▶️ VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: THE ELEPHANT IN THE CANADIAN ROOM
⭐️ HelloKitty’sGotAHairTrigger
VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: THE ELEPHANT IN THE CANADIAN ROOM
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t first glance, the current American-Canadian trade “war” is absurd. We are neighbors with a long history of close friendship, speak the same language (for the most part), and spring from the same British civilization. Nearly one million Canadians reside in the United States.
Given the two countries’ natural affinities, Canadians are nearly indistinguishable from Americans.
Yet America is surging ahead while Canada stagnates, and that growing asymmetry—not trade alone—is driving the acrimony between two longtime allies.
Both sides have reasonable grievances over trade policy. Americans don’t like Canada’s perennial trade surpluses of more than $50 billion in a supposedly free-trade zone. They resent the fact non-free-market China exports subsidized cheap steel and aluminum through Canada, giving Canadian auto and truck exports a price advantage.
The United States also objects to Canada imposing a surcharge on American digital media companies to subsidize Canadian Indigenous and French-language content.
Americans further resent Prime Minister Mark Carney’s backing out of an apparent deal at the eleventh hour. He apparently hoped to gin up Canadian nationalism on the eve of two key elections in Alberta and Quebec by attacking Trump, who is unpopular in Canada. Ascendant separatist movements in both provinces threaten to unravel the Canadian nation.
Moreover, Carney expects the dispute to damage Trump on the eve of the U.S. midterm elections, which might reduce his leverage over Canada.
Canada, in turn, resents American demands concerning its importation of Chinese goods as an infringement upon its sovereignty. It increasingly believes that the sheer size of the United States next door—13 times larger in nominal GDP and nine times larger in population—threatens to overwhelm Canada’s unique culture.
Canada maintains that its trade surplus results largely from U.S. imports of Canadian oil sands petroleum—a mutually beneficial arrangement. It is also tired of Trump’s trolling and mockery. But even these differences could easily be resolved, given our centuries of friendship.
So what is the unspoken source of the acrimony? The United States is leaping ahead of other Western countries in ways few anticipated several decades ago, while Canada is stagnating.
America is the world’s largest producer of oil and natural gas. Its technology, software, biotechnology, digital media, satellite, and numerous other companies dominate global rankings.
American GDP is roughly $10 trillion larger than either China’s or the European Union’s. Yet China has four times the population of the United States, while the European Union has 100 million more people.
The U.S. military is the world’s most lethal and is now being rebuilt with even greater defense spending.
Moreover, the United States has not been shy about warning its Western friends that their socialist paradigms and leftist policies threaten their very existence.
The EU suffers from unsustainably low fertility. Massive and often illegal immigration threatens the very culture and values of Europe. Green hysteria has nearly wrecked the German and British economies. Until Russia invaded Ukraine and Trump began his harangues, European NATO members were de facto disarming.
Yet Canada—especially under the globalist prime ministers Justin Trudeau and Mark Carney—has adopted much of this ossified European model.
The result is a sluggish economy. Also left unspoken is Canada’s growing reliance on the U.S. market, American continental defenses, and the general goodwill of the United States.
Until last year, Canada had refused to honor its NATO commitment to spend 2 percent of GDP on defense. It has thrown open its border even as the United States is closing its own. Some 45 percent of Canadian residents are either foreign-born or the children of immigrants.
The majority come from impoverished, non-Western countries and immediately depend upon a vast social welfare system that the present anemic economy cannot sustain.
Utopian think tanks speak grandly of a Canadian “Century Initiative” that would bring in enough immigrants to increase the population to 100 million. But sheer numbers will hardly remedy the country’s underlying demographic and economic stagnation.
How mostly non-Western immigrants are to be integrated, assimilated, and acculturated in a country that has forsaken anything remotely resembling the idea of a melting pot is never explained.
The tragic irony is that Canada once punched well above its demographic weight, with a formidable military and a dynamic economy. Not anymore. Its per capita GDP is now among the lowest in the industrialized West.
Yet Canada has the fifth-largest oil and natural-gas reserves in the world, even as green restrictions and provincial infighting nullify those natural advantages. In timber, metals, and mineral resources, Canada ranks among the world’s top five nations.
Apparently, Canada believes that opening its economy, insisting upon legal, meritocratic, diverse, and measured immigration, and fully developing its natural wealth would be a bitter medicine worse than even its present maladies.
For all America’s unsolicited advice and tough-love attitude, the United States would prefer a strong Canadian partner to a dependent one.
That growing asymmetry explains much of this otherwise inexplicable melodrama. ✪
▶️ CAN WE EVER THROW OFF THE YOKE OF BIG GOVERNMENT?
CAN WE EVER THROW OFF THE YOKE OF BIG GOVERNMENT?
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n June 1788, when New Hampshire became the ninth state to ratify the Constitution, America was born. In 1789, its entire payroll reportedly fit on a single ledger page, consisting mainly of customs officers, marshals, postmasters, and clerks. By 1800, the Federal civilian workforce had grown to 125 people. By 1901, it had reached 231,000, including the Post Office. Today, the Federal civilian workforce numbers approximately 2.7 million. Add another 1.7 to 2 million contractual employees, and the number is around 4.5 million—and this doesn’t count anyone in uniform.
Next, count those in state and local government: another 20 million Americans! For perspective, there are only about 100–103 million full-time private-sector workers and 25 million people employed directly or indirectly by Government. In round numbers, that translates into one out of every five Americans is working for the Government. That imbalance is economically indefensible.
The size of the government workforce is only the first part of the story. Working for the government is often considerably more lucrative than working in the private sector. Federal employees receive significantly more total compensation than comparable private-sector workers, particularly those without a college degree. The average Federal salary is an astounding $112,000. Add benefits, and total compensation rises to $150,000–$175,000.
Federal employees work 210–225 days a year, compared with 235–245 days in the private sector. They receive heavily subsidized health insurance, a defined-benefit pension, and job security that is nearly impossible to match. State and local employees generally enjoy a similar advantage. Private-sector workers remain exposed to layoffs, changing market conditions, rising health care costs, and the possibility that their employer simply decides their position is no longer necessary.
