Authored by Steve Gillman via RealClear Wire,

From ancient Egypt to medieval England, cultivating one or more crops in the same field was common practice among many farmers for thousands of years. However, in the last century, food producers largely stopped ‘intercropping’ and moved towards an industrial type of agriculture – a shift that contributed to 34% of the world’s farmland being degraded today. 

“Interest is growing in intercropping [again] because farmers increasingly understand it improves their soil health,” said Jerry Allford, an organic farmer and advisor from the Soil Association, a UK charity promoting sustainable agriculture. Jerry thinks this renewed focus can “open up a whole new way of farming” because it can bridge profitability with regenerative agriculture practices. 

“In the case of growing a legume and cereal together, we know there is nutrient transfer between the two crops,” he said, adding that this reduces the need for synthetic fertilisers and its associated costs. Other potential benefits include reduced weeds, pests and diseases as well as higher resistance to extreme weather from climate change – all of which can improve farmers’ bottom line.  

To understand and amplify the potential of intercropping, Jerry is running a range of trials where farmers grow a mix of crops on the same stretch of land. This is part of an EU project called LEGUMINOSE which is researching the benefits of intercropping in eight European countries, as well as in Egypt and Pakistan. In total, there will be 180 ‘living labs’ where farmers in monoculture systems introduce a strip of intercropped cereals and legumes, such as wheat and peas or barley and broad beans. 

Each living lab will be tailored to its region with the farmer choosing the techniques and crops most relevant to their area, such as drilling depth, seed mix and planting methods. The idea is that this will enable food producers to produce more practical results, something which LEGUMINOSE wants to use to attract others to intercropping. 

One of the UK’s living labs recently finished and Jerry says it has already provided an insight into intercropping’s promise. The test farm planted wheat and beans, reporting a 27% increase in the intercropped plot compared to the monoculture strips on the same farm. Less weeds were also reported while a preliminary analysis of the soil showed less plant disease present between the two, meaning less need to buy and use agricultural chemicals.  

The economic potential of intercropping does not stop there either. Farmers can choose to grow a secondary crop for the market, such as a legume for human and animal consumption, or a plant that can enhance the quality of a primary crop. 

“We’re also finding that intercropped wheat is meeting UK milling specifications easier, so it could produce a premium price for the farmer,” Jerry said, adding that he hopes this drives an uptake of intercropping and the practice becomes mainstream in the agriculture sector. 

Models for scale 

In Europe, only 2% of farmers currently use a legume-cereal intercrop. Shamina Imran Pathan, LEGUMINOSE’s project coordinator, says it will not be easy to make the practice go mainstream, but providing farmers with the right information and tool can help them switch quicker from a monocultural farming system to a more regenerative one. 

“Many farmers still don’t know what intercropping is,” Pathan points out. “That’s why we need to involve more and more farmers to increase their knowledge about mixing crops together.” 

The living labs are designed to galvanise discussions among farmers and boost uptake that way, but LEGUMINOSE will also reinforce this knowledge through seven additional research fields that explore the benefits of intercropping in precise detail. Academics from several European universities will collect soil samples from farms and conduct a range of physical, chemical and biological analyses to explore the benefits of intercropping on a range of aspect, such as those around soil health, pesticide reduction and crop quality.  

Early results have also shown promise here too with one trial finding that wheat intercropped with clover completely removed the presence of a parasitic weed called dodder – a benefit that could reduce the need to use herbicide and help farmers’ cut down on their input costs.  

Pathan explains this data will be combined with the regional information from the living labs to create forecasting models based on artificial intelligence. This will be made available to farmers as a web-based tool in the coming years that they can use to select the optimal intercrop combinations for their specific situation. 

“Farmers can use this to input criteria like their soil type and climate, and the tool will then tell them what combination of crops could work for them,” Pathan said.

Concerns over the potential misuse of AI have prompted the U.S., U.K., China and the G7 to speed up regulation of the technology, but Europe is already ahead.

European Union policymakers agreed Friday on a comprehensive regulation for artificial intelligence, the AI Act.

This makes the EU the first governing body to pass AI legislation of the sort.

The deal was struck following a nearly 24-hour debate on Dec. 8 and 15 hours of negotiations after that.

As CoinTelegraph’s Amaka Nwaokocha reports, the agreement covers the governmental use of AI in biometric surveillance, how to regulate AI systems such as ChatGPT, and the transparency rules to follow before market entry.

