Buried within the 2024 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that was just passed in both the House and Senate is an amendment which aims to prevent any future president from withdrawing the United States from NATO.

One of the legislation’s co-sponsors Tim Kaine (D-VA) described that it “reaffirms US support for this crucial alliance that is foundational for our national security. It also sends a strong message to authoritarians around the world that the free world remains united.”

Of course, none of these Democrats and Congressional hawks are worried for a moment that President Biden would ever entertain the idea of leaving NATO, but this is certainly a scenario Republican presidential nominee frontrunner Donald Trump has floated at various times over the years. The bipartisan legislation was also led by Senator Marco Rubio of Florida.

Trump has in recent weeks said it’s something he would consider if reelected to office. He’s long called the Western military alliance which stood down the Soviet Union throughout the Cold War a “paper tiger” at this point.

He spent his first term aggressively denouncing NATO members which had failed to meet the alliance’s commitment to spending at least 2% of GDP on their defense budget.

As early as the year 2000, Trump has been on record as favoring the idea, for example writing in is book The America We Deserve that “pulling back from Europe would save this country millions of dollars annually.”

On the other side of this is Biden who has called the NATO pact “sacred”. But Trump has long criticized the kind of Washington foreign military adventurism that being at the helm of the alliance invites. From endless wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, to NATO spearheading regime change operations from Libya to Syria, Trump and his supporters have lambasted such quagmires. But in reality it’s more often Washington that conducts military adventurism under the guise of ‘international support’ via NATO (for example, Obama’s Libya intervention used NATO as a fig leaf).

In response, the Biden administration has played the ‘Russiagate’ card and smeared Trump with cozying up to Putin, including in a statement in October:

“Donald Trump’s threats to weaken NATO and side with [Russian President] Vladimir Putin undermine America’s strength on the global stage and threaten our national security,” campaign spokesman Ammar Moussa said in a statement. “As president, Donald Trump spent four years cozying up to dictators and making our country less safe. The idea that he would abandon our allies if he doesn’t get his way underscores what we already know to be true about Donald Trump: The only person he cares about is himself. And, it’s exactly why Donald Trump shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near the Oval Office.”

Yet the reality remains that NATO expanded into Montenegro and North Macedonia during the years of the Trump presidency – and Trump’s vows to negotiate an end to the Russia-Ukraine war would likely be predicated on maintaining a powerful NATO to use as leverage.

Still, Trump’s past rhetoric has clearly made Congressional leaders and deep state hawks very nervous. It seems they are also preparing for a potential Trump victory in 2024.

Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.us,

When I first encountered the concept of 4th Generation Warfare around 20 years ago I was studying the basics of propaganda and how it works. While the core issue is deeply disturbing on a number of levels I also found it fascinating – The ways in which governments and elitists have endeavored to control the masses while at the same time trying to avoid direct confrontation whenever possible.

With the advent of civilian populations armed with military grade weaponry and familiar with the training required for combat, elitist groups realized (post American Revolution) that dominating the public with military might was no longer a sure bet. They had to engage in a new kind of warfare using psychological attacks until they could weaken and disarm the populace. The new system of oppressing was about mental coercion; to make people believe that the authoritarian ideal is inevitable.

One part of this strategy involves using economic leverage for social engineering. A hundred years ago it was more about banks creating an endless series of debt mechanisms and controlling the issuance of currencies. Today, corporate elites are expanding – They want to change the very nature of money through Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs). By extension, they’re also trying to influence public behavior by attaching “social justice” ideology to economic participation through ESG.

In other words, if you want to have access to credit or money and have the ability to compete in the new “inclusive” marketplace, you will have to bow to the woke religion. If you refuse, your access to trade could be shut down completely, and you and your family could starve.

A greater factor in the mind war, though, is the shift of the Overton Window by making cultural pillars into cultural villains. This is being accomplished through the creation of the deconstruction religion, or what we sometimes call the “Cult of Woke.”

Name any cultural value or principle that defines the western world, such as meritocracy, independence, self reliance, mental toughness, liberty (with responsibility), legacy through hard work and family, the protection of children from perversions, discipline over hedonism, logic and reason over fanaticism, conservation of heritage and history and for many people the tenets of Christian duty. These are all pillars of our society which the woke cult seeks to destroy. In every way I can imagine it is a psychological war on the west, all of it funded through billions of dollars in grants from globalist think tanks like the Ford Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation and the Open Society Foundation.

The globalists view public manipulation and social engineering as their birthright. They think it’s their manifest destiny, and they suggest often that humanity would somehow decay and self destruct without their influence.

As the famed propagandist Edward Bernays once stated:

“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. …We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of…

…In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons…who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind.”

For men like Bernays the purpose of psychological ops was more about maintaining a certain status quo, with the establishment power brokers firmly in charge but shielded from public view (and anger) as much as possible. The methodology of “shadow government” was constructed in the era of Bernays. However, what started as a tactic for keeping the populace in the dark has now become a strategy for waging war on them. 4th Gen Warfare was born from the mire of public perception management.

