Fire Hydrant of Freedom

Also note the role of Lannie Davis getting Cohen to plead guilty to fed election charges when he was being prosecuted on the taxi medallion charge.  I suspect an effort to seed a bootstrapping to catch Trump down the road i.e. now.

May 29, 2024
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Russian Strategy in the Sahel
As the U.S. leaves Niger, Moscow’s intentions are becoming clearer.
By: Ronan Wordsworth

A date has been set for the United States to fully demobilize from its military bases in Niger. On Sept. 15, American forces will leave at a time when the West continues to lose ground to Russian influence in the Sahel. As this happens, a clearer picture of Moscow’s broader regional strategy is beginning to form.

The Sahel has long been a hotbed for global terrorism. It was initially identified in the so-called Global War on Terror as a threat to Africa and to U.S. and Europe security because of its potential to nurture extremism and to export extremists through legal migration channels to Europe. Unsurprisingly, Brussels and Washington have each spent hundreds of millions of dollars in the Sahel, with Niger receiving a substantial portion of U.S. training and support. The fact that Russia is now taking over and deploying resources and personnel to Africa amid a stagnating war in Ukraine attests to the importance of the region.

This explains why in March the U.S. engaged in negotiations to remain in Niger. During those talks, U.S. officials said they gave the Nigerien junta a pathway for continuing the relationship, which included a planned roadmap for a return to democracy (which no Nigerian leader has been able to provide) and a reconsideration of its choice to supply yellowcake, a uranium concentrate powder, to Iran. Clearly, the talks were unsuccessful; reports indicate that the junta has already agreed to move forward with the sale of hundreds of tons of the substance to Iran, even though it has denied doing so. U.S. and Nigerien officials met again in mid-May as a last ditch effort to ease tensions and keep a foothold in the country, but these talks failed too, thus the deadline for Washington’s departure.

The U.S. has since halted much of its support to Niger. Though some in the government expected deliveries of things like drones and weaponry to continue, it should not come as a surprise. Washington provides tons of material to countries like Niger, but it does so with strings attached: It tends not to provide military assistance to governments that come to power through coups, and it usually requires certain discussions and degrees of influence in exchange. Moscow has no such compunction. It has a long history providing arms to the region, and it leverages its relationship to curry favor with its regimes. Russia has already provided anti-air defense systems to Niamey, as well as some 100 Russian soldiers and military instructors “to train local forces in the fight against terrorism.” That Russia provides drones, equipment, arms, and ammunition without restrictions will continue to set it apart from Washington when dealing with governments across Africa.

Niger typifies Russian strategy in North and West Africa, but it is only one of many countries the Kremlin is trying to woo. Sao Tome and Principe, for example, recently signed a military cooperation agreement with Russia that calls for military training, logistical support and "possible collaborations" involving Russian ships and planes. The president of Guinea-Bissau recently visited Moscow and declared that Russia was a “permanent and loyal ally.” Guinea-Bissau has had a military agreement with Russia since November 2018, but it’s highly likely that during the president’s trip there was an updated framework agreement proposed to increase military cooperation. Russia also announced that it will be opening an embassy in Equatorial Guinea. The EU was slow to react but has now expressed significant alarm at the developments.

Russia's Increased Presence in Africa

(click to enlarge)

Why is Russia interested in this part of Africa? First, since its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Moscow has been in search of friendly governments to support it in the international arena and help it avoid diplomatic and economic isolation. Many governments across Africa have bought into the Kremlin’s portrayal of the war as an anti-imperial conflict. Ukraine has fought back, dispatching Foreign Minister Dymtro Kuleba to a dozen African countries (some of which had never received a Ukrainian government delegation before) during four separate visits since early 2022. Kyiv also developed an Africa-focused communications strategy to counter Russian propaganda.