This covers technical documents, adherence to European Union copyright and sharing training content summaries. 

The agreement stipulates that AI models with significant impact and systemic risks must evaluate and address those risks, perform adversarial testing for system resilience, report incidents to the European Commission, ensure cybersecurity and disclose energy efficiency.

“Correct implementation will be essential – the Parliament will keep a close eye on supporting new business ideas with sandboxes and effective rules for the most powerful models.”

After the deal was made, European Commissioner for Internal Market Thierry Breton posted on X:

Historic!

The EU becomes the very first continent to set clear rules for the use of AI 🇪🇺

The #AIAct is much more than a rulebook — it’s a launchpad for EU startups and researchers to lead the global AI race.

The best is yet to come! 👍 pic.twitter.com/W9rths31MU

— Thierry Breton (@ThierryBreton) December 8, 2023

The deal forbids cognitive behavioral manipulation, scraping facial images from the internet or CCTV footage, social scoring and biometric systems inferring personal details like beliefs and orientation.

Consumers would have the right to file complaints and get explanations.

Fines for violations would range from 7.5 million euros ($8.1 million) or 1.5% of turnover up to 35 million euros ($37.7 million) or 7% of global turnover, depending on the infringement and size of the company.

The new law still needs to be approved by the European Parliament, though that should be a formality.

However, as NYTimes reports, even as the law was hailed as a regulatory breakthrough, questions remained about how effective it would be. Many aspects of the policy were not expected to take effect for 12 to 24 months, a considerable length of time for A.I. development.

And finally, enforcement remains unclear. The A.I. Act will involve regulators across 27 nations and require hiring new experts at a time when government budgets are tight. Legal challenges are likely as companies test the novel rules in court. Previous E.U. legislation, including the landmark digital privacy law known as the General Data Protection Regulation, has been criticized for being unevenly enforced.

Authored by Uriel Araujo via InfoBRICS,

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is pressuring European diplomats to cease any talks about Ukraine joining NATO, according to a member of Rada (the Ukrainian parliament), Oleksiy Goncharenko.

This is no minor politician.

The son of a former Odessa mayor, he is a member of the Ukrainian Permanent Delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE). The allegations were publicly made in a series of texts posted in his Telegram channel (in Ukrainian). He wrote:

“Unfortunately, there will be no NATO [for Ukraine]. Forget about it – it won’t happen.”

Goncharenko claims that “several sources” in Washington told him the topic of Ukraine’s accession to the Atlantic Alliance “annoys the US elite” and even “after war” the country should not expect it.

The politician also commented on the ongoing friction between the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and  Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, General Valery Zaluzhny. According to Goncharenko, Washington is “not happy” about it. In addition, he says, one should expect the next aid package to Ukraine to be the last one: “In a year, at the end of 2024, we will not be given any more money… Most likely, we will switch to a credit form of cooperation. They’ll give a loan. Not a grant that won’t need to be repaid.”

Could such allegations be a fabrication created for propaganda purposes? There is no reason to think so and the logic of it in this case would be far from clear. In fact, Goncharenko’s claims make perfect sense in light of what we already know by now.

We know the US has been pressuring its ally to hold elections. Moreover, the US Mission to NATO last month posted on X (formerly Twitter) a vague message about Washington being “focused on setting the conditions for a just, durable, and sustainable peace” in Ukraine. We also know that European Union (EU) member states are divided over the bloc’s common budget, including additional funding for Kyiv in 2024.

In addition, Pulitzer winner journalist Seymour Hersh has written that, according to his American diplomacy and intelligence sources, the aforementioned General Valery Zaluzhny has been directly negotiating a peace deal with Russian general Valery Gerasimov, independently of Zelensky, who is described as a “wild card”. According to the journalist: “The two generals may continue to talk and Putin may indeed be interested in a settlement that gives him permanent control of Crimea and the four provinces he has claimed, but Zelensky remains the wild card. The American official said that Zelensky has been told that “this is a military-to-military problem to solve and the talks will go on with or without you.” If necessary, the American official told me, “We can finance his voyage to the Caribbean’.”

We know that the unprecedented sanctions against the Russian Federation have been backfiring since the beginning, with the Eurasian great power reaching record trade surplus as early as May 2022. That has sparked division within the European continent, and how de-industralized post-Nord Stream Europe has been hurt by the ongoing conflict and by American subsidy war.

