Authored by RFE/RL via OilPrice.com,

• The EU and G7 are exploring ways to use frozen Russian assets to financially support Ukraine, potentially through a $50 billion loan backed by these assets.

• The EU is considering either open-ended immobilization of Russian assets or extending sanctions by up to 36 months to provide legal certainty for the plan.

• The EU has officially launched a visa liberalization dialogue with Armenia, which could eventually allow Armenians visa-free travel to most EU countries.

The European Union and the Group of Seven (G7) leading industrialized nations are slowly gearing up new legislation that will allow a $50 billion loan to go to Ukraine by the end of the year.

The political decision for that loan was already agreed when the G7 met in Italy for its annual summit on June 13-15. In the communique from the meeting, it was stated that “we decided to make available approximately $50 billion leveraging the extraordinary revenues of the immobilized Russian sovereign assets, sending an unmistakable signal to President Putin.”

There are roughly $282 billion worth of Russian frozen assets in G7 countries after these resources were targeted by sanctions in early 2022, mostly in the EU. And while no one is keen yet to face the legal consequences of actually confiscating the money — as fears persist it could dissuade other countries from investing in the eurozone and thus undermine the euro — there is momentum now to get creative in using the funds to financially support Kyiv.

The G7 declaration stated as much by noting that “Russia must end its illegal war of aggression and pay for the damage it has caused to Ukraine. These damages now exceed $486 billion, according to the World Bank. It is not right for Russia to decide if or when it will pay for the damage it has caused in Ukraine. Russia’s obligations under international law to pay for the damage it is causing are clear, and so we are continuing to consider all possible lawful avenues by which Russia is made to meet those obligations.”

Deep Background: 

Most Russian money located in the EU, the onus is on Brussels. EU leaders, including more Ukraine-skeptic nations such as Hungary and Slovakia, endorsed the G7 outcome at a summit in Brussels just a week after. They unanimously agreed on conclusions that urged the European Commission to take the work forward on this and added, “Subject to EU law, Russia’s assets should remain immobilized until Russia ceases its war of aggression against Ukraine and compensates it for the damage caused by this war.”

It should be recalled that the bloc already has a mechanism in place to send the annual windfall profits from the frozen Russian assets to Ukraine. This is estimated to generate some 3 billion euros a year ($3.2 billion), with 90 percent of it going to military equipment and the rest for reconstruction.

The first tranche of this money was disbursed over the summer.

This new G7 initiative, however, goes a step further, bringing the interest proceeds from frozen assets via a loan that is guaranteed by the G7 countries.

The preliminary division is that the EU and the United States will back this up with $20 billion each, and Japan and the United Kingdom will guarantee the remaining $10 billion between them. But a lot of nitty-gritty legal groundwork is still needed.

Drilling Down

• The item was discussed for the first time by EU ambassadors at the end of July with the European Commission providing a one-page outline, seen by RFE/RL, of what the options are. The idea is that the commission will present a fully fleshed-out legal proposal at the end of August with EU ambassadors discussing the text on September 4. But from the one-pager it is already clear that there are essentially just two avenues available to take.

• The main issues to ensure are legal certainty and predictability. And that means that Russian assets remain frozen for a longer period. Brussels is looking to either agree on an open-ended immobilization of Russian assets or prolong this sanction by a longer period of up to 36 months. It’s worth noting that all types of economic sanctions against Russia that Brussels has imposed currently are rolled over via consensus by the 27 member states every six months, with the latest prolongation confirmed on July 22.

• According to diplomats familiar with the initial discussion, the overwhelming majority favor an open-ended immobilization. The option paper says this option will still be “reviewed by the Council at regular intervals (e.g. 12 months), on the basis of clear predefined criteria (i.e. the end of the war of aggression and assurances of nonrepetition, the payment of compensation by Russia, etc. as set out by the EUCO – European Council).”

• It also adds that “ending the immobilization of the CBR (Central Bank of Russia) assets would require a new Council act, based on a report by the High Representative (EU foreign policy chief)/Commission assessing that the criteria for lifting are fulfilled.”

• The question is, however, whether Hungary has the appetite to agree on this. So far, EU leaders have never threatened not to roll over the sanctions but at the same time they haven’t been militantly against moving away from an extension beyond the six months mark. Budapest might go against both options outlined in the paper, and that would mean there isn’t much of the legal certainty and predictability that the EU seeks.

• If the EU can ensure this, the question is whether the United States, in the middle of its election period, is ready to give a green light. The U.S. Congress needs to approve this loan, and if there are any fears that Hungary (or any other EU member states, for that matter) might threaten to block the renewal a couple of times a year, the whole scheme risks unraveling.