Second, Moscow is establishing a trade corridor to funnel natural resources from the region to Russia – and away from Europe. Russia provides weapons and military equipment, while its paramilitaries protect African military leaders as well as mining operations. In exchange, the African military juntas permit Russian firms to extract gold, oil, diamonds and other valuable commodities. From there, Russia can transport the commodities north to Libyan ports, where they are loaded onto ships and sold abroad. (Thanks to its close partnership with Libya, Russia is also able to disguise its natural gas as Libyan and sell it to Europe, undermining European efforts to end its dependence on Russian energy while refilling the Kremlin’s coffers.) If Niger were to sell yellowcake to Iran, as both Nigerien and Western officials have alleged it may, then the corridor to the Mediterranean would be an ideal route. It is also a superb choice for migrants who aspire to reach Europe – a journey that Moscow and Minsk have not just endorsed but facilitated in recent years to sow discord in European politics and society.

Finally, and perhaps most consequential for Western interests, Russia seeks to unite its allies from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic. For a long time, Russia has been pursuing naval bases along the coasts of Africa. (It previously struck a deal with Sudanese leader Omar al-Bashir, who was removed from power during a coup in 2019.) In February, it reportedly started courting the West African country of Togo in a bid to extend its Sahel corridor to the Atlantic Ocean. Elsewhere in West Africa, Senegal’s recently inaugurated president has emphasized anti-colonialism, casting doubt on the future of Dakar’s relations with Paris, its former ruler. He has also spoken openly about drawing closer to the pro-Russia Alliance of Sahel States (comprising Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger). For Russia, an Atlantic naval base would give it more secure access to trans-Atlantic trade routes and support its logistics chain to its Sahelian allies.

The focal point for Russia’s Africa strategy at the moment is Libya, whose rival authorities can both claim good relations with the Kremlin. Wagner mercenaries long fought alongside Gen. Khalifa Haftar’s forces in the east, while Russian diplomats kept in contact with the Government of National Unity in Tripoli. Besides the several thousand ex-Wagner military contractors who were already in the country, Russia has been sending professional soldiers to Libya since February. In the past month alone, it deployed 1,800 troops alongside several hundred special operators. Since April, Russian frigates have made at least five deliveries of military equipment to Tobruk. Moscow’s military build-up in North Africa poses a serious threat to Europe, but Russia’s forces are more likely to be deployed across the region than they are to remain in Libya.

Russia's Prospective Missile Range from Tobruk, Libya

(click to enlarge)

Following its withdrawal from Afghanistan, the U.S. is determined to ensure that its exit from Niger goes smoothly. One hundred U.S. troops have already departed, but approximately 1,000 remain. They will leave behind an expensive drone base that provided Sahelian governments with intelligence and reconnaissance for their fight against Islamist insurgencies. However, Washington remains convinced of the importance of monitoring and, when necessary, actively disrupting Islamist extremist networks across the Sahel, so it continues to seek a new home for its counterterrorism operations.

Meanwhile, Russia has been proactive in ensuring this will not be an easy task for the United States. In addition to building links between its African allies, Moscow is trying to push further into Lusophone countries. It is also prioritizing collaboration with the new Senegalese president and other countries along the Atlantic coast, including Togo. By forming tighter alliances across the region, Russia will benefit economically and politically, while gaining the ability to threaten NATO in new ways – all of which will increase Moscow’s future bargaining power.

Arnie started out with some real gusto and pushed hard for a couple of good initiatives, but lost to the power of the public unions etc and then kind of gave up.

https://dailycaller.com/2024/05/27/china-billions-chips-tech-war-us/?utm_source=piano&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=29912&pnespid=7OhqEC4ear1ChuCeoWqzHZyItBj1DIAvIeq9yLR3rRxmY7iwRcAWh5q1EzWNS4XVhZBF3bbJ

There is a reason I bring this up today from the Memory Hole:

https://gazette.com/.../article_bd0ec09a-cdf0-11eb-989f...

By the way, until I saw this particular piece I did not know the reporter who broke the story was Hillaried , , ,

The article does miss two highly significant details though when it writes: 

"The meeting took place days before then-FBI Director James Comey announced the bureau would not recommend charges against Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton's wife, for her emails. However, Comey called her handling of classified information "extremely careless."

FIRST DETAIL:   Decisions about whom to prosecute are made by the Dept of Justice i.e. AG Lynch.  However due to her getting caught in this violation of the canons of judicial ethics by having an ex parte meeting without representatives of both sides being present in political terms Lynch was a non-starter to make the decision.

It was at this moment Comey leaped into the vacuum and purported to make the decision to not prosecute-- a decision which in no way was his to make!  After all the FBI is for INVESTIGATION, NOT PROSECUTION.   

