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CHICAGO — About 300 anti-war activists crowded into the basement of the Teamsters Union’s headquarters on Saturday to hear organizers from all over the country describe their plans to disrupt the Democratic National Convention this August. Joe Biden’s backing of Israel since Hamas’s October 7 attack has turned these left-wing radicals against their own party.

“It’s really inspiring to see that people are just as enthusiastic, and maybe even more enthusiastic, to march on the DNC as they are to march on the RNC,” says Omar Flores, a Milwaukee-based activist. “We can thank Genocide Joe and our movement for that.”  

But then a man stumbles to the podium, wiping sweat from his forehead. He grabs the microphone to announce that the Islamic regime of Iran has launched missiles and drones heading straight toward Israel.

“They believe that they will be in Palestinian—I don’t call it Israeli—airspace between two and four a.m., which means about two to four hours from now,” he says. “In addition, there are reports of drones having been fired on Israel from Yemen and Iraq.”

The crowd, all wearing black N95s, erupts into applause. Someone in the back lowers their mask to send a celebratory whistle soaring throughout the room.  

The man at the podium, Hatem Abudayyeh, heads the U.S. Palestinian Community Network, “a purported community group which, on information and belief, is an affiliate of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a designated terror organization based in Gaza,” according to a lawsuit over the alleged relations between U.S. advocacy groups and Hamas. 

“This is when this country and the world needs us because the United States is going to, quote unquote, defend the criminal Israeli state,” says Abudayyeh, whose home was raided by the FBI in 2010 as part of an investigation “concerning the material support of terrorism.” 

“We have to assume that the United States is going to try to retaliate against Iran.”

After the boos and calls of “shame” subside, Abudayyeh says it is “incumbent” upon Americans to “stop the United States from expanding this war and hitting Iran.”

“We’ve got to be the strong, powerful anti-war movement that we are,” he says, placing the microphone down and exiting the stage. 

The crowd immediately began chanting, “Hands off Iran.”

A woman in a hot pink gas mask, wielding a matching neon cane and dressed in a “Protect Trans Kids” t-shirt, throws her fist in the air. Nearby, a service poodle is taking a nap under the chair of his owner, who is wearing a leather harness over his t-shirt. Then the group that has joined here from cities across America—Seattle, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles—cheers and claps in celebration. 

Joe Iosbaker, an organizer with the Freedom Road Socialist Organization, which called October 7 a “good turn of events” in its press release about the terrorist attacks, tells me he supports Iran. His organization has since released a statement backing Iran, where citizens gathered to shout “Death to America” during their nation’s strike against Israel Saturday night.

“We demand hands off Iran,” the statement says. “The people have power, and we will exercise it in the streets.” 

Earlier that day, before news of the attack broke, at a “breakout session” on “the anti-war movement,” Shabbir Rizvi, an organizer with Anti-War Committee Chicago, taught participants how to chant “death to Israel” and “death to America” in Farsi. 

“Marg bar Israel,” he chanted, leading a group of about 80 attendees along with him. A man draped in a Soviet flag bearing a gold hammer and sickle clapped his hands. 

A man in a full black denim outfit shouted out behind his N95—“Can we get a ‘marg bar America’?”

“We can get a ‘marg bar America,’ ” Rizvi replied. 

Then Rizvi raised his hand in the air, leading the crowd like a conductor.

“Marg bar America,” they cheered. 

On my way out of the event, I ask a woman smoking a cigarette to fill me in on the latest news regarding Iran’s lobbing of missiles and drones, which were later intercepted with help from forces from France, the U.S., and the UK. Iran said its strike was retaliation for Israel’s hit on the Iranian embassy in Syria earlier this month, which destroyed the consulate building next to the embassy and killed two of Tehran’s top commanders, and that the matter is “concluded”—unless Israel hits back.

