Special counsel Jack Smith has asked the federal judge overseeing the criminal case against former President Donald Trump in Washington, D.C., to impose a “narrowly tailored” gag order on the former president over concerns that he could make public statements that “present a serious and substantial danger of prejudicing” the case.

 A school superintendent in the Atlanta area this week doubled down on his promise to protect students from “pornographic material” after critics called for him to be removed for banning books.

Consumers are not too happy with the decision made by personal care brand Dove to pick an open anti-White racist as the brand's “fat acceptance ambassador,” leading to #BoycottDove trending on X/Twitter.

The ambassador's name is Zyahna Bryant, someone who is far from new to the news cycle. Bryant spread around false information about a University of Virginia student who accidentally drove in on a Black Lives Matter protest, per Reason. The student, Morgan Bettinger, drove down the road but a dump truck blocked her from proceeding. 

Eventually, she stopped her car upon realizing there was a protest going on and the truck driver approached Bettinger to talk to her. She thanked the truck driver for stopping and assisting her, jokingly saying if she had messed up the protesters would have become “good speed bumps.”

Bryant then began an entire campaign against Bettinger for the one comment she made out of context, painting the young white woman as a vindictive and evil person. Bryant asked for people to write to UVA and ask for punishment against Bettinger which eventually spiraled into harassment against the student. 

And now the very same person who led the whole campaign against a white student for a simple misunderstanding has a full brand deal with Dove. Bryant shared a video on her Instagram page sharing an announcement for her partnership and talking about what “fat liberation” means to her. 

Webmaster addition: Being obese leads to high blood pressure, low-density lipoprotein (LDL, or “bad”) cholesterol, triglycerides, blood sugar, and inflammation. These changes translate into increased risk for coronary heart disease, stroke, and cardiovascular death. So, eat up, Zyahna!

Iran’s defense minister has rebuked the US government’s seizure of one million barrels of Iranian crude, warning that the Islamic Republic is fully capable of retaliating “on a larger scale” in due time.

The US Department of Justice confirmed on September 8 that it had seized the Marshall Islands-flagged tanker carrying Iranian oil, named Suez Rajan, and its cargo of 980,000 barrels of crude oil off the coast of Texas.

The department claimed that Suez Rajan was in April transporting Iranian oil to China in violation of Washington’s sanctions against Tehran. It also said the US government had obtained a warrant earlier this year for its seizure.

“This is an act of theft by the United States, which is not acceptable across the world whatsoever,” Defense Minister Brigadier General Mohammad Reza Ashtiani stated.

Speaking with ISNA, Ashtiani warned that if Washington goes ahead with stealing the Iranian oil cargo, “we will definitely retaliate, and we can react on a larger scale.”

“But for now, we have limited our action to the discussions we are engaged in,” he said, stressing that Iran expects the Americans to stop such actions.

Don’t be fooled. Special Counsel Jack Smith was not hired to argue a brilliant case against President Donald Trump in the court of law. Jack Smith was not hired to bring legitimate charges against President Trump. Jack Smith was hired as a DOJ hitman to take out Trump. Period.

Jack Smith has always been a hitman. He was hired as a hitman before. He was hired as a hitman to destroy Trump.

Jack Smith is not a genius on legal theory. That’s not his job.

When Attorney General Merrick Garland, top DOJ officials, and Joe Biden’s handlers met to plan their next assault on the former president they all agreed on one thing. They needed to destroy President Trump completely and assure that he never makes it to Election Day.

Democratic Virginia political candidate Susanna Gibson, who was outed by the Washington Post for performing sex acts online for cash - and instead of owning up to it cried 'sex crime!', was actually tipped off a week earlier by the Associated Press, which didn't run the story - allowing her to delete videos before the WaPo piece hit, according to the Daily Wire's Luke Rosiak.

Gibson, a 40-year-old nurse practitioner and mother of two, streamed various sex acts on 'Chaturbate,' where more than a dozen videos of she and her husband were archived on a publicly available site, Recurbate, in September 2022 after she entered the race. The most recent were two videos archived Sept. 30, 2022, however it's unclear when the live stream occurred.