Given the highly perfidious behavior of the seventh floor of the FBI in burying Hillary's many felonies in the saga of her illegal private email server, her destruction of 33,000 Congressionally subpoenaed emails, and much more it seems safe to say that this was a highly purposeful overreach designed to get Hillary off the hook for her many serious felonies.

This brings us to the SECOND DETAIL, which is the standard of the statute against mishandling top secret materials.   Remember this is what was used to prosecute and convict genuine war hero General Petraeus for letting his biographer (and lover), whose clearance was a step below his ("Secret" as vs. his "Top Secret") -- in other words this stuff is taken seriously-- as it should be.

Most felonies have a standard of "intent"-- but given the gravity of the consequences of the crime in question, the statute merely requires "recklessness"-- so note well Comey's misdirect with the slickly chosen phrase "extemely careless" so as to avoid its homonym "reckless".

All this comes to mind with today's revelation of President visiting a primary witness in Hunter's upcoming gun trial:

https://www.msn.com/.../joe-biden-visits.../ar-BB1n8Ioj

Witness tampering anyone?

Note too this:

"Joe Biden’s visit to Hallie Biden follows a state dinner held by the White House last week with Hunter Biden and Attorney General Merrick Garland on the guest list.

"Garland is responsible for appointing special counsel David Weiss, who is leading the prosecution of Hunter Biden. The younger Biden’s attorneys have unsuccessfully sought to dismiss his gun charges based on arguments that Weiss is unlawfully appointed and selectively prosecuting Biden, even though Weiss’s boss is an appointee of Biden’s father."

Meanwhile in the Spermy Daniels trial wherein a State DA prosecutes an unnamed federal election crime which as a State DA he does not have the authority to do, the State gets to go last with the jury meaning the defense had to do its summation without knowing what the federal charge was-- the one purported to rectify the fact that the state misdemeanor charge was years past the statute of limitations.

THIS IS GENUINE BANANA REPUBLIC STUFF FOLKS!!!

Nothing to see here folks, keep moving, keep moving , , ,

The Supreme Court on Racial Gerrymandering
In a South Carolina case, the Justices clarify the high bar required for judicial intervention to overrule legislatures.
By
The Editorial Board
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May 27, 2024 3:44 pm ET




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Sen. Dick Harpootlian, D-S.C., compares his proposed map of House districts drawn with 2020 Census data to a plan supported by Republicans on Jan. 20, 2022, in Columbia, S.C. PHOTO: JEFFREY COLLINS/ASSOCIATED PRESS
The Supreme Court, in a 6-3 ruling last week, upheld a U.S. House map in South Carolina that lower judges had rejected as an illegal racial gerrymander. On the facts of the case, it’s a good call. Even better is that the majority opinion by Justice Samuel Alito explains principles that set a high bar before judges intervene in the inherently political process of redrawing district lines.

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After the last census, Republicans in South Carolina wanted to shore up their advantage in the First District, which they lost to a Democrat in 2018 before GOP Rep. Nancy Mace won it in 2020. The Legislature’s map raised the district’s Republican vote share to 54% from 53%. As the Supreme Court held in Rucho v. Common Cause (2019), partisan gerrymandering is nonjusticiable, meaning federal courts can’t police it. But the state NAACP argued that South Carolina’s map was a racial gerrymander, which the High Court has said judges can adjudicate.

The trick is telling the difference, given racially polarized voting patterns. Was the First District drawn to exclude more Democrats, who happen to be black? Or was it drawn to exclude more black voters, who happen to be Democrats? The map’s creator testified that he relied “one hundred percent” on partisan data. But a three-judge panel in district court, based on circumstantial evidence, said it believed “race was the predominant factor.”

Justice Alito, joined by the rest of the Court’s conservatives, has a rebuke in Alexander v. S.C. Conf. of NAACP. The plaintiffs had “no direct evidence of a racial gerrymander, and their circumstantial evidence is very weak,” he writes. “None of the facts on which the District Court relied to infer a racial motive is sufficient to support an inference that can overcome the presumption of legislative good faith.”