Government employment operates under a different set of rules, a consequence of a lack of a profit motive. Those rules matter because government compensation ultimately has to be financed by the productive economy—through taxation, borrowing, or inflation. When government spending grows faster than the supply of goods and services, prices rise because the government is injecting more money into the economy than the economy can absorb.
The difference becomes even more apparent over the course of a career. A Federal employee under the General Schedule receives within-grade increases simply by staying around. Those increases occur at predetermined intervals, in addition to annual and locality pay adjustments. Most state and local governments have similar arrangements. Private employers frequently reward experience, but they decide whether the additional cost is justified. Government compensation systems make these decisions automatically, treating pay increases as entitlements rather than cost‑benefit judgments. A government employee can accumulate compensation advantages simply by being a warm body. The private employee often has to change employers, negotiate, or demonstrate increased value to obtain a comparable increase.
Government employees typically receive more paid time off through holidays, sick leave, vacation, parental leave, and administrative leave. Many state and local employees also work fewer hours than the conventional 40‑hour private‑sector week, some as few as 32 hours. This does not mean every government employee is lazy. There are dedicated public servants whose work is difficult and/or essential. The issue is the structure. If an employee receives full-time compensation while working substantially fewer hours, the effective cost of that labor is higher. If an agency employs more people than it needs, costs expand commensurately. That cost eventually shows up in taxes, borrowing, reduced public investment, or slower economic growth for our country. And sometimes the consequences are more serious than an inefficient budget.
In March 2026, an Air Canada Express jet landing at LaGuardia collided with a fire truck that had been cleared to cross the runway, killing both pilots and injuring dozens. The subsequent investigation revealed that two air traffic controllers had left work without permission about an hour early, a practice the FAA characterized as systematic time‑clock fraud. Their departure contributed to understaffing at a critical moment, leaving one controller to manage multiple responsibilities during an emergency. Air traffic control depends upon trained people being where they are supposed to be when they are supposed to be there. The LaGuardia accident demonstrates what happens when staffing, work schedules, or accountability don’t rise to what the public assumes it is paying for. Sometimes government inefficiency is measured in lives.
Government is no longer simply an institution Americans entrust to perform certain functions; it has become an its own enormous self-serving economic ecosystem. Every new program creates new positions. Every expansion of government creates permanent new spending, leading beneficiaries to acquire a direct economic interest in preserving the system that benefits them. Allowing government employees, either directly or through unions or dedicated PACs, to make campaign contributions or provide in-kind services creates an incestuous relationship between government employees and their elected leaders, leading to indefensible loyalties and conflicts of interest.
That does not require corruption; it simply reflects ordinary human proclivities. A government employee prefers continued government employment, while a contractor dependent upon federal contracts opposes cuts. An organization receiving government grants defends the program providing them. Every expansion of government creates another constituency interested in maintaining it. This helps explain why government grows more easily than it contracts, as employees know they’re unlikely to find similarly lucrative employment in the private sector. Over time, government consumes an ever larger share of the pie, creating the yoke.
The government of 1789 could fit on a ledger page. Today’s government employs or financially supports tens of millions of people. That transformation did not occur overnight; it grew incrementally. One program, one agency, one new benefit, one more layer of administration was never seen in its totality; it was just too easy to add them, never looking back. The obvious answer: Zero‑based budgeting. Frightening to government leaders because it would reveal waste and inefficiency they would be forced to address.
Eventually we wound up with 25 million government employees, millions more dependent upon government contracts, and an enormous system whose beneficiaries have a manifest interest in preserving it. The yoke was built slowly, by people who believed they were doing good. But a burden is no lighter just because it was created with good intentions. The weight of that yoke is felt not in Washington DC but by the citizens who fund it and suffer the other losses that an inefficient government inevitably imparts. If Americans want a freer and more prosperous future, they will have to confront a difficult reality: reducing government means changing the incentives of millions who now depend upon it. Before we can throw off the yoke, we must recognize how heavy it has become and accept the necessity to address it. Otherwise, government—and those who feed off it—will slowly become our masters. ✪
▶️ RAUL CASTRO IS ON HIS DEATHBED
RAUL CASTRO IS ON HIS DEATHBED
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aúl Castro turned 95 years old in June, so this isn’t exactly a big news flash, but if rumors are true, he’s not doing too well.
Various Miami-based Cuban exile media outlets have reported a source inside his inner circle says he has had a serious stroke and is in the hospital in critical condition. Some are even reporting that he’s intubated and machines are keeping him alive.
The rumors started on social media, where a Cuban YouTube post cited an alleged Cuban Government document that had leaked describing plans for his funeral. Then on Tuesday Spanish-language daily Diario las Americas wrote Castro was not dead but reportedly in critical condition, “on life support and apparently suffering from the effects of a stroke,” citing “information reaching the newsroom.”
Dr. Andy S. Gomez of Local 10 in Florida has also confirmed Cuban sources tell him Castro is hospitalized; but he refuses to say more or speculate about his condition. The Miami Herald says sources inside Cuba claim there is no public activity which would reflect the former dictator’s impending death.
Of course, the regime has not confirmed or denied any of this. If you’ll recall, there were lots of false rumors leading up to his brother Fidel Castro’s death in 2016, so this could very well end up being just another one of those situations.
However, Raúl has made some public appearances in recent months, though he’s also skipped a few notable ones. Whenever he does appear in public, he looks extremely frail and unwell. His most recent appearance was on August 13 when he attended public events to celebrate Fidel’s 100th birthday. He has reportedly had some health issues in recent years, like cancer, but again, the regime has never confirmed any of it.
On the outside, nothing in Cuba would necessarily change when Raúl does die, but internally, there could be some shock to the structure which has held the Castro regime together over the years. He’s the one who built and supposedly still influences the Revolutionary Armed Forces and Grupo de Administración Empresarial S.A. (GAESA) — the two institutions which basically run the entire country — and he’s the last surviving founder of the 1959 revolution.
