[Daily Mail, where America gets its news] He was fluent in French and German by the time he was 15, mastered Spanish and rudimentary Russian soon thereafter, and flew a jet fighter when still only 18, before becoming Reuters correspondent in Paris and, later, in Berlin.
He also fitted in occasional missions for 'The Firm' – the British Secret Service – and plotted a groundbreaking blockbuster, after undertaking rigorous research.
But, in the aftermath of Donald Trump's miraculous escape from death, The Day of the Jackal author Frederick Forsyth, tells me that he despairs of security agencies the world over – in particular, their failure to learn, or remember, a fundamental truth.
'The sniper is still a formidable enemy,' he points out. 'I've lost count of murdered politicians since I tapped 'the day of the Jackal was over' onto the last page.
'What Trump's escape shows is the uselessness of close-body protectors against the rifle, when you've failed to secure the area,' adds Forsyth, 85, who is, understandably, struck by an extraordinary similarity in Trump's survival and that of the French president in his novel from 54 years ago – a very slight movement of the head.
#1
The 73 adaptation of Forsyth's Book with Edward Fox is a masterpiece, far better than the second version despite a sterling performance by Bruce Willis.
[ZeroHedge] In this article, I’m going to argue that the U.S. government, in particular, has been overrun by the wrong kind of person.
It’s a trend that’s been in motion for many years but has now reached a point of no return. In other words, a type of moral rot has become so prevalent that it’s institutional in nature. There is not going to be, therefore, any serious change in the direction in which the U.S. is headed until a genuine crisis topples the existing order. Until then, the trend will accelerate.
The reason is that a certain class of people – sociopaths – are now fully in control of major American institutions.
Their beliefs and attitudes are insinuated throughout the economic, political, intellectual, and psychological/spiritual fabric of the U.S.
What does this mean to you, as an individual? It depends on your character.
Are you the kind of person who supports “my country, right or wrong,” as did most Germans in the 1930s and 1940s? Or the kind who dodges the duty to be a helpmate to murderers? The type of passenger who goes down with the ship? Or the type who puts on his vest and looks for a lifeboat? The type of individual who supports the merchants who offer the fairest deal? Or the type who is gulled by splashy TV commercials?
What the ascendancy of sociopaths means isn’t an academic question. Throughout history, the question has been a matter of life and death. That’s one reason America grew; every American (or any ex-colonial) has forebears who confronted the issue and decided to uproot themselves to go somewhere with better prospects. The losers were those who delayed thinking about the question until the last minute.
I have often described myself, and those I prefer to associate with, as gamma rats. You may recall the ethologist’s characterization of the social interaction of rats as being between a few alpha rats and many beta rats, the alpha rats being dominant and the beta rats submissive. In addition, a small percentage are gamma rats that stake out prime territory and mates, like the alphas, but are not interested in dominating the betas. The people most inclined to leave for the wide world outside and seek fortune elsewhere are typically gamma personalities.
You may be thinking that what happened in places like Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, Mao’s China, Pol Pot’s Cambodia, and scores of other countries in recent history could not, for some reason, happen in the U.S. Actually, there’s no reason it won’t at this point. All the institutions that made America exceptional – including a belief in capitalism, individualism, self-reliance, and the restraints of the Constitution – are now only historical artifacts.
On the other hand, the distribution of sociopaths is completely uniform across both space and time.
Per capita, there were no more evil people in Stalin’s Russia, Hitler’s Germany, Mao’s China, Amin’s Uganda, Ceausescu’s Romania, or Pol Pot’s Cambodia than there are today in the U.S. All you need is favorable conditions for them to bloom, much as mushrooms do after a rainstorm.
Conditions for them in the U.S. are becoming quite favorable. Have you ever wondered where the 50,000 people employed by the TSA to inspect and degrade you came from? Most of them are middle-aged. Did they have jobs before they started doing something that any normal person would consider demeaning? Most did, but they were attracted to – not repelled by – a job where they wear a costume and abuse their fellow citizens all day.
