Israeli missiles have hit a site in Iran, according to confirmation from a U.S. official as first reported by ABC News. The official was unable to confirm whether the reports of additional Israeli strikes against military targets in Syria and Iraq were true. Iran has activated its air defenses over several cities, according to Iranian state media.
However, local sources report explosions in Iran’s city of Isfahan, the home of the Iranian regime’s nuclear and conventional-missile programs. Meanwhile, further explosions were reported near Baghdad, in an area used by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to meet with proxies in the region.
Dubai-based air carriers FlyDubai and Emirates were observed diverting around Isfahan, located in central Iran, in the early hours of Friday morning local time.
The reported strikes come hours after Iran’s foreign minister, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, said in an exclusive interview with CNN that Iran’s response to military action from Israel would be “immediate and at a maximum level.”
One wonders how much “maximum effort” Iran has left in the can as their previous 300 missile/drone barrage accomplished jack and squat.
Amir-Abdollahian remarks come after Iran’s Sunday attack when Iran launched approximately 300 missiles and drones at Israel in a blanketing effort to overwhelm Israeli missile defenses. Coalition forces, the U.S. foremost among these, shot down the overwhelming majority of the incoming munitions.
Best YouTube footage I could find, which isn’t great.
Israel and its coalition partners in the Middle East successfully defended against an unprecedented Iranian attack featuring hundreds of drones and missiles soaring into Israeli airspace.
The Israel Defense Forces said early Sunday morning Iran launched 170 drones, more than 30 cruise missiles, and more than 120 ballistic missiles, with over 99 percent of them getting intercepted. Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari called the defense “a very significant strategic success” as only a small fraction of them reached Israel itself.
A seven-year-old girl suffered severe injuries from shrapnel that fell directly onto her home. She was rushed to the hospital and underwent emergency surgery for a head wound. An estimated 31 people in total were treated for stress and minor injuries.
The U.S., U.K, France, and Jordan came together with Israel to intercept the onslaught of Iranian drones, according to multiple reports. Explosions could be seen over Jerusalem and other parts of the Jewish state as Israel and its allies defended the Jewish state. Most notably, Israel intercepted Iranian missiles headed towards the temple mount, a holy site for Jews, Christians, and Muslims.
Suchomimus is reporting that seven of the missiles that got through, all of which hit Nevatim Air Base.
“Not all of these were launched from Iran. Some of the drones came from Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen.”
“Around seven missiles [all hit near] Nevatim Air Base. The base is still operational, however. Here is an F-35 landing shortly after the attack, so I expect the damage is actually quite minimal.”
“Some Reports say they actually landed in open areas, missing the key infrastructure.”
The Times of Israel is reporting that airbase, which is home to Israel’s F-35s, appears to have been a primary target in the strike.
While a list of sites Iran tried to hit has not been publicized by Tehran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps — which launched the drones and missiles — the main target of the attack appeared to be a sensitive airbase in southern Israel, home to the F-35 stealth fighter jet, the military’s most advanced aircraft.
According to the Israel Defense Forces, Iran’s attack comprised 170 drones, 30 cruise missiles, and 120 ballistic missiles — 99% of which were intercepted by air defenses.
All the drones and cruise missiles were downed outside of the country’s airspace by the Israeli Air Force and its allies, including the United States, United Kingdom, Jordan, France, and others — according to the IDF’s top spokesman, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari.
Though Israel and Jordan have been quietly working together since they signed a peace treaty in 1994, this is the first instance I can recall of Jordanian planes helping protect Israeli airspace.
The drones had a flight time of multiple hours to reach Israel, and the cruise missiles similarly would have taken around more than an hour to reach their target, according to assessments by defense officials.
The ballistic missiles, however, have a much shorter flight time — around 10 minutes — and are more challenging to intercept, and indeed some managed to evade Israel’s air defenses early Sunday.
The IDF said that the long-range Arrow air defense system managed to knock down the “vast majority” of the 120 ballistic missiles. The Arrow 3 system is designed to take out ballistic missiles while they are still outside of the atmosphere.
We’ve talked about Iron Dome, Israel’s short range air defense system, but less about David’s Sling (intermediate range) and Arrow (long range). David’s Sling is a joint venture between Rafael and Raytheon, while Arrow 3 is jointly developed between Israel Aerospace Industries and Boeing.
Unlike the drones and cruise missiles, the ballistic missiles were shot down over Israel, leading the IDF to activate warning sirens over fears of falling shrapnel. The sole injury in Israel due to the Iranian attack was a Bedouin girl who was struck and seriously wounded by falling shrapnel in the Negev desert.
Snip.
Most of the sirens warning against the falling shrapnel and ballistic missiles were activated in the central and eastern Negev region of southern Israel, specifically in the area surrounding Nevatim Airbase. Sirens also sounded in the Jerusalem area, the West Bank, and Golan Heights.