As early as April 2023, as I wrote, former US ambassador to Finland, Earle Mack wrote that the US-led West had been “propping up Ukraine to fight a proxy war” but he could only see “a decade of death and chaos” for the country.

In May Zelensky was planning a number of bold actions against Russia, including bombing the Druzhba pipeline that provides Russian oil to Hungary (a NATO member), and even occupying Russian villages plus targeting the Russian Federation with long-range missiles. Such plans crossed some red lines and were a huge problem from the point of view of both the US and that of Ukraine’s neighbors.

That same month, aforementioned Serymour Hersh also reported that countries such as Hungary, Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, and the Czech Republic, led by Poland (with Germany playing some role in it too) had been pressuring the Ukrainian leader “to find a way to end the war, even by resigning himself if necessary, and to allow the process of rebuilding his nation to get under way.” According to Hersh’s CIA source at the time, these European leaders had “made it clear that ‘Zelensky can keep what he’s got – a villa in Italy and interests in offshore bank accounts – ‘if he works up a peace deal even if he’s got to be paid off, if it’s the only way to get a deal’.” Few months later, in September, Poland stopped sending Ukraine weapons, allegedly over a trade dispute, as bilateral relations deteriorated.

All of this points to a clear picture emerging, one that had been haunting Ukraine for a while: Western abandonment and betrayal – something of which Washington has a solid record. From an European perspective, the picture is even more dramatic: it is about the bloc’s own interests. As I wrote, in December 2021, American and European energy interests are far from converging and in fact the energy crisis in that part of the Old World is something that has benefited Washington, while hurting its European allies – and the same can be said about the American proxy attrition war in Eastern Europe. It is about time to admit NATO’s expansion has been a recipe for disaster and about time to admit Ukraine has a far-right problem and a problem with the way it deals with the Russian minority – and not just in Donbass. And all of that is a problem for Europe, too.

It remains to be seen how European leaders will conduct their policy pertaining to Ukraine and also to the strategic energy interests of the continent. One may expect many European voices urging the bloc to reconsider sanctions against Russia, for instance, as has been the case already. For a start, it could reconsider its stance on the issue of the rights of ethnic minorities.

“The people have spoken, and so it shall be,” Elon Musk posted on X in reply to a poll on Saturday asking users whether to reinstate Alex Jones’ account. 

“Reinstate Alex Jones on this platform?” Musk asked. Nearly two million X users voted, with more than 70% voting in favor of Jones’ return. 

The people have spoken and so it shall be

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 10, 2023

Jones’ account was banned under old Twitter in September 2018 for violating the platform’s abusive behavior policy. 

As of early Sunday morning, Jones’ X account has been reinstated. 

The self-proclaimed “free speech absolutist” billionaire said Jones is welcomed on the platform but added: “He cannot break the law.” 

He cannot break the law

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 9, 2023

Restoring Jones’s account came days after the Infowars blog founder sat down with Tucker Carlson for an interview.

In May, American YouTuber and columnist Gonzalo Lira was arrested in Ukraine because he “publicly justified” the Russian invasion, according to a press release by the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU).

The statement from Kiev said that Lira “has the citizenship of one of the countries of Latin America” but omitted that he is also California-born U.S. citizen, as ZeroHedge contributor Space Worm reported at the time.

Following his release, Lira said he was tortured in a Ukrainian prison, explaining that “two thugs held my head and used a toothpick to scratch the whites of my left eye, while asking me if I could still read if I had just one.” Lira informed followers that he was making a mad-dash via motorcycle towards the Hungarian border:

Right now, I’m about to try to get out of Ukraine, and seek political asylum in Hungary.

Either I’ll cross the border and make it to safety, or I’ll be disappeared by the Kiev regime.

This is what’s happened to me over the past three months.