Few of them can imagine that they’re shepherding in a police state as they play their roles in security theater. (A reinforced door on the pilots’ cabin is probably all that’s actually needed, although the most effective solution would be to hold each airline responsible for its own security and for the harm done if it fails to protect passengers and third parties.) But the 50,000 newly employed are exactly the same type of people who joined the Gestapo – eager to help in the project of controlling everyone. Nobody was drafted into the Gestapo.
What’s going on here is an instance of Pareto’s Law. That’s the 80-20 rule that tells us, for example, that 80% of your sales come from 20% of your salesmen or that 20% of the population are responsible for 80% of the crime.
As I see it, 80% of people are basically decent; their basic instincts are to live by the Boy Scout virtues. 20% of people, however, are what you might call potential trouble sources, inclined toward doing the wrong thing when the opportunity presents itself. They might now be shoe clerks, mailmen, or waitresses – they seem perfectly benign in normal times. They play baseball on weekends and pet the family dog. However, given the chance, they will sign up for the Gestapo, the Stasi, the KGB, the TSA, Homeland Security, or whatever. Many seem well intentioned, but are likely to favor force as the solution to any problem.
But it doesn’t end there, because 20% of that 20% are really bad actors. They are drawn to government and other positions where they can work their will on other people and, because they’re enthusiastic about government, they rise to leadership positions. They remake the culture of the organizations they run in their own image. Gradually, non-sociopaths can no longer stand being there. They leave. Soon the whole barrel is full of bad apples. That’s what’s happening today in the U.S.
It’s a pity that Bush, when he was in office, made such a big deal of evil. He discredited the concept. He made Boobus americanus think it only existed in a distant axis, in places like North Korea, Iraq and Iran, which were and still are irrelevant backwaters and arbitrarily chosen enemies. Bush trivialized the concept of evil and made it seem banal because he was such a fool. All the while, real evil, very immediate and powerful, was growing right around him, and he lacked the awareness to see he was fertilizing it by turning the U.S. into a national security state after 9/11.
[Bee] MARTHA'S VINEYARD, MA — This week, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis flew 50 migrants to an affluent island in Massachusetts to highlight the struggles of border states whose resources are buckling amid soaring numbers of undocumented immigrants. Progressives have labeled the action as "cruel" and "heartless," but when California governor Gavin Newsom volunteered asylum for the migrants in his own state, they declined the offer since they had only recently escaped a collapsing communist state without electricity.
"I don't like bullies, and Florida governor Ron DeSantis is bullying these migrants by not welcoming them! We in California believe a nation of immigrants draws its strength from more immigrants — come to the sunshine state and we will house you, clothe you, and feed you." Newsom spoke out in a video message from his home after the events of the week, pledging that there was "no limit" to how high he would tax other people to pay for the migrants' livelihoods but also clarifying that he would not be able to help personally.
While the migrants have heard the message, they have already voiced their intent to avoid California to reporters, speaking out about the harrowing circumstances they had escaped: skyrocketing inflation, a demolished economy, and obvious corruption at the highest levels of government. The migrants say that California's trash-littered sidewalks, water shortages, and electrical outages bear too much resemblance to the Venezuela they left behind for it to be a desirable destination.
One of Governor Newsom's PACs, Robbing California Citizens To Fund Our Voter Base, has posted a press release condemning the migrants for the comparison. "To compare California to Venezuela is disingenuous, and these narrow-minded migrants should be ashamed. They come from a nation where business is stifled by overregulation and state interference, a one-party system has ruled for decades with a compliant state media to tout its success while cities burn, and citizens struggling to pay for gas, food, and other necessities — this is nothing like California. For this disrespect, we call for their immediate deportation to the ’greener pastures' of Florida that they seek so much, with plans for them to be re-imported for votes during election seasons."
