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Morally-Bankrupt MSM Couldn’t Even Admit It Was An Assassination Attempt

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Morally-Bankrupt MSM Couldn’t Even Admit It Was An Assassination Attempt

Authored by Mark Jeftovic via The Daily Bell,

Innocent bystander and shooter killed during loud popping noises incident at Trump rally.

A few years back, during the #FreedomConvoy, my main business came out in support of the truckers, and we took a lot of heat for it, including an (admittedly lame) grass roots campaign to have our business decertified as a .CA registrar.

At the time I would patiently defend our position against those who disagreed, and things would remain fairly civil – right up until the point where I would challenge where they were getting their information from.

It was weird – opposing their viewpoint was one thing, calling into question the basis of their information, namely the mainstream media, would send them into a frothing tirade. This happened repeatedly.

Until a few hours ago, nothing has surfaced both the illegitimacy and fundamental dishonesty of the corporate media cartel quite like the attempted assassination of Donald Trump at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.

CNN led the narrative, hearkening back to their “Fiery but mostly peaceful” roots with a couple of doozies:

MSNBC ascribed all the commotion to “popping sounds”, which apparently “startled” the former president (more accurately, perhaps,  was that he was hit on the side of the head by fucking bullet).

Which set the tone everywhere…

Do you see the difference?

The New York Times came the closest to at least admitting it was a gunman, albeit framing it as though somebody was there shooting up the rally, and not a targeted assassination attempt.

“The Secret Service killed a gunman after Donald Trump was rushed off stage in what is being investigated as an assassination attempt.”

Uh, yeah, ’cause that’s exactly what it was.

[ZH: Once it was unquestionable that an assassination attempt had occurred, MSM turned to Trump’s reaction… and exposed themselves once again…]

It’s amazing that after all this time, and all the gaslighting and all the lies, it’s the so-called “mainstream media” that lays claim to the factual high ground, while alternative outlets that actually report the facts and follow data are demonized and dismissed as “conspiracy theory”.

Tyler Durden
Sun, 07/14/2024 – 09:20

‘That Was A Complete Disaster’ – Biden Snaps In Meeting Called To Reassure House Dems

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‘That Was A Complete Disaster’ – Biden Snaps In Meeting Called To Reassure House Dems

Embattled President Biden opened up a meeting with a group of Democratic US representatives by challenging them to ask him “hard questions” about his candidacy and his fitness to serve — only to jump down the throat of a member who sought reassurance about the 81-year-old’s ability to serve as a strong commander-in-chief. His loss of temper and ill-preparedness for the meeting reportedly did nothing to bolster his audience’s confidence. 

That audience for the Saturday video conference call was the New Democrat Coalition, a group comprising some 100 centrist Democrats. While the group’s chairwoman, New Hampshire Rep. Anne McLane Kuster, politely characterized the conversation as “candid, respectful and productive,” members speaking to reporters anonymously were far less charitable about Biden’s performance.

“That was a complete disaster. We saw the same Joe Biden from the debate,” one of the House reps on the roughly 30-minute, late-afternoon call told Axios. Another said the call was “awful,” while a third said “members were not holding back.”

Another source who was on the call told The Hill it was “tense.” That tension hit a crescendo when Colorado Rep. Jason Crow told Biden that, from a national security perspective, voters were uneasy about Biden being “at the helm when they go to sleep at night.” 

“Biden ripped him…the exchange was hard to watch,” The Hill’s source said. According to three sources who spoke to Politico, Biden raised his voice and said, “I don’t want to hear that crap!” before forcefully touting his foreign policy record, citing — as he incessantly does now — his role in expanding NATO, an undertaking that does nothing to increase US security. 

“He started shouting at Jason Crow for no reason,” a member said. Undaunted by Biden’s rebuke, Crow — a former Army Ranger — told Biden his accomplishments weren’t persuading voters who have doubts about his ability to serve another term. 

Rep. Jason Crow, a former Army Ranger who represent’s Colorado’s 6th Congressional district, previously blasted Biden for the Afghanistan withdrawal debacle (Jason Connolly/AFP/Getty Images via Axios)

The Hill’s source said members were “really dismayed” by overall Biden’s performance, saying he seemed unprepared to handle the questions that everyone is asking about him since his disastrous June 27 debate performance. As he is prone to do, Biden was said to have given rambling answers — offering just another confirmation of his declining mental strength. 

One lawmaker summed it up with this blistering report card:

“He had no answer to questions about his electability. He seemed oblivious to the polling that shows him losing swing states. He didn’t want to hear it … He didn’t try to reassure anyone. He took no responsibility.”

Multiple reps were queued up to ask questions, but Biden said he had to leave to attend mass near his Rehoboth Beach, Delaware home. Illinois Rep. Mike Quigley was said to be “visibly not happy that he was not going to be able to ask a question.” 

Earlier in the day, Biden had a much longer and more harmonious call with progressive Democrats, who’ve emerged as his staunchest defenders. In a Saturday op-ed at the New York Times, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders called on Democrats to stop “bickering and nit-picking,” calling Biden “the most effective president in the modern history of our country and…the strongest candidate to defeat Donald Trump.”  

Saturday’s attempted assassination of President Trump, which came within an hour of the conference call’s conclusion, is certain to galvanize his support. At the same time, it’s had the effect of at least temporarily erasing Biden’s mental-fitness controversy from news headlines.

With insurgent forces growing in the Democratic ranks, the reprieve will likely prove short-lived. The New Democrat Coalition could end it: One rep on Biden’s call said the group is considering a joint letter urging Biden to quit the race, and that his bad Saturday meeting “probably” increased the odds that they’ll do so. Given the group’s large size, that would make big waves, as it could cause the total number of Democratic House reps opposing Biden’s campaign to grow by several multiples all at once. 

