• The letter was signed by 51 intel officials in 2020 immediately before the presidential election 
  
• It falsely claimed that Hunter Biden's laptop had all the 'classic earmarks of a Russian information operation' 
  
• Government watchdog group Judicial Watch filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit Thursday 

MSN Wrote:On October 19, 2020, Morell allegedly sent the CIA the final version of the letter to the Prepublication Classification Review for review and called it a 'rush job' so it could be approved.

The new report also revealed that former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper provided editorial advice to 'strengthen the verbiage.'

Oklahoma Sen. James Lankford Wrote:The pennies made from selling the border wall will not be enough to pay the families who suffer from a criminal act committed by someone who crossed our open borders during the Biden administration.

Quote:The lawsuit, obtained by NBC News, alleges that Hawaiian Electric helped set the stage for the devastating wildfires that killed at least 110 people last week. The plaintiffs accuse the utility company, which supplies 95% of the state's electricity, of knowingly failing to protect its equipment and customers from the threat of fire.

"Hawaiian Electric is not just responsible, and they weren't just negligent," Mikal Watts, a lead attorney on the case, told NBC. "They were grossly negligent by making conscious decisions to delay grid modernization projects that would have prevented this very tragedy."

Three other lawsuits filed in the aftermath of the disaster that were reviewed by NBC make similar claims.

Quote:A 5.5 magnitude earthquake hit Los Angeles on Sunday afternoon while Southern California experiences a historic tropical storm from Hurricane Hillary.

Reports indicate that the epicenter occurred two miles north of Ojai near Santa Barbara. No indication of any severe damage as of yet.
...
People immediately hit social media to express their disbelief over experiencing an earthquake at the same time California deals with a once-in-a-lifetime tropical storm that has sparked a state of emergency.
...
Democrat Gov. Gavin Newsom already declared a state of emergency this weekend over Hurricane Hillary.

“Today, Governor Gavin Newsom proclaimed a state of emergency for much of Southern California to support Hurricane Hilary response and recovery efforts as the state continues mobilizing and coordinating resources ahead of the storm’s forecasted impacts starting today,” the press release said.

Quote:The New York Times exposed the inside dealings of Hunter Biden’s attorneys with senior officials at DOJ, who had constrained U.S. Attorney for Delaware David Weiss even as Garland was testifying to Congress that Weiss had full authority to act in the case.

The Times reported that not only did the whistleblowers stop the cover-up, but that Hunter Biden’s lawyers now want them to be prosecuted for speaking out against his special treatment — a violation of President Biden’s promise to protect whistleblowers:

Now, the I.R.S. agents and their Republican allies say they believe the evidence they brought forward, at the precise time they did, played a role in influencing the outcome, a claim senior law enforcement officials dispute. While Mr. Biden’s legal team agrees that the I.R.S. agents affected the deal, his lawyers have contended to the Justice Department that by disclosing details about the investigation to Congress, they broke the law and should be prosecuted.

Earlier this year, The Times found, Mr. Weiss appeared willing to forgo any prosecution of Mr. Biden at all, and his office came close to agreeing to end the investigation without requiring a guilty plea on any charges. But the correspondence reveals that his position, relayed through his staff, changed in the spring, around the time a pair of I.R.S. officials on the case accused the Justice Department of hamstringing the investigation. Mr. Weiss suddenly demanded that Mr. Biden plead guilty to committing tax offenses.
…
As the testimony from the I.R.S. agents took hold, Mr. Biden’s legal team felt the ground shift beneath them. The U.S. attorney’s office suddenly went quiet.
...
Key figures that emerge from the Times narrative are Assistant U.S. Attorney Lesley Wolf, who has been accused of interfering on Hunter Biden’s behalf; and Christopher J. Clark, a well-connected lawyer for Hunter Biden.

The whistleblowers, IRS Criminal Supervisory Special Agent Gary A. Shapley Jr. and IRS Special Agent Joseph Ziegler, told the House of Representatives that prosecutors would not let them pursue Hunter Biden’s tax crimes, and had sometimes tipped off the president’s son about impending searches or interviews.

Quote:Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenksy has claimed that the Netherlands will send all 42 of its F-16 fighter jets after he met with outgoing Prime Minister Mark Rutte on Sunday.

In his second visit to the Netherlands since the Russian invasion last year, Mr Zelensky toured a military airbase in Eindhoven on Sunday morning, where globalist lame-duck Prime Minister Mark Rutte showed off his fleet of F-16 fighter jets, which have been cleared by the Biden administration to be sent into battle in Ukraine, with Washington having final say over where they are deployed given that they are made in the United States.
...
“Prime Minister Mark Rutte and I reached an agreement on the number of F-16s to be transferred to Ukraine once our pilots and engineers have completed their training. 42 jets. And this is just the beginning. Thank you, Netherlands!”

However, despite Zelensky’s proclamation, the Dutch Ministry of Defence has so far refused to confirm exactly how many F-16s it would be sending to Kyiv, with 42 representing the country’s entire stock of the American-made jets.

The Dutch government has also refrained from giving a specific timeline as to when the warplanes will be delivered...

Quote:Delaware U.S. Attorney David Weiss requested the dismissal last week in order to bring new charges in California or Washington, D.C., where Biden has lived, after a previous plea deal collapsed and remained unsalvageable.

“After the hearing, the parties continued negotiating but reached an impasse,” Weiss wrote in court filings last week, according to the Hill. “A trial is therefore in order.”

The Washington Post reported that efforts to negotiate a new plea deal have “foundered” over Hunter Biden’s insistence on immunity against any new charges and the federal government’s insistence that any immunity offered would only apply to additional tax charges between 2014 and 2019.
...
For many months, IRS and FBI investigators have been frustrated with Weiss’s handling of the case, believing it should have been investigated and prosecuted more aggressively, people familiar with those discussions said.

That broader probe includes examining whether Hunter Biden violated the Foreign Agents Registration Act, the people said, speaking on condition of anonymity to describe a sensitive investigation. The act requires that lobbyists and others who work on behalf of foreign entities or governments register with the U.S. government.
...
According to the outlet, prosecutors wanted to take the immunity provision out of the diversion agreement, but Biden’s team called that a deal-breaker.

Quote:Chinese officials on Thursday seethed over the trilateral United States-South Korea-Japan summit scheduled to be held at Camp David, Maryland, on Friday, denouncing the United States for scheming to create an “Asian NATO” and warning South Korea it could pay a steep price for angering China.

The Camp David summit is expected to include a security dialogue between President Joe Biden, South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol, and Japanese Prime Minister Kishida Fumio. This will feature discussions about China’s territorial aggression, China’s potential invasion of Taiwan, and North Korea’s ballistic missile threat. Proposed responses are reported to include improved intelligence sharing and more joint military exercises.

Although the United States, South Korea, and Japan have discussed their mutual security concerns at various international conferences, Friday’s meeting will be the first formal trilateral summit between them and the first international meeting to be held at Camp David since 2015.
...
“China has noticed some exclusionary groupings being assembled for the so-called ‘regional security’ only to intensify antagonism and undermine the strategic security of other countries. China firmly opposes such practices,” fumed the Chinese embassy in Washington.