It’s a strong directive for future disputes. “If either politics or race could explain a district’s contours, the plaintiff has not cleared its bar,” Justice Alito says. If it were otherwise, litigants could circumvent Rucho. Anyone who opposes a politically unfavorable map could “reverse-engineer the partisan data into racial data,” and then file a racial lawsuit instead.

Justice Elena Kagan, writing in dissent for the three liberals, complains that the trial court is owed more deference, and its finding of a racial gerrymander was “reasonable.” She says Justice Alito’s standards are meant to derail these lawsuits. “This Court has prohibited race-based gerrymanders for a reason,” she argues. “They divide citizens on racial lines to engineer the results of elections.”

Yet isn’t that what federal courts are doing now? Justice Clarence Thomas, in a solo concurrence, cites a case from Washington state. “A District Court recently concluded that Hispanic voters in a majority-Hispanic district lacked an opportunity to elect the candidate of their choice, even though the district elected a Hispanic Republican,” he writes. “The court later purported to correct the lack of Hispanic opportunity by imposing a remedial map that made the district ‘substantially more Democratic,’ but slightly less Hispanic.”

Justice Thomas would extend Rucho’s logic and find racial gerrymandering nonjusticiable as well, since it turns “on questions that cannot be answered through the kind of reasoning that constitutes an exercise of the ‘judicial Power.’” Redistricting involves trade-offs: Cohesive communities can sprawl into odd shapes, and uniting one might mean splitting another. Whether map makers “packed” voters or simply aimed for compact districts, Justice Thomas says, is “too often in the eye of the beholder.”

Gerrymandering complaints are as old as the Republic, they may never end, and there’s no panacea. But the majority is right: Judges being asked to override elected lawmakers should require stronger evidence of racial motivation than was present in South Carolina, or in most such lawsuits.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xA1ZU8LDpVE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O35GOWIY-eY

The jurors have not been sequestered.

https://dailycaller.com/2024/05/25/xi-jinping-revives-decades-old-playbook-to-supercharge-chinas-surveillance-state/?utm_source=piano&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=29912&pnespid=tbVlWDpHa78LhfjarT6lGpvStkOtBYZsPbO_xvU59kRmM.nb9YAb3L0xy.rbtPa_PzSm1Ah9

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uvNGBH3qKHg&t=3s

https://decrypt.co/232583/bitcoin-70000-ethereum-nearly-4000-argentina-legal-tender

https://elsalvadorinenglish.com/2024/05/23/argentina-and-el-salvador-discuss-bitcoin-adoption/

ZANG!!!

https://twitchy.com/amy-curtis/2024/05/26/us-fleet-forces-commander-says-non-citizens-trying-to-infiltrate-military-bases-n2396628

Much to disagree with here, but some important questions raised.

===============================================


Open Borders Produced the Biden Economic Boom
Why doesn’t he get credit for strong growth? In part because he can’t defend his immigration policies.
By Donald L. Luskin
May 24, 2024 4:35 pm ET


Migrants trying to enter the U.S. cut barbed wire fencing at the border with Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, May 13. PHOTO: AFP CONTRIBUTOR#AFP/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

Supporters of President Biden wonder why he gets such low ratings on the economy despite strong growth and low unemployment. The conventional answer is persistent inflation, and there’s truth to that. But an underappreciated factor is that Mr. Biden has achieved his economic successes via a politically unpalatable and ultimately unsustainable means: the uncontrolled influx of immigrants into the U.S. across the southern border. It’s a catastrophe of lawlessness and maladministration. But it appears to have contributed to a strong labor market and to economic growth.

Consider the 3.2 million increase in the foreign-born adult population in the U.S. in the 21 months since July 2022. We start at that date because it gives us a clean slate, free from the effects of the pandemic lockdown and reopening. And this period captures the full effect of the Biden administration’s loose border policies.

Over that period, foreign-born employment has increased 1.8 million—meaning that roughly 56% of the 3.2 million new foreign-born adult population became employed. Setting aside the political matter of how much of this employment is legal, the stereotype that immigrants don’t or can’t work appears to be false.