• That’s why the United States initially wanted the EU to guarantee most, if not all, of the $50 billion and why most member states would prefer an open-ended immobilization. The diplomatic wrangling on this is likely to continue throughout the autumn.

Looking Ahead

The EU and NATO are still on the beach this week, but look out for two interesting visits on August 21. First German Chancellor Olaf Scholz is due in Chisinau in what is a symbolic show of solidarity from the EU’s most powerful member state to Moldova, which will hold a crucial presidential vote later this autumn and a referendum on whether the country should aim to join the EU.

That same day Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is due in Warsaw and will travel to Kyiv from there. The West has attempted to woo India for a long time and is hoping the country will be more vocal and practical in its support for Ukraine and opposition to Russia’s invasion.

Authored by Chris Morrison via DailySceptic.org,

Earlier this month the Met Office declared the hottest day of the year so far in the U.K. with the temperature reaching 34.8ºC in Cambridge. The Met Office claimed it was only the eleventh time since 1961 that the temperature had reached that level, with six of these occasions having been recorded in the last 10 years. Needless to say, missing from the account was a note that the station in Cambridge’s National Institute for Agricultural Botany (NIAB) is located just metres from a massive heat-generating electricity sub-station complex.

Electricity sub-stations give off so much heat into the surrounding atmosphere there are even plans to trap it for commercial use.

The Cambridge station at Histon has recently benefitted from a £5 million upgrade including the installation of a third heat-pumping transformer.

It is difficult to think of a worse place to locate an instrument to accurately measure nearby uncorrupted air temperatures, other than favoured Met sites at international airports and solar farms.

Cambridge NIAB crops up regularly in the Met Office’s local daily ‘records’. Last year it claimed a recording at this site was the highest measured in the eastern region during September since 1949. The World Meteorological Office (WMO) rates Met Office sites from class 1 to 5 and Cambridge NIAB is said to have a pristine class 1 designation with no temperature ‘uncertainties’ due to local natural and unnatural influences. But how reliable is this superior rating? The view from Google Earth suggests that questions about its validity can legitimately be asked.

WMO guidelines state that any heat source in class 1 sites must be at least 100 metres away. But the google map above suggests that 100m is a very generous distance between the Histon grid and the red Met station marker. An even nearer straight line path or road might also not be considered helpful in taking an uncorrupted measurement. Recent expansion at Histon has added a third heat-pumping transformer to help increase capacity.

Electricity sub-stations release huge amounts of heat into the nearby surroundings. There have even been plans to capture the output from these ‘boilers’ for commercial use. In 2021, SSE Energy Solutions and the National Grid unveiled plans to use the heat generated to produce hot water and space heating for domestic and industrial premises. As Nathan Sanders, managing director at SSE, noted: “Electric power transformers generate huge amounts of heat as a by-product when electricity flows through them. At the moment, this heat is just vented directly into the atmosphere and wasted.”

Not entirely wasted, the cynical might observe. It serves to boost temperatures – highly useful for spreading political Net Zero panic and alarm – across the entire U.K. Met Office measuring network. As regular readers will know, this network is composed of largely junk stations in class 4 with WMO ‘uncertainties’ of 2ºC, and super-junk class 5 with possible errors up to 5ºC. Almost eight in 10 stations across the 380-strong network are labelled class 4 and 5. Many of these stations, such as the urban heat furnace that is Heathrow airport, produce regular daily ‘records’. Incredibly, the overall data is used by the Met to claim it can measure air temperature across the four countries of the U.K. down to one hundredth of a degree centigrade.

The Daily Sceptic is obliged to citizen journalist Ray Sanders for drawing our attention to the obvious corruptions at Cambridge NIAB. Ray is a frequent contributor to Paul Homewood’s blog, an excellent online publication that has long drawn attention to the obvious and widespread problems at the Met Office sites. Earlier this year, the Daily Sceptic broke the story that revealed most of the stations are junk following a freedom of information request. Interest in this scientific scandal is now widespread on social media, but it remains of little concern to mainstream media. Most writers captured by the lazy Net Zero narrative continue to tout the heat corrupted figures and ‘records’. To date, the Met Office has failed to respond to the growing critical interest in its obviously flawed temperature readings.

Heat corruptions caused by electricity sub-stations can be found at other locations used by the Met Office. Ray has also drawn our attention to the ‘notorious’ Bingley No 2 site, in use since 1972.

Again, it is just metres away from a major city sub-station. Unsurprisingly, in this case it has a class 4 junk designation.