Rosiak also reports that Gibson's online sex acts could have exposed her to prostitution charges, lawyers say.

Virginia law states that “any person who, for money or its equivalent … engages in sexual intercourse” or other sexual acts with another person “is guilty of prostitution, which is punishable as a Class 1 misdemeanor.”

Shawn M. Cline, a former prosecutor and defense attorney in Virginia Beach who represents people charged with sex crimes, said in his view it’s a “chargeable offense.”

“The statute is very clear, you cannot for money or its equivalent perform sex acts,” Cline told The Daily Wire. “It doesn’t matter who’s paying for the act, if it’s an observer or the recipient. You can’t receive money.”

“It would definitely be a chargeable offense,” Cline said. -Daily Wire

What's more, she could be busted for deliberately causing hotel workers to see her performing sex acts.

The New Orleans-based electric utility Entergy (ETR) posted a video on X.com last week featuring one of its nuclear power plant control room supervisors. The video appeared to be intended to highlight the company's embrace of diversity and inclusion. 

X.com gives users the option of hiding certain replies to their posts. Here's a sample of some of the replies to this one that Entergy chose to hide: 

From the exterior, to the fortified loading ramps for incoming and outgoing 18-wheelers, to the police who diligently patrol on foot and passively survey sidewalk activity — everything about these buildings exudes a sense of security.

However, as tourists walk through the front doors to peruse carefully assembled exhibits explaining our monetary system, the back rooms in these buildings are busy generating pure inflation. There, PhDs in suits hand down flawed monetary policies that are, by mathematical certainty, setting our country down the wrong course.

There are days, like one I experienced early this week, when I simply stand in awe of these buildings. Everything about them screams stability, and their inhabitants will passionately argue that stability is precisely their raison d'être. Yet, it's hard to ignore the facts. Income inequality is widening, and inflation is spiraling out of control, disproportionately affecting the middle and lower classes. Meanwhile, limousine-liberal economists like Paul Krugman take to the airwaves, confidently proclaiming an economic victory utilizing these institutions…for reasons they can't even clearly articulate.

“The economic data have been just surreally good. Even optimists are just stunned,” he recently said on CNN. “This is a goldilocks economy.”

A large nationwide study of more than 4 million people in New Zealand identified a statistically significant association in two adverse events following vaccination with Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine.

In the post-marketing safety study recently published in Springer, researchers examining 12 specific adverse events found an increase in myopericarditis during the 21-day period following both Pfizer vaccine doses. Myopericarditis describes two distinct inflammatory heart conditions that occur simultaneously, myocarditis and pericarditis.

The highest rate of myopericarditis was observed in the youngest participants under 39 years of age following the second vaccine dose—with an estimated five additional myopericarditis cases per 100,000 persons vaccinated regardless of age. Researchers also observed an increase following both vaccine doses in individuals aged 40 to 59.

“Our findings align with international postmarketing studies, case series reports, and cases detected through reports to New Zealand’s spontaneous system that identify an association between the BNT162b2 vaccine and myo/pericarditis, especially in younger people and after the second dose,” the researchers stated.

In addition to myopericarditis, the study found an increase in single-organ cutaneous vasculitis (SOCV) in the 20- to 39-year-old age group following the first vaccine dose. SOCV is a syndrome characterized by inflammation and damage to the skin's blood vessels without the involvement of other organ systems.

Frederic Neumann, Chief Asia Economist at HSBC Global Research, highlighted in a note to clients Friday that skyrocketing rice prices present hurdles for central banks combating high inflation. He drew parallels between the current surge in food prices and the one that rocked the world in 2008, noting that shortage fears are rising for the staple food that feeds billions of people.

"The memory of the 2008 Asian food price scare sits deep," Neumann wrote. 

He said, "Back then, rising rice prices in some economies quickly spilled over into other markets as consumers and governments across the region scrambled to secure supplies. It also lifted the prices of other staples, such as wheat, as buyers shifted to alternatives."

Rice from Asia accounts for about 90% of the global production. The El Nino weather phenomenon has sparked heavy rainfall and droughts across top-producing regions, such as India, which has imposed export restrictions to ensure adequate domestic supplies. 