You might ask, though, how we are being attacked without soldiers, guns, bombs, tanks or drones? Doesn’t this sound a little paranoid?

In a once obscure internal US Army document titled ‘From Psyop To Mindwar’, the military value of sabotage through 4th Generation methods is described in detail. The treatise outlines the idea of causing a target population to self enslave by undermining its core structures through psychological warfare. The paper was written in 1980 by Lt. Colonel Michael Aquino, a devout satanist, and Colonel Paul Vallely, who would later become a General.

Aquino’s theory was essentially that the US Army was under-utilizing psychological operations as a background to kinetic operations. He argued that psyops could be used as the front line weapon to destroy an enemy nation (or control a domestic population) without the exploitation of standard munitions. As Aquino suggests in a 2003 preface to Mindwar:

“Essentially you overwhelm your enemy with argument. You seize control of all of the means by which his government and populace process information to make up their minds, and you adjust it so that those minds are made up as you desire. Everyone is happy, no one gets hurt or killed, and nothing is destroyed.”

The faux benevolence behind this idea is disturbing.  Believe it or not, this was Aquino’s attempt to “soften” the public’s perception of the document. He lamented the exposure of Mindwar among “conspiracy circles” and spent decades trying to downplay the role of occultism in the upper echelons of the military and the government. It was all a “big misunderstanding” according to the satanist.

Mindwar attempts to disconnect itself from the dark and dirty reputation of propaganda efforts among the Nazis or the Communists. Propaganda is commonly, and rightfully, associated with lying. Aquino admits that the new psyops will be used against Americans, not just foreign enemies, but this time he claims they will use “the truth” to manipulate the masses. And who gets to dictate what the truth is? Well, satanist fanatics like Aquino, of course.

The hypocrisy of Mindwar is evident in its underlying premise – That the establishment will always propagandize using the truth, because that which is a lie today can be made into the truth tomorrow. As Aquino notes:

“Unlike PSYOP, MindWar has nothing to do with deception or even with “selected” – and therefore misleading – truth. Rather it states a whole truth that, if it does not now exist, will be forced into existence by the will of the United States.”

Mindwar as a document is itself a piece of propaganda that can’t help but twist reality to justify the vision of men who seek power above all else. I invite you to read the paper (linked above); nearly every concept described in it is being used against the American people and the western public today. The crooked arguments made in Mindwar are the same exact arguments used by current governments to justify state propaganda and mass censorship of opposing views as essential to security and the greater good.

Not to mention, the woke movement is disturbingly similar in its ideals and goals to the narcissistic religions of satanism and luciferianism that Aquino adores.  I’m sure that’s purely coincidence…

The reason that conservatives and liberty proponents have been at such a disadvantage in the midst of this “mind war” until recently is because we have an OLD way of viewing warfare that assumes a stand-up fight. They point their guns at us and try to control us, we point our guns at them and say no thanks. But not all war is designed to destroy people directly, and some wars are fought in a cowardly fashion in order to avoid direct confrontation.

Mind war proponents would argue that the tactics are similar to guerrilla methods. I would argue they are much more closely related to terrorist methods, and yes, there is a difference.

The globalists know that once the shooting starts they lose the ability to micromanage the outcome and they might become targets. The purpose of psyops is to either terrorize a population into not fighting back at all, or, to shore up popular sentiment through lies and make any potential rebellion as fringe as possible. Hence the reason for funding woke activism and indoctrinating western youth. Given a generation or two, they think they can replace the west by demonizing it in the minds of today’s children. They might never have to fight us at all.

The conflagration goes beyond “left vs right” to be sure – The globalists and their institutions are the root of the disease our civilization faces, and until that cancer is cut out we will never know peace, regardless of which side of the political spectrum comes out on top.

That said, it’s lazy to suggest that this conflict is simply a product of the false left/right paradigm. Leftists truly are a mob army fully supported by the globalists and fully serving their interests. To get to the money elites, we will likely have to roll through the leftists. Either by forcefully removing them from positions of influence over the next generation (which is what some conservative states are finally doing), or booting them out of a state or country entirely. In war, the people trying to destroy freedom no longer deserve the benefits of freedom.

The key to grasping the situation is to accept that a war is upon us. Woke is a psychological operation devised by globalists, and it is currently battling to become the one and only system of thought – A morally relativist system of thought. It relies on a specific circumstance in order to succeed: The idea that men of the west will not take on a fighting posture in the face of psychological attack. As long as we continue to see war only as fighting with guns, we will remain docile in the face of a more advanced cultural bombardment.

For 4th Gen Warfare to prevail the target population has to follow a certain set of rules while the other side operates without rules. They have to be allowed to pursue all-out destruction against their enemy while the other side is admonished for doing anything remotely defensive, including speaking up. But what happens when patriots stop caring about being admonished? What happens when the optics are no longer relevant? What happens when the goal goes from winning in politics or in the halls of public discourse to winning the actual conflagration in front of us?

