Retired American teacher imprisoned by Russia returns to U.S.

From NBC News.com (Oct. 21):

Russia has released retired American teacher Stephen Hubbard, 74, the latest sign of warmer ties between the two countries as Washington pressures Kyiv to agree to a deal to end Moscow’s war against Ukraine.

The jet carrying Hubbard touched down at Lackland Air Force Base, Texas, at about 10:49 p.m. Wednesday (11:49 p.m. ET), video at the base showed.

U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff lauded Russian President Vladimir Putin for Hubbard’s release as they held peace talks early Wednesday in St. Petersburg. “You talk so much about my president, President Trump, being a humanitarian. You are a humanitarian also, sir,” Witkoff said.

Lawmakers from both parties criticized Witkoff’s use of the word “humanitarian,” with Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, saying Putin is “the aggressor in the war against Ukraine.”

The U.S. has courted the Kremlin for weeks, and the release of Hubbard — a Michigan native detained in Ukraine in 2022 — will give President Donald Trump a victory to tout after backlash at home and abroad for his tilt away from Kyiv in the conflict.

Son of Stephen Hubbard says 'no evidence' his father was a mercenary

Trump hailed the news, telling reporters late Wednesday that Hubbard would visit the White House “over the next day or so.”

Earlier, Trump said on Truth Social that Hubbard was “on his way back home and will soon be with his family. The United States, out of respect for President Trump, was not required to give anything in return — an unprecedented situation for Russia.”

Trump said he directly asked Putin in a phone call last week to release Hubbard, who was being held on charges of fighting as a mercenary in Ukraine, which he denies. He was the last American designated as wrongfully detained in Russia by the State Department.

The Kremlin said the move was a goodwill gesture.

Hubbard’s family in a statement thanked “President Trump and his team for opening the dialog with Russia which led to this joyful day. Our family can attest that there are wonderful blessings to be found along the hard road to peace.”

Putin’s foreign policy aide Yuri Ushakov later said Hubbard was handed over to Witkoff at St. Petersburg’s Pulkovo Airport.

In a video from the Russian state news agency RIA, Hubbard wears a green jacket and is smiling as he meets Witkoff. “Thank you very much for all your efforts,” he tells Witkoff as they shake hands. Putin sent Hubbard “blessings,” Witkoff tells him, adding, “From today, it’s a new life.”

Martin De Luca, Hubbard’s lawyer, said in a phone interview Wednesday that he spoke with Hubbard as he was “getting ready to take off” on a plane bound for the U.S. and that his client was overjoyed to be released.

“He was overwhelmed with joy,” De Luca said. “The No. 1 thing he was excited about was seeing his children and family, who will be waiting for him when he arrives in the U.S. tonight. He was in a fragile state, so it wasn’t a long conversation, but he’s OK, which is what’s important.” [read more]

Good to read. Welcome back home!

Trump Announces at a Georgia Campaign Rally That Audi Will Build a New Auto Factory in the State

From Newsmax.com (Oct. 25):

President Donald Trump on Saturday announced that Audi will build an automobile plant in Georgia as he tries to deliver on his promise to bolster American manufacturing in the final days before the midterm elections.

Speaking at a campaign rally in Perry, Georgia, where he sought to boost Republican candidates, Trump said Audi — the German luxury brand owned by Volkswagen — would commit $4.2 billion in nearby Macon to begin construction on a plant that will produce 200,000 cars a year.

“Think of that. 200,000 cars a year. That’s incredible,” Trump said, crediting his aggressive and unpopular tariff policies for the company's decision to build the plant.

The announcement seemed timed to offer a last-minute boost to Republican candidates in the battleground state, including Rep. Mike Collins, who is trying to unseat Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff. Trump has spent October campaigning in reliably Republican states as the party tries to hold onto its majorities in the House and Senate. Trump won Georgia in 2024 after losing it in 2020.

Trump was joined on stage by Gernot Döllner, the chairman of the board of management at Audi, who said the plant would be producing “our biggest and most premium SUVs.”

“This is a long-term investment, because we believe in the American market,” he said.

Audi, in a news release, said the plant — its first in Georgia — would create approximately 4,500 jobs and that construction was scheduled to begin in 2027, with production beginning in the early 2030s.

Republicans are bracing for losses in the Nov. 3 midterm elections as they contend with an unpopular president and an electorate that is angry over high costs and the ongoing war in Iran.

At the rally, Rick Jackson, the Republican candidate for Georgia governor, thanked Trump for the plans.

“Thank you on behalf of Georgia for putting the biggest economic deal in Georgia history right here today," he said. [source]

Call it a win! 

Another win:

DOJ touts major drops in crimes amid enforcement surge, 31% decline in aggravated assaults across US

How Christianity Invented the Hospital

From Christianity.com (Aug. 17, 2022):

Far from being an otherworldly religion, Christianity teaches both the importance and goodness of life in this world. In fact, from Jesus’ healing ministry to the work of modern missionary doctors, a consistent feature of the work of the Church in the world has been to care for the sick and needy, and not just point them to the life to come.

The early Church understood Jesus’ ministry to be a paradigm for their own work. So, just as Jesus set believers free from their bondage to sin, early Christians purchased slaves specifically to free them. Whereas Jesus used miraculous power to heal people from physical effects of the Fall, Christians used more ordinary tools to care for the sick and disabled. These activities are not merely good deeds in themselves but serve to advance the Kingdom. Though the Gospel is a message and must be proclaimed, the early Church saw works of mercy and preaching the Gospel as two sides of the same coin.

The first major epidemic faced by the Church was the Antonine Plague (A.D. 166-189). In fear of their lives, the Romans threw the sick out of their homes to die in the streets. Galen, the most prominent physician of the age, knew he could neither heal its victims nor protect himself. So, he fled Rome to stay at his country estate.

Recognizing that all persons were made in the image of God and that Jesus came to make all things new, body and soul, many Christians ran the other direction. They fought the Fall by tending to the sick, at risk (and often at the cost) of their own lives.

Since even basic nursing care can make a significant difference during an epidemic, Christian action saved lives. Their courage and self-sacrifice contributed to the rapid growth of Christianity. For example, when Irenaeus arrived in Lyon from Asia Minor, there were very few Christians. By the time the plague ended, there were 200,000 believers in Lyon. [read more]

Interesting history of the early Church.

The Problem with “Predictive” Theories of Economics

From David Gordon on Mises.org (Sept. 17, 2020):

Kay and King are not Austrians, but in this important book, they lend aid and comfort to several key points of Austrian economics. Kay teaches economics at Oxford, and King, who was formerly governor of the Bank of England, teaches at NYU. (King in an earlier book, The End of Alchemy, that I had occasion to review warns against the dangers of fractional reserve banking in a way that will delight admirers of Murray Rothbard.)

Austrians hold that the dynamics of the market depend on profit-seeking entrepreneurs, whose judgments of appraisement are of necessity subjective, irreducible to monetary calculation. As Joseph Salerno explains,

Mises presents a penetrating critique of the Walrasian view that, in the plans of producers, prices substitute for knowledge of the economic data or, rather, for entrepreneurial understanding and appraisement of future variations of these data. Mises’s critique is grounded on the incontrovertible fact that “The prices of the market are historical facts expressive of a state of affairs that prevailed at a definite instant of irreversible historical time.” As such, realized prices can never serve as an unambiguous guide to production; which is always aimed at supplying a market of the more or less remote future involving a different configuration of the eco­nomic data.

