The Rise of Anarcho-Capitalism...

The New Ghetto's of White Supremacy...

Nov 6, 2023 · New polls by The New York Times and Siena College found that 22 percent of Black voters in six of the most important battleground states said they would support former President Donald Trump...

Subversive Anti-Democracy

Satellite Jamming in Ukraine - Russian EW?

Guesses as to frequency ranges being jammed?

On the Drone jamming front...

Russia deploys tank-mounted Volnorez jammers in Ukraine
September 25, 2023 Tim Mahon Counter-UAS systems and policies

First seen in public at the Russian Army Expo 2023, the Volnorez (Breakwater) C-UAS jammer has now been seen mounted on T-80BVM main battle tanks in Ukraine, according to social media reports circulating in mid-September.

Volnorez spans the frequency range from 900-2,000MHz and is able to disrupt drone signals from ranges in excess of one kilometre, providing the jammer-equipped vehicle (and its immediate neighbours) with enhanced levels of protection in an increasingly intense conflict. The jammers – which are magnetically attached to the host vehicle, thus increasing operational agility-are omnidirectional, thereby providing 360° coverage.

Sounds like Ukraine could use some wild Weasels and anti-radiation missiles like HARM or better to home on the jammers.  The need to continuously radiate/ jam has GOT to be an exploitable vulnerability.

America's "Hobson's Choice" Political System

 

from Wiki:

A Hobson's choice is a free choice in which only one thing is actually offered. The term is often used to describe an illusion that multiple choices are available. The best known Hobson's choice is "I'll give you a choice: take it or leave it", wherein "leaving it" is strongly undesirable.

The phrase is said to have originated with Thomas Hobson (1544–1631), a livery stable owner in Cambridge, England, who offered customers the choice of either taking the horse in his stall nearest to the door or taking none at all.

Origins[edit]

Portrait of Thomas Hobson in the National Portrait Gallery, London

According to a plaque underneath a painting of Hobson donated to Cambridge Guildhall, Hobson had an extensive stable of some 40 horses. This gave the appearance to his customers that, upon entry, they would have their choice of mounts, when in fact there was only one: Hobson required his customers to take the horse in the stall closest to the door. This was to prevent the best horses from always being chosen, which would have meant overuse of the good horses.^[1] Hobson's stable was located on land that is now owned by St Catharine's College, Cambridge.^[2]

Early appearances in writing[edit]

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the first known written usage of this phrase is in The rustick's alarm to the Rabbies, written by Samuel Fisher in 1660:^[3]

If in this Case there be no other (as the Proverb is) then Hobson's choice...which is, choose whether you will have this or none.

It also appears in Joseph Addison's paper The Spectator (No. 509 of 14 October 1712);^[4] and in Thomas Ward's 1688 poem "England's Reformation", not published until after Ward's death. Ward wrote:

Where to elect there is but one,
'Tis Hobson's choice—take that, or none.^[5]

So who shall it be, America?  DJT or Genocide Joe?  Which stands nearer the political UniParty's L->R stable door?

Democratic Party NewSpeak Strikes Again...

Complete & Utter Failure = Success!!!!

Happy Thanksgiving!

IfNET/ WEF: The Blind Leading the Blind

Institute For New Economic Thinking & World Economic Forum To Collaborate On The Future Of Economics (2/22/13)

Collaboration to introduce the ideas and innovations of a new generation of economists

INET scholars to participate in the World Economic Forum's "Summer Davos" in Dalian, China in September

NEW YORK and DAVOS, Switzerland, Jan. 22, 2013 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET) and the World Economic Forum today announced plans for closer collaboration to foster new approaches to economic thinking.

Ahead of this year's World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos, Switzerland, both organizations highlighted the need for innovative and sustainable solutions for persistent economic, social and political challenges. Their future collaboration will focus on engaging both a new generation of economic thinkers, as well as the most influential scholars from a variety of disciplines.

"The problems facing us today require a fundamental shift in economics and the participation of a global community from business, politics and academia," Dr. Robert Johnson, Executive Director of INET said. "We are therefore very excited to be collaborating with the World Economic Forum to accelerate the development of new economic thinking. The financial crises, environmental challenges and increasing inequality have revealed just how little we understand about the issues facing our world. Addressing these is key to creating a more resilient and dynamic world, and is core to many of the discussions in Davos this year."

"The state of the world remains such that we need to challenge fundamental economic assumptions and to embrace new thinking globally," said Lee Howell, Managing Director of the World Economic Forum responsible for their Annual Meeting in Davos. "INET is a leader in innovative ideas and research because of their commitment to stellar young scholars, who represent the future for the field of economics."

The World Economic Forum and INET will collaborate on introducing new economic ideas at the Forum's Annual Meeting of New Champions referred to as the "Summer Davos" in Dalian, China. "INET looks forward to working with the World Economic Forum in Dalian and bringing new visions, ideas and outstanding scholars into dialogue with the young people convening there," Dr. Johnson said. This collaboration will also provide opportunities for INET's Young Scholars to engage with the World Economic Forum's communities, such as the Young Global Leaders and Global Shapers – communities aimed at fostering interaction and exchange with the next generation of leaders.

