Read it.

Real America’s Voice host Ben Bergquam published a video on social media platform X that exposes what is described as a ‘guerrilla camp’ on the southern border, operated by radical leftist groups, which are aiding in the illegal migrant invasion by cartels.

“OK, here is the whole video. You have to watch it all – it just gets worse and worse! Leftists caught directly aiding and abetting the invasion of our country the wall in Sasabe, Arizona,” Bergquam wrote on X.

He continued: ” These are some of the same people that we previously exposed harboring illegals at their camp in Arivaca. How do we save our country when we allow enemies within to do this? When we take power back, these organizations must be defunded and prosecuted.”

Read it.

U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) inspectors uncovered problems at a Moderna plant used to manufacture a substance that is part of the company’s COVID-19 vaccine, according to a newly released document.

Moderna failed to meet multiple requirements, including rules aimed at minimizing the potential for contamination, according to the document.

FDA inspectors performed inspections at the plant in Norwood, Massachusetts from, Sept. 11 to Sept. 21, visiting nine times in total.

Politico.

Before we blame the individuals on center stage, however, we should look at the structural causes that brought us to this moment. A big reason for our disenchantment is that the job of a university president no longer prioritizes being a pioneering thought leader, but instead requires the skills of a savvy lobbyist. For most large universities, administrators’ attention has increasingly focused on outside funding and large revenue generators and away from student instruction and traditional scholarship.

One significant reason — one that has been wholly unappreciated but is growing in importance — is the role many universities play in our nation’s health sector. Universities with health systems are better understood as health systems with universities. As such, they are highly dependent on the graces and whims of policymakers, and their leaders are structurally restrained from asserting independence against, or challenging the wrongheaded politics of, elected leaders. In the end, academic freedom is the big loser.

National Geographic.

On the fourth floor of the Museum of the Bible, a sweeping permanent exhibit tells the story of how the ancient scripture became the world’s most popular book. A warmly lit sanctum at the exhibit’s heart reveals some of the museum’s most prized possessions: fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls, ancient texts that include the oldest known surviving copies of the Hebrew Bible.

But now, the Washington, D.C. museum has confirmed a bitter truth about the fragments’ authenticity. On Friday, independent researchers funded by the Museum of the Bible announced that all 16 of the museum’s Dead Sea Scroll fragments are modern forgeries that duped outside collectors, the museum’s founder, and some of the world’s leading biblical scholars. Officials unveiled the findings at an academic conference hosted by the museum.

“The Museum of the Bible is trying to be as transparent as possible,” says CEO Harry Hargrave. “We’re victims—we’re victims of misrepresentation, we’re victims of fraud.”

Read it.

At least four police officers were hurt Saturday in what has been dubbed a ‘diversity riot’ in London.

The incident in Camberwell, South London saw a violent mob of stick-wielding hoodlums, some reportedly of Ethiopian descent and some Eritreans, attempting to stop a meeting inside a nearby theatre that was being attended by representatives of the government of the East African nation.

The footage shows that as police attempted to control the situation, they quickly found themselves under attack.

A major problem with letting large numbers of foreigners into your country is that they often bring their quarrels with them from The Old Country.

Strategy Page.

This is our annual summary of current war zones and an overview of where it is all heading. After this overview there is the alphabetical list of the war zones and a quick summary of how the local mayhem has been proceeding. Since we have been covering this sort of thing for over twenty years now, there are many war zones that have gone quiet. We left most of those in summary, with a note that those wars had gone dormant, and maybe extinct. History shows that dormant is more common than extinct. Forever wars, or at least multi-century ones, are an ancient tradition.

Read it.

Republicans like Texas Gov. Greg Abbott have effectively led sanctuary cities to regret their policies as southern border migrants flood their cities to the “breaking point.”

“New York City has begun to see another surge of migrants arriving, and we expect this to intensify over the coming days as a result of Texas Gov. Abbott’s cruel and inhumane politics,” New York City Mayor Eric Adams said this week.

“For many months, we were able to keep the visualization of this crisis from hitting our streets, but we have reached a breaking point and can no longer do that.”

Read it.

It always comes as a surprise to some people when Communists actually act like Communists.

OffGuardian.

I think many people believe that our society has gotten so complex, with so many people, and so much need for consumption of natural resources in order to be comfortable, that what the government is forcing on us now is required to survive.

This includes all the control, restrictions, forced vaccines, lockdowns, censorship of free speech, 15-minute cities, and a myriad of other restrictions and mandates. This belief is inanely stupid, but stupid is as stupid does. What can ‘ya say?

