[CNS] In an era where everything is captured on camera, the cold-blooded murder of Gyovanny Arzuaga and Yasmin Perez remains particularly galling.
The occasion was the Puerto Rican Day Parade in Chicago, Saturday last. The location: West Division Street on the Northwest Side, at Humboldt Park.
South Africa style—and for no good reason—a bunch of "fellas," as Colin Flaherty is wont to say, leapt out of their vehicle, surrounded a stationary car, pulled a young couple out of it, and shot each in the head, execution style, while hopping about and gesticulating in feral glee. Watch:
There was no detonating rage or purpose to the act—only heightened arousal. The scene had the ritualistic quality of a voodoo ceremony, minus the wide-eyed ululation. Running commentary offered by the videographer had the same flat affect: Folks, this is good fun, but hey, stay cool. Chill.
"I don’t think this crime will be ’disappeared’ so easily," tweeted one "Musil Protege." "It may be worth watching Tucker tonight. He has developed a relationship with Chicago Alderman Raymond Lopez," posited "Musil." The alderman is "a reasonable law-and-order Democrat, who has become something of a thorn in the side of Mayor [Lori] Lightfoot."
[InfoWars] The New York Times reported, “The New York City Public Design Commission voted unanimously…to relocate the bronze effigy of the nation’s 26th president that has stood at the Upper West Side institution since 1940.”
[VDH at American Greatness] - Debt is suffocating us. Our currency is on its way to being Lebanonized.
Most major American cities are broke, dirty, unsafe, and run by either corrupt incumbents, neo-Marxists, or both. The law is optional, and applied asymmetrically on the basis of race and ideology. The past is found guilty by the laws of the present and so it is being undone.
The military budget is on a trajectory to be the smallest in terms of GDP allotment since World War II; its careerist officers, for their own short-term interests, are now demonizing and will soon be driving away the very demographic that has suffered percentage-wise the greatest casualties in recent wars and was once unquestionably the foundation of the military.
There is no U.S. border; it is an abstract construct that millions will illegally cross in the next few years, ostensibly because they will become future soldiers in the progressive wars for America to come. The idea of merit that built America is a dirty word, replaced by medieval tribalism of hiring and promotion by superficial appearance.
In just five months, Joe Biden created a desert and called it progress.
Progressivism is billed as many things. But its foundational brand is devotion to supposedly "scientific" principles to improve the human condition. That Enlightenment project demands greater social welfare expenditure and therapeutic education to "improve" human nature itself. And all this can sometimes require necessary force.
Such utopian dreams of mandated equity attract all sorts to the cause. There are the naïve who feel socialist redistribution, if at last done right just this once, can really, really create social equity and inclusion. Many of the sympathetic rich assume they will be exempt from the tough medicine that follows from their own guilt or sense of civic duty. Some are opportunistic and parasitical careerists piggy-backing on the chaos. Others are social and psychological zealots who find meaning and relevance as wannabe soldiers marching to utopia.
[Washington Examiner] UFOs exist that appear to display technology the United States does not possess and lacks the ability to defend against, according to a former intelligence chief.
John Ratcliffe, who served as former President Donald Trump’s final director of national intelligence and oversaw the nation’s 18 spy agencies, made the observation while offering insight into a declassified report on "unidentified aerial phenomena," which was released by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence on Friday.
The long-anticipated but very brief document discussed 144 reports of UFOs originating from U.S. government sources between 2004 and 2021. Eighty were observed with multiple different sensors, and most reports described the UFOs as objects that interrupted preplanned military training or other military operations. The ODNI report said "a handful" of the UFOs "appear to demonstrate advanced technology" and "in 18 incidents, described in 21 reports, observers reported unusual UAP movement patterns or flight characteristics." Parts of the assessment also remain classified.
In giving his first public reaction to the unclassified ODNI report since its release, Ratcliffe told Fox News host Dan Bongino for a Saturday episode of Unfiltered that UFOs are a matter of national security and stressed that the real number of UFOs that have been observed remains unknown to the public.
Officials are telling us , We are being visited 🛸, and they don't know by who...
"The scientists identified 1,715 star systems where alien observers could have discovered Earth in the past 5,000 years by watching it ‘transit’ across the face of the sun."
Me, I'll say to them,
Y'all drop on by, and we'll have a drink and toast our new acquaintance, you Boys ever had shine, corn squeezens, or white ⚡ lightning ?
It cures whatever ails you, I guarantee!
