Tucker: "I have no clue at all how Nancy Pelosi is just so rich or how her stock picks are, like, way better than Warren Buffett's. How does that happen?"
sputnik | Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) raised eyebrows
recently with the revelation the former US House Speaker placed a big
bet on a little-known San Francisco tech startup. A disclosure made last
week showed the powerful Democratic Party politician purchased $5
million in stock of the privately-held company Databricks, a cloud data
company. The stake is one of dozens Pelosi holds in US tech companies,
some obscure and some well-known such as Tesla and Microsoft. The
lawmaker has reportedly invested more than $120 million in stock
purchases since entering federal government in 1987. Her net worth is
thought to be over $100 million, although her current salary as a US
congresswoman is just over $220,000. Pelosi has never been convicted of
criminal wrongdoing in her investment activity, although her portfolio’s
impressive return of 65% last year might suggest the legislator is more
informed than average traders. US stock indices grew an average of 26%
in 2023.
“From an ethical perspective, I believe it is extremely harmful for
politicians to trade individual stocks,” said Chris Josephs, the founder
of a stock trading service, to US media. “There are numerous jobs out
there that don’t allow employees [to conduct] trading, yet our most
powerful Americans can.” Pelosi opposed attempts to ban lawmakers from
buying and selling stocks in 2021 under the claim such activity could be
viewed as insider trading. “We are a free-market economy,” she said at
the time. “They [Congress members] should be able to participate in
that.” Former director of the US Office of Government Ethics Walter
Shaub slammed the argument as “ridiculous.” “She might as well have said
‘let them eat cake,’” said Shaub, referring to famous comments by the
French queen Marie Antoinette. “Sure, it’s a free-market economy. But
your average schmuck doesn’t get confidential briefings from government
experts chock full of nonpublic information directly related to the
price of stocks.”
Late last week it was announced that an activist involved in
pro-Palestine protests at the California lawmaker’s home had been
arrested on felony vandalism charges. Cynthia Papermaster, 77, is
reportedly being held on a $50,000 bond. “We want to see a permanent and
immediate ceasefire,” said Papermaster in an interview recently. “We
can’t control what the Israelis do, but we can control what our own
government does, or at least that’s the aspiration.” Pelosi called for
the anti-war activists to be investigated by the FBI in an appearance on
US television after the incident earlier this year. Pelosi first
claimed the demonstrators were being paid by China, then later clarified
she believed Russia was behind the act of civil disobedience. The
former House speaker joins the ranks of opponents of US civil rights
with her comments; detractors frequently claimed racial justice protests
in the 1960s and 70s were fomented by Russia to sow discord in the
United States.
strategic culture | Let’s start with the possible chain of events that may have led to
the Crocus terror attack. This is as explosive as it gets. Intel sources
in Moscow discreetly confirm this is one of the FSB’s prime lines of
investigation.
December 4, 2023. Former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff, Gen Mark Milley, only 3 months after his retirement, tells CIA
mouthpiece The Washington Post: “There should be no Russian who goes to
sleep without wondering if they’re going to get their throat slit in the
middle of the night (…) You gotta get back there and create a campaign
behind the lines.”
January 31: Victoria Nuland travels to Kiev and meets
Budanov. Then, in a dodgy press conference at night in the middle of an
empty street, she promises “nasty surprises” to Putin: code for
asymmetric war.
February 22: Nuland shows up at a Center for Strategic and
International Studies (CSIS) event and doubles down on the “nasty
surprises” and asymmetric war. That may be interpreted as the definitive
signal for Budanov to start deploying dirty ops.
February 25: The New York Times publishes a story about CIA cells in Ukraine: nothing that Russian intel does not already know.
Then, a lull until March 5 – when crucial shadow play may have been
in effect. Privileged scenario: Nuland was a key dirty ops plotter
alongside the CIA and the Ukrainian GUR (Budanov). Rival Deep State
factions got hold of it and maneuvered to “terminate” her one way or
another – because Russian intel would have inevitably connected the
dots.