China’s state-run Global Times on Wednesday denounced the Camp David summit as a “mini-NATO” that will be “destructive to regional security.”
...
The Global Times eventually settled on quoting North Korean officials who railed that the Americans were pushing Asia to “the verge of a nuclear war outbreak” by helping South Korea shore up its defenses against Pyongyang’s incessant threats.

Quote:Titanic Chinese property developer Evergrande filed for bankruptcy protection in the United States on Thursday, the culmination of two years of distress as China’s troubled property market slides further into crisis.

Evergrande was once China’s largest property developer and its rise was a symbol of how important the indebted real estate sector had become to China’s economy. Some estimates say the sector accounts for 30 percent of China’s gross domestic product.

Real estate investment and home ownership became an important focus for precautionary savings in China, a place to stash excess income in a country seen by its own populace as having few safe outlets for investment. Owning real estate also plays an important role in China’s cultural as a status symbol, making the collapse of Evergrande even more important.

Evergrande filed for Chapter 15 bankruptcy in Manhattan. Chapter 15 makes bankruptcy protection under U.S. law available to foreign companies. Much of Evergrande’s corporate debt was held by U.S. and European institutional investors.

Evergrande has been under intense pressure since 2021, when it first defaulted on its bonds.

Quote:A train derailed Monday morning in the Palm Springs, California, area due to the impact of Tropical Storm Hilary.

Aerial footage showed water flowing around the derailed train cars.
...
Officials with Union Pacific are reporting that two routes are closed, in and out of the Los Angeles Basin due to washouts and flood waters over the rails. Additionally, the company is reporting that widespread road closures are slowing down its employees’ ability to get to work and operate the company’s trains safely.
...
A train derailed Monday morning in the Palm Springs area over by the Gene Autry overpass.
...
The storm, which made landfall on Mexico’s Baja California Peninsula on Sunday, was downgraded to a post-tropical cyclone but resulted in mass power outages and flooding across Southern California. Over 45,500 customers were without power across the state as of 1 p.m. Eastern, per Poweroutage.us. Over 10,000 of those outages are in Los Angeles County.

Quote:The moment occurred on Monday as the president mingled with a first responder, prompting laughter from people nearby.

“You guys catch the boots out here? That’s a hot ground, man,” he joked.
...
In another moment, the president addressed Maui’s wildfire victims, and he attempted to relate to them by citing a fire his home endured back in 2004.

“I don’t want to compare difficulties, but we have a little sense, Jill and I, what it’s like to lose a home,” he said.

Biden said that he almost “lost my wife, my ’67 Corvette, and my cat.”

The president used the moment to commend firefighters for their bravery.

According to a 2004 report from Firehouse.com, the fire at the Biden residence was contained to the kitchen.
...
“The country grieves with you, stands with you, and will do everything possible to help you recover, rebuild, and respect culture and traditions,” Biden said.

An estimated 480 people have died in the catastrophic fire, with over 800 still missing.

Quote:United States military applicants may soon be able to use calculators while taking entrance exams as government officials grapple with recruitment troubles.

President Joe Biden’s (D) Pentagon is weighing a policy regarding the devices that would “change how applicants take the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery, or ASVAB,” Fox News reported Monday.

The news comes as many Americans, who are of age for the military, have experienced difficulty making adequate scores on the test to qualify.

A June 2022 report said the Pentagon was falling short of its recruitment goals, and officials were considering dropping some of its disqualifiers for military service.

It is not exactly clear how bad the problem is for every branch, but the Army — the military’s largest branch —  is facing historic struggles. It has met only about 40% of its enlisted recruiting mission for fiscal year 2022, which ends in three months on September 30.

In hopes of meeting its goal, the Army last week announced it is dropping its requirement for recruits to have high school diplomas or GED certificates if they can ship to basic training by October 1, according to Military.com.

On Monday, a defense official told Fox in a statement, “The department is carefully considering the use of calculators for the ASVAB.”

Quote:On Sunday, Adams’s office began filling up the newly built migrant camp with single adult male border crossers and illegal aliens who have arrived in the sanctuary city from the United States–Mexico border.

According to the New York Post, by the end of Monday, there will be at least 150 border crossers and illegal aliens at the migrant camp. City officials have the capacity to put some 3,000 single adult male migrants in the camp at a massive $20 million per month cost to taxpayers.

“We’re taking away from people who are real New Yorkers,” a Queens woman told the Post. “… I was born here, on the Lower East Side, and you’re telling me they come first? How is that? I pay my tax money, federal, local, all that beautifulness, and my children don’t get to enjoy New York.”

Indeed, New York City’s school children who use the soccer fields on Randall’s Island will have their leagues and games disrupted as a result of the migrant camp. Thousands of parents signed petitions asking Adams not to put border crossers and illegal aliens on the soccer fields, but the opposition was ignored.

Quote:On Monday, Mayorkas announced that the DHS, through the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), would give 53 NGOs and cities more than $77 million in federal grants for their help in absorbing border crossers and illegal aliens released into their communities.

The recipients include NGOs like Catholic Charities, United Way, Mission: Border Hope, and Louisiana Advocates for Immigrants in Detention, among others, which rely heavily on illegal immigration to circulate funding.

Sanctuary cities like Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Chicago, Illinois; Washington, DC; Albuquerque, New Mexico; and New York City, New York, are also receiving millions in taxpayer money through the initiative, as well as border cities like McAllen, Texas, and Pima County, Arizona.

In total, DHS has now granted more than $770 million to NGOs and mostly sanctuary cities for facilitating illegal immigration.

Much of the taxpayer money is flowing through a new route under Biden after he created the Shelter and Services Program (SSP) to funnel funding from the federal government to NGOs and sanctuary cities that help with their mass immigration goals.

Quote:President Joe Biden is expanding Ukrainian migration into the United States, just as Ukraine’s government is drafting more men to operate all the U.S. weaponry that Biden is sending into the embattled country.

The expansion was announced on August 18 when top officials expanded the offer of “Temporary Protected Status” (TPS) to cover an additional 167,000 recent Ukrainian migrants in the United States:

“Russia’s ongoing military invasion of Ukraine and the resulting humanitarian crisis requires that the United States continue to offer safety and protection to Ukrainians who may not be able to return to their country,” said [Department of Homeland Security] Secretary Alejandro N. Mayorkas. “We will continue to offer our support to Ukrainian nationals through this temporary form of humanitarian relief.”

The 167,000 expansion follows a prior award of TPS to 26,000 Ukrainians. The roughly 190,000 Ukrainian migrants traveled to the United States via routes through Germany, Hungary, Poland, Ireland, Mexico, and many other peaceful states.

They were allowed to enter the United States due to the greatly expanded “humanitarian parole” loophole for emergency cases in the nation’s border laws. This loophole has been formalized into the “Uniting for Ukraine” program that allows Ukranians through the borders, but the TPS extension gives the arrivals more rights, including the right to work.