#11
"It's... CRT!" [ripple of fear]
"Why cain't we jes' zerp 'em?"
"Oh,dear."
"Yo, send us to Durrr,
Where there could be a cure!"
"Fellow Alphans, the answer is clear...
And it's thirteen-thirds light years from here!"
#14
Has anyone seen the Alien movies? I always thought it's less about the deadly crawling things that may populate space, and more about the certainty of Americans bringing them home.
'Something is out there'
... and it hates us!
But verily let's go,
ask how it rates us.
Mayhap we shall,
without Sharpton Al
learn to love it
while it face rapes us.
#2
I was startled by my first example of the fashion at a rocker bar last Thursday. It was open jam night — “Let The Bodies Hit The Floor” got them up on their feet, and Dudley Taft, formerly of grunge bands Sweet Water and Second Coming is a favourite, to give you the flavour of the place. The dress was sweetly dowdy — the fabric was a floral in sepia tones which made the blond young lady fade into the background, paired with Depression era boots and a straw hat — but she clearly felt herself quite stylish.
#4
^
Bet you would look 'smashing' in the 50s-2021 style TW, pleasing colors, classic design, hot tomato look, with polka dots (appreciate ladies in polka dots like pic#2) --- Mr. TW might like it too.
I think its great, no grunge, real style, there might be hope for the Zzz's yet, if they get the 'conservative attitude' and 'I like Ike' politics.
#6
Not gonna happen folks - not today or tomorrow. Perhaps, in a not too distant future... but not today as there is little to no political currency to be had in it.
Posted by: Rex Mundi ||
06/28/2021 14:18 Comments ||
Top||
#7
Women dressing like women. Is that even allowed anymore?
Posted by: Matt ||
06/28/2021 14:25 Comments ||
Top||
#8
Bet you would look 'smashing' in the 50s-2021 style TW, pleasing colors, classic design, hot tomato look, with polka dots (appreciate ladies in polka dots like pic#2) --- Mr. TW might like it too.
You are too kind, Hupulet Untervehr2563. Mr. Wife does indeed enjoy that look on me. If I ever lose the Covid weight I’ll pull out all the cashmere sweaters and pencil skirts I currently have boxed up.
[Hot Air] The Texas Supreme Court is on a roll. Yesterday I wrote about a groundbreaking decision made by the court that Facebook can be held liable for sex traffickers who use the social media platform to recruit and prey on children. Today there is a "landmark" decision to be heralded from the court. A retail sports chain cannot be held responsible for selling a gun used in a massing shooting.
The mass shooting at the First Baptist Church of Sutherland Springs in 2017 resulted in the deaths of 25 innocent churchgoers and 20 injured. A madman entered the church during Sunday morning services and opened fire. Those murdered included a pregnant woman. He turned the gun on himself after that, dying of a self-inflicted gunshot. This horrific event is Texas’ deadliest ever mass shooting. The attention turned to the mass shooter, a 26-year-old former airman, and how he came to have possession of his weapon, a Model 8500 Ruger AR-556, fitted with a 30-round magazine. The former airman had a troubled military record — he served a year in confinement after an assault conviction in 2012 and was released from the USAF in 2014 with a bad conduct discharge. He lived in Comal County, outside of San Antonio. Apparently, this developed from a domestic dispute and his mother-in-law was a member of the church.
With that record, the shooter should not have been in possession of a gun, right? Survivors and families of victims filed four lawsuits against Academy Sports + Outdoors, the retailer who sold the gun to the shooter. The lawsuits accused Academy Sports of negligence for making the sale in the first place. On Friday, the Texas Supreme Court issued a unanimous decision — Academy Sports can not be held responsible for the actions of the gun owner. It tossed all four lawsuits.
As it turns out, Academy Sports did all it could to make a responsible sale. It followed the law and performed a background check. The shooter, however, wasn’t properly flagged as a risk. The Air Force dropped the ball. The Air Force didn’t enter his domestic violence conviction against his wife and infant son into a government database. This would have prevented him from passing a background check to purchase the gun.
When the lawsuits were filed, Academy Sports claimed it was shielded by the federal Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act. This law protects firearms dealers and manufacturers from lawsuits when the gun owner legally purchases a weapon and then uses it in a crime. The retail store asked State District Judge Karen H. Pozza, a Democrat, to throw out the lawsuits but she ruled against Academy Sports.
The unanimous ruling by the Texas Supreme Court was signed by Justice Debra Lehrmann. How could Academy Sports disqualify the shooter from purchasing a gun if the information against him wasn’t available?