Yet Nuland, in fact, is not “retired” yet; she’s still presented as
Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs and showed up recently in
Rome for a G7-related meeting, although her new job, in theory, seems to
be at Columbia University (a Hillary Clinton maneuver).
Meanwhile, the assets for a major “nasty surprise” are already in
place, in the dark, and totally off radar. The op cannot be called off.
March 5: Little Blinken formally announces Nuland’s “retirement”.
March 7: At least one Tajik among the four-member terror commando visits the Crocus venue and has his photo taken.
March 7-8 at night: U.S. and British embassies
simultaneously announce a possible terror attack on Moscow, telling
their nationals to avoid “concerts” and gatherings within the next two
days.
March 9: Massively popular Russian patriotic singer Shaman
performs at Crocus. That may have been the carefully chosen occasion
targeted for the “nasty surprise” – as it falls only a few days before
the presidential elections, from March 15 to 17. But security at Crocus
was massive, so the op is postponed.
March 22: The Crocus City Hall terror attack.
ISIS-K: the ultimate can of worms
The Budanov connection is betrayed by the modus operandi – similar to
previous Ukraine intel terror attacks against Daria Dugina and Vladimir
Tatarsky: close reconnaissance for days, even weeks; the hit; and then a
dash for the border.
And that brings us to the Tajik connection.
There seem to be holes aplenty in the narrative concocted by the
ragged bunch turned mass killers: following an Islamist preacher on
Telegram; offered what was later established as a puny 500 thousand
rubles (roughly $4,500) for the four of them to shoot random people in a
concert hall; sent half of the funds via Telegram; directed to a
weapons cache where they find AK-12s and hand grenades.
The videos show that they used the machine guns like pros; shots were
accurate, short bursts or single fire; no panic whatsoever; effective
use of hand grenades; fleeing the scene in a flash, just melting away,
almost in time to catch the “window” that would take them across the
border to Ukraine.
All that takes training. And that also applies to facing nasty
counter-interrogation. Still, the FSB seems to have broken them all –
quite literally.
A potential handler has surfaced, named Abdullo Buriyev. Turkish
intel had earlier identified him as a handler for ISIS-K, or Wilayat
Khorasan in Afghanistan. One of the members of the Crocus commando told
the FSB their “acquaintance” Abdullo helped them to buy the car for the
op.
And that leads us to the massive can of worms to end them all: ISIS-K.
The alleged emir of ISIS-K, since 2020, is an Afghan Tajik, Sanaullah
Ghafari. He was not killed in Afghanistan in June 2023, as the
Americans were spinning: he may be currently holed up in Balochistan in
Pakistan.
Yet the real person of interest here is not Tajik Ghafari but Chechen
Abdul Hakim al-Shishani, the former leader of the jihadi outfit Ajnad
al-Kavkaz (“Soldiers of the Caucasus”), who was fighting against the
government in Damascus in Idlib and then escaped to Ukraine because of a
crackdown by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) – in another one of those
classic inter-jihadi squabbles.
Shishani was spotted on the border near Belgorod during the recent
attack concocted by Ukrainian intel inside Russia. Call it another
vector of the “nasty surprises”.
Shishani had been in Ukraine for over two years and has acquired
citizenship. He is in fact the sterling connection between the nasty
motley crue Idlib gangs in Syria and GUR in Kiev – as his Chechens
worked closely with Jabhat al-Nusra, which was virtually
indistinguishable from ISIS.
Shishani, fiercely anti-Assad, anti-Putin and anti-Kadyrov, is the
classic “moderate rebel” advertised for years as a “freedom fighter” by
the CIA and the Pentagon.
Some of the four hapless Tajiks seem to have followed
ideological/religious indoctrination on the internet dispensed by
Wilayat Khorasan, or ISIS-K, in a chat room called Rahnamo ba Khuroson.
