BLUF:
[American Thinker] The second disturbing hypothesis is that the Deep State, rather than using the Epstein information to achieve justice, is using it to control people. There is no better way to move legislative votes or court rulings than to say, "Nice little sinecure ya’ got here. Shame if something happened to it because people learned that you were the Epstein client who had a special fondness for 11-year-old blond girls."
This is not a particularly far-fetched hypothesis. We know that, during J. Edgar Hoover’s tenure at the FBI, he specialized in collecting dirt on those whom he deemed his enemies (and probably on his "friends," too, in case they became enemies). The point, always, was power and control. Someone who knows your nasty little secrets (and a lot of people have secrets that they’d prefer stay that way) has you on a leash.
[PowerLine] The tide of anti-Semitism is not abating. To the contrary, it seems to be growing larger by the day, and it is fair to say that rather than a tide, a tsunami is the better imagery. Did everyone misjudge the latent anti-Semitism amongst us? I think not, because what we are seeing now differs from the old-timey anti-Semitism of the 20th century, which involved ugly, resentful stereotypes of Jews as rootless cosmopolitans, grasping financiers, or (for some medieval Christians) "Christ-killers."
The primary charge against Jews and Israel right now emphasizes they are "settler colonialists"—an ideological construct that didn’t exist until the day before yesterday. This ought to be a very big "tell" of the insincerity and larger source of what is going on. In short, this is not your grandfather’s anti-Semitism. And because it is rooted in a broader progressive ideological banner, it effectively mobilizes a lot of terrible human beings who might not be sufficiently motivated by Jew-hatred alone.
One way to begin to understand this more clearly is to think about the popular meme that shows a glowering Trump (my favorite kind of Trump) with the legend, "It’s not me they’re after—it’s you. I’m just in the way." We can paraphrase this by saying, "It’s not Israel we’re after—it’s the entire project of Western civilization. Israel is just in the way." It is not for nothing that Iran, for example, has been calling the United States "the great Satan" for 40 years now. If they were to succeed in destroying Israel, we know who would be the next primary target.
John has already posted the video I include again at the end here because I want to add the question: If Israel/Gaza is the issue, then why are these protestors going to such trouble to take down the American flag? (On Veteran’s Day, no less.) I think we all know why perfectly well.
Here’s more photo evidence, from a London protest: Jews: the eternal canaries in a coal mine?
We squawk instead of taking it quietly. That’s what canaries do.
Posted by: Grom the Reflective ||
11/13/2023 01:20 ||
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#7
When ever I see these Palestinian flags at these protests, I also see a few Communist and Socialist ones as well. I remember seeing these usual suspects on Boston Common during the anti-nuclear rallies in the early 80's. Birds of a feather, or just plain opportunists.
[HotAir] Pro-Hamas protestors on the campus of MIT were warned that if they didn’t disperse—they were violating campus policies that prohibited interfering with academic activities and the free movement of students and staff—they would be suspended. The protestors were warned several times and failed to disperse.
Jewish students were prevented from entering the campus through the main entrance and were rerouted.
Once the protestors finally dispersed the administration decided to not follow through on their threats to punish the students for violating the policies of the school.
It was a bit of a surprise because MIT President Kornbluth seemed ready to follow through on her threat.
Because we later heard serious concerns about collateral consequences for the students, such as visa issues, we have decided, as an interim action, that the students who remained after the deadline will be suspended from non-academic campus activities. The students will remain enrolled at MIT and will be able to attend academic classes and labs.
In other words, a substantial fraction of the students shouting for Intifada and creating chaos and danger on campus weren’t US citizens or permanent residents. They were guests in the United States.
Nice to know that we are importing such people into the country and that MIT is so worried about them that they are allowed to run riot on their campus and in our country.
This is the modern West. The rules only apply to some people, while anybody near the top of the intersectional ladder gets a pass.
[WIRE] From around the world today, we’re receiving reports of the rapid-fire spread of a virus that transforms human beings into brain-eating zombies. According to witnesses from every corner of the globe, infected zombies are rampaging through city and countryside, attacking and biting unsuspecting passersby. After a count of twelve seconds, the victim is himself transformed into a walking corpse that is starved for human brains and can only be stopped by a bullet to the head.
The President of the United States was on vacation in Delaware and could not be reached for comment but was said to be carefully monitoring the situation between enjoying the occasional pistachio ice cream cone and quiet walks along the beach with his doctor wife. But White House Spokeswoman Karine Jean Identity Hire did address the D.C. press corps saying, "As a lesbian woman of color, I just want to say that our hearts go out to the zombie community today as they are under attack right now and really suffering. This president is committed to developing an across-the-board response to the rising tide of zombie-phobia along with the troubling trend of increasing gun violence."
Some conservative outlets released what they claimed was a leaked zombie manifesto out of Nashville, Tennessee, which said in its entirety, "Must eat brains." The Chief of Police in what used to be Nashville and is now just a seething hive of brain-eating zombies, responded to the manifesto release by announcing that he had begun a full investigation into who had leaked the document, and would suspend the animated corpse of anyone who was responsible.