Quote:The Iranian Foreign Ministry said on Monday it could take up to two months to complete the “process” of releasing five American hostages after President Joe Biden’s reported $6 billion ransom payment.

The Foreign Ministry also indicated the $6 billion in unfrozen assets from South Korean banks might not be enough, ominously musing that Iran has assets frozen in Iraq as well.

“The agreements were signed with an expectation that they will be implemented within two months. We view the prospects for their implementation on time with optimism, because, according to the information we have, the work in this direction is proceeding well,” Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanaani said on Monday.

Kanaani claimed the “handover process” for Iranian assets in Iraq has begun, and “some of them have already been moved out of Iraq.” He offered no further details.

The Biden administration has also been remarkably tight-lipped about the hostage deal. No formal announcement has been made to date — everything the American people know about the arrangement was leaked anonymously to news networks in an orchestrated backdoor media rollout on August 10.

Quote:General Abdourahamane Tchiani, the leader of the military junta that seized power in Niger in July, announced in a speech this weekend that he had ordered his offers to draft a detailed plan to transition towards democracy, vowing not to remain in power for more than three years.
...
In response, the countries of Mali and Burkina Faso, also led by recently installed military coup juntas, claimed any attack on the Niger coup leaders would be “a declaration of war” against them as well — creating the potential for a world war and prompting ECOWAS to resume attempts at dialogue.
...
As the fourth coup in the region against governments considered relatively friendly to the West — and in Burkina Faso and Mali, leading to the installment of military juntas favoring closer ties to Russia — Tchiani’s move alarmed the government of leftist President Joe Biden, which has repeatedly demanded the restoration of Bazoum’s administration to no avail.

Following negotiations with ECOWAS this weekend, however, Tchiani issued a 12-minute speech on national television vowing that the coup was aware of “the desire for true democracy” in the country and would not result in an indefinitely ruling dictatorship.

Quote:An Embrarer-made private jet crashed in the Tver Oblast north of Moscow on Wednesday, killing all ten passengers and crew, Russian state media organisation TASS said Wednesday. In a separate flash shortly afterwards, the wires service also said Yevgeny Prigozhin was among those aboard.

It has been reported in the past that when travelling internationally, Prigozhin flew on a private jet of Embrarer type. The Federal Air Transport Agency said in a statement that an investigation had been launched into the crash, and it is said there were no casualties on the ground, as the aircraft crashed at an abandoned farm.

The claimed death of the warlord comes nearly two months to the day after he redirected his mercenary army from fighting in Ukraine towards Moscow, launching a march on the capital calling for serious changes at the top of the Russian state. While the coup quickly folded — allegedly in return for personal guarantees for Prigozhin’s safety — it was seen as a major event that shook the Russian state.

Prigozhin was said to have been exiled to Belarus, however, he has frequently turned up in Russia and Africa since. Just this week he said he was in Africa, making the continent “more free”.

While Russian state media has referred to the lost Embraer jet today as a “crash” and “incident”, a media channel previously widely acknowledged by Western media as being “affiliated with Wagner”, the private army Prigozhin led, has claimed the aircraft was purposefully shot down.
...
According to a post on a Telegram channel linked to the mercenary Wagner Group, Dmitry Utkin, a former special forces officer in the GRU Russian military intelligence branch who reportedly went on to found PMC Wagner, died alongside the mercenary group’s commander, Yevgeny Prighozhin, in a plane crash inside Russia on Wednesday. The ‘Grey Zone’ channel said that Utkin “died as a result of the actions of traitors to Russia.”
...
The Wagner-linked group wrote Wednesday evening: “The Embraer Legacy 600 business jet with registration number RA-02795, which belonged to Yevgeny Prigozhin, was shot down by air defense fire from the Russian Defense Ministry in the Bologovsky district of the Tver region.”

The group claimed witnesses on the ground heard “two bursts of characteristic air defense”.

Quote:Fulton County Sheriff’s Office released mugshots for Rudy Giuliani and other co-defendants in District Attorney Fani Willis’s case against former President Donald Trump.

Fulton County released the booking photos as the defendants turned themselves in this week. Bail bondsman Scott Hall on Tuesday was the first of 19 defendants to turn himself in this week, followed by Trump attorney John Eastman.
...
The Sheriff’s office reportedly announced it would release the booking photos around 4:00 p.m. local time each day. Prosecutors gave the defendants until Friday to turn themselves in.

On Wednesday, the sheriff’s office released the booking photos for Giuliani, Jenna Ellis, and Sidney Powell.
...
Kenneth Chesebro, Ray Smith, David Shafer, and Cathy Latham also had their mugshots released on Wednesday.
...
Most defendants have negotiated bond agreements with prosecutors ranging from $10,000 to $200,000, as Forbes reported.

Quote:The Ministry of State Security identified the CIA spy as a 39-year-old named “Hao” and claimed that the case “is under investigation” without specifying if Hao was in police custody, what ministry Hao allegedly helped the CIA infiltrate, or whether or not the Chinese Communist Party believed Hao was the only Chinese national involved in the alleged espionage. The Chinese state newspaper Global Times appeared to identify Hao as a man.

“Following the discovery of Hao’s espionage activities by one of China’s national security agencies, a lawful inquiry has been initiated into his actions in accordance with law, and the case is under investigation,” the Global Times reported.

“Hao” is the second person the Chinese Ministry of State Security has publicly identified this month as a Chinese national “flipped” by the CIA to be used as an American asset. On August 11, the ministry claimed to identify another person known as “Zeng” who similarly faced presumably criminal accusations of cooperating with the CIA.

The accusations follow the launch of a campaign by the Chinese Communist Party to pressure the general public to engage in “counter-espionage” activities. The Ministry of State Security debuted a page of the regime-controlled social media site WeChat in early August meant to make the law enforcement and anti-espionage agency a constant presence in the lives of ordinary Chinese people. The WeChat page also allows citizens to levy accusations against others they believe may be foreign spies.

Quote:The Times of India (TOI) reported Sunday that conditions in Ukraine are increasingly difficult for visiting Indian students, because the Ukrainians resent India’s positive relationship with invading Russia. Indian visitors say the locals are increasingly telling them to “go back” as the war grinds on.

TOI explained that about 18,000 Indian students were evacuated from Ukraine after Russia invaded in February 2022, but 3,400 of them were obliged to return to complete their degrees.

“As per National Medical Council guidelines, students who are studying abroad after December 2021 cannot transfer to any other university. This is why I and many other students had to come back here,” one of the Indian medical students said.

Sending people back to the hottest war zone on the planet to finish their degrees seems like a big ask, but several hundred Indian medical students actually volunteered to return soon after the evacuation operation was complete. Others went back because they feared losing huge amounts of student financial aid if they refused, or because instructions from the Indian government and courts were so confusing they did not know what else to do. Some noted that studying anywhere in Eastern Europe outside of Ukraine would be more than twice as expensive.

