Authored by Ryan McMaken via The Mises Institute,

Good news: the Pentagon is having trouble meeting recruiting goals, and an increasingly small portion of the American public is interested in fighting wars for the regime. 

It’s been apparent for several years now that the Pentagon is having serious trouble with recruitment.

In September, the New York Post reported that “Much of the military will fall short of recruitment goals by as much as 25% this year.”

2023 is the first time the Air Force has missed its recruiting goals since 1999. 

Moreover, a Gallup poll in June found confidence in the military declined for a sixth consecutive year, to 60 percent.

It doesn’t look like a major war will induce most Americans to sign up either.  For example, Newsweek reports today: 

A poll by the research institute Echelon Insights of 1,029 likely voters, conducted between October 23-26, found that 72 percent of those asked would not be willing to volunteer to serve in the armed forces were America to enter a major conflict, compared with 21 percent who would. The remainder were unsure. The poll was conducted after Hamas led an unprecedented militant attack on Israel on October 7.

Note how the question is phrased. It’s not asking people if they would fight to defend their communities. Rather, the question is whether or not one would be willing to volunteer to fight in “a major conflict.”  Few are apparently interested, and why should they be? It has become abundantly clear over the past 25 years that the elective wars fought by the US regime have nothing to do with the defense of Americans or their communities. The US bombing of Libya and Syria has had nothing to do with keeping Americans safe. The multi-decade wars in Iraq and Afghanistan had nothing to do with keeping Americans safe.  After all, the US lost the wars in both Afghanistan and Iraq, with no invasion of the United States imminent as a result. In fact, those wars likely increased the danger to  Americans by destabilizing the region—the US invasion made ISIS possible—and making more enemies for the US around the world. 

Sadly, every American who died in those conflicts died for little except to enrich local warlord “allies” in those countries made rich by suitcases full of US taxpayer dollars.

In 2023, the “we’re fighting them over there so they don’t fight us here” slogan only works on the most gullible of Americans, and fewer than ever are falling for it. That worked well in 2001. Most have now caught on to the ruse. 

On the other hand, it’s worth noting that a majority of Americans still say they’d volunteer to fight if the United States were actually invaded. Newsweek continues:

At the start of October, a survey of 1,000 likely voters conducted by J.L. Partners for the Daily Mail found that while an overall majority of Americans said they would die fighting for their country were the U.S. invaded…

Discerning potential recruits have figured out the reality which is that joining the military most likely means being shipped 10,000 miles away to do the bidding of wealthy arms dealers, White House officials, and uniformed politicians—known as Pentagon generals. At any time these political cliques could ask ordinary American soldiers to do any of the following: 

• Provide security guarantees to the dictators of Saudi Arabia.

• Fight to prop up the Ukraine regime, known to be one of the most corrupt governments on earth. 

• Fight in a war against Iran because some Washington interest groups don’t like that country. 

Of course, most service members won’t ever be in combat. They’ll spend their time doing more mundane tasks—such as computer programming or logistics planning—to justify a defense budget that now nears a trillion dollars per year. 

One thing that is clear to most, however, is that virtually none of this has anything to do with defending the United States from invasion, so most young people who have real talent, skills, and plans know they can contribute to the community is far more useful ways. Ordinary nurses, truckers, roofers, private-school teachers, and insurance salesmen do far more net good for their communities than any member of the military who spends his time guarding a hill of sand in Syria or protecting the dictators of Kuwait. 

If the US military wants to see a return of enthusiasm for enlistment, there are some things they could do:

• End all foreign deployments of National Guard troops, and make the National Guard a strictly domestic defense force controlled by state governments. 

• End all US military foreign deployment to any place where the US Congress has not formally declared war against the local regime. 

• Stop fighting elective wars that have nothing to do with the defense of Americans in America. 

Of course, doing those things would put significant obstacles in the way of the regimes that seeks to ever expand an de facto American global empire that reserves to itself the right to invade or bomb any country on earth at any time for any reason. 

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) announced threw off some serious Hunger Games vibes Monday, announcing that the state of New York has been ‘collecting data’ from social media platforms in order to combat “hate speech” following an alleged rise in antisemitic attacks.

The announcement came after Hochul met with the state’s Jewish leaders, local law enforcement and federal authorities.

“It’s painful to me as the governor of this great state — that has been known for its diversity, and how we celebrate different cultures, different religions, different viewpoints — it’s painful to see the cruelty with which New Yorkers are treating each other,” she said, not letting a crisis go to waste.

“Everywhere from college campuses, to our streets, to schools, to playgrounds; even as they’re entering their houses of worship,” Hochul said, noting that she “immediately deployed the State Police to protect our synagogues and yeshivas and mosques and any other place that could be susceptible to hate crimes or violence.”