#2
Car dealers for misuse of their product leading to deaths. Alcohol producers for the consequences of their product in the hands (guts and brains) of the usual suspects. In the latter some bars have been held accountable when they knew the patron was already drunk but continued service leading to dire consequences for others. The standard is that if the product is legal and sold iaw with the law, the manufacturer is not subject to litigation for the misuse of their product.
[Mint Press News] AFGHANISTAN — The COVID-19 pandemic has been a death knell to so many industries in Afghanistan. Charities and aid agencies have even warned that the economic dislocation could spark widespread famine. But one sector is still booming: the illicit opium trade. Last year saw Afghan opium poppy cultivation grow by over a third while counter-narcotics operations dropped off a cliff. The country is said to be the source of over 90% of all the world’s illicit opium, from which heroin and other opioids are made. More land is under cultivation for opium in Afghanistan than is used for coca production across all of Latin America, with the creation of the drug said to directly employ around half a million people.
This is a far cry from the 1970s, when poppy production was minimal, and largely for domestic consumption. But this changed in 1979 when the CIA launched Operation Cyclone, the widespread funding of Afghan Mujahideen militias in an attempt to bleed dry the then-recent Soviet invasion. Over the next decade, the CIA worked closely with its Pakistani counterpart, the ISI, to funnel $2 billion worth of arms and assistance to these groups, including the now infamous Osama Bin Laden and other warlords known for such atrocities as throwing acid in the faces of unveiled women.
"From statements by U.S. Ambassador [to Iran] Richard Helms, there was little heroin production in Central Asia by the mid 1970s," Professor Alfred McCoy, author of "The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade," told MintPress. But with the start of the CIA secret war, opium production along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border surged and refineries soon dotted the landscape. Trucks loaded with U.S. taxpayer-funded weapons would travel from Pakistan into its neighbor to the west, returning filled to the brim with opium for the new refineries, their deadly product ending up on streets worldwide. With the influx of Afghan opium in the 1980s — Jeffrey St. Clair, co-author of "Whiteout: The CIA, Drugs and the Press," alleges — heroin addiction more than doubled in the United States.
"In order to finance the resistance for a protracted period, the Mujahideen had to come up with a livelihood beyond the weapons that the CIA was providing," McCoy said, noting that the weapons issued could not feed the fighters’ families, nor reimburse them for lost labor:
#1
An interesting site that certainly digs deeper than most. Odd that this comes from a site that describes itself as follows
We focus our coverage on issues relating to the effects of special interest groups, big business and lobbying efforts and how they shape policies at home and abroad, including American foreign policy. Through the lens of social justice and human rights, we report on how these dynamics drive our foreign affairs and impact the world, and examine the effects they have on our democracy and freedoms as defined by the constitution.
#2
Simplistic. Afghanistan and Pakistan were THE major suppliers of opiates to Western Europe and North America in the mid-1970s. They took over from Burma/Laos because political and military instability and a long drought reduced movement of opium from the Golden Triangle. Myriad news reports in the nineteen seventies tied Pakistan military to the poppy trade in Afghanistan. There was Pak military operations all along the Northwest Frontier. They have not ceased to this day.
#4
The campaign against Paraquat goes back at least to New York Times, "POISONOUS FALLOUT FROM THE WAR ON MARIJUANA", By Jesse Kornbluth, Nov. 19, 1978.
Direct translation of the article. Edited. A REGNUM continues to investigate the traces of Hitler's aggression and genocide on the territory of modern Russia. Our new step on this path is a series of essays on concentration, labor, transfer camps on the territory of the constituent entities of the Russian Federation within its current borders.
[Just The News] China is waging a "malign" campaign for global domination by 2049, coaxing or coercing U.S. firms to give up technology and intellectual property, usurping U.S. capital to build its companies and supplanting critical American supply chains, House Intelligence Committee Republicans warned Sunday in a memo outlining the stark challenges between Washington and Beijing.
The lawmakers led by Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), the panel's ranking Republican, announced they had begun an investigation into China's intentions on U.S. soil and the vulnerabilities they create and identified several preliminary conclusions from the evidence gathered so far.
"China is executing a plan to undermine and co-opt U.S. business," Nunes told Just the News. "Corporate America needs to understand that China is targeting them, often using lucrative access to Chinese markets as a means to acquire their technology and innovations, and even to force them to suppress their own employees' freedom of speech on China issues."