A lucky few were transferred to internships in countries surrounding Ukraine. Others settled for online classes from Ukraine but feared their course credits might not count. The families of other students filed suit with Indian courts when they were told the medical careers of students who refused to go back to Ukraine would be destroyed, but they found the response from the courts to be slow and unsatisfying.

Quote:According to local media reports, the text messages from Xian’s Health Commission and Family Planning Association wished residents “sweet love, marriage, and childbirth” for Qixi and told them to create “good fertility” for the benefit of the nation.

The “sweet love” text messages were backed up by a post on Weibo, China’s tightly controlled version of Twitter, that ordered residents to “continue the blood of China and share the important task of rejuvenation” if they are at the “right age” for childbearing. This sounded more quintessentially Communist than wishing sweet love on people, especially since the Weibo post did not bother to specify what the “right age” for childbearing is.

Qixi is also known as Double Seventh Festival, because it falls on the seventh day of the seventh month of the lunar calendar, which works out to August 22 this year.

Quote:Genocidal communist dictator Xi Jinping landed in South Africa in the early morning hours of Tuesday to a personal welcome from President Cyril Ramaphosa, a traditional dance troupe, and the nation’s armed forces in anticipation of this week’s BRICS summit.

Ramaphosa and other senior South African government officials greeted Xi’s plane in Johannesburg. The visit is Xi’s second time leaving China this year; the Chinese dictator met with Russian leader Vladimir Putin in Moscow in March.
...
Upon landing, Xi delivered a pre-written speech, according to the Chinese state outlet Xinhua, celebrating South Africa as a close trade partner that allegedly shares the Chinese Communist Party’s values.

“A solid and growing China-South Africa relationship not only benefits the two peoples, but also brings more stability to a world which is undergoing transformation and turbulence, Xi said,” Xinhua reported, “adding that he believes with the two sides’ concerted efforts, the visit will definitely be a complete success.”

Xi reportedly also praised BRICS as a “constructive force for the the world’s economic growth, better global governance and greater democracy in international relations,” urging African leaders generally to engage in building “closer cooperation, greater development and a more peaceful world.”

Quote:Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), a designated terrorist organization, on Saturday released footage of its speedboats confronting two U.S. Navy ships in the Strait of Hormuz on August 17.

The IRGC claimed it forced U.S. Navy and Marine helicopters to land by threatening to shoot them down, a claim the Pentagon denied on Monday.
...
The IRGC published heavily edited footage through Iran’s state-run Fars News Agency that depicted small Iranian speedboats maneuvering near USS Bataan and USS Thomas Hudner in the Strait of Hormuz last Thursday. The clip was spliced to make it appear the squadron of tiny Iranian craft “intercepted” the U.S. ships.

The IRGC included footage of Marine UH-1Y Venom and AH-1 Viper attack helicopters, plus a Navy MH-60S Knight Hawk helicopter. The voiceover from an IRGC officer includes a threat to shoot all three helicopters down if they did not land.
...
This could have been a voiceover added to the clip later, rather than a genuine radio transmission sent to the American ships on August 17, an impression bolstered by the amusingly overwrought music the IRGC threw in.

Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh told reporters on Monday there were no reports of American helicopters forced to land under duress during the Strait of Hormuz transit.

“We’ve seen this from them before pushing out, I don’t know if it’s propaganda, but I would say like, untrue statements, and that just is not accurate,” she said.

The U.S. ships were part of an American buildup to discourage Iranian piracy in the Persian Gulf and Strait of Hormuz. In early August, the U.S. offered to put armed sailors and Marines aboard commercial vessels to counter Iranian attempts to seize them.

Quote:Trump announced Thursday morning he would surrender himself around 7:30 p.m. local time Thursday evening.
...
Footage showed Trump’s plane landing in Atlanta to turn himself in shortly before 7:30 p.m. Aerial footage captured his motorcade transporting him to the Fulton County jail for processing, and then several minutes later, captured Trump’s motorcade leaving after the former president had been processed.
...
Trump and 18 others were indicted in a 98-page, 41-count indictment handed down by a Fulton County, Georgia, grand jury last week.
...
Prosecutors gave Trump and his 18 co-defendants until Friday to surrender themselves into custody. Trump’s surrender comes after several of his co-defendants have turned themselves in this week.

Mugshot photos for Jenna Ellis, Rudy Giuliani, and others were released by the Fulton County Sheriff’s Office one day after they were booked. Trump had his mugshot taken while officers processed him on Thursday, CNN reported.
...
“Unless somebody tells me differently, we are following our normal practices, and so it doesn’t matter your status, we’ll have a mugshot ready for you,” Labat said.
...
Trump has been released on a $200,000 bond, the highest amount out of any of his co-defendants. Trump’s release terms are stricter than some of his other co-defendants’ terms. 

Quote:Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday made his first comments on the reported death of Yevgeny Prigozhin, the oligarch and mercenary warlord who led a mutiny against the Russian armed forces in June...

Putin told journalists at the Kremlin Thursday that Prigozhin was “a man of complicated destiny.”

The Russian dictator reminisced about meeting Prigozhin in the 1990s, after which the onetime hot-dog vendor and restaurant entrepreneur became known as “Putin’s Chef” for winning lucrative contracts to cater to the Kremlin and supply food to the Russian military.

Prigozhin used his profits to co-found a private military company (PMC) called the Wagner Group in partnership with a former Russian special forces operator named Dmitry Utkin, who was also reportedly killed in the plane crash on Wednesday.

“He’d made serious mistakes in his life, but also got results – for himself as well as our common cause, when I asked it of him in these last months,” Putin said, alluding to Wagner mercenaries participating in his bloody invasion of Ukraine. The brutality of Wagner’s forces made them one of the most effective elements of the Russian invasion force.

“It seems that the primary data indicate that employees of the Wagner company were also there. I would like to note that these are people who have made a significant contribution to our common cause of fighting the neo-Nazi regime in Ukraine,” Putin said, citing one of the excuses he gave for attacking Ukraine in February 2022.

Quote:The BRICS economic and security coalition announced on Thursday that it would accept six new countries as members – notably including both Iran and Saudi Arabia, bitter rivals who set aside their differences in March as a result of talks brokered by China.

China is one of the six countries that gave the BRICS its name – alongside Brazil, Russia, India, and South Africa – and by far the most influential within the group. South Africa is the newest current member (the coalition used to be named BRIC) and the host of the ongoing summit expected to end on Thursday. The group primarily serves as an economic and diplomatic organization; its members support one another’s misdeeds at the United Nations and other international venues and have greatly expanded trade to bolster their individual markets.
...
“We decided to invite the Republic of Argentina, the Arab Republic of Egypt, the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, the Islamic Republic of Iran, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to become full-fledged members of BRICS,” Ramaphosa announced.

These countries reportedly beat out sixteen others who had formally applied to join the group. The Russian news agency Tass listed the 22 applicants as “Algeria, Argentina, Bangladesh, Bahrain, Belarus, Bolivia, Venezuela, Vietnam, Honduras, Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, Kazakhstan, Cuba, Kuwait, Nigeria, the United Arab Emirates, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Thailand and Ethiopia.”