Tyler Durden
Sun, 07/14/2024 – 08:45

Fearless

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Fearless

Submitted by QTR’s Fringe Finance

A couple of hours before the assassination attempt of President Donald Trump, I was sitting in a bar having a laugh with some new friends I had just met from Texas.

Our discussion was centered around how divided the country has become and why we all felt another four years of President Biden would be an unmitigated disaster.

In the spirit of honest discourse among new friends, we began to rattle off the things we liked and didn’t like about Trump, as well. We conceded to each other that Trump was vain and a narcissist, obsessed with his own image, but we also agreed his policy stances would be far better for the country than those of the Democratic party.

And the self-obsessed narcissism criticism you, and everybody else, should know by now: it’s been lobbed at Trump for so many decades now he probably takes it as a compliment.

Look, I’m a realist. I understand that it’s easy to look at Trump’s personal life and career prior to being President and conclude he’s always prioritized the money and the image over substance.

From Trump Airlines to Trump Steaks to Trump University to Trump’s namesake casinos in Atlantic City, combined with allegations of not paying vendors that worked for him on projects and fabricating positive press about himself in the media, I don’t fault people for taking that view of the man.

We could sit here and analyze what drives Trump to engage in these patterns of behavior, which would probably take forever since it would require him to undergo a trillion hours of therapy to uncover his deepest trauma, or we could zoom out, take a 30,000-foot view and simply take note: for one reason or another, the f*cking guy is driven.

And it’s this incessant, relentless, fearless drive and desire to win — no matter what is fueling it — that has allowed Trump to shake off his past business failures and eventually land on The Apprentice, which became a resounding success. It’s the same drive that empowered Trump to campaign obsessively in 2016 and then defy all odds to win the presidency.

People first joked that Trump was running in 2016 as a PR stunt. Maybe he was. But at the end of they day, he manifested himself into the White House. And, to boot, he did a decent job: he ran the country effectively, slashed regulations, cut taxes, kept us out of war, and kept the economy booming. Regardless of why he wanted to become president, once he was put in that position, he did a decent job of “getting shit done” and won the respect of many world leaders who otherwise wouldn’t have taken him, or the United States under a President Hillary Clinton, seriously.

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As I was saying to my new friends last night, his style is brash and he is cutthroat as a businessman. He’s the personification of the Wall Street shark who, in business, gets a reputation for screwing the little guy. But if you’re not his counterparty and he’s negotiating on your behalf (or your country’s behalf) isn’t that exactly what you want? Someone who will fight tooth and nail, to the death to win, and who refuses to be intimidated? If Trump is striking a deal that’ll benefit the country, does it matter to you that it’s his ego driving his bold nature?

Putting aside what drives him, the fact is simply that nobody needs to tell him to get out of bed in the morning. While campaigning, he often makes multiple stops in a day, and while he was president, he went to war with the press for hours at a time nearly every single day. Those are positive character traits for a President no matter what is fueling it. It’s consistency, perseverance, reliability. Trump is the gun Boris the Blade sells Tommy in Snatch:

“Heavy is good, heavy is reliable. If it doesn’t work you can always hit him with it.”

And last night, after surviving an assassination attempt, President Trump didn’t hurriedly rush off the stage. Even after he was surrounded by multiple Secret Service agents, and it became evident that his life was in danger, he chose to stand on the stage and raise a fist in the air to show the world that the engine that drives him to push forward still hadn’t shut down.

I said to another friend last night that Trump is such a PR genius that it’s probably just muscle memory for him to seize momentous occasions as photo opportunities.

Anybody that has watched him publicly knows a lot of times he’ll “pose” in the middle of saying certain sentences or during certain meetings because he knows a photograph of that image will capture the brand that he wants to sell to the world.

It’s how we wind up with gems like this.

Think about this. When we watch the UFC, do we care about what’s going on in the personal lives of the fighters outside the octagon? Do we spend time bemoaning how some fighters, like Nate Diaz, for example, are simply just “built different” and love to fight for the hell of fighting? No, we sit back and watch them take personal pain and obsession and turn it into remarkable careers. Then, we celebrate them.

At this point in Trump’s life, he has gone far past being a caricature of himself and has simply believed and manifested himself into being a success by being “built different”. You can call it ego and narcissism if you’d like, and it probably is, but, as is the case with most all of us, Trump‘s personality disorders are the gasoline that he uses to fuel his engine.

So we can talk about Stormy Daniels, or we can talk about taking on irresponsible amounts of debt to fund the Taj Mahal. We can talk about Trump’s obsession with his image or how he lies about golf scores and bullshitted his way to the top. But how can you argue the man isn’t a success? He was President of the United States and one of the most well-known individuals on the face of the earth. How can you say he’s that he’s a terrible family man when his children routinely show up to support him and he has been a provider for them his entire life? How can you say he’s not courageous to stand down a litany of extremely damaging, false allegations throughout his entire tenure as President?

And putting aside his motivation, how can you not say that choosing to stand on stage after being shot instead of ducking, hiding and scurrying away isn’t courageous?

At the end of the day, I don’t care what drives him. Trump is a guy that perseveres.

And if you view the country like I do right now, as a scattered, disorganized free-for-all, badly losing its grip on both law and order and its moral compass, a little drive, direction, perseverance and courageousness could go a long way for us.