Kathy Hochul announced that New York is “collecting data” from “surveillance efforts” on social media

Hochul says the social media analysis unit will contact people who commit “hate speech”

This is to “ensure safety” Even though they got rid of Guiliani’s Stop and Frisk which… pic.twitter.com/QjlPiXfRpz

— Eric Abbenante (@EricAbbenante) November 13, 2023

According to the NYPD, hate incidents against Jews have increased nearly 331% in New York City since the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attack on Israel.

And after meeting with top Jews in NY, Hochul plans “to catch incitement to violence” and “direct threats to others” via social media surveillance.

“We’re very focused on the data we’re collecting from surveillance efforts – what’s being said on social media platforms. And we have launched an effort to be able to counter some of the negativity and reach out to people when we see hate speech being spoken about on online platforms,” she said, adding that New Yorkers “should feel they have to hide any indications of what their religious beliefs are.”

Some definitions of ‘hate speech’ and ‘incitement to violence,’ plus a list of who’s judging speech to be hateful, would be nice.

Authored by Victor Davis Hanson via American Greatness,

One of the many satanic paradoxes of the Third Reich’s architecture of the Final Solution was the requirement – mandated after the 1939 outbreak of the war – that Jews anywhere under German rule or occupation had to wear a yellow badge or armband with the Star or David.

Yet was not all this elaborate bureaucratic need for identification embarrassing to the Nazi apparat?

After all, if Nazi doctrine about supposedly manifest Aryan “racial” superiority – Nordic looks and build, superior intelligence, stable disposition – were so persuasive, then why the need for Jews to identify themselves?

In contrast, the Star-of David IDs were prima facie proof that the entire bankrupt Nazi project was based on the unspoken fear that millions of Jews were indistinguishable in all respects from other Europeans.

In other words, on the fascist right, anti-Semitism was predicated on the pseudo-science that Jews were not European and thus somehow racially inferior. Yet currently, the entire industry of anti-Semitic hatred has flipped, from Jews as toxic non-whites to Jews as toxic whites. The two common denominators of racial obsession and hating Jews remain the same.

One of the key reasons leftwing anti-Semites have been so effective at galvanizing campus hatred of Israel, and by association of Jews in general, is their careful effort to brand themselves DEI victims why tarring Jews with the empty white supremacy slur.

Accordingly, Jews and Israel now supposedly enjoy toxic white privilege.

They are libeled as veritable white supremacists illegitimately in the Middle East to colonize “Palestine,” and as European imperialists picking up the mantle of the earlier 19th century British and French—as if a prior 400 years of Ottoman imperialism in the Middle East never occurred.

As now-privileged white victimizers, contemporary Jews are not seen as victims of the Holocaust, explaining the comfortable alliance between Islamist Holocaust deniers and the DEI crowd.

It was no accident that a racist BLM on news of the October 7 massacres quickly issued posters glorifying Hamas hang-gliding murderers.

It was no surprise that DEI czars and professors in various ethnic and race studies programs proved the most prominent on campus in damning Israel and its Jewish citizens as racists. And who was shocked when university administrators—the cowardly MIT campus is a good example—simply warned Jews of no-go zones, rather than ensured there were no such zones anywhere on campus for anyone?

Jews seem to be collateral damage from the damning of an entire group of people, namely white Americans and Europeans. In a society that is supposedly wedded to Martin Luther King, Jr.’s dictum that we should be judged by the content of our character, not the color of our skin, it is shocking how the racist DEI and woke industries have been given a complete pass to castigate and demonize an entire group, without any concern for individual characteristics, or for class, religious, or ethnic differences.

Indeed, white is as sloppy a term as Hispanic. Just as third generation Cuban-American professionals have almost no intrinsic ethnic, political, class, or often even linguistic affinities with impoverished Oaxacans who just crossed illegally into America—and vice versa—so too a white male from rural America working as a welder in the Ozarks or a logger in the Sierra Nevada has zero solidarity with a white Bay Area techie at Google or an Ivy League legacy preppie screaming “from the river to the sea” in Harvard Yard.

But “white” is not just a ridiculous construct that ignores the multiplicities of European ethnic and religious fault lines, the vast differences in “white” class, income, and politics, and the increasing frequency of whites marrying non-whites. When joined with the tired epithets “privilege,” “supremacy,” and “rage,” the result grows even more incoherent and sinister.

Is proof of the privilege of “whites” that their life expectancy is lower than Hispanics and Asians?

A suicide rate higher than blacks, Asians, and Hispanics?

Dying in combat in Afghanistan and Iraq at double their numbers in the general population?

An inordinate percentage of fentanyl deaths?

A current percentage of whites in Ivy League freshman classes of 20-40 percent, despite making up 55 percent of the youth demographic?

Why does “white rage” not result in whites being overrepresented as perpetrators of “hate crimes,” as are Latinos and blacks? Or in relatively rare interracial crimes, why are blacks far more likely to assault or kill whites than vice versa? In the DEI lexicon of reductionist stereotypes, is there a term “black rage” that reflects FBI statistics on hate or interracial crimes?

Woke and DEI fads have created entire anti- “white privilege” industries.