When this happens, everything in America and the western world will change. For good or ill will really depend on who is left to rebuild once the smoke clears.

*  *  *

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Authored by Vance Voetberg via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

For decades, statins have been heralded as the reliable heroes in the battle against heart disease, the leading cause of death in the United States and globally. However, this seemingly flawless reputation has been called into question.

A new expert review suggests that long-term use of statins may be inadvertently aiding the enemy by accelerating coronary artery calcification instead of providing protection.

Statins Deplete Heart-Protecting Nutrients 

The review, published in Clinical Pharmacology, suggests statins may act as “mitochondrial toxins,” impairing muscle function in the heart and blood vessels by depleting coenzyme Q10 (CoQ10), an antioxidant cells use for growth and maintenance. Multiple studies show statins inhibit CoQ10 synthesis, leading many patients to supplement.

CoQ10 is vital for producing ATP, the cell’s fundamental energy carrier. Insufficient CoQ10 inhibits ATP production, resulting in an energy deficit that the review authors say “could be a major cause for heart muscle and coronary artery damage.

“We believe that many years of statin drug therapy result in the gradual accumulation of mitochondrial DNA damage,” according to the authors.

A 2022 study published in Biophysical Journal linked reduced ATP to heart failure.

A 2008 study published in BioFactors reaffirms the statin–CoQ10 link. Researchers evaluated 50 statin patients for side effects like fatigue and muscle pain. All then stopped statins and supplemented CoQ10 for 22 months on average.

Heart function improved or held steady for the majority of patients. The researchers conclude statin side effects, including statin cardiomyopathy, “are far more common than previously published and are reversible with the combination of statin discontinuation and supplemental CoQ10.”

Statins Deplete Vitamin K, Raising Heart Calcification Risk

Statins impair the production of vitamin K, an essential vitamin in managing calcification, according to the review. Optimal vitamin K2 intake helps avoid plaque buildup of atherosclerosis—thickening or hardening of the arteries—and keeps calcification risk low.

Coronary calcification happens when calcium accumulates in the walls of the coronary arteries that provide oxygen to the heart. This plaque buildup is a sign of early coronary artery disease, which can block blood flow and trigger a heart attack.

A 2021 study published in the Kaohsiung Journal of Medical Sciences found a connection between statin use, coronary artery calcification, and vitamin K2 deficiency. The results shed light on how statins may spur arterial calcium accumulation by inhibiting vitamin K. The study’s findings were “in agreement with the existing evidence about positive association between statins and vascular calcification,” the authors added.

Statins also damage selenoproteins, carriers of the mineral selenium essential for heart health.

Statins were also linked to increased calcification in a 2022 study published in Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis, and Vascular Biology. However, the authors proposed that statins may encourage calcification by heightening inflammation rather than nutrient deficiency.

Physicians Overlook Statins as Driver of Heart Failure: Experts

Based on emerging evidence on statins’ potential cardiac downsides, the authors of the new review warn that “physicians in general are not aware that statins can cause heart failure and are clearly not recognizing it.” Though doctors readily diagnose heart failure in statin users, they usually attribute it to factors like age, high blood pressure, or artery disease.

Doctors prescribing cholesterol drugs “cannot ignore the moral responsibility of ‘informed consent,’” the researchers wrote, noting that patients deserve full disclosure of side effects like cardiovascular disease or heart failure.

With over a million annual heart failure hospitalizations in the United States, the condition is often referred to as an epidemic—and it may be that “statin drug therapy is a major contributing factor,” according to the review.

Authored by James Bovard via The Brownstone Institute,

Is the First Amendment becoming a historic relic? On July 4, 2023, federal judge Terry Doughty condemned the Biden administration for potentially “the most massive attack against free speech in United States history.” That verdict was ratified by a federal appeals court decision in September 2023 that concluded that Biden administration “officials have engaged in a broad pressure campaign designed to coerce social-media companies into suppressing speakers, viewpoints, and content disfavored by the government.”

In earlier times in America, such policies would have faced sweeping condemnation from across the political spectrum. But major media outlets like the Washington Post have rushed to the barricades to defend the Biden war on “misinformation.” Almost half of Democrats surveyed in September 2023 affirmed that free speech should be legal “only under certain circumstances.” Fifty-five percent of American adults support government suppression of “false information” – even though only 20 percent trust the government.

Biden’s War on Free Speech

The broad support for federal censorship is perplexing considering that courts have vividly laid out the government’s First Amendment violations. Doughty delivered 155 pages of damning details of federal browbeating, jawboning, and coercion of social-media companies. Doughty ruled that federal agencies and the White House “engaged in coercion of social media companies” to delete Americans’ comments on Afghanistan, Ukraine, election procedures, and other subjects. He issued an injunction blocking the feds from “encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner the removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content containing protected free speech.”