Now read:

QTR’s Disclaimer: Please read my full legal disclaimer on my About page here. This post represents my opinions only. In addition, please understand I am an idiot and often get things wrong and lose money. I may own or transact in any names mentioned in this piece at any time without warning. Contributor posts and aggregated posts have been hand selected by me, have not been fact checked and are the opinions of their authors. They are either submitted to QTR by their author, reprinted under a Creative Commons license with my best effort to uphold what the license asks, or with the permission of the author. This is not a recommendation to buy or sell any stocks or securities, just my opinions. I often lose money on positions I trade/invest in. I may add any name mentioned in this article and sell any name mentioned in this piece at any time, without further warning. None of this is a solicitation to buy or sell securities. These positions can change immediately as soon as I publish this, with or without notice. You are on your own. Do not make decisions based on my blog. I exist on the fringe. The publisher does not guarantee the accuracy or completeness of the information provided in this page. These are not the opinions of any of my employers, partners, or associates. I did my best to be honest about my disclosures but can’t guarantee I am right; I write these posts after a couple beers sometimes. I edit after my posts are published because I’m impatient and lazy, so if you see a typo, check back in a half hour. Also, I just straight up get shit wrong a lot. I mention it twice because it’s that important.

Tyler Durden
Sun, 07/14/2024 – 08:10

Tonga Volcano Contributed To Global Warming, Not Cow Farts Or Taylor Swift’s Private Jet

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Tonga Volcano Contributed To Global Warming, Not Cow Farts Or Taylor Swift’s Private Jet

The massive 2022 eruption of the underwater volcano in Tonga, known as Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai, catapulted plumes of soot, water vapor, and sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere, leading to what some are saying is the driving force behind the most recent warming event on Earth. Meanwhile, the ‘green’ cult, their climate alarmist friends, including Greta and Al Gore, and their allies in the leftist corporate media, relentlessly push the fossil fuels and cow farts narratives to explain the so-called global warming crisis.

In a recent op-ed, Las Vegas Review-Journal’s Victor Joecks recounted the scorching 120F-degree days across the Las Vegas metro area this month. He noted, “The national mainstream media blames global warming.” 

Joecks cited Reuters and CNN reports, sounding the alarm on climate change for the “chaos” that is “driving extreme heat waves across the world.” He noted that even the Nevada Democrat Party attacked the Republican governor for ending “the state’s climate plan.” 

Unlike Reuters and CNN, who mostly stick to government-approved narratives and embrace the mass censorship blob across the Western world, with critical thinking skills lacking and stopping at fossil fuels and cow farts, Joecks actually does real reporting, and instead of peddling leftist climate change misinformation and disinformation… 

Remember this from Greta.

Joecks tells readers not to consider cow farts, Taylor Swift’s private jet, and Jeff Bezos’ superyacht as some of the drivers in global warming, but actually, “The underwater volcano erupted in Tonga.” 

Here’s more from Joecks:

But consider this. In January 2022, a huge underwater volcano erupted in Tonga, an island nation in the southwest Pacific Ocean. The blast sent a massive amount of water into the Earth’s stratosphere. In August 2022, NASA reported it was “equal to 10 percent of the water already present in that atmospheric layer.”

Major volcanic eruptions “typically cool Earth’s surface by ejecting gases, dust and ash that reflect sunlight back into space,” NASA wrote. In contrast, “water vapor traps heat.”

That led to predictions from scientists. In September 2022, Live Science wrote, “50 million tons of water vapor from Tonga’s eruption could warm Earth for years.” The Associated Press reported in 2022 that the eruption “could wind up warming the Earth.”

NPR reported at the time that it usually takes two to three years for “sulfate aerosols from volcanoes to fall out of the stratosphere. But the water from the Jan. 15 eruption could take 5-10 years to fully dissipate.”

Do the math and you’re looking at higher temperatures in 2024. Hmm.

Late last month, New Scientist confirmed it. “Record amount of water from 2022 Tonga eruption is still in atmosphere,” it reported. That water is “possibly contributing to global warming.”

Given how many of their past climate predictions haven’t come true, you would think scientists would be bragging about getting one right. Nope. The volcano’s role in increasing global temperatures is either ignored or downplayed. It appears climate alarmists fear attention on it will complicate their global warming alarmism.

And it does. It’s a reminder that the climate and mankind’s response to it consists of more than one variable. Once you acknowledge that, the push to eliminate fossil fuels falls apart.

Look at climate-related deaths. They’re down more than 95 percent in the past century. A major reason is that the energy from fossil fuels has helped raise global living standards. When people are wealthier, they can afford things such as air conditioners and higher quality construction. The latter limits the devastation and death from natural disasters such as hurricanes. Even if you believe human activity contributes to global warming, cheap, reliable fuel saved dramatically more lives than a slightly cooler globe would have.

Mankind can’t control the weather, but innovation — powered by fossil fuels — has made all temperatures much more bearable.

On the volcanic explosivity index, Tonga ranked six, making it the most violent eruption on Earth since Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines in 1991. Even with the biggest blast in decades, leftist corporate media ignores and continues blaming cow farts and stresses the need for you to give up on meat and eat insects. 

Let’s revisit the rising water levels narrative pushed by the climate cult. 

And the climate predictions.

In 2023, we asked: Is Tonga’s Volcano Eruption Set To Warm Earth?

Tyler Durden
Sun, 07/14/2024 – 07:35

Jeffrey Sachs: The NATO Declaration & The Deadly Strategy Of Neoconservatism

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Jeffrey Sachs: The NATO Declaration & The Deadly Strategy Of Neoconservatism

Authored by Jeffrey D. Sachs

In 1992, U.S. foreign-policy exceptionalism went into overdrive. The U.S. has always viewed itself as an exceptional nation destined for leadership, and the demise of the Soviet Union in December 1991 convinced a group of committed ideologues—who came to be known as neoconservatives—that the U.S. should now rule the world as the unchallenged sole superpower. Despite countless foreign policy disasters at neocon hands, the 2024 NATO Declaration continues to push the neocon agenda, driving the world closer to nuclear war.