A few of the ballistic missiles managed to bypass the Israeli defenses and strike the Nevatim base. According to the IDF, minor damage was caused to infrastructure at the airbase, but it was operating as usual on Sunday morning.
We’ll have to wait for satellite imagery to confirm that, but I suspect it will.
Why are Israeli air defense systems so much better at intercepting missiles and drones than Russia’s is? For one thing Israel’s systems are probably at least 30 years more advanced than Russia’s predominately ancient, predominately Soviet systems. For another, Russia is 779 times larger than Israel.
Right now it appears that Iran’s attack against Israel has been an expensive, colossal failure.
Update: Suchomimus has a new video up that shows minimal damage to the base.
Not even sure that this is worth a breaking, since it’s drones rather than missiles or planes, but Iran just launched a drone attack at Israel.
Iran launched a massive drone attack toward Israel Saturday night into Sunday morning local time, following through on its vow to retaliate against the Jewish state after several top Iranian commanders were killed in a suspected Israeli strike in Damascus earlier this month.
The Israeli military estimates that the attack involves over 100 drones, which won’t arrive in Israel for another few hours. Some reports indicate that the airborne operation will also include missiles. This would mark the first direct Iranian attack on Israeli soil.
On Friday, President Joe Biden said that Iran’s retaliatory attack against Israel was imminent and warned Tehran against carrying out the attack. “Don’t,” he said. U.S. officials believe the attack, once it hits Israel, will lead to a wider regional conflict that extends beyond Israel and Iranian proxies such as Hamas or Hezbollah.
Airspace in Israel, Iraq, and Jordan have been closed as the attack unfolds. U.S. and Israeli officials said they plan on intercepting the Iranian drones before they reach Israel, according to reports.
Early reports said “over 50,” now it’s “over 100,” and some Iranian sources say “500.”
It’s one thing to get drones past spread out Russian SAM systems, and quite another to get them past modern U.S. and Israeli aircraft, AWACS and Iron Dome.
Iran claims ballistic missiles are on the way. We’ll see. Nazi Germany hit London with V2s back in 1944, so it’s not like the basics are out of Iran’s technological reach. Still, I wouldn’t expect anything more sophisticated than a SCUD, and it wouldn’t surprise me if Iron Dome could shoot those down as well.
If it is just drones, it strikes me as more a performative strike than anything that will actually damage Israel. This was Iran gets to say “We struck back!” without actually committing serious assets.
Livemap says “dozens” of rockets have been fired from Lebanon, which is honestly pretty by the standards of Hezbollah rocket attacks.
Of course, Hamas isn’t launching any rockets, because they’ve contracted a terminal case of IDF.
Footage of an Israeli ABM (likely Arrow 2 or 3) achieving an exoatmospheric (space) kill on an Iranian ballistic missile somewhere east of Israel tonight. pic.twitter.com/jKihty4GR0
This is a big, big story that doesn’t seem to be getting the sort of attention that a big story should.
An Israeli airstrike that demolished Iran’s consulate in Syria on Monday killed two Iranian generals and five officers, according to Iranian officials. The strike appeared to signify an escalation of Israel’s targeting of military officials from Iran, which supports militant groups fighting Israel in Gaza, and along its border with Lebanon.
Some clarification: Given the location…
…what Israel hit was not a consulate, but Iran’s embassy in Syria. An embassy enjoys certain privliges in international law, though generally those protections apply to the host country (in this case Syria) than a hostile third party (Israel). So let’s just throw this out there:
Since the war in Gaza began nearly six months ago, clashes have increased between Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah militants based in Lebanon. Hamas, which rules Gaza and attacked Israel on Oct. 7, is also backed by Iran.
Israel, which rarely acknowledges strikes against Iranian targets, said it had no comment on the latest attack in Syria, although a military spokesman blamed Iran for a drone attack early Monday against a naval base in southern Israel.
Israel has grown increasingly impatient with the daily exchanges of fire with Hezbollah, which have escalated in recent days, and warned of the possibility of a full-fledged war. Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen have also been launching long-range missiles toward Israel, including on Monday.
The airstrike in Syria killed Gen. Mohammad Reza Zahedi, who led the elite Quds Force in Lebanon and Syria until 2016, according to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard. It also killed Zahedi’s deputy, Gen Mohammad Hadi Hajriahimi, and five other officers.
A member of Hezbollah, Hussein Youssef, also was killed in the attack, an official with the militant group told The Associated Press. The official spoke on condition of anonymity in line with group’s rules. Hezbollah has not publicly announced the death.
By the rules of international law, hitting Iran’s embassy is the same as hitting a target in Iran’s own soil. Now, Iran has been funding and supporting terrorist attacks on Israel for decades, funding both Hamas and Hezbollah as part of a proxy war against Israel, and Israel has hit targets inside Iran before, albeit with covert actors rather than airstrikes. Even so, this would seem to be a significant escalation in the proxy war between Iran and Israel.