We provided readers with enough understanding that rice, which is critical to the diets of billions of people worldwide, was headed for a shortage:

• Sept. 2022: The Stage Is Being Set For A Massive Global Rice Shortage

• April 2023: "We've Been Warned": El Nino Watch Initiated As Ag-Industry In Crosshairs

• May 2023: Global Rice Shortage Looms, Set To Be The Biggest In Decades

• May 2023: Thai Rice Crop In Crosshairs Of El Nino As Farmers Are Warned About Water Shortages

• August 2023: Rice Crisis Sends Prices To Highest Levels Since 2008

US weapons maker RTX, formerly known as Raytheon Technologies, scrubbed a multibillion deal with Saudi firm Scopa Defense earlier this year over "concerns" that the latter was pursuing business with sanctioned Russian and Chinese companies, according to people familiar with the deal that spoke with the Wall Street Journal (WSJ).

In 2022, RTX and Scopa signed a memorandum of understanding to build a factory in the kingdom for air defense systems to protect Riyadh from airstrikes. The plan reportedly called for installing radars and multiple air defense systems with an investment of $25 billion in the kingdom and $17 worth of sales.

The upcoming Steadfast Defender NATO war drills, set for early 2024, are expected to be the biggest military exercises in Europe since the end of the Cold War, the Financial Times is reporting Monday.

At a moment the war in Ukraine grows more and more unpredictable, given neither Russia nor the West have shown any signs of backing down, the FT writes that "Nato is preparing its biggest live joint command exercise since the cold war next year, assembling more than 40,000 troops to practice how the alliance would attempt to repel Russian aggression against one of its members."

Like with the ongoing, smaller 'Northern Coasts' war games currently being executed by NATO in Baltic waters, the Steadfast Defender 24 drills will simulate how the military alliance would respond in the face of a hypothetical Russian invasion. 

NATO officials were quoted in FT as saying the planned exercises are seen as a key part of "demonstrating to Moscow that the alliance is prepared to fight."

Steadfast Defender is slated to run in February and March, and is likely to be seen as a provocation by Moscow given it will take place in various locales across Germany, Poland, and the Baltic states - the latter which border Russia. According to more from the FT report detailing the upcoming giant war game:

"It will start in spring next year and is expected to involve between 500 and 700 air combat missions, more than 50 ships, and about 41,000 troops, Nato officials said."

"It is designed to model potential maneuvers against an enemy modelled on a coalition led by Russia, named Occasus for the purposes of the drill."

This report is designed to help readers think about some big topics: how to really prevent pandemics and biological warfare, how to assess proposals by the WHO and its members for responding to pandemics, and whether we can rely on our health officials to navigate these areas in ways that make sense and will help their populations.

We start with a history of biological arms control and rapidly move to the COVID pandemic, eventually arriving at plans to protect the future.

Weapons of Mass Destruction: Chem/Bio

Traditionally, the Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) have been labelled Chemical, Biological, Radiologic, and Nuclear (CBRN).

The people of the world don’t want them used on us—for they are cheap ways to kill and maim large numbers of people quickly. And so international treaties were created to try to prevent their development (only in the later treaties) and use (in all the biological arms control treaties). First was the Geneva Protocol of 1925, following the use of poison gases and limited biological weapons in World War I, banning the use of biological and chemical weapons in war. The US and many nations signed it, but it took 50 years for the US to ratify it, and during those 50 years the US asserted it was not bound by the treaty.

The US used both biological and chemical weapons during those 50 years. The US almost certainly used biological weapons in the Korean War (see this, this, this and this) and perhaps used both in Vietnam, which experienced an odd outbreak of plague during the war. The use of napalm, white phosphorus, agent orange (with its dioxin excipient causing massive numbers of birth defects and other tragedies) and probably other chemical weapons like BZ (a hallucinogen/incapacitant) led to much pushback, especially since we had signed the Geneva Protocol and we were supposed to be a civilized nation.

The Biden administration is reportedly close to authorizing yet another weapons system for Ukraine that it had previously ruled out. According to ABC News and the Financial Times, the US will send Army Tactical Missile Systems, or ATACMS, a high priority for Kiev and its most hawkish backers. The long-range missiles, which travel up to 190 miles, would bolster Ukraine’s capacity to hit Crimea and possibly mainland Russia.