One result was the epidemic of careerism-inspired and media-fed hoaxes, such as the Duke Lacrosse lie, the Covington Kids myth, and the Jussie Smollett fiasco.

All were predicated on the idea the white male smear would alone obviate the need for evidence—and would provide exemption when the fakers were exposed.

Another bastard child of the “white privilege” myth was the ironic but pathetic effort of whites to fake a non-white identity to win privileges in hiring, admissions, and status.

What, after all, drove the transitioning of Sen. Elizabeth Warren to declare herself the first “native American” professor of law at Harvard, or careerist professor Ward Churchill to outfit himself in buckskin and beads—not to mention the famous Rachel Dolezal, former head of the NAACP in Spokane, Washington?

Identity fakery is traditionally an empirical guide to privilege, or otherwise nonwhites would be transitioning to white status, as in the segregationist and overtly racist days of the Old South.

In that regard, why did the New York Times dub Hispanic, half-Peruvian George Zimmerman “White Hispanic,” when they had never used that phrase for any other person, even though two thirds of “Hispanic” Americans self-identify as white? Because it was an acceptable affront in demonizing Zimmerman, but would have been considered a racist slander against another Hispanic American?

A hallmark of the white-privilege slander industry is the one-way application of “disproportionality,” or the idea that coveted or celebrity billets must reflect demographics.

Such institutionalized discrimination is now applied in crude fashion throughout companies and universities, but not when inconvenient. In professional sports, where meritocracy is deemed essential and whites are “underrepresented,” or in recording contracts, or even in the US postal service, there is no such sin in any group’s overrepresentation.

Another dividend of the blanket white privilege/supremacy slur is the racial shakedown industry. The BLM movement in the wake of George Floyd’s death ended up extorting millions of dollars from guilty or scared corporations. The vast majority of donations ended up unaccounted for, but likely enriched the founding grifters of BLM.

Ibram X. Kendi earned lucrative fees and honoraria espousing “anti-racism” and founded an “anti-racism” academic center that produced no tangible research. All that and more followed from his academic mish-mash of writings justifying racism against whites to “stop racism.”

The industry of white demonization also plays a role in the drastic reductions in U.S. armed forces recruitment.

The Pentagon insists that labor shortages, obesity, criminality, gang affiliations, or drugs explain their current alarming dearth of recruits.

But the drop-off in white rural and suburban males is demonstrable, and the reason is most likely their weariness with constant woke hectoring and discrimination.

Such pandering was on display when Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Mark Milley in his June 2021 testimony to Congress pontificated about ferreting out “white rage” and “white privilege” in the ranks—despite providing no evidence or data to back up his white bias and racism allegations.

Indeed, the Pentagon publicly quotes in detail the racial makeup of almost every branch and rank of service—except the disproportionately-white demographics of combat deaths, which are considered taboo and inherently macabre and “divisive.”

The DEI virus and the incessant “white privilege” stereotyping infect all areas of American life, and have rendered our society obsessed and hypocritical, if not incoherent as it equates everything from meritocracy to punctuality to toxic “whiteness.”

The normal rules of media sensationalism dictate that when any law enforcement officer lethally shoots an unarmed suspect, especially at a distance that posed no direct threat to the shooter, the name of the officer is immediately released.

But when a capitol officer shot and killed the unarmed January 6 protestor Ashli Babbitt for the likely misdemeanor of entering a broken window in the Capitol, his name and identity were immediately hidden from the public for months.

The same coverup was at work in the suppression of the manifesto and diaries of the self-declared trans mass shooter in Nashville—given that current leaks reveal one of her motivations was sheer hatred of what she deemed “white privileged” children, or, as she also called them, “crackers.”

If New York Prosecutor Letitia James had been a white male conservative activist prosecutor, seeking fame and an upward political career in his state by indicting Barack Obama in an election year for some suspicious financial transactions or sweetheart real estate con from years ago, he would have been denounced as racist.

And what if said prosecutor was on record screaming, not the now socially acceptable and common slogan “too pale, too male, and too stale,” but something about the overrepresentation of the “not pale, not male, but stale?” Would the result be the summary dismissal of an embarrassing, superfluous, and racist writ by a grandstanding, incoherent political hack?

Inconsistency is a final hallmark of “white privilege” ideology.

What characterized the exemptions given to the summer of 2020 riots—with 35 dead, 1,500 law enforcement officers injured, $2 billion in damages, and a courthouse, police precinct, and historic church torched—was their pretense that white privilege had resulted in George Floyd’s death and anti-racist violence was justified.

Black Lives Matter therefore was to be immune from consequences in its “rage” against “white supremacy.”

During the lockdowns, when minor infractions of the quarantine warranted everything from social ostracism to jailing, thousands of health-care professionals—once the most adamant in insisting on the shutdowns—hit the streets claiming that they were marching against white privilege and therefore exempt from the very protocols they had inflicted on others.