His death could lead to some internal power struggles between the military, the Communist Party, and members of the Castro family, like his grandson Raúl Guillermo Rodríguez Castro, who has become more involved in in politics during recent years. We could even see younger members of the Castro family willing to make concessions to the United States. Never say never…
There are other potential outcomes, like increased discontent from the Cuban people who are already quite miserable due to the energy crisis and protesting nearly weekly. However, that could also lead to increased repression, given the regime’s need to prove nothing has changed in order to maintain its image.
Symbolically, his death will mark the end of an era, and it will test what the Castro brothers built to see if it can outlast their deaths; something that’s fairly fragile at the moment given how much pressure the Donald Trump Administration has put on Cuba this year.
I know many Cuban exiles are very unhappy Raul will never see justice for any of his numerous crimes. You may remember earlier this year, the Department of Justice unsealed a superseding indictment, charging Castro with conspiracy to kill U.S. nationals, two counts of destruction of aircraft, and four counts of murder for his role in the 1996 shoot-down of two Brothers to the Rescue planes which resulted in the death of four men.
While it was highly unlikely Castro, who defiantly ignored the charges, would ever see jail time, I still do understand the disappointment.
A Miami Herald source in Havana said there were no signs on the streets that something extraordinary was happening, and people were going about their business as usual. We’ll keep you updated on any new developments. ✪
▶️ AMERICA 250: JAPAN SURRENDERS ON THE USS MISSOURI
AMERICA 250: IMPERIAL JAPAN SURRENDERS ON THE USS MISSOURI
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n September 2, 1945, one of the most murderous regimes of the 20th Century officially surrendered to the Allies on an American battleship, finally ending World War II.
The official post from the United States Army below contains the essential details and notes 22 out of the 88 Army divisionswhich served in WWII were in the Pacific Theater. Millions of soldiers, Marines, and sailors served in the Pacific Theater against the Japanese during the war. Over 30 million soldiers and civilians died in the Pacific Theater, with around 400,000 dead or wounded Americans. The Japanese killed up to 10 million people across multiple Asian nations and heinously maltreated POWs from multiple countries, including America:
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War History Online has a list of mass atrocities committed by the Imperial Japanese in their bloody rampage across Asia, including the Sandakan and Bataan death marches, the Jesselton revolt put-down, the Sook Ching and Manila massacres, and the Thai-Burma Railway. You can also read about the Nanjing atrocities. When we discuss World War II, we tend to fixate so much on the Nazis we forget there was another equally murderous regime that barely agreed to surrender even after two atomic bombs.
The National WWII Museum says the Americans chose the location where a U.S. commodore sailed into Tokyo Bay in 1853 to force the self-isolated island nation to have dealings with the rest of the world. Now, once again, Americans would make Japan accept American terms for interacting with other nations.
The 11 Japanese delegates assigned to make the surrender arrived at 8:56 a.m. local time, led by Foreign Minister Mamoru Shigemitsu and representatives of the Japanese military. Assembled around them were thousands of American sailors as well as representatives of all of the Allied nations—and, of course, dozens of journalists, for this ceremony would be broadcast across the world. “A million eyes seemed to beat on us with the million shafts of a rattling storm of arrows barbed with fire,” recalled Japanese diplomat Toshikazu Kase. “Never have I realized that the glance of glaring eyes could hurt so much’…After a prayer and playing of the “Star-Spangled Banner,” General MacArthur gave a short speech before the document signing…As the ceremony ended after 23 minutes, a formation of B-29 Superfortresses which had brought destruction to Japan, along with carrier planes, swooped overhead.
There is an unconfirmed rumor that shows up periodically in social media posts and AI chatbots: that one of the generals present expressed a wish for Bing Crosby, the star known as the “Voice of America,” to be there to set the seal on the day. Whether it is a true story or not, it represents the contribution of popular entertainment to the war effort and the excitement at the prospect of enjoying entertainment in peace that so many of the soldiers felt at the close of the war.
Yes, celebrities like Crosby had done their part to keep up morale, but now all the war-weary troops could look forward to a night at the movies without the threat of battles and bombings hanging over them. The soldiers, sailors, and Marines couldn’t wait to restart their lives back home. As the popular wartime song had said, they would finally be home for Christmas. ✪
▶️ ZELENSKYY HIRES CHRYSTIA FREELAND AS ECONOMIC ADVISOR
ZELENSKYY HIRES CHRYSTIA FREELAND AS ECONOMIC ADVISOR
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here is some good news coming within this announcement as Justin Trudeau’s former Deputy Prime Minister to Canada is a well known political figure to both President Donald Trump and North American political followers for a decade.
Chrystia Freeland was the former lead of the Canadian trade delegation when Trudeau realized he needed to try and offset the economic damage within the renegotiated NAFTA agreement known as the USMCA. Freeland was also the lead attack agent behind the debanking effort against Canadian truckers who opposed the vaccine mandate.
In addition to holding Ukraine roots, the ideology of Chrystia Freeland as a multinational globalist and promoter for the World Economic Forum’s ‘new world order’ is well documented.
VOLODYMYR ZELENSKYY – “Today, I appointed Chrystia Freeland as an Advisor on Economic Development. Chrystia is highly skilled in these matters and has extensive experience in attracting investment and implementing economic transformations. Right now, Ukraine needs to strengthen its internal resilience – both for the sake of Ukraine’s recovery if diplomacy delivers results as swiftly as possible, and to reinforce our defense if, because of delays by our partners, it takes longer to bring this war to an end. I am grateful to everyone who is ready to support our state and our engagement with partners. Glory to Ukraine!”
Presumably this appointment is intended to assist Zelenskyy in gaining further western banking investment in Ukraine, part of the 20-point plan that relates to economic recovery. However, the downside is this announcement undermines any motivation the Trump Administration might have toward that same objective.
In reality, given the recent revelations about billions of laundered aid funds being skimmed by corrupt members of the Ukraine Government, we can only imagine how much of the recovery funds would be apportioned to maintaining the life of indulgence the political leaders expect.
In response to the lucrative “voluntary” appointment, Chrystia Freeland has announced her resignation from the Canadian Government in order to avoid any conflict of interest as the skimming is organized.