Hey, I’m really tired of pussy footing around all this garbage. I’m now calling a spade a spade and forgetting about being polite or politically correct. These people who believe this charade are destroying our lives, as well as destroying humanity itself.

Read it.

A shop owner in Germany was denounced as a racist for complaining about migrants mass looting his store, while a left-wing politician sided with the criminals, saying they were “entitled” to steal.

Read it.

minor but significant spark of direct action occurred in New York on 15 December. A group of people entered a Whole Foods store (owned by Amazon), took groceries without paying and exited wearing Jeff Bezos masks.

Independent reporter Talia Jane posted the following on Twitter/X:

“The action was in protest against corporate wealth alongside increased food insecurity & to call attention to Amazon’s contracts with Israel.”

She also posted a video of the event with people throwing around flyers and shouting, “Feed the people, eat the rich!” Jane stated the food was later redistributed and given to food ‘distros’ and community care spaces feeding migrants and the unhoused.

Read it.

Once upon a time, different institutions believed in different things.

Take universities. We had Royalist Oxford and Parliamentarian Cambridge; later came UCL, the “Godless college of Gower Street”; King’s College London was the Tory response. As 2023 began, our graduates received their new-year alumni magazines, featuring refreshingly identical opinions on sustainability, migration, decolonisation.

Like in early East Germany, private companies still exist, but they increasingly understand that their role is to support the state and its ideology. The chief executive of KLM airlines asks people to take fewer flights for the sake of Net Zero; a new label on Nescafé jars reminds instant-coffee drinkers to celebrate “gender diversity”.

Read it.

A network of NGOs, or non-governmental organizations, seems to be playing a powerful role in coordinating the large-scale invasion of illegals at the US southern border.

The new website Muckraker revealed a treasure trove of “mass migration blueprints,” handed out by NGOs across South and Central America to illegals with details about their route to the US.

Read it.

Australia is the latest country to reject a request from the United States to send warships to the Red Sea under the command of the Pentagon’s Operation Prosperity Guardian to protect commercial vessels along the critical maritime trade route from Iran-backed Houthi.

Defense Minister Richard Marles told Sky News that Australia’s military would not send a “ship or a plane” to the Red Sea but would triple the number of troops for the US-led maritime force.

Jonathan Turley.

As the House of Representatives goes into high gear in its impeachment proceedings (and possible contempt resolution against Hunter Biden), the Biden family legal problems continue to mount. In one week, it was revealed that President Biden’s brother James was caught on an FBI audiotape in a corruption investigation, while Ashley Biden, the president’s daughter, is now also facing demands for unpaid taxes.

James Biden is expected to appear before the House for questioning in the coming weeks.

The appearance may solidify a new line of defense for the Bidens: that they are harmless grifters.

Read it.

Governor Katie Hobbs has had a change of heart over the immigration crisis on Arizona’s southern border. She recently reversed an earlier decision against deploying the National Guard, now sending over 200 Tucson sector troops and committing up to $5 million in Arizona taxpayer money to send troops to the Lukeville Port of Entry.

Hobbs also demanded the federal government reimburse Arizona $512.5 million for “migrant transportation, drug interdiction and law enforcement” expenses incurred under the Biden administration. She also promised to seek reimbursement “regularly” from the feds for Arizona’s border crisis mitigation.

What sparked the flurry of activity from our heretofore passive chief? Finally, the direct expenses to Arizona could no longer be ignored. They’re affecting Arizona’s budget and future financial viability.

For Hobbs and scores of other Democrat mayors and governors, compassionate sympathy with the plight of illegal immigrants was a good image so long as the expense was borne elsewhere. Hundreds of sanctuary cities were formed. Mayors from New York Chicago, Los Angeles and other cities basked in assuring that theirs was an open, caring place. Like Biden himself, they welcomed illegal immigrants to our shores. Sure, they heard the reports of complaints from border communities suffering from growing hordes of needy illegal immigrants, but those were mostly just red state conservatives anyway.

However, when the influx of visitors became so overwhelming that they had to be exported around the country, perspectives changed. Too late Hobbs and the others realized the growth was out of control and the fiscal demands truly unsustainable. Their pleas for help from the feds were ignored.

Read it.

For the 10th consecutive year, Illinois lost population. Only West Virginia was worse.

Read it.

A United Nations official said in an interview last week that Palestinians who kill Israeli soldiers are not guilty of crimes because such killings are in line with their “right to resist,” in the latest controversial comments by the anti-Israel official.