By contrast, both the peaceful protestors and the rioters of January 6 were alike dubbed “white supremacists” and “insurrectionists,” and given harsh sentences.

Some no doubt deserved such arrest and punishment, but the single-day event was hardly comparable to the 120 days of rioting, looting, arson, and killing associated with the Antifa/BLM-engineered 2020 riots.

The low bar for “insurrection,” of course, was white-privilege-inspired.

Note the contrast with the recent “pro-Palestine” demonstrations.

Ostensibly these protests should have qualified for all the new requirements of “insurrection” established by the official responses to January 6.

Some of them entered the Capitol rotunda, where protests are forbidden. They interrupted a session of Congress, yelling and disrupting congressional hearings. They defaced government property, smearing fake-blood on the White House stone wall and swarming iconic statues. The genocide of Jews was the theme of their “river to the sea” monotonous chants.

And to make the analogy with the January 6 “insurrection” complete, a prominent politician, Rep. Rashida Tlaib, delivered a speech to the protestors prior to their entry into the Capitol.  In fact, she too implicitly fired up the volatile crowd by calling for the destruction of Israel by demanding a Palestine “from the river to the sea.” Yet in contrast to the January 6 protestors, there were very few arrests and likely will be fewer convictions.

In sum, for years the left has been exempted for what in normal circumstance would be a cardinal civil rights sin. They demonize and stereotype an entire group solely on the basis of their skin color, attributing to them collective negative characteristics that trump all individual differences by presenting them as if frozen in a time warp of the pre-1960s.

Anti-Semitism is on the rise and fortified by the campus DEI and woke crowd.

Hate crimes are soaring. Violent crime in general is on the upswing. Military recruitment is dropping. Trust in the media is plunging. Anti-Semites are proud and not ashamed of acting out their hatred. The progressive woke agenda is imploding.

The one common denominator is the now-acceptable notion that it is not just permissible but encouraged to smear without evidence over two-thirds of Americans as the sole beneficiaries of “privilege,” prone to rage, and conspiring to ensure racial supremacy—all lies.

But they are lies nevertheless as useful to their promulgators as they are toxic and incendiary to a multiracial consensual society if not addressed, refuted, and discredited.

It is past time for Americans to reject all racial stereotyping and the racist careerists who leverage it – before we all descend into tribal nihilism.

In what might be the most least surprising news of the week, retailers are ditching cities and moving to the suburbs. It’s a trend we’ve already seen in places like New York, Philadelphia, Chicago and San Francisco.

Now, it’s taking place in Boston. According to a new report from Bisnow, the retail sector in Boston’s suburbs is experiencing a revival, with locals spending less time traveling to the city center and seeking more shopping and dining alternatives in their own neighborhoods.

The report says that retailers are adapting to changing consumer trends by moving towards suburban areas. However, this shift is bypassing traditional enclosed malls in favor of suburban main streets and open-air lifestyle centers, as reported by brokers and landlords.

Bisnow notes that the high demand has led to lower vacancy rates, enabling property owners to increase rents and transfer expenses to tenants. Simultaneously, this trend is challenging for new businesses seeking to establish themselves in these areas, prompting developers to consider increasing supply.

Bialow Real Estate CEO Corey Bialow commented: “The suburbs have been on fire. I’ve never seen such a landlord-favored market. It’s become the norm that if any good space comes up in a strong suburban shopping center, there’s four or five offers right out of the box.”

He added: “As people are spending more time at home instead of going to lunch down on Boylston Street, they’re having lunch around the corner from their house in downtown Newton or downtown Beverly. We’re just seeing a lot of these small downtowns re-emerge, which is good for the community.”

Boston’s consumer behavior shift will become evident in the upcoming holiday season, expected to be robust. Deloitte’s Holiday Retail Survey indicates Boston shoppers will spend an average of $1,883, up 16% from last year and 14% above the national average. This expenditure includes non-gift items like personal clothing and home furnishings, with 81% of respondents planning such purchases, the report says. 

The pandemic’s impact on work and commute patterns has shifted retail hotspots from downtown areas like Newbury Street and the Seaport to suburban town centers. These New England main streets in Newton, Brookline, Dedham, Arlington, Wellesley, and Lexington, known for their quaint low-rise buildings and local retail, are in high demand but face low vacancy rates. For instance, Newton Centre has less than a 2% vacancy, making it challenging for new businesses to enter these bustling retail corridors.

Whitney Gallivan, managing director at Boston Realty Advisors, added: “There’s certainly been a flock to the suburbs. With the access to the work-from-home environment, as well as hybrid workplaces, I think more and more people are able to gravitate further away from the city.”

“Young families and young people want their suburbs and want their town to have more. They want the fitness concept, they want the fast-casual place to grab food, they want a brewery. We are starting to see the suburbs light up,” Gallivan added. 

Judy Cazeau, associate retail broker at Avison Young’s Boston office, added: “You’re looking at astronomical numbers to get your storefront running. I’ve seen several landlords, even in markets that aren’t even in Boston, asking for 5% annual increases, and it’s kind of jaw-dropping.”