The indoctrination game happened to be supervised by a Tajik, Salmon
Khurosoni. He’s the guy who made the first move to recruit the commando.
Khurosoni is arguably a messenger between ISIS-K and the CIA.
The problem is the ISIS-K modus operandi for any attack never
features a fistful of dollars: the promise is Paradise via martyrdom.
Yet in this case it seems it’s Khurosoni himself who has approved the
500 thousand ruble reward.
After handler Buriyev relayed the instructions, the commando sent the bayat
– the ISIS pledge of allegiance – to Khurosoni. Ukraine may not have
been their final destination. Another foreign intel connection – not
identified by FSB sources – would have sent them to Turkey, and then
Afghanistan.
That’s exactly where Khurosoni is to be found. Khurosoni may have
been the ideological mastermind of Crocus. But, crucially, he’s not the
client.
The Ukrainian love affair with terror gangs
Ukrainian intel, SBU and GUR, have been using the “Islamic” terror
galaxy as they please since the first Chechnya war in the mid-1990s.
Milley and Nuland of course knew it, as there were serious rifts in the
past, for instance, between GUR and the CIA.
Following the symbiosis of any Ukrainian government post-1991 with
assorted terror/jihadi outfits, Kiev post-Maidan turbo-charged these
connections especially with Idlib gangs, as well as north Caucasus
outfits, from the Chechen Shishani to ISIS in Syria and then ISIS-K. GUR
routinely aims to recruit ISIS and ISIS-K denizens via online chat
rooms. Exactly the modus operandi that led to Crocus.
One “Azan” association, founded in 2017 by Anvar Derkach, a member of
the Hizb ut-Tahrir, actually facilitates terrorist life in Ukraine,
Tatars from Crimea included – from lodging to juridical assistance.
The FSB investigation is establishing a trail: Crocus was planned by
pros – and certainly not by a bunch of low-IQ Tajik dregs. Not by
ISIS-K, but by GUR. A classic false flag, with the clueless Tajiks under
the impression that they were working for ISIS-K.
The FSB investigation is also unveiling the standard modus operandi
of online terror, everywhere. A recruiter focuses on a specific profile;
adapts himself to the candidate, especially his – low – IQ; provides
him with the minimum necessary for a job; then the candidate/executor
become disposable.
Everyone in Russia remembers that during the first attack on the
Crimea bridge, the driver of the kamikaze truck was blissfully unaware
of what he was carrying,
As for ISIS, everyone seriously following West Asia knows that’s a
gigantic diversionist scam, complete with the Americans transferring
ISIS operatives from the Al-Tanf base to the eastern Euphrates, and then
to Afghanistan after the Hegemon’s humiliating “withdrawal”. Project
ISIS-K actually started in 2021, after it became pointless to use ISIS
goons imported from Syria to block the relentless progress of the
Taliban.
Ace Russian war correspondent Marat Khairullin has added another juicy morsel to this funky salad: he convincingly unveils the MI6 angle in the Crocus City Hall terror attack (in English here, in two parts, posted by “S”).
The FSB is right in the middle of the painstaking process of cracking
most, if not all ISIS-K-CIA/MI6 connections. Once it’s all established,
there will be hell to pay.
But that won’t be the end of the story. Countless terror networks are
not controlled by Western intel – although they will work with Western
intel via middlemen, usually Salafist “preachers” who deal with
Saudi/Gulf intel agencies.
The case of the CIA flying “black” helicopters to extract jihadists
from Syria and drop them in Afghanistan is more like an exception – in
terms of direct contact – than the norm. So the FSB and the Kremlin will
be very careful when it comes to directly accusing the CIA and MI6 of
managing these networks.
But even with plausible deniability, the Crocus investigation seems
to be leading exactly to where Moscow wants it: uncovering the crucial
middleman. And everything seems to be pointing to Budanov and his goons.