1/25

— Gonzalo Lira (@GonzaloLira1968) July 31, 2023

Grayzone reporter Liam Cosgrove pressed State Department spox Matthew Miller on the issue, asking how the Biden Administration has allowed an American to be tortued by a closely allied nation: 

The Grayzone’s @cosgrove_iv asked @StateDeptSpox today about the status of Gonzalo Lira, the US citizen who was jailed by the Ukrainian govt for challenging its official narrative of the war and whose Twitter account now claims he’s making a break for the Hungarian border pic.twitter.com/kc7NY6hkdt

— The Grayzone (@TheGrayzoneNews) August 1, 2023

Even more damning about Miller’s non-answer is that 3 months prior, Miller admitted that the State Department was aware of Lira’s imprisonment and plead the Fifth when asked whether the administration planned to advocate for his release:

State Department refuses to say whether it will negotiate with Zelensky for the release of detained U.S. citizen Gonzalo Lira: pic.twitter.com/jTD58XjYnw

— Liam Cosgrove (@cosgrove_iv) May 28, 2023

Tucker and Elon sound the alarm

In a Saturday post on X, Tucker Carlson highlighted Lira’s situation and spoke with the journalist’s father. Carlson asked why the Biden administration is allowing this, and questioned what kind of country Ukraine is for doing this to an American simply for criticizing the government.

In response, Elon Musk asked: “An American citizen is in prison n Ukraine after we sent over a $100 billion?” adding, “Is there more to this story than simply criticizing Zelensky?”

“If that’s all it is, then we have serious problem here.”

An American citizen is in prison n Ukraine after we sent over a $100 billion?

Is there more to this story than simply criticizing Zelensky?

If that’s all it is, then we have serious problem here.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 9, 2023

Yep. Saying unapproved things. That’s his crime.

— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) December 10, 2023

Musk then directly asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to explain…

President @ZelenskyyUa, please educate the American people about this matter

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 9, 2023

Which reminds us, 2024 presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy pointed out that Ukraine is an extremely corrupt country.

You know what’s naive? Those who claim that Ukraine is a paragon of “democracy” in a battle of good vs. evil. Here’s the TRUTH about the Zelensky regime:

– Banned 11 opposition parties
– Recently assassinated a 2019 Ukrainian Presidential candidate ⁰-Consolidated all TV media… pic.twitter.com/JUqPrzxC8K

— Vivek Ramaswamy (@VivekGRamaswamy) December 7, 2023

Is the worm turning?

Elon is asking the question that US politicians don’t dare to ask. Good.

— Gabor Gurbacs (@gaborgurbacs) December 9, 2023

We need an answer immediately. We gave you so much money and you hold one of us like this?

— Right Angle News Network (@Rightanglenews) December 9, 2023

What happened next? https://t.co/FRzKw5bNsb

— David Sacks (@DavidSacks) December 10, 2023

Gonzalo wasn’t a gay female basketball player so the US State dept didn’t care

— The_Real_Fly (@The_Real_Fly) December 10, 2023

he might ask few billions from you instead

— The White Rabbit 🐇 (@WR_Samurai) December 9, 2023

In a territorial dispute spanning nearly two centuries, tensions between Guyana and Venezuela have once again reached a boiling point.

As Visual Capitalist’s Bruno Venditti and Nick Routley detail below, the focal point of this dispute is the vast Essequibo region which encompasses around 70% of Guyana’s territory, and is roughly equivalent to the size of Florida.

Venezuela claims historical rights dating back to the Spanish colonial period when Essequibo fell within its boundaries.

In 1840, the British government drew the Schomburgk Line expanding the territory of British Guiana (now Guyana) far beyond the occupied area and to the strategically-located mouth of the Orinoco River.

This line played a pivotal role in shaping the modern borders of the region by defining the territory claimed by the UK, and later, a decolonized Guyana, as the country gained independence in 1966. That same year, Venezuela and the UK signed an agreement aiming for a negotiated solution.

In 2004, President Hugo Chávez eased border tensions under the advice of Fidel Castro, stating that he considered the dispute to be finished.

Recent events, however, have reignited the dispute. Between 2015 and 2021, Guyana announced the discovery of about 8 billion barrels of oil, elevating a country with fewer than a million people to a prominent position among the top nations in terms of oil reserves. ExxonMobil, leading a consortium, operates three offshore projects in the country, earning nearly $6 billion in 2022 alone.

Venezuela’s Referendum and New Map

On December 1, 2023, the World Court ordered Venezuela to refrain from actions in the border dispute with Guyana. However, just two days later, on December 3, Venezuelans approved a referendum claiming sovereignty over Essequibo.

President Maduro subsequently ordered the creation of a new state, Guayana Esequiba, within Venezuela’s borders, and released a new map of the country.