The final meteorological horror show can be seen at Amersham where temperatures at this class 4 site are again taken just a few metres away from the area’s main sub-station. This site is a new one, having been established in 2015. It begs the question why the Met Office continues to locate scientific measuring stations in such unsuitable places. Another recent FOI request has revealed that over eight out of 10 of the 113 stations opened in the last 30 years are in classes 4 and 5. Worse, 81% of the stations started in the last 10 years, including Amersham, are junk, as are eight of the 13 new sites in the last five years.

Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Modernity.news,

A taxpayer-funded group is once again putting up posters around London that say, “Hey Straight White Men Pass The Power!”

Yes, really.

The posters, which originally appeared in Southwark, London and other areas of the UK in 2022, appear to have popped up once again, with an image posted to X showing one in Acton, London.

Billboards saying “Hey straight white men, pass the power!” are appearing all over London, just to make sure you know it’s not happening and it’s a good thing that it is. pic.twitter.com/BMZFUKJqRg

— RAW EGG NATIONALIST (@Babygravy9) August 20, 2024

They are the work of an art project called the Artichoke Trust and were designed by a black artist from Marseille called Nadina who previously produced ‘street art’ that proclaimed, ‘Never forget George Floyd’ and ‘Nobody is free until Palestine is free’.

“Research from the Taxpayers’ Alliance claimed (the group) had been given £3million from a government art grant,” reported the Daily Mail.

Respondents questioned precisely what ‘power’ straight white men were supposed to give up in a society where they are already disenfranchised to the extent that large, partially government-funded billboards in major cities scream at them for merely existing.

“Hey straight white men, pass the power!”

Anti-White billboards seen across Britain were tax-funded.

Complete absurdity. pic.twitter.com/s0vuUXM5oi

— iamyesyouareno (@iamyesyouareno) August 15, 2024

When the posters initially appeared two years ago, they drew the ire of author Douglas Murray, who asked who exactly white people were supposed to ‘pass the power’ to.

“When I see such a piece of public insult, a number of things cross my otherwise tranquil mind. The first is a desire to put a foot through the billboard in question,” wrote Murray.

“The second is to wonder whether Southwark council, the Mayor of London or anyone else would permit any similarly bigoted public messages if they happened to turn it round the other way. ‘Oy, black blokes. Give us your rights!’, for example. Or: ‘Hey, gays, hand over the cash!’ Those billboards would most likely be hate crimes, and the mayor of London, Southwark council, the General Synod and everyone else would immediately be out to condemn them as such. But when it comes to not just insulting straight white men, but actually hectoring them, then it seems no one can be bothered to raise a whisper of objection.”

Once you see it… https://t.co/u9Gh6jdFiH pic.twitter.com/UPI7DOgTbS

— Will Chamberlain (@willchamberlain) August 20, 2024

Respondents on X compared the posters to anti-mass migration stickers that were handed out by activist Sam Melia, who ended up receiving a 2 year prison sentence for “inciting racial hatred.”

The stickers handed out by Melia included one that said, “It’s OK to be white.”

How bad are hate speech laws in the UK? Saying “it’s OK to be white” can result in a harsher sentence than child pornography. @abigailandwords found numerous cases in which UK judges jailed thought criminals while letting actual criminals off the hook.

The list is shocking.🧵 pic.twitter.com/ell2A5hjdi

— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) August 20, 2024

So apparently, merely affirming that it’s acceptable to be white is a criminal offence, but demanding white men give up their (illusory) power is a social justice cause to be celebrated and funded with taxpayer money.

*  *  *

Your support is crucial in helping us defeat mass censorship. Please consider donating via Locals or check out our unique merch. Follow us on X @ModernityNews.

Authored by John & Nisha Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,

“When a population becomes distracted by trivia, when cultural life is redefined as a perpetual round of entertainments, when serious public conversation becomes a form of baby-talk, when, in short, a people become an audience, and their public business a vaudeville act, then a nation finds itself at risk; culture-death is a clear possibility.” 

– Neil Postman

What you smell is the stench of a dying republic.

Our dying republic.

We are trapped in a political matrix intended to sustain the illusion that we are citizens of a constitutional republic.

In reality, we are caught somewhere between a kleptocracy (a government ruled by thieves) and a kakistocracy (a government run by unprincipled career politicians, corporations and thieves that panders to the worst vices in our nature and has little regard for the rights of American citizens).

For years now, the government has been playing a cat-and-mouse game with the American people, letting us enjoy just enough freedom to think we are free but not enough to actually allow us to live as a free people.

In other words, we’re allowed to bask in the illusion of freedom while we’re being stripped of the very rights intended to ensure that we can hold the government accountable to abiding by the rule of law, the U.S. Constitution.