Approved by British intelligence, MI6, and the greater British Commonwealth in accordance with the needs of the World Economic Forum and banking control managers, it is likely that Freeland will join a growing list of globalist Ukraine Economic “Advisors.”
As Zelenskyy recently said about the opportunity for the EU to confiscate the Russian sovereign wealth fund, “just give me the money.”
Today, around 27 leaders, NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte as well as the alliance’s top military officer, Gen. Alexus Grynkewich, will gather in Paris amid so-called Coalition of the Willing format. The objective will be to solidify the U.S. elements to provide the “security guarantees,” while Brussels organizes the financial structures which will be possible only because the USA will stand guard over their investment. …. And, so it goes.
PARIS — U.S. Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner — U.S. President Donald Trump’s son-in-law — will travel to Paris and attend a meeting of Ukraine’s allies on Tuesday, an Elysée official told reporters on Monday. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio will not be there “for obvious reasons,” the official added, referring to the situation in Venezuela. “We have strived to bring the Americans closer to us, never resigning ourselves to the U.S. abandoning Ukraine. We have succeeded in this exercise of reconvergence between Ukraine, Europe, and America,” the official stressed.
Who knows, maybe we will get Greenland in exchange for providing for Ukrainian national security. ✪
▶️ FORD MARKETS ANOTHER EV PICKUP TRUCK: FOR LATE 2027
FORD MARKETS ANOTHER EV PICKUP TRUCK: FOR LATE 2027
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hat could Ford possibly be thinking? Their F-150 Lightning was canceled in 2025. To Ford, judging by their ads, it looked like a sure thing. Take the most popular vehicle in America and electrify it? Yeah, bound to be a winner. It was high-tech, electric, green, and oh-so-cool! It also had a “Frunk,” short for “front trunk.”
It took a few years, but Americans discovered it couldn’t do the things people buy pickups to do. Its range, particularly when towing, was awful. It was worse in winter, when cold sapped about 50% of its range, greatly increased charging times, and it couldn’t keep drivers warm. Ford recommended using only the seat and steering wheel heaters.
Despite MSRPs in the $80,000 range, Ford lost as much as $60,000 on every Lightning. Ford admitted an $11.1 billion loss in the first quarter of 2026, though bizarrely suggesting they’d lose $4 to $5 billion in 2026. They’ve been losing at least that yearly amount on EVs every year for years now.
“I think the customer has spoken,” Ford CEO Jim Farley said on the company’s earnings call. “That’s the punchline.”
Yet Ford continues to build the Mach-E, which starts at $37,795. Ford tried to market it as a police cruiser. A few blue city police agencies fell for that, but not for long. Ford sold only 4600 in the first quarter of 2026, which could optimistically mean 18,400 for the year. In comparison, Toyota sold 317,186 Camrys in 2025. Manufacturers selling so few vehicles normally cancel such products. Yet Ford still makes an “E-Transit” cargo van.
So, Ford heard the customer speak but didn’t pay attention. Ford is going to spend $50 billion through 2026 on EVs, including a compact pickup they’ve unfathomably named the “Fathom.” According to Motor Trend, a notorious EV cheerleader, it’s the same size and configuration as the conventionally powered Ford Maverick compact pickup, a best seller.
Its primary selling point is a $29,945 starting price, with a $1,595 destination and delivery add-on, for $31,540. Every manufacturer makes a few at the lowest price point for advertising, but if you want one with minimal gear, expect another $6,000 or so. And it has a Frunk!
The Fathom has “Bi-Directional Power Capability”—old tech. Theoretically, in a power outage, you could use it to power your house until the battery is dead with no way to recharge it. You can also apparently power appliances while camping. Just be sure to leave enough juice in the battery to get back to civilization.
Motor Trend speculated about a tire symbol in the Fathom:
A tire could also indicate a drive mode, and Ford has used a similar symbol in the Maverick to denote the traction control, which can have off-road or performance modes. If nothing else, we think it’s meant to signal capability since critics have questioned whether a small, low-riding, electric pickup will be able to do “real” truck things like towing, hauling, and off-roading.
Imagine that. Critics questioning that kind of thing when the full-sized, now-canceled F-150 Lightning had real trouble with that stuff.
The Fathom won’t be available until late in 2027, but Ford would really like you to preorder one in early 2027. No, they don’t have any range figures yet, but experience has taught Americans that EPA range figures for EVs are wildly optimistic and might only apply in an EV with no cargo, no passengers, on completely flat roads with no wind, and if highway speeds are carefully avoided. That’s partly why the Lightning is an ex-EV: it wasn’t ready for prime time, and neither are most other EVs.
Full disclosure: My wife and I happily own two Ford pickups, a Maverick and a Ranger. We’re very Wyoming that way. That’s why I worry about Ford refusing to learn what to Normal Americans appear obvious lessons. OK, the Fathom is a compact pickup like the very successful, well-designed, and well-made Maverick. And it, if you’re very careful, costs less than Ford’s previous EVs—maybe.
But it’s still an EV. It still has cold- and hot-weather performance problems. It will still have horrific range problems when loaded and when towing. It will still take a very long time to recharge. Repair and body shop costs will still be astronomical, and so will insurance rates, and resale value will be abysmal. That’s why Ford abandoned its utopian plans to make 50% of its lineup electric by 2030, and why every other manufacturer has done the same.
EVs comprise around 7% of all vehicles sold in the US. It’s a very small market. They’re not for everyone. Perhaps Ford is hoping to lose only $20,000 or so on each Fathom? I thought Ford was a for-profit corporation. Silly me. ✪
▶️ ABDUL EL-SAYED’S PEDOPHILIA PROBLEM
ABDUL EL-SAYED’S PEDOPHILIA PROBLEM
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e need your voice,” Abdul El-Sayed told a sex offender who had been sentenced to prison for sexually soliciting who he thought was a 14-year-old girl online and then for “distributing child sexually abusive material and multiple counts of accosting children for immoral purposes.”
The sex offender had reinvented himself as an activist against incarceration and claimed he had suffered, “I was only allowed to have the type of phone without a browser, and several times had my phone confiscated” and argued the answer “is to address the root causes of crime… address the real problems… like education, lack of economic opportunity.”