These numbers come from the Bureau of Labor Statistics in its monthly jobs report. They are collected in the Current Population Survey—the so-called household survey—which is used to calculate the national unemployment rate. It’s an old-fashioned door-to-door census of 60,000 households in which respondents are asked, among many questions, whether they are native-born or foreign-born. They aren’t asked if they are in the country illegally, and no doubt some are. But illegal aliens may be harder to find and less likely to answer a knock on the door, so the BLS probably undercounts them.

Even undercounted, the foreign-born represent 80% of the 4.1 million U.S. adult population increase since July 2022, and they account for 71% of the 2.5 million new jobs. All else equal, without the new foreign-born workers, total job growth in the economy would have been about 86,000 less every month—only 724,000 over the period, not 2.52 million.

Considering that population and employment growth are the most important variables in economic growth, it would seem that without the present immigration surge the economy would have grown less than a third as much as it actually has in a series of strong quarters since July 2022, across which annual real GDP growth averaged 2.8%—compared with the Federal Reserve’s estimate of growth potential at only 1.8%.

That wouldn’t be true if the new immigrants were parasitically taking jobs that the native-born would have gotten otherwise. Since July 2022, the native-born adult population grew by 821,000, and its employment grew by 724,000, which is to say that 88% of them found jobs. It would seem that the problem for new native-born adults is that there are so few of them, not that they can’t get work.

It is likely the case that the new foreign-born adults are diluting the productivity of the U.S. economy by arriving with few skills and with language and education deficits. But the economy needs many low-skill workers, and they rapidly acquire skills on the job, so they will surely contribute to productivity growth in the future.

Yes, new immigrants put incremental demands on roads, hospitals, schools and other resources. But so do new native-born citizens. For either population, the question is what they produce as well as what they consume. The evidence shows that the foreign born are more likely to be producers than the native-born. In total, the foreign-born employment-to-population ratio is 63.4%. For the native-born, it is only 59.6%. By hook or by crook, legal or illegal, new immigrants are working.

It would seem that in purely economic terms, and at least for the moment, the Biden administration’s loose border policy is a feature, not a bug. But politically it’s a loser this election year, and it’s no surprise that the Biden administration isn’t bragging about it.

In a February Pew poll, 77% of Americans said that the southern border is either a “crisis” or a “major problem.” Even 62% of Democrats agreed. People see the bug, not the features, because the boom in job growth from immigration is, by definition, experienced by people most Americans here already don’t know—and, presumably, who won’t be able to vote this November. And even with his own political base, it would be awkward for Mr. Biden to argue that he has produced economic growth via laissez-faire deregulation at the border.

Such a policy is unsustainable in any case. Under capitalism, economic growth depends on trust—on the ability of economic participants to rely on others’ adherence to a set of defined and stable rules. The ad hoc lawlessness of the Biden border policy undermines that, and unless it can be stabilized it will be corrosive to long-term growth prospects. On the other hand, a border crackdown such as Donald Trump has proposed could end up leading to slower growth. Whoever is president in 2025 will need to take great care in balancing these urgent interests.

Mr. Luskin is CEO of TrendMacro.

https://www.newsweek.com/map-shows-drinking-water-safety-issues-state-1904506

https://pjmedia.com/kevindowneyjr/2024/05/25/the-odd-us-special-ops-shooting-near-ft-bragg-from-three-weeks-ago-we-are-just-hearing-about-n4929344

 

I disagree with this due to lack of present day talent and doubts about ability to prevent runaway horseshit, but share it here in the interest of convesation:

file:///C:/Users/craft/Downloads/ConventionofStatesSummary.pdf

https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/russia-programs/2024-05-25/waiting-gorbachev-chernyaev-diary-1984?eType=EmailBlastContent&eId=8bedf5d9-ad82-4278-b62a-36735d1fd622

https://michaelyon.locals.com/upost/5674740/title

www.dogbrothers.com

https://ncnewsline.com/2024/05/23/unc-board-of-governors-repeals-dei-policy-embraces-principled-neutrality/?emci=3a1158ed-c019-ef11-86d0-6045bdd9e096&emdi=3a4f43ad-fb19-ef11-86d0-6045bdd9e096&ceid=244814

https://amgreatness.com/2024/05/25/a-final-indignity-to-the-arsenal-of-democracy/

https://amgreatness.com/2024/05/24/house-judiciary-committee-grills-atf-director-oversight-hearing/