RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.frontpagemag.com/are-these-our-locust-years/

The “locust years” was how Winston Churchill described the Thirties, the decade that started with the Great Depression and ended with Germany’s invasion of Poland that sparked the most destructive war in history.

Could we be reprising the follies, delusions, and hubris of those years?

Between the two world wars, the allies who had won the first sank into civilizational exhaustion and moral ennui. The horrors of the Great War turned “never again”––the pledge to never, ever repeat such carnage––into pacifism, socialism, naïve internationalism, communist terror, reckless disarmament, totalitarian police states, and finally appeasement of a feral aggressor. All these ills guaranteed that the slaughter would indeed return––worsened by the holocaust, gulags, millions of refugees and displaced persons, atomic bombs, and the massive destruction of cities in Japan and Germany, an apocalypse wrought by the most civilized and advanced countries in the world.

The West today may seem to be light-years from the Thirties and its lethal dysfunctions, and the monstrous violence that decade bred. Even so, in many respects, our cultural decay, political corruption, and zany stupidities are willfully undermining not just our foundational political institutions, but science itself, not to mention common sense and traditional wisdom. These unprecedented, suicidal attacks on our civilization are breeding the swarms of locusts that may devour us.

First, the threat of large-scale wars is growing, ignored or dismissed by too many of those responsible for defending our lives and interests. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is a case study in how to make sure such aggression will happen and perhaps succeed. Like Hitler, Putin had signaled for years his intentions and motives––to rebuild the Russian Empire lost in 1991, along with half the Soviet-era population. Nor was his ruthless willingness to use devastating force against civilians unknown, not after his brutal pacification of Chechnya in 1999-2009. Yet each move in his aggression was met with diplomatic braggadocio, school-marmish scolding, and useless sanctions.

And just as Hitler’s serial aggression and violations of the Versailles Treaty in the Thirties were met with bluster by the Allies and the League of Nations, so too Putin’s territorial grabs in South Ossetia and eastern Ukraine, culminating in the 2014 seizure of Crimea, were met with empty rhetoric and Swiss-cheese sanctions. And once Biden skedaddled from Afghanistan, leaving behind hundreds of our citizens, thousands of our Afghan allies, and billions in weapons–– at the cost of 13 murdered American soldiers––why wouldn’t Putin try conclusions and restart his ambition to swallow Ukraine whole?

Now we are entangled in an expensive war––at least $115 billion and counting––that currently is stalemated, with no feasible way out through negotiation or even withdrawal, considering the enormous moral hazard that a Russian victory would confront us and our Nato allies. And given Russia’s overwhelming advantage in population, and Putin’s traditional Russian penchant for sacrificing wholesale his own citizens, time is on his side.

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/08/30/google-tries-to-silence-a-castro-refugee-as-it-ramps-up-censorship-campaign/

Shortly after we ran a review of the first Republican primary debate, Google’s ad network, called AdSense, blocked its ads from appearing on that page. It said the piece, written by veteran communications specialist Bob Maistros, violated two of Google’s content rules because it contained “dangerous or derogatory content” and “unreliable and harmful claims.”

These are impossibly vague standards, and while Google tells us we must “fix” the article in order for its ads to appear on that page, it provided no indication of what exactly violated either of these rules or what would constitute a fix. You be the judge: “Guv Ron’s Great Republican Comeback.”

It’s as though Google’s thought police read Kafka and concluded that he was writing instruction manuals instead of warnings about mindless bureaucratic authoritarianism.

For the record, here’s how Google defines these two offenses.

Dangerous or derogatory content

We do not allow content that:

incites hatred against, promotes discrimination of, or disparages an individual or group on the basis of their race or ethnic origin, religion, disability, age, nationality, veteran status, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, or other characteristic that is associated with systemic discrimination or marginalization.
harasses, intimidates, or bullies an individual or group of individuals.
threatens or advocates for harm to oneself or others.
relates to a current, major health crisis and contradicts authoritative, scientific consensus.
exploits others through extortion.

Unreliable and harmful claims

We do not allow content that:

makes claims that are demonstrably false and could significantly undermine participation or trust in an electoral or democratic process.
promotes harmful health claims or relates to a current, major health crisis and contradicts authoritative scientific consensus.
contradicts authoritative scientific consensus on climate change.

https://outreach.senate.gov/iqextranet/view_newsletter.aspx?id=111545&c=JErnst

Thousands of calls to the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) from veterans seeking mental health services are going unanswered.

Desperate travelers are waiting hours on the phone or in line hoping to speak with someone at the State Department about passport delays that are causing vacation cancelations.

Seniors calling the Social Security Administration are increasingly being greeted with busy messages, waiting longer to speak to a representative, or having their calls go unanswered altogether as the agency shifts towards remote work.

Frustrated Americans are being put on hold while too many federal employees are phoning it in.

A manager of a VA medical center responsible for overseeing the scheduling of veterans’ care appointments actually called into a meeting from a bubble bath—and even posted a selfie on social media with the caption, “my office for the next hour.” Another VA staffer lamented, “It’s almost as if this employee is making a mockery of all the veterans. I can sit here in my tub and relax, and you just have to wait.”