The most stark warning in the memo is that U.S. companies and financiers are aiding and abetting China's push — wittingly and unwittingly — to replace the United States as the premier global power.
"The Chinese government's grip on business is a powerful platform for malign influence," the memo stated.
"U.S. businesses are being manipulated and/or coerced into sharing key technologies with China and helping Beijing acquire sensitive intellectual property, which benefits China-based firms at the expense of U.S. industry," it added.
#1
badanov, I haven't been commenting on them, but thank you very much for posting these historical nuggets. It's so much more relaxing to spend some time thinking about Agincourt or Leyte Gulf than to read today's news.
Posted by: Matt ||
06/28/2021 12:34 Comments ||
Top||
#3
badanov, I haven't been commenting on them, but thank you very much for posting these historical nuggets. It's so much more relaxing to spend some time thinking about Agincourt or Leyte Gulf than to read today's news.
History goes to show that America and her past was a bit more than enslaving negros.
We share the complaint, but the key is that Mr. Spenser found the Somali jihadi’s name, or at least part of it:
[PJMedia] German authorities are baffled: a knife-wielding man, identified in the German media as "Jibril A.," stabbed three people to death and injured five others in Wurzburg, Germany, on Friday. Police and intelligence officials have no idea why he did it. Yes, he was screaming, "holy shit! Allahu akbar!" during his attacks, and yes, he told police interrogators after he was arrested that he had now carried out his "jihad," but really, what does that even mean? The German-language Tagesspiegel reported Saturday that "the motive for the fatal knife attack in Wurzburg on Friday has still not been fully clarified." Of course it hasn’t. After all, Islam is a religion of peace!
According to Tagesspiegel, Bavaria’s Interior Minister, Joachim Herrmann, said that "it must now be determined to what extent the psychological condition of the 24-year-old Somali played a role." Hermann revealed that "his condition had been noticed in recent months, including violent mostly peaceful tendencies, and a few days ago he was put into compulsory psychiatric treatment."
Hermann did acknowledge that Jibril’s screams of "holy shit! Allahu akbar" and identification of his act as a "jihad" do suggest "a possible Islamist motive, and that is also part of the investigation," but it’s clear that German authorities are favoring the idea that Jibril is mentally ill over the possibility that he is a jihad terrorist. German government front man Steffen Seibert tweeted Saturday: "The investigation will reveal what the motive was of the gunman from #Wurzburg. One thing is certain: His horrific act is directed against all humanity and every religion. All thoughts and prayers are with the seriously injured and the families of the victims in their pain today."
#1
Insanity. Mass insanity. Also the people who keep voting in these mental pieces of shit. All insane.
...His horrific act is directed against all humanity and every religion. All thoughts and prayers are with the seriously injured and the families of the victims... look, we don't really give a shit.
[Townhall] Not all ideas are equal. Some have less intrinsic value. Some are downright bad. Some are inherently dangerous.
Yet one of the reasons that the framers of our nation protected the expression of ideas was so that most could be evaluated and the individual could choose to reject or advance them.
Team Biden is full of bad & inherently dangerous ideas.
1. Biological sex is meaningless.
2. Racial makeup means everything.
3. Life has no value.
4.Laws, boundaries & accountability don’t matter.
5. Private property doesn’t exist.
6. Women are bleeding/birthing people.
7. Fathers are oppressive.
8. aith & Belief are to be eliminated.
9. The dignity of work/earning/saving & building of a legacy is immoral.
10. Merit doesn’t exist.
That’s ten, but you could literally list hundreds.
Everything they touch and each executive order they have issued advances the corrupt core of where such ideas are born.
Some would see these ideas as intuitively Marxist, but they go far beyond that. They do however all carry a key feature of Marxism: Godlessness.
The idea that humans can solve any civil, cultural, or criminal injustice sans an objective moral source is an absurdity.
[Rolling Stone Magazine] Former attorney general William Barr, one of Trump’s true loyalists, literally called "bullshit" on his former boss’s oft-disproven claims of election fraud.
This news comes from an excerpt of a book by ABC News’ Jonathan Karl, Betrayal, which chronicles the last days of the Trump administration. According to the book, Barr concluded it was highly unlikely evidence existed to back up Trump’s voter fraud claims even before Barr gave the go-ahead to go against long-standing Justice Department policy to investigate those claims.
"To date, we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have effected a different outcome in the election," Barr told AP reporter Michael Balsamo in December 2020.