I don’t any of this amounts to anything close to a war crime. But it may amount to a mistake.
But, weirdly, the world at large doesn’t seem to be treating it as such. There are stories about it, but The All Powerful Algorithm doesn’t seem to be pushing them to the front page. You would think the Iran-loving Obama retread’s guiding Biden’s foreign policy establishment would have encouraged more outraged bleating, but if they have it seems pretty muted.
Likewise, there are no stories about it from conservative media in my inbox.
Even the dark “Biden is going to abandon Israel and side with Iran” muttering types don’t seem to have made much of it.
This is a dog that isn’t barking, and I don’t know why.
If you know what to make of it, feel free to note in the comments below.
Bad news: Still unemployed. Good news: Applied/submitted for lots of jobs.
Good news: My dog’s operation was a success! Bad news: The lump was cancerous. Good news: The cancer was a Stage 1 soft tissue melanoma, which is the lowest level and has little chance of recurrence.
Also: Today is Friday the 13th. Also, a Hamas leader has declared a “Day of Jihad.
At the time, Maisy, now 22, was in her final year of high school. She and her two older sisters, along with Joe Biden and First Lady Jill, had tried to stage an intervention just weeks earlier at the President’s Delaware home to get Hunter to go back to rehab.
He promised to go, but instead ended up smoking crack in a hotel, he confessed in his 2021 memoir, Beautiful Things.
Emails and messages from his laptop show money he took from Maisy’s educational savings account went in part to paying various suspected prostitutes who visited him at hotels in the following days, his Porsche 911 car loan, sex webcam subscription fees, and other personal expenses.
Hunter’s assistant Katie Dodge plaintively emailed him on December 28 that year that he had University of Pennsylvania tuition bills of $27,945 due (likely for his eldest daughter, Naomi), a $1,700 payment for his Porsche, $4,244.70 for Maisy’s high school Sidwell Friends, her $3,000 paycheck and $1,000 for another employee.
Hunter tersely told Dodge to pay for the Porsche and his health insurance, but that she would only be getting half her paycheck – and that he would ‘deal with tuitions when time comes.’
Following reports of Syria launching missiles at northern Israel, Israel hit the country’s two main international airports, “in the capital of Damascus and Aleppo in the north. It happened while an Iranian plane was inbound.” Also, the number of Americans killed by Hamas is now up to 27.
A day late, a shekel short: “Israel Loosens Strict Gun Control Laws To Arm ‘As Many Citizens As Possible.'” Benjamin Netanyahu and the entire Israeli political establishment deserve a good measure of blame for not doing this much sooner.
Speaking of guns in Gaza evidently Hamas now have a lot of rifles chambered in 5.56 NATO thanks to the Biden Administration’s abrupt withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Steve Scalise drops out of the House Speaker race. Does this mean Jim Jordan is back in the picture? Jordan was briefly the frontrunner before Scalise emerged as the candidate preferred by a majority of Republican House members, and Jordan was also endorsed by Donald Trump. Update: Yep, it’s Jordan.
Even House Democrats are slamming The Squad for their anti-Israel/pro-Hamas bias.
A revolt against government policies that many say usurp parental authority is spreading across the nation—especially in blue states where lawmakers have promoted transgender ideology and “gender-affirming care”—according to parents, attorneys, and teachers.
For more than a year, California parents have shown up in droves at legislative hearings and phoned in by the hundreds to protest policies that encourage schools to keep social gender transitions of children secret. Teachers also have begun to refuse to hide information about a child’s gender identity from parents.
Meanwhile, Democratic members of the California Legislative LGBTQ Caucus have spearheaded legislation supporting so-called gender-affirming care, especially for children, touting it as a “first-in-the-nation” model.
Parental rights groups such as Our Duty have pushed back against the model, while groups such as Planned Parenthood, Equality California, and others support it.
California school districts claim that they’re required by law to keep gender transitions secret from parents unless a child wants to tell his or her parents. But recent court rulings tell a different story.
A federal judge on Sept. 14 blocked California’s Escondido Union School District from punishing two teachers who refused to comply with guidance issued by the California Department of Education that encourages educators to keep gender transitions of students secret from their parents.
The People’s Republic of California is getting ready to declare war on classic cars. “California is looking seriously at instituting, or allowing local governments to institute, zero emission zones in the near future. In preparation for such a move, the California Air Resources Board (or CARB) is reportedly gathering information about classic cars.”
Federal prosecutors announced that an El Paso woman received a prison sentence of more than seven years after admitting to impersonating immigration agents to swindle money from “undocumented noncitizen victims and their family members.”
The Department of Justice (DOJ) stated that 53-year-old Ana Maria Hernandez pleaded guilty in April to 10 counts of wire fraud and one count of impersonation. Prosecutors say she pretended to be an official with Citizenship and Immigration Services and promised victims she could help them acquire American citizenship and collected fees.