We’re in trouble, folks.

This is no longer America, land of the free, where the government is of the people, by the people and for the people.

Rather, this is Amerika, where fascism, totalitarianism and militarism go hand in hand.

Freedom no longer means what it once did.

This holds true whether you’re talking about the right to criticize the government in word or deed, the right to be free from government surveillance, the right to not have your person or your property subjected to warrantless searches by government agents, the right to due process, the right to be safe from militarized police invading your home, the right to be innocent until proven guilty and every other right that once reinforced the founders’ commitment to the American experiment in freedom.

Not only do we no longer have dominion over our bodies, our families, our property and our lives, but the government continues to chip away at what few rights we still have to speak freely and think for ourselves.

My friends, we’re being played for fools.

On paper, we may be technically free.

In reality, however, we are only as free as a government official may allow.

We only think we live in a constitutional republic, governed by just laws created for our benefit.

Truth be told, we live in a dictatorship disguised as a democracy where all that we own, all that we earn, all that we say and do—our very lives—depends on the benevolence of government agents and corporate shareholders for whom profit and power will always trump principle. And now the government is litigating and legislating its way into a new framework where the dictates of petty bureaucrats carry greater weight than the inalienable rights of the citizenry.

With every court ruling that allows the government to operate above the rule of law, every piece of legislation that limits our freedoms, and every act of government wrongdoing that goes unpunished, we’re slowly being conditioned to a society in which we have little real control over our lives.

As Rod Serling, creator of the Twilight Zone and an insightful commentator on human nature, once observed, “We’re developing a new citizenry. One that will be very selective about cereals and automobiles, but won’t be able to think.”

Indeed, not only are we developing a new citizenry incapable of thinking for themselves, but we’re also instilling in them a complete and utter reliance on the government and its corporate partners to do everything for them—tell them what to eat, what to wear, how to think, what to believe, how long to sleep, who to vote for, whom to associate with, and on and on.

In this way, we have created a welfare state, a nanny state, a police state, a surveillance state, an electronic concentration camp—call it what you will, the meaning is the same: in our quest for less personal responsibility, a greater sense of security, and no burdensome obligations to each other or to future generations, we have created a society in which we have no true freedom.

Government surveillance, police abuse, SWAT team raids, economic instability, asset forfeiture schemes, pork barrel legislation, militarized police, drones, endless wars, private prisons, involuntary detentions, biometrics databases, free speech zones, etc.: these are mile markers on the road to a fascist state where citizens are treated like cattle, to be branded and eventually led to the slaughterhouse.

Freedom, or what’s left of it, is being threatened from every direction.

The threats are of many kinds: political, cultural, educational, media, and psychological. However, as history shows us, freedom is not, on the whole, wrested from a citizenry. It is all too often given over voluntarily and for such a cheap price: safety, security, bread, and circuses.

This is part and parcel of the propaganda churned out by the government machine.

That said, what we face today—mind manipulation and systemic violence—is not new. What is different are the techniques used and the large-scale control of mass humanity, coercive police tactics and pervasive surveillance.

We are overdue for a systemic check on the government’s overreaches and power grabs.

By “government,” I’m not referring to the highly partisan, two-party bureaucracy of the Republicans and Democrats. Rather, I’m referring to “government” with a capital “G,” the entrenched Deep State that is unaffected by elections, unaltered by populist movements, and has set itself beyond the reach of the law.

For years now, we have suffered the injustices, cruelties, corruption and abuse of an entrenched government bureaucracy that has no regard for the Constitution or the rights of the citizenry.

We have lingered too long in this strange twilight zone where ego trumps justice, propaganda perverts truth, and imperial presidents—empowered to indulge their authoritarian tendencies by legalistic courts, corrupt legislatures and a disinterested, distracted populace—rule by fiat rather than by the rule of law.

Where we find ourselves now is in the unenviable position of needing to rein in all three branches of government—the Executive, the Judicial, and the Legislative—that have exceeded their authority and grown drunk on power.

We are the unwitting victims of a system so corrupt that those who stand up for the rule of law and aspire to transparency in government are in the minority. This corruption is so vast it spans all branches of government.

The predators of the police state are wreaking havoc on our freedoms, our communities, and our lives. The government doesn’t listen to the citizenry, it refuses to abide by the Constitution, which is our rule of law, and it treats the citizenry as a source of funding and little else.

The American kleptocracy has sucked the American people down a rabbit hole into a parallel universe in which the Constitution is meaningless, the government is all-powerful, and the citizenry is powerless to defend itself against government agents who steal, spy, lie, plunder, kill, abuse and generally inflict mayhem and sow madness on everyone and everything in their sphere.