“If the Palestinians target civilian objects, they commit war crimes,” said Francesca Albanese, U.N. special rapporteur for the Palestinian territories, in an interview on the podcast Makdisi Street. “If they target military objects, they do not commit war crimes—they are in line with acts of resistance.”

Albanese went on to criticize “Western media” outlets that have condemned “every Palestinian action,” including attacks on soldiers.

“The killing of soldiers—it’s, I mean, frankly, it’s a tragedy, but it’s not a crime,” Albanese said. “Instead, very often, when Palestinians manage to attack soldiers, they are portrayed as terrorists. And this is a misunderstanding that needs to be addressed.”

Read it.

Mayor Muriel Bowser’s leadership in Washington, DC, has become a spectacular disaster. The nation’s capital is grappling with a massive surge in carjackings and murders – no thanks to her failed social justice reforms (such as defunding the police).

Read it.

At least three teachers have lost their day jobs after using OnlyFans for a side hustle.

Two high school teachers from Missouri were placed on leave after word got out that they had personal OnlyFans accounts, Fox News Digital reported. The move received both praise and ridicule.

Megan Gaither and Brianna Coppage, both now-former teachers at St. Clair High School, apparently started “selling racy content to pay off student loans.” Gaither had $125,000 in student loans to pay off and turned to the digital prostitution site to supplement her income. Coppage, who makes only $42,000 annually as a teacher, is now “among the platform’s top creators, raking in nearly $1 million since she began the account over the summer,” Fox News Digital added.

Read it.

The official UK COVID Inquiry will be ignored by the public and will do nothing to inform future pandemic responses unless it urgently works to change the impression that its mind is already made up on lockdowns, campaigners have warned.

Don’t hold your breath.

Read it.

While it may once have been scandalous for employers to exclude white men from their recruitment process, fast forward to 2023 and most hiring panels appear to have decided it’s riskier to include them. Infuriated by the failure of equality to produce equal outcomes, our liberal culture demands a bogeyman, and in the straight, white male, it found the pantomime villain of its dreams. Whatever your grievance, the patriarchy will shoulder the blame because any alternative culprit is simply too ‘offensive’ to countenance—no matter how well the facts support their claim.

The American Mind.

Ever since anti-Trump forces began to weaponize the legal system to achieve political objectives through litigation rather than the ballot box, the former president has been attacked on multiple fronts. One major national effort has been to attempt to disqualify Trump from running as a candidate in Republican presidential primaries this year. Altogether there have been about a dozen such challenges, and more may be coming.

To date, these efforts have been unsuccessful. Trump has beaten back challenges in Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island. Most of those decisions have not reached the question whether Trump is, in fact, legally barred from running. The Minnesota Supreme Court, for instance, ruled only that the challenge was untimely and could be renewed at a later stage.

Only the Colorado case reached the merits. That case, therefore, is the most significant so far. And it gave the victory to Trump.

Read it.

Back in 2021, the University of Pittsburgh garnered national media headlines after reports were leaked that the school was using fetal tissue for research assignments.

Now, documents obtained through a FOIA request by the pro-life group Center for Medical Progress (CMP) and the conservative group Judicial Watch revealed that Pitt was at one point under federal investigation for harvesting baby parts.

There’ve been numerous public record requests by those two pro-life groups, and more and more information is corroborating the malicious ways that Planned Parenthood worked with the University of Pittsburgh to use the body parts of babies who were aborted late in gestation in what was called “The GenitoUrinary Development Molecular Anatomy Project,” (GUDMAP). While the GUDMAP Project was supposedly intended to research and develop therapies for diseases of organs like kidneys, the bladder, ureter and urethra, its methods were inhumane.

Read it.

The Feminist Majority Foundation, along with Feminist Campus, Equal Rights Advocates, Girls Inc, Women’s Legal Defense and Education Fund, Trust Women, United State of Women, and the National Organization for Women, and numerous feminist groups signed a letter attacking the federal ‘Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act’ for daring to protect women from suffering the way that Payton and other female athletes had.

A dozen organizations with “women”, “girl” or “feminist” in their names were dedicated to the proposition that womens’ sports should be eliminated and that any women or girls who play should be ready to suffer catastrophic injuries from 220-lb. ‘transgender’ male athletes.

Beating women and denying their existence is the new feminism. So is raping women.

In the wake of the Hamas rapes during the invasion of Israel on Oct 7, some have wondered where the feminist organizations are. The answer is that they’re supporting the rapists.