Mises’s argument depends on the distinction, made famous by Frank Knight, between risk and uncertainty. In a situation of risk, the actor knows the possible outcomes and can apply the probability calculus to them. In a situation of uncertainty, he cannot do so, either because he cannot use the probability calculus or because he does not know all the possible outcomes. He must rely on his judgment about the particular case. Mises calls this the distinction between class and case probability. He says in Human Action about case probability: “Case probability means: We know, with regard to a particular event, some of the factors which determine its outcome; but there are other determining factors about which we know nothing. Case probability has nothing in common with class probability but the incompleteness of our knowledge. In every other regard the two are entirely different.”

Mainstream neoclassicals do not accept this distinction. Milton Friedman says, “[I]n his seminal work, Frank Knight drew a sharp distinction between risk, as referring to events subject to a known or knowable probability distribution, and uncertainty, as referring to events for which it was not possible to specify numerical probabilities. I’ve not referred to this distinction because I do not believe it is valid….We may treat people as if they assigned numerical probabilities to every conceivable event.” If Friedman is correct, a key tenet of Austrian economics is wrong; entrepreneurial appraisement must exit the scene.

Mises acknowledges that you can say things like “I think there is a 50 percent chance the Republicans will win the coming election.” But this is just an expression of how confident you feel about this, and it is meaningless to use probability calculus here. He says,

On the eve of the 1944 presidential election people could have said:…(c) I estimate Roosevelt’s chances as 9 to 1….This is a proposition about the expected outcome couched in arithmetical terms. It certainly does not mean that out of ten cases of the same type nine are favorable for Roosevelt and one unfavorable. It cannot have any reference to class probability. But what else can it mean? It is a metaphorical expression….For the comparison is based on a conception which is in itself faulty in the very frame of the calculus of probability, namely the gambler’s fallacy. In asserting that Roosevelt’s chances are 9:1, the idea is that Roosevelt is in regard to the impending election in the position of a man who owns 90 per cent of all tickets of a lottery in regard to the first prize. It is implied that this ratio 9:1 tells us something substantial about the outcome of the unique case in which we are interested. There is no need to repeat that this is a mistaken idea.

Knight has an amusing comment on this issue. He says, “The saying often quoted from Lord Kelvin…that where you cannot measure, your knowledge is meagre and unsatisfactory; as applied in mental and social science is misleading and pernicious…the Kelvin dictum very largely mean[s] in practice, if you cannot measure, measure anyhow!”

Friedman has an answer to this objection. It does not matter, he says, whether people actually do assign probabilities to every conceivable event. This is just an assumption economists make, and what counts for a good theory is not the realism of its assumptions. Rather, a good theory is one that generates good predictions.

Kay and King reject this view, and here they again render Austrian economics a service, though, to reiterate, they themselves aren’t Austrians. The method of Austrian praxeology is deductive, and unless your premises are true, you have no guarantee that the conclusions you deduce from them are also true. Thus, Austrians must reject Friedman’s position.

Kay and King reject Friedman’s methodology because there is almost never clear evidence that the predictions of a theory are false. You can always adjust something in the theory to make it come out true, and that is what all too many economists do:

Friedman’s article [on methodology] appeared in a brief period of intellectual history in which a version of Popperian falsificationism—the idea that a hypothesis acquires scientific status only if there is a possibility that it might be refuted was in fashion….The decisive rejection of this falsificationist view is encapsulated in what philosophers know today as the Duhem-Quine hypothesis: such refutation is rarely definitive, because any test requires a range of auxiliary assumptions, and it is always possible to argue that these assumptions have not been fulfilled.

There is an additional point that strengthens the argument against Friedman. It isn’t clear that his claim about probability estimates generates any predictions at all. If you make a series of bets that don’t conform to the principles he sets forward, he can show through what is called a “Dutch-book” argument that you will lose money. But that is hardly a prediction that anyone will in fact make a series of bets of this kind. [read more]

Think We Can Model the Climate? Clouds Get in the Way!

From Ron Barmby on CO2 Coalition.org (Apr. 9, 2023):

I’ve looked at climate change from both sides now, and I have found common ground between proponents and skeptics of the belief that climate change is largely caused by humans. When it comes to forecasting global temperatures, distinguished experts in both camps agree a dominant variable cannot be simulated in computer models because clouds get in the way.

Among the proponents is Dr. Bjorn Stevens, a contributing author to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Assessment Report 5 (2014). Dr. Stevens is also director at the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, Hamburg, Germany, and a cloud expert. In a recent interview he acknowledged the contribution of clouds to global warming is overestimated in the IPCC’s “Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis.”

“Clouds are tricksters,” he said, referring to their complexity. However, he said, many scientists use oversimplified representations of clouds in modeling “as a guide because they are easier to simulate. This makes the climate models less accurate.”

On the skeptic side is Dr. Richard S. Lindzen, a former lead author for IPCC Assessment Report 3 and now a vocal critic of the IPCC. In a recent podcast the interviewer noted that Lindzen had published sufficient research papers to earn 80 PhDs. (Lindzen humbly declined the praise.)

Lindzen, professor emeritus of Atmospheric Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology,  points out that IPCC models rely on the assumption that water vapor and clouds amplify the greenhouse gas effects of CO₂ in order to achieve forecasts of catastrophic global warming. The IPCC theory is that a warmer atmosphere will have a higher content of water vapor – itself is a greenhouse gas – that adds to the warming caused by CO₂. Without this amplifying “positive feedback” effect, the models are still wrong for many reasons, but they no longer project “catastrophic” warming.

Dr. Stevens, who is on record stating that global warming is a “huge problem,” agrees that increased clouds do not amplify global warming: “Water-rich low clouds over the tropical ocean have the greatest cooling effect and low-water ice clouds at high altitudes have the strongest warming effect. Overall, the cooling effect is greater.” That’s called “negative feedback.”

Dr. Lindzen argues that global average temperature is controlled by the polar regions. The temperature at the tropics remains relatively constant over long periods of time while the polar regions have significant variations. In other words, a small change in global average temperature is the result of a big change in polar temperatures. The stability of tropical temperatures indicates that increased clouds provide negative feedback in times of global warming. Rather than exacerbating the global warming effect of CO₂, clouds reduce it.

Lindzen proposes the mechanism by which greater negative feedback is produced: High altitude cirrus clouds (Dr. Stevens’ low-water high altitude ice clouds that cause warming) control heat emissions to space. As the air below these clouds warms, the cirrus clouds dissipate and allow more energy to radiate into space. He calls this the Iris Effect.

Nature is dominated by negative feedbacks, not positive ones. French chemist Henry Louis Le Chatelier expresses this in Le Chatelier’s principle: A system in dynamic equilibrium (in this case the climate) is disturbed by changing the conditions (in this case the concentration of CO₂), then the equilibrium moves to counteract the change. Negative feedbacks occur because when a variable changes, other variables react in ways that offset the shift.

We can’t model clouds. The IPCC admits this. Nonetheless, its forecasting models rely on assumptions that clouds amplify CO₂ warming, without which its temperature forecasts are benign (that’s strike one).

IPCC forecasts based on cloud models have been called out by eminent cloud experts on both sides—proponents and skeptics of the notion of human-caused climate change. A recognized cloud expert and IPCC author (Dr. Stevens) states that clouds cause cooling overall, not warming (strike two).

And, finally, the observed stability of tropical temperatures argues that increased clouds provide even greater negative feedback to CO_2, and a cloud expert who has done enough research for 80 Ph.D.s (Dr. Lindzen) has an idea how that happens (strike three).