Dr. Johnson also serves as vice-chair of the World Economic Forum's Global Agenda Council on New Economic Thinking and will contribute to a number of sessions at the Annual Meeting in Davos. He will moderate a dinner discussion featuring the world's leading economists. The session will focus on designing the economics textbook needed to guide society from the present day to the year 2030. Participants in this session include Nobel Laureate Professor Robert Engle of New York University, Professor Robert Shiller of Yale University, Professor Li Daokui of Tsinghua University, Dr. Adam Posen, President of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, and INET Advisory Board Members Professor Barry Eichengreen and Professor Helen Rey.

About the Institute for New Economic Thinking

The Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET) is a global economic research and education foundation designed to broaden and accelerate the development of a new field of economic thought that will lead to real-world solutions to the great economic and social challenges of the 21st century.

www.ineteconomics.org

Media Contacts:
Eric J. Weiner, Institute for New Economic Thinking, + 1 212 493-3327, ejw@ineteconomics.org
Lucy Jay Kennedy, World Economic Forum, + 41 79 817 06 07, lucy.jaykennedy@weforum.org

SOURCE Institute For New Economic Thinking

American Interventions....

Rise of the "Anti's" - Distancing from the Secular Human

Robert Huddleston, "Humanism and Its' Discontents"

Humanism aspires to ethical universalism but in practice it is defined by what it opposes and excludes.

“Humanism,” Sarah Bakewell tells us, “is a semantic cloud of meanings and implications.” As a philosophy, humanism encompasses the intellectual and cultural legacy of the Renaissance, humanitarianism, liberalism, atheism, and agnosticism, and the objects and methods of study of a loosely affiliated set of academic disciplines. As a historical movement, it is more coherent. It began in Europe in the late Middle Ages and—despite setbacks due to political and religious persecution—there has been an unbroken tradition of humanism in the West stretching up to the present day. In her provocative and intriguing book, Bakewell examines a slew of thinkers from Petrarch to Tzvetan Todorov and—despite the conceptual cloudiness of her subject—reveals certain key aspects of humanism, as both a tradition and as a system of values.
One of these core characteristics is humanism’s intrinsically pluralistic epistemology. Humanists believe that there is more than one aspect to the truth. This should not be confused with the position that truth is merely relative, that different things can be true, depending on your point of view, and that there is therefore no such thing as objective truth—an idea known as perspectivism. Nor does it mean that nothing is really true (nihilism). As historian Edward Hallett Carr puts it in his 1961 book What Is History?, “It does not follow that, because a mountain appears to take on different shapes from different angles of vision, it has objectively either no shape or an infinity of shapes.” Paul Cézanne painted Mont Sainte-Victoire from various angles, at different times of day, and in changing weather, yet in every picture it is recognizable as the same mountain in Provence. Analogously, while individual human perspectives differ—there are many ways to be human—there is clearly a “human dimension of life,” as Bakewell puts it, and that dimension exists “in between the physical realm of matter and whatever purely spiritual or divine realm may be thought to exist.”

After a brief discussion of humanism’s roots in antiquity, Bakewell begins her exploration with 14th-century Italian poet Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch), often considered the originator of the studia humanitatis, the humanities. Petrarch and his compatriot Giovanni Boccaccio “put together the [humanist] profile” of intellectual independence from faith and tradition. It took nearly two more centuries for humanism to become overtly moral and political. Desiderius Erasmus advocated that in civil and political affairs, we should be guided by human reason and viewed humanistic learning as a vital part of a civilizing ethical process. Following Plato, Erasmus attempts to separate human nature—which includes such undesirable aspects as a persistent propensity to violence—from an ethical ideal, a “true humanity, which we should be striving to develop and fulfill.” For Erasmus, humanism is about both social and individual enlightenment; it creates the proper conditions for moral and intellectual flourishing, for the spiritual elevation of the human being. This conception of humanism is liberal, but not yet fully secular. It views humanity as a set of moral qualities—this is not a given, but something we can get right or wrong, and that can be fostered by specific social practices that nudge us in the direction of good.

The antithesis of humanism, for Erasmus, is war. In his 1517 work The Complaint of Peace, Erasmus argues that, as Bakewell paraphrases, “War is a blunder: a failure to be human.” According to Erasmus, war is not only inhumane but unnatural to humans. Violence is literally brutalizing—it makes us descend to below the level of brute beasts. This later develops into one of the key tenets of humanism: it is something chosen. This implies that unlike beasts, we are free to choose the good; consequently, when we fail to do so, the fault lies with us. We cannot blame human violence on the promptings of nature. This suggests a view of human perfectibility—a view further developed by eighteenth-century writers such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who, like Erasmus, believed that education was the key to developing and cultivating human capacities and steering them in the right direction.

For humanists, ethics is quite distinct from religion. In his Essays (1580), Michel de Montaigne writes, “I set forth notions that are human and my own, simply as human notions considered in themselves,” meaning that his ideas are not influenced by any consideration of the divine. The likely cause of this secularizing impulse was the violence unleashed by the hellish religious wars of the sixteenth century. Both secularism and pluralism came of age with Montaigne, for whom human multifariousness is to be celebrated in itself and for whom the most distinctive human quality is an irreducible diversity of conduct and opinion.