Poor construction in illegal alien-populated Colony ridge is affecting Harris County water. “Harris County Commissioner Tom Ramsey (R-Pct. 3) warned his fellow commissioners on Tuesday that improper drainage construction in Colony Ridge was causing erosion and excessive silt to wash downstream into the county’s main source of drinking water.”
Follow-up: Josh Kruger, the recently-murdered gay left wing journalist who taunted conservatives, has been accused of grooming his accused killer from age 15. “The Philadelphia Inquirer reports that the family of Kruger’s alleged killer, 19-year-old Robert Davis, says Kruger began a years-long relationship involving drugs that began when Davis was just 15-years-old. Davis remains at large.”
Every single donation sent by Christianity Today staffers went to Democrats.
Below is the tip jar, if you’re so inclined. Thanks to everyone who donated to the Non-Homeless Blogger Fund. I’m bad at thanking people individually the way I should, but let me know if you want public recognition in this space or not.
The job search continues, Buddy is healing nicely from his surgery, and we’ve finally gotten some decent cool weather. This week: More Biden border follies, social justice types getting stabbed by reality, and a double dose of doggy goodness. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
Department of Homeland Security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas waived 26 federal laws Wednesday, allowing border-wall construction in south Texas to resume under the Biden administration for the first time since former president Donald Trump left office.
“There is presently an acute and immediate need to construct physical barriers and roads in the vicinity of the border of the United States in order to prevent unlawful entries into the United States in the project areas,” Mayorkas wrote in the notice.
The new construction project will add an additional 20 miles to the border wall in Starr County, Texas, which has been reported as an area experiencing “high illegal entry.” Border Patrol’s Rio Grande Valley sector, in which the county is located, has seen over 245,000 illegal migrants enter the U.S. through that area during fiscal year 2023.
Among the 26 laws that the DHS waived included the Clean Air Act, Safe Drinking Water Act, and Endangered Species Act, all notable environmental laws that limited further construction of the wall. The project will be funded by a congressional appropriations package from fiscal year 2019, the notice stated.
The announcement marks a noticeable flip from President Joe Biden’s original stance on the matter. “Building a massive wall that spans the entire southern border is not a serious policy solution,” Biden said in January 2021, ending the national emergency over the border crisis when he first became president.
While running against Trump in 2020, Biden emphatically stated, “There will not be another foot of wall constructed in my administration.”
Of course the same overflowing conditions have been plaguing the border throughout the entirety of Biden’s term, but Democratic mayors we’re screaming for relief from their own “sanctuary city” policies until recently. Chalk up another win for Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s illegal alien busing policies.
Or maybe not? “Mayorkas Furiously Backpedals After Claiming ‘Acute & Immediate Need’ For Border Wall.”
3 million people, more or less, were “encountered” by U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which includes the Border Patrol, illegally entering the U.S. in fiscal year 2023 (which ended Sept. 30). On Mayorkas’ watch, we have set the record for the highest number of yearly illegal alien encounters in U.S. history. If those caught in 2023 formed a new city, it would the third biggest in America, behind only New York and Los Angeles.
304,000 illegal aliens were encountered this August alone (the last month for which we have official government numbers). That’s the population of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
75% of August’s inadmissible aliens were freely let in by President Joe Biden’s Department of Homeland Security. Mayorkas has told the press and Congress many times that the border is not open. But if a door admits three of every four people who attempt to go through it, can we consider it closed? A philosophical question, perhaps. Maybe we can settle on “mostly open,” like the “mostly dead” Wesley in the movie “The Princess Bride” or the “mostly peaceful” riots of 2020.
A November 2021 arrest in Queens, New York led to the discovery of a satanic cult of pedophile extortionists known as 764, which has been linked to significant criminal activity around the globe. The organization, which goes byseveral aliases, was uncovered by the FBI while investigating alarming posts on social media made by 23-year-old Angel Almeida of Astoria, Queens, The Guardian reports.
Almeida was flagged to the FBI by an anonymous tipster who was concerned over his social media accounts, which contained images of violence against children and animals. In one post, he expressed support for Charleston mass-murderer Dylann Roof. Another post showed him talking around with a shotgun while wearing a “a skull mask and crossed bandoliers of rifle ammunition across his chest with a flag in the background featuring an Order of Nine Angles symbol.”
Almeida served 18 months in prison for third degree burglary in 2018, and was arrested for being a felon in possession of a firearm. He was detained in Brooklyn’s metropolitan detention center. In February 2023, federal prosecutors filed a superseding indictment on child pornography and exploitation charges related to his involvement in the cult, as well as hundreds of thousands of digital files recovered from his residence.
In new charges, Almeida is accused of coercing a teenage girl into having sex with an older man, and convincing another girl to cut herself on camera and send it to him.
In one post, Almeida posts “For the 2k pedophile haters,” showing his finger over the trigger guard of a Taurus handgun.