“Iran is part of the resistance,” said the woman, who flew in that morning from New Orleans, where she’s been part of an effort to disrupt Israel-bound shipments in her hometown. “Yemen and Iran and Hezbollah, who are also a militant group in Lebanon, and the Syrian government are all parts of the arc of resistance.” 

A smile creeps across her face as she tells me: “They’re part of the arc of resistance because the enemies are Israel and the USA.” 

CORRECTION: A previous version of this piece misspelled Omar Flores’s last name as “Florez.” The Free Press regrets the error.

Olivia Reingold is a reporter for The Free Press. To support more of our independent journalism, become a Free Press subscriber today:

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This story has even made it into the Anglophone press, so you know it’s a big deal: “German transport minister warns of weekend driving ban,” says The Telegraph. “German minister threatens ‘indefinite driving bans’ on weekends,” proclaims Politico. “German transport minister under fire for weekend driving ban threat,” declares Reuters.

But no, despite the headlines, they are not going to take away our cars. Amazingly, not even the Greens want to do that. For once the story is not about German authoritarianism, or woke insanity or anything like that. Rather, it’s about how nobody can really bring himself to care about the climate anymore – not even our forward-thinking, progressively minded, environmentally responsible political establishment.

For the backstory, we must go all the way back to the pre-Covid era, when aggressive climate legislation was popular even with centre-right CDU voters, and before the electorate had a taste of what Green policies like the draconian home heating ordinances really feel like on the ground.

Back in those halcyon days, when the child saint Greta Thunberg was cutting class to save the earth, Angela Merkel’s government passed the Climate Protection Act. The law mandates a 65% reduction in CO2 emissions compared to 1990 levels by 2030, an 88% reduction by 2040, and an utterly unrealisable carbon neutrality by 2045. In the near term, the Climate Protection Act also establishes maximum annual emissions levels for various economic sectors. Should a given sector exceed its maximum, the responsible Ministry must submit an ominous “action programme” to bring things back on target.

The Climate Protection Act is archetypal climate nonsense. Politicians like to take credit for Doing Something about the climate, but because Doing Something amounts to massive economic restrictions and drastic interventions in daily life, they would prefer not to Do that Something themselves. Far better is to pass legislation committing future governments to Do Something and let them deal with the mess. Then you can reap the short-term rewards of being tough on carbon emissions, without bearing direct responsibility for all the chaos that actually being tough on carbon emissions would unleash. Alas, time marches forwards at a steady pace. I am sure that 2030 sounded like an unimaginably distant date when it was floated at the Paris Accords in 2015, but now it is a mere six years away. That is becoming a big, big problem for the climatists.

You could say that Merkel’s Climate Protection Act bequeathed the hapless Scholz government a small collection of ticking time bombs, which they’ve developed a considerable interest in defusing. One way to do this, is to revise the Climate Protection Act and remove its strict sector-based emissions limits before anybody is forced to field a climate-saving “action programme.” In the meantime, they’ve been studiously ignoring the requirements, which is why our Minister of Economic Destruction Robert Habeck could be found complaining back in June that no cabinet ministers were complying with Climate Protection Act emissions limits.

The fly in the ointment is the Green Party, who are as crazy as their oblivious out-of-touch upper middle-class urbanite constituents, and who have thought it best to block government efforts to (however temporarily) defang Merkel’s odious law. In a fit of frustration, the liberal Transport Minister Volker Wissing therefore warned that if no Climate Protection Act reforms were possible, he might be forced to impose “drastic interventions” on motorists:

In the dispute over a reform of the Climate Protection Act, Federal Transport Minister Volker Wissing (FDP) has warned of drastic cuts for motorists – including weekend driving bans. This is according to a letter from Wissing to the heads of the SPD, Green and FDP parliamentary factions. It was made available to the Deutsche Presse-Agentur on Thursday …

The letter states that if the amended Climate Protection Act does not come into force before 15 July, the ministry will be obliged under the current law to present an action programme to ensure compliance with the annual emission levels for the transport sector in the coming years.