Ramzan Kadyrov dropped an extra clue. He said the Crocus “curators”
chose on purpose to instrumentalize elements of an ethnic minority –
Tajiks – who barely speak Russian to open up new wounds in a
multinational nation where dozens of ethnicities live side by side for
centuries.
In the end, it didn’t work. The Russian population has handed to the
Kremlin total carte blanche to exercise brutal, maximum punishment –
whatever and wherever it takes.
TAE | From what I’ve read so far, ISIS is about the least likely suspect
for the Crocus massacre. If only because the CIA fingered them within
minutes of the event. Russia will need to do a very thorough
investigation, and hard evidence, to keep its people calm. Andrew
Korybko has more:
Andrew Korybko:
Speculation has swirled since Friday night’s terroristattack
at the Crocus City Hall venue in Moscow over whether ISIS-K was really
responsible like the group claimed or if Ukraine’s military-intelligence
service GUR orchestrated everything under the cover of its agents
posing as members of that group. The Mainstream Media is running with
the first scenario while doing their utmost to discredit the second, but
recalling the GUR’s terrorist history and ties with radical Islamists
shows that it’s not above suspicion.
The modern-day GUR is a product of the CIA, which certainly shared
with its protégés everything that it learned while waging the ongoing HybridWar
on Syria, not to mention their terrorist contacts as well. It was
through this meticulous cultivation that GUR chief Kirill Budanov
obtained his bloodlust that was on full display last spring when he declared
that “we’ve been killing Russians and we will keep killing Russians
anywhere on the face of this world until the complete victory of
Ukraine.”
For as lethal as the GUR has become over the past decade, it’s still a
CIA knockoff, which is why it’s expected to make sloppy mistakes from
time to time. This is relevant when it comes to the latest attack after
ISIS-K claimed responsibility using an outdated news template,
thus suggesting that someone else claimed credit in their name at first
but then ISIS-K opportunistically ran with it for clout. Considering
its terrorist history and ties with radical Islamists, that mysterious
actor was arguably the GUR.
What likely happened is that their agents posed as members of that
terrorist group in order to retain plausible deniability in case the
planned attack was foiled or the terrorists were caught afterwards. One
of the Tajiks who was captured in the car that was racing towards the
Ukrainian border claimed
that they were recruited by the curators of a radical Telegram channel
just a month ago to carry out the attack using already cached arms in
exchange for a debit card payment of around $5000 each.
These nationals were probably chosen by the GUR since some of them
are predisposed to religious radicalism due to the lingering legacy of
Tajikistan’s Islamist-inspired civil war from the 1990s, their country
abuts ISIS-K’s Afghan headquarters, and they have visa-free travel privileges to Russia.
Accordingly, they were allegedly recruited via a radical Telegram
channel, ISIS-K’s involvement doesn’t seem entirely implausible, and
they were able to easily enter Russia with minimal scrutiny.
They weren’t radical enough to go out with guns blazing or in a
suicide blast like ISIS-K is known for, however, but were still
sufficiently sympathetic with that group’s ideology to carry out what
they believed was its latest mission in exchange for money. This
explains why they fled from the scene of the crime, which is contrary to
what any affiliate of that group would ever do, after machine-gunning
dozens of people and setting fire to the venue.
Had they reached Ukraine, where the FSB confirmed that they had contacts and President Putin said
that “a window was prepared for them…to cross over”, then they’d likely
have been killed by the GUR to cover everything up. It shouldn’t be
forgotten that this group learned how to conduct terrorism from the CIA,
which in turn perfected this practice in Syria over the past 13 years
of the Hybrid War that it’s been waging there, but the GUR is still a
knockoff and that’s why they made three sloppy mistakes.