This dissolution of that sacred covenant between the citizenry and the government—establishing “we the people” as the masters and the government as the servant—didn’t happen overnight. It didn’t happen because of one particular incident or one particular president. It is a process, one that began long ago and continues in the present day, aided and abetted by politicians who have mastered the polarizing art of how to “divide and conquer.”

Unfortunately, there is no magic spell to transport us back to a place and time where “we the people” weren’t merely fodder for a corporate gristmill, operated by government hired hands, whose priorities are money and power.

Our freedoms have become casualties in an all-out war on the American people.

Through every fault of our own—our apathy, our ignorance, our intolerance, our disinclination to do the hard work of holding government leaders accountable to the rule of law, our inclination to let politics trump longstanding constitutional principles—we have been reduced to this sorry state in which we are little more than shackled inmates in a prison operated for the profit of a corporate elite.

If we continue down this road, there can be no surprise about what awaits us at the end.

For there to be any hope of real change, we must change how we think about ourselves, our fellow human beings, freedom, society, and the government.

The following principles may help any budding freedom fighters in the struggle to liberate themselves and our society.

First, we must come to grips with the reality that the present system does not foster freedom. The government’s primary purpose is maintaining power and control. It’s an oligarchy composed of corporate giants wedded to government officials who benefit from the relationship. In other words, it is motivated by greed and exists to perpetuate itself.

Second, voting is no guarantee of liberty. Voting is a way to keep the citizenry pacified. That’s why the government places so much emphasis on the reassurance ritual of voting. It provides the illusion of participation while maintaining the status quo. As Jordan Michael Smith, writing for the Boston Globe, concludes about the American government, “There’s the one we elect, and then there’s the one behind it, steering huge swaths of policy almost unchecked. Elected officials end up serving as mere cover for the real decisions made by the bureaucracy.”

Third, question everything. Don’t assume anything the government does is for the good of the citizenry. As James Madison warned, “All men having power ought to be distrusted to a certain degree.” Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Fourth, there is little hope for any true resistance if you are mindlessly connected to the electronic concentration camp. Remember, what you’re being electronically fed by those in power is meant to pacify, distract, and control you.

Fifth, be wise and realize that there is power in numbers. Networks, coalitions, and movements can accomplish much—especially if their objectives are focused, practical and nonviolent—and they are very much feared by government authorities.

Sixth, as always, change must start with “we the people.” I’ve always advised people to think nationally, but act locally. Yet it can be hard to make a difference locally when the local government is as deaf, dumb and blind to the needs of its constituents as the national government.

Seventh, local towns, cities and states can nullify or say “no” to federal laws that violate the rights and freedoms of the citizenry. When and if you see such federal laws passed, gather your coalition of citizens and demand that your local town council nullify such laws. If enough towns and cities across the country would speak truth to power in this way, we might see some positive movement from the federal governmental machine.

Clearly, it’s time to clean house at all levels of government.

We have been saddled with the wreckage of a government at all levels that no longer represents the citizenry, serves the citizenry, or is accountable to the citizenry.

“We the people” are not the masters anymore.

It doesn’t matter whether you’re talking about the federal government, state governments, or local governing bodies: at all ends of the spectrum and every point in between, a shift has taken place.

“We the people” are not being seen, heard or valued.

We no longer count for much of anything beyond an occasional electoral vote and as a source of income for the government’s ever-burgeoning financial needs.

Everything happening at the national level is playing out at the local level, as well: the violence, the militarization, the intolerance, the lopsided governance, and an uneasy awareness that the citizenry have no say in how their communities are being governed.

So, what’s the answer?

For starters, stop tolerating corruption, graft, intolerance, greed, incompetence, ineptitude, militarism, lawlessness, ignorance, brutality, deceit, collusion, corpulence, bureaucracy, immorality, depravity, censorship, cruelty, violence, mediocrity, and tyranny. These are the hallmarks of an institution that is rotten through and through.

Stop holding your nose in order to block out the stench of a rotting institution.

Stop letting the government and its agents treat you like a servant or a slave.

You’ve got rights. We’ve all got rights. This is our country. This is our government. No one can take it away from us unless we make it easy for them.

You’ve got a better chance of making your displeasure seen and felt and heard within your own community. But it will take perseverance and unity and a commitment to finding common ground with your fellow citizens.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, we’re making it way too easy for the police state to take over.

So, stop being an accessory to the murder of the American republic.

China has responded to the fresh NY Times revelation that President Joe Biden recently (and secretly) approved a new nuclear strategic plan that includes US preparations for a simultaneous nuclear war with Russia, China, and North Korea. The new strategic doctrine was reportedly put into effect in March.