And just like that, the climatists are falling all over themselves to reassure Germans that no, don’t worry, driving is fine, nobody wants to take away your cars:

The Federal Environmental Agency believes [driving bans are] unnecessary. “Of course we don’t need driving bans. Nobody is even discussing such a ban; this is frightening people for no reason,” said [Green-affiliated] President Dirk Messner. Instead, he once again suggested a general speed limit on German motorways …

There is more, there is always more:

The SPD also criticised the proposal: “Scaremongering with far-fetched proposals won’t help climate protection in the transport sector at all, quite the contrary,” SPD Bundestag faction leader Detlef Müller said … “The proposal does not further our common goal of reducing CO2 emissions, but to unnecessary uncertainty for people in our country.” The SPD Bundestag faction clearly rejects driving bans for cars and lorries. Such manoeuvres would hardly advance the ongoing deliberations on the Climate Protection Act in the Bundestag, said Müller.

I like this paragraph so much that I’ve read it five times. It’s just so entertaining to read some right-thinking lunatic like Müller insisting up and down that literally banning driving “does not further our common goal of reducing CO2 emissions.”

Along with the Green Party and Greenpeace, the environmental organisation BUND has also criticised Wissing’s statements on the threat of driving bans. BUND transport expert Jens Hilgenberg said: “It fits the picture that this minister, of all people, who blocks every measure, no matter how easy to implement, such as a speed limit on motorways, is now playing on people’s fears.” He is only doing so to further increase the pressure on the coalition partners, Hilgenberg says. “This is a shabby tactic.”

We must add avoiding political suicide to the long and growing list of things – from the rights of Palestinians to the threat posed by “disinformation” to third-world poverty – that are more important than climate change. This is becoming a very long list indeed.

So what are the solutions, if we’re not going to ban driving on weekends, and the Greens insist on blocking reforms to the Climate Protection Act? Well, aside from the speed limit, which has the same attraction for the left in Germany as banning guns does for the left in the United States (and about equal chances of achieving any of the stated goals), the experts have nothing but the same tired nostrums: We need more public transit! We need more electromobility! We need more expansions to the electric vehicle charging networks! The problem is not only that none of this amounts to an “action programme” to sink vehicle emissions posthaste; it is also that there is no money for any of this. Electric vehicle subsidies have been withdrawn since the courts blew a 60 billion dollar hole in the government’s budget. Far from expanding public transit, we’re fighting to maintain the decaying rail network we already have. And nobody believes that more charging stations will save the planet.

This is late-stage climatism and it will linger for a long time. There await years if not decades of haggling over the ambitious goals set by past governments, years of fig leafs and excuses, years of relaxing restrictions in elaborate ways so we can pretend we’re still doing something. It is going to be very tedious, but also, I suspect, occasionally entertaining.

Meet Mike:

“Semi retired family physician after 50+ years. A patriot and concerned about my country. I am a Trump supporter. And a big fan of Rand Paul. He has done a great job on the investigation of the release of Covid. The things that need to be considered are three, means motive and opportunity. Just think about it.”

Commented on:

A man who attempted to murder a colleague by poisoning her — probably leaving her with permanent health problems and shrinking her life span — spent only ten days in jail, despite his crimes being caught on camera. It would have been easy to send him to prison for many years, but he’s getting off […]

The post Man poisons colleague, tries to kill her, gets nothing more than probation, due to left-wing DA’s office appeared first on Liberty Unyielding.

Kyle Benjamin Douglas Calvert, 26, has become the latest Antifa member arrested for alleged political violence. Calvert is accused in the explosion of an IED device outside of Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall’s office in downtown Montgomery at around 3:42 a.m. on February 24. For years, Democratic politicians and the media have downplayed the violence of Antifa, even questioning its very existence. These photos may help them come to grips with the reality of Antifa.

Despite the denial of its existence by figures like Rep. Jerry Nadler (D., N.Y.), I have long written and spoken about the threat of Antifa to free speech on our campuses and in our communities. This includes testimony before Congress on Antifa’s central role in the anti-free speech movement nationally.