In the order that they occurred, their first mistake was recruiting
people who weren’t ready to fight to the death at the scene of their
forthcoming terrorist attack. This led to the culprits being captured
and spilling the beans about how they were recruited in exchange for
money, which is one of the signs that ISIS-K wasn’t behind what happened
since their members always expect to die as “martyrs”. Accordingly, the
fact that this mistake was made suggests that the GUR was desperate to
go through with their plans.
The second mistake was that they didn’t tell their proxies to flee to
a safe house right after the attack to meet a contact that’ll then help
them reach the border later on but who’d actually kill them once they
meet in order to cover everything up. This led to them racing towards
the Ukrainian border, thus showing everyone that they at the very least
felt that they’d find sanctuary there, which made Russia’s claim of
Ukrainian involvement much more believable for many skeptical
Westerners.
And finally, the last mistake was that the GUR used an outdated news
template to claim credit for the attack on behalf of ISIS-K, who they
correctly predicted would opportunistically run with it for clout. By
doing so, however, they signaled that the group itself didn’t play a
role in organizing what happened otherwise their more modern template
would have been used instead. Taken together, these three sloppy
mistakes discredited the Mainstream Media’s narrative and drew attention
to the GUR instead.
Coupled with its terrorist history and ties with radical Islamic
groups, which respectively prove that it has the capabilities and intent
to carry out the Crocus attack as well as the knowledge required to
impersonate extremists online for recruiting purposes, all of this makes
the GUR the prime suspect. It learned everything about terrorism from
the CIA, but since it’s still a knockoff, it made a series of sloppy
mistakes that resulted in incriminating Ukraine instead of lending false
credence to the ISIS-K narrative.
strategic culture |Exhibit 1: Friday, March 22, 2024. It’s War. The Kremlin, via Peskov, finally admits it, on the record.
The money quote:
“Russia cannot allow the existence on its borders of a state that has
a documented intention to use any methods to take Crimea away from it,
not to mention the territory of new regions.”
Translation: the Hegemon-constructed Kiev mongrel is doomed, one way
or another. The Kremlin signal: “We haven’t even started” starts now.
Exhibit 2: Friday afternoon, a few hours after Peskov. Confirmed by a serious European – not Russian – source. The first counter-signal.
Regular troops from France, Germany and Poland have arrived, by rail
and air, to Cherkassy, south of Kiev. A substantial force. No numbers
leaked. They are being housed in schools. For all practical purposes,
this is a NATO force.
That signals, “Let the games begin”. From a Russian point of view, Mr. Khinzal’s business cards are set to be in great demand.
Exhibit 3: Friday evening. Terror attack on Crocus City, a
music venue northwest of Moscow. A heavily trained commando shoots
people on sight, point blank, in cold blood, then sets a concert hall on
fire. The definitive counter-signal: with the battlefield collapsing,
all that’s left is terrorism in Moscow.
And just as terror was striking Moscow, the US and the UK, in
southwest Asia, was bombing Sana’a, the Yemeni capital, with at least
five strikes.
Some nifty coordination. Yemen has just clinched a strategic deal in
Oman with Russia-China for no-hassle navigation in the Red Sea, and is
among the top candidates for BRICS+ expansion at the summit in Kazan
next October.
Not only the Houthis are spectacularly defeating thalassocracy, they
have the Russia-China strategic partnership on their side. Assuring
China and Russia that their ships can sail through the Bab-al-Mandeb,
Red Sea and Gulf of Aden with no problems is exchanged with total
political support from Beijing and Moscow.
The sponsors remain the same
Deep in the night in Moscow, before dawn on Saturday 23. Virtually no
one is sleeping. Rumors dance like dervishes on countless screens. Of
course nothing has been confirmed – yet. Only the FSB will have answers.
A massive investigation is in progress.
The timing of the Crocus massacre is quite intriguing. On a Friday
during Ramadan. Real Muslims would not even think about perpetrating a
mass murder of unarmed civilians under such a holy occasion. Compare it
with the ISIS card being frantically branded by the usual suspects.