I haven’t kept up with internal issues in Commie dystopian Venezuela, but evidently they’re having trouble with criminal gangs.
Early in the morning of September 20, 11,000 members of the Venezuelan security forces deployed around the notorious prison of Tocorón in Aragua state, the home base of the country’s most powerful criminal structure, the Tren de Aragua.
“The Bolivarian Government informs that the Cacique Guaicaipuro Liberation Operation has been underway since the early hours of the morning. Its objective is to dismantle and put an end to organized crime gangs and other criminal networks operating from the Tocorón Penitentiary, to the detriment of the tranquility of the Venezuelan people,” read an official communiqué.
Residents living near the prison were awakened by the sounds of armored vehicles speeding towards the prison, in what is one of the largest deployments ever of the Venezuelan security forces.
The simple fact that the operation, named after a legendary native chief of the 16th Century, needed 11,000 soldiers and officials speaks to the power of the Tren de Aragua and its leader Héctor Rusthenford Guerrero Flores, alias “Niño Guerrero,” in Tocorón.
The prison, which is in the central state of Aragua and home to some 7,000 inmates, is one of the biggest in the country.
This operation, the first against the Tren de Aragua, and the largest of its kind to date, is a clear show of force by the Venezuelan government.
Tocorón has long been home to the Tren de Aragua and Niño Guerrero, who ran the prison like his personal fiefdom with the blessing of the prison ministry (Ministerio de Poder Popular para el Servicio Penitenciario). Niño Guerrero, imprisoned for murder, was the “pran” of Tocorón prison, essentially the criminal warden in a system set up by the first Prison Minister Iris Varela, now Vice President of the National Assembly. The pran system saw inmates take control of several prisons across the country in exchange for maintaining order, reducing homicides, and ending jail uprisings.
This operation might signal the end of the pran system, something suggested in the official communique of the operation, which stated that the operation was to “restore and dignify the penitentiary system.”
The question now is whether this operation will disrupt the leadership and running of the Tren de Aragua, a transnational criminal structure with thousands of affiliates with a presence not only across Venezuela, but in Colombia, Peru, and Chile. The Tren de Aragua has projected power abroad, riding off the backs of the more than seven million Venezuelans who have fled the economic collapse and authoritarian regime presided over by President Nicolás Maduro.
What has prompted Maduro to act after years of tolerating the criminal fiefdom of Tocorón? The Venezuelan president has long tolerated criminal structures operating in the country, both Venezuelan and Colombian, because he needed access to criminal rents to maintain the loyalty of key generals and political figures, as the state teetered on the brink of bankruptcy.
However, since 2020, the Venezuelan security forces have moved against several defiant criminal groups, like the megabanda of Carlos Luis Revete, alias “El Koki,” and dissident elements of the rebel group the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia – FARC), which set up drug trafficking infrastructure in the Venezuelan department of Apure. The operation against the ex-FARC saw the deployment of significant military forces, which ended up humiliated by the Colombian rebels, who captured eight soldiers and forced a military withdrawal. This might explain the apparent overkill with the Tocorón operation: Maduro clearly did not want any further defeats or humiliations.
“Philadelphia Journalist Who Mocked Concern Over Violent Crime In Democrat Cities Shot Dead In Home.”
A left-wing Philadelphia journalist who mocked concern over rising crime in Democrat-run cities was shot to death in his home.
Josh Kruger was shot seven times after someone entered his home, shot him at the base of his stairs, and then fled. Kruger ran outside seeking help from his neighbors and collapsed, where police found them after responding to call just before 1:30 a.m. on the 2300 block of Watkins Street.
Kruger, 39, was rushed to the Penn Presbyterian Medical Center, where he died just before 2:15 a.m.
No arrests have been made, and there was no sign of forced entry into the home, according to Deputy Police Commissioner Frank Vanore.
“Either the door was open, or the offender knew how to get the door open,” he said. “We just don’t know yet.”
Detectives believe his death may have been the result of a domestic dispute or may have been drug-related, according to three law enforcement sources with knowledge of the case. The sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation, said police investigators recovered troubling text messages between Kruger and a former partner. Investigators also recovered methamphetamine inside Kruger’s bedroom, the sources said. -Inquirer
Snip.
Kruger frequently mocked conservatives on X, ironically calling Dilbert creator Scott Adams “Nostradamus” on Saturday for predicting that people would be dead “within the year” of Biden’s election.
Kruger also mocked conservatives concerned over the city’s shootings, which he said were “dropping to levels not seen in years.”
More on the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, Syria gets spicy again, woke companies like Disney are having massive layoffs, and Sig Saur gets into the Killbot business. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
Courtesy of Bloomberg’s reporting, it appears that not only were insiders dumping their shares faster than syphilitic hooker, there were loading up on loans from the bank at a scale that makes a mockery of any regulatory oversight…
”
Yes, that’s real.