Clouds do not amplify global warming; they promote global cooling. That’s enough to convince this climate heretic that IPCC forecasts are no “red light” for humanity and to reject the insane drive to eliminate CO₂ from our economies.

IPCC forecasters overstate warming because they still somehow really don’t understand clouds at all. [source]

Darn those pesky clouds!

Scientists Discover Outer Space Isn't Pitch-Black After All

From NPR.org (Nov. 18, 2020):

Look up at the night sky and, if you're away from city lights, you'll see stars. The space between those bright points of light is, of course, filled with inky blackness.

Some astronomers have wondered about that all that dark space — about how dark it really is.

"Is space truly black?" says Tod Lauer, an astronomer with the National Science Foundation's National Optical-Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory (NOIRLab) in Arizona. He says if you could look at the night sky without stars, galaxies and everything else known to give off visible light, "does the universe itself put out a glow?"

It's a tough question that astronomers have tried to answer for decades. Now, Lauer and other researchers with NASA's New Horizons space mission say they've finally been able to do it, using a spacecraft that's traveling far beyond the dwarf planet Pluto. The group has posted its work online, and it will soon appear in The Astrophysical Journal.

New Horizons was originally designed to explore Pluto, but after whizzing past the dwarf planet in 2015, the intrepid spacecraft just kept going. It's now more than 4 billion miles from home — nearly 50 times farther away from the sun than the Earth is.

That's important because it means the spacecraft is far from major sources of light contamination that make it impossible to detect any tiny light signal from the universe itself. Around Earth and the inner solar system, for example, space is filled with dust particles that get lit up by the sun, creating a diffuse glow over the entire sky. But that dust isn't a problem out where New Horizons is. Plus, out there, the sunlight is much weaker.

To try to detect the faint glow of the universe, researchers went through images taken by the spacecraft's simple telescope and camera and looked for ones that were incredibly boring.

"The images were all of what you just simply call blank sky. There's a sprinkling of faint stars, there's a sprinkling of faint galaxies, but it looks random," Lauer says. "What you want is a place that doesn't have many bright stars in the images or bright stars even outside the field that can scatter light back into the camera."

Then they processed these images to remove all known sources of visible light. Once they'd subtracted out the light from stars, plus scattered light from the Milky Way and any stray light that might be a result of camera quirks, they were left with light coming in from beyond our own galaxy.

They then went a step further still, subtracting out light that they could attribute to all the galaxies thought to be out there. And it turns out, once that was done, there was still plenty of unexplained light.

In fact, the amount of light coming from mysterious sources was about equal to all the light coming in from the known galaxies, says Marc Postman, an astronomer with the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore. So maybe there are unrecognized galaxies out there, he says, "or some other source of light that we don't yet know what it is."

The new findings are sure to get astronomers talking.

"They're saying that there's as much light outside of galaxies as there is inside of galaxies, which is a pretty tough pill to swallow, frankly," notes Michael Zemcov, an astrophysicist at Rochester Institute of Technology, who was not part of the research team. [read more]

Feds have DNA evidence that could prove Ilhan Omar wed her brother, committed immigration fraud: sources

From NY Post.com (Oct. 19):

WASHINGTON — Federal prosecutors are planning to use DNA evidence to try to prove Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) committed immigration fraud, as part of the sprawling investigation into the congresswoman, sources told The Post.

People familiar with the years-long criminal probe said the feds have made use of whistleblowers, government records and now obtained DNA in an effort to substantiate decade-old allegations that Omar — and possibly members of her family like her father — defrauded immigration authorities.

One source said the DNA evidence was critical to proving an allegation that Omar married her brother when she wed Ahmed Nur Said Elmi in 2009 because she was trying to help him get a green card — which never came to fruition.

It’s unclear whether the DNA was taken before or after Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) searched the congresswoman’s home in Washington, DC, last Monday, when federal agents were seen exiting the bungalow with boxes marked “Seized Property Evidence.”

Another source pushed back on initial reports that investigators had gone “dumpster diving” in order to get DNA swabs of Omar, Elmi, who is currently residing in the UK, or family members.

Two more indicated that the execution of the search warrant on Oct. 12, coupled with the DNA and additional evidence, has provided a solid basis to bring charges of conspiracy to commit some form of immigration fraud before a grand jury, stemming from the probe initiated by the Minnesota US Attorney’s Office.

Given the case is being pursued as a general conspiracy, the evidence will prove useful even if some of the acts fall outside of the statute of limitations.

“If you argue a conspiracy, you can allege overt acts in furtherance of the conspiracy that are outside the statute of limitations,” said Neama Rahmini, a former federal prosecutor.

DC US Attorney Jeanine Pirro is also investigating issues related to the congresswoman’s finances — including entries in House disclosures that resulted in Omar deflating her net worth by tens of millions of dollars in the last year due to an unexplained accounting “discrepancy.”

“That judge would not have signed that warrant unless there was probable cause,” Pirro told Fox News. “If there was a crime committed, it will be prosecuted.”

The DNA evidence could finally prove an allegation that has percolated in Minnesota and DC political circles for more than a decade. Omar has repeatedly denied any accusations of the rumored sibling marriage since 2016, when she was first running for office as a state representative.

Elmi, who divorced from Omar in 2017, reportedly applied and then withdrew his application for a marriage-based green card in 2019, when US Citizenship and Immigration Services asked for additional evidence about his marriage to her, according to The Washington Post.

President Trump’s border czar Tom Homan said over the weekend that the feds have built “a strong case” that could result in the Trump administration seeking to denaturalize Omar, who has lived in the US since her family emigrated from war-torn Somalia in 1995.

Previously, sources said that the immigration fraud pertained to either Omar or her father, Nur Omar Mohamed, allegedly misrepresenting the future congresswoman’s birth date so that she could become a US citizen when her dad naturalized in 2000.

Legal experts have noted the statute of limitations is lengthier for providing false information on immigration paperwork than for fraudulently marrying someone. [read more]

Is it deportation time?  Or maybe prison time?

More Omar articles: 

• DOJ Court Filing Lists Rep. Omar Under Different Name
• Either Ilhan Omar Lied About Her Age In Her Autobiography, Or She’s Lying Now
  
• Report: Obama Admin Uncovered Evidence Against Omar's Marriage
  
• It’s Not Just Some ‘Rumor’ That Ilhan Omar Married Her Brother. Here’s The Evidence.
• Minnesota Rep: By 2016 Everyone Knew Ilhan Omar Married Her Brother
  

16 promises Trump kept before the midterms--and four he hasn't

From Glenn Beck.com (Oct. 20):

Here are the accomplishments that stand out.

1. He secured the border

Remember when we were told securing the border was impossible without Congress?

In December 2023, there were nearly 371,000 encounters at the border. This March, southwest border apprehensions were approximately 8,300 for the entire month.

2. He delivered on mass deportations

Trump promised the largest deportation operation in American history, and so far he is delivering. His administration has dramatically expanded removals over the past two years, although he hasn't reached the million-deportation target. But there are still two years to go.

3. He unleashed American energy

Remember the Green New Deal? The pressure to shut down coal plants, restrict drilling, and move away from natural gas? That’s dead and gone.

America is now producing roughly 13.8 million barrels of oil a day; Trump has put domestic energy production at the center of his economic strategy.