Let’s go pop. To quote Talking Heads: “This ain’t no party/ this
ain’t no disco/ this ain’t no fooling around”. Oh no; it’s more like an
all-American psy op. ISIS are cartoonish mercenaries/goons. Not real
Muslims. And everyone knows who finances and weaponizes them.
That leads to the most possible scenario, before the FSB weighs in:
ISIS goons imported from the Syria battleground – as it stands, probably
Tajiks – trained by CIA and MI6, working on behalf of the Ukrainian
SBU. Several witnesses at Crocus referred to “Wahhabis” – as in the
commando killers did not look like Slavs.
It was up to Serbia’s Aleksandar Vucic to cut to the chase. He
directly connected the “warnings” in early March from American and
British embassies directed at their citizens not to visit public places
in Moscow with CIA/MI6 intel having inside info about possible
terrorism, and not disclosing it to Moscow.
The plot thickens when it is established that Crocus is owned by the
Agalarovs: an Azeri-Russian billionaire family, very close friends of…
sonar21 | Americans are by-and-large decent, genial folks. But when it comes to
history, most have the memory of an Alzheimer’s patient. Sam Cooke was
speaking for most Americans when he crooned, “Don’t know much about
history …”. So I will make this simple — America’s hatred of Russia has
its roots in the U.S. Government’s post-WW II embrace of Nazis. Tim
Weiner writes about this in his essential book, Legacy of Ashes.
In the immediate aftermath of the fall of Berlin, U.S. Army
intelligence recruited and relied on German General Reinhard Gehlen:
“During World War II, General Gehlen had tried to spy on the Soviets
from the eastern front as a leader of the Abwehr, Hitler’s military
intelligence service. He was an imperious and cagey man who swore he had
a network of “good Germans” to spy behind Russian lines for the United
States.
“From the beginning,” Gehlen said, “I was motivated by the following
convictions: A showdown between East and West is unavoidable. Every
German is under the obligation of contributing his share, so that
Germany is in a position to fulfill the missions incumbent on her for
the common defense of Western Christian Civilization.” The United States
needed “the best German men as co-workers…if Western Culture is to be
safeguarded.” The intelligence network he offered to the Americans was a
group of “outstanding German nationals who are good Germans but also
ideologically on the side of the Western democracies.”. . .
“But in July 1949, under relentless pressure from the army, the CIA
took over the Gehlen group. Housed in a former Nazi headquarters outside
Munich, Gehlen welcomed dozens of prominent war criminals into his
circle. As Helms and Sichel feared, the East German and Soviet
intelligence services penetrated the Gehlen group at the highest levels.
The worst of the moles surfaced long after the Gehlen group had
transformed itself into the national intelligence service of West
Germany. Gehlen’s longtime chief of counterintelligence had been working
for Moscow all along.”
In the wake of this debacle, the CIA failed to recruit and run any
significant sources in the Soviet Government. The CIA had very few
officers who spoke Russian and swallowed whole hog the belief that the
Soviets were intent on conquering the world and that it was up to the
United States — relying heavily on the CIA — to stop the Soviets. That
became the cornerstone of American foreign policy and explains the CIA’s
obsession with regime change. No one in the intelligence hierarchy was
encouraged or permitted to raise the alternative view — i.e., the
Soviets, fearful of a Western invasion, took firm control of the
European nations on its western border and installed governments that
would served the Soviet interest. The CIA started its life as a new
bureaucracy in Washington firmly committed to destroying the Soviet
Union.
One of its first projects was recruiting and funding an insurgency
with Ukrainians who had sided with the Nazis. While that effort was
crushed by the Soviets, it served to further convince Stalin and others
in the Soviet hierarchy that the West was in bed with Nazi survivors and
could not be trusted.