This pluralist outlook anticipates the novelistic tradition, inaugurated by writers like Miguel Cervantes in Don Quixote (1605–15) and Henry Fielding in Joseph Andrews (1742) and Tom Jones (1749). The kaleidoscopic works of Cervantes and Fielding are characterized by a capacious curiosity about the wide range of human motivations and characters. This fascination is echoed in Leo Tolstoy’s novel War and Peace (1865–69), in which Pierre is “struck by the endless variety of men’s minds, which prevents a truth from appearing exactly the same way to any two persons.” For Pierre, as for Montaigne, the idiosyncrasy of each person’s views forms the basis of his sympathy and esteem for human diversity.

The “fanatically nonfanatical” Montaigne, as Bakewell calls him, pioneered this new humanist value: tolerance of a wide range of customs, opinions, and appetites, including some that might seem intuitively odd or repellent, remarking in “Of Cannibals,” for example, that “Chrysippus and Zeno, the two heads of the Stoic sect, were of the opinion that there was no hurt in making use of our dead carcasses, in what way so ever for our necessity, and in feeding upon them too.” Montaigne was the originator of an anthropological strain of humanism that later developed into cosmopolitanism, with its emphasis on cultural diversity as a source of ethical and aesthetic enrichment.

The connection between humanism and liberalism is formulated most cogently by John Stuart Mill, who sought a political foundation for “absolute freedom of opinion and sentiment on all subjects, practical or speculative, scientific, moral, or theological,” as he writes in his 1859 work On Liberty. As Bakewell notes, Mill was profoundly influenced by Wilhelm von Humboldt, who saw freedom of expression as vital to human flourishing. Mill prefaces On Liberty with a quotation from Humboldt’s work on the theory of statecraft: “The grand, leading principle… unfolded in these pages… is the absolute and essential importance of human development in its richest diversity.” Both Humboldt and Mill believed that the state’s main role was to provide enough security to allow human beings to freely define their own individual and collective goals. Mill’s utilitarianism—his belief in the greatest good for the greatest number—is a practical solution to the inevitable fact that people differ in their wishes and purposes. At the heart of Mill’s liberalism is compromise and a rejection of absolutism.

This reveals a glaring weakness in the humanist program: the need to tolerate one’s opponents sits uneasily with human nature. This commitment to pluralism can make humanism seem less like a universalist philosophy than like a particular temperament that must be trained: civilized, rational, urbane, averse to violence and coercion—a sensibility that exists only in the West, a WEIRD phenomenon. Many of the humanists profiled by Bakewell—from George Eliot and Bertrand Russell to Ludwig Zamenhof, the inventor of Esperanto—are exceptional humans.

This is a paradox traceable to humanism’s earliest origins. For Erasmus—as for Russell—humanity is something to be achieved. This has led some critics to view it as elitist. As detractors have noted, humanism aspires to ethical universalism but in practice it is defined by what it opposes and excludes. And that includes tendencies that are characteristically, stubbornly human and that lead to, as Bakewell puts it, “the general human habit of behaving inhumanely.” It seems too facile to treat human and humane as synonymous, as humanists tend to do.

Disillusionment with all too human moral depravity prompted the rise of antihumanism in the twentieth century. This in turn influenced both poststructuralism and Marxist critical theory—movements that are not only ideologically but methodologically antihumanist in emphasizing the causal role of social structures and historical forces over the agency of individuals. As the “new humanist” philosophers Luc Ferry and Alain Renault suggest, a widespread disillusionment among intellectuals with the cultural legacy of the West prevailed in the wake of the Second World War.

This skepticism was also fueled by the emerging anti-colonialist liberation movements. With some justification, the West was blamed for a long sequence of historical catastrophes. By extension, humanism and liberalism were also labeled suspect and dangerous, guilty by association with a “corrupt” civilization. Furthermore, as Richard Wolin argues persuasively in his 2004 book The Seduction of Unreason, antihumanism provided an alibi for writers tainted by fascism, such as Maurice Blanchot, Paul de Man, and Martin Heidegger, a way of shaking off the moral burden of collaboration. If the Enlightenment was in some sense “just as bad” as fascism, how could they be especially guilty—especially if the individual was not the locus of moral choice and action, but history was just “a process without a subject,” as Louis Althusser alleged.

This form of antihumanism began in the growing conviction that individuals are dominated by external forces and lack agency in the face of either history or discourse. It started to take root toward the end of the nineteenth century, presenting itself as analogous to the scientific principle that described objects in nature not in terms of their outward sensory manifestations or appearances but the imperceptible components of which they were composed and the forces that acted upon them. Antihumanism marshaled ideas from German idealism; from the hermeneutics of suspicion, Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Sigmund Freud; and from other sources, including the counter-Enlightenment eighteenth-century thinkers Joseph de Maistre and Johann Georg Hamann. It attempted to debunk the ideas of individual agency and universal human nature. 