“I hope that you’ll run, and I hope that when you do, you’ll find me out and let me have the opportunity to support,” Abdul El-Sayed endorsed his political activism. “We need your voice, folks who are affected by the experiences that you’ve had uniquely need your voice.”
One of the sex offender’s alleged former victims, said he “solicited me as a minor” and he “worked with Senate hopeful Abdul El-Sayed” and together with other politicians made it possible to expunge criminal sexual conduct in the fourth degree and “removing rape from 17-24 year old’s permanent record.” The anonymous victim posted “Abdul helped lead the decarceration movement. He was the president of the non-profit Michigan United.”
Abdul El-Sayed served as the president of Michigan United aka the Michigan Organizing Project as part of a board with a number of Muslim figures including Aamina Ahmed of AAPI Rising, appointed by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer to head Protect Michigan, Senegalese immigrant activist Fatou-Seydi Sarr and Dearborn Magistrate Judge Rula Aoun. One of the organization’s missions was combating ‘mass incarceration’ and it was part of the Michigan Justice Advocacy coalition alongside Safe & Just Michigan where the sex offender worked as a lobbyist and argued for keeping sex offender registries secret and for allowing them to live near schools.
Michigan has one of the largest sex offender lists in the country making the threat even worse.
Why was Abdul El-Sayed advocating for a man who was “distributing child sexually abusive material” and “accosting children” and whose victim spoke out against El-Sayed?
This is only one of a series of pedophilia scandals and intersections involving El-Sayed. Earlier in August, Abdul El-Sayed came under fire for a planned appearance at the Islamic Society of North America, an Islamic group named as an unindicted co-conspirator in a terror funding trial, alongside numerous figures who had called for violence and terrorism, including Imam Tariq Masood who praised Hitler and described having “forced his 13-year-old niece into marriage, and advised his followers to do the same with their young female relatives.”
El-Sayed tried to disavow any connection to the imam who had been accused of “pedophilic rhetoric” but a book by yet another Islamic figure with troubling views on child rape was spotted on his bookshelf despite his efforts to prevent coverage of the hateful text from being broadcast.
Abdul El-Sayed asked documentarians covering his previous campaign to “not get these things in the shot” and, as reported by the Free Beacon, the book in question was by Bilal Philips, an unindicted co-conspirator in the World Trade Center bombing, who in other writings ‘advocated that young girls are fit for marriage the moment they begin menstruating.’ Philips argued in another book:
“The prophet Muhammad practically outlined the rules regarding marriage prior to puberty, with his practice he clarified what is permissible and that is why we shouldn’t have any issues about an older man marrying a younger woman, which is looked down upon by this society today, but we know that Prophet Muhammad practiced it, it wasn’t abuse or exploitation, it was marriage.”
In that same book, Bilal Philips also argues monogamy is “illogical, men are polygamous by nature” and the alternative is prostitution. The Koran allows men to rape their wives, “a woman is obliged to give herself to her husband and he may not be charged with rape,” and “Sharia does permit a husband to hit his wife.”
Bilal Philips complained the ‘Prophet’ Mohammed “has been accused of being a pedophile due to his marriage to Aisha at the age of 9” and argues “pedophilia involves adults taking advantage of children by purchasing sexual favors from them” when they “are not seeking marriage but only sex” and that the “age of consent for women set in the West” and has “no actual relationship to the woman’s ability or inability for sexual relations.” By contrast “Islam sets the age of marriage at puberty.” And that having sex with a nine-year-old is completely fine.
Presumably, according to Islamic Sharia law, a 9-year-old can be both raped and beaten.
It is unclear whether Abdul El-Sayed, who is running on his ‘public health experience’ agrees with all this, but the pattern of his complicity raises troubling questions about his position on the sexual abuse of children. Most political candidates can’t even afford one pedophilia scandal, El-Sayed is up to three scandals which arrived at the incredible rate of one per week during the month of August.
El-Sayed’s involvement in Michigan United has been downplayed, as has its link to advocacy for sex offenders and his own political support for a sex offender has largely been buried as well. The intersection between the Islamist political candidate and Islamic figures who have normalized pedophilia was reported on by the Free Beacon, but did not go any farther beyond that.
Advocates for children have long expressed concern of a hidden epidemic of child abuse happening in Islamic enclaves like Dearborn and Hamtramck where local Islamic governments have the ability to suppress complaints and cases. Under Islamic Sharia law, the sexual abuse of children as young as 9 years old might not be considered a crime, and as Abdul El-Sayed and other Islamic figures in the state have argued, Sharia law is fundamental to their way of life.
Where does Abdul El-Sayed draw the line? Is it at pedophilia? If so, why does he advocate for a sex offender and why iss he comfortable keeping a text by an Islamic figure who argued for sex with 9-year-old girls on his bookshelf? And if El-Sayed is comfortable with pedophilia, is that an Islamic value that Michigan Democrats are comfortable integrating into their platform of multiculturalism? ✪
▶️ IT’S ABSURD TO THINK CHINA WILL EVER GIVE UP COAL
IT’S ABSURD TO THINK CHINA WILL EVER GIVE UP COAL
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ince the approval of the Paris Climate Agreement in 2015 by every nation on earth except the United States, the ever-compliant global media has flooded newsprint, airwaves and digital space with narratives China is moving away from coal. We have been assured by tens of thousands of scholarly, peer-reviewed “studies” the communist government there is rapidly displacing its gigantic fleet of coal power plants; bigger than the rest of the word’s combined, with glorious solar panels, windmills and battery arrays so enormous they’d cover Taylor Sheridan’s 6666 Ranch in the Texas panhandle.
It all makes for a glorious narrative, one heavily encouraged by Xi Jinping’s government in its ceaseless drive for acceptance by the global community and accumulation of geopolitical and hegemonic leverage. The narrative has gained such a high level of acceptance that China is invariably treated at the annual COP and World Economic Forum events as a full participant in the impossible globalist drive for Net Zero by 2050 even though its own nebulous commitments do not even begin to kick in until 2060 and beyond. In the meantime, China continues to expand its coal power fleet and ramp up its mining operations every year; a fact which seems to always be “unexpected” by the media’s preferred “experts” on such things.
