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September 2023

Mexican cartel bases used to spy on enemies, dispatch hitmen The ‘intelligence bunkers’ are active on the Mexico/US border By Luis Chaparro

https://www.foxnews.com/world/mexican-cartel-bases-used-to-spy-on-enemies-dispatch-hitmen

The different cartels operating in Mexican border cities are setting up their own “intelligence centers” equipped with cameras, communications and a rudimentary dispatch office from where they send information gathered by their cameras, lookouts or sources to their operators. 

Criminal organizations like the Sinaloa cartel or the Jalisco New Generation cartel are setting up proper “intelligence bunkers” from where they keep a tight watch on authorities, citizens and “enemies” along the U.S.-Mexico border, according to Mexican officials and cartel members speaking with Fox News Digital.

In July, the local authorities of the Mexican border city of Tecate, Baja California, found over a dozen “illegal security cameras” around the city allegedly owned by the Sinaloa cartel.

“After an investigation we found these cameras didn’t belong to any of the city or state security forces and decided to remove them in an attempt to combat the criminal organizations operating here,” Tecate’s chief of police, Leopoldo Tizoc Durán, said in a press release. 

In Tijuana, the cartel pays a monthly rent to home or business owners to install security cameras on their properties, according to a Sinaloa cartel operative speaking with Fox News Digital anonymously.

“We pay from 500 pesos to 1,000 ($25 to $50) for installing a couple of cameras around their property,” the operative said. “Those images go straight to a safe house where we have people sending out reports.” 

How Biden Will Circle the Wagons As impeachment becomes inevitable, the President’s defense schemes are predictable By Victor Davis Hanson

https://amgreatness.com/2023/09/18/how-biden-will-circle-the-wagons/

The strategies of saving the Biden presidency from an impeachment and a Senate trial despite overwhelming evidence of his corruption are starting to emerge.

The Family is confronted with damning evidence from the laptop, from the testimonies of Hunter’s business associates Bobulinksi and Archer, from Ukrainian oligarchs and Viktor Shokin, from IRS whistleblowers, from FBI writs, from a likely pseudonymous Biden trove of 4,000 emails to his son and associates, and from the absolute paranoia of a White House that must constantly change its narrative of denials to adjust to a growing portrait of utter corruption, bribery, and perhaps even the treason of warping U.S. policy to fit Biden family interests.

The Defense in Depth 

One of their strategies is to deny, then hedge, then ignore, then grow silent—and repeat the wash/rinse/spin cycle of stonewalling as many times as necessary to evade the mounting truth.

Insidiously Joe Biden has retreated from his once loud protestations that he supposedly had no idea of what Hunter and his associates were doing. Such a patently dishonest denial set the model that the President would have no compunction about lying to the American people until the evidence of his wrongdoing becomes overwhelming.

But this first line of defense did not crumble for years—only to be replaced by a second line of denial: Biden may have known of Hunter’s shenanigans, but he had no business interests with him. That was another blatant untruth.

And that additional stalling also allowed Biden to ignore the closing walls of incrimination for even more months. When these two forward lines of defense collapsed, as the Biden consortium knew they eventually would, a retreat to a third line of defense followed: yes, Joe knew, after all, of Hunter’s miscreant shakedowns; and, yes, Joe, after all, conceded that from time to time he did meet Hunter’s business associates, and upon requests made phone calls to Hunter’s clientele. But he did not profit from such knowledge and associations. Instead an upright old Joe from Scranton was playing along with the “illusion” of influence peddling: Scranton naiveté is not D.C. criminality.

Biden’s tripartite lines of defense always got shorter and shallower as evidence mounted. But so far Biden has managed to consume 31 months of his presidency through these strategic retreats. His fourth and final line of defense will likely be that he was involved, that he had rather than feigned contact, but that he did nothing other than what scores of other high-ranking politicians do who rub shoulders with would-be miscreants, sycophants, and crooks—and so did not knowingly take “loans” and “gifts” that had strings attached.

To those Relatives and Friends who still Doubt Covid treatments Eileen F. Toplansky

NO URL…THIS IS AN ORIGINAL COLUMN

Jews worldwide are commemorating the Jewish New Year and as they eat their challah and munch on honey and apples, conversations emerge that covid cases are increasing.  Yet, most around the lavishly adorned dining room table still resist any information about ivermectin and the thousands of adverse reactions from the covid “vaccine.” 