The White House previously invoked that very capability to rule out the ATACMS as too dangerous an escalation. As National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan explained in June 2022, President Biden was “not prepared to provide” long-range missiles, given the “key goal” of avoiding “the road towards a third world war.”

Just over one year later, the road towards a third world war is no longer closed.

Helping matters is what ABC News describes as “a surprising discovery”: according to two US officials, the US “has found it has more ATACMS in its inventory than originally assessed.”

The “surprising discovery” for the war effort is reminiscent of another fortuitous find. In June, the Pentagon claimed that an “accounting error” had freed up more than $6.2 billion in new funds to buy weapons for Ukraine.

It will be of no surprise to anyone who has followed the Ukraine proxy war that the Biden administration is once again crossing its own red line. From the start, the White House has publicly resisted sending major weapons systems only to later relent. The arsenal of rejected-turned-authorized weapons includes HIMARS rocket artillery, Patriot missiles, Abrams tanks, F-16 fighter jets, cluster munitions, and depleted uranium.

The threat of world war has not changed. Instead, by supplying just enough weapons to continue the fight, the US can achieve its primary aim: not help defend Ukraine and end the war, but use Ukraine to “lock Russia in a quagmire” that will leave Moscow “weakened” or even regime changed.

As Edward Stringer, ex-head of operations for the UK Defense Staff, put it, the NATO weapons supply has been a “drip-feed” that offers “just enough for Ukraine not to lose,” and ultimately amounts to “just prolonging the war.”

Billionaire Democratic donor George Soros is financing an army of Gen-Z TikTokers to push his extreme left-wing causes, praise President Joe Biden, and bash conservatives, a review of public documents and social media by The Post shows. 

Soros’ Open Society Foundation shelled out $5.5 million to the nonprofit Accelerate Action Inc. in 2020 and 2021 — which in turn gave at least $300,000 in 2022 to another nonprofit, Gen Z for Change, which boasts a network of 500 “activists, organizers, and creators,” tax filings show.

The woke foot soldiers regularly go into battle on behalf of abolishing border enforcement, defunding cops, and ending cash bail according to their website.

Throughout his term in office, President Biden has looked to Gen Z for Change and other social-media stars to sell his policy agenda.

In March 2022, top White House officials briefed them on the ongoing US effort in Ukraine.

President Biden, who was mentored by former KKK 'Exalted Cyclops' Robert Byrd, once called a black adviser 'boy' during a FEMA briefing, called Obama the first mainstream 'bright and clean' and articulate African-American, and worried in the late 70s that forcing schools to desegregate would subject his white children to "a racial jungle," just did it again.

(There's a lot more, by the way...)

In another humiliating gaffe, the 80-year-old Biden suggested that httdfdps://x.com/CurtisHouck/status/1432401230916169742?s=20b black and hispanic workers don't have high school diplomas.

"We’ve seen record lows in unemployment particularly — and I’ve focused on this my whole career — particularly for African Americans and Hispanic workers and veterans, you know, the workers without high school diplomas," he said in televised remarks.

The White House, of course, went into damage control mode - doctoring the official transcript to read something Biden never said, and claiming that there was supposed to be the word "and" separating the minority groups and veterans, from 'those without high school diplomas.'

"We’ve seen record lows in unemployment particularly — and I’ve focused on this my whole career — particularly for African Americans and Hispanic workers and veterans, you know, and the workers without high school diplomas," reads the official transcript.

Blacks, hispanics, veterans, and possibly those without high school diplomas took offense, and general mockery ensued.

We’re seeing signs of a notable shift in how some U.S. mainstream media outlets operate. Surprisingly, some have started reporting certain news stories fairly and accurately. Recently, the Washington Post published an article urging Joe Biden not to run in 2024 and CNN spent an entire segment blathering on about what a liar Joe Biden is.

Now, most likely, CNN and the Washington Post have gotten their marching orders from higher-ups who’ve decided Joe needs to go. But there’s a lot more to this story.