Just one problem: It’s all a myth. In a recent analysis, Canadian energy analyst Dr. Joseph Fournier details the realty, which is that the Xi government remains as wedded to coal as former British prince Harry remains wedded to former Netflix star Meghan Markle. Fournier points out the fact Chinese policymakers framed coal as “the sea-calming divine needle (a reference to the mythical magic staff of Sun WuKong) or ballast stone of national energy security” in the country’s 14th Five-Year Energy plan published in 2020. That framing continues to shape the 15th Five-Year plan published earlier this month, in which authors reaffirm coal’s role as the country’s “foundational” energy source.
This year’s planning report does emphasize “clean and efficient utilization” of coal, as well as “promoting the peaking” of its use, but stops short of specifying the year in which said glorious “peak” might happen or how many years the period of phasing it all down will take. Why play such word games? Because again, it’s all a grand game.
Not that the Chinese haven’t invested massively in wind and solar; because they certainly have, so much so that the country’s “renewable” sector contributed as much as 10% to China’s gross domestic product in 2024. Of course, the troublesome reality there is all those wind, solar and battery installations and exports were manufactured in factories powered by coal, fed by raw metals mined by diesel-powered heavy equipment, realities the World Economic Forum (WEF), the United Nations (UN) and their media cheerleaders prefer to ignore.
They’ve built so much of the stuff in fact this year has seen record levels of curtailment of these weather-reliant energy sources. An estimated 360 terawatt hours of wind and solar went wasted during the first half of 2026 alone, a near-50% year-over-year increase.
The latest Five-Year Plan goes on to call for strengthening coal’s regulatory function within a “new-type power system,” concentrating production in northern security bases, modernizing mines to reduce emissions and pollution and diversifying some coal enterprises into chemicals and other industrial businesses. It also emphasizes methane controls and efficiency upgrades for existing plants but predictably makes no mention of hard consumption caps or rapid retirement schedules.
So, should we really expect China, a nation with transparent designs on global domination, to just voluntarily surrender its Divine Needle to gain praise from climate alarm prophets of the global order? Don’t be silly.
Which brings us to another troublesome reality which Dr. Fournier describes: The fact at current consumption levels, China’s domestic coal supplies will be essentially depleted over the next 30 years or so. In his report, Fournier says the evidence at hand “does not describe a nation merely hedging against uncertainty. It describes a state systematically preparing for regional war and coercive resource acquisition.”
After all, energy security is in fact inseparable from national security. Why would any rational person expect China to voluntarily give up on protecting that? ✪
▶️ QUESTIONS ABOUT WEATHER WARFARE BEGIN TO ARISE
QUESTIONS ABOUT WEATHER WARFARE BEGIN TO ARISE
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e who controls the weather will control the world. Vice President Lyndon Johnson said those words in 1962 during a commencement speech at his alma mater, Southwest Texas State University. By then, the government had already been tampering with the weather for at least 15 years. Assuming the intention was not malevolent, one of those experiments went awry in 1947 after the Air Force dropped 180 pounds of dry ice on a hurricane that was winding down off the coast of Florida. That intervention gave the hurricane a second wind and redirected it toward Savannah, Georgia, where it wreaked today’s equivalent of $230 million in damages.
As catastrophic floods, storms, droughts, and wildfires appear to surge in frequency and intensity, people are beginning to notice. As expected, climate alarmists say the global-warming chickens have come home to roost. Of course, a fresh report from the United Nations says it’s time for the world to take action; and to do so now. More on that later.
✪ Human Intervention
However, a growing number of people are also beginning to wonder if the extreme weather events are the result of direct human intervention. When it comes to some wildfires, that’s an easy one to verify, since arsonists, or suspected arsonists, have been arrested in connection with some of the most destructive blazes, including one of the recent Spokane fires, some of the Reno fires, one of the largest of the Palisades fires, and blazes in France and Canada.
Peruse any social-media thread about a flood and you’ll find numerous comments blaming cloud seeding for the “one in a thousand year” floods or rain events we appear to be getting every year now. This was especially the case with the 2025 catastrophic flood in the Texas Hill Country, which was hit by a similarly destructive flood this year as well. That part of the country, however, is notorious for floods.
✪ Cloud Seeding
On Monday, USA Today published an article about cloud seeding. It comes off as an attempt to downplay weather modification as a harmless, barely helpful tool. The paper reported a private cloud-seeding company used drones to trigger “19 million gallons of precipitation to fall in Alaska.” And although 19 million gallons sounds like a lot, it’s really not. The CEO of the company said the effect covered 100 square miles and amounted to a “drizzle.” The reason it was worth reporting, we are told, is because the company was able to measure how much precipitation it created with drones. Later in the article, the author says the Federal Government had conquered this measuring feat nearly a decade ago with the SNOWIE project (Seeded and Natural Orographic Wintertime Clouds: The Idaho Experiment), but without the use of drones.
The article reads like a propaganda piece designed to discredit “skeptics and conspiracy theorists alike” who suspect human intervention is behind some of the most destructive recent weather events. This is the same language legacy media used to describe people who raised concerns about the Covid-19 injection, the same label they put on people who didn’t believe the report on John F. Kennedy’s assassination, and the same category under which they huddle those who believe that there exists a secretive cabal that exerts power over the world’s visible governments.
✪ Used By Several States
In addition to the idea that it barely works, the article tries to convince readers cloud seeding happens only mostly in the West, where it’s needed. “The most common type of cloud seeding used in the United States is done almost entirely in Western states,” says the article, specifically mentioning Idaho, Utah, and Colorado. We can quibble with the words “almost entirely,” but the intention here is clear.
Colorado has seven weather modification projects. Utah seeds from November to April to bolster snowpack. Idaho seeds from November to April. But one of the most active cloud-seeding programs is in Texas, where the practice has been in use since the 1950s, according to the Lone Star government itself. Texas has five different projects that it uses to deploy seeding for up to 45 days a year. The USA Today article mentions Texas, but in a dismissive context against the popular rumor that seeding caused the 2025 Hill Country flood.