4. He's bringing manufacturing back

Trump promised to rebuild America's manufacturing base, and in response, companies from across America and the world have announced plans for new factories and investments, with roughly 309,000 manufacturing jobs projected from announcements this year.

5. No tax on tips became law

Trump signed legislation providing a federal income tax deduction for qualifying tips. He also delivered a deduction for qualifying overtime pay. After years of hearing politicians promise tax relief for working Americans, voters can point to an actual law.

6. Violent crime is falling

The murder rate is on pace to reach a historic low. According to the FBI, "the 2025 murder rate of 4.1 per 100,000 inhabitants is tied with 1955 and 1956 for the lowest murder rate," and that 2024 to 2025 shows the largest year—to—year decline in violent crime rates since the FBI began tracking in 1936. That’s fewer funerals, fewer grieving families, and fewer empty chairs at Thanksgiving. We all have a lot to be thankful for this year. [read more]

80% of promises kept is a pretty good record!  As for peace and secure elections, that will take the other participants to get their act together and be responsible.

‘GOD SAVED ME’ Mum found floating at sea after two years missing ‘felt shark fins’ passing by her before miracle rescue

From The-Sun.com (Sept. 29, 2020):

Angelica Gaitan, 46, was found unconscious and suffering from hypothermia off the coast of Colombia after being in the sea for eight hours.

She was discovered by fisherman Rolando Visbal and a pal floating 1.2 miles off the town of Puerto Colombia on the Atlantic side of the country at around 6am on Saturday.

It reported her first words after being rescued were “I was born again, God did not want me to die” after she had jumped into the sea following mental health problems.

She was brought ashore where locals tended to her before she was taken to hospital.

Angelica was then reunited with her family as she told investigators what had happened to her since disappearing two years ago.

The Carribean sea where she was in is home to dangerous sharks, including tiger sharks and bull sharks.

During her time in the sea she said the creatures circled her as she drifted in and out of consciousness.

“I knew there are many sharks in that area and, I don’t know if in a hallucination I felt that a fin passed very close to me, but it didn’t stop,” she said.

But then with time beginning to run out, she had a miraculous stroke of luck when she was spotted by the fisherman, who initially thought she was a log until she waved her hand to summon help.

Dramatic video shows the moment Rolando and a friend known only as Gustavo came across Angelica, who appears to be completely unresponsive.

Rolando told Colombia’s Caracol Radio that they nearly didn’t go out fishing that day after problems with his boat’s engine delayed an earlier trip.

“If we hadn’t had the problem with the spark plug on Friday, we would have gone fishing that day and the woman would be dead at sea,” he said.

“Gustavo warned me to be careful with the trunk and I began to turn about 15 degrees to the right, then to my surprise the trunk moved. I thought it was something supernatural.”

The video shows Angelica being dragged towards the boat in a lifebuoy the pair had thrown to her and which she had used her last ounce of energy to put on.

The pair attempt to have a conversation with her and give her water but Angelica begins to cry as the video comes to an end.

Rolando said Angelica didn’t say anything when they hauled her on to deck and was so weak he believed she would have drowned if she had spent any longer in the sea.

“So it turns out that I didn’t catch any fish that day either, but I fished a life. I think this was God’s purpose.”

Mystery continues to surround exactly what happened during the time her family lost contact with her, with her account of fleeing domestic abuse at the hands of her partner disputed by her daughter. [read more]

A miracle indeed. Glad she was rescued in time.

Happy Halloween!

 Made by me with a Gemini prompt (see below):

Photo-realistic painting in perspective. A night sky with stars in the sky. Upper-left is a small white waning crescent moon. Upper-right is a small fractal bolt of lightening.

The ground is covered with dead Bermuda grass.

A small vampire bat is flying close to the center in the sky. In the center of the painting is 2-story dilapidating abandoned pine wood house with 4 broken windows.

In the one of the windows is a transparent apparition of a small woman in white with black eyes. 

In another window is a small shadow person with a hat on his head.

In another window is a small bluish white sparkling ball of light.

Surrounding the house is a gated rusted iron fence. Next to the house on the left is an old bloodwood tree with a black widow spiderweb on one of the branches.

Next to the house on the right is a gray medium-sized granite tombstone with words RIP carved in the middle.

Out of the grave in front of the tombstone is a skeleton's small hand.

To the right of the house, is a zombie walking with its arms out. 

In front of the fence is the Grim Reaper. 

A transparent headless specter is walking toward the left in the background.

A medium sized blue lighted pumpkin with a worried carved expression in front of the house.

Notes from the American Citizenship and Its Decline course

Dr. [Victor Davis] Hanson argues that perhaps the greatest catalyst for the development of citizenship in ancient Greece was the protection of property.

Rome adopted many ideas from the Greeks regarding citizenship, especially from the constitutions of Sparta and Crete.

The Romans established a government with a senate and two consuls in order to check the excesses of radical Greek democracy.

According to Dr. Hanson, Rome was able to expand as far as it did because the Romans brought legal protections, cultural sophistication and material benefits to the peoples they conquered.

Rome's expansion brought new challenges to citizenship because its population was too diverse to share a common identity, the elites no longer felt invested in the common interest, citizens in distant provinces were difficult to assimilate.

According to Dr. Hanson, borders are significant to the idea of citizenship because borders define a space in which a common idea can be pursued.

Dr. Hanson does not classify globalization as one of the "organic" or "premodern" challenges to citizenship.

Source: Hillsdale College's "American Citizenship and Its Decline" course.

Pentagon UFO boss says strange sightings are either 'aliens' or a foreign power - and he hopes it's extraterrestrials

From Daily Mail.com (Nov. 10, 2023):

The Pentagon's outgoing UFO chief has said he does believe extraterrestrial life exists - but that you'd have to go to Mars or beyond to find it. 

Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick, the longtime laser and materials physicist and head of the Pentagon's UFO-chasing All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, delivered his assessment following news of his retirement from government service.

Kirkpatrick's 18-month tenure as the office's first-ever director has been laced with controversy, as expected for an area once relegated to the scientific fringe.

In the summer, there was a Congress hearing into claims the American government is covering up its knowledge of alien craft - which included the resurfacing of the 'Tic Tac' shaped UFO saga from 15 years ago.

Kirkpatrick's office was established in July 2022. He said his mission is to 'is raise the level of the conversation' around aliens and their potential existence.

When asked by Politico if aliens are real, he said: 'That is a great question. I love that question.

'Number one, the best thing that could come out of this job is to prove that there are aliens, right? Because if we don’t prove there are aliens, then what we’re finding is evidence of other people doing stuff in our backyard. And that’s not good.

'Two, from a scientific perspective: The scientific community will agree that it is statistically invalid to believe that there is not life out in the universe, as vast as the universe is and the number of galaxies and solar systems and planets.

'That is what part of NASA’s mission is to look for that life. The probability, however, that that life is intelligent and that it has found Earth and that it has come to Earth and that it has repeatedly crashed in the United States is not very probable.

'So part of what we’ve been trying to do, and part of what I will continue to do until I’m done, is raise the level of the conversation.

'If you are talking with NASA or the European Space Agency, and you’re talking about looking for life out in the universe, it is a very objective, very scientifically sound discussion and discourse.

'As that discussion gets closer to the solar system, somewhere around Mars, it turns into science fiction. And then as you get even closer to Earth, and you cross into Earth’s atmosphere, it becomes conspiracy theory.

'We need to change the level of the [public] conversation. It’s one of the reasons why we’ve engaged academia to work on a number of scientific papers that look at the probabilities of these things, and what are the signatures associated with that?