Read it.

The large data sets on the cost of living and the cost of children are instructive. But nothing compares with the anecdotes you hear from people who once thought they were prosperous but now wonder if they can really get by while completely ruling out the idea of having and raising children. It’s a genuine shift and one that is devastating for the future.

Read it.

The House Oversight investigation into President Joe Biden and his family’s influence peddling schemes digs all the way back to ties to the late-90s big tobacco settlement, including James Biden’s deal-working caught on FBI tapes in an unrelated 2008 bribery scheme.

James Biden’s deal-making getting picked up on FBI tapes in 2008, as The Washington Post reported Sunday, are resurfacing amid the House Oversight investigation and the official impeachment inquiry.

Mississippi trial attorney Richard Scruggs admitted to paying James and Sara Biden’s “consulting firm” $100,000 to help grease the wheels for the Senate to pass a 1997 big tobacco law that would ultimately fail. James Biden was key, because he was the brother of then Senate Judiciary Ranking Member Joe Biden.

Read it.

Once nearly impenetrable for migrants heading north from Latin America, the jungle between Colombia and Panama this year became a speedy but still treacherous highway for hundreds of thousands of people from around the world.

Driven by economic crises, government repression and violence, migrants from China to Haiti decided to risk three days of deep mud, rushing rivers and bandits. Enterprising locals offered guides and porters, set up campsites and sold supplies to migrants, using color-coded wristbands to track who had paid for what.

Enabled by social media and Colombian organized crime, more than 506,000 migrants — nearly two-thirds Venezuelans — had crossed the Darien jungle by mid-December, double the 248,000 who set a record the previous year. Before last year, the record was barely 30,000 in 2016.

Read it.

A majority of Palestinians support Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel, according to a poll from a research organization based in the West Bank.

Seventy-two percent of Palestinian respondents to a poll the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research released Wednesday said they believe the attacks were the correct decision given the outcome. Support was more prominent among West Bank residents, 82 percent of whom said the attacks were correct. In Gaza, 57 percent said the attacks were the correct decision, compared to 37 percent who said it was incorrect.

Researchers said the poll does not indicate support for atrocities Hamas committed during the attacks. Majorities of Palestinians in both Gaza and that West Bank correctly said attacking or killing civilians in their homes violated international law. Eighty-five percent, however, said they did not see videos of Hamas terrorists committing those atrocities, and only 7 percent said they believe Hamas committed them.

There are no ‘innocent civiliams’ in Gaza.

Read it.

On Wednesday, December 13th, the Dubai-hosted UN climate summit, COP28, concluded by presenting its final declaration. All 198 participating countries reached a non-binding deal which—in a world first—makes explicit mention of weaning countries off fossil fuel use.

Following two weeks of intense negotiations, the deal aims to reduce or wholly avoid the negative byproducts of climate change and was praised by COP28 President Sultan Al Jaber as “historic.” Amid the celebrations, delegates are avoiding the real implications of phasing out oil, gas, and coal.

At times COP28 presented itself as threatened by some its participants, with the Saudi Arabia-led oil producer group the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) threatening to veto the adoption of a ‘green’ agenda, arguing that the world economy can slash emissions while continuing to use specific hydrocarbon-based fuels. After necessitating an additional day of negotiations, OPEC relented and Al Jaber was able to tell a jubilant plenary session that “we must take the steps necessary to turn this agreement into tangible actions.”

Read it.

Former President Donald Trump issued an urgent call for action to his fellow Republicans over what he called “the biggest story of the year,” namely a survey showing that 20 percent of mail-in voters admitted to committing at least one kind of voter fraud in the 2020 election.

The Heartland/Rasmussen poll, released on Dec. 12, suggests concerning levels of voter fraud in the 2020 election, bolstering President Trump’s longstanding claim that he was cheated out of a victory amid an explosion in mail-in ballots combined with state-level moves by the courts that made it easier to cheat.

 

The American Mind.

The explosion of support for Hamas’s assault on human decency could well turn out to be the high-water mark of the progressive Left. The authoritarian multicultural ideology generated on campuses and transmitted dutifully by the established media has reached its apex and may now begin to descend.

The signs are tentative but some are unmistakable. Corporate and university Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) departments are being slashed, and increasingly seen as both burdensome and discriminatory toward whites, Jews, and Asians. One-third of DEI professionals lost their jobs in 2022. Brands that posted Pride month messages in 2022, such as Lego and Miller Lite, have abandoned such posturing. Even the Navy deleted Pride-related messaging from Instagram and Twitter.