Yet, for those who still care about family and friends who may have been kept in deliberate ignorance by Big Pharma, and government leaders, I offer this piece.  Most people believe that in the beginning of the epidemic, there were no good treatment options and that is was sad that so many people passed away.

But there were treatment options early on that were not made available. Unfortunately, the government in tandem with Big Pharma withheld treatment options and as a consequence, thousands of people died who could have been saved. This information is emerging daily and it is a medical scandal of major proportions.  It will ultimately dwarf the DES and Thalidomide scandals of the past.

Early on, I was fortunate enough to read and hear information from informed doctors, many of whom were censored despite their knowledge and expertise. But the more I learned, the more horrified I was of the damage that was and still is being perpetuated on the American people and the world at large.

Thus, I would like to share with you some of the info I learned so you can make up your own mind.  The following hyperlinks will lead you to various sites that have explored this issue.  They are eye-openers.

At Epoch Times, the articles here expose the dangers of more covid vaccines, the actual dangers of wearing masks, and the covid 19 protocols for recovery.

There’s a whole lot to say about the missing F-35, none of it good (but some of it funny) By Andrea Widburg

It’s not a news story anyone in America ever expected to read, although maybe two-and-a-half years into the Biden administration, we should have learned to expect the unexpected: An unpiloted F-35 combat aircraft is flying somewhere over America on a trajectory known only to itself. The memes are wonderful, but the facts should disturb all of us.

The story sounds like a Cold War farce but, as the local Charleston paper reports, it’s very real:

At least we know that the jet, which was designed to be a stealth fighter, lives up to that reputation.

Image: An F-35A fighter. Public domain.

But, honestly, how in the world can we have a functional military that loses $80-100 million jets? It’s one thing if we design them so that the enemy can’t spot them but did anyone in the chain of command think that we might want to find them?

The contention is that the plane’s transponder was turned off. How in the world did that happen? Was it incompetence? Or are we looking at something worse, such as sabotage or even an enemy action? Perhaps the plane is winging its way to China or Russia even as we speak. And speaking of China, maybe the Chinese weather balloon can find the jet for us.

As of this writing, the search for the missing jet is continuing:

Based on the facts available, I’m also troubled by the pilot ejecting from the plane over a heavily populated area. Of course, the plane may have ceased responding to anything he did, in which case, there was nothing he could do but save his own life.

Who is Seth Rich? Who Murdered Him? And What’s The Deep State Hiding? By Ron Wright

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/09/who_is_seth_rich_who_murdered_him_and_whats_the_deep_state_hiding.html

The Background:

Seth Rich, a DNC staffer, was murdered on July 10, 2016. The DC Metro Police attributed his death to a botched robbery. That’s tragic but straightforward. Why, then, is the FBI refusing to release the information from Rich’s laptop? Perhaps it’s because Rich is the key to understanding the Russian collusion narrative that the Democrats and Deep State used to such savage effect against Trump, up to and including the 2020 campaign, when operatives lied about Hunter Biden’s laptop. Anyone questioning the official narrative was immediately labeled a conspiracy theorist and canceled.

The Russian Disinformation Narrative – The Con:

The convenient Russian collusion claim had its roots in 2016 when the FBI knowingly used the false Russian narrative to weave together a FISA search warrant affidavit alleging that two low-level Trump campaign volunteers, Carter Page, and George Papadopoulos, were Russian assets. They were not. However, unaware of that fact, the FISA court issued a search warrant and three subsequent warrants for counter-espionage surveillance authorizations.

Special Counsel John Durham’s team thoroughly debunked the Russian collusion narrative during the trial of Attorney Michael Sussman. From the trial testimony and evidence introduced, we learned that the Russian collusion narrative was created, paid for, and leaked to the media at the behest of Hillary Clinton and her operatives, and aided by the FBI and CIA in a domestic disinformation operation.

The FBI retargeted the fabricated counter-espionage investigation to spy illegally, first, on candidate and, then, on President-elect Trump. The FBI knowingly failed to disclose the dual-purpose nature of these warrants to the FISA judge(s) who reviewed and issued these warrants. The FBI agents, including then-Director James Comey, lied by omission to the FISA court, as they later did in the Mar-a-Lago warrant. To this day, there has been no criminal accountability for these FBI agents.

Buying a car? What the UAW strike means – and doesn’t mean – for auto sales By Peter Valdes-Dapena,

https://www.cnn.com/2023/09/15/business/car-prices-auto-strike-uaw/index.html

Now that the United Auto Workers union has started a strike, the US auto market is about to be thrown into turmoil all over again.