The neoconservatives were originally led by Richard Cheney, the Defense Secretary in 1992. Every President since then—Clinton, Bush, Obama, Trump, and Biden—has pursued the neocon agenda of U.S. hegemony, leading the U.S. into perpetual wars of choice, including Serbia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, and Ukraine, as well as relentless eastward expansion of NATO, despite a clear U.S. and German promise in 1990 to Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev that NATO would not move one inch eastward.

The core neocon idea is that the U.S. should have military, financial, economic, and political dominance over any potential rival in any part of the world. It is targeted especially at rival powers such as China and Russia, and therefore brings the U.S. into direct confrontation with them. The American hubris is stunning: most of the world does not want to be led by the U.S., much less led by a U.S. state clearly driven by militarism, elitism and greed.

The neocon plan for U.S. military dominance was spelled out in the Project for a New American Century. The plan includes relentless NATO expansion eastward, and the transformation of NATO from a defensive alliance against a now-defunct Soviet Union to an offensive alliance used to promote U.S. hegemony. The U.S. arms industry is the major financial and political backer of the neocons. The arms industry spearheaded the lobbying for NATO’s eastward enlargement starting in the 1990s. Joe Biden has been a staunch neocon from the start, first as Senator, then as Vice President, and now as President.

To achieve hegemony, the neocon plans rely on CIA regime-change operations; U.S.-led wars of choice; U.S. overseas military bases (now numbering around 750 overseas bases in at least 80 countries); the militarization of advanced technologies (biowarfare, artificial intelligence, quantum computing, etc.); and relentless use of information warfare.

The quest for U.S. hegemony has pushed the world to open warfare in Ukraine between the world’s two leading nuclear powers, Russia and the United States. The war in Ukraine was provoked by the relentless determination of the U.S. to expand NATO to Ukraine despite Russia’s fervent opposition, as well as the U.S. participation in the violent Maidan coup (February 2014) that overthrew a neutral government, and the U.S. undermining of the Minsk II agreement that called for autonomy for the ethnically Russian regions of eastern Ukraine.

The NATO Declaration calls NATO a defensive alliance, but the facts say otherwise. NATO repeatedly engages in offensive operations, including regime-change operations. NATO led the bombing of Serbia in order to break that nation in two parts, with NATO placing a major military base in the breakaway region of Kosovo. NATO has played a major role in many U.S. wars of choice. NATO bombing of Libya was used to overthrow the government of Moammar Qaddafi.

The U.S. quest for hegemony, which was arrogant and unwise in 1992, is absolutely delusional today, since the U.S. clearly faces formidable rivals that are able to compete with the U.S. on the battlefield, in nuclear arms deployments, and in the production and deployment of advanced technologies. China’s GDP is now around 30% larger than the U.S. when measured at international prices, and China is the world’s low-cost producer and supplier of many critical green technologies, including EVs, 5G, photovoltaics, wind power, modular nuclear power, and others. China’s productivity is now so great that the U.S. complains of China’s “over-capacity.”

Sadly, and alarmingly, the NATO declaration repeats the neoconservative delusions.

The Declaration falsely declares that “Russia bears sole responsibility for its war of aggression against Ukraine,” despite the U.S. provocations that led to the outbreak of the war in 2014.

The NATO Declaration reaffirms Article 10 of the NATO Washington Treaty, according to which NATO’s eastward expansion is none of Russia’s business. Yet the U.S. would never accept Russia or China establishing a military base on the US border (say in Mexico), as the U.S. first declared in the Monroe Doctrine in 1823 and has reaffirmed ever since.

The NATO Declaration reaffirms NATO’s commitment to biodefense technologies, despite growing evidence that U.S. biodefense spending by NIH financed the laboratory creation of the virus that may have caused the Covid-19 pandemic.

The NATO Declaration proclaims NATO’s intention to continue to deploy anti-ballistic Aegis missiles (as it has already done in Poland, Romania, and Turkey), despite the fact that the U.S. withdrawal from the ABM Treaty and placement of Aegis missiles in Poland and Romania has profoundly destabilized the nuclear arms control architecture.

The NATO Declaration expresses no interest whatsoever in a negotiated peace for Ukraine.

The NATO Declaration doubles-down on Ukraine’s “irreversible path to full Euro-Atlantic integration, including NATO membership.” Yet Russia will never accept Ukraine’s NATO membership, so the “irreversible” commitment is an irreversible commitment to war.

The Washington Post reports that in the lead-up to the NATO summit, Biden had serious qualms about pledging an “irreversible path” to Ukraine’s NATO membership, yet Biden’s advisors brushed aside these concerns.

The neoconservatives have created countless disasters for the U.S. and the world, including several failed wars, a massive buildup of U.S. public debt driven by trillions of dollars of wasteful war-driven military outlays, and the increasingly dangerous confrontation of the U.S. with China, Russia, Iran, and others. The neocons have brought the Doomsday Clock to just 90 seconds to midnight (nuclear war), compared with 17 minutes in 1992.

For the sake of America’s security and world peace, the U.S. should immediately abandon the neocon quest for hegemony in favor of diplomacy and peaceful co-existence.

Alas, NATO has just done the opposite.