Perhaps more significant may be the rebellion of donors to the leading universities, prime movers of the ideology that drives everything from the DEI establishment. Money is the mother’s milk of politics and universities and foundations alike. The overt hostility toward Israel on campuses, and the resulting feeling of threat among Jewish students, makes Jewish and non-Jewish donors wonder where their money is going.

Read it.

Controllers like to control. Many things need to be controlled (and some things don’t), but once there is an obligation to secure some level of planning permission, the applicant is a hostage to the decision-maker. And, as controllers are often frustrated by the limitations of their powers, they are naturally tempted to push for their extension.

Rules and regulations are always done with the best of intent. But once some apparent improvement is put in place, however ill-conceived or impractical it transpires to be, it establishes a benchmark from which any relaxation is seen as a drop in standards.

This article is from the U.K., which is worse in most respects than the U.S., but you can find equally insane conditions in this country, especially in Blue states.

Read it.

Rasmussen Reports has polled voters on, among other things, their use of mail-in ballots in the 2020 election, in conjunction with the Heartland Institute. The results, if even remotely representative, are stunning. Cheating may be far more widespread than is generally assumed.

Niall Ferguson.

In 1927 the French philosopher Julien Benda published La trahison des clercs—“The Treason of the Intellectuals”—which condemned the descent of European intellectuals into extreme nationalism and racism. By that point, although Benito Mussolini had been in power in Italy for five years, Adolf Hitler was still six years away from power in Germany and 13 years away from victory over France. But already Benda could see the pernicious role that many European academics were playing in politics.

Those who were meant to pursue the life of the mind, he wrote, had ushered in “the age of the intellectual organization of political hatreds.” And those hatreds were already moving from the realm of the ideas into the realm of violence—with results that would be catastrophic for all of Europe.

Read it.

Some years ago, I was in Boston on business, and invited a European friend to lunch. The man was finishing a year-long fellowship at Harvard University, and was about to head back to Europe. Over a spread of delicious New England raw oysters, I asked my friend what the most important lesson he learned from his year at America’s most prestigious university.

He thought for a moment, then said, “How fragile the American elites are.”

The European explained how shocked he and his fellow Europeans on the program were to see so many American students unable to confront ideas that gave them anxiety—and how eager professors were to accommodate their intellectual and emotional fragility. This expressed itself as an ideological phenomenon—the students were all on the left, and coughed up the usual woke hairballs (e.g., “Transphobia is triggering”) told me that when he read in the Harvard student newspaper that more than three-quarters of the university’s student population was taking anti-depressants, he understood that their intellectual fragility was tied to their mental fragility.

Read it.

Researchers in a landmark new study have discovered a sequence within the Pfizer mRNA vaccine that produces an “unintended immune response” in the body, which experts are calling a massive “developmental and regulatory failure.”

Read it.

Japan has approved the world’s first self-amplifying mRNA (sa-mRNA) COVID-19 vaccine, although the manufacturer has not published safety or efficacy data for the shot.

Tokyo-based Meiji Seika Pharma received approval for manufacturing and marketing its Kostaive sa-mRNA COVID-19 vaccine, the company announced in a Nov. 28 press release. The mRNA in the vaccine is designed to self-amplify when delivered into cells, which generates a “strong immune response and the potential for extended duration of protection.” The vaccine is intended for primary immunization (2 doses) as well as booster immunization in adults. Kostaive is the “world’s first approved product applying self-amplifying mRNA technology,” according to the press release.

Both mRNA and sa-mRNA are RNA vaccines that use a virus’ genetic code against it. When an mRNA vaccine is injected into an individual, the mRNA instructs cells to make a specific protein and thus stimulates immune response. An sa-mRNA vaccine takes this concept

Reuters.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has made immigration his main weapon to blunt Canada’s big challenge of an aging and slowing population, and it has also helped fuel economic growth. That drove Canada’s population up at its fastest clip in more than six decades this year, Statistics Canada said.

But now a reversal of that trend is gradually taking hold. In the first six months of 2023 some 42,000 individuals departed Canada, adding to 93,818 people who left in 2022 and 85,927 exits in 2021, official data show.

The rate of immigrants leaving Canada hit a two-decade high in 2019, according to a recent report from the Institute for Canadian Citizenship (ICC), an immigration advocacy group. While the numbers went down during pandemic lockdowns, Statistics Canada data shows it is once again rising.

Read it.