On top of giving investigators the OK, Karl reports that Barr began his own unofficial inquiry into the former president’s claims. Barr told Karl that he suspected all along that Trump was lying, and that the time had come for Trump to provide real evidence or move on.
"My attitude was: It was put-up or shut-up time. If there was evidence of fraud, I had no motive to suppress it. But my suspicion all the way along was that there was nothing there. It was all bullshit," Barr said.
#12
He's a lawyer, read his words for detail. '...highly unlikely evidence existed...' isn't the same thing as it didn't happen or said evidence hasn't been destroyed or indelibly obscured, X is not the same thing as F(X).
#13
Barr is a prime example of whats wrong with DC. He never takes a stand, just goes with the power base and leaves it at that.
Posted by: 49 Pan ||
06/28/2021 11:10 Comments ||
Top||
#14
Yup. "To date, we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have effected a different outcome in the election"
Me either, Billy. I'm still waiting for some investigations.
But there is plenty of circumstantial evidence out there.
Posted by: Bobby ||
06/28/2021 11:12 Comments ||
Top||
#15
#6 /\ Yes, yes, yes, but the Durham indictments are expected on Friday.
Unintentional Snark of the Day!
There were a number of revelations as a result of Donald Trump's presidency - China's hand in almost everything, the resilience of government bureaucracy, the corruption of institutions like the IRS, FBI, EPA and DOJ - but the biggest was that the existential struggle between the Democrats and the Republicans was just part of one big show, like professional wrestling. The fans believe it is life or death, but the story line is as scripted as a Noh play.
We haven’t nearly seen the end to any of this, nor the reaction that it is liable to provoke among citizens who have had enough of being played by their own government. Think about all that while you make plans to celebrate the Fourth of July, a holiday that commemorates an earlier time when the people of this land had enough of being played by their rulers.
Posted by: Bubba Lover of the Faeries8843 ||
06/28/2021 12:39 Comments ||
Top||
#17
Just your 'opinion',
AGB, you are a deviant.
Should have stuck to your guns,
You didn't and now
you look like a
[American Thinker] Technically speaking, Donald Trump is a loser. After all, it’s Biden who’s occupying the Oval Office. But let’s not get entangled in technicalities. Forty-one percent of Americans believe that Trump actually won the election and that Biden’s ascension was the result of fraud, with over half of Republicans holding that belief. And as Biden has managed, remarkably swiftly, to destroy the border, the economy, the military, education, and more, worried patriots are redoubling their support for Trump. So, when Trump, the man who didn’t win, calls a rally, thousands upon thousands of people show up. And the people who attended the rally in Wellington, Ohio, got vintage Trump.
The red-capped crowd filled the stands and the overflow area:
What worries me is the competition between to the Deep State vs. Socialist-Democrats to find, plan and activate their next James Earl Ray, John Hinckley/Oswald/Squeaky etc... solution to their problem.
List of assassination attempts on Presidents who upset the Deep State Apple cart:
Eisenhower: 38.
Kennedy: 42.
Nixon: 184.
Reagan: 197.
Trump: 2. Note: A complete list on Trump attempts still has not been released yet.
Interesting History Note
Theodore "Teddy" Roosevelt was shot and still finished delivering his campaign speech before seeking medical attention. Teddy was running against SOCIALIST Democratic candidate Woodrow Wilson who won by a slim margin.
#2
...some historians note that if Teddy had gone directly to the hospital, he would have garnered a greater 'sympathy' vote to get the office.
N.B. Given that Obama ended the tradition that former presidents keep their mouth shut about their successors, the road was opened for Trump to be Trump.
#6
They lived in different eras in what was acceptable, tolerable, or social norms of behavior. People who lived a hundred years ago had more in common with those who lived a thousand years before them, than we today have in common with those who lived a 100 years ago.
[Razib Khan] We're not the man we used to be. Over the last twenty years, genomics, ancient DNA and paleoanthropology have joined forces to completely overhaul our understanding of the origin of our species. The true diversity and complexity of human evolution over the last few hundred millennia surpasses even the most unhinged imaginings we might have hazarded just a short generation ago. But greater clarity has left us with a messier and less elegant narrative. Our species’ status, it turns out, is "complicated."
In the year 2000, the orthodoxy was that humans spread across the world 60,000 years ago, and were descended exclusively from a small population in Africa. Neanderthals and various other human groups (and yes, we didn’t even deign to give them all names) were evolutionary "dead ends." Of interest mostly to scholars, they were dismissed as failed experiments in a world our ancestors won. Today, this tidy story of us no longer passes a basic fact check.