Loans to officers, directors and principal shareholders, and their related interests, more than tripled from the third quarter last year to $219 million in the final three months of 2022 – a record dollar amount of loans going back over 20 years.
Many questions come to mind – what were the terms, who were the recipients, what was the collateral?
But, sadly, we will likely never know.
However, we do note that the banking execs may be facing a serious shortfall (like their bank): if the loans were collateralized by SVB shares for example, those shares are now worthless, leaving the loan-heavy C-suite left to come up with the cash to repay the loans (and no, these loans don’t disappear with the bank’s liquidation).
Between that and the insider share dumping, people need to go to jail.
After the implosion of the FTX crypto exchange run by Sam Bankman Fried, questions of due diligence and competency immediately arose, suggesting that perhaps the company mishandled assets “accidentally” and that Fried was naive and “in over his head.” Numerous central bank officials and globalist organizations jumped into the debate almost immediately, arguing that FTX was a perfect example of why centralized regulation of crypto and digital currencies was necessary. They claimed that without oversight by banking elites, disaster was inevitable.
Of course, what they did not mention was that FTX and Sam Fried already had extensive connections with globalist groups including the World Economic Forum. In fact, the very basis of Fried’s business model was the WEF’s “Stakeholder Capitalism” theory, which he often referred to as “Effective Altruism.”
Stakeholder Capitalism is essentially the opposite of free markets – It is a socialist/globalist framework which uses corporations as a kind of economic enforcement tool. Corporations are already highly socialistic in their operations, and their existence is completely dependent on their special relationship with government. Corporations are created through government charter, enjoy special protections under “corporate personhood” laws and avoid direct consequences for criminal activities through limited liability.
Many corporations are not even allowed to fail because governments backstop their operations. That’s socialism, not free markets. However, “stakeholder capitalism” expands on this dynamic a hundred-fold.
Where free markets assert that businesses must make profit their primary objective for the overall economy to function, the WEF asserts that companies including banking institutions have a social obligation that goes beyond making money. To the typical leftist this probably sounds like a Utopian vision filled with promise, but to anyone that actually understands economics it sounds like a recipe for the collapse of civilization.
The WEF paints stakeholder capitalism an effort to reign in the power of the corporate system in favor of social causes. In reality, it’s a way to give corporations ultimate power over everything, including ultimate influence over public behavior.
We have seen extensive evidence of this through widespread corporate ESG investment programs implemented in the past several years. It is no coincidence that the invasion of woke ideology into the mainstream happened at the exact same time that ESG-based lending accelerated.
The institutions lending to various companies were able to set social rules for access to credit, and these rules required businesses to adopt far-left politics in their marketing and policies as a result. Stakeholder capitalism is about homogenizing all business into a single ideological entity – Instead of competing with each other for market share through innovation, companies have been abandoning merit based competition and are colluding to saturate the mainstream with social justice cultism, climate change propaganda and globalist rhetoric.
By making corporate elites “responsible” for society, we give them the power to engineer society.
However, the WEF’s model of false altruism is turning out to be a disaster for corporate survival. I have to wonder now if this was the intent all along – To create a kind of ESG fueled woke financial bubble that was always intended to come crashing down, leaving the western world in ruins.
Snip.
Looking into SVB’s operational history, the company was a woke nightmare.
Take a gander at their 66 page ESG report compiled in 2021 to get a sense of how far to the extreme political left the bank was. SVB is the pinnacle example of why “Get Woke, Go Broke” is more than a mantra, it’s a rule.
Digging even deeper we then find that SVB’s leadership was highly involved in the WEF and their Stakeholder Capitalism Metrics (SCM), along with corporate governance. SVB was not only implementing every single policy the WEF outlines in its agenda, they were reporting back to the WEF on their progress.
SVB’s capital exposure was heavily tied up in securities, but also venture capital for woke tech startups, climate change related projects and leftist activist groups which qualified for ESG loans; everything from BLM to Buzzfeed. In other words, they were investing aggressively into money-pit projects that devoured cash and gave nothing back. The real question is, how many US banks are involved in ESG and WEF operations at the same level as SVB? Dozens? Hundreds?
“U.S. Carries Out Airstrikes in Syria after Iranian Drone Kills U.S. Contractor, Wounds Five Service Members.” As I’ve mentioned before the withdrawal of most U.S. troops from Iraq and Syria doesn’t mean all. And the same goes for Africa.
“56% of liberal white women age 18-29 have been diagnosed with a mental health condition.” Well, you already said “liberal”…
Louisiana state Rep. Francis Thompson switched from the Democratic to the Republican Party, given Republicans a super-majority in both houses and thus the ability to override any veto by Democratic Governor John Bel Edwards. ““The push the past several years by Democratic leadership on both the national and state level to support certain issues does not align with those values and principles that are a part of my Christian life,” said Thompson.
World Athletics, the governing body for international track and field competition, has banned men from international competition. “I’ll take ‘Headlines no one in the 20th century would understand’ for $600, Alex.”