The six new members are set to receive their membership privileges on January 1, 2024.

On Thursday, Xi, as the member most enthusiastically pushing for expansion, celebrated the new members and the growth of the group as serving “the common interests of emerging markets.”

Quote:As more than 100,000 border crossers and illegal aliens have arrived in New York, mostly in New York City, since the spring of last year, Hochul has pleaded with President Joe Biden not to stem the flow of illegal immigration but to more easily provide new arrivals with work permits.

In addition, Hochul rolled out a jobs program for border crossers and illegal aliens whereby the New York State Department of Labor (DOL) will be authorized to connect migrants with employers so they can nab jobs.

“All asylum seekers with work authorization in New York can now register for assistance here,” a press release from Hochul’s office states of the jobs program:

DOL career experts will work with individuals to assess skills, work history, education, career interests and more, and connect them with employers across the State. Additionally, the New York State Department of Labor launched a portal enabling businesses to inform the State that they would welcome newly-authorized individuals into their workforce. [Emphasis added]

Hochul’s jobs program comes as more than 380,000 New Yorkers are counted as unemployed and likely hundreds of thousands more remain out of the labor market entirely.

Quote:President Joe Biden is ignoring concerns from Brooklyn, New York, residents and has greenlit a plan that will see at least 2,000 single adult male border crossers and illegal aliens housed in a former naval airfield facility — paid for by New Yorkers.

On Tuesday, residents in southeast Brooklyn protested New York Gov. Kathy Hochul’s (D) plan to turn Floyd Bennett Field, owned by the federal government, into a massive migrant camp.

The former naval airfield sits along Jamaica Bay and near multiple neighborhoods including Gerritsen Beach, Roxbury, and Breezy Point.
...
During the protest, former GOP candidate for New York City mayor Curtis Sliwa blamed Biden’s lax enforcement of federal immigration law for the more than 100,000 migrants that have arrived in the city since the spring of last year.

“The people here feel that they have been betrayed,” Sliwa said at the protest. “No transparency whatsoever. It’s like ‘Pay your taxes, shut up, raise your kids, and we’ll tell you what you’re going to do.’ Well, we’ve had enough, no more of the illegal aliens. Enough is enough, this is Joe Biden’s problem.”

Quote:The Chinese state propaganda outlet Global Times condemned President Joe Biden and other Western leaders for implying that Russian strongman Vladimir Putin orchestrated a plane crash believed to have killed Wagner Private Military Company (PMC) leader Yevgeny Prigozhin this week.

The Times, citing Chinese Communist Party-approved “experts,” claimed in an article on Thursday that suggesting Putin ordered the demise of the plane, which also reportedly carried other senior members of the paramilitary organization, was part of a “wave of public opinion and cognitive warfare” intended to confuse Russian nationals out of supporting their autocratic leader.

“While the results of the investigation are still not clear, the US and its allies pointed the finger at Putin, which is aimed at discrediting him at home and disrupting Russia’s internal unity and stability,” one such “expert” told the outlet.

China Daily, another government newspaper, also accused the United States on Friday of trying to “intensify the volatility in Russia’s ‘internal affairs’ by suggesting that Putin would eliminate Prigozhin,” potentially inciting violence on the part of disaffected Wagner mercenaries.
...
Russian officials announced that all individuals on board the plane were dead but did not identify Prigozhin, specifically, as having passed away. A Kremlin spokesman insisted on Friday that the Russian government would not declare him dead until DNA testing on the bodies proved that the people on board matched the list of names on the manifest.

Quote:Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday signed a decree requiring paramilitary fighters in “volunteer formations” to swear an oath of allegiance to the Russian flag.

The move immediately followed the suspicious reported death of Wagner Group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin, whose mercenaries are commonly referred to as a “volunteer formation” in Russian state media because private military contractors are illegal.

Two days after Prigozhin allegedly died in a plane crash, Putin decreed that groups “contributing to the execution of tasks given to the armed forces” must swear an oath to Russia’s flag in order to strengthen “the spiritual and moral foundations for the defense of the Russian Federation.”

The decree said all paramilitary forces must “pledge their loyalty to the Russian Federation,” swear to “strictly follow their commanders and superiors’ orders,” and “conscientiously fulfill their obligations.”

Mercenary groups like Wagner are technically illegal under Russian law, but Putin uses them as deniable black ops forces for the dirtiest operations, such as the illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014. Wagner Group mercenaries have been among the most brutally effective forces in Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

Wagner forces have also been instrumental in Russia’s growing influence over Africa, a project Prigozhin seemed to be enthusiastically working on — and profiting handsomely from — at the time of his reported death.

Quote:The human rights organization Freedom House revealed in the latest update to its China Dissent Monitor on Wednesday that labor protests had more than doubled throughout China from the number documented in June 2022 to the same month in 2023.

Guangdong province, a factory hub in the nation’s south, documented a notable surge in acts of anti-regime dissent compared to the rest of the country.

Freedom House is a human rights research and advocacy group that documents political repression around the world. Its China Dissent Monitor, launched last year, documents incidents of dissent – protests, public expressions of opposition to the Communist Party, and other acts – in the country, revealing a constant drumbeat of anti-regime sentiment undermining the communist regime’s assurances that the Chinese people unanimously adore their totalitarian rulers.

For much of 2022, and certainly in late November of that year when protests erupted nationwide, Chinese citizens expressed outrage and disillusion with the poor handling of the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic, and in particular the use of city-wide lockdowns to place millions in a state of house arrest and the imprisonment of at least thousands in government-run quarantine camps.

Quote:The Canadian Ombudsman for Responsible Enterprise (CORE) announced on Thursday it is investigating the Canadian branches of Walmart, Hugo Boss, and Diesel for the alleged use of Uyghur slavery in their supply chains.
...
In this case, CORE acted on allegations from human rights groups that Chinese suppliers for the three firms used slaves from the oppressed Uyghur Muslims of East Turkistan, which China calls Xinjiang.

Forced labor contamination is an especially pernicious problem in the garment industry since China provides a great deal of the world’s cotton, and Xinjiang produces almost 90 percent of China’s supply.

CORE’s ombudsman and chief spokeswoman, Sheri Meyerhoffer, said Friday that Walmart, Hugo Boss, and Diesel all refused to participate in a preliminary assessment of the slavery reports, so her agency had no choice but to launch an investigation:

The investigations will provide all three companies with an ongoing opportunity to provide further relevant information, and mediation of the allegations remains open. We are hopeful that the investigation findings will provide the companies with information to support their ability to strengthen their due diligence practices.

All three companies denied they purchased goods tainted by forced labor.

Quote:On Friday’s broadcast of the Fox News Channel’s “The Story,” Mark Schmitz, whose son, Lance Corporal Jared Schmitz, was killed in the Kabul airport attack in 2021, said that he hasn’t gotten answers on whether the Kabul suicide bomber could have been taken out before the attack and accused the Biden administration of covering up evidence on the issue.