“The U.S. is peddling the China nuclear threat narrative, finding excuses to seek strategic advantage,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning responded on Wednesday.

“China is seriously concerned about the relevant report and the facts have fully proved that the United States has constantly stirred up the so-called China nuclear threat theory in recent years,” she added.

Mao insisted that instead of hyping fake threats, Washington should pursue setting an example of nuclear disarmament and de-escalation, and reminded a press briefing that Beijing officially maintains a a policy of no-first-use of nuclear weapons.

“China has always kept its nuclear capabilities to a minimum required for national security needs with no intention to engage in any arms race with any country,” the spokeswoman continued.

She then called attention to the fact that the US possesses “the largest and most advanced nuclear arsenal” and at the same time “stubbornly adheres to a nuclear deterrence policy based on the first use of nuclear weapons.”

As we featured previously, the US nuclear strategy is updated about every four years or so and is highly classified. The Times described the new strategy as the “first to examine in detail whether the United States is prepared to respond to nuclear crises that break out simultaneously or sequentially, with a combination of nuclear and nonnuclear weapons.”

China’s arsenal is still just a fraction of what the US and Russia possess. The State Department said in July that the US has 5,748 warheads, including 2,000 that are retired and awaiting dismantlement.

Classified doc reveals Joe Biden ‘approved a highly classified nuclear strategic plan that reorients US deterrent strategy to focus on China’s rapid expansion in its nuclear arsenal’

White House – “Not a response to any single entity, country nor threat” https://t.co/svHGmQvfcJ

— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) August 21, 2024

According to the Arms Control Association, Russia has 5,580 warheads, including 1,200 that are retired and awaiting dismantlement. Russia has 1,549 nuclear warheads that are deployed, and the US deploys 1,419.

Authored by Teresa Manning via American Greatness,

This week, the National Association of Scholars (“NAS”) and the Heritage Foundation are sponsoring a panel discussion on diversity ideology in higher education. A number of reports have recently been published on the topic, with most documenting monies spent by state universities on “diversity, equity and inclusion” (“DEI“). The Maryland affiliate of the National Association of Scholars released the most recent such report this summer, but the Virginia affiliate issued one last year, while Idaho, North Carolina, Maine, and Tennessee produced similar documents before that.

The Maryland report reminds state officials that “diversity” is usually a cover for race-based practices that are now likely illegal under the 2023 United States Supreme Court case, Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard (or “SFFA”). That opinion found that racial preferences in university admissions were a violation of federal civil rights laws and also the Constitution’s Equal Protection clause. SFFA means that any race-based practice in college is presumptively unlawful. As the Court said, “Eliminating discrimination means eliminating all of it … distinctions between citizens solely because of their ancestry are by their nature odious.”

Virginia’s report is similar to the others with its focus on money, asking Should Virginians Pay for University “Diversity” Leftism? It found that DEI expenditures at Virginia’s state universities have exploded with the University of Virginia (UVA) probably the worst offender. In 2020, for example, UVA spent $4,149,732 on DEI programs with 38 DEI administrators; but within one year, both those figures had nearly doubled. In 2021, UVA spent $6,924,279 on DEI and had 77 DEI administrators. Incredibly, more recent findings show that UVA’s DEI expenditures have skyrocketed even more, with over $20 million spent in 2023 including for 235 DEI employees.

That’s taxpayer money not spent on instruction, library holdings, or lab equipment.

The “diversity” contagion is a relatively recent mind virus. The word was almost unheard of for most of American history, making its first real appearance in a 1978 United States Supreme Court case finding racial quotas in school admissions illegal but allowing some consideration of race for the sake of diversity in education. The brief mention may have seemed innocuous but “diversity” was then seized upon by those hostile to Western civilization to dilute social cohesion in Western nations. (Diversity is not a thing in Japan, which would likely view it as an act of war.)

America typifies the West as it is a product of Great Britain and, for its first 200 years, was populated almost entirely by Western peoples of the United Kingdom and Europe. America’s founding documents—the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution—enshrine Western principles of limited government for a free and presumably moral people. In fact, most founders emphasized that the Constitution would not work without a moral people. And the governance established by the Constitution—its separation of powers, its checks and balances including between the federal and state powers—reflects America’s Christian heritage and especially the Christian notion of man’s tendency toward corruption and sin. Hence the checks on power. As Lord Acton famously explained, “Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

Nowhere in these founding documents does the word “diversity” appear, nor do its partner buzzwords “equity,” “inclusion,” etc. In fact, diversity ideology is not only un-American (that is, not part of our basic laws), it’s arguably anti-American in that it obsesses about race to pit Americans against each other. It also undermines America as the land of opportunity where individuals matter most—their talent, industry, and character.