“Dallas Bar Cancels All-ages Drag Event.” Funny how the threat of having your TABC license yanked concentrates the mind…
Get Woke, Go Broke Part 1: After a string of expensive bombs and streaming losses, Disney to lay off 7,000 employees.
Get Woke, Go Broke 1.5: “Woke Marvel Producer Victoria Alonso Gone From MCU.” She was one of the central figures pushing Disney to adopt a pro-groomer position in Florida. The ostensible reason for her firing was breach of contract for producing a non-Marvel movie, but a lot of industry insiders think her outspoken wokeness was a key reason for her getting the axe.
Get Woke, Go Broke Part 2: “Twitch Streaming Service To Sack 36% Of Employees.”
SIG Sauer announced late last week it has acquired General Robotics, one of the world’s premier manufacturers of lightweight remote weapon stations and tactical robotics for manned and unmanned platforms as well as anti-drone applications. The companies have been working in concert for some time, a fact made obvious at January’s SHOT Show when they debuted a Polaris ATV equipped with a General Robotics PitBull remote weapons station that aimed and fired the vehicle-mounted SIG MG 338 belt-fed machine gun remotely.
“This acquisition will greatly enhance SIG Sauer’s growing portfolio of advanced weapon systems,” said Ron Cohen, president and CEO of SIG Sauer. The team at General Robotics is leading the way in the development of intuitive, lightweight remote weapon stations with their battle-proven solution.”
“Biden’s job growth is mostly immigrants working for low wages.” Also this: “The Department of Homeland Security has been issuing an unknown number of two-year work permits to illegal immigrants, which will keep them in the workforce suppressing wages and fanning the flames of discontent amongst Americans unable to find jobs until the next presidential election.” What the hell?
“Disinformation Inc: State Department bankrolls group secretly blacklisting conservative media.”
The Department of State has funded a deep-pocketed “disinformation” tracking group that is secretly blacklisting and trying to defund conservative media, likely costing the news organizations vital advertising dollars, the Washington Examiner can confirm.
The Global Disinformation Index, a British organization with two affiliated U.S. nonprofit groups, is feeding blacklists to ad companies with the intent of defunding and shutting down websites peddling alleged “disinformation,” the Washington Examiner reported . This same “disinformation” group has received $330,000 from two State Department-backed entities linked to the highest levels of government, raising concerns from First Amendment lawyers and members of Congress.
“Any outfit like that engaged in censorship shouldn’t have any contact with the government because they’re tainted by association with a group that is doing something fundamentally against American values,” Jeffrey Clark, ex-acting head of the Justice Department’s Civil Division, told the Washington Examiner. “The government or any private entity shouldn’t be involved with this entity that’s engaged in conduct that is either legally questionable or at least morally questionable.”
GDI compiles a “dynamic exclusion list” that it feeds to corporate entities, such as the Microsoft -owned advertising company Xandr, emails show. Xandr and other companies are, in turn, declining to place ads on websites that GDI flags as peddling disinformation.
The Washington Examiner revealed on Thursday that it is on this exclusion list. The list includes at least 2,000 websites and has “had a significant impact on the advertising revenue that has gone to those sites,” said GDI’s CEO Clare Melford on a March 2022 podcast.
GDI has identified that the 10 “riskiest” news outlets for disinformation are the American Spectator, Newsmax, the Federalist, the American Conservative, One America News, the Blaze, the Daily Wire, RealClearPolitics, Reason, and the New York Post.
Another huge story that the news media has done it’s best to ignore: a toxic derailment in East Palestine, Ohio. The blew it up to prevent a BLEVE and ended up releasing Phosgene gas. That’s carrying your World War I reenactment too far.
90-year California Democratic Senator old Dianne Feinstein to retire after 2024. But…
A few hour later she was evidently unaware she had retired. Increasingly, “crazy” or “senile” seem to be the two most common flavors of the Democratic Party…
Peter Zeihan says the abysmal performance of the Russian Army is going to have a whole lot of ramifications around the world, many in Russia’s own near abroad. “It means that the image of the Russians as a regional power, much less a global one, is gone, and it’s not coming back.”
Some takeaways:
“The countries that had signed on to kind of a Russian Alliance, if you will, [they’re] on their own completely, and that provides opportunities for their rivals to take matters into their own hands.”
Belarus: “Here’s a country of 10 million people that has basically hitched itself to Putin’s star. And the Poles, the Latvians, the Lithuanians, the Estonians, the Finns, and the Swedes they have been chomping at the bit for years to try to take Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus down to size and basically peel Belarus out of the Russian orbit. They will now have the opportunity, and it’s unlikely that anyone in Europe or the United States is going to try to stand in the way.”
“Unless Lukashenko sues for peace with the Balts and the Nordics, very quickly we should count on seeing him being brought up on war crimes before very long. Because after all he did provide the access that was necessary for the assault on Kiev early in the war.”