One of the defining statements of the radical antihumanist view was Michel Foucault’s 1966 book The Order of Things. Foucault argued that the human sciences, rooted in Renaissance humanism, were already crumbling. The ideas (or “constructs”) of the human being and of a human-centered world would, he concluded, soon “be erased, like a face drawn in sand at the edge of the sea” by historical and ideological transformations. For the anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss, this was the explicit aim. The goal of structuralism was “not to constitute but to dissolve man” into the underlying symbols and processes of his social existence in the search for causal mechanisms that transcend the individual.

Bakewell devotes only a few pages to the postwar antihumanists and pays little attention in general to the long history of humanism’s ideological antagonists. Yet, humanism cannot be understood without examining their critiques.

As Richard Wolin has pointed out, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, antihumanists were typically reactionaries such as Joseph de Maistre and Edmund Burke, who were appalled by “the social cataclysms of revolutionary France—mob violence, dechristianization, anarchy, civil war, terror, and political dictatorship” and consequently rejected the revolution’s secularizing tendencies and ideals of reason and progress. Social turmoil produces antihumanist and authoritarian reactions as readily as humanist responses, it would seem. Later, antihumanism would be taken up by the radical Left as an alternative to the postwar liberal consensus.

More importantly, Bakewell says very little about differing strands of humanism itself. As Kate Soper has observed, what the term humanism means to most people—if it means anything at all—is a vaguely naturalistic atheism. This is certainly the platform of organizations like Humanists UK and Humanists International, something Bakewell downplays while attempting to portray their brand as essentially tolerant of religious belief. Such cheerful ecumenism elides profound differences in how humanists themselves have understood humanism—differences manifested in such questions as whether human values stem from a transcendental source. Bakewell’s history is a tad Whiggish, suggesting an inexorable march toward a single, vaguely defined enlightened secularism that happens to coincide with Western liberalism in its current form. While Humanly Possible emphasizes the unbroken continuity and progress of the humanist project, it touches on its many ruptures and lapses only glancingly.

Humanism’s biggest blind spot is that it fails to account for the intrinsically inhumane impulses in our nature—and, if it can’t do that, it can’t be an effective instrument of moral progress. While Bakewell’s book is both engaging and illuminating, she never examines head-on the feature that distinguishes human beings from animals and machines—our radical freedom to choose. As Bakewell acknowledges, in a brief nod to Jean-Paul Sartre’s Existentialism and Humanism (1946), humans “have no preexisting blueprint” for our choices, apart from the history that we ourselves have made. As humans we cannot choose the circumstances of our origin, but we are nevertheless responsible for ourselves.

Humanism is, at heart, an aspirational philosophy. It suggests what we should value: human life and flourishing. But when those values are in abeyance—when we are in the grip of illiberal ideologies and thanatocratic cults, to which we are all too humanly susceptible as recent world events have shown—humanism fails to provide a roadmap for how to get from where we are to where we want to be.

Time for Ending Biden's Ridiculous Proxy War Against Russia in Ukraine

A Democrat's 1st World "Solution" to 3rd World Problems...

Globalism...Your Fragility is Showing....

Time for Anti-Fragile!

Y'all so Classy!

Profiles in Profilicity - Got a Preferred ProNoun?

Got Health? You May not want Free Health"Care".

That which does not kill me simply keeps on tryin'...

MIT's Administrative Jim Crow and Anti-Semitic "Green Book"/ Letter

This is the reality that MIT President wants to hide. A letter from Israeli & Jewish MIT students:

To all students at MIT,

Today, Jewish and Israeli MIT students were physically prevented from attending class by a hostile group of pro-Hamas and anti-Israel MIT students that…

— Retsef Levi (@RetsefL) November 10, 2023

Today, on the 9th of November, on the 85th anniversary of Kristallnacht, which marked the beginning of the Holocaust, Jews at MIT were told to enter campus from back entrances and not to stay in Hillel for fear of their physical safety. We are seeing history repeating itself and Jews on MIT’s campus are afraid.

#BREAKING Hamas police and Al Qassam fighters are recorded firing their weapons at residents attempting to flee the Al Nasser hospital in Rimal, central #Gaza City after the Israelis declared the daily humanitarian opening to the south pic.twitter.com/E7DeemwXLS

— Gaza Report - اخبار غزة (@gaza_report) November 10, 2023

Meanwhile, Hamas begins herding/ shooting at their own Human Shields

Why Politicians Shouldn't Ever Make Statutory Economic Decisions....

 

...especially in a "Hypernormalised" America: 

Maryland, My Maryland

I

The despot's heel is on thy shore,

Maryland![a]

His torch is at thy temple door,

Maryland!

Avenge the patriotic gore

That flecked the streets of Baltimore,

And be the battle queen of yore,

Maryland! My Maryland!

II

Hark to an exiled son's appeal,

Maryland!

My mother State! to thee I kneel,

Maryland!

For life and death, for woe and weal,

Thy peerless chivalry reveal,

And gird thy beauteous limbs with steel,

Maryland! My Maryland!

III

Thou wilt not cower in the dust,

Maryland!

Thy beaming sword shall never rust,

Maryland!

Remember Carroll's sacred trust,

Remember Howard's warlike thrust,—

And all thy slumberers with the just,

Maryland! My Maryland!