What’s even more notable and can’t be so easily explained away is a recent ABC News story on Georgia prosecutor Fani Willis and President Trump. It’s quite something that ABC News didn’t mince words, describing Fani’s actions against Trump as a desperate move, like “throwing stuff against the wall.” This level of honesty is quite a departure from what we would have seen just a few months ago.

Here’s what Trending Politics co-founder Collin Rugg shared on X:

NEW: ABC News producer John Santucci is appalled at how “bad” Fani Willis’ case against Trump is, admits she is just “throwing things against the wall.”

You know it’s bad when even the main stream media is admitting it.

Santucci also mentioned how Trump scored a big win after the judge denied Willis’ motion to try all 19 co-defendants at once,

“Bad. I mean, Fani Willis wasn’t there… she’s throwing things against the wall based on this hearing.”

“A great win for Donald Trump and others that did not want to be part of this speedy trial case.”

“I can tell you, sitting here with you, just texting with some of the attorneys involved in the other defendants celebrating. Yay victory!”

Webmaster addition: Another theory might be that corporate media fears Trump will overcome the massive election fraud and be elected in 2024 (barring the "unexpected"), and they are worried about reprisals for their obvious bias.

Israeli police arrested an American tourist today suspected of vandalizing a Jesus statue in a church in the Old City of Jerusalem.

The suspect, who is in his forties, damaged a statue of Jesus in the Church of the Condemnation on the historic Via Dolorosa, a processional route believed to be the path Jesus took to his crucifixion.

He was detained after shouting at security guards:  'You can't have idols in Jerusalem. This is the holy city.' 

Police said the man's mental health was being assessed. The American Embassy  declined to comment.

NASCAR (National Association for Stock Car Racing) is a Southern-based racing sport, popular among Southerners and Southern-adjacent white people.   

Obviously, that means they have to go out of their way to make it woke and politically correct. 

The latest example is the reeducation of Noah Gragson, a race car driver guilty of blasphemy against George Floyd.   All the guy did was ”like” a humorous meme about George Floyd.   That cannot be tolerated. 

The single most important cultural change of the last 10 years is not transgenderism, Black Lives Matter, or even social media. It’s the end of free speech. Just a few years ago, it was almost beyond imagination that American companies would restrict free speech, with Amazon taking a principled stand in defense of even the vilest content. Today, books are regularly deplatformed, including Jared Taylor’s White Identity. Social media censorship is even worse and financial deplatforming has reached unknown depths.

Still, some might say that’s alright because these are actions by private companies. Many would expect Americans to rise in defiance if the government were telling people what they can and cannot say. Yet this line too was crossed. It was under the Trump Administration that the federal government — specifically the Department of Homeland Security — began working with social media to censor dissidents. President Donald Trump himself did nothing about the problem except for a nonsensical “Social Media Summit” featuring no one who was actually deplatformed. He is still doing nothing except posting on his echo chamber on Truth Social, despite regaining access to his Twitter/X account.

Some Republicans have begun fighting back now that the Democrats are in charge, especially after the government excesses during the COVID-19 pandemic. This too was too little, too late; conservatives ignored or even quietly welcomed the arbitrary decisions by Big Tech to wipe out entire groups, subcultures, and movements from platforms. That said, some are now moved to action.

It paid off when a federal judge ruled that the federal government could no longer work with tech companies to censor Americans. The decision baffled and outraged journalists, our country’s most dangerous free speech opponents. The Biden Administration appealed and got the injunction lifted, but appears to have lost the appeal in Missouri v. Biden.

On September 4, I reported that Japanese scientists had examined Covid and its variants and found that all are Laboratory creations. https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2023/09/04/japanese-scientists-find-that-covid-19-and-all-of-the-variants-are-laboratory-creations/ This discovery raises the dangerous and disturbing question why a laboratory is producing viruses with which to infect humans.

I contacted a scientist who had been involved in the study of the original SARS for his evaluation and explanation of the Japanese scientists’ report. His explanation is below. It is challenging for non-professionals to follow, but less so than the Japanese study itself. As I understand the findings, it is the absence of synonymous mutations in the variants that reveal that Covid and its variants are lab creations.