✪ Damage From Tampering
Three states have banned cloud seeding altogether: Tennessee, Florida, and Louisiana. And dozens of others have done so or are considering doing it. The reason is simple: because there is widespread belief that weather tampering is causing problems. And that belief is well founded.
In 1978, a Senate subcommittee published a 784-page report titled “Weather Modification: Programs, Problems, Policy, and Potential.” The report said the Federal Government has been tampering with the weather since 1947. Among the branches which have used the technology is the military. The report suggests weather tampering has caused natural disasters:
Sometimes disastrous events have occurred during or soon after cloud seeding, and rightly or wrongly, they have been associated with the seeding. The June 1972 flooding from excessive rainfall in the Rapid City, S. Dak. area is an example of such a disaster which occurred nearly simultaneously with cloud seeding operations in the vicinity by the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology.
In another section of the report, there’s this statement:
There’s no question that during a dry season, cloud seeding aggravates conditions to produce drought, and during a wet cycle, it triggers even more rain and probably floods.
The report cites an article by the Tri-State Natural Weather Association that attributed many ills; weather and non-weather related, to weather modification. The article blames a five-year drought in the Northeast on cloud seeding. Some “isolated sections” in that same region went through 18 years of drought “due to cloud seeding.” Farmers suffered financial losses because of cloud seeding. “When effects of seeding wear off, cloud bursts occur, causing floods, destroying crops, buildings, and drowning people as well as livestock,” the subcommittee said. Seeding has also caused pollution, and mental retardation and insanity. “Poisoning of all living matter is directly related to cloud seeding,” the report adds.
✪ NOAA Non Compliance
Before this report was published, Congress passed the Weather Modification Reporting Act of 1972, which requires anyone conducting weather modification activities to report to NOAA (the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) beforehand, during, and afterward. And it requires NOAA maintain and make those records public. NOAA isn’t doing that — or at least not very well. At least, that’s what a report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) says. The GAO report, published in February of this year, said:
For more than 50 years, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has been responsible for overseeing weather modification reporting. But we found that NOAA is not fully meeting its responsibilities to provide useful, complete, and transparent information to the public.
So, we have one arm of the government admitting the agency which is supposed to keep track of all the weather-tampering projects is not doing its job.
✪ Exploiting Destruction
Meanwhile, the globalists are doing what they always do. They’re exploiting the destruction. The United Nations just published a report this week warning if the world doesn’t overhaul society to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide we produce, the extreme weather events will become normal and the planet will incur irreversible ecological changes.
The report, Limiting Overshoot, says that the world will go well beyond the UN’s 1.5-degree Celsius target for global temperature rise in the next few years. But if we all come together and agree to overhaul our societies in order to eliminate greenhouse-gas emissions, we can shorten the destructive phase and eventually stabilize the planet. “We must deliver rapid and deep cuts to CO2, methane and other greenhouse gases immediately, working towards net-zero — with governments sending the right policy signals to financial institutions and the private sector,” writes Inger Andersen, executive director of the UN’s Environment Programme, or UNEP.
Andersen, the UN says, is calling for the same thing these people have been tying to accomplish for decades. They want all the governments, under their direction, to eliminate gasoline cars, cows, gas stoves, and, in the process, rural living. They want to control every aspect of our lives in the name of getting the weather under control.
✪ Used In War
Going back to LBJ’s comment, “He who controls the weather will control the world,” Johnson was talking about America’s space program, particularly satellites. Among the capabilities those satellites would have is to control the weather. Conversations about space and weather dominance had been happening for years by then, primarily in the context of having an edge in the Cold War.
Not too long after he made that comment, someone assassinated President John F. Kennedy and Johnson became president. Under his administration, Americans were sent to war in Vietnam. And in Vietnam, the U.S. military weaponized its weather-modification capabilities. With Operation Popeye, the U.S. government used cloud seeding to increase rainfall over parts of the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam to disrupt the North Vietnamese supply lines.
✪ Globalists’ Excuse
Let’s review. For decades, the globalists have tried to use climate fear as an excuse to usher in policies which give governments control over every aspect of our lives. With the reelection of President Donald Trump, the U.S. exited the Paris Climate Accords and essentially eliminated all policies created under the guise of addressing climate change. The president called the climate agenda a con in front of the world, and has worked to increase fossil-fuel production.
There is no question. The weather has been noticeably more intense lately. But there are critical questions which should be considered. Are the weather extremes of late the result of man-made climate warming or disasters, or part of God’s natural ebb-and-flow cycle of His creation? And is it beyond those with the capability to control the weather to weaponize it against us? ✪
▶️ THE NUCLEAR WAR OF THE LEFTIST MIND
THE NUCLEAR WAR OF THE LEFTIST MIND
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he progressive Left, its media and podcasts, keep invoking the likelihood of “nuclear escalation” in Eurasia, because they can’t emotionally accept a simple and practical solution: surrender by Iran and Ukraine. To them, both countries are symbols of defiance, and champions against the object of their contempt: the West and empire.
Psychologists call this “cognitive dissonance.” They won’t accept the reality of an Iran and Ukraine defeat, so instead, they latch onto an illusion of more war because this lets them avoid hard facts that make their dissonance worse: Iran cannot win, and Ukraine is finished.
Surrender and settlement solve the escalation problem cold. However, the progressive Left thinks nuclear escalation is inevitable because they can’t accept the reality of an Iran and Ukraine surrender.
So why can’t the progressive global left, and its Iranian and Ukraine sympathizers, intellectually process this reality?
One reason is political partisanship, because surrender by Iran means President Trump is successful. It is cognitive dissonance by the political Left: they want peace, but will accept war if they believe it can lead to domestic political retribution. As the Left has already shown in the U.S., civil violence, legal terror and property destruction is their political cause.
In Ukraine’s case, it is helpful to ask why it was even selected for proxy purposes in the first place. Why Ukraine?
There’s a simple reason: its corruption and disorganization lend itself to manipulation. No such proxy actions, including regime change, could have been accomplished with other Russian border states such as Belarus, or even the Baltic states. Mongolia or Kazakhstan wouldn’t work either, and the EU and U.K. don’t understand the larger East anyway; it is too alien and removed from their understanding and experience. Even Poland is difficult to fully destabilize and appropriate, despite its strong aversion to all things Russian.