Where America would value the individual, DEI wants tribes. It’s preoccupied with groups, typically based on race or sex. All this fosters poisonous identity politics where the individual barely matters. This also undermines excellence as the tribe trumps individual talent. It’s no coincidence that collectivist, socialist regimes tend to have crumbling bridges, bad cars, and outdated technologies. They’re against individual achievement. America was never like this. But it’s getting that way now.

Worse, diversity ideologies always have a religious flavor. They’re packaged as moral imperatives and pitched especially to young people as if they’re a “new and improved” ethics. Young people are by definition inexperienced and usually unwise—which is to say, they’re easy prey. Family and societal breakdown has also made them unanchored, free radicals who are even easier to manipulate, indoctrinate, and control. And they’re tragically ignorant not only of their own Western heritage but also of norms throughout the world. For example, young Americans are taught the evils of slavery, where the simplistic story is that African Americans were victims and Americans of European descent were victimizers. But they’re never taught that Africans also participated in the slave trade, with one African tribe often selling another to the Europeans. They also don’t seem to realize that Europeans—“whites”—were the ones to abolish slavery. Even today, slavery remains a common practice in much of the world, especially within the Middle East, Africa, and parts of Asia. Any praise for Western civilization and especially its religious heritage for this moral progress? Nope. Just more diversity propaganda, the false religion.

America needs to reject these destructive diversity ideologies and return to its place as the land of opportunity for individuals—its citizens. It can start by rooting out DEI in its educational institutions, starting with colleges and universities. It’s none too soon.

We are too speechless to even offer any snarky, sarcastic commentary because, frankly, this is beyond idiotic.

Asked about today’s near record downward jobs revision, Biden’s Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo – who we repeat, is the Secretary of the Department of Commerce which is responsible among other things, for the Bureau of Economic Analysis – said she “doesn’t believe” the revision because, somehow Trump was behind it. But when she was informed that the data comes from her own administration, namely the Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics, Raimondo’s response was simply legendary: “I am not familiar with that.”

Harris-Biden Commerce Sec. Gina Raimondo says she doesn’t believe new government data that shows almost a million of the jobs the Harris-Biden admin claimed to have “created” don’t actually exist.

“I’m not familiar with that.” pic.twitter.com/JaAwEWKuNC

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) August 21, 2024

And there you have it: the person who is at the top of the US propaganda data collection and distribution pyramid is, checks notes, “not familiar” with the Bureau of Labor.

To this, all one can ask the former Governor of Rhode Island and current “Commerce Secretary” is what would you say… you do here?

Authored by Andrew Korybko via substack,

Russia’s foreign spy agency SVR revealed that “the Ukrainian Armed Forces’ operation in the Kursk region was prepared with the participation of the special services of the USA, Great Britain and Poland. The units involved in it underwent combat coordination in training centers in Great Britain and Germany. Military advisers from NATO countries provide assistance in managing the UAF units that have invaded Russian territory and in the use of Western types of weapons and military equipment by Ukrainians.”

They ended their statement to popular newspaper Izvestia by adding that “The alliance countries also provide the Ukrainian military with satellite intelligence data on the deployment of Russian troops in the area of ​​the operation.” This coincided with the Russian Foreign Ministry summoning the US charges d’affaires to protest American journalists’ illegal crossing of their border for propaganda purposes in support of this invasion as well as the military role therein played by at least one American PMC.

Commander of the Akhmat Special Forces from Russia’s Chechen Republic Apty Alaudinov accused the invaders of carrying out a spree of war crimes as part of Zelensky’s stated goals of carving out a “buffer zone” and bolstering Ukraine’s “exchange fund” for future prisoner swaps. Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko had earlier warned in an interview with leading Russian media that Ukraine might actually want Russia to use nuclear weapons, the possible rationale of which was explained here.

What all of these details show is that what’s happening in Kursk is a real NATO-backed Ukrainian invasion of universally recognized Russian territory, not some “5D chess master plan” by Russia to encircle the Ukrainians in a “cauldron” like some in the Alt-Media Community (AMC) have speculated. The US can play dumb about this all it wants, but Russia is convinced that it orchestrated this unprecedented provocation, thus raising questions about how it’ll respond.

A lot of AMC folks on social media demand something radical like Russia striking targets in NATO and/or having Wagner carry out cross-border incursions against its frontline members from Belarus, but neither are likely to materialize. Regardless of whatever one’s personal opinion might be about his approach, Putin has proven to have the patience of a saint by refusing to escalate in response to the slew of provocations that have been carried out against his country since the special operation began.