In 2010, genomes recovered from ancient remains of "archaic hominins" in Eurasia turned out to have genetic matches in many modern humans. It seems they weren’t quite as "archaic" as we thought. In addition, we had to get used to the new reality that a solid 2-3% of the ancestry of all humans outside Africa is Neanderthal. About 5% of the ancestry of Melanesian groups, like the Papuans of New Guinea, actually comes from a previously unimagined new human lineage discovered in Denisova cave, in Siberia of all places.
Since these first major overhauls, the genetic picture has only grown more complex. Trace, but detectable (0.2% or so), levels of "Denisovan" ancestry are found across South, Southeast, and East Asia (as well as among indigenous people of the Americas). Similarly, trace but detectable levels of Neanderthal ancestry actually appear in most African populations. And, though we have no ancient genomes to make the triumphant ID, a great deal of circumstantial DNA evidence indicates that many African groups harbor silent "archaic" lineages equivalent to Neanderthals and Denisovans. We call them "ghost" populations. We know they’re there in the genomes, but we have no fossils to identify them with.
Even the canonical "Out of Africa" migration itself has turned out to be less neat and tidy than we thought. Outside Africa, whether you are an indigenous Australian, Amazonian native or a German burgher, fully 90-99% of your ancestry derives from a single ancestral human population pulse 60,000 years ago. Somehow, an isolated African tribe of 1,000 to 10,000 people, who became genetically homogenous due to their initial small population size, swept across Eurasia. By 50,000 years ago, they reached Australia. They had replaced the last Neanderthals and Denisovans by 40,000 years ago, if not earlier. They even migrated to North and South America 15,000 years ago.
But inside of Africa, the story is much richer and still not fully grasped. Many African populations started separating from each other 200,000 years ago, becoming distinct lineages such as Khoisan and West Africans. The emergence of modern humans within the continent was not an explosion, but a gradual evolution of interacting lineages. A slow burn. The ancestors of modern non-Africans were part of this dance, but were isolated at some point for tens of thousands of years, passing through the "great bottleneck." Where? When? Who knows? We can’t be sure at this point. Best to just come out and admit it: this chapter of the story is still provisional.
#2
"Good people!" The voice of the lord
In the darkness. "I know that you're bored,
But if you'll remain
Shut indoors, and be patient,
Your... science will soon be restored!"
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[CNS] In an era where everything is captured on camera, the cold-blooded murder of Gyovanny Arzuaga and Yasmin Perez remains particularly galling. 
[Washington Examiner] UFOs exist that appear to display technology the United States does not possess and lacks the ability to defend against, according to a former intelligence chief.
[Mint Press News] AFGHANISTAN — The COVID-19 pandemic has been a death knell to so many industries in Afghanistan. Charities and aid agencies have even warned that the economic dislocation could spark widespread famine. But one sector is still booming: the illicit opium trade. Last year saw Afghan opium poppy cultivation grow by over a third while counter-narcotics operations dropped off a cliff. The country is said to be the source of over 90% of all the world’s illicit opium, from which heroin and other opioids are made. More land is under cultivation for opium in Afghanistan than is used for coca production across all of Latin America, with the creation of the drug said to directly employ around half a million people.
A REGNUM continues to investigate the traces of Hitler's aggression and genocide on the territory of modern Russia. Our new step on this path is a series of essays on concentration, labor, transfer camps on the territory of the constituent entities of the Russian Federation within its current borders.
[Just The News] China is waging a "malign" campaign for global domination by 2049, coaxing or coercing U.S. firms to give up technology and intellectual property, usurping U.S. capital to build its companies and supplanting critical American supply chains, House Intelligence Committee Republicans warned Sunday in a memo outlining the stark challenges between Washington and Beijing.
[Rolling Stone Magazine] Former attorney general William Barr, one of Trump’s true loyalists, literally called "bullshit" on his former boss’s oft-disproven claims of election fraud.
Ref #7: I was unaware Durham had retired. Duhhh, this might explain the absence of news reporting relative to his investigation. 
[Razib Khan] We're not the man we used to be. Over the last twenty years, genomics, ancient DNA and paleoanthropology have joined forces to completely overhaul our understanding of the origin of our species. The true diversity and complexity of human evolution over the last few hundred millennia surpasses even the most unhinged imaginings we might have hazarded just a short generation ago. But greater clarity has left us with a messier and less elegant narrative. Our species’ status, it turns out, is "complicated."