When I was a young businessman working in Eastern Europe and Russia in the telecommunications and aerospace industries, our larger U.S. corporate management put a firm “No” (and “Nyet”) on any investments or joint ventures in Ukraine. That was back in the 1990s.
Things have only gotten much worse since then, so it seems prudent in retrospect. This corporate risk decision wasn’t due to a weak appetite for commercial risk and opportunity: After spending several months in Kiev, it became clear that Ukraine was unusually corrupt, and simply did not possess or have control of working government institutions, or a legal, banking, and regulatory infrastructure which could act as a reliable counter-party in business projects. Nor did it appear to have any interest in establishing them.
Iran doesn’t really have that either, and we weren’t even welcomed there. Both were undeveloped and hostile.
Which brings up the question why multiple media sources, including various alternative podcasts which saturate modern news opinion, can’t get their arms around two simple realities of current global conflict: both Ukraine and Iran need to surrender because neither possesses the resources and institutions to prevail, or even consolidate any imaginary victory. Moreover, they are each unwilling and incapable of acting as regional leaders, so they are, therefore, not sources of regional stability. They are guarantors of regional instability.
Too much media dialogue is being drawn into a naive and limited framework where ideology, emotion and moralizing are replacing Realpolitik. Their language centers around three constantly repeated terms: “escalation ladder, U.S. defeat” and “the nuclear option.”
Rarely if ever is the term “total surrender” ever invoked. Why? The second reason is because the Iran war, and the Ukraine war, are both seen by the progressive Left as moral symbols which serve to confirm their own biases against the U.S., Israel and the larger West. This includes seeing Russia and China as rising powers who are just biding their time until they challenge the liberal Left’s foes.
“Escalation” doctrine, in reality, appeals to their feelings about retribution against Western supremacy, even though they will admit that such escalation could lead to nuclear detonation, and once that happens, a series of automatic responses are “pre-programmed.”
No one wins a mutual nuclear exchange and there is no coherent first strike doctrine. But no matter: the Left can’t process that reality either — nor that unconditional surrender by Iran and Ukraine makes this all moot.
There is no way Iran will ever prevail against the combined powers, and determination, of joint U.S.-Israel operations. Indeed, with a rational and competent government in Iran, and in the Ukraine territory (I say “territory” because Russia cannot be deterred from ultimately controlling it), an eventual Middle East federalism makes sense, while Ukraine needs Russia if only for a competent government.
The three major superpowers are capable of leading that kind of eventual accord because their underlying economic model of capitalism, a model adapted even in China, and in Russia, puts trade and development ultimately ahead of war.
When progressives ruminate about escalation, and when they fantasize about an Iranian or Ukraine victory, they are in reality indulging a larger “underdog” fantasy of an ideological “Bolshevik” utopia by revolutionary uprising and socialism. As the Soviet Union and China can attest, that only comes about through violence, and ends in dictatorship.
Ironically, the 1979 Iranian revolution proves the same thing, while Ukraine shows what happens when a corrupt independent state is for sale. ✪
▶️ SCIENTISTS TURN PLASTIC WASTE INTO EDIBLE COOKIES
SCIENTISTS TURN PLASTIC WASTE INTO EDIBLE COOKIES
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he future of food is looking a little grim. In the event we turn all arable land on this planet into a barren heath incapable of growing food, humankind may have to resort to reaping what we sowed by eating our own plastic pollution.
A team of researchers at Southern Illinois University Carbondale have just demonstrated this is possible by using a specially engineered yeast to create tasty — and yes, edible — cookies which they 3D print out of plastic waste.
The yeast breaks down the components of plastic compounds and agricultural byproducts like discarded plant stalks into proteins, fats, acids, and flavorings which become edible. When these are combined together, the mixture is fed into a 3D printer which will spit out cookies in any desired shape.
The researchers chose to print their cookies as the Greek letter µ, creating what they call “µBites” — or micro bites. They haven’t actually eaten one of their µBites yet, as they wait for university approval, but they’re not hedging their bets: the cookies will be safe and tasty. The David Cronenberg film “Crimes of the Future” may prove to be a prophecy after all.
“I think it has a pleasant, appealing aroma,” Lahiru Jayakody, a microbiologist at SIU who led the research, told NewScientist. “And it will taste good, too. We’ve not tasted it, but it smells good — that’s for sure — like a real cookie.”
In their work, which is being presented at the meeting of the American Chemical Society in Chicago on Monday, the researchers used CRISPR gene-editing technology to reprogram yeast strains to eat polyethylene terephthalate (PET), a widely used form of plastic commonly found in disposable water bottles, food packaging, and clothes, which is rich with carbon.
Before the yeast can start feasting, the PET plastics are subjected to a process called oxidative hydrothermal dissolution to break them down into smaller bits that the microbes can digest. The purported advantage of this approach is that it’s environmentally friendly, using only heat, water, and oxygen. The yeast feasts on these stripped-down plastic bits, turning them into a slurry of proteins, fats, and acids that are combined with additional fiber, starch, and sweetener to make them more palatable. One of the yeast strains in particular was able to convert plant biomass into tasty vanilla flavorings.
Ideally, this technique could kill two birds with one stone: addressing hunger across the globe, and whittling away at the mountains of plastic waste which now litter the Earth. However right now, it’s an expensive process, costing around $60 to produce only a kilogram of cookies. And some experts say it’s wishful thinking to believe we can 3D-print and eat ourselves out of these global waste problems with 3D-printed, delectable treats.
“We produce 400 million tons a year of plastic waste. You’re not going to turn it all into cookies,” Jason Hallett at Imperial College London told New Scientist. “So it’s not a solution to the plastic-waste crisis. There’s no way you could do this commercially. We’re not gonna be eating plastic cookies.”
Perhaps the cookies could find a more niche use. The researchers say their work, which was funded as part of NASA’s Deep Space Food Challenge, could also be used to feed astronauts on lengthy missions to distant worlds like Mars. More food for thought, indeed. ✪
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