The failure of the CIA to predict critical world events was an early
distinguishing feature of the CIA from the start. The Soviets detonated
their first nuke on August 29, 1949. Three weeks later a U.S. Air Force
crew flying out of Alaska detected traces of radiation beyond normal
levels. Weiner recounts what happened next:
“On September 20, the CIA confidently declared that the Soviet Union
would not produce an atomic weapon for at least another four years.”
The CIA’s leaders knack for getting it wrong continued with the
failure to heed warnings that China was going to intervene on behalf of
North Korea in 1950. Here is Weiner’s account:
“The president left for Wake Island on October 11, 1950. The CIA
assured him that it saw “no convincing indications of an actual Chinese
Communist intention to resort to full-scale intervention in
Korea…barring a Soviet decision for global war.” The agency reached that
judgment despite two alarms from its three-man Tokyo station. First the
station chief, George Aurell, reported that a Chinese Nationalist
officer in Manchuria was warning that Mao had amassed 300,000 troops
near the Korean border. Headquarters paid little heed. Then Bill Duggan,
later chief of station in Taiwan, insisted that the Chicoms soon would
cross into North Korea. General MacArthur responded by threatening to
have Duggan arrested. The warnings never reached Wake Island.
At headquarters, the agency kept advising Truman that China would not
enter the war on any significant scale. On October 18, as MacArthur’s
troops surged north toward the Yalu River and the Chinese border, the
CIA reported that “the Soviet Korean venture has ended in failure.” On
October 20, the CIA said that Chinese forces detected at the Yalu were
there to protect hydroelectric power plants. On October 28, it told the
White H ouse that those Chinese troops were scattered volunteers. On
October 30, after American troops had been attacked, taking heavy
casualties, the CIA reaffirmed that a major Chinese intervention was
unlikely. A few days later, Chinese-speaking CIA officers interrogated
several prisoners taken during the encounter and determined that they
were Mao’s soldiers. Yet CIA headquarters asserted one last time that
China would not invade in force. Two days later 300,000 Chinese troops
struck with an attack so brutal that it nearly pushed the Americans into
the sea.
Are you beginning to see a pattern here? While it is true there were
some solid intelligence officers in the ranks of the CIA, any attempt to
raise a warning that flew against conventional wisdom or defied what
the leaders wanted to hear was ignored or punished. The failures of the
CIA leadership to correctly predict the Soviets producing a nuclear bomb
and the Chinese invasion of Korea are not isolated incidents. When it
comes to big, critical issues — e.g., the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Tet
offensive, the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the fall of the Shah
of Iran and the rise of the Ayatollah Khomeni, Saddam’s 1990 invasion
of Kuwait, the collapse of the Soviet Union, the 9-11 plot, weapons of
“Mass Destruction in Iraq” and Russia’s ability to survive western
sanctions and spin up its defense industry to outpace the U.S. and NATO
countries combined — the CIA missed them all.
TIMESTAMPS: (00:00) Candace is attacked – even when she’s right (4:27) Ben Shapiro’s comments (12:50) The emotional response to news out of Israel (23:05) Nikki Haley vs. free speech (30:34) 2024 predictions pic.twitter.com/VOThqpQQ48
dailycaller | The Daily Wire co-founder Jeremy Boreing announced Friday that the outlet has severed ties with Candace Owens. Owens hosted a show on The Daily Wire after becoming a prominent name in the conservative movement. The outlet abruptly made the announcement of her departure for reasons currently unknown. “Daily Wire and Candace Owens have ended their relationship,” Boreing announced without an explanation.
apnews | Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar, who made history as his country’s
first gay and first biracial leader, announced Wednesday that he is
stepping down for reasons that he said were both personal and political.
Varadkar announced Wednesday he is quitting immediately as head
of the center-right Fine Gael party, part of Ireland’s coalition
government. He’ll be replaced as prime minister in April after a party
leadership contest.
“My reasons for stepping down now are personal
and political, but mainly political,” Varadkar said, without
elaborating. He said he plans to remain in parliament as a backbench
lawmaker and has “definite” future plans.