Tyler Durden
Sun, 07/14/2024 – 07:00

Trump Gunman Identified As Thomas Matthew Crooks

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Trump Gunman Identified As Thomas Matthew Crooks

Summary (footage below):

  • Shooter identified as 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, NY Post
  • Trump has responded, saying on Truth Social “I was shot with a bullet that pierced the upper part of my right ear.”
  • Secret Service says one spectator was killed and two were critically injured.
  • Former President Donald Trump was shot in the ear by a would-be assassin at a Butler, Pennsylvania rally on Saturday.
  • Trump could be seen grabbing his ear and falling to the ground, before standing up and walking off stage.
  • Approximately nine shots rang out.
  • A member of the crowd, as well as the shooter, are dead following the assassination attempt.
  • One Trump supporter says he alerted Secret Service before the shooting and was ignored.
  • Trump’s team reportedly asked for ‘beefed up protection’ and was rebuffed over and over by Biden DHS.

*   *   *

Update (0013ET): The shooter has been identified by the NY Post as 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks of Bethel park, PA. According to sources, crooks was planted on the roof of a manufacturing plant over 130 yards away from the stage at Butler Farm Show Grounds.

*  *  *

Update (2350ET): Watch as the FBI, Secret Service and state police hold presser following the Trump assassination attempt.

*   *   *

Update (2126ET): President Trump has responded on Truth Social, writing: “I was shot with a bullet that pierced the upper part of my right ear. I knew immediately that something was wrong in that I heard a whizzing sound, shots, and immediately felt the bullet ripping through the skin. Much bleeding took place, so I realized then what was happening.”

Trump has been released from the hospital:

The would-be assassin is allegedly pictured here:

The secret service, which reportedly ignored a warning about the shooter climbing a building (see below), has issued the following statement:

During Former President Trump’s campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on the evening of July 13 at approximately 6:15 p.m., a suspected shooter fired multiple shots toward the stage from an elevated position outside of the rally venue. U.S. Secret Service personnel neutralized the shooter, who is now deceased. U.S. Secret Service quickly responded with protective measures and Former President Trump is safe. One spectator was killed, and two spectators were critically injured. This incident is currently under investigation. and the Secret Service has notified the FBI.

Update (1918ET): Trump was grazed by a bullet and two people are dead, including the shooter, according to the Butler Country District Attorney.

According to The Federalist‘s Sean Davis,

“A source familiar with Trump’s security detail tells @FDRLST that the former and future president’s detail has been asking for beefed up protection and resources for weeks, but has been rebuffed time and again by Biden’s DHS.

DHS, which oversees Secret Service protective detail “wasn’t responsive to those requests” for more resources, the source said.”

New audio has emerged from moments after the shooting.

*  *  *

Donald Trump appears to have been shot during a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. The former President could be seen grabbing his neck and then falling to the ground as the sound of shots rang out.

Longer clip with closer vantage (shooting at 21 seconds):

Trump was seen standing back up with blood on his face, and was led off stage by the Secret Service, who could be heard shouting “get down” during the incident.

“I saw blood on his ear,” one rallygoer, Ron Moose, told the NYT.

Nine shots were heard, including three before Trump grabbed his ear.

Some reported seeing the military chase someone on the left hand side of the bleachers. The Times is also reporting that secret service is kicking out the press and has declared the venue a crime scene.

Trump’s ear was visibly wounded.

According to Secret Service spoksman, Anthony Guglielmi, Trump “is safe” after “an incident occurred” at the Pennsylvania rally.

Trump spokesman Steven Cheung said that Trump is “fine and is being checked out at a local medical facility,” adding that Trump “thanks law enforcement and first responders for their quick action during this heinous act.”

“Everyone join me in praying for our President Trump and everyone at that rally. I hope everyone is ok,” GOP Senator J.D. Vance (R-OH) posted on X.

One Trump supporter told the BBC that he and others saw the shooter before the assassination attempt, alerted police and the secret service, and was ignored…

The incident comes days after Joe Biden and top Democrat donor Reid Hoffman make assassination comments.

Democrats are bummed…

And of course, the Washington Post goes with “Trump Rushed Offstage From Rally After Loud Pops.”

Yes, ‘loud pops’ … ‘loud noises,’ really just an annoying sound is what we think they’re trying to convey.

And then there’s CNN…

Elon Musk, who recently donated to Trump, says he hopes for his ‘rapid recovery.’

Now, turning to PredictIt odds…

Here’s a better view of Trump’s soaring odds. 

Google searches for “donate to Trump” are surging nationwide. If the sham guilty verdict in NYC in May was any indication, then Trump’s campaign could pull in millions of dollars overnight into Sunday. 

Tyler Durden
Sun, 07/14/2024 – 00:13

The Roots Of World War III

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The Roots Of World War III

Authored by Francis P. Sempa via RealClearWire.com,

The American diplomat and historian George F. Kennan called the First World War the “seminal catastrophe” of the 20th century, and he wrote two lengthy books on the events that led to the outbreak of that war: The Decline of Bismarck’s European Order and The Fateful Alliance. He also included one of his lectures on the First World War in his book American Diplomacy. Reading these works of history gives one a better sense of the root causes of that war, which included policies, decisions, and events that occurred decades before June-August 1914.

When the war began in the Balkans after the assassination of the Austrian archduke and his wife in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914, few foresaw that the conflict would eventually engulf most of Europe and parts of Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, and result in the toppling of four empires (Romanov, Hohenzollern, Hapsburg, and Ottoman), the deaths of more than 10 million combatants, the aerial bombing of cities, the use of poison gas, the carving-up of territories in the Middle East that would engender conflicts that continue to this day, the creation of revolutionary secular ideologies that led to an even more destructive war and a Cold War that followed it. When Kennan reviewed the major diplomatic and international events in the rest of the century, he remarked that “all the lines of inquiry” led back to World War I.