Venezuela’s new territorial claims don’t stop on land, they extend far out into sea as well. Specifically, Venezuela is claiming a critical area called the Stabroek Oil Block, where ExxonMobil and others are already active.

With a population of around 125,000 people, the disputed region is full of dense rainforest, making a military incursion from Venezuela feasible only by sea or through the Brazilian state of Roraima. Brazil, maintaining good diplomatic relationships with both countries, has already increased military personnel on the border. The U.S. announced joint military flight drills in Guyana on December 7.

Despite increased military presence in the region, many experts believe that President Maduro has no intention of actually annexing Essequibo, and that this recent claim is a tactic to bolster his own image within Venezuela.

Authored by Amie Dahnke via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

A new study indicates that long-term use of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) medication may increase the risk of developing cardiovascular disease and that the risk increases the longer the drug is used.

The results of the study conducted in Sweden were published in JAMA Psychiatry, bringing to light the potential risks of long-term ADHD medication.

About 6 million, or 1 in 10, children ages 3 to 17 have been diagnosed with ADHD, according to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Approximately 8.7 million adults in the United States also have ADHD. Individuals with ADHD may have difficulty paying attention, find it hard to sit still, or act without thinking; the symptoms and specifics vary from person to person.

Medication has been the standard treatment of care for decades, researchers wrote, adding that “the use of ADHD medication has increased greatly in both children and adults during the past decades.” Medication therapies include stimulant and non-stimulant therapies, with modalities being determined by the patient’s needs.

Risk Grows With Duration of Use

In the study, researchers looked at 13 years of records in the National Inpatient Register of over 278,000 individuals between the ages of 6 and 64 with ADHD. They found that the longer an individual used ADHD medication, the higher their risk was of developing cardiovascular disease compared to those who did not take ADHD medication. Additionally, each additional year an individual used ADHD medication increased their risk of heart disease by an average of 4 percent. Overall, the results suggest that heart disease risk was 23 percent higher for people who used ADHD medication for more than five years compared to those who never used it. The risk was stable among children and adults, both male and female.

Cardiovascular diseases linked to ADHD medication include hypertension and artery disease. There was no increased risk for other associated conditions, such as heart failure, arrhythmias, thromboembolic disease, arterial disease, and other forms of heart disease.

The study confirms previous research that indicated patients taking stimulant ADHD medication, such as Ritalin or Adderall, are at higher risk of developing cardiovascular disease than those taking non-stimulant ADHD medication. The reason for the development is likely because the stimulants in the drugs are known to elevate blood pressure, arouse the nervous system, and make the heart work harder.

The study authors noted that clinicians should “be vigilant in monitoring patients … and consistently assess signs and symptoms of CVD (cardiovascular diseases),” especially in patients receiving high doses of stimulant medications.

Those taking ADHD medication should monitor their heart health regularly. ADHD patients can rely on the American Heart Association’s Life’s Essential 8, a set of key health behaviors and factors that can alter one’s risk of heart disease. The Essential 8 include the following:

• Eating healthily.
• Being more active.
• Quitting smoking.
• Getting enough sleep.
• Managing weight.
• Controlling cholesterol.
• Managing blood sugar.
• Managing blood pressure.

No Proof of Causation

Researchers noted the limitations of the case-control study, including that it cannot prove that ADHD medication causes any cardiovascular disease problems.

Additionally, the study’s sample was limited to one country, which could indicate the need for more diversity in the future.

Of prominent note: Researchers did not look at the risk of cardiovascular disease in those who already had heart issues.

The authors indicated that further research must be done that examines those with preexisting cardiovascular disease. “Evaluating the risk among them necessitates a different study design that carefully considers the potential impact of prior knowledge and periodic monitoring,” they wrote.

In 2023, advertising spend is projected to reach $61.3 billion on U.S. broadcast and cable TV.

Despite declining viewership, traditional TV has been found to be an optimal platform for storytelling ads. Additionally, advertisers can target viewer segments on traditional TV—similar to digital marketing channels.

Visual Capitalist’s Dorothy Neufeld shows the top advertisers on traditional TV outlets in the chart below, based on data from Nielsen.

Top 10 National TV Advertising Spenders

Here are the top advertisers on national U.S. broadcast and cable TV for the month of June 2023:

Procter & Gamble was the top TV advertising spender in the U.S., at $109.3 million. Home to Gillette, Crest, and Tide, the company spent a stunning $5.1 billion in overall advertising in 2022.