Varadkar, 45, has had two spells as taoiseach, or prime minister — between 2017 and 2020, and again since December 2022 as part of a job-share with Micheál Martin, head of coalition partner Fianna Fáil.
He was the country’s youngest-ever leader when first elected, as well
as Ireland’s first openly gay prime minister. Varadkar, whose mother is
Irish and father is Indian, was also Ireland’s first biracial
taoiseach.
“I’m proud that we have made the country a more equal and more modern
place,” Varadkar said in a resignation statement in Dublin.
Varadkar was first elected to parliament in 2007, and once said he’d quit politics by the age of 50.
He led Ireland during the years after Britain’s 2016 decision to
leave the European Union. Brexit had huge implications for Ireland, an
EU member that shares a border with the U.K.’s Northern Ireland.
U.K.-Ireland relations were strained while hardcore Brexit-backer Boris
Johnson was U.K. leader, but have steadied since the arrival of Prime
Minister Rishi Sunak.
Varadkar recently returned from Washington, where he met President Joe Biden and other political leaders as part of the Irish prime minister’s traditional St. Patrick’s Day visit to the United States.
racket |Hopkins reached out to me after listening in disgust to the Murthy v. Missouri Supreme
Court hearing Monday. Standing was a big issue: our government said
plaintiffs like Drs. Jay Bhattacharya and Aaron Kheriaty lacked definite
proof that the government was responsible for suppressing their speech.
No such issue exists in CJ’s case, as you can see.
Hopkins
also wanted Americans who might be up in arms about the specter of
legalized censorship in their own country to see that the phenomenon has
also spread to virtually every Western democracy, often in more extreme
forms than we’ve seen so far in the United States.
CJ’s unique
insight involves his ludicrous German case, which as you’ll read in the
Q&A below has taken bizarre turns since we last checked and will now
go to trial yet again. As an expat following the American situation
from afar, he’s seen how the authoritarian tide is rising in similar or
worse ways all around the globe.
Hopkins is facing the business end of the German version, among the worst. As detailed last June,
he was charged with “disseminating propaganda, the contents of which
are intended to further the aims of a former National Socialist
organization.” The crime? Using a barely detectible Swastika in the
cover image of his book, The Rise of the New Normal Reich.
Far from “furthering the aims” of Nazism, he was criticizing them by
comparing Nazi methods and laws to those of modern health authorities.
The offending image:
Hopkins went to trial in January and delivered an impassioned plea
to the court. “Every journalist that has covered my case, everyone in
this courtroom, understands what this prosecution is actually about,” he
said. “It has nothing to do with punishing people who actually
disseminate pro-Nazi propaganda. It is about punishing dissent, and
making an example of dissidents in order to intimidate others into
silence.”
Though the judge was clearly not a fan of Hopkins — a courtroom account by Aya Velázquez, which
I recommend reading, described how the judge said CJ’s statements were
“ideological drivel,” just “not punishable by law” — he won on the law.
After
acquittal, he was made aware that technically the case wasn’t over,
because thanks to a quirk of German jurisprudence, the prosecutor had a
week to file an appeal. Hopkins was unconcerned. “I doubt he will
[re-file]. He made a total fool of himself in front of a large audience
yesterday,” he wrote. “I can’t imagine that he will want to do that again.”
Bzzt! Wrong.
The prosecutor re-filed charges. The prosecutorial theory in the
Hopkins case was based on a bizarre interpretation of hate crime,
essentially asserting that if you have to think about an image to
realize it’s satire, it can’t be allowed. If that idea spreads, it would
make comedy or even sharp commentary impossible. This is why his
indictment, and the similar investigation of Roger Waters,
are really serious moments. Not to be heavy-handed, but eliminating the
loophole for satire or mockery is exactly what Waters meant by “Another Brick in the Wall.” Before you know it, it’ll be toohigh to see over.
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