At publishing time, Newsom had reiterated his offer in a video at his $5 million home, gesturing to the plentiful electricity around him, but migrants have said that this reminds them too much of the opulence enjoyed by Chavez and then Maduro while they wreaked havoc on the nation.
Posted by: Frank G ||
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[NYPOST] They’re having a rough one over at MSNBC.
After keeping "Morning Joe" off the air Monday, following the liquidation attempt against Donald Trump ...His ancestors didn't own any slaves... , their primetime talent has overcompensated by cranking up the crazy during coverage of the Republican National Convention.
Never mind that the network’s main anchors are delivering many of these wild takes from their Manhattan studio with an LED-screen backdrop which creates the illusion that they’re live from Milwaukee.
On a scale of 1 to 10 tinfoil hats, Alex Wagner, Rachel Maddow and Joy Reid have rated a strong 12. Am I the only one who believes that Joy Behar and Joy Reid might not be the same person?
Altogether, this trio has dropped crackpot monologues about Trump’s shooting, compared beating COVID to surviving an assassin’s bullet and suggested JD Vance has Aryan leanings because he named his company after a "Lord of the Rings" reference. And my personal favorite: that Vance’s speech contained "Easter eggs of white nationalism."
Look, it’s the Republican National Convention, so I’d expect — even welcome — a healthy dose of pushback from the left-wing network.
Surely they’d find plenty of substantive disagreements with Trump and Vance. Maybe there’s something to nitpick from Vance’s past, considering the potential veep gifted the Dems plenty of opposition research in a best-selling little book called "Hillbilly Elegy."
Nope. Instead, MSNBC’s team deployed its go-to weapons: identity and white supremacy
...the pernicious doctrine that laws were intended to be obeyed, that society works better when people don't pour shreiking from their places of worship every Friday for a weekend of rioting over insults real or imagined; and that cannibalism, beastiality, incest, murder, theft, rape, and similar activities are bad. A Dead White European (which invalidates his opinion) philosopher once opined that societies thrive when a person's word can be relied upon, and that a society which puts individual happiness first will invariably fail. Strangely enough, other successful societies, such as China, Japan, Korea, and those kinds of places could also be lumped with white supremacist societies, since they push the same values... .
During Vance’s acceptance speech at the RNC, he recalled proposing to his wife, Usha, a daughter of Indian immigrants colonists. "Honey, I come with $120,000 worth of law school debt, and a cemetery plot on a mountainside in eastern Kentucky," he said.
It was a sweet, very personal expression of love and the hope for a shared future.
Wagner, however, said it shows that Vance "fundamentally believes in the supremacy of whiteness and masculinity." And that the only history their family should inherit is "white male lineage," not their Indian side.
Perhaps it would have been more romantic — and acceptable to Wagner — if Vance had included an endorsement of equity and inclusion in asking for Usha’s hand in marriage.
Wagner was also dismayed by Vance’s optimistic assertion that "America is not just an idea, it is a group of people with a shared history and a common future."
She offered an alternative: "It’s a lot of people with different histories, different heritages."
Maddow didn’t even wait for Vance’s speech to verbally crawl into a Nazi rabbit hole on air. On Wednesday, she said that Vance naming his venture capital firm Narya, after a ring in "The Lord of the Rings," meant he harbored a love of the far right.
"He called it Narya, N-A-R-Y-A," she said. "Which you can remember because it’s ’Aryan,’ but you move the ’N’ to the front. Apparently that word has something to do with elves and rings from ’The Lord of the Rings’ series, I don’t know."
Yeah, we know you don’t.
Meanwhile,
...back at the Hubba Hubba Club, Big Shirley was still trying to snatch Nunzio bald-headed. She was already halfway there... Reid seems to be growing increasingly untethered from reality. She attacked RNC speaker Amber Rose as "racially ambiguous" to delegitimize her message to minorities, and suggested that the Trump liquidation attempt was a set-up.