Today, with wars in Eastern Europe and the Middle East, and a gathering storm in the western Pacific, there is concern that the world is lurching toward another world war. All three conflicts involve at least one nuclear armed power. Some respected strategists and observers believe that an “axis” of autocracies (Russia, China, Iran, and perhaps North Korea) are collaborating to undermine the global order produced by the end of the Cold War, and are urging the United States and its allies to become more deeply involved in these conflicts. Some have even urged the formulation of a “grand strategy” for winning the Third World War. The “lessons of Munich” have been invoked along with Churchillian-like warnings about the need to confront aggressors now to deter future aggression. Those who counsel prudence or restraint, or who promote diplomatic solutions to these conflicts are often labeled “appeasers” or worse.

In The Decline of Bismarck’s European Order, Kennan wrote that the origins of World War I could be traced to at least 1875, when the future Franco-Russian alliance first germinated in the minds of the statesmen of both countries. A hallmark of German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck’s diplomacy was to prevent an alliance between France and Russia. When Bismarck left the scene in 1890–forced into retirement by the brash Kaiser Wilhelm II–his alliance structure gradually fell apart. During the next two decades, France and Russia grew closer, eventually entering into what Kennan called the “fateful alliance” in 1894. Germany, meanwhile, allowed the Reinsurance Treaty with Russia to lapse, grew closer to Austria-Hungary, while simultaneously scaring Great Britain by challenging it at sea. Yet, almost to the very day in August 1914, that Germany declared war on Russia, and the alliance system quickly brought other great powers into the war, few believed that the regional war between Austria-Hungary and Serbia would spread across Europe, into Asia, the Middle East, and Africa, and draw into the maelstrom of conflict combatants from Australia, North America, and elsewhere.

In The Fateful Alliance, Kennan explained what he characterized as a “whole series of . . . aberrations, misunderstandings, and bewilderments that have played so tragic and fateful a part in the development of Western civilization over the subsequent decades.” He continued:

One sees how the unjustified assumption of war’s likelihood could become the cause of its final inevitability. One sees the growth of military-technological capabilities to levels that exceed man’s capacity for making any rational and intelligent use of them. One sees how the myopia induced by indulgence in the mass emotional compulsions of modern nationalism destroys the power to form any coherent, realistic view of true national interest. One sees, finally, the inability of otherwise intelligent men to perceive the inherent self-destructive quality of warfare among the great industrial powers of the modern age.

Kennan worried that in the nuclear age, these developments could result in “a catastrophe from which there can be no recovery and no return.”

In his seminal history of World War II, The Second World Wars, Victor Davis Hanson described how a series of smaller, regional wars–an Italian-Ethiopian war, a German/Soviet-Polish war, a German-Norwegian war, a German-Danish war, a German/Italian-French/British war, a German-Yugoslav war, a German-Greek war, a German-Soviet War, a Japanese-Chinese War, a U.S./Britain-Japan War–expanded into a global conflict of unprecedented proportions and destruction.

Today, the wars between Russia-Ukraine/NATO/US, Israel/US-Hamas/Hezbollah/Iran, and the China-Taiwan/U.S. dispute are regional conflicts that if not limited and resolved may expand into a global conflict among nuclear powers–a Third World War, which, to paraphrase George Kennan, would be a catastrophe from which there would be no recovery and no return. Yet, the United States under the Biden administration seems intent on continuing and escalating its involvement in Ukraine, even as it sends mixed signals about our intentions in the Middle East and the western Pacific. Adding to the danger is a growing perception both here and abroad that the American president is cognitively unfit for the job of commander-in-chief and chief diplomat.

Should, God forbid, World War III evolve out of these regional conflicts, historians of Kennan’s depth and insight may trace its roots to the early post-Cold War years when successive administrations expanded NATO and positioned the alliance on Russia’s European borders despite vigorous protests from successive Russian leaders (Gorbachev, Yeltsin, Putin), and prophetic warnings from Kennan and several other experts on Russia and international affairs (including Richard Pipes, Edward Luttwak, Jack Matlock, Jr, Paul Nitze, Fred Ikle, Sam Nunn, Marshall Shulman) that NATO enlargement would produce an aggressive Russian reaction. Those same historians may also cite the foolish and failed post-Cold War engagement of China which helped facilitate the rise of our next peer competitor even as it drove Russia into the arms of that peer competitor while we were distracted fighting peripheral wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and clearing the way for greater Iranian influence in the Middle East in our quest to remake that region in our own image (the so-called “Arab Spring”).

Now, some in the West are calling on the U.S. and its allies to invite Ukraine to become a member of NATO even as Ukraine’s war with Russia gives no sign of ending. This caused more than 60 foreign policy specialists and scholars to pen an open letter to NATO leaders urging them not to invite Ukraine into the alliance. “Moving Ukraine toward membership in the alliance,” the letter states, “could make the problem worse, turning Ukraine into the site of a prolonged showdown between the world’s two leading nuclear powers and playing into Vladimir Putin’s narrative that he is fighting the west in Ukraine rather then the people of Ukraine.” Such a move, the signers contend, “would reduce the security of the United States and NATO allies, at considerable risk to all.”

Let us hope that a future George Kennan will not describe a U.S.-NATO-Ukraine Treaty as a “fateful alliance.”

Francis P. Sempa is a regular contributor to RealClearDefense and writes the Best Defense column each month.  Read his latest: “Rise and Fall of American Naval Mastery.”