Censors reigned from the start of the Biden era. Barely two weeks after Biden’s inauguration, White House Digital Director Rob Flaherty demanded that Twitter “immediately” remove a parody account of Biden’s relatives. Twitter officials suspended the account within 45 minutes but complained they were already “bombarded” by White House censorship requests at that point.

Biden White House officials ordered Facebook to delete humorous memes, including a parody of a future television ad: “Did you or a loved one take the COVID vaccine? You may be entitled….” The White House continually denounced Facebook for failing to suppress more posts and videos that could inspire “vaccine hesitancy” — even if the posts were true. Facebook decided that the word “liberty” was too hazardous in the Biden era; to placate the White House, the company suppressed posts “discussing the choice to vaccinate in terms of personal or civil liberties.”

Flaherty was still unsatisfied and raged at Facebook officials in a July 15, 2021, email: “Are you guys f–king serious?” The following day, President Biden accused social-media companies of “killing people” by failing to suppress all criticism of COVID vaccines.

Federal Censorship

Censorship multiplied thanks to an epic bureaucratic bait-and-switch. After allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 election, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Act was created to protect against foreign meddling. Prior to Biden taking office, CISA had a “Countering Foreign Influence Task Force.” In 2021, that was renamed the “Mis-, Dis- and Mal-information Team (‘MDM Team’).”

But almost all the targets of federal censorship during the Biden era have been Americans. Federal censorship tainted the 2020 and 2022 elections, spurring the suppression of millions of social-media posts (almost all from conservatives). During the 2020 election, CISA targeted for suppression assertions such as “mail-in voting is insecure” — despite the long history of absentee ballot fraud.

CISA aims to control Americans’ minds: A CISA advisory committee last year issued a report that “broadened” what it targeted to include “the spread of false and misleading information because it poses a significant risk to critical function, like elections, public health, financial services and emergency responses.” Thus, any idea that government officials label as “misleading” is a “significant risk” that can be suppressed.

Where did CISA find the absolute truths it used to censor American citizens? CISA simply asked government officials and “apparently always assumed the government official was a reliable source,” the court decision noted. Any assertion by officialdom was close enough to a Delphic oracle to use to “debunk postings” by private citizens. Judge Doughty observed that the free-speech clause was enacted to prohibit agencies like CISA from picking “what is true and what is false.”

Covid-Inspired Censorship

“Government = truth” is the premise for the Biden censorship regime. In June 2022, Flaherty declared that he “wanted to monitor Facebook’s suppression of COVID-19 misinformation ‘as we start to ramp up [vaccines for children under the age of 5].’” The FDA had almost zero safety data on COVID vaccines for infants and toddlers. But Biden announced the vaccines were safe for those target groups, so any assertion to the contrary automatically became false or misleading.

Biden policymakers presumed that Americans are idiots who believe whatever they see on Facebook. In an April 5, 2021, phone call with Facebook staffers, White House Strategy Communication chief Courtney Rowe said, “If someone in rural Arkansas sees something on FB [Facebook], it’s the truth.”

In the same call, a Facebook official mentioned nose bleeds as an example of a feared COVID vaccine side effect. Flaherty wanted Facebook to intervene in purportedly private conversations on vaccines and “Direct them to CDC.” A Facebook employee told Flaherty that “an immediate generated message about nose bleeds might give users ‘the Big Brother feel.’” At least the Biden White House didn’t compel Facebook to send form notices every 90 seconds to any private discussion on COVID: “The Department of Homeland Security wishes to remind you that there is no surveillance. Have a nice day.” Flaherty also called for Facebook to crack down on WhatsApp exchanges (private messages) between individuals.

Federal agencies responded to legal challenges by portraying themselves as the same “pitiful, helpless giants” that President Richard Nixon invoked to describe the US government when he started bombing Cambodia. Judge Doughty wrote that federal agencies “blame the Russians, COVID-19 and capitalism for any suppression of free speech by social-media companies.” But that defense fails the laugh test.

Federal agencies pirouetted as a “Ministry of Truth,” according to the court rulings, strong-arming Twitter to arbitrarily suspend 400,000 accounts, including journalists and diplomats.

The Biden administration rushed to sway the appeals court to postpone enforcement of the injunction and then sought to redefine all its closed-door shenanigans as public service. In its briefs to the court, the Justice Department declared, “There is a categorical, well-settled distinction between persuasion and coercion,” and castigated Judge Doughty for having “equated legitimate efforts at persuasion with illicit efforts to coerce.”

Biden’s Justice Department denied that federal agencies bullied social-media companies to suppress any information. Instead, there were simply requests for “content moderation,” especially regarding COVID. Actually, there were tens of thousands of “requests” that resulted in the suppression of millions of posts and comments by Americans.

Team Biden champions a “no corpse, no delicta” definition of censorship. Since federal SWAT teams did not assail the headquarters of social-media firms, the feds are blameless. Or, as Justice Department lawyer Daniel Tenny told the judges, “There was a back and forth. Sometimes it was more friendly, sometimes people got more testy. There were circumstances in which everyone saw eye to eye, there were circumstances in which they disagreed.”