She also asserted, with a straight face, that Biden overcoming COVID was as badass as Trump getting shot at and showing up to the RNC a couple days later.
"This current president of the United States is 81 years old and has COVID, should he be fine in a couple of days, doesn’t that convey exactly the same thing? That he’s strong enough — older than Trump — to have gotten something that used to really be fatal to people his age," Reid said on air. "So, if he does fine out of it and comes back and is able to do rallies, isn’t that exactly the same?"
Sure, Joy. But this bizarre act shows that, as the Biden situation deteriorates and panic sets in, MSNBC is just throwing the proverbial spaghetti at the wall — to see what sticks.
Hey, conspiracy and an "Everything is white supremacy" ethos worked in 2020.
But these anchors are so out of touch with regular folks, they don’t realize that most people have simply moved on.
And some cockamamie commentary won’t pull anyone back in.
[FE] In the current run-up to the 2024 presidential election, data shows that more than 10 million hunters and gun owners—just shy of 3% of the total US population—are not registered to vote.
That’s a lot of non-voting bastards. Maybe they should go live in their own state? We can call it "North Korea."
For context and scale, the entire population of the state of Georgia is approximately 10.6 million people. In the 2020 Presidential election, Georgia was decided by 11,779 votes, none of which came from Georgia’s 350,897 hunters and gun owners who are not registered to vote.
Hunter and gun owner votes mattered big-time in Georgia but, instead of voting, these people left America high and dry. When asked why they’re not registered to vote, the theme was clear: defeated, apathetic conservative voters across the U.S. believe that elections are rigged, that their votes don’t count, and that voting doesn’t make a difference.
Stephen Aaron is an advisor to Vote4America.org, the non-profit voter advocacy group reporting the 10 million unregistered hunters and gun owners stat. According to Aaron, "Data shows several reasons for voter apathy, especially among gun owners and hunters. The biggest being, voters are not connecting their personal anxieties to decisions made by elected officials."
If Ben Franklin were alive, he’d be disappointed, but probably not surprised.
The first votes of the new American democracy were not on parchment or paper. They were lead musket balls, fired from the rifles of pissed-off, over-taxed, and under-represented colonists at the battles of Lexington and Concord in 1775.
Over the next six bloody years, hundreds of thousands of votes were cast against the tyrannical rule of British monarchy by the Continental Army. Not all of these votes counted. Many ended up lodged in trees and buildings while others ricocheted into oblivion. Some votes were only cured after the plunge of a bayonet.
Nonetheless, in 1781, the final votes were cast at the Battle of Yorktown and enough had cured to settle the score with the English. British General Cornwallis fled, accepting defeat at the hands of an "inferior" fighting force, and the fledgling American republic began to spread its wings.
"A republic, if you can keep it."
—Benjamin Franklin’s response to Elizabeth Willing Powel’s question: "Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?"
With the wetwork of kicking out the lobster-backs complete (sorry Craighead, we love you brother), it took eight more years to operationalize the playbook by which Americans could keep their republic: the U.S. Constitution.
Today, Americans love to talk about our favorite constitutional rights like speaking freely, bearing arms, and remaining silent. But we rarely talk about the one duty required to keep our republic, and preserve these rights:
#1
It's been an oligarchy of special interests for decades whose leaders have been bankrupting the nation to line their own pockets or attaining power.
#2
we need to re-write the bill-of-rights. keep the first 10 and add these two...
11: no discrimination on shape or color of skin.
12: all voting same day in person and on paper.
#3
A faux-Republic Tax-Plantation run by an un-titled political aristocracy with oligarch-plutocrat patrons.
Interestingly, the majority of the terms above have Latin roots, linking the modern civilizational conundrum to the same problems manifest in Rome. Curious but history doesn't repeat itself, just rhymes?