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited. by Alexander Dugin
This is not a religious conflict. This is a war of the atheistic, materialistic West against all traditional religions.
[RIA] Russia, as the pole of a multipolar world, is at war with the West in Ukraine. Many Islamic countries, under the influence of Western propaganda, did not clearly understand the reasons, goals and the very nature of this war, believing that we were talking about a regional conflict (and there are many of them in the Islamic world itself). But now, when globalism in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict has directly affected all Muslims of the world, Russia’s special military operation will take on a completely different meaning in their eyes.
#1
That's the guy whose daughter was murdered by Ukrainians - they were trying for him. So, it's understandable that he's off rails.
IMO, USG is supporting Israel against "Palestinians" - instead of supporting "Palestinians" against Israel, like it did since the Oslo accords - is because the World is no longer monopolar. So, geopolitical considerations outweght the discontent of the domestic, pseudo-educated, vermin.
#2
A different perspective, certainly. I assumed that the Biden team are appearing to support Israel — while actually quietly undermining them as much as they can get away with — to avoid cluing in the big Jewish Democratic donors as we head into the overly long and overly expensive presidential campaign season. Once the election is over they can, as usual, go back to business as usual. Bur for now the Democratic Party leadership does not want to see the kind of thing Harvard and UPenn, etc are going through.
#5
Dugin has got to be the most Marxist sounding neoreactionary I've ever heard. All that "inevitably." First this will happen, then that will happen, and it will cause this other thing...
[Daily Mail, where America gets its news] Life expectancy in the US has crashed to its lowest level since 1996, official data has revealed.
The average American born in 2021 can expect to live to 76.4 years, according to a Centers for Disease Control (CDC) report published this week.
In comparison, the average child born in 2014 was thought to live to 78.9 years and in 2019, 78.8
That was before the physical damage caused by COVID and the vaccines, though now they’re saying that for most people it resolves after three years. Also the deconditioning and weight gain so many experienced as a result of the lockdown.
It is the second consecutive year that life expectancy in the US has fallen, after tumbling to 77.0 years in 2020. It is now at its lowest level since 1996, when it was 76.1 years. Before 2019, life expectancy was rising.
Covid-19 was the main driving force for the plunge, the CDC reported.
In 2021, the virus was the third leading cause of death in the country, behind heart disease and cancer - which continue to hold top spots as the most common causes of death.
Increases in suicides and homicides, plus a five-fold increase in drug overdose deaths over the past decade - fueled by a rise in fentanyl contamination - have also contributed to the decline.
The CDC used the National Center for Health Statistics life tables to calculate life expectancy. Life tables show how many more years a person is expected to live for, depending on the year in which they were born. They are hypothetical calculations based on mid-year population estimates and how many people died every year.
Everything after that in the article has perhaps as much validity as climate change predictions, so we’ve left it at the link for those who are driven enough to exert themselves.
#2
If I was going to die tomorrow I wouldn't want to know today.
Posted by: ed in texas ||
11/13/2023 8:39 Comments ||
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#3
Yes. When you see an older person in those dangerous locales, you are not seeing a easy mark...
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
11/13/2023 8:42 Comments ||
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#4
Did they limit the data used to American citizens with a lifetime of residence in the US? If not, the data is worthless, only of value for political manipulation. Including people from other countries with an unknown level of nutrition and lifelong medical care makes it impossible to assess actual American life expectancy. Almost certainly, foreigners, especially the illegal alien invaders, have had a far more spotty/non-existent helthcare history which can only degrad the findings of any such "survey".
#2
Every time "economists" say "we are too much consumerists, we need to get by on less stuff," a recession occurs, and they start screeching for us all to "consume more."
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
11/13/2023 7:59 Comments ||
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#3
California will stick with an unrealistically dumb plan for a long time, especially one projected out beyond the political horizon of the boobs that enacted the plan.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
11/13/2023 12:37 Comments ||
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#4
The answer to Cali's trucking issues is of course to put the containers on railcars to Arizona, and put them on trucks there. Problem solved.
Posted by: ed in texas ||
11/13/2023 19:44 Comments ||
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Detail-heavy analysis, for all you business/finance types who understand such things. A few selected paragraphs below the bullet points.
[FreightWaves]
This week’s FreightWaves Supply Chain Pricing Power Index: 35 (Shippers)
Last week’s FreightWaves Supply Chain Pricing Power Index: 30 (Shippers)
Three-month FreightWaves Supply Chain Pricing Power Index Outlook: 35 (Shippers)
Contract Load Accepted Volume is an index that measures accepted load volumes moving under contracted agreements. In short, it is similar to OTVI but without the rejected tenders. Looking at accepted tender volumes, we see a rise of both 6.83% w/w and of 8.75% y/y. This narrowing y/y difference implies that actual freight flow is recovering from this cycle’s bottom.