It’s irrelevant that President Joe Biden publicly accused social-media companies of murder for not censoring far more material and that Biden appointees publicly threatened to destroy the companies via legislation or prosecution. Nope: It was just neighborly discussions between good folks.

The Courts Strike Back

At the appeals court hearing, Judge Don Willett, one of the most principled and penetrating judges in the nation, had no problem with federal agencies publicly criticizing what they judged false or dangerous ideas. But that wasn’t how Team Biden compelled submission: “Here you have government in secret, in private, out of the public eye, relying on … subtle strong-arming and veiled or not-so-veiled threats.” Willett vivified how the feds played the game: “That’s a really nice social-media platform you’ve got there, it would be a shame if something happened to it.”

Judge Jennifer Elrod compared the Biden censorship regime to the Mafia: “We see with the mob … they have these ongoing relationships. They never actually say, ‘Go do this or else you’re going to have this consequence.’ But everybody just knows.”

Yet the Biden administration was supposedly innocent because the feds never explicitly spelled out “or else,” according to the Justice Department lawyer. This is on par with redefining armed robbery as a consensual activity unless the robber specifically points his gun at the victim’s head. As economist Joseph Schumpeter aptly observed, “Power wins, not by being used, but by being there.”

In its September decision, the appeals court concluded that the White House, FBI, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and the US Surgeon General’s office trampled the First Amendment by coercing social media companies and likely “had the intended result of suppressing millions of protected free speech postings by American citizens.”

The court unanimously declared that federal officials made express threats…. But, beyond express threats, there was always [italic in original] an “unspoken or else.” The officials made clear that the platforms would [italic in original] suffer adverse consequences if they failed to comply, through express or implied threats, and thus the requests were not optional.

The appeals court also took a “real-world” view of the nation’s most feared law enforcement agency: “Although the FBI’s communications did not plainly reference adverse consequences, an actor need not express a threat aloud so long as, given the circumstances, the message intimates that some form of punishment will follow noncompliance.” The federal appeals court upheld part of the injunction while excluding some federal agencies from anticensorship restrictions.

The Biden administration quickly appealed the partial injunction to the Supreme Court, telling the court: “Of course, the government cannot punish people for expressing different views…. But there is a fundamental distinction between persuasion and coercion. And courts must take care to maintain that distinction because of the drastic consequences resulting from a finding of coercion.”

The Biden brief bewailed that the appeals court found that “officials from the White House, the Surgeon General’s office, and the FBI coerced social-media platforms to remove content despite the absence of even a single instance in which an official paired a request to remove content with a threat of adverse action.” But both the federal district court and the appeals court decisions offered plenty of examples of federal threats.

The New Civil Liberties Alliance, one of the plaintiffs, scoffed: “The Government argues that the injunction interferes with the government’s ability to speak. The Government has a wide latitude to speak on matters of public concern, but it cannot stifle the protected speech of ordinary Americans.” And the injunction impedes federal officials from secretly coercing private companies to satisfy White House demands.

As the Biden administration pressured the Supreme Court, the anticensorship lawyers on September 25 secured an en banc rehearing of their case, which consists of a panel of all 17 active Fifth Circuit judges. The plaintiffs were especially concerned that the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Act was excluded from the injunction. CISA and its array of federal censorship contractors have sowed far too much mischief in recent years. The appeals court modified the injunction to put a leash on CISA.

Censorship could cast the deciding vote in the 2024 presidential election. Judge Doughty issued his injunction in part because federal agencies “could use their power over millions of people to suppress alternative views or moderate content they do not agree with in the upcoming 2024 national election.”

Much of the mainstream media is horrified at the prospect of reduced federal censorship. The Washington Post article on Doughty’s decision fretted, “For more than a decade, the federal government has attempted to work with social media companies to address criminal activity, including child sexual abuse images and terrorism.” The Post did not mention the Biden crusade to banish cynicism from the Internet. Journalist Glenn Greenwald scoffed, “The most surreal fact of U.S. political life is that the leading advocates for unified state/corporate censorship are large media corporations.”

Fifty years ago, philosopher Hannah Arendt wrote of the “most essential political freedom, the right to unmanipulated factual information without which all freedom of opinion becomes a cruel hoax.” The battle over federal censorship will determine whether Americans can have more than a passing whiff of that political freedom. Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost joined the lawsuit against censorship and commented in September: “The federal government doesn’t get to play referee on the field of public discourse. If you let them decide what speech is OK, one day yours might not be.”

On October 20, the Supreme Court announced that it would rule on this case, with a decision expected within a few months. Stay tuned for plenty of legal fireworks and maybe even good news for freedom.

*  *  *

This article was originally published in the December 2023 edition of Future of Freedom.

Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthis have launched a series of attacks on commercial vessels in the highly trafficked Red Sea strait as retaliation for Israel’s Gaza operation and Washington’s support of Israel. In light of these developments, shipping giants A.P. Møller – Mærsk A/S – also known as Maersk – and Hapag-Lloyd halted their container ships from sailing in these highly contested waters on Friday. Two other major shipping firms followed suit on Saturday.

The number of major shipping firms that have suspended sails through the Red Sea due to elevated missile and drone attacks near the strategic Bab al-Mandab strait has jumped to four. 

AFP News reports that Italian-Swiss-based Mediterranean Shipping Company and French-based CMA CGM halted container ship sails through the Red Sea on Saturday, citing mounting risks due to Iran-backed Houthi rebels. 

Spillover risks of the Israel-Hamas war are already being recognized, as the Red Sea is responsible for 40% of the world’s international trade. 

“We are deeply concerned about the highly escalated security situation in the southern Red Sea and Gulf of Aden,” Maersk said in a statement. 

Maersk continued, “The recent attacks on commercial vessels in the area are alarming and pose a significant threat to the safety and security of seafarers.”

Hapag-Lloyd spokesman Nils Haupt said its container ships were drifting outside the strait and waiting for further instructions. This stretch of water is a crucial transit point for vessels traveling through Egypt’s Suez Canal. 

On Saturday morning, US Central Command wrote in a post on X that the Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS CARNEY shot down 14 Houthi drones in the Red Sea. 

In the early morning hours of December 16 (Sanna time) the US Arliegh Burke-class guided missile destroyer USS CARNEY (DDG 64), operating in the Red Sea, successfully engaged 14 unmanned aerial systems launched as a drone wave from Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen. The UAS were… pic.twitter.com/Rjkzng5LxW

— U.S. Central Command (@CENTCOM) December 16, 2023

Some shipping companies have already rerouted around the Cape of Good Hope to avoid the conflict area. 

As de-globalization accelerates and the old world order shreds apart, former NY Fed repo guru and former Credit Suisse strategist Zoltan Pozsar warned earlier this year that a multipolar world would usher in the need for increased use of militaries around the world to ensure safe maritime shipping lanes. 

Via The Cradle,

The Israeli daily The Times of Israel reported late in the week that the attempt to pump seawater into the vast network of tunnels built by Hamas in Gaza was proving to be a “success.”

“The tunnel flooding had indeed begun, albeit in a limited trial capacity …,” and that “it was understood to have been a success,” the newspaper said on Thursday.

Days ago, Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported that the Israeli military had already begun pumping seawater into tunnels used by Hamas. Citing US officials familiar with the Israeli military operation, the WSJ had reported that the move to flood the tunnels with water from the Mediterranean was in its early stages. A spokesperson for the Israeli defense minister had declined to comment, saying tunnel operations were classified. 

When asked, however, if the tunnel flooding tactic might pose a threat to Israeli prisoners held in Gaza, Israeli army spokesman Daniel Hagari said in a press conference on Thursday that the military operates on “intelligence” regarding where prisoners are being kept, adding that Israel “will not take steps that harm them.”

In another press conference in Beirut on Thursday, senior Hamas official Osama Hamdan said that the tunnels were built to withstand flooding, and that Israel’s plans have been taken into account. 

“The tunnels were built by well-trained and educated engineers who considered all possible attacks from the occupation, including pumping water,” Hamdan said, adding that the underground network is “an integral part of the resistance, and all consequences and expected attacks have been taken into account.”

At the start of the war in October, officials were quoted as saying that soldiers should “under no circumstances” attempt to enter the tunnels. 

The report by The Times of Israel comes as Israel is no closer to its goal of destroying Hamas. “Israel is still far from toppling Hamas. The majority of its fighters are still alive; it still possesses rockets,” said Michael Millstein, a Palestinian studies expert, on 12 December. 

Clashes continue to rage between Israel and the Palestinian militants in both north and south Gaza, with resistance fighters ambushing Israeli troops on a daily basis. At least 10 Israeli soldiers were killed in the Shujaiya neighborhood of north Gaza and elsewhere on 12 December in coordinated ambushes laid by Hamas and other groups. 

Israeli media referred to the ambush as “one of the deadliest” since the ground war was launched in late October. 

Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) sent out a “health advisory” on Dec. 14 regarding “low vaccination rates” for influenza, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), and COVID-19.

The agency stated that the relatively low vaccination rates “could lead to more severe disease and increased healthcare capacity strain in the coming weeks” and “reports of increased respiratory disease have been described in multiple countries recently.”

“Healthcare providers should administer influenza, COVID-19, and RSV immunizations now to patients, if recommended,” the CDC stated.

The CDC is tracking “increased respiratory disease activity in the United States for several respiratory pathogens,” but it made no mention of China or a rise in mysterious pediatric pneumonia cases in the country in recent weeks. The agency mentioned only influenza, RSV, and COVID-19.

“In the past 4 weeks, hospitalizations among all age groups increased by 200 percent for influenza, 51 percent for COVID-19, and 60 percent for RSV,” it stated.