The Philippines and China traded accusations on Sunday over a collision of their vessels near a disputed shoal in the South China Sea as tensions over claims in the vital waterway escalate.

The Philippine coast guard accused China of firing water cannons and ramming resupply vessels and a coast guard ship, causing “serious engine damage” to one, while China’s coast guard said the Philippine vessel intentionally rammed its ship.

China claims almost the entire South China Sea, a conduit for more than $3 trillion of annual ship-borne commerce, including parts claimed by the Philippines, Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia and Brunei. The Permanent Court of Arbitration in 2016 said China’s claims had no legal basis.

Politico.

City elections are officially nonpartisan in Houston, the country’s fourth-largest city with more than 2.3 million people, but Democrats have held the office since 1982.

Note that they include a picture of her but not one of him, perhaps  because he is not a Person of Color.

Read it.

America is witnessing a seismic shift in its demographic landscape. Recent data from Idaho reveals an unprecedented trend: people are migrating not just for jobs, schools, or lifestyle,but for political alignment. The movement is reshaping the country, according to the Seattle Times.

Read it.

Violent crime is quickly spreading to suburbia. A new report shows gangs from South America have targeted mansions in wealthy neighborhoods across the Detroit metro area. This comes as the Biden administration’s disastrous open border policies have flooded the country with millions of illegal migrants, as well as progressive cities fail to enforce ‘common sense’ law and order.

WXYZ Detroit reported at least 30 to 40 homes in upscale neighborhoods across Detroit have been targeted by “highly functional and well-trained” gangs from South America this fall.

Thieves are using high-tech “jammers” to disable WiFi home security systems. They’re primarily after cash, jewelry, and expensive handbags.

Cory Doctorow.

20 years ago, Chris Anderson told me that it was unrealistic to expect tech companies to refuse demands for DRM from the entertainment companies whose media they hoped to play. My argument – then and now – was that any tech company that sells you a gadget that can have its features revoked is defrauding you. You’re paying for x, y and z – and if they are contractually required to remove x and y on demand, they are selling you something that you can’t rely on, without making that clear to you.

But it’s worse than that. When a tech company designs a device for remote, irreversible, nonconsensual downgrades, they invite both external and internal parties to demand those downgrades. Like Pavel Chekov says, a phaser on the bridge in Act I is going to go off by Act III. Selling a product that can be remotely, irreversibly, nonconsensually downgraded inevitably results in the worst person at the product-planning meeting proposing to do so. The fact that there are no penalties for doing so makes it impossible for the better people in that meeting to win the ensuing argument, leading to the moral injury of seeing a product you care about reduced to a pile of shit.

Read it.

French farmers are dumping vast quantities of manure on government buildings to protest against excessive environmental regulations that threaten their way of life.

Read it. 

To some people, at least.

On the south side of Taipei, nestled in the hills behind the Gongguan Metro Station, is a community with a rather unusual history. Once a military outpost, it’s now a cluster of gray concrete, red brick, and sheet metal stacked haphazardly, rising some 260 feet (80 meters) above the surrounding city. Steep staircases lead to twisting alleyways filled with graffiti and confusing sculptures. In one courtyard, tourists can often be seen sitting on a pair of giant fortune cookies.
This is Treasure Hill–a prototype for what one architect believes is the future of sustainable urban living.

Note the key buzzword. Sustainable. This is the world the “Urban Planners” have in mind for us–living like Eastern European immigrants in the early 1900s.

Read it.

Imagine that you grew up and lived your whole life protected by an invisible, magical shield that kept out the armies of foreign conquerors. The shield had been there before you were born, and there was no reason to think it ever wouldn’t be there — it was simply a background fixture of your Universe. And then one day imagine that this invisible shield vanished. You wouldn’t notice right away. And the conquerors, lurking patiently behind that shield, might also take a while to realize that your land now lay open and vulnerable to their armies. You would go about your life for a while unaware that anything important had changed.

If you live in a democratic country, I worry that this pretty much describes the situation you’re in right now.

Read it.

The schoolyard bullies are back at it again. Russia is funneling waves of migrants into the Finnish border, and China has wreaked havoc on the Gulf of Finland by dragging an anchor across the sea floor.

Read it.

Harvard President Gay is Weasel of the Year and the competition has never been steeper. She edged out past winners FBI Director Wray and USAG Garland at the last minute with a truly appalling performance before Congress. When asked to comment when contacted this afternoon in his retirement home in the UAE Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf (AKA “Baghdad Bob”) simply replied “LOL. Amazing!”