And that is exactly what is happening.

The VA is still providing misleading wait times to hide the problem, but the heartbreaking stories of veterans continuing to go without urgent, medically necessary care—sometimes for months—tell the real story.

Taxpayers are also picking up the cost of maintaining mostly empty buildings in Washington. Seventy-five percent or more of the office space at the headquarters of most federal agencies is not being used, according to a review conducted by the Government Accountability Office.

The vacant offices beg the question: Where are all the federal employees?

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/crime/boosters-fencers-cleaners-cartel-criminals-retail-theft

A nationwide retail theft epidemic cost the United States close to $100 billion in 2021. Stores are being forced to raise prices or shut up shop, insurers are refusing to help, and smaller mom and pop stores are being left behind. In this series, Mayhem on Main Street, the Washington Examiner will investigate the causes behind the scourge of shoplifting, the role of the cartels, the cost to stores big and small, and the complicity of lax prosecutors. Part 2 investigates the role of the cartels. To read Part 1, click here.

Mexican cartels are behind the spike in organized retail crime and are deeply entrenched in every level of the process, according to the federal government’s chief investigative agency.

Retailers nationwide sustained nearly $100 billion worth of losses in 2021, the highest year on record, according to the National Retail Federation report published in September 2022. The growing number of cartel-run theft rings around the country drove that figure up from $70 billion in 2019.

“Organized retail crime is leading to more brazen and more violent attacks in retail stores throughout the country. Many of the criminal rings orchestrating these thefts are also involved in other serious criminal activity such as human trafficking, narcotics trafficking, weapon trafficking, and more,” said Steve Francis, acting executive associate director for Homeland Security Investigations, in a statement. HSI is part of the Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The Retail Industry Leaders Association described the acceleration of organized retail crime in recent years as having “exploded.”

In fact, 80% of retailers polled nationwide reported an increase in merchandise stolen in 2022, according to the National Retail Federation.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/08/the_national_archives_refuses_to_release_5400_emails_biden_sent_using_fake_names.html

The National Archives and Records Administration, also known as “NARA,” has become ideologically corrupt. It no longer operates as a non-partisan repository of our nation’s documents. It is, instead, a Democrat-run institution that rides roughshod over American values, has dedicated itself to destroying Trump, and, most recently, has provided cover for Joe Biden. How else can one explain the fact that it’s spent more than a year trying to prevent the release of thousands of emails that Biden wrote using fake names?

In June 2021, the National Archives turned on itself for being insufficiently woke, with a task force announcing that the institution was structurally racist, right down to its rotunda, which focuses on American history.

In September 2021, the National Archives declared that the Constitution, Bill of Rights, and Declaration of Independence merited a “Harmful Language Alert.”

In November 2021, when the House select committee investigating January 6 asked NARA to produce documents from Trump’s presidency, Trump filed a motion to block that initiative. NARA, violating its founding obligation to be non-partisan, filed a brief opposing Trump.

In August 2022, the FBI raided Mar-a-Lago at the behest of the National Archives, which claimed that Trump refused to return to them his presidential records. The records, at the time, were in a secure area under guard by the Secret Service.

https://www.spiked-online.com/2023/08/20/the-death-of-the-great-american-city/

The King of Wall Street has spoken, but the peasants are not listening. Ever since the end of the lockdowns, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, like many of his elite counterparts in cities from New York to Seattle, has been calling for the workers to return to their cubicles and daily commutes. The business elites have been cheered on by big-city corporate media, like The Economist. Even the White House, despite its green posturing, is pushing to get most Americans back on the road, often for long, mind-numbing, energy-consuming commutes.

Yet American workers – particularly more seasoned employees – are refusing to kowtow. The shift to companies offering some remote work seems to be on the increase. As Stanford researcher Nicholas Bloom notes, the number of job postings for remote-friendly roles is hitting record levels.

In fact, according to the Flex Index, the share of people in the office full time dropped from 49 per cent in the first quarter of 2023 to 42 per cent in the second quarter. A Gallup survey found that only two in 10 workers in jobs that can be done remotely are working full-time in the office.

This is not merely an American phenomenon. In London, office attendance is still down 35 per cent on pre-pandemic levels. Canary Wharf in east London is being hit particularly hard, as employers like HSBC and Barclays downsize their operations.

All this suggests a dramatic comedown for many of our most elite business districts. North America’s largest central business districts are all in distress. Overall, office buildings in the 10 leading metro areas remain roughly 50 per cent occupied. And when workers do turn up at the office, it is usually midweek. On Mondays and Fridays office visits fall by around half.

In some ways, this reverses the patterns of the industrial age, as portrayed in Friedrich Engels’ The Condition of the Working Class in England or in Jacob Riis’ How the Other Half Lives. As factory labour swelled, and artisanal industries declined, workers left their more bucolic towns to live in cities, as Engels put it, amid ‘the most distressing scenes of misery and poverty’.