Historical data show that the recent increase COVID-19 hospitalizations appear to be relatively low compared with previous increases during the pandemic.

“Infants, older adults, pregnant people, and people with certain underlying medical conditions remain at increased risk of severe COVID-19 and influenza disease. Infants and older adults remain at highest risk of severe RSV disease; it is the leading cause of infant hospitalization in the United States,” the CDC bulletin reads.

Other than vaccines, health care providers should recommend antiviral medications for influenza and COVID-19 for all eligible patients, especially older adults and people with certain underlying medical conditions, according to the CDC.

Vaccine Fatigue?

However, recent surveys have shown that Americans appear to be showing signs of vaccine fatigue. One from the health policy research group KFF found that about three-fourths of respondents said they weren’t concerned about getting COVID-19.

“With fall and winter holidays coming up, the possibility of a further wave of COVID-19 infections is looming with increased indoor gatherings and time with friends and family. Yet, most of the public is not worried about spreading or catching COVID-19 over the coming months,” the KFF stated.

It noted that 54 percent are “not too worried” or “not at all worried” about COVID-19 increases or hospitalizations.

There were 7.4 million fewer influenza vaccine doses administered to adults in pharmacies and physician offices than were administered during the 2022–23 influenza season, according to the CDC.

Nearly 16 percent of U.S. adults aged 60 and older were reported to have taken an RSV vaccine, and 36 percent of U.S. adults aged 65 and older took a COVID-19 vaccine for the 2023–24 period.

The CDC also stated in December that COVID-19 booster uptake is lower than it had anticipated for this season, and a member of the Food and Drug Administration’s panel of experts said in September that he won’t take the latest booster shot and wouldn’t advise a healthy American younger than 70 to get it either.

“I think the goal of this vaccine is to keep people out of the hospital, keep them out of the intensive care unit and keep them from dying. That’s the goal. That was always the stated goal. It remains the goal,” Dr. Paul Offit told a media outlet. “So who is it that’s getting hospitalized? Who is it that most benefits? People who are elderly, people who have multiple comorbidities, health problems that put them at high risk, chronic lung disease, heart disease, diabetes, obesity, etc. People who are immunocompromised and pregnant people. I think that those are the ones who most benefit.”

Recent CDC Study Results

Earlier this month, a CDC study found that children who reported to pediatric center emergency departments with respiratory illness and were hospitalized were more likely to have taken COVID-19 vaccines.

The overwhelming majority of the young children in the study never received a dose of a COVID-19 vaccine. That group of 6,377 far outnumbered the 281 children who received one dose and the 776 children who received at least two doses. Across the United States, most young children are unvaccinated. Of the unvaccinated children in the study, 44 percent were hospitalized. Of the vaccinated, 55 percent were hospitalized.

The study focused only on COVID-19 vaccines, not vaccines for influenza or RSV.

Pfizer Stock Drops

Pfizer has COVID-19 and RSV vaccines that are approved in the United States, while Moderna and Novavax have “bivalent” COVID-19 vaccines that are also approved by federal agencies.

“We are in the middle of the COVID fatigue,” Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla said during an investor call on Oct. 16, according to media reports. “Nobody wants to speak about COVID.”

Notably, Pfizer’s stock recently fell to 10-year lows after reporting this week that its 2024 sales could be as much as $5 billion below Wall Street expectations, in part because of its weakened ability to move COVID-19 products such as vaccines and treatment drugs.

Zachary Stieber and Reuters contributed to this report.

A Jewish Georgia middle school teacher has been arrested for threatening to kill a Muslim middle school student who took offense at the Israel flag displayed in his classroom. He’s been charged with cruelty to children and making terroristic threats. 

According to accounts collected from more than 20 witnesses — including other teachers — 7th-grade social studies teacher Benjamin Reese went into a rage on the afternoon of Dec. 7th at Warner Robins Middle School. Three students say they were walking down the hall after school when one noticed a flag of the State of Israel in Reese’s classroom and asked him why it was on display. 

According to the student’s account recorded in a police report reviewed by 13WMAZ, Reese said “he was Jewish and has family members still there.”

The female Muslim student told Reese the country’s flag was “offensive due to Israelis killing Palestinians” in the Israeli-Hamas war, which caused him to become angry and call her antisemitic.

They left and Reese followed the three down the hallway, yelling at them along the way.

The mildest quote: “You don’t make an antisemitic comment like that to a Jew!”

However, several teachers say the 51-year-old Reese also unleashed vivid threats of violence: 

• “You motherfucking piece of shit! I’ll kick your ass! I should cut your motherfucking head off!”

• “She is a stupid motherf***er, and I will drag her by the back of my car and cut her f***ing head off for disrespecting my Jewish flag!”

• “I’ll slit her fucking throat!”