Auto sales hadn’t entirely recovered from the pandemic, but car shopping in the United States could change once more.

Dealerships will stay open

You will still be able to shop for cars, even at Ford, GM and Stellantis dealers. They’re not going to shut down, as car dealerships are independent franchises that aren’t owned by the company whose logo is on the building.

What’s more, they will still have cars to sell for a while. Most of those dealers have vehicles on hand to sell for a few weeks yet, and the current strike plans will initially impact only some of their product lines, said Jonathan Smoke, chief economist for Cox Automotive. The strike’s impact will be nothing like the Covid pandemic and the computer chip shortages that largely shut down the entire US auto industry in recent years, he said.

For first time in history, union workers strike against all Big Three automakers

Besides, new car dealers also sell used cars and, even if the flow of new cars suddenly stops entirely, they will continue to do so. They also service cars, and their service operations will continue, as well, although parts supplies could be hampered.

The auto manufacturing crises of recent years have left auto dealers better prepared to deal with disruptions, said Scott Kunes, chief operating officer of Kunes Auto and RV Group, which owns more than 40 dealerships in the Midwest.

Charles Lipson: Of course Joe Biden backs the auto unions. His green policies made a strike inevitable Blue collar workers were once the backbone of the Democratic party. Now they’re its roadkill

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/09/18/joe-biden-uaw-strike-electric-cars-esg-green/

As the clock turned 12:01am on Friday, the United Auto Workers (UAW) began their strike against Ford and General Motors. Not all union workers left the assembly line as part of the “rolling strike,” where some workers stay on the job (and earn their paychecks) while others walk the picket line. They’ll probably be picketing for a while: the union and the auto companies are still far apart on key demands.

Joe Biden has given the union his strong backing, proudly claiming he is the most pro-union president in history. He may well be, but the irony is that most of the union demands seek to undo the damage caused by his own policies.

All Americans, including autoworkers, have faced two consecutive years of falling incomes and spending-fuelled inflation under Biden – a loss the UAW wants to make up for under new contracts. The prospect of job losses from electric vehicles – directly tied to  Biden’s aggressive environmental policies – has driven another key demand from the U. They want to protect their union jobs as the industry follows Biden’s mandates, shifts to EVs, and slices the number of hours needed to produce every car and truck.

Those demands would be hard for companies to meet under the best conditions. They are much harder because the administration’s massive, mandated disruption of the auto and truck market creates huge uncertainty for manufacturers. They simply don’t know if ordinary consumers will buy the more expensive EVs at the same pace they have bought gas powered ones. This uncertainly makes manufacturers even more reluctant than usual to offer pay hikes and job guarantees.

That’s not all the bad news for negotiators. Right now, traditional manufacturers are losing buckets of money on EVs. They are saddled with legacy costs and facilities and are forced to compete with a host of new firms without them, spearheaded by Elon Musk’s Tesla.

What is “The Right Way To Lead Life”? When a philosopher goes wrong, he can go really wrong By Roger Kimball

https://amgreatness.com/2023/09/17/what-is-the-right-way-to-lead-life/

In a famous passage of Plato’s Republic, Socrates admonishes his young friend Glaucon (who, incidentally, was also Plato’s older brother) that what they are talking about “is no ordinary business, but the right way to lead one’s life.”

Talking about “the right way to lead life”—if not, alas, actually doing it—has always been philosophy’s trump card, its highest purpose, the reason, deep down, we put up with the philosopher’s woolliness, his maddening jargon, his intellectual arrogance. We suspect that he might just have something important to tell us about how to live—or how not to live—our lives.

We’re right about that. But it must also be said that when a philosopher goes wrong, he can go really wrong. Some of the loopiest things ever said about life, the universe, and everything have been said by philosophers.

It is not just intellectually that philosophers can go wrong. There is something about the grandness of the philosophical enterprise—laying down the law about what is and what isn’t wisdom—that gives a certain kind of philosopher a sweet tooth for political tyranny.

Plato himself famously flirted with Dionysius, the tyrant of Syracuse. And in our own time there is the example of the German philosopher Martin Heidegger (1889-1976).

There are two widely divergent opinions about Heidegger.

One camp holds that Heidegger was one of the greatest philosophers of the 20th century, a philosophical giant whose inquiries into the nature of Being made him a worthy heir of Kant.