After playing video of Sgt. Tyler Vargas-Andrews testifying about the failure to prevent the attack, host Martha MacCallum asked, [relevant exchange begins around 1:40] “You ever get any answers on that part of what happened there, sir?”

Schmitz answered, “Nothing yet. In fact, I’ve asked for copies of the SD card footage off of his rifle scope. That would have been recorded, and they would have been able to have that as evidence that this was or was not, in fact, the bomber. That card has been ‘misplaced,’ as they say. So, I don’t know what the truth is anymore. We can’t seem to get a straight answer out of anybody.

Quote:ABC 7 / Chicago Sun-Times reported the one shooting fatality occurred around 4 a.m. “in the 2500 block of West Monroe Street.” Police responded to calls about the shooting and found a man who had been shot “in the chin and ankle.”

He was transported to a hospital where he later died.

Breitbart News noted nearly 40 were shot last weekend in Chicago, seven of them fatally, and at least 23 were shot in Chicago during the weekend prior.

The Sun-Times pointed out that 392 people were killed in Chicago January 1, 2023, through August 25, 2023.

Quote:“It is with profound sadness that we announce that the World’s Greatest MC who ever lived, Bob Barker has left us,” Barker’s publicist Roger Neal said in a statement sent to multiple outlets on Saturday. No additional information was given.

With his twinkly eyes and smooth demeanor that put contestants at ease as they competed for the big prize, Barker was an endearing presence who enlivened daytime TV with an almost effortless charm. From 1972 to 2007, his near-perfect attendance on CBS’s “The Price is Right” became a ritual for millions of housewives and children staying home from school.

With his year-round tan, silver hair, and long-handled microphone, Barker was a TV icon who was often parodied but seldom equaled. Even his daily “The Price is Right” sign-off was memorable.
...
Later, he hosted the Miss Universe and Miss USA pageants for two decades — resigning when they declined to use synthetic furs — and even played himself in the 1996 Adam Sandler golf comedy Happy Gilmore.

Quote:From wheeling cart loads of stolen merchandise out of a Burlington store in California to swiping a package out of a FedEx driver’s hands, thieves in America are growing bold.

The most recent account of a porch pirate stealing a package comes out of Chesterfield County, Virginia, WBOY reported. The thief stole a box containing a $1,600 iPad from the hands of a delivery driver.

Ring footage shows the suspect walking beside the delivery driver on the sidewalk of Jessica Saenz’s home, then snatching the package out of the FedEx worker’s hands. The thief then runs across the lawn toward his white BMW parked on the side of the road and drives off.

“I was in a meeting, and then the FedEx lady started knocking on my door, like, really hard,” Saenz told the news outlet. “I’m like, ‘What’s going on?’”

Neighbor Johnny Eubanks told WBOY he saw the incident while walking his dog.

“People are pretty desperate,” Eubanks said.

For some cities, like Seattle, theft has become such an issue that the United States Postal Service temporarily halted delivery for an entire zip code, Breitbart News reported.

Quote:The globalist-minded government of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is said to have urged its underlings to tamp down criticisms of rouge states and instead lay the focus on “hostile actors” rather than “hostile states”.

According to a report from The Times, guidance from the Foreign Office said that “states aren’t inherently hostile themselves, they just do hostile things.”

This comes despite persistent threats from top-level Kremlin figures such as Dmitry Medvedev threatening to use nuclear weapons against the UK and Communist China trampling on the Sino-British Joint Declaration on Hong Kong and reportedly threatening exiled freedom fighters on British soil.

Responding to the mealy-mouthed guidance from the government, former Conservative Party leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith said: “Our position towards China is that we’ll deal with it with robust pragmatism but often you can’t be robust and pragmatic at the same time.

“This is Orwellian political speak in which you invent terms that are themselves meaningless to describe genuine dangerous and difficult circumstances because you have an ulterior motive such as not frightening your own people or not to upset those you are dealing with.

“The idea that China is not a hostile state is absurd.”

Former Ukraine prosecutor general Viktor Shokin Wrote:And the fact that Joe Biden gave away $1 billion in US money in exchange for my dismissal, my firing, isn’t that alone a case of corruption?

President Joseph R Biden Wrote:I looked at them and said, ‘I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money,’ Well, son of a bitch. He got fired.

A letter from Hawaiian Electric’s Attorneys Wrote:Hawaiian Electric will take reasonable steps to preserve evidence, but cannot make any guarantees due to the rapidly evolving situation on the ground, which is also not within our control.

Quote:The National Hurricane Center (NHC) is warning of storm surges of 10–15 feet in some areas of Florida as hurricane Idalia makes landfall, warning residents of “destructive life-threatening winds” across the state.

“Catastrophic impacts from storm surge inundation of 10 to 15 feet above ground level and destructive waves are expected somewhere between Aucilla River and Yankeetown, Florida,” the National Hurricane Center’s (NHC) 11 a.m. update of the storm reads, warning that “life-threatening storm surge inundation” is likely for portions of the Gulf Coast.
...
Further, the NHC warns of the potential for “destructive life-threatening winds where the core of Idalia moves onshore in the Big Bend region of Florida, with hurricane conditions expected elsewhere in portions of the Hurricane Warning area along the Florida Gulf Coast.”
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However, the NHC warns that strong winds will also affect other portions of the state outside of the west coast, spreading inland up to northern Florida and southern Georgia as well. It urges residents in these area to “be prepared for long-duration power outages.”

Quote:Border Patrol agents apprehended more than a dozen Uzbek nationals earlier this year who crossed the border from Mexico into the U.S. The migrants were reportedly released into the U.S. by the Biden administration to pursue asylum claims, according to a report by CNN on Tuesday.

National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson told the news network that officials are working to “identify and assess” all of these migrants who were apprehended and subsequently released into the U.S. interior with a “Notice to Appear” to some future immigration court hearing. The FBI says there is currently no specific ISIS plot that has been identified but one of the smugglers is reported to be connected to the terrorist network.

Earlier this year, a cohort of migrants from Uzbekistan requested asylum and were screened by the Department of Homeland Security, part of a rising number of asylum seekers who have traveled to the US from Central Asia in recent years. There was no information in any of the intelligence community’s databases that raised any red flags and the people were all released into the US pending a court date.

It was only later, when the FBI learned about the existence of a human smuggling network helping Uzbek nationals travel to the US – and that this network included at least one individual with connections to ISIS – that national security officials put the pieces together.

Quote:Multiple sources with knowledge of the incident but not authorized to speak to media on the matter told Breitbart Texas that the National Guard soldier fired his weapon to stop a violent attack on a group of migrants on the Mexican side of the border. The soldier struck the alleged assailant in the leg, according to health officials in Juarez, Mexico.

“The Guardsman observed a group of cartel agitators approaching a group of migrants on the southern bank of the Rio Grande,” one source indicated. “One of the cartel members had a pistol at his waist and was wielding a machete.”