Tyler Durden
Sat, 07/13/2024 – 23:20

Russian Plot To Assassinate CEO Of German Arms Giant Dismissed As ‘Fake’ Intel Story By Kremlin

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Russian Plot To Assassinate CEO Of German Arms Giant Dismissed As ‘Fake’ Intel Story By Kremlin

Top German government and political figures have reacted with outrage to a CNN report alleging that Russian intelligence had plotted to assassinate Armin Papperger, who is the head of Germany’s biggest arms company Rheinmetall. The company is among the top European suppliers of 155mm artillery shells, tanks, armored vehicles, and other crucial military equipment to Kiev.

The Kremlin is calling it fantasy and pointing to zero evidence being presented alongside the major accusation. Here’s how the bombshell CNN report published late this past week began: “US intelligence discovered earlier this year that the Russian government planned to assassinate the chief executive of a powerful German arms manufacturer that has been producing artillery shells and military vehicles for Ukraine, according to five US and western officials familiar with the episode.”

Armin Papperger, via Bloomberg

There have been widespread allegations for several months in Western media pointing to an irregular and covert Russian warfare campaign to conduct sabotage missions against European defense and manufacturing companies supplying Ukraine.

The CNN report alluded to these prior stories: “The plot was one of a series of Russian plans to assassinate defense industry executives across Europe who were supporting Ukraine’s war effort, these sources said.” It detailed further that “The plan to kill Armin Papperger, a white-haired goliath who has led the German manufacturing charge in support of Kyiv, was the most mature.”

In recent months, there have been several instances of fires engulfing weapons and ammo manufacturing sites in the UK and on the European continent, some of which we detailed previously. Simultaneously, Russia has been subject of similarly mysterious blazes at defense contractor buildings and companies.

As for the alleged plot to take out the CEO of Rheinmetal, the CNN story is sourced entirely to anonymous intelligence officials, making it impossible to verify at this point, other than taking the word of US, German, and NATO officials. 

According to more from the original CNN report, “When the Americans learned of the effort, they informed Germany, whose security services were then able to protect Papperger and foil the plot. A high-level German government official confirmed that Berlin was warned about the plot by the US.”

But Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov rejected the allegations as ‘fake news’: “It’s all presented in the style of another fake story, so such reports cannot be taken seriously,” he said at the end of the week.

German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock belatedly appeared to confirm that the German government finds the warnings credible. “In view of latest reports on Rheinmetall, this is what we have actually been communicating more and more clearly in recent months: Russia is waging a hybrid war of aggression,” she had told a press briefing at the NATO summit in Washington.

Papperger himself has since described to the Financial Times that German authorities had imposed a “great deal of security around my person” – and he’s now considered to be the most highly protected private citizen in all of Germany.

Another interesting aspect to the story is the timing: the CNN revelation corresponded precisely to the close of the annual NATO summit in D.C. at a moment Western officials urged the alliance to stay the course on Ukraine, and commit to supplying more weapons for years to come.

Tyler Durden
Sat, 07/13/2024 – 22:45

Scientists Find A Cause of Lupus And A Way To Potentially Reverse It

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Scientists Find A Cause of Lupus And A Way To Potentially Reverse It

Authored by Marina Zhang via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Patients with lupus have an imbalance in a crucial chemical pathway in their bodies, according to a Nature study published on Wednesday.

(ART-ur/Shutterstock).

Researchers found that this imbalance produces more disease-causing cells that promote lupus. If this chemical imbalance can be corrected, they believe lupus can be reversed.

Current lupus treatments often target symptoms or broadly suppress the immune system, leading to side effects. The researchers believe targeting the specific chemical imbalance identified could more effectively treat lupus without systemic immunosuppression interventions.

Lupus is a chronic autoimmune disease that causes the body to attack its own tissues and organs, including the joints, skin, kidneys, blood cells, brain, heart, and lungs.  

There is currently no cure for lupus.

A Surprising ‘Molecular Switch’

The chemical that researchers identified is the aryl hydrocarbon receptor (AHR).

AHR is a key protein involved in the imbalance of immune cells in lupus patients. It regulates the body’s response to environmental pollutants, bacteria, and metabolites. While AHR is present in all cells, it is not always active.

Researchers found that lupus patients have reduced AHR activity. This reduction leads to an increase in follicular and peripheral T helper cells, which are involved in inflammation and autoimmunity.

However, when AHR activity increases, these T-cells are reprogrammed to be T-cells that promote wound healing and barrier protection.

Dr. Jaehyuk Choi, associate professor of dermatology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, and the study’s senior author, explained to The Epoch Times that AHR can be compared to “a molecular switch” that determines the fate of immune cells.

By developing therapeutics that target AHR in rogue T-cells, researchers believe they may be able to reverse lupus.

Dr. Choi and Dr. Deepak Rao, an assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, expressed their surprise at discovering that AHR could be vital in reversing autoimmunity, given that the receptor had no known connection to it.

Dr. Rao, who is also a senior author of the study, added that it was initially surprising to find that a T-cell involved in wound healing would be the opposite of an autoimmune T-cell.

“Those two T-cell populations with those two functions are not obviously connected or related,” he said. He added that he could not have predicted that when wound-healing T-cells increased, autoimmune T-cells would decrease, and vice versa.

T-Cells Drive Autoimmunity

Follicular and peripheral T helper cells have long been known to play a major role in driving lupus, Dr. Rao told The Epoch Times.

In lupus, the patient’s body produces autoantibodies, antibodies that attack self-tissues. B-cells generate these autoantibodies under the control of rogue autoimmune T-cells.

Therefore, by converting these autoimmune T-cells into cells involved in wound healing, the production of autoantibodies is reduced, thereby decreasing autoimmunity.

“It is almost like a cell streamline, where if you can block one part, then the downstream is blocked,” Dr. Choi explained.