The other camp holds that Heidegger was one of the greatest philosophical charlatans of the 20th century, a man hopelessly addicted to mystification and obfuscating polysyllabic word-play.

I know it sounds paradoxical (not to say self-contradictory), but I believe that both camps have a point. I believe that Heidegger really was a deep thinker. I also think he was a deliberately mystifying one.

Someday I may come back to that controversy. But today, I want to concentrate on Heidegger’s performance as a public person, a philosopher in the glare of the public realm. Considered from this point of view, as a political figure, Heidegger does not merit very good grades.

Why Are Palestinians Fleeing the Gaza Strip? by Bassam Tawil

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19976/palestinians-fleeing-gaza

These Palestinians are running away because they can no longer tolerate life under the Islamist movement of Hamas. They are not fleeing because of Israel.

“I know I’m risking my life, but I want to leave, dead or alive. At least I will find a dignified life abroad. People want to leave because of the oppression and injustice we see here [in the Gaza Strip].” — Sfouk AlSheik, twitter.com, September 10, 2023.

Since 2007, the Gaza Strip has been controlled by the Iran-backed Hamas terror group, an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood organization. Instead of working to improve the living conditions of the two million Palestinians living under its rule, Hamas has since invested millions of dollars in manufacturing weapons and building tunnels from which to attack Israel. Hamas had an opportunity to turn the Gaza Strip into the “Singapore of the Middle East,” but its desire to destroy Israel has brought only war and death to the Palestinians. To achieve its goal of murdering Jews and eliminating Israel, Hamas appears ready to sacrifice endless numbers of Palestinians.

Hamas evidently does not care if hundreds of Palestinians are killed and injured in wars instigated by its rocket attacks against Israel. Hamas does not even hesitate to use Palestinians as human shields during its wars with Israel. Members of the terror group have endangered the lives of thousands of their own innocent civilians by firing rockets from residential areas close to schools and hospitals.

“Despite their exposure to the risks of drowning, loss, and death, Palestinians fleeing the Gaza Strip see that Turkey and Europe are their hope and future.” — Mahmoud al-Raqab, Palestinian political analyst, knooznet.com, September 10, 2023.

Needless to say, Abbas, in his speech, completely ignored the plight of the young Palestinians fleeing the Gaza Strip. For Abbas, promoting hate against Israel and Jews is more important than addressing the economic and humanitarian crisis he helped create, through his sanctions in the Gaza Strip.

Hamas leaders, for their part, continue to pretend that in the Gaza Strip everything is fine. They are also continuing to incite Palestinians to carry out terror attacks against Israel. Notably, the Hamas leaders are making these statements from their five-star hotels and villas in Qatar and Lebanon.

The international community, meanwhile, continues to ignore the wretched conditions of the Palestinians living under the Palestinian Authority and Hamas, choosing instead to lay all the blame on Israel.

As Palestinian leaders continue to suppress the people of the Gaza Strip, Israel has increased the number of work permits for Gazans. In July, at least 67,769 Palestinians from the Gaza Strip were allowed to cross the Israeli-controlled Erez border crossing — up to 90% of them for jobs that pay well in Israel. Six per cent of the exits were for patients needing medical treatment in Israel or the West Bank.

It seems that Israel is doing more to help the Palestinians of the Gaza Strip than the Palestinian Authority, Hamas or any Arab country. However, because this news does not fit the anti-Israel agenda of many newspapers and foreign journalists, it is highly unlikely to make it into the mainstream media in the West.

The University of Pennsylvania Has Become Comfortably Numb to Antisemitism By Zach Kessel

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/the-university-of-pennsylvania-has-become-comfortably-numb-to-antisemitism/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=article&utm_campaign=river&utm_content=more-in-tag&utm_term=first

The University of Pennsylvania plans to host the Palestine Writes Literature Festival on its campus later this month, but it appears the event’s focus will lean more toward the elimination of Israel than the promotion of Palestinian authors.

The festival’s website describes itself as being “dedicated to celebrating and promoting cultural productions of Palestinian writers and artists,” which seems innocent enough. There is, of course, nothing wrong with celebrating one’s culture and the artistic output thereof, but a closer look at the festival’s roster of guests will clue you in as to the true aims of its organizers.

The four most notable speakers at the conference are Australian writer Randa Abdel-Fattah, Rutgers University professor Noura Erakat, City University of New York professor Marc Lamont Hill, and former Pink Floyd frontman Roger Waters. Each one of those four, suffice to say, has a spotty record where the Jews are concerned.