I suspect that the Japanese study will be suppressed and that any American or Western scientist who took up this inquiry would find himself cut off from research funds and his career terminated.

It never fails that when a Democrat’s back is up against the wall, the mainstream media rushes to run interference for them by echoing (or sometimes inventing) talking points in their defense. And as was confirmed very recently, sometimes those talking points are provided to the press directly by Democrats themselves.

That is, of course, exactly what we’re seeing play out this week in the aftermath of House Speaker Kevin McCarthy green-lighting the start of an impeachment inquiry against President Joe Biden.

Already, Sen. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, Reps. Adam Schiff and Nancy Pelosi and all the rest are declaring the impeachment inquiry to be a frivolous “witch hunt” not based on evidence, with Schumer stating on Tuesday, “The American people want us to do something that will make their lives better, not go off on these chases, witch hunts.”

Want to have some ability to choose where your child goes to school?

Well, then you’re a racist.

So says Randi Weingarten, leader of the American Federation of Teachers.

Words like “school choice” or “parental rights,” she maintains, are the “same kinds of words” used by segregationists, so if you use them too, you’re one of them.

Predictably, Weingarten is now furiously backpedaling, claiming that she was just making an innocent comment about “language” rather than actually accusing anyone of being racist, but this isn’t the first time she’s beat this drum.

In 2017, she called school-choice programs the “only slightly more polite cousins of segregation.”

Nor is she the only teachers-union leader to make this claim.

A new report details how a controversial definition of antisemitism is stifling free speech at United Kingdom universities.

The study, which was conducted by the British Society for Middle Eastern Studies (BRISMES) and the European Legal Support Center (ELSC), relies on the analysis of 40 cases between 2017-2022 in which students or staff were accused of antisemitism based on the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism.

“Our findings demonstrate that the IHRA definition is undermining academic freedom and freedom of expression in relation to discussions of Israel and Palestine and risks being used in a way that discriminates against Palestinians and others on campuses who wish to speak out against the oppression of Palestinians,” reads the report.

In 2016, the IHRA adopted the non-legally binding definition, which includes eleven “contemporary examples” of antisemitism. It defines such prejudice as “a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of anti-Semitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.”

The definition has been criticized by academics, human rights groups, activists, and others over its vague nature and the fact that some of its examples consider criticisms of Israel to be antisemitic. Since it was established, critics have warned that it can be used as a tool to stifle anti-Zionist sentiment and their concerns have consistently been validated.

The Israeli military has conducted an airstrike against the northern Gaza Strip after attacking a protest in the Tel Aviv-besieged coastal sliver.

The Israeli army struck the territory on Friday, claiming it had hit "a military post" belonging to the Gaza-based Palestinian resistance movement of Hamas.

A spokesman for the military said the airstrike had hit an area where Palestinians had gathered earlier in the day, near the permanently closed Karni crossing.

Earlier on Friday, the regime attacked protesters near Gaza's border with the occupied territories.

An AFP journalist at the protest saw two demonstrators with gunshot wounds.

The territory's health ministry also said as many as 12 Gazans had been wounded at various rallies along the border.

The occupying regime has taken the territory under four full-scale wars since the 2000s. The regime also regularly conducts airstrikes on the territory against alleged targets belonging to Hamas or the movement's fellow Gaza-headquartered resistance group of the Islamic Jihad.

Hundreds of rioters have been charged, convicted and sentenced for joining the mob attack on the U.S. Capitol. Unlike their cases, Samuel Lazar’s appears to have been resolved in secret — kept under seal with no explanation, even after his release from prison.

Lazar, 37, of Ephrata, Pennsylvania, was arrested in July 2021 on charges that he came to the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, dressed in tactical gear and protective goggles, and used chemical spray on officers who were desperately trying to beat back the angry Donald Trump supporters.

There is no public record of a conviction or a sentence in Lazar’s court docket.

But the Bureau of Prisons told The Associated Press that the man was released from federal custody this week after completing a sentence for assaulting or resisting a federal officer. Lazar was sentenced in Washington’s federal court on March 17 to 30 months in prison, according to the Bureau of Prisons, but there’s no public record of such a hearing. He had been jailed since July 2021.