'So that we can benchmark what we’re doing in scientific proofs and in scientific fact and not hearsay and pointing fingers and government cover ups and conspiracies with no evidence of any of them.'

Kirkpatrick also revealed he's had over 30 whistleblowers 'come in to talk,' adding: 'We have investigated every single one of them, every single story, every lead that provided any substantive evidence for us to go after.'

According to the director of the Pentagon's UFO investigation office, 'the best thing that could come out of this job is to prove that there are aliens.'

The alternative to what would be a literally Earth-changing discovery of extraterrestrial life exploring our own planet would be that a rival foreign power could be 'doing stuff in our backyard,' he said.

Kirkpatrick added: 'And that's not good.'

While some UFO whistleblowers now accuse Kirkpatrick of fostering an 'atmosphere of disinterest,' others have suggested his superiors are holding AARO's efforts back even though a few have described 'really positive' experiences with the office.

'I'm ready to move on,' Kirkpatrick told Politico, upon official confirmation of his retirement. 'I have accomplished everything I said I was going to do.' [read more]

Is there another explanation other than misidentification? I suppose they could also be future earth time travelers if you want to get imaginative. From a Christian perspective, UFOs or UAPs could be Satan messing with mankind. Hard to say.

EXCLUSIVE: Hamas Turns Gaza Hospitals and Schools Into Torture Chambers as It Reestablishes Police State: Gazans Describe Horrific Interrogations, Beatings

From Free Beacon.com (June 10):

Hamas has built makeshift torture chambers inside Gazan hospitals and schools where its men are interrogating and abusing fellow Palestinians suspected of disloyalty. The reign of terror comes as Hamas moves aggressively to reassert its power over the Gaza Strip, according to video testimonials and official government documents reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon.

More than eight months after a fragile ceasefire with Israel left Hamas badly wounded, the terror group has largely turned inward, establishing a strict police state and moving internal security operations—its dreaded "Interior Ministry"—back into the same civilian outposts it commandeered to wage war on Israel. Eyewitness accounts from three Gazans reveal that Hamas has again laid claim to al-Shifa hospital, the Gaza Strip's largest medical complex, the al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah, Nasser hospital in Khan Younis, and the al-Ma'amadani Hospital in Gaza City. The terror group has done the same with schools across Gaza, turning classrooms into prisons and detention centers where civilians are often subjected to brutal beatings and more creative forms of torture.

"They have prisons inside the schools, rooms that function like prisons," recounted one Gazan activist who says he was abducted by Hamas and beaten for several days. "The same goes for hospitals. They have rooms underground in the basement that they use as a prison, as if they were military and security sites." At the Nasser Hospital, said a second Gazan woman, "inside the Hind al-Daghma Dialysis Center, people are beaten and shot in the legs. If they send someone to the renal department at Nasser, it basically means it's over."

Jonathan Schanzer, a veteran regional analyst and executive director at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies think tank, said it is no surprise that Hamas is again staking claim to Gaza's most important civilian centers.

"Hamas has always exploited the civilian infrastructure that it has wielded to deter Israel from attacking its military structures," he said. "The co-opting of institutions is a long-standing practice of this terrorist organization dating back to its very founding."

Like others quoted in this report, the Gazan witnesses to Hamas's torture operation have asked to remain anonymous in order to protect themselves from Hamas retaliation. The video testimonials were secretly filmed inside Gaza by Jusoor News, an independent Arab-run media outlet that frequently documents life under Hamas control, and provided to the Free Beacon along with Hamas-run Interior Ministry documents that show civilians being summoned to hospitals for interrogation.

The testimonials and documentation provide some of the firmest evidence to date that Hamas is not only torturing Palestinians, but also continuing to breach international law by using civilian buildings as military outposts. Israel targeted several of the aforementioned hospitals during the war in Gaza and provided extensive evidence that Hamas used these medical facilities for its operations, with Hamas operatives often working alongside humanitarian aid workers.

At the same time, anti-Israel elements of the international community and the media have paid little attention as Hamas rebuilds its authoritarian state and have focused instead on criticizing Israel. The New York Times last month published a largely discredited opinion column by Nicholas Kristof, which alleged that Israelis were raping "Palestinian journalists" with carrots and dogs. [read more]

Evil sheep-screwing bastards!  President Trump should just let Israel destroy Hamas. The world (other than the crazy Mullahs) wouldn’t miss them.

Illegal immigrant who murdered Michigan woman sues Trump, demands $75M, public apology, US citizenship

From Fox News.com (July 20):

An illegal immigrant serving a lengthy prison sentence for the murder of a Michigan woman is suing President Donald Trump, alleging he faced humiliation when his case was used as a political talking point, and is demanding $75 million, a public apology, and U.S. citizenship.

Brandon Ortiz-Vite, 27, who was previously deported from the United States, is serving a sentence of 39 to 102 years in prison for killing Ruby Garcia in March 2024.

Garcia's body had several gunshot wounds and was found dumped along a road in Grand Rapids. The pair were in a romantic relationship and were engaged in an argument at the time of the slaying.

In a handwritten complaint filed in federal court, Ortiz-Vite named Trump and White House Principal Deputy Press Secretary Steven Cheung as defendants.

Fox News Digital has reached out to the White House.

Ortiz-Vite's case garnered national attention and was highlighted when Trump, who made combating illegal immigration a large part of his campaign, visited Grand Rapids in 2024. During his remarks, Trump labeled Ortiz-Vite as "America's problem."

He also featured Ortiz-Vite’s mugshot in commercials as an example of the "murderers, rapists , and drug traffickers" who resided illegally in the United States, The Midwesterner reported.

He was mocked by prison staff and other inmates, he said.

"I was put into a category. Who I was as a person no longer mattered! What only mattered was my race," Ortiz-Vite wrote. "My case and immigration status! Once again, it belittled me, shattered my dignity and what I was as a person."

"The shame it brought to my family name is a reality I have to live with now," he added. "I took full responsibility for my actions but for them to use my case for political gain on TV was unjust. Humiliating. When I thought it couldn't get worse, it did. I was center stage in front of a nation, public scrutiny at its finest!"

Ortiz-Vite, who acted as his own attorney, said his case came under intense media coverage, resulting in him living in a "nightmare".

"It all became clear to me when I first met with my court-appointed attorneys. They explained how my case had now gotten blown out of proportion and was now a high-profile case!" he wrote. "The shock in their eyes and the tears from mine were a reaction to my realization that I was living everyone's worst nightmare! To be publicly infamous—a target! To the United States of America, from here everything went downhill. I was now labeled a cold-blooded murderer in the eyes of the people of this nation."

"The anxiety and despair I felt compares to no other," he added.

Matthew Borgula, a criminal defense attorney and former federal prosecutor, said the lawsuit is unlikely to succeed, citing a range of factors, including presidential immunity.

"Federal law requires courts to screen prisoner suits before anyone is served. This complaint will likely not survive that screening," Borgula told Fox News Digital. "Also, Presidential immunity covers official acts, and campaign statements can fall outside it — but this suit fails for more basic reasons." [read more]

That's too bad. Count your blessings that Michigan didn't give you the death penalty. You claim you were humiliated?  Be thankful you weren't attacked or killed in prison. That choice wasn't ever given to Ruby Garcia. I hope this selfish bastard gets deported immediately if he ever gets released.