As I have written, it has long been the “Keyser Söze” of the anti-free speech movement, a loosely aligned group that employs measures to avoid easy detection or association.  Yet, FBI Director Chris Wray has repeatedly pushed back on the denials of Antifa’s work or violence. In one hearing, Wray stated “And we have quite a number — and “Antifa is a real thing. It’s not a fiction.”

Some Democrats have played a dangerous game in supporting or excusing the work of Antifa. Former Democratic National Committee deputy chair Keith Ellison, now the Minnesota attorney general, once said Antifa would “strike fear in the heart” of Trump. This was after Antifa had been involved in numerous acts of violence and its website was banned in Germany. His own son, Minneapolis City Council member Jeremiah Ellison, declared his allegiance to Antifa in the heat of the protests this summer. During a prior hearing, Democratic senators refused to clearly denounce Antifa and falsely suggested that the far right was the primary cause of recent violence. Likewise, Joe Biden has dismissed objections to Antifa as just “an idea.”

It is at its base a movement at war with free speech, defining the right itself as a tool of oppression. That purpose is evident in what is called the “bible” of the Antifa movement: Rutgers Professor Mark Bray’s Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook.

Bray emphasizes the struggle of the movement against free speech: “At the heart of the anti-fascist outlook is a rejection of the classical liberal phrase that says, ‘I disapprove of what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it.’”

Bray admits that “most Americans in Antifa have been anarchists or antiauthoritarian communists…  From that standpoint, ‘free speech’ as such is merely a bourgeois fantasy unworthy of consideration.” It is an illusion designed to promote what Antifa is resisting “white supremacy, hetero-patriarchy, ultra-nationalism, authoritarianism, and genocide.” Thus, all of these opposing figures are deemed fascistic and thus unworthy of being heard.

Bray quotes one Antifa member as summing up their approach to free speech as a “nonargument . . . you have the right to speak but you also have the right to be shut up.”

Hopefully, if found guilty, Calvert will actually face punishment. We previously discussed the case involving another Antifa member who was convicted after taking an ax to the door of Sen. John Hoeven’s office in Fargo. He was given no jail time, and the FBI even returned his ax. He later mocked the government by posting on social media “Look what the FBI were kind enough to give back to me!”

This case will no doubt be different . . . there is no bomb to give back to Calvert.

I’M GUESSING IT’S THE COVERUP AND THE CRIME:

JUST IN: Reporter Catherine Herridge testifies that CBS News locked her out of the building and seized all her files, says she was working with sources to "expose government corruption."

Nothing at all going on here, folks.

"CBS News’ decision to seize my reporting records… pic.twitter.com/XDuQEjyHcd

— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) April 11, 2024

That the mainstream media has gotten so blatant about being the state’s willing tool makes me wonder if they’re confident in their untouchability or just foolish.

WHAT WERE THEY DOING IN GERMANY? Married ISIS couple who ‘raped two Yazidi slave girls aged 12 and FIVE and would punish them with a broomstick or scalding hot water’ are arrested in Germany. “The Iraqi suspects, identified only as Twana H. S. and Asia R. A., are accused of genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and membership of a foreign terrorist organisation, the federal prosecutor’s office said.”

INFLATION IS TRANSITORY, OR A MYTH, OR SOMETHING: USPS Proposes Raising Prices of Stamps to 73 Cents.

We know, from ample experience, that high minimum wage laws have a rather depressive effect on huge parts of the economy, most notably fast food:

The House on Wednesday failed to approve an extension to the Section 702 warrantless surveillance powers, due largely to pushback from conservatives over abuse.

Vote now in the poll below.

Bangladesh is one of the world’s most crowded countries, with a density of 3,441 people per square mile — much denser than U.S. cities like Charlotte, Jacksonville, Kansas City and Oklahoma City. Yet, species once declared extinct there due to habitat loss are making a comeback. That includes Nilgais, the largest antelope species in Asia. […]

The post Asian antelope declared extinct in Bangladesh is now making a comeback appeared first on Liberty Unyielding.