Pharmaceutical companies Abbvie and GSK were the next biggest spenders, at $81.4 million and $52.8 million, respectively. Overall, pharmaceuticals accounted for the largest share of advertising across the top 10.

Big tech companies Alphabet and Amazon also made the list, each spending over $30 million in June alone.

Top 10 Local TV Advertising Spenders

By contrast, the automotive sector made up seven of the top 10 local broadcast and cable TV advertisers, led by General Motors and Toyota:

Meanwhile, communication giants Comcast and Charter were big spenders, and the nation’s largest personal injury law firm, Morgan & Morgan, ranked in seventh overall.

U.S. Television Trends

Today, live TV viewership in the U.S. is primarily made up of those aged 65 and over, which spend nearly five hours per day watching TV. In contrast, those aged 25-34 spend only about one hour and 12 minutes per day watching live TV.

Furthermore, in 2022, fewer than half of U.S. viewers paid for traditional TV services for the first time. By year-end 2027, this proportion is projected to fall to just over a third of households.

Yet due to its scale of available media inventory, traditional TV may continue to bring in the bulk of TV advertising spending over the near future. One reason is that advertising makes up 20% of time spent on traditional TV but just 3% on streaming platforms.

However, as viewership declines, advertisers on live TV say that they are most likely to allocate their ad spend to streaming services. By year-end 2027, ad spend on streaming platforms is projected to jump to $40.9 billion, a 63% increase from 2023.

Authored by Ben Weingarten via RealClear Wire,

During the 2020 election, the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency (CISA) partnered with the Election Integrity Partnership (EIP), a consortium of groups led by the Stanford Internet Observatory, to track and counter what they considered mis- and dis-information.

EIP surveilled hundreds of millions of social media posts and collected from the cooperating government and non-governmental entities that it calls its “stakeholders” potential violations of social media platforms’ policies concerning election speech.

It coordinated its efforts primarily through a digital “ticketing” system. There, one of its as many as 120 analysts or an external partner could highlight a piece of offending social media content, or narrative consisting of many offending posts, by creating a “ticket,” and share it with other relevant participants by “tagging” them. Tagged participants could then communicate with each other, in something of a group chat, about the veracity of the flagged content, concerns about its spread, and what actions they might take to combat it.

For social media companies this meant removing the content outright, reducing its spread, or “informing” users about dubious posts by slapping corrective or contextualizing labels on them.

During the 2020 election cycle, EIP generated a total of 639 tickets, covering some 4,784 unique URLs – representing content shared millions of times – disproportionately related to the “delegitimization” of election results. Major platforms including Twitter, Google, and Facebook responded to tickets in which they were tagged at rates of 75% or higher. The platforms “labeled, removed, or soft blocked” 35% of the URLs shared via EIP.

RealClearInvestigations has obtained data associated with nearly 400 EIP tickets, data produced for the House Homeland Security Committee in connection with its oversight efforts. The tickets come in the form of a series of spreadsheets. Each row represents one ticket. The Stanford group provided no key for the spreadsheets. Much of the information is redacted.

Here are just a few examples of the tickets EIP produced:

Ticket EIP-482 (created October 27, 2020) was originated by the CISA’s Elections Infrastructure Information Sharing & Analysis Center (EI-ISAC). It concerns a tweet from then-President Trump indicating “most” states permit one to change one’s original vote after engaging in early voting, which EIP categorized as potential “Procedural Interference.”

The analysts point to fact-checks from, among other sources, Buzzfeed and ABC News challenging the president’s claim. Following two redacted comments on the ticket, an unnamed commenter writes, “Twitter received and is reviewing.” A subsequent comment reads: “We heard back from Twitter through CISA with this response: Our team concluded that the Tweet was not in violation of our Civic Integrity Policy.”

CISA-produced documentation shows the sub-agency’s chief counter-MDM (mis-, dis-, and malinformation) officer, Brian Scully, had also reported the tweet to Twitter, which responded to him directly about it. Therefore, EIP and its stakeholder, an executive agency, both forwarded the chief executive’s speech to a social media platform for potential censorship.