She concluded: “Cities and towns are just becoming a little more hip. They’re investing in their smaller communities and small businesses.”

You can read Bisnow’s full report here.

Authored by James Howard Kunstler via Kunstler.com,

“I hope you realise the ideological brain worms possessing group narcissists preclude condemnation of anything done in the name of the cause no matter how evil. The ends justify the means — no matter how depraved. This is why you can’t reason with them. Ideology binds and blinds.”

– Aimee Therese on X

The sun is low on the horizon all day long now, and darkness creeps in like a home invasion of your mind. Demons descend through a red and black sky and no help is on the way. Our country is so mentally hog-tied trying to unravel the twisted events of just a few years past that it has no mojo left for rationally anticipating the events of just a few years ahead. Have you ever felt more alone?

This is the end-process that we’ve been softened up for: the inability to think and plan. The gigantic “intel community” evolved from something intended to act as sensitized antennae for detecting threats against our republic into what is now a remorseless mind-fucking operation against our republic. That word, by the way, derives from the Latin res publica: the public thing, a society that literally belongs to the people, who decide its affairs. Now, so much is mysteriously decided for us, and not in any good way.

It’s no wonder more than half the country can’t think straight, and it’s a whopping irony that this group comprises most of our country’s thinking class —the bureaucratic managers, the professors, the curators, the editors, the reporters lost in mis-reporting. This group used to play a critical role in the res publica: to earnestly determine what is true and what is real, and to present us with a way of understanding all that so we can think and plan. They appear to be captured by malign forces. The scribes are hard at work defending every act of official malice. The dishonesty at work is epic. You need a decoder ring to keep your mind right.

You are probably desperate to understand why this is happening — how, for instance, a blatantly corrupt and ignorant attorney general in New York state can get away with bringing a politically-motivated nonsense case against the leading presidential candidate in a courtroom ruled by a judge who acts like a jester in a Shakespeare play. New York AG Letitia James gets away with it because the flagship organ of the thinking class, The New York Times, is in on the gambit. But why?

We struggle to sort this out.

One explanation is that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has infiltrated the management of our country at every level so as to eventually conquer our territory for its resources while eliminating or enslaving the population?

Surely, the CCP has made significant inroads, starting with the successful bribery and compromise of “Joe Biden,” probably other elected officials, too, in placing many CCP agents in the vast array of university research departments, NGOs, PACs, and lobbying gangs, and extending to the purchase of vital businesses and farmland to prepare the gameboard for eventual takeover. My opinion is they’ve accomplished a good bit of this, but it’s not the answer you’re seeking.

Another popular idea out there is that a sinister cartel or cabal composed of the World Economic Forum, the WHO, the EU, and a claque of super-rich megalomaniacs (e.g., Bill Gates, George Soros, Mark Zuckerberg) trying to usher in the so-called “transhumanist” next chapter of human history.

This scheme is so full of preposterous contradictions that it remains hard to take seriously. The main one is that their engineered collapse of techno-industrial civilization would destroy the very network of complex systems that might support their supposed cyborg nirvana, especially a reliable electric grid. Secondarily, collapse would result not in centralizing power but just the opposite, re-localizing power away from the center, negating the possibility of global rule.

A third theory is that the USA has somehow gone “communist.”

The universities have, for sure, but in a most half-assed way imaginable that presents more as a case of collective mental illness than a true political ideology. Higher education has lately enjoyed stupendous subsidies and revenues that funnel down to the miserable cat-ladies who have taken over the faculty department chairs, plus the deans and president’s offices. The Niagara of grants and lavish salaries has funded the dissemination of incoherent cat-lady ideas, such as the foundational notion that all men are hopelessly defective except the ones who pretend to be women or vice-versa. Such postulations lead to ridiculous actions like the drag queen story hour, or men competing in women’s swim competitions. These actions-and-effects are “communistic” only insofar as the induce some Marxist-Gramscian overthrow of normality (i.e., a coherent cultural consensus) in order to usher in the utopia of perfect social equity, where nobody is allowed to do better than anybody else — that is, a society of cat-ladies (plus men pretending to be cat-ladies), all equally miserable.

Are the editors and reporters of The New York Times all bought off by the CCP, Soros, Gates? I doubt it. That’s not what’s going on here. And the same goes for the Intel Community, much of the rest of the executive branch of the US government, the various “blue” state and blue city governments, and the great social media companies. Are all the employees of these vast bureaucracies dedicated communists?  Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha….

What’s going on is that all these players are now desperate to evade the blame for and consequences of their many crimes. Hundreds of top bureaucrats and elected officials will be liable for prosecution for monstrous acts of perfidy and treason against our republic and its citizens. The New York Times and other compliant news outlets that lied about everything from Russian collusion to election fraud to the safety of Covid-19 vaccines to protect their fumbling allies in power are desperate to save their reputations — though that will be impossible as the truth eventually unfolds, and it will. Their knowing lies did real and lasting harm to the public thing.