By Will Kessler Two members of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors introduced an ordinance to be considered that would require grocery stores to provide six-months notice before closing, or be liable for a lawsuit. Supervisors Dean Preston and Aaron Peskin introduced the ordinance on Tuesday, which would also require that operators of supermarkets in […]

The post Blue City Officials Want To Let Residents Sue Grocery Stores For Closing appeared first on Liberty Unyielding.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. president is the former CEO of Solyndra, the green energy company that went bankrupt in 2011 after receiving $500 million in loans during the Obama administration.

Let's check in on the "my democracy" folks down in Brazil:

NATALIE SOLENT: A “PALESTINIAN WRITER.” “The tweet calls Walid Daqqa ‘a Palestinian writer,’ as if he had been imprisoned for his writings – as if he were the sort of prisoner of conscience on whose behalf I used to write letters on that special blue Air Mail paper, back when I was a member of Amnesty International. . . . Amnesty’s writer, Erika Guevara-Rosas, did not say much about Moshe Tamam. She cited Walid Daqqa’s youthful age at the time, 24, but did not see fit to say that his victim Moshe Tamam was just 19. And she skips over some relevant details in that brief word ‘killed.’ Daqqa and his PFLP comrades did not just kill Moshe Tamam, they tortured him to death. They gouged out his eyes and castrated him. Then they murdered him.”

I remember when Amnesty International opposed torture and murder, instead of covering for torture and murder.

FASCISM, STRAIGHT UP: Letitia James to Start Seizing Trump’s Properties. “On April 1, Trump submitted a $175 million bond to prevent the seizure of his assets by New York Attorney General Letitia James during his appeal of a civil fraud ruling. However, the court’s filing system rejected the bond shortly afterward due to missing paperwork, including a ‘current financial statement.'”

Seizing properties on a technicality ought to do wonders for New York’s business climate.

Another stomatal CO2 study published nearly 20 years ago also documents ±100 ppm CO2 changes over the last few centuries, with a peak of about 380 ppm in the 1940s. Like Beck’s work, this too must be rejected, as it doesn’t align with the human-caused angle.

Image Source: Kouwenberg et al., 2005

“NATIONALISTS” MEANS THOSE WHO LOVE THEIR COUNTRY. WHICH APPARENTLY INCLUDES THE IRISH. WELL DONE, IRELAND:  Antifa Battered In Coolock, Their Phones Seized By Nationalists Apparently Revealing Seedy Links Between Media, NGOs, and Far Left.

Natural gas got an “A” grade, followed by nuclear, which got a “B+”. Wind and solar energy came in last, each receiving “F” grades, according to the study.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: Why Truman’s 1948 upset is no template for the 2024 U.S. presidential election, according to the expert who wrote the book on polling failure.

Harry S. Truman’s stunning, come-from-behind victory in the 1948 presidential election has encouraged frissons of optimism for long-shot candidates ever since. Walter Mondale invoked the 1948 election in his race against President Ronald Reagan in 1984, insisting the polls signaling his overwhelming defeat weren’t picking up the popular support flowing to his candidacy. Mondale lost in a 49-state landslide. In 1996, Bob Dole channeled Truman’s pugnacity of 1948, declaring, “I’m going to win whether you like it or not.” The closing hours of Dole’s race against President Bill Clinton included a campaign stop at Truman’s hometown in Independence, Missouri. Dole lost by 8.5 percentage points.

President Joe Biden’s uncertain campaign for reelection this year has invited comparisons to Truman’s come-from-behind victory in 1948. A recent assessment in Politico, for example, said the blueprint Truman followed in his aggressive and strenuous campaign in 1948 offers Biden a playbook for victory. Even the leading newspaper in France, Le Monde, has invoked the 1948 template as a way of understanding this year’s U.S. presidential election.