One of the teachers told police that, as Reese went ballistic, she feared for her own safety. Security video captured Reese following the students. When the principal and a school security officer tried to question Reese about the incident, he became agitated and aggressively kicked a door-stopper before “invok[ing] his civil rights” and walking away.

I’ve been skeptical of claims that Jewish college students are so “unsafe” that they need special protections, just as I’ve been skeptical of that narrative for other groups.

But here’s a student definitely justified in feeling unsafe due to a teacher’s statements on Israel: pic.twitter.com/QFsVe8RibP

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) December 15, 2023

In the biography that’s still posted on the school’s website, Reese says he’s a Navy veteran and that “over the course of the last 8 years [teaching], I have been challenged far beyond anything 17 years of military service had prepared me for, and I love it.”

Reese is out of jail, having met the bond requirements set by the judge: $5,000 for the cruelty to children charge and $2,500 for the alleged terroristic threat. In a statement to 13WMAZ, the Houston County School District carefully distanced itself from Reese: 

While we are not able to discuss specific personnel matters, we can share that Mr. Reese has not been on the campus of Warner Robins Middle School since Dec. 7, 2023. Safety and the well-being of our students and staff is our number one priority.”

The Georgia middle school incident comes alongside allegations that antisemitism is running rampant on college campuses, with Jewish students claiming they feel unsafe and some filing lawsuits charging school administrations with breach of contract for failing to bar speech about the Israel-Palestine conflict that they interpret as threatening. 

Authored by Hans Zeiger via RealClear Wire,

December 15th marked Bill of Rights Day, which commemorated the 232nd anniversary when the first ten amendments to the U.S. Constitution were ratified.

December 15th should be a day all Americans reflect on the unique blessings the Bill of Rights safeguards – the freedom of speech, the right to bear arms, and being protected from undue searches and seizures, to name just a few.

But Bill of Rights Day also offers us the opportunity to reflect upon another unique aspect of our republic: the Preamble to the United States Constitution.

Originally penned by Gouverneur Morris, the Preamble states, “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, ensure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain this Constitution for the United States of America.”

And although today we can find little to argue with in such beautiful – and familiar – language, at the time of its framing, and immediately after, the Preamble was the subject of much debate, all intimately tied to the deliberations that resulted in the Bill of Rights.

Following the ratification of the Constitution, James Madison turned over a package of recommendations for a Bill of Rights to a House Select Committee on Amendments in 1789. In the committee’s initial report, dated July 28, 1789, the very first proposal was an amendment to the Preamble. As the report put it, “In the introductory paragraph before the words, ‘We the people,’ add, ‘Government being intended for the benefit of the people, and the rightful establishment thereof being derived from their authority alone.’”

Why amend the Preamble? It turns out that members of Congress from New York, Virginia, and North Carolina felt that “We the People” on its own was inadequate. According to these congressmen, some further explanation of the source of “rightful” government was in order, more explicitly connecting the Preamble back to the words of the Declaration of Independence to make clear that the people are the source of all legitimate governments.

In this proposed amendment, new text was to be incorporated into the body of the Constitution. Madison favored this approach, while Roger Sherman of Connecticut – the only Founding Father to have signed the Articles of Association, the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, and the Constitution – opposed it.

Madison, always the moderate, favored the approach mainly for the sake of compromise and harmony. Sherman, meanwhile, felt that the Preamble was sufficient as is. In fact, its worth had been demonstrated by the practical results of the Constitution’s adoption. Now, Madison and others were asking for new language that would “give [the people] a right to do what they did” and “to let them know that they had a right to exercise a natural and inherent privilege.” After all, the Constitution had been ordained and established on the basis of popular consent. Moreover, the Constitution already contained the language justifying the consent of the people to govern themselves. It was right there at the beginning – three words, full of meaning, and perfectly succinct. “The words ‘We the people,’ in the original Constitution, are as copious and expressive as possible; any addition will only drag out the sentence without illuminating it,” said Sherman. 

Sherman was not the only Founder who perceived the Preamble’s depth and meaning. As early as the Pennsylvania Ratifying Convention in 1787, James Wilson asserted the Preamble as the basis for his opposition to a Bill of Rights. If rights belonged to the people and the people were sovereign, clearly declaring themselves to be the source of the Constitution in its opening words, there was no need to enumerate a list of rights in the Constitution.

Wilson lost the argument, but he was correct to note the sufficiency of “We the People” as the Constitution’s philosophical foundation. And Sherman’s point about the sufficiency of the Preamble’s wording seems to have stood the test of time. Indeed, it is hard to imagine an economy of words fuller with meaning than the combination found in the Preamble.

So as we celebrate the ratification of the Bill of Rights this December 15th, let us remember that these ten great amendments only serve as an additional layer of protection. The Preamble itself, and the entire structure of our Constitution, already protects these rights. They are rights inherent in us as citizens. We have enumerated them only as an extra guard against tyranny – against a power which would seek to destroy the “We the people” of which our Preamble speaks.

Hans Zeiger is the President of the Jack Miller Center.