IV

Come! 'tis the red dawn of the day,

Maryland!

Come with thy panoplied array,

Maryland!

With Ringgold's spirit for the fray,

With Watson's blood at Monterey,

With fearless Lowe and dashing May,

Maryland! My Maryland!

V

Come! for thy shield is bright and strong,

Maryland!

Come! for thy dalliance does thee wrong,

Maryland!

Come to thine own anointed throng,

Stalking with Liberty along,

And sing thy dauntless slogan song,

Maryland! My Maryland!

VI

Dear Mother! burst the tyrant's chain,

Maryland!

Virginia should not call in vain,

Maryland!

She meets her sisters on the plain—

Sic semper! 'tis the proud refrain

That baffles minions back amain,

Maryland! My Maryland!

VII

I see the blush upon thy cheek,

Maryland!

For thou wast ever bravely meek,

Maryland!

But lo! there surges forth a shriek,

From hill to hill, from creek to creek—

Potomac calls to Chesapeake,

Maryland! My Maryland!

VIII

Thou wilt not yield the Vandal toll,

Maryland!

Thou wilt not crook to his control,

Maryland!

Better the fire upon thee roll,

Better the blade, the shot, the bowl,

Than crucifixion of the soul,

Maryland! My Maryland!

IX

I hear the distant thunder-hum,

Maryland!

The Old Line's bugle, fife, and drum,

Maryland!

She is not dead, nor deaf, nor dumb—

Huzza! she spurns the Northern scum!

She breathes! she burns! she'll come! she'll come!

Maryland! My Maryland!

Abigail Constantine, "It’s Greenbelt: Maryland site picked for new FBI headquarters"

After years of back-and-forth and speculation about where the new FBI headquarters will be located, the General Services Administration has confirmed Wednesday that a site in Greenbelt, Maryland, has been selected.

Maryland and Virginia both lobbied hard for the chance to be the new headquarters, and the selection of Greenbelt quickly sparked a series of angry reactions from Virginia officials.

The Washington Post first reported the news.

A General Services Administration spokesperson said in a statement that “GSA determined Greenbelt to be the best site because it was the lowest cost to taxpayers, provided the greatest transportation access to FBI employees and visitors, and gave the government the most certainty on project delivery schedule. It also provided the highest potential to advance sustainability and equity.”

“GSA looks forward to building the FBI a state-of-the-art headquarters campus in Greenbelt to advance their critical mission for years to come,” GSA Administrator Robin Carnahan said in the statement, calling the selection an “important milestone” following a multiyear effort.

Frustration from Virginia officials 

Virginia officials expressed disappointment over the Maryland choice.

“We’re deeply disappointed that despite the clear case that Virginia is the best home for the FBI, the Administration went a different direction,” Sens. Mark Warner and Tim Kaine said in a joint statement Wednesday night.

Rep. Gerry Connolly, whose district includes one of the potential sites in Fairfax County, echoed the Virginia senators’ criticism, saying that the GSA has “shamelessly caved to political pressure,” leading to the 11th-hour change by the agency of the criteria for site selection.

“We spent years appropriately criticizing the last Administration for politicizing the new FBI headquarters — only for a new Administration to come in and allow politics to taint the selection process,” Warner and Kaine said.

While Gov. Glenn Youngkin has participated in the push to bring the headquarters to Springfield in the past, he has not publicly commented on the decision. WTOP has reached out to the governor.

In 2022, GSA indicated it had narrowed down its search to three possible sites — Greenbelt and Landover in Prince George’s County, Maryland, and Springfield in Fairfax County, Virginia.

Officials in Virginia touted Springfield for its proximity to the FBI Academy in Quantico.

Later, the GSA, which acts as the federal government’s landlord, released a contentious scoring system that would be used to help make the final selection. The scoring system drew rowdy debate from lawmakers in Virginia and Maryland with accusations of an unfair process and political interference.

The new criteria gave more weight to cost and social equity concerns than closeness to the FBI Academy.

Maryland officials respond to claims the decision was politicized 

Prince George’s County Executive Angela Alsobrooks thanked the GSA for being “so thoughtful in this decision” while responding to the backlash from Virginia officials.

“I think after hearing from both Virginia and Maryland, GSA was able to make a decision, which we believe was always the right decision based on the criteria that had been set out for at least the last decade,” Alsobrooks said while on a call with reporters.

“Greenbelt, for example, is the only site that is located at a transportation hub at the Greenbelt Metro,” she said.

Maryland Rep. Glenn Ivey, who represents the 4th congressional district where Greenbelt is located, echoed arguments from Alsobrooks and Gov. Wes Moore that the location will save taxpayers money.

“It’s hard to argue with $1 billion to $1.5 billion in savings for federal taxpayers,” he told WTOP. “That’s the difference between the cost of building it in Prince George’s County as opposed to building in Virginia.”

Alsobrooks said that’s because the Maryland location is “shovel ready,” whereas the proposed Virginia location would require buildings be demolished or relocated.