The ‘Far Right’ Is Surging In Europe Because The Left’s Version Of ‘Democracy’ Has Failed

From The Federalist.com (June 13, 2024):

Due to mounting dissatisfaction with the political establishment throughout the European Union, right-wing parties have made significant gains in the recent European Parliament elections. Perhaps most surprisingly, this surge in seats won was fueled not only by traditional older conservatives but also by younger voters who have sought to rekindle the spirit of nationalism within their homelands.

Before the European Parliament elections, 32 percent of French 18-to-25-year-olds said they’d vote for the “far right” National Rally party, closely reflecting the eventual election outcome. Led by Marine Le Pen, “the National Rally party is on course to win 31.5 percent of the vote—more than twice the 14.7 percent projected for [French President Emmanuel] Macron’s liberal Renaissance party.”

Meanwhile, Germany’s AfD party secured better-than-expected results, coming in second in Germany’s EU parliamentary election, winning nearly 16 percent of the vote. Notably, AfD gained significant ground among younger voters, surging 12 percentage points to 17 percent among 16-24-year-olds.

This political earthquake felt in France and Germany is not an isolated incident within these two countries. Feelings of Euroscepticism and discontent over immigration are rising all across Europe.

While a “centrist” (meaning leftist) pro-EU majority remains in firm control of the European Parliament, members of the Western ruling class are quickly realizing that the backlash against the globalist agenda, put into motion shortly after World War II, is escaping leftist containment and steadily growing.

This should surprise no one. We saw the first strong signs of this immune response to globalism in 2016 when Britain voted to leave the European Union. Yet ruling class members on both the left and right within the United Kingdom did not heed the message their voters sent as immigration surged.

One of the major promises of Brexit was to regain control of England’s borders, yet the number of legal arrivals has nearly doubled since Brexit. This surge has fueled a significant rise in anti-immigration protests by individuals desperate to preserve their culture and heritage. As a consequence, the Conservative Party in the U.K., which has been the primary governing party since 2010, is now set for historic losses ahead of the July 4 national elections due in part to its failure to control its borders.

Of course, according to leftist media, the rise of so-called “far-right” populism, manifesting itself through legitimate electoral wins, is positioned as a threat to democracy. But this is a rhetorical sleight of hand.

Democracy is not in danger. It’s their “democracy” that’s threatened as the right is beginning to flex its political muscles — finally acting as legitimate opposition to the status quo dominated by an establishment left and right that look and behave in a very similar fashion.

When liberals use the word “democracy,” they don’t mean the will of the voters. Rather, the word democracy is used as a substitute for leftist hegemony, or as Curtis Yarvin explained, “When they say democracy, they mean oligarchy.”

“Traditional” conservatives and “centrist” leftists both share the same immigration policy. That’s part of why the left is terrified of legitimate right-wing opposition as opposed to the traditional “opposition in-name-only” conservatism they are accustomed to defeating. In a recent New York Times analysis titled “Just How Dangerous Is Europe’s Rising Far Right?” author Roger Cohen alluded to the failure of leftist political containment strategies,

“Across Europe, the far right is becoming the right, absent any compelling message from traditional conservative parties. If ‘far’ suggests outlier, it has become a misnomer. Not only have the parties of an anti-immigrant right surged, they have seen the barriers that once kept them out crumble as they are absorbed into the arc of Western democracies.”

Much to the dismay of liberal elites, authoritarian “barriers” in the form of “hate speech” legislation, social stigmatization, corporate media exclusion, and outright censorship are proving ineffective because the reality of deteriorating social and economic conditions, due in part to mass migration across the West, is too great to ignore. After decades of prioritizing the well-being of immigrants over that of native-born citizens, the reinvigoration of traditional forms of nationalism through legitimate right-wing opposition was not only necessary but inevitable.

The surging popularity of the “far right” in Europe is shaking democracy to its core, as it should, exposing how unresponsive “democracy” has become to the needs of the people Western governments were meant to serve. [source]

Good. The Left likes to scare the public by using the term 'far right.' When in reality, the public gets tired of failed crazy socialist policies and wants sane policies back again.

Science 'Pleads the 5th'

From AFA.net (Aug. 10):

First and Second Samuel were originally a single book in the Hebrew Bible, known simply as Sefer Shmuel [Book of Samuel] and remained undivided in the Masoretic manuscript tradition. The book was divided into 2 parts when translated into Greek as part of the Septuagint, probably during the 2^nd century B.C.

Although the human authorship of 2 Samuel remains unknown, its vivid description of Absalom may preserve the testimony of someone familiar with David’s royal court, perhaps a prophet such as Nathan or Gad, or a royal chronicler whose records were later incorporated into the Samuelan tradition.

Second Samuel 14:25 records Absalom’s extraordinary physical beauty:

“But in all Israel there was none to be so much praised as Absalom for his beauty: from the sole of his foot even to the crown of his head there was no blemish in him.”

The next chapter reveals how Absalom converted physical appearance, insincere concern, and calculated flattery into personal loyalty. As 2 Samuel 15:6 concludes: “So Absalom stole the hearts of the men of Israel.”

In his classic The Life of David, written in the 1930s, A.W. Pink observes that Israel’s admiration for Absalom revealed the Nation's low spiritual condition. He possessed neither piety, wisdom, nor justice, yet the people were captivated by his handsome appearance. His wickedness was overlooked while his physical beauty was celebrated, feeding the arrogance that eventually brought about his ruin.

Pink saw the same spiritual disorder in his own generation: physical beauty and outward prowess were valued more highly than moral virtue and spiritual grace. He argued that Christendom had fallen into decline because it had become increasingly attracted to whatever appealed to the flesh. Churches wanted full pews and full treasuries; preachers wanted to retain the young; evangelists wanted visible results. Consequently, worldly attractions and high-pressure methods were employed to manufacture the appearance of spiritual success.

Such is seemingly the spiritual state of the Union in 21st-century America: a mile wide and an inch deep.

Which brings us to the ruse of the Gibeonite-like deception surrounding COVID-19 and Anthony Fauci, and the American people’s profound lack of spiritual discernment. The official narrative was advanced by a decadent secular culture and its antagonistic cultural Marxists, deeply entrenched across the spiritual, intellectual, educational, economic, and vocational mountains of influence and power in America.

Yet the Gibeonite deception reveals an even deeper failure. Joshua 9:14 tells of the fatal mistake of trusting physical evidence instead of seeking God’s guidance: “The Israelites sampled their provisions but did not inquire of the Lord.”

The evidence appeared persuasive: the worn garments, patched wineskins, old shoes, and moldy bread. Everything had been carefully arranged to produce the desired conclusion. Israel examined what the Gibeonites presented but failed to inquire of the One who could expose what appearances concealed.

In Gleanings in Joshua, A.W. Pink explains that Satan opposes the people of God in 2 distinct forms: openly, as a roaring lion seeking to devour, and covertly, as a subtle serpent practicing deceit. Pink contends that Scripture and Church history demonstrate that deception is far more dangerous and successful than open persecution. When force cannot exterminate or intimidate the faithful, Satan turns to secret schemes.

Whereas the roaring lion is easily recognized, the subtle serpent seldom is. Open persecution may awaken the Church, but deception enters quietly, clothed in authority, credentialed by experts, amplified by institutions, and presented as unquestionable truth.

That is the great warning running from Joshua through 1 & 2 Samuel and into 21st-century America: God’s people are rarely defeated by superior strength alone. More often, they are defeated when they fail to seek the Lord’s counsel, mistake appearance for character, and surrender spiritual discernment to the prevailing authorities of the age.