Ticket EIP-257 (Sept. 29), originated by the EI-ISAC, concerns a social media post from an unnamed user, alleging an absentee ballot had been delivered by mail to his dead father. An EIP stakeholder “flagged the post to Facebook for removal and the link is no longer active which means it has either been taken down or made private to the individual’s Facebook.” A subsequent comment notes that “We also received confirmation from Facebook (by way of CISA) that Facebook took action on this case,” again showing EIP and CISA seemingly working as force multipliers in content moderation.

Ticket EIP-301 (Oct. 2), originated by the EI-ISAC, concerns a “tweet regarding voting machines.” An elected official reported that the since-deleted and unavailable tweet “is false. Voting machines work the vast majority of the time. Old machines do have issues, but to phrase it like [this] vastly overstates the scope of the problem.” CISA inquired as to whether Twitter took the tweet down. It did.

Ticket EIP-954 (Nov. 8), the origins of which are not discernible, concerns social media posts sharing an article from The Federalist, where I am a senior contributor, titled “America Won’t Trust Elections Until The Voter Fraud Is Investigated.” According to the ticket, the article “Misconstrues Disinformation as Evidence.” One tagged post comes from Federalist Editor-in-Chief Mollie Hemingway. A stakeholder writes to Facebook and Twitter in connection with the ticket that “this seems to be the greatest hits from the past 3 days wrapped up in one article. The article links to several of the gateway pundit links which have received action since Tuesday.” Twitter indicates it was reviewing the tweet, though it appears not to have taken action on it. RCI asked Hemingway for comment on the flagging of her tweet and publication’s work. She replied:

This unconscionable censorship of The Federalist and its reporters is sadly unsurprising. The censorship-industrial complex in this country clearly views free speech as its enemy and will do anything to shut it down, including spreading lies and using intimidation to coerce private companies to censor factual, legal speech on behalf of the regime.

Hemingway concluded with a warning: “The censorship-industrial complex better buckle up, because the days of conservatives taking this lying down are over.”

This article was adapted from a RealClearInvestigations article published Nov. 6.

US military bases in the Middle East reportedly came under Fresh attack again on Friday, pushing the total number of attacks since mid-October past 80 incidents.

“There were four additional attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria since yesterday, according to a DOD official. Now 82 overall since Oct. 17,” Politico’s Pentagon correspondent Lara Seligman wrote. Some media sources have put the figure as high as 85.

While the fresh attack hasn’t been widely reported in Western media, Iran’s Mehr News Agency is among those regional sources claiming that some four American bases in Syria were hit.

And one regional monitor OSINTdefender said, “The Attacks on U.S. Forces in the Middle East today has been Never-ending, with at least 10 Rocket and Drones Attacks reported against 6 different Bases in both Iraq and Syria in the last 12 Hours.”

In a Thursday briefing Pentagon spokesperson Sabrina Sing had said this trend of attacks had lessened since the end of the weeklong Israel-Hamas truce, and that the US is hoping things stay calm in the region.

“In terms of the attacks on our forces, I think it’s important to remember that it’s good that we have not seen attacks on our forces in the last 24 hours,” Singh said. “We would like to see that continue.”

The Biden administration has long asserted that it “won’t hesitate” to defend American forces in the region; however, recent reporting in Politico has suggested the US is intentionally refraining from a response to Iran-backed Houthi aggression in the Red Sea, on fears of sparking a broader war.

This week for the first time since Oct.7, the US Embassy in Baghdad came under multiple missile salvos. Damage was reported but no injuries.

Likely, attacks will continue to intensify especially in Syria – given that both Syrian national and Iranian forces want to squeeze American forces out of the illegal occupation of the country’s oil and gas regions. There have been dozens of US troop injuries, with all of them reported as minor.

Attacks on U.S. Bases in Middle East Are Escalating.
I continue to argue our troops in Iraq & Syria are serving no purpose… they are not degrading terrorist groups in the region. Get them out of there!#iraq #Syria #MiddleEast #isis #hamas #Terrorists pic.twitter.com/2UMkGHs8bR

— Daniel Davis Deep Dive (@DanielLDavis1) December 9, 2023

Washington has been intent on strangling Damascus and the Syrian population after Assad emerged victorious from the decade-long proxy war there. Turkey also wants to see the US presence end, given the Pentagon’s support to the Kurds.

Just this week the Senate voted down a resolution that which have required a quick and full US troop drawdown from Syria, on the basis that there was never explicit Congressional authorization for the occupation in the first place.