Sweet victory for Maryland officials 

In the past, Maryland leaders highlighted how the locations in Landover and Greenbelt “could provide a bigger economic and employment impact than it would in Virginia” and would support the Biden-Harris administration’s “commitment to equity.”

“It was hard to deny that the federal government had already spent, over the last 15 years, $460 billion in Virginia [and] had only spent $120 billion investing in Prince George’s County,” added Alsobrooks.

The county executive said, “we know that these investments do yield income and allow for job growth to happen.”

About 7,500 jobs are connected to the facility.

When it came to the issue of equity, Alsobrooks said Virginia officials were “very confused.”

“When we talked about equity, they just started talking about counting heads — how many Black or brown people lived in a jurisdiction,” she said.

Maryland senators, representatives, Moore and Alsobrooks called the announcement a “historic moment.”

Maryland House Speaker Adrienne Jones said the “GSA got it right” and that the state’s “commitment to the FBI has been unwavering” in a social media post.

“After a thorough deliberation process and consideration of stakeholder input, the GSA selected the Greenbelt site as the location for the new FBI headquarters,” the Maryland leaders said in a joint statement. “The GSA’s analysis of the facts and its consultations revealed that the Greenbelt site is the most fitting site of the three final candidates when all factors were considered together.”

“It’s a big win for Prince George’s County, kudos to [Congressman] Steny Hoyer,” Ivey said. “He’s been working on this for more than a decade, and it’s great to see it finally come to fruition.”

Rep. Steny Hoyer has long called for the headquarters to come to Maryland and urged the GSA to alter its criteria for picking a headquarters site — which he argued unfairly favored Virginia before its most recent update.

The bureau has been in its location on Pennsylvania Avenue in D.C. since 1975, but talks about moving the headquarters has been ongoing for at least a decade.

The move was largely put on hold under President Donald Trump’s administration, when FBI officials in 2019 recommended keeping the headquarters in D.C. across the street from the Justice Department.

When President Joe Biden took office, discussions around moving the FBI headquarters again picked up momentum.

Trust the Machines? Of Course. The Programmers/ Administrators? Not for a Minute.

Light Seen at the End of the Ukrainian Tunnel...?

Courtney Kube, Carol E. Lee and Kristen Welker, "U.S., European officials broach topic of peace negotiations with Ukraine"

Sources say that the conversations have included very broad outlines of what Ukraine might need to give up to reach a deal with Russia.

WASHINGTON — U.S. and European officials have begun quietly talking to the Ukrainian government about what possible peace negotiations with Russia might entail to end the war, according to one current senior U.S. official and one former senior U.S. official familiar with the discussions.

The conversations have included very broad outlines of what Ukraine might need to give up to reach a deal, the officials said. Some of the talks, which officials described as delicate, took place last month during a meeting of representatives from more than 50 nations supporting Ukraine, including NATO members, known as the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, the officials said.

The discussions are an acknowledgment of the dynamics militarily on the ground in Ukraine and politically in the U.S. and Europe, officials said.

They began amid concerns among U.S. and European officials that the war has reached a stalemate and about the ability to continue providing aid to Ukraine, officials said. Biden administration officials also are worried that Ukraine is running out of forces, while Russia has a seemingly endless supply, officials said. Ukraine is also struggling with recruiting and has recently seen public protests about some of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s open-ended conscription requirements.

And there is unease in the U.S. government with how much less public attention the war in Ukraine has garnered since the Israel-Hamas war began nearly a month ago, the officials said. Officials fear that shift could make securing additional aid for Kyiv more difficult.

Some U.S. military officials have privately begun using the term “stalemate” to describe the current battle in Ukraine, with some saying it may come down to which side can maintain a military force the longest. Neither side is making large strides on the battlefield, which some U.S. officials now describe as a war of inches. Officials also have privately said Ukraine likely only has until the end of the year or shortly thereafter before more urgent discussions about peace negotiations should begin. U.S. officials have shared their views on such a timeline with European allies, officials said.

“Any decisions about negotiations are up to Ukraine,” Adrienne Watson, spokesperson for the National Security Council, said in a statement. “We are focused on continuing to stand strongly in support of Ukraine as they defend their freedom and independence against Russian aggression.”

An administration official also noted that the U.S. has participated with Ukraine in discussions of its peace summit framework but said the White House “is not aware of any other conversations with Ukraine about negotiations at the moment.”

Questions about manpower

President Joe Biden has been intensely focused on Ukraine’s depleting military forces, according to two people familiar with the matter.

"Manpower is at the top of the administration’s concerns right now,” one said. The U.S. and its allies can provide Ukraine with weaponry, this person said, “but if they don’t have competent forces to use them it doesn’t do a lot of good”

Biden has requested that Congress authorize additional funding for Ukraine, but, so far, the effort has failed to progress because of resistance from some congressional Republicans. The White House has linked aid for Ukraine and Israel in its most recent request. That has support among some congressional Republicans, but other GOP lawmakers have said they’ll only vote for an Israel-only aid package.

Before the Israel-Hamas war began, White House officials publicly expressed confidence that additional Ukraine funding would pass Congress before the end of this year, while privately conceding concerns about how difficult that might be.