[Red State] She's long been a racialist homophobic hater. Have you ever noticed the most bitter hags are named Joy? Joy Reid’s descent into madness has been well-chronicled on MSNBC, but her latest comments suggesting the assassination attempt against Donald Trump was staged should be the final straw that earns her a pink slip from the network.
Reid, aside from lacking talent outright, is now a danger to the public discourse due to her lead role as a BlueAnon conspiracy theorist.
Earlier in the week, she accused Trump of using the attempt on his life as a "photo op."
"Donald Trump is an elderly man who, for whatever reason, was given nine seconds to take an iconic photo-op during an active shooter situation," she declared.
Yes, of course. Because it seems likely that a man who just had his head nearly blown off thoughtfully crafted a plan to gather the Secret Service around him in the hopes that a photographer was snapping away.
Reid then tried to convince her followers that the GOP candidate didn’t actually get shot.
"I have many questions! Like where are the medical reports? What caused Trump’s injury and what was the injury? Sheapnel? [sic] Glass? A bullet?" she wrote on Threads.
The main question here is: How can one person be that dumb and still be employed at a major news network? If you could somehow harness the energy coming from Joy’s brainwaves, you might — MIGHT — be able to light a small birthday candle.
Reid’s conspiracy theory, of course, has been debunked by left-wing fact-checker Snopes. Why let a little thing like the truth get in the way of reporting at MSNBC?
Reid then tripled down on the insanity. Days after the "Maybe he didn’t get hit with a bullet" buffoonery was debunked, she reiterated it and suggested the entire assassination attempt was staged.
"When it comes to what happened on Saturday, with former President Donald Trump, this assassination attempt, we know almost nothing about his medical condition," she said.
"How come no one else has any information about this wound? We still don't know for sure whether Donald Trump was hit by a bullet, whether he was hit by glass fragments, whether he was hit by shrapnel, we don't have those details," she falsely contends.
"We know almost nothing! Why? Why don't we know that much?"
Volumes could be written about the things Joy Reid doesn’t know.
It isn’t that she’s been able to hide her obvious hysteria, and it’s suddenly just making an appearance with this coverage of the assassination attempt.
But the level it is reaching — the absolute delusion, the wide-eyed neurosis on full display — requires a colleague at that network to step in. Imagine being the family of Corey Comperatore, the retired volunteer fire chief who was killed in the assassination attempt, having to listen to this woman suggest the shooting was staged.
Alex Jones suffered for spreading the same tin-foil hat-level conspiracy theories that Reid is now espousing.
Reid has a long, long history of lunacy. Check out this recent video of her commentary on the Supreme Court ruling on presidential immunity, in which she insists Joe Biden’s cognitive decline does not matter so long as they get Trump.
She invokes a Waffle House and a Best Western for absolutely no reason before declaring that Biden "could roll around in a wheelchair" for all she cares, so long as Trump doesn’t get back in the White House.
Hmm. That’s the kind of insistence — that Trump must be stopped at all costs — that leads to violence.
Where is somebody at MSNBC to come along and say, "Look, Joy, we can’t have you on the airwaves saying things that prove you’re a weapons-grade dolt, okay? It reflects poorly on our profession. Not to mention, your incendiary lies are going to get somebody killed. If you don’t stop, we’re pulling the plug."
Reid also has a long history of fireable offenses. Anybody recall those bigoted, homophobic blog posts, which she claims were posted by hackers?
The FBI was supposed to look into that. That crack staff of Barney Fife’s will probably solve the case right around the same time they find the J6 pipe bomber or the cocaine addict in the White House.
The point is that Joy Reid has never been held accountable by anybody at MSNBC. It’s well past time they took action here.
They can’t continue to turn a blind eye. Not when the temperature in the country needs to be lowered. The only thing Joy Reid is currently lowering is the collective IQ of the people who watch her.
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited. by Aleksandr Kargin
The writer nails it.