The COVID-19 crisis was therefore more than medical or political. It was spiritual, a test whether the American Church could distinguish the voice of truth from the whispers of the guileful serpent.

The postgame accounting must now be lawful, factual, public, and unsparing. Every relevant document should be released. Every financial interest should be disclosed. Every misleading statement should be examined. Every abuse of governmental authority should be exposed.

The actions of Dr. Fauci, NIH officials, pharmaceutical companies, media organizations, government agencies, and communications platforms should be subjected to full-scale, rigorous public examination. Wherever the evidence establishes deliberate deception, concealment, censorship, or unlawful conduct, those responsible must answer for it; not as an act of vengeance, but as a vindication of truth and a warning against its repetition.

Century-old family businesses were bankrupted. Employees and military personnel lost their livelihoods under mask and vaccination mandates. Churches were shuttered, and in places such as California, congregational singing was prohibited. Loved ones died alone in sterile hospital rooms.

These were not abstractions. They were grievous harm inflicted upon real people, real families, churches, and the Nation itself.

Yet the deepest scandal of COVID-19 was not merely that powerful institutions may have misled the American people. It was that a spiritually undiscerning Nation had become so enamored with titles, appearances, credentials, and institutional power that it no longer knew whom - or what - to believe.

Absalom stood before Israel in all his external splendor, captivating and without visible blemish. The Gibeonites stood before Joshua wearing old garments and carrying moldy bread. In both instances, appearance concealed reality.

And therein lies the warning to America: the serpent seldom announces himself with a roar. He comes handsomely dressed, impressively credentialed, officially approved, and carrying precisely the evidence he wants us to see.

The question now is not merely whether America was deceived.

The question is whether the church has recovered enough spiritual discernment to seek the counsel of the Lord, and prevent it from happening again.

Gideons or Rehabs have begun to stand. [source]

Science is about discovering the Truth. When it loses that purpose and becomes politicized and weaponized then trust becomes an issue. I hope and pray that day never comes.

How Government-Owned Streets Prevent Effective Law Enforcement

From Mises.org (Sept. 12, 2020):

“Your right to swing your arms ends where another person’s nose begins.” While this widely attributed quote sounds ostensibly libertarian in terms of respecting self-ownership, it’s actually quite misleading. One need not abide some lunatic swinging his arms about near one’s face, being forced to tolerate it as long as no physical contact is made. Rather, property owners may establish rules regarding the conduct of those who choose to enter their property, including prohibitions against swinging arms near other people’s faces. Individuals may then decide what rules they are willing to tolerate when they enter another’s property, and competition between property owners enables them to determine what bundle of rules various consumers prefer.

This is not the case on so-called public property—that is, land areas controlled by the state such as streets, roads, parks, government buildings—even if that state were perfectly constrained by a written constitution. In The Structure of Liberty, Randy Barnett articulates this problem well:

A society that includes extensive public property holdings is faced with what might be called a dilemma of vulnerability. Since governments enjoy privileges denied their citizens and are subject to few of the economic constraints of private institutions, their citizens are forever vulnerable to governmental tyranny. Therefore, freedom can only be preserved by denying government police agencies that right to regulate public property with the same discretion accorded private property owners. Yet steps to protect society from the government also serve to make citizens more vulnerable to criminally inclined persons by providing such persons with a greater opportunity for a safe haven on the public streets and sidewalks and in the public parks. (p. 220)

Barnett further notes that no one can be barred from public space controlled by the state; there is free access for everyone, even convicted criminals as long as they have served their sentences. Anyone must be tolerated up until the point they violate the criminal code. Some libertarians may think this is well and good since it limits the police’s authority to intervene. However, as Barnett explains, this leads to a tradeoff: we may be more free from arbitrary police enforcement, but we are also more vulnerable to victimization. Such constitutional constraints are not only restrictions on the police, but on everyone else as well: rules that would be enforced if public property were in the private domain cannot be enforced by private actors.

In this sense, on public property the rules of conduct are socialized. The unpleasantries of witnessing activities that might otherwise be prohibited on private property (depending on the intended purpose of that property), such as solicitation, panhandling, or protesting, must be tolerated on public property. The police are legally constrained in enforcing rules against such activities, as they are constitutionally protected or laws prohibiting them have been voided for vagueness by the US Supreme Court.

The manifestations of this problem are viscerally illustrated in the ongoing mostly peaceful protests/riots. While the US Supreme Court has opined that local governments can constitutionally impose some restrictions, such as requiring a permit if certain conditions are met, protestors are to be otherwise free to assemble, hold their signs, and chant. They are not free, however, to engage in the acts associated with rioting, such as vandalism, looting, and arson, among other crimes.

As such, protesting on public property is analogous to the supposed right of someone to swing their arms as long as they don’t hit someone in the face—it must be tolerated up to the point it becomes a riot. This presents a problem for police—they are prohibited from interfering with masses of people apparently peacefully assembling, but once those masses are assembled they are difficult to contain after they decide they want to hit another person’s nose by rioting.

Owners of shops and small businesses adjacent to the state-owned streets where mobs are allowed to gather are simply out of luck in terms of preventing such assemblies or receiving compensation from the state for failing to prevent such foreseeable consequences (though the lack of compensation may change if lawsuits in Seattle, among other cities, are successful). If violent mobs were allowed to assemble on private property with the similarly predictable outcome of the destruction of neighbors’ property, would we not consider the property owner who allowed it to be at least partially liable? Would it not also be reasonable for neighboring property owners to seek an injunction if this behavior continued night after night? A private property owner is not bound by the First Amendment to the US Constitution: they may exclude protestors no matter how peaceful they are.

In light of these considerations, the fact that riots are able to continue month after month would likely be impossible but for the institution of “public property.” If the streets where the mobs assemble were privately owned, assemblies that would likely result in property damage or even inconvenience for everyday people would be prevented from gathering together in the first place. Protestors blocking the streets, as well as the vehicle-protestor collisions resulting from them, would become a thing of the past. Property owners would be able to nip riots in the bud by preventing masses of people intent on rioting from assembling. There would be little need for masses of riot police, flanked by armored vehicles from war zones, staring down mobs of protestors, waiting for them to cross the line so that pepper spray, rubber bullets, and batons can legally be unleashed on them.

This is yet another example of why the privatization of streets is of interest for reasons of police reform alone. (Indeed, riots themselves are partly responsible for the militarization of police.) The failure of government policing to secure the streets not only leaves us more vulnerable to criminal victimization, but government is worse than useless when they criminalize the private defense of property. “Taking back the streets” ought to mean privatizing them and enabling property owners to defend their property. This would be the surest way to end the riots. [source]

Riots is what the far-Left wants, so the gov’t owning the streets serves the Left’s purpose.

Nature generates more data than the internet … for now

From PopSci.com (Sept. 22, 2023):

Is Earth primarily a planet of life, a world stewarded by the animals, plants, bacteria, and everything else that lives here? Or, is it a planet dominated by human creations? Certainly, we’ve reshaped our home in many ways—from pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere to literally redrawing coastlines. But by one measure, biology wins without a contest.

In an opinion piece published in the journal Life on August 31, astronomers and astrobiologists estimated the amount of information transmitted by a massive class of organisms and technology for communication. Their results are clear: Earth’s biosphere churns out far more information than the internet has in its 30-year history. “This indicates that, for all the rapid progress achieved by humans, nature is still far more remarkable in terms of its complexity,” says Manasvi Lingam, an astrobiologist at the Florida Institute of Technology and one of the paper’s authors.