Biden had been reassuring U.S. allies that Congress will approve more aid for Ukraine and planned a major speech on the issue. Once Hamas terrorists attacked Israel on Oct. 7, the president’s focus shifted to the Middle East, and his Ukraine speech morphed into an Oval Office address about why the U.S. should financially support Ukraine and Israel.

Is Putin ready to negotiate?

The Biden administration does not have any indication that Russian President Vladimir Putin is ready to negotiate with Ukraine, two U.S. officials said. Western officials say Putin still believes he can “wait out the West,” or keep fighting until the U.S. and its allies lose domestic support for funding Ukraine or the struggle to supply Kyiv with weapons and ammunition becomes too costly, officials said.

Both Ukraine and Russia are struggling to keep up with military supplies. Russia has ramped up production of artillery rounds, and, over the next couple years may be able to produce 2 million shells per year, according to a Western official. But Russia fired an estimated 10 million rounds in Ukraine last year, the official said, so it will also have to rely on other countries.

The Biden administration has spent $43.9 billion on security assistance for Ukraine since Russia’s invasion in February 2022, according to the Pentagon. A U.S. official says the administration has about $5 billion left to send to Ukraine before money runs out. There would be no aid left for Ukraine if the administration hadn’t said it found a $6.2 billion accounting error from months of over-valuing equipment sent to Kyiv.

Public support slipping

Progress in Ukraine’s counteroffensive has been very slow, and hope that Ukraine will make significant advances, including reaching the coast near Russia’s frontlines, is fading. A lack of significant progress on the battlefield in Ukraine does not help with trying to reverse the downward trend in public support for sending more aid, officials said.

A Gallup poll released this week shows decreasing support for sending additional aid to Ukraine, with 41% of Americans saying the U.S. is doing too much to help Kyiv. That’s a significant change from just three months ago when 24% of Americans said they felt that way. The poll also found that 33% of Americans think the U.S. is doing the right amount for Ukraine, while 25% said the U.S. is not doing enough.

Public sentiment toward assisting Ukraine is also starting to soften in Europe.

As incentive for Zelenskyy to consider negotiations, NATO could offer Kyiv some security guarantees, even without Ukraine formally becoming part of the alliance, officials said. That way, officials said, the Ukrainians could be assured that Russia would be deterred from invading again.

In August national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters, “We do not assess that the conflict is a stalemate.” Instead, Sullivan said, Ukraine is taking territory on a “methodical, systematic basis.”

But a Western official acknowledged there has not been a lot of movement by either side in some time, and with the cold weather approaching it will be tough for either Ukraine or Russia to break that pattern. The official said it will not be impossible, but it will be difficult.

U.S. officials also assess that Russia will attempt to hit critical infrastructure in Ukraine again this winter, attempting to force some civilians to endure a frigid winter without heat or power.

Administration officials expect Ukraine to want more time to fight on the battlefield, particularly with new, heavier equipment, “but there’s a growing sense that it’s too late, and it’s time to do a deal,” the former senior administration official said. It is not certain that Ukraine would mount another spring offensive.

One senior administration official pushed back on any notion of the U.S. nudging Ukraine toward talks. The Ukrainians, the official said, “are on the clock in terms of weather, but they are not on the clock in terms of geopolitics.”

On Re-Framing Diversity & Inclusion

Why Nobody Wants the Palestinians or Any Other Perpetually Aggrieved SJWs in Their Midst or as Neighbors

Face it, they're just militant thugs and A-holes!  it's what a lifetime of the do-gooding UN and European/ American sponsored parasitic welfare system buys/ rewards, more militancy and A-hole behaviour.  Biden can't offer them enough $billions to stop causing trouble for Israel.  'Ef the Palestinians.  Time to end "well intended but counter-productive" UNWRA welfare and STOP rewarding bad behaviour.  They've made their beds, let them now sleep in them.  Neither money nor a "land of their own" can ever solve this problem.  It's time to STOP feeling sorry for Palestinians, and simply start ignoring their self-inflicted crocodile tears and insatiable need for enabling victimhood inspired media coverage.  One Palestinian refugee may indeed be  redeemable.  Two Palestinian refugees in the same geographic location or acting as internet correspondents has been socially conditioned into soon becoming a terror cell.  They'd all make ideal subjects for Elon Musk's NeuraLink experiments, but why would I ever give Musk the opportunity to perfect his destined to become involuntary medically-implanted mind control devices for later 'systemic' misuse/ abuse?

The Moral Hazards from Bureaucratic Systems - The 'Embodiment' and 'Banality' of Evil in Social Systems (Hannah Arendt).  Good Intentions leading to Disastrous Results.  Why "systemic affirmative action" is ALWAYS a bad idea, but "individualized affirmative action" is not.  You can't either group or individually teach another person virtue, but they can, as individuals, learn it.  So what have the Palestinians "learned" from 75 of UNWRA?  That the system only rewards BAD BEHAVIOUR (w/ independence/ land/ $$$).  They've learned that Plutus isn't 'blind' (Aristophanes), but rewards bad behaviour ever more generously.  The Palestinians have been trained to become the ultimate antisocial-media influencers.  Perhaps this is the same way Donald J. Trump learned his counter-intuitive but effective "media" skills.