[REGNUM] The Israeli parliament (Knesset) has voted overwhelmingly to adopt a resolution rejecting the creation of a Palestinian state. Why was this high-profile decision taken now, and what consequences will it have not only for the Middle East conflict, but also for global politics?
"The Israeli Knesset strongly opposes the establishment of a Palestinian state west of Jordan. The establishment of a Palestinian state in the heart of the land of Israel would pose an existential threat to the State of Israel and its citizens, perpetuate the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and destabilize the region," the resolution says.
The document outlines the main concerns of Israeli critics of Palestinian statehood. For example, the document claims that if a Palestinian state is created, Hamas will soon "seize power and turn it into a base of terror, acting in coordination with the Iranian-led 'axis' aimed at eliminating the state of Israel."
The Knesset decision itself is declarative in nature. It does not carry significant legal consequences, but rather consolidates the consensus that exists today among the majority of Israeli political actors on the Palestinian issue.
Moreover, the text emphasizes that Israel opposes the creation of a Palestinian state “now.” Thus, it is not excluded that in the future, if circumstances change, the decision will be revised.
The resolution was adopted by parties in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's coalition, as well as right-wing opposition parties. Notably, the initiative received support from opposition leader Benny Gantz's centrist party.
Moreover, members of parliament from the center-left Yesh Atid party of former Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid left the session hall in order not to support this decision, but did not openly vote against it. This is due to the currently dominant narrative in Israeli society against the creation of a Palestinian state and Yair Lapid’s fear of electoral costs.
The icing on the cake is that the resolution was adopted just days before Netanyahu's visit to the United States, where he will address a joint session of both houses of Congress and meet with President Joe Biden at the White House.
Thus, with this demonstrative step, Netanyahu kills two birds with one stone - he strengthens his position inside Israel and at the same time complicates life for Biden, whose left-wing voters will be extremely unhappy with this decision by the White House partners.
In fact, today it is obvious that the Israeli Prime Minister not only supports Donald Trump, but is doing everything in his power to ensure that Biden loses. This is the revenge on the owner of the White House for the attempt at an Israeli-style "Maidan" last year, when, at Washington's instigation, Israel was rocked by anti-government demonstrations.
At the same time, this decision by the Israeli parliament is a kind of message to the European Union, as if saying: “Israel will not succumb to European pressure.”
This is undoubtedly connected with the recent parade of recognitions of the Palestinian state by a number of European countries – Ireland, Norway, Spain and Slovenia. Moreover, Spain even joined the case of South Africa in the International Court in The Hague, which is considering the accusation of Israel of genocide against Palestinians.
In this regard, it seems highly likely that European-Israeli relations will worsen, although the right-wing forces that have strengthened their positions in Europe are, for the most part, taking pro-Israeli positions, which will soften the situation.
In general, there is unity in Israel in terms of opposing Palestinian statehood “here and now.”
The problem is that society lacks a clear idea of what to do next.
Most Israelis also do not want to annex disputed territories, including the Gaza Strip, to Israel, or give Israeli citizenship to local Palestinians.
In fact, given the total popularity of the ultra-radical Hamas among the Palestinians, the only option for the near future is to maintain the status quo – a continuation of the bloody confrontation and increasing escalation.
#1
At the same time, this decision by the Israeli parliament is a kind of message to the European Union, as if saying: “Israel will not succumb to European pressure.”
When has the ICJ said anything critical of the EU? Describing the ICJ as the Lawfare arm of the EU seems hard to disagree with.
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.
[BabylonBee]
[Bee] MARTHA'S VINEYARD, MA — This week, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis flew 50 migrants to an affluent island in Massachusetts to highlight the struggles of border states whose resources are buckling amid soaring numbers of undocumented immigrants. Progressives have labeled the action as "cruel" and "heartless," but when California governor Gavin Newsom volunteered asylum for the migrants in his own state, they declined the offer since they had only recently escaped a collapsing communist state without electricity.
[NYPOST] They’re having a rough one over at MSNBC.
[Red State] 