Georgia: “Here I do expect things to be a little bit more circumspect. The Georgians tried to call Russia’s bluff and invade their former secessionist Republics of North Ossetia and Abkhazia several years ago in 2004, and it was a trap and the Russians were able to destroy the Georgian Army. So the Georgians are not going to do this until a couple of other countries in the region have already pulled this off successfully.”
Moldova:
There’s a small secessionist republic there called Transnistra. It’s only 10 percent of the population of a country of like three and a half million people. There’s not much going on there, but the Russians intervened decisively right at the end of the Soviet collapse to basically make sure that Transnistra could be functionally independent under Russian sponsorship, but unlike the Georgian secessionist territories, which share a land border with Russia proper, Transnistra is on its own. The only way to supply it is through Ukraine, and that has obviously stopped. So the Moldovans and their sponsors in Romania have now a vested interest in ending this historical aberration, and I would expect to see that being wrapped up within a year or two.
Israel: Without big brother Russia providing help, Syria may be screwed.
The Russians have very publicly, unfortunately for them, relocated a lot of hardware from Syria to Ukraine, specifically air defense equipment to help them with their assaults. Which means that if you are Israel, the only thing that is standing in your way of going after the Syrian regime is someone from the Biden Administration saying “You know what? We really don’t want a nuclear event to erupt because there are Russian troops involved.” Well, the tone of the Biden Administration in the last 72 hours has kind of changed. Now it’s more of “You kids go have fun” sort of vibe, so I expect us to see some very interesting pyrotechnics between the Israelis and the Syrians in a very short period of time, followed by the Syrians suing for peace. Which means that we get to revisit the entire Syrian Civil War now without the Russians being players.
Two caveats from my viewpoint: 1. Given the history of Israeli striking Syria with impunity several times over the past decade, with possibly one Israeli plane hit during that period, I don’t think Russian anti-aircraft equipment have provided any significant deterrent to Israel doing whatever it wanted in Syria. I view it more likely that Israel views a weakened Assad continually beset by a grinding civil war against numerous enemies a preferable option to taking him out entirely. 2. Not sure where Zeihan is getting his information on a change in the Biden Administration’s messaging to Israeli, but I readily concede that he likely does have better sources than I do. It may also be that the most recent failure of the asinine Iran deal has changed the collective mind of whatever passes for a Biden brain trust.
Speaking of Iran: “Tehran has lost its primary weapons sponsor, and its primary Security Council sponsor, and that is going to force the Iranians to think differently and act differently in every theater.”
Plus possible policy changes in (or toward) Cuba and Venezuela.
Lebanon has seized a ship loaded with barley and wheat flour while it determines whether the cargo may have been stolen from Ukraine, said Public Prosecutor Ghassan Oueidat.
The Ukrainian Embassy in Beirut said the vessel was loaded at Feodosia in the Russian-occupied peninsula of Crimea, and that the commodities originated from Zaporizhzhia, Mykolaiv and Kherson in southeastern Ukraine.
The embassy accused Russia of stealing more than 500,000 tons during its occupation of the three regions. While Russia denies stealing grain, it has publicly touted the resumption of grain shipments from occupied ports.
Grain shipments from Crimea have surged since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February, which analysts say indicates Ukrainian grain is being exported. Exports from Crimea are sanctioned by the European Union and the U.S..
The cargo ship Laodicea arrived at Tripoli in northern Lebanon on July 27, according to ship-tracking data monitored by Bloomberg. It will be held while Lebanon carries out an investigation into the cargo’s origin, Oueidat told Bloomberg.
Supposedly the seizure is limited to 72 hours. We’ll see.
The ship’s registered owner is Syria Mar Shipping Ltd., according to European database Equasis. Syria Mar Shipping Ltd. wasn’t immediately available to comment. Both the company and the ship were sanctioned by the U.S. in 2015 for their association with the Syrian government of President Bashar Assad.
Syria, of course, is a neighbor that has repeatedly interfered with Lebanon through its terrorist proxy/political party Hezbollah, though current Lebanese President Michel Aoun usually counts Hezbollah as a parliamentary ally. (Summarizing the weird twists and turns of Lebanon’s ever-shifting multi-confessional political landscape is way beyond the scope of this article, though if you’re really interested, reading Michael Totten’s The Road to Fatima Gate might help.) The fact that Lebanon, a small and broke country, is willing to defy both Russia and Syria, speaks to how unified much of the world is against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and how little such countries fear Russia’s wrath these days.
Indeed, the “broke” part may be the deciding factor here, as Lebanon is seeking a $3 billion bailout from the IMF (which is demanding enactment of serious reforms before handing the money over), and the big backers of the IMF are all firmly on Ukraine’s side.
If counties like Lebanon (somewhere around the 100th largest economy in the world) are willing to seize illicit Russian cargo, then the opportunities for Russia to financial benefit from its illegal occupation of Ukraine would seem to be thin.
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