The industry is indeed recovering, as can be seen from October’s incredible surge in containerized imports. Per data from Descartes Systems Group, imports were up 3.9% y/y in October and 4.7% over September, making for the third-best October on record (behind the obvious front-runners, 2020 and 2021). This surge — particularly the Port of Los Angeles’ 81% increase in imports from Oct. 26 to Nov. 2 — fed truckload markets like a goose bred for foie gras. Truckload volumes in Ontario, California, a heavyweight market that houses and distributes the lion’s share of Los Angeles’ and Long Beach’s imports, are up a staggering 26% w/w.
But as much as I would wish otherwise, the caveats must be restated. First, October’s growth was heavily driven by exports from China. As we have previously noted, China halted or curbed exports at the beginning of October during the national celebration of Golden Week. Taking into account the lead times, transit times and potential delays at either the port of discharge or lading, this disruption will not hit U.S. shores until next week. So by all means, smoke ’em while you’ve got ’em, but the winter is about to hit truckload markets sooner rather than later.
Second, ocean carriers are bracing for unfavorable trade winds that are forecast to persist well into 2024 if not beyond. After a brutal third-quarter earnings miss, Hapag-Lloyd — the world’s fifth-largest ocean carrier — tightened its guidance for the remainder of the year. Rolf Habben Jensen, CEO of Hapag-Lloyd, identified the problem not as volume weakness but as overcapacity driving down rates. “We do not expect a dramatic recovery of demand in the next couple of quarters,” Habben Jensen said. “The macro environment remains challenging, there are two wars going on, interest rates are still pretty high, inflation is higher than it should be, and investor sentiment is not great.”
This outlook is equally applicable to truckload markets, insofar as they are both fed by maritime imports and are also suffering from overcapacity driving down rates. As we will note below, even a 10% increase in actual volumes is not nearly enough to compensate for the lingering aftereffects of the past few years’ freight gold rush. In fact, this problem might be extended by struggling carriers being thrown a lifeline by an all-too-brief surge in volumes.
All of the good news concerning volumes is almost canceled out by the intractable stagnation of rejection rates. If anything, the current uptick in freight demand shows just how impossibly far volumes need to rise in order to keep everyone in the market. Unfortunately, the more likely scenario is that carriers continue to exit the industry during the upcoming quiet season of Q1. Bloodletting as the best solution is a sad reality, but it is reality nonetheless.
[Washington Examiner] A thought has been worming its way uncomfortably through my mind since Oct. 7. What if peace is impossible? What if there is literally no way to reach a lasting accord? What if one side will settle for nothing less than the destruction of the other?
My doubts began in the immediate aftermath of the atrocity as I watched the reaction of some Palestinians and some of their sympathizers, not least in the West. On that dreadful Saturday evening, there had as yet been no Israeli response. Protesters did not have the (perfectly reasonable) argument that the participants in later demonstrations had, namely that they were defending human rights in Gaza. No, this was exultation in the murder of Israelis, pure and simple.
C.S. Lewis remarked that when the lights are flicked on suddenly, we see where the rats are hiding, and we saw them on Oct. 7. The Hamas volunteers boasting about rape and murder. The leftist academics queuing up to tell us that decolonization was not a metaphor. The delirious crowds celebrating the "resistance."
These people were not demanding a two-state solution or calling for a different line on the map (the kibbutzim where the horrors took place were not settlements). They must have known, on some level, that the attacks would ensure a terrible retaliation. Yet they did not care as long as a blow had been struck against Israel. As one British-Arab TV reporter put it: "Nothing will ever be able to take back this moment, this moment of triumph, this moment of resistance, this moment of surprise, this moment of humiliation on behalf of the Zionist entity — nothing ever."
Israelis have heard such talk before. Indeed, in one sense, the history of their country has been a series of struggles against neighbors who would rather fight than share. Since the 1937 Peel Commission, various plans have been put forward providing for partition. All of them have been rejected by Palestinians, who were happier to risk losing everything in a war than to accept the existence of a Jewish state.
#5
Send them all to Chicago and Martha's Vineyard.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
11/13/2023 8:00 Comments ||
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#6
problem is they wouldn't stay there
Posted by: Chris ||
11/13/2023 8:15 Comments ||
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#7
Do not forget, the muslims danced on the rooftops in New York on 9/11. They danced in the streets and handed out candy all over the ME to celebrate the deaths of westerners. They don't want peace.
Posted by: Cleared Cookies Lost Nic ||
11/13/2023 9:35 Comments ||
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#8
^ Another of those "conspiracy theories" that actually happened...
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
11/13/2023 9:46 Comments ||
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#9
If they don't want peace, they can have death. It's an acceptable outcome.
#10
Surely there's some remote island in the Indian or Pacific Ocean thousands of miles from anywhere else where we can send them?
Posted by: Tom ||
11/13/2023 12:27 Comments ||
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#11
They are air-droppable right? I'm sure we can roll them out the back of a plane at 30,000 and hit the island perfectly. I'm sure it'll be a point of pride for your entire load to splatter....errr land perfecting in the targeted area.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[Washington Examiner] A thought has been worming its way uncomfortably through my mind since Oct. 7. What if peace is impossible? What if there is literally no way to reach a lasting accord? What if one side will settle for nothing less than the destruction of the other?