Take heart in these darkening days. The light will not be extinguished. It will return, as everything does in this universe of endless cycles. A nation turned upside down will find its feet again. The wicked will answer. The counter-revolution has begun. You are not alone.

*  *  *

Support his blog by visiting Jim’s Patreon Page

Authored by Bill Pan via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Jacob Chansley, the Arizona man who entered the halls of Congress shirtless while wearing patriotic face paint and horned fur headgear on Jan. 6, 2021, has filed paperwork to run for Congress as a Libertarian.

According to the filings, Mr. Chansley is seeking to fill the seat currently held by Rep. Debbie Lesko (R-Ariz.), who announced in October that she won’t be running for reelection in Arizona’s 8th Congressional District. The congresswoman’s term ends in January 2025.

Others seeking the seat include Blake Masters, a Republican who lost to Democrat Sen. Mark Kelly in last year’s election, and Republican state Sen. Anthony Kern, who was labeled an “insurrectionist” by Arizona Democrats for being present at the Jan. 6 “Stop the Steal” rally in Washington.

Mr. Chansley, better known as “QAnon Shaman,” was among the first batch of the “Stop the Steal” rally attendees to enter the Capitol. Images of him sitting in Vice President Mike Pence’s chair in the Senate became iconic representations of that day, when thousands of supporters of President Donald Trump gathered in the nation’s capital, urging Congress to halt the certification of electoral college votes from states they believed had serious problems of election integrity.

Among the footage was a clip showing Mr. Chansley walking alongside several U.S. Capitol Police officers who didn’t make any attempt to remove him from the building. At one point of the clip, an officer even opened a door to the Senate Chamber for Mr. Chansley before following the shirtless, American-flag-carrying man inside.

“The crowd was enormous. A small percentage of them were hooligans. They committed vandalism. You’ve seen their pictures again and again,” said Mr. Carlson, speaking of the “possibly thousands” of people who entered the Capitol over the course of two hours that day. “But the overwhelming majority weren’t. They were peaceful. They were orderly and meek. These were not insurrectionists. They were sightseers.”

The footage prompted prominent public figures such as Elon Musk to call for Mr. Chansley’s release. The attorney representing the Arizona man also asked the court to vacate the prison sentence, arguing that the government violated his client’s constitutional rights by not handing over the potentially exculpatory footage.

“I experienced a certain level of prejudice, considering I was the guy in the horns, and they knew who I was,” he said of his 11-day stay in the Washington jail in February 2022, before being transferred to a facility in Alexandria, Virginia.

This experience, according to Mr. Chansley, allowed him to gain a deeper insight into America’s ideological polarization.

“The media sells outrage. They don’t sell truth,” he said. “And they never offer solutions. They only complain about the problem.”

He also said he believes that the government is “certainly corrupt on both sides of the aisle—Republicans and Democrats.”

“I think in America, we can actually agree on a whole lot more than we disagree on,” he told The Epoch Times.

He said he hopes to promote “a spiritual message of love, of peace, the power of love, the power of peace, the power of prayer, the power of forgiveness, the power of the truth.”

“That’s the only way we’re going to solve our problems,” he said.

Gary Bai contributed to this report.

By Tsvetana Paraskova of OilPrice.com

The world faces the highest geopolitical risks since the 1973 oil embargo, the chief executive of one of the largest oilfield service providers, Baker Hughes, told the Financial Times.

“From a historical context I’ve heard people say, you go back to the oil embargo of 1973 — that being somewhat similar,” Baker Hughes CEO Lorenzo Simonelli told FT in an interview.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine and the conflict in the Middle East could threaten further instability in the oil and gas markets, Simonelli noted.

The risks are stoking demand for LNG, a key growth area for Baker Hughes.

Global LNG demand is set to grow by 2% year-over-year in 2023, to reach close to 410 million tons annually, the company said last month as it reported higher-than-forecast earnings for the third quarter.

“Year-to-date, global LNG demand has reached record levels at just over 300 MTPA. This is despite softer than anticipated gas demand and economic weakness persisting in key LNG-consuming markets like Europe and China,” Simonelli said on the earnings call.

“Turning into 2024, we forecast LNG demand to increase by 3%, which should result in utilization rates remaining at elevated levels, as we forecast just 15 MTPA of nameplate capacity coming online next year.”

Baker Hughes believes that natural gas will play a critical role as both a transition and destination fuel.

“Accordingly, natural gas will be fundamental in satisfying the world’s energy needs for many decades to come, while also improving air quality and reducing global emissions, displacing coal in the broader energy mix,” Simonelli said last month.

Looking into 2024, geopolitical risk will be a very important factor to monitor, the executive said. 

Some top level members of the Biden administration have warned that Israel could be seeking to provoke a broader war with Hezbollah with an aim toward drawing the United States into a deeper conflict with Iran and its proxies.

Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin “expressed concern” over escalation with Hezbollah in a Saturday call with his Israeli counterpart, Yoav Gallant – with the White House also citing “growing anxiety” that Israel’s military action which could spark war in southern Lebanon.

The US has also been warning Hezbollah, as well as the Lebanese government, against escalating attacks on northern Israel, which have left about ten Israeli soldiers and civilians dead since last month. Hezbollah has also revealed that over 60 of its fighters have been killed.

This ‘warning’ has also come in the form of a US military build-up in the Eastern Mediterranean, which has significantly included a couple of aircraft carrier strike groups and ominously a nuclear-powered submarine.

SecDef Austin’s caution conveyed to Gallant about Israeli military actions in Lebanon was first reported in Axios on Sunday, which wrote based on three Israeli and US sources privy to the call: 

Austin’s message to Gallant reflected growing anxiety in the White House that Israeli military action in Lebanon is exacerbating tensions along the border, which could lead to a regional war.

Some in the Biden administration are concerned Israel is trying to provoke Hezbollah and create a pretext for a wider war in Lebanon that could draw the U.S. and other countries further into the conflict, according to sources briefed on the issue. Israeli officials flatly deny it.

Israel has already evacuated tens of its citizens from near the border with Lebanon, comprising dozens of towns and settlements, given the exchanges of fire have grown daily.

There have been more clashes today between #Hezbollah and #Israel along the border with Hezbollah targeting Israeli military positions and Israel bombing the outskirts and homes in southern #Lebanon villages like Aita Chaab, Naqoura, Tayr Harfa. #حزب_الله #لبنان #إسرائيل pic.twitter.com/GPFfZlYxyC

— Nicholas Frakes | نيكولاس فريكس (@nicfrakesjourno) November 13, 2023

Meanwhile, the border just witnessed a big escalation, with Times of Israel detailing that “at least 14 civilians were wounded, including one seriously, in an anti-tank guided missile attack by the Hezbollah terror group from Lebanon on Sunday, the military and medical officials said.” And a separate attack witnessed seven Israeli soldiers wounded by a mortar.

“The Hezbollah missile struck a number of vehicles near the northern community of Dovev, close to the border. Some of the victims were Israel Electric Corporation employees who had arrived to repair power lines damaged by previous fire from Lebanon,” the Israeli report continued.

Authored by Simon White, Bloomberg macro strategist,

Money and loan data from China continue to show few signs of a sustained upturn. 

Notably, though, stock futures in China are only marginally lower, suggesting they are reaching their saturation point with bad news.

China’s M1 came in below expectations at 1.9% year-on-year (2.5% was expected), while M2 was in line at 10.3%.

As the chart below shows, real M1 is stagnant, and in order to have confidence China is on the cusp of a sustainable upturn, it would need to show a more decisive rise.

Loan growth also disappointed expectations, however month-to-month data is noisy. To see trends, it is best looked at as the annual percentage change of its 12-month rolling sum. On that basis, total new loans are falling, but the deceleration might be easing off.

More unequivocally positive is household loan growth, which while still negative, is rising, and at the current rate growth will be positive in a few months. This reflects a redressing of the imbalances that were worsened in the pandemic, as policymakers focused on supporting the industrial and export sectors at the expense of the household sector.

Real estate continues to be one of the biggest risk factors to a recovery in China, and thus bears watching. The debt of real estate is currently bouncing around the new lows it recently made.

China property-development Country Garden company failed to pay interest on dollar bonds a few weeks ago.

On the other hand, there are positive signs too, such as rising growth in floor-space of newly started houses, and an increase in the annual-growth rate of house prices, especially in tier-1 cities.

Stocks though, look like they may have absorbed all the bad news they can, and are bottoming. Incrementally less negative news may be sufficient for them to continue rising.

It’s the old leftist anti-gun standby:  Pretend as if the 2nd Amendment was drafted only to protect hunting and self defense against criminals.  Ignore the fact that the Founding Fathers explicitly created gun rights for the purpose of repelling and overthrowing a corrupt government.  Pretend as if Americans are not supposed to have access to military grade weapons when that is exactly what the 2nd Amendment was enshrined to protect.  

Under the Constitution, the American militia was intended to act as the defense force for the nation.  And, the militia was made up of every able bodied male citizen.  The militia was the military (in a sense), and the militia had access to all the weapons needed to fulfill their role.  This included repeating rifles (automatic rifles), cannons, explosives and even naval ships in private hands.  The Founders never intended for a standing military to exist, nor did they ever intend for a standing military to act as a proxy in place of an armed citizenry.  