White Racists: The Democratic Party's 'Pokemon'

Significant Vote Mishandling & Unlawful Ballot Processing Judgement in the Bridgeport Democratic Primary - Dry Run 2024?

The Ruling (excerpts):

II. DISCUSSION

... 

Findings of Fact:

5. The results of the primary election as reported to the state were 4,212 votes for Ganim and 3,961 votes for Gomes. The margin of victory equated to 251 votes.

6. Per the undisputed reported results, Mr. Ganim received 2648 votes on the "machines" in the polling places on primary day and 1,564 absentee ballot votes.

7. Per the undisputed reported results, Mr. Gomes received 3,100 votes on the "machines" on primary day and 861 absentee ballot votes.

...

VIOLATIONS OF ABSENTEE BALLOT RULES - & 9.140b
...

In the three precincts making up the 136th District (where Geter-Pataky was the district leader), Ganim received 61.31%, 40.96%, and 55.06% of his votes respectively by way of absentee ballots (Plaintiff Ex. 149). In the 39th District, where Martinez lives, Ganim received 29.08% and 43.35% of his votes by absentee ballots respectively. But in two districts, 130-02 and 135-03, only 5.23% and 7.87% of his votes were by absentee ballots.

In precinct 136-01, a total of 94 absentee ballots were counted and 81 had no stamp and postmark, or 86.1%. In precinct 136-02, 36 of 42 had no stamp or postmark, or 85.7%. In precinct 136-03, 87 of 104 absentee ballots likely came through drop boxes, or 83.6%. (Id. at 30). In the two precincts of District 139 together, 165 of 210 had no stamp or postmark, or 78.5%. (Plaintiff Ex. 149, Plaintiff Ex. 181).

III. CONCLUSION

The numbers provide grounds to question the reliability of the primary.

We all know how Democrats LOVE to vote ABSENTEE, but it's curious that the "gap" between Ganim Democrats voting absentee and Gomes Democrats voting absentee was  a whopping 41.5% more for Ganim.  I guess the Ganim absentee voters were just "particularly lazy"....

Another $40k "Loan Repayment" (aka bribe/payoff) for the Big Guy...

 The laundered money trail took six steps, the committee said:

1. July 30, 2017: Hunter Biden put pressure on Zhao for a $10 million payment using the influence of Joe Biden, who was “sitting” in the room, according to a screenshot of a WhatsApp message from an IRS whistleblower in June.
2. August 8, 2017: Hunter-Biden-linked bank accounts received about $5 million in payments from Zhao within ten days of the text, using proximity to Joe Biden as a cudgel. (Northern International Capital, a Chinese company affiliated with CEFC, sent $5 million to Hudson West III, a joint venture established by Hunter Biden and CEFC associate Gongwen Dong.)
3. August 8, 2017: On the same day, $400,000 was wired to Owasco, P.C. from Hudson West III, another entity controlled by the president’s son.
4. August 14, 2017: Hunter Biden then wired $150,000 to Lion Hall Group, an entity owned by Joe Biden’s brother, James Biden, and his wife, Sara Biden.
5. August 28, 2017: Sara Biden withdrew $50,000 in cash from Lion Hall Group. On the same day, Sara Biden deposited $50,000 into her shared personal checking account with James Biden.
6. September 3, 2017: Sara Biden wrote Joe Biden a check for $40,000 for a “loan repayment,” a method Republicans say is used to launder money.

Why Democratic Elites No Longer Focus on Changing Laws...

 ...they now focus on the magical misdirection technique of changing Law Enforcement Practices (ie BLM/ Lawfare) instead.

"If Latinos sit out the election instead of saying, 'We're gonna punish our enemies, and we're gonna reward our friends who stand with us on issues that are important to us' -- if they don't see that kind of upsurge in voting in this election -- then I think it's going to be harder. And that's why I think it's so important that people focus on voting on November 2nd." 

- Barrack Obama, "Univision Interview"

---

Arbitrage Government . Just look what they've done at FBI and DOJ!  No wonder Trump was indicted four times.  Does the arbitrageur par excelance, George Soros, control America?   Is Elon jealous, or just looking to right a sinking ship?   Barrack Obama & Eric Holder's "Social Justice Doctrine" is so "the Chicago Way"/ gangsta!  "'Ef da LAW, ya gotsta PAY to PLAY!"

Why the Democratic Party Elites LOVE Illegal Immigration...

....and America is trapped in the Panderverse.

---

To Dream, the impossible Dream...

... dreamt by a Man of Science.

...and not another, more  obscurantly "ambiguous".

A libation poured unbidden

upon the sun-parched earth

unlocked a seed's potential

for life as well as mirth

For a patch of vibrant color

Emerged from that favoured spot

And as I passed it drew my eye

This new life unleashed by lot

Now examining a life without due regard

for gods or greater matters

Can discern only half the inner thirsts

That leave like minded souls in tatters

And so I thank my G_d today

for unearned graces granted

And overturn my half filled cup

towards errant seeds unplanted

-Anon.

---

... cuz in the final discursive end (late capitalism), it's ALL about the BOTTOM LINE!