While broad and superficial similarities may be detected between 2024 and 1948, the two cases are in fact quite dissimilar, especially in the conventional wisdom that pre-election polls generate and reinforce.

* * * * * * *

In 2020, several prominent national polls, including those conducted for CNN and jointly for NBC News and the Wall Street Journal, anticipated Biden’s winning by 10 points or more. Biden carried the popular vote by 4.5 points in what, overall, was the poorest polling performance in a presidential election since 1980.

As of Apr. 4, the RealClearPolitics polling average showed Trump with less than a percentage point lead in a two-way race against Biden–scarcely a margin to inspire 1948-style overconfidence.

Another notable difference lies in the sense of vigor projected by the Democratic candidates. Truman was 64 years old in 1948 and pursued a grueling campaign of a kind that is difficult to imagine the 81-year-old Biden even remotely contemplating. Truman logged thousands of miles by train in an arduous, cross-country whistlestop campaign, or what biographer David McCullough called “a fast-rolling political roadshow.”

“I know I can take it,” Truman said of the rigors of the campaign, adding in jest: “I’m only afraid I’ll kill some of my staff.”

Meanwhile, Dewey ran an above-the-fray campaign, a model Trump would never embrace. Dewey, unlike Trump, sought to minimize controversy and avoided specific policy pronouncements, once telling an aide “When you’re leading, don’t talk.”

Biden doesn’t have the energy and the good health sufficient for a repeat of Truman’s last-minute whistlestop campaign, but the entire Democratic apparatus are dedicated to repeating one aspect of it:

MILE MARKERS ON THE ROAD TO DETROIT: San Francisco Bill Would Let People Sue Grocery Stores for Closing Too Quickly.

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors is considering a remarkable policy that would allow people to sue grocery stores that close too quickly.

Earlier this week, Supervisors Dean Preston and Aaron Peskin introduced an ordinance that, if passed, would require grocery stores to provide six months’ written notice to the city before closing down.

Supermarket operators would also have to make “good faith” efforts to ensure the continued availability of groceries at their shuttered location, either through finding a successor store, helping residents form a grocery co-op, or any other plan they might work out by meeting with city and neighborhood residents.

Lest one thinks this is some heavy-handed City Hall intervention, the ordinance makes clear that owners still retain the ultimate power to close their store. It also creates a number of exemptions to the six-month notice requirement. If a store is closing because of a natural disaster or business circumstances that aren’t “reasonably foreseeable,” it doesn’t have to provide the full six months’ notice.

Still, should stores close without providing the proper notice, persons affected by the closure would be entitled to sue the closed store for damages.

San Francisco’s city government apparently can’t stop their city’s doom spiral, so why not extort those supermarkets closing up as a result of it? I’m sure that won’t accelerate the city’s descent at all.

SUICIDE MISSION: What Boeing did to all the guys who remember how to build a plane.

I TOO AM SADLY UNABLE TO STOP IT: Michigan mayor says he’s been asked to stop the eclipse.

There’s only one incorporated city in Michigan that‘s even going to see totality during the Great American eclipse, Luna Pier, which is just a little north of Toledo.

Like many small cities, Luna Pier is worried that they’ll be overrun with sun watchers.

So much so, that Jim Gardner says people have asked him to stop the eclipse from happening.

I’ve been told that I need to stop this eclipse and I do not have the authority to do that. So yes, people are really concerned. But we’re just trying to prepare them.

That’s an odd request and an odder response.

What does mayoral authority have to do with an astronomical event?

Especially when these are pre-planned regular events. No need to worry:

Related: Newspaper cutting unearthed from 1970 successfully predicted 2024 solar eclipse. It’s time to start bopping along to some Bonnie Tyler:

UPDATE: Speaking of Bonnie Tyler: ‘Total Eclipse of the Heart’ singer Bonnie Tyler feels extra love for her hit song ahead of the eclipse.