As James Madison noted:

“Besides the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation, the existence of subordinate governments, to which the people are attached, and by which the militia officers are appointed, forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition, more insurmountable than any which a simple government of any form can admit of.”     
– James Madison, January 29, 1788, Federalist No. 46     

And, as George Mason asserted:

“I ask who are the militia? They consist now of the whole people, except a few public officers.”
  – George Mason, June 4, 1788, Address to the Virginia Ratifying Convention

It should be treated as a revealing condition that the establishment and corporate media consistently attack the civilian ownership of guns which they argue are “made for war.”  These guns which they refer to as “assault rifles” (because it sounds scary) are used in less than 3% of all gun crimes in the US.  They are also a small percentage of overall mass shootings in the US, yet they garner almost 100% of the anti-gun lobby’s attention. 

None of these facts mean anything to the leftist propagandists at Rolling Stone, however.  They pursue the same mission as any other gun grabbing group, which is to misrepresent the gun issue with as much enthusiasm as possible.  In an article titled ‘Mass Murder Is A Choice, The Gun Industry Made It’, Rolling Stone seems to assert that the big bad bogeyman behind gun deaths is the gun industry (a throwback to the old 1990s narrative of an evil conspiracy of gun makers forcing poor Americans to buy guns they don’t need).  Rolling Stone claims:

“The industry is increasingly pushing weaponry on civilians that rivals or even exceeds the firepower commonly entrusted to soldiers. This includes not only AR rifles, but also AR-style shotguns. Other gun-makers invoke dark notions of social collapse or civil conflict that could give heavily-armed civilians the opportunity to engage in battle.  

…A more noble, or less brazen, industry might be inhibited by good conscience — or by the threat of litigation — to curb such messaging…”   

The diatribe is primarily in reference to the shootings in Lewiston, Maine by Robert Card, a middle-aged white male with a military background that fits the media’s preferred narrative much better than the majority of recent mass shooting suspects (minorities and LGBT members).  Rolling Stone does what leftists always do, which is to gloss over the extensive mental health problems of the suspect in question and immediately dive into a politicized screed about guns and gun sellers being the problem.

From Rolling Stone:

“The gun industry’s embrace of military lethality was born, in part, of desperation. The traditional long-gun market, selling to hunters, was cratering and continues to do so. The percentage of U.S. homes with a hunter fell from 32 percent in 1977 to 14 percent in 2021. The industry needed “replacement shooters,” says Sugarmann, whose group tracked the hunting decline.  

The marketing push to young men included getting brand-name AR guns included in video games like Call of Duty. Critics liken the effort to the cigarette industry’s worst past practices — targeting kids too young to buy a weapon, but not too young to develop brand loyalty…”

First, as mentioned, gun rights have nothing to do with hunting.  Second, there’s no proof whatsoever that gun marketing is a primary driver of gun demand (gun dealers don’t need to advertise when Democrats like Barack Obama or Joe Biden are in the White House, the guns sell themselves).  Third, the reason why this debate point fails on every level is the fact that the vast majority of these gun buyers don’t commit crimes with the firearms they buy.  Their motivation for purchasing an AR or other semi-auto rifle is irrelevant.     

The leftist obsession with “the gun industry” and often the NRA as a malicious organization of villains is a very deliberate disinformation tactic.  The real opposition against gun control groups is the average American gun owner, and there are 50 million+ gun owning households in the US.  Rolling Stone dares to mention the issue of potential rebellion by patriots, but dishonestly frames it as a product of frenzied gun industry marketing convincing Americans to take up arms:

“This frightening evolution of mass shootings is happening at a moment of dire instability in the United States. A disturbing new survey from PRRI finds that nearly a quarter of Americans, and one-third of Republicans, agree with the statement that “because things have gotten so far off-track, true American patriots may have to resort to violence in order to save our country.”  

The gun industry is now making bank from the anxiety that the country is edging toward civil war, and may need to be fought over by factions of armed citizens…”   

What is really bothering leftists is the idea that the gun industry is no longer catering to Elmer Fudds and sunshine patriots as they used to do decades ago.  These were the old guard Republicans that allied with Democrats and tried to restrict “military grade” arms in civilian hands.  These were the same Republicans that used to argue that “no one needs an AR-15 for hunting.”  Those guys are mostly dead and gone now.

Today, the gun industry, like any industry, is reading the room and meeting the demands of their customers.  And customers in the gun world are increasingly concerned about economic instability, social chaos and rioting, as well as government overreach and authoritarianism.  And, to prepare for those potential problems, weapons of war are required.  The gun industry didn’t create the stagflation crisis, BLM and Antifa riots and Orwellian covid mandates and lockdowns, and these are things that actually drove gun sales the past few years.

Leftists are angry because the gun industry is legitimizing the concerns of its market by meeting consumer demand for gear that could be used in war, and that market is growing daily.  It is a fear that progressives try to deny when they claim that an “AR-15 is useless against a tank or an F16.”  Deep down, they know this is untrue.  

Rolling Stone, in a roundabout way, admits to a deeply rooted leftist anxiety:  They derive power from collectivism and the force of the mob, but all that is negated by the existence of weapons of war in the hands of civilians.  How can they maintain power unless all these weapons are taken away?