“The man with the machete began to strike one of the migrants with the weapon,” the source said. “The Guardsman believed the migrants were in imminent danger of being killed or severely injured by the attacker and discharged his weapon.”

“The cartel members jumped into a vehicle and sped away before Mexican law enforcement officials arrived,” a second source source indicated.

El Paso Matters reported that the Chihuahua State Attorney General’s Office confirmed that a male had been injured near the international bridge connecting Juarez and El Paso. Chihuahua Health authorities told the local news outlet that doctors at General Hospital treated the man for a through-and-through bullet wound in his right leg. The man was later discharged from the hospital.

Quote:During a “fireside chat” at New York Law School, Adams said, “Gov. Hochul has been a partner on subway safety, on crime, on a host of things, but I think on this issue the governor is wrong,” the New York Post reported.

“She’s the governor of the state of New York. New York City is in that state. Every county in this state should be part of this,” he added.

Hochul previously blamed President Joe Biden (D) and demanded his administration take ownership of the mass of asylum seekers crossing the nation’s southern border.

However, “Adams slammed Hochul, saying in a statement following her address that she was ‘abdicating’ her duty as governor to create a statewide response to the crisis and forcing other areas of New York to pitch in,” the Post report said.

Right now, the city is reportedly caring for about 60,000 migrants, but thousands are flooding in every week, according to the outlet.
...
In a press conference this week, Hochul seemingly spun as a positive the fact that thousands of border crossers and illegal aliens, often with no means to support themselves, are arriving in New York every week as New York City Mayor Eric Adams (D) has said the city is in a crisis.
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“I can’t tell you how many people have said to me, ‘I need them in my North Country Lake Placid hotel, a restaurant over in Syracuse, a nursing home on Long Island,’” Hochul said. “There are so many jobs that they could be absorbed into our economy so easily.”

Quote:Upwards of 400 local residents of the Arrochar neighborhood of northeast Staten Island rallied on August 28 to oppose the arrival of illegal border crossers after a shuttered Catholic school building was quietly designated as a migrant shelter without consulting the neighborhood.

The hundreds of neighbors are unhappy that the building, formerly housing the St. John Villa Catholic school, has been declared a shelter for 300 illegals, a designation that locals accuse Mayor Eric Adams of making “in a cloud of secrecy.”
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Residents unfurled a large banner ahead of the rally reading, “NO F%*KIN WAY!” as they gathered to voice their opposition to the shelter being opened in a building that is flanked by two active elementary schools.
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“The message is that here in Staten Island, we love immigrants,” rally organizer John Tobacco added. “We’re the most Italian-American congressional district in the country, and all our ancestors came here legally. We love anyone who comes here legally.”

Tobacco also called the avalanche of illegals “unsustainable.”
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The decision was made so quietly that local GOP state Assemblyman Michael Tannousis said that he was never told about the move.

Quote:Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson (D) responded to the surge in auto thefts in his city by suing Kia and Hyundai, claiming both carmakers make their vehicles too easy to steal.

FOX News reported that Chicago Alderman Raymond Lopez (D) derided Johnson’s approach, saying, “Clearly, we don’t have a crime problem. We have a Kia problem in the city of Chicago, according to Mayor Johnson. The numbers speak for themselves – 104% increase from last year, a 234% increase in vehicle thefts from two years ago – but yet it’s the car’s fault.”

Lopez added, “It’s the fact that they are so easily taken by criminals who run rampant in the city of Chicago, but we have yet to hear our mayor say anything, one word, about the criminals running rampant in our streets,”
...
On May 24, 2023, ABC 7 noted there had been “more than 20,000 cars stolen in Chicago from May 2022 to May 2023.” And by August 24, 2023, the Chicago Sun-Times pointed out there had been “19,062 vehicle thefts this year, up more than 100% from the same point last year.”

Mayor Johnson released a statement criticizing Kia and Hyundai for the percentage of their cars being stolen, saying, “The failure of Kia and Hyundai to install basic anti-theft prevention technology in these models is sheer negligence, and as a result, a citywide and nationwide crime spree around automobile theft has been unfolding right before our eyes.”

Quote:Nevada Tribal Rangers on Sunday plowed through a climate change protest that caused a miles-long backup blocking traffic to the annual Burning Man festival.

Video footage from Sunday showed the Nevada Tribal Rangers successfully breaking up the demonstration by driving a truck through the blockade. Close to 150 cars were reportedly halted on the only road to Burning Man due to the protesters.
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The anti-capitalist climate change protesters showed signs that said, “General Strike for Climate,” and, “Abolish Capitalism.” Some protesters reportedly chained themselves to the trailer that was blocking traffic.

Footage showed the Tribal Rangers plowing through the blockade with a truck and exiting the vehicle to make arrests.
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“We are not violent! Please… we have no weapons at all, we are environmental protesters,” a woman yelled as police detained one protester.

The Rangers arrested the protesters for “trespassing on tribal land.”

Brief Open Editorial

Be Careful What You Wish For

There are a couple of things we should consider first before reading the next article.

First, the easiest topic to handle would be the arrest itself. If you break almost any law, you are subject to be detained by the police or the rangers, etc. We all grownups know that. Even teenagers should know that as well. It doesn't matter at all whether or not you were violent during a protest if talking about any arrest. Still, it could get a lot worse for you if you resist the authorities, knowing that you're breaking one or more laws already.

Second, capitalism is one of the factors that allows you to have freedoms like free speech in the first place. In markets that are partially or totally controlled by the state or some gang or any organization, you're not even free to choose anything. Speaking up is a moral crime, TV anchors will demand people to harass you in public, and you don't fear the arrest itself but the illegal punishments that you will go through while waiting for a trial.

Where do I get all of this? That's an easy one indeed. It begins with letter C and ends with hina. Or you could also pick an R and fill in the gap with ussia, too. One country has total control over its population and the other one is getting there as well.

Killing capitalism won't solve your problems. It will make them a lot worse because you'll be told what to think EVERY SINGLE MOMENT of your life. Your money is no longer yours nor your car nor your appartment or flat. Heck! They'll even tell you what TV programs or YouTube channels you can watch without repercussions. You will become an actual slave of the state because there would be no line separating it from any company or corporation.

Just take a look at how those 2 countries I mentioned fuly control their industry with ease. In the country with the bloody red flag you can find CCP members being an active and integral part of the company's board. And this doesn't respect facts that the company is local or has international investors or the headquarters are located in the US or EU. They simply comply with the CCP's regulations or pay the price in no time. Period. This includes providing the CCP with all the valuable and private information your company might have. Two laws force them to do so. They don't call it espionage or theft because they can now legally demand such things from any company running business in mainland China or even Hong Kong. Heck! What am I saying? They also asked TikTok's US subsidiary to send private information back to China!! It didn't matter if their customers were Chinese or American...

Is that really what you want? A country where you are no longer capable of struggling for a better future made with your own hands? A future where the state tells you what should suffice and satisfy your needs without ever asking for your very own opinion? A place where you own nothing but are supposed to be happy about it?