He highlighted the study’s findings demonstrating that adding AHR to rogue T-cells in cell culture transforms them into wound-healing cells. These reprogrammed cells can no longer help B-cells make autoantibodies.

Dr. Rao added that these rogue T-cells are also present in other autoimmune conditions, like rheumatoid arthritis, raising the question of whether drug targets for these cells may apply to such conditions.

Treatment Without Immunosuppression

The study sampled 19 lupus patients and compared their immune cells to those of 19 healthy people.

Despite the small initial sample size, the authors told The Epoch Times that they believe their findings apply to all patients because they have been corroborated through genetic studies.

Dr. Choi explained that their findings were also validated in AstraZeneca’s TULIP clinical trials. These trials tested anifrolumab, a drug that interacts with the AHR pathway, and found it successfully controlled lupus symptoms.

Current lupus treatments are prescribed to resolve symptoms or elicit broad immunosuppressive effects by reducing B- and T-cell activity.

However, when rogue T-cells are targeted explicitly with AHR, patients may experience disease reversal without compromising their overall immunity.

Additionally, the increase in cells involved in wound and barrier repair may help alleviate gastrointestinal problems in patients with lupus.

“There have been a number of studies that have suggested abnormalities in barrier function or barrier integrity in patients with lupus, especially in the gut,” Dr. Rao said. “So one can imagine that there could be a beneficial effect of that.”

Currently, Drs. Choi and Rao’s team are working to identify specific therapeutics that selectively target only rogue T-cells.

Since AHR is present in all cells, broad administration of AHR-targeted treatments could cause systemic adverse effects, which the authors are trying to avoid.

Currently, there are already drugs on the market that activate AHR, such as toparinof, a topical cream approved for treating psoriasis.

Major Environmental Contributors to Lupus?

Researchers do not know why AHR is involved in lupus progression. It is also currently unknown why some people get lupus and others don’t, though researchers believe it is a combination of genetic and environmental exposures to toxins and infections.

Given AHR’s role in responding to environmental factors, Dr. Choi said their findings may suggest that major environmental factors contribute to lupus.

Perhaps AHR, “which normally integrates information from the outside or the environment … has gone awry in patients with lupus,” and patients may be able to resolve their lupus through lifestyle changes alone, Dr. Choi speculated.

“I think this needs more research, but it is an interesting idea that we can now think about,” he said.

Tyler Durden
Sat, 07/13/2024 – 22:10

At Least 90 Dead In Israeli Strike On Gaza Tent Camp Targeting Hamas Oct.7 Mastermind

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At Least 90 Dead In Israeli Strike On Gaza Tent Camp Targeting Hamas Oct.7 Mastermind

Another mass casualty strike has been reported on a refugee camp in southern Gaza, where the local health ministry says at least 90 have been killed, and 300 injured, after Israeli missiles slammed into Al-Mawasi camp, allegedly hitting tents where displaced persons were staying.

Israel has said that most of the victims were likely Hamas, and that it was going after the leader of the group’s Qassam Brigades, Muhammad Deif, a mastermind behind the Oct.7 attacks. Throughout the day Saturday the military said it was still investigating whether Deif was killed, of which there’s as yet been no confirmation.

Aftermath of Israeli attack on a tent camp in Al-Mawasi area near the coast in southern Gaza, via Reuters.

Hamas responded by saying Israel’s “allegations about targeting leaders are false” and by design are “merely to cover up the scale of the horrific massacre.”

According to some fresh updates in the NY Times:

  • The Israeli officials said the strikes had also targeted Rafah Salameh, the top Hamas commander in Khan Younis, who was with Mr. Deif at the time of the attack.

  • The Gazan authorities said that a second, smaller strike hit the center of Khan Younis, a nearby city to the east of Mawasi.

  • A senior American official said that Israel had told Washington that it targeted Mr. Deif, but the official said that neither Israel nor the United States could yet confirm his status.

Saudi Arabia has been among the earliest countries to weigh in, condemning the Israeli attack on the refugee camp.

“The Foreign Ministry condemns in strongest terms the continuation of genocidal massacres against the Palestinian people at the hands of the Israeli war machine, the latest of which was the targeting displaced people’s camps in Khan Younis in the south of the Gaza Strip,” the Saudi statement said.

Hardliners in Netanyahu’s coalition government have praised the strike, saying it demonstrates the need to keep intensifying operations inside Gaza. “Congratulations to the prime minister, defense minister, the IDF, and Shin Bet. Now is not the time to take the foot off Sinwar’s neck,” Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich wrote on X.

Despite the Biden White House claiming that there’s been tentative agreement on a new ceasefire deal mediated by Qatar and Egypt, the warring sides are still publicly blaming the other for lack of a finalized hostage deal.

Meanwhile, Hamas is urging Palestinians in the West Bank to rise up against the Israeli occupiers en masse. Senior Hamas official Abdel Hakim Henini in a statement called on Palestinians to “take action against the onslaught on their compatriots in the besieged Strip, and to stand up to Israeli settlers wreaking havoc across the West Bank.”

Initial graphic scenes of the camp strike aftermath via Palestinian media…

“We reiterate how important it is for Palestinian youth to stand up to the occupying forces,” Henini said. “A global war is being waged against the Palestinian people, their rights and their resistance forces. The US administration is a true partner in all the massacres being perpetrated against our people.”

Simultaneously Hezbollah continues to bog down Israeli forces in the north, and it appears Hamas is hoping that a multi-front war more fully opens up. Hezbollah leadership has said that if Hamas agrees to a ceasefire deal, it too will halt its attacks from Lebanon.

Tyler Durden
Sat, 07/13/2024 – 21:35

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