This includes Ukraine’s bombings of the Crimean Bridge, its destruction of the Kakhovka Dam which risks turning Crimea into a desert, the assassination of journalists like Darya Dugina, incessant attacks against civilians in Russia’s new regions, the bombing of its strategic airbases and early warning systems, involvement in the Crocus terrorist attack, and even attacking the Kremlin. All of these provocations and more were carried out with American assistance, yet Russia hasn’t radically responded to any of them.  

The most that it’s done is carry out strikes against Ukraine’s energy infrastructure in an attempt to impede its military operations as well as recently carve out a tiny buffer zone in Kharkov Region, but it won’t bomb bridges across the Dnieper nor political targets like the Rada.

Time and again, Russia consistently refuses to escalate, only doing the bare minimum of what its most zealous supporters in the AMC demand when it finally decides to do something out of the ordinary.

The reason for this (some would say too) cautious approach is Putin’s fear of inadvertently triggering World War III, which he’s afraid might become inevitable if Russia radically responds to its foes’ provocations due to the fast-moving sequence of events that it could lead to. To be clear, Russia has the right to respond in such a way, but it’s voluntarily eschewing that right for the aforementioned reasons that it considers to be for the “greater global good”.

Accordingly, it’s highly unlikely that Putin will finally throw his characteristic caution to the wind by deliberately risking World War III (or at least that’s how he’d see everything as being) by opting for a radical response to his government’s conclusion that the US is involved in Ukraine’s invasion of Kursk.  

The only plausible scenarios in which he’d change his calculations would be if there was a nuclear provocation, a high-level assassination, or a terrorist attack even worse than the recent Crocus one.

Recalling what was written earlier about how Lukashenko warned that Ukraine might actually want Russia to use nukes, none of these scenarios and whatever other ones might cross Putin’s non-negotiable red lines (which the previously enumerated provocations didn’t do) can be ruled out. They’d also likely be used in the far-fetched event of a Russian military collapse along its western border, or Belarus’ collapse along its own with NATO or Ukraine, and subsequent large-scale invasion.

From Russia’s perspective, Ukraine’s invasion of Kursk remains manageable despite the US’ involvement in this unprecedented provocation, thus meaning that Putin probably won’t resort to the radical response that many in the AMC have been fantasizing about. If he finally decided to let loose, however, then he might only ramp up the intensity of the special operation in Ukraine instead of attacking NATO and thus risking the outbreak of World War III that he’s worked so hard to avoid thus far.

Higher education is nothing more than leftist indoctrination camps, costing students (or taxpayers, in some cases) tens of thousands of dollars per year to be uploaded with the woke mind virus. Some of these woke activist students were triggered earlier this year, spewing racist hate speech and death threats against Jewish students (and we’re sure the hate went both ways) over the Israel-Gaza conflict. 

RAINING: 2:15pm Friday at the pro-Palestinian protest at Northwestern University In Evanston, Illinois. Much of the crowd which reached over 600 a hour ago is leaving. Everybody else moving to tents and covering food & signs with tarps. pic.twitter.com/QzAjTTHNt8

— Mark Weyermuller (@publicpolicyman) April 26, 2024

The chaos and hate that flooded schoolyards at universities and colleges like Northwestern University earlier this year has served as a major wake-up call for Americans, leading many to question how leftist institutions might be indoctrinating vulnerable young minds. 

Hate at Northwestern must have been such a serious issue for the administration because now, the school has announced mandatory training for all students on preventing antisemitism and Islamophobia on campus. 

“There is no room on our campus for antisemitism; there is no room for Islamophobia; there is no room for racism and other forms of identity-based hate. Northwestern will not tolerate behavior or speech that harms members of our community,” Northwestern President Michael Schill wrote in a statement. 

Schill revealed new ‘educational opportunities’ for students this coming semester:

• Mandatory trainings on antisemitism and other forms of hate will be used in September at incoming student orientation and over the Fall Quarter for all returning students. Training also will be provided to staff and faculty.

• A set of lectures and panels on antisemitism, Islamophobia and racism as well as the history and politics of the conflict in the Middle East.

This comes as pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli demonstrators clashed on campus in late 2023 and through the spring 2024 semester. Also, there was a failed effort by the pro-Palestinian side to force Northwestern’s administration to divest from all things Israel. 

Meanwhile, Harvard University added a new essay topic for applicants: how they handle disagreements.

The changes are coming in response to a nation shocked after witnessing the out-of-control uprisings at left-wing colleges and universities over the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza, along with the surge of hate that emerged from these woke institutions.