The problem is not capitalism, it is some sort of revived fascism with corporativism plus some nasty mob rule... Just think about it. Nobody can get richer and richer without the freedom to accumulate riches and spend them the way PEOPLE want them to be spent or saved at a bank, etc.

Three ways to make that possible is to defend true democracy with fair elections, to defend the republic and its constitution, and to defend capitalism. This might need people to have free access to firearms AND proper training to handle them responsibly.  Criminals truly fear an armed citizenry.

You say you don't want to buy any weapon of sorts? Fine, that's you exercising your self determination as expected. Yet, that doesn't give you the right to stop other citizens from getting to a weapon dealer's store and purchase legal firearms there. In a free country, both the guy that refuses to bear an weapon and the one that takes it anywhere should be free to do so.

Did anybody commit a crime with a  knife or sword or gun? That's where the criminal should face the  police and be presented to a  judge to determine what is the right punishment for such a misbehavior. Keep in mind that I'm saying here that this applies even when the criminal only threatened people with such a weapon at some point.

Why did I include weapons as a vital part of this editorial? That's because weapons are tools. This is self evident if we're talking about the police or even firefighters that need to use axes as part of their job. Free citizens are supposed to be able to defend themselves because there's no way we can ever guarantee that a police will arrive just in time to stop the criminals from hurting you. If you totally surrender your right to bear arms, you could let the state become the worst enemy, the worst criminal organization that ever existed.

There are very few cases where governments have forbidden its people to bear arms and that have helped them control violence somehow. Sadly, even Japan has lost a former prime minister not too long ago.  Or remember how a religious cult entered the Japanese subway and released some dangerous chemical there as an attempt to kill hundreds of their fellow citizens years ago.  Just think about how defenseless those victims felt at that terrible moment.

Quote:Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has demanded that taxpayers in the United States and European Union send the country even more aid if the West wishes for elections to be held next year.

In an interview published by the president’s office on Sunday evening, Zelensky said that he would be willing to hold elections despite the ongoing martial law amid the war with Russia, so long as the U.S. and EU bankroll the voting process.

The Ukrainian leader said that elections during peacetime typically cost around 5 billion hryvnia ($135 million) but did not speculate as to how much more they would cost during a war, though presumably it would be much higher.

Zelensky said that he discussed the topic of funding for the 2024 elections with U.S. Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, who has been one of the staunchest supporters of sending more aid to Ukraine on Capitol Hill.

“I told [Sen. Graham]: If the United States and Europe give us financial support… I’m sorry, I will not hold elections on credit, I will not take money from weapons and give it to elections either. But if you give me this financial support, if the parliamentarians realize that we need to do this, then let’s quickly change the legislation and, most importantly, let’s take risks together,”  Zelensky said.

“Observers should be in the trenches. I told him: observers must be sent to the frontline so that the elections are legitimate for us and for the whole world. And this is absolutely fair,” he added.

Quote:Russian officials on Monday appointed Gen. Andrey Averyanov, head of covert offensive operations for Russian military intelligence, to supervise the mercenary Wagner Group’s valuable operations in Africa following the reported death of its founders, Yevgeny Prigozhin and Dmitry Utkin, in a plane crash last week.

Some global intelligence analysts thought Averyanov might have played some role in creating the vacancy he just filled, because the most notorious “covert offensive operation” he has been linked to is the poisoning of double agent Sergei Skripal on British soil in March 2018.

Skripal and his daughter Yulia were found unconscious on a bench in the city of Salisbury and remained in critical condition for weeks, barely surviving exposure to a military-grade Soviet-era nerve agent called Novichok. The same nerve weapon was used in an unsuccessful attempt to assassinate Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny in Siberia in 2020.

The UK Daily Mail last week quoted British intelligence sources who thought Prigozhin’s “days were numbered” before he was killed in a plane crash, and there was “a lot of discussion” in the intelligence community that Averyanov might be the man doing the numbering.

Averyanov was known to dislike Prigozhin and last month he was actually overheard introducing himself to African leaders as Prigozhin’s likely replacement during a summit in St. Petersburg.

Quote:The Chinese Communist Party’s Ministry of Natural Resources published a new “standard map of China” on Monday, labeling nearly the entire South China Sea, the nation of Taiwan, and large swathes of India under Chinese rule.

Beijing typically releases an updated official version of the map of the country every year. It has regularly outraged its neighbors by pushing China’s borders far beyond where they sit in real life, slicing off parts of other countries and declaring them Chinese territory.

The Chinese government has, on multiple occasions, attempted to rename parts of India with Mandarin-language names and often refers to northern India as “South Tibet.” Tibet itself is an occupied territory, where most residents have no ethnic or cultural ties to the dominant Han people in the Communist Party and reject attempts to exterminate their identity.

In the South China Sea, China illegally claims territory belonging to Brunei, Vietnam, the Philippines, and Malaysia. It also falsely claims the entire nation of Taiwan as a rogue “province,” along with its maritime territory and the waters off of Natuna Island, Indonesia. In 2016, the Permanent Court of Arbitration at the Hague ruled, in a case brought to it by the government of the Philippines, that China’s claims in the South China Sea were all illegitimate. Beijing has proceeded to ignore that ruling for the better part of a decade, as the court has no enforcement mechanism and the states that rightfully own that territory have much smaller militaries than China.

China has regularly used a marking called the “nine-dash line” to cut into other nations’ territory in the South China Sea. India’s World Is One News (WION) network observed that the 2023 “standard map” introduces a new “ten-dash line,” seizing even more foreign territory.

Quote:Xi appeared in Urumqi, the capital of East Turkistan, on Saturday, for his first visit since July 2022. Footage published by Chinese state media indicates that Xi spent most of his time there with high-ranking local communists indoors, not interacting with the public.

Xi launched a genocide campaign against the indigenous populations of East Turkistan – the majority Uyghurs, but Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, and other Turkic, majority-Muslim peoples as well – in 2014, branding it an “anti-terrorism” initiative and claiming that the eradication of Islam and Uyghur culture was necessary to prevent jihadist violence. Since then, the Chinese government has forced over three million people into concentration camps, where they endure a host of human rights atrocities including torture, sexual assault, slavery, communist indoctrination, and medical testing consistent with live organ harvesting.

Outside of the camps, the Chinese Communist Party has separated children from their families; bulldozed critical cultural sites, including cemeteries; and forcibly sterilized potentially hundreds of thousands of women to prevent the non-Han population from growing.

Extensive evidence procured by human rights activists, Uyghur survivors, and journalists indicates that Xi personally ordered the genocide. Chinese government documents obtained by researcher Adrian Zenz and the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation in 2022, and published under the name “Xinjiang Police Files,” repeatedly gave Xi credit for ordering the genocidal policies, demanding Communists “break the lineages, break the roots, break the connections, break the origins” of indigenous East Turkistanis.

Xi defended the genocide in remarks “affirming the achievements made” in the region by the Communist Party.