But that could change in the very near future. Lingam and his colleagues say that, if the internet keeps growing at its current voracious rate, it will eclipse the data that comes out of the biosphere in less than a century. This could help us hone our search for intelligent life on other planets by telling us what type of information we should seek.

To represent information from technology, the authors focused on the amount of data transferred through the internet, which far outweighs any other form of human communication. Each second, the internet carries about 40 terabytes of information. They then compared it to the volume of information flowing through Earth’s biosphere. We might not think of the natural world as a realm of big data, but living things have their own ways of communicating. “To my way of thought, one of the reasons—although not the only one—underpinning the complexity of the biosphere is the massive amount of information flow associated with it,” Lingam says.

Bird calls, whale song, and pheromones are all forms of communication, to be sure. But Lingam and his colleagues focused on the information that individual cells transmit—often in the form of molecules that other cells pick up and respond accordingly, such as producing particular proteins. The authors specifically focused on the 100 octillion single-celled prokaryotes that make up the majority of our planet’s biomass.

“That is fairly representative of most life on Earth,” says Andrew Rushby, an astrobiologist at Birkbeck, University of London, who was not an author of the paper. “Just a green slime clinging to the surface of the planet. With a couple of primates running around on it, occasionally.”

As all of Earth’s prokaryotes signal to each other, according to the authors’ estimate, they generate around a billion times as much data as our technology. But human progress is rapid: According to one estimate, the internet is growing by around 26 percent every year. Under the bold assumption that both these rates hold steady for decades to come, the authors stated its size will continue to balloon until it dwarfs the biosphere in around 90 years’ time, sometime in the early 22nd century.

What, then, does a world where we create more information than nature actually look like? It’s hard to predict for certain. The 2110s version of Earth may be as strange to us as the present Earth would seem to a person from the 1930s. That said, picture alien astronomers in another star system carefully monitoring our planet. Rather than glimpsing a planet teeming with natural life, their first impressions of Earth might be a torrent of digital data.

Now, picture the reverse. For decades, scientists and military experts have sought out signatures of extraterrestrials in whatever form it may take. Astronomers have traditionally focused on the energy that a civilization of intelligent life might use—but earlier this year, one group crunched the numbers to determine if aliens in a nearby star system could pick up the leakage from mobile phone towers. (The answer is probably not, at least with LTE networks and technology like today’s radio telescopes.)

On the flip side, we don’t totally have the observational capabilities to home in on extraterrestrial life yet. “I don’t think there’s any way that we could detect the kind of predictions and findings that [Lingam and his coauthors] have quantified here,” Rushby says. “How can we remotely determine this kind of information capacity, or this information transfer rate? We’re probably not at the stage where we could do that.”

But Rushby thinks the study is an interesting next step in a trend. Astrobiologists—certainly those searching for extraterrestrial life—are increasingly thinking about the types and volume of information that different forms of life carries. “There does seem to be this information ‘revolution,’” he says, “where we’re thinking about life in a slightly different way.” In the end, we might learn that there’s more harmony between the communication networks nature has built and computers. [source]

Interesting. I guess the data race is on.

Octopus punches fish in the head (just because it can)

From Live Science.com (Dec. 23, 2020):

Why do octopuses have eight arms? The better to punch fish with, new research reveals.

These brainy cephalopods sometimes team up with fish to find food; hunting collaboratively like this allows them to cover more area, and it increases their chances of catching prey. However, when big blue octopuses (Octopus cyanea), also known as day octopuses, are displeased with their fish partners, they demonstrate their ire by suddenly punching the fish in the head.

The octopus lashes out using "a swift, explosive motion with one arm," in an attack "which we refer to as punching," scientists wrote in a new study.

Temporary hunting alliances between octopuses and coral reef fish have been documented for decades and can involve multiple participants of various species, the study authors reported Dec. 18 in the journal Ecology.

Sometimes, fish and octopuses will work together for more than an hour, with different species scouting different locations. Octopuses pursue prey that dart around rocks and into tight spaces in the reef, while bottom-feeding fish such as the yellow-saddle goatfish (Parupeneus cyclostomus) scour the seafloor, and other fish species patrol the water column, according to the study.

But those collaborations don't always work out so well for the fish, the new study shows. Between 2018 and 2019, researchers observed eight incidents while diving in Eilat, Israel, and in El Quseir, Egypt, in which octopuses suddenly punched out their supposed partners.

"I laughed out loud, and almost choked on my own regulator," said lead study author Eduardo Sampaio, a Ph.D. student at the University of Lisbon and the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior. His later reactions were more subdued, "but I still marveled at it every time I saw it," he told Live Science in an email.

"The fish would get pushed to the edge of the group, or would actually leave the group. Sometimes after a while it would return, other times it would not return at all. The octopus would leave the fish alone after displacing it," he said. Though octopuses were previously known to throw defensive punches when attacked by damselfishes or while fighting over food, this is the first time their punching has been scientifically described and linked to collaborative hunting, Sampaio said in the email. [read more]

Maybe, the octopus was annoyed by the fish. Then again, maybe the octopus was just being mischievous. Who knows.

Study: 44 Percent of Dems OK With Violence to Stop Trump

From Newsmax.com (Sept. 27):

A quarter of American adults — including 44% of self-identified Democrats — say they support the use of force to prevent President Donald Trump from being president, according to a new survey's findings described by University of Chicago political scientist Robert Pape.

Pape is also warning that the 2026 midterm elections could produce a level of political violence not seen in the U.S. in decades — and, under a worst-case scenario, could become "the most violent election in American history."

"We haven't seen this level of violence, political violence, since the 1960s," Pape said in a recent interview.

Pape is director of the Chicago Project on Security and Threats, or CPOST, which has been tracking Americans' attitudes toward political violence since 2021.

CPOST conducts nationally representative surveys with NORC (National Opinion Research Center) at the University of Chicago.

Pape said his concern about November is heightened because several pressures are converging at once: deep partisan hostility, rapid demographic and social change, economic anxiety, and an electorate in which significant minorities tell pollsters that political force can be justified.

In his interview last week with podcaster Chris Williamson, Pape said his latest University of Chicago survey found that 25% of American adults supported using force to prevent Trump from being president, equivalent to about 65 million adults.

Among self-identified Democrats, Pape said the figure was 44%.

"This is a stunning number," he said. "This is not just another turn of the data."

Pape said broad support for political violence increases the likelihood of violence.

He said his team has tried to determine what respondents mean by "force" through focus groups and survey experiments.

Pape said that among respondents endorsing force against Trump, 55% associated it with lethal violence such as assassination, while others envisioned riot-style violence.

He said his surveys also found support for coercive force on the other side.

Pape said 16% of Americans supported Trump using the military to suppress Democrat protesters in his latest polling.

For Pape, however, Election Day itself is not necessarily the most dangerous moment. His greatest concern is the period beginning when votes are counted and extending through the seating of the winners in January.

"That's the real danger zone," he said.

The critical question, he said, is whether losing candidates and their supporters accept defeat or conclude the election was stolen.

Pape also points to additional economic stress.

Behind all of this is Pape's broader theory of "violent populism." He argues that social media amplifies political anger but does not create its underlying causes. [read more]

That percentage is way too high. ☹️ Should be closer to zero. Then again they and their collaborators in the artificial news say the President is Hitler. So, there is that.