Italy Votes Decisively for Nationalist-Right Coalition (VIDEO)

At the Economist, "Giorgia Meloni of the Brothers of Italy is set to be the country’s first female prime minister":

It would be hard to imagine a more satisfying result for Giorgia Meloni and her radical-nationalist Brothers of Italy (fdi) party than the one that took shape early on September 26th after Italy’s general election. With all but 2% of the votes counted, the right-wing alliance to which the Brothers belong trounced its nearest rivals, a centre-left coalition, by more than 18 percentage points.

That, or something very like it, had been foreseen in the polls. What was not fully expected was the extent of the Brothers’ dominance within the stringently conservative partnership now poised to form Italy’s most right-wing government since the second world war. Ms Meloni’s party, which uses as its logo the same symbol as the post-war neo-Fascist party from which the Brothers are descended, took more than 26% of the vote. That compares with 9% for the Northern League (half its share at the last general election, in 2018) and 8% for Forza Italia, whose leader, Silvio Berlusconi, had put himself forward as a moderating influence. In the next government, instead, the prospective role of the 85-year-old Mr Berlusconi and of the League’s Matteo Salvini—should he survive as leader following his party’s dismal result—will be to put up and shut up.

In part, the Brothers’ success is thanks to their novelty. Having taken only 4% in the election in 2018, they were the only major party to stay out of Mario Draghi’s national-unity coalition, which took office last year. As often happens in Italian politics, Ms Meloni’s star is liable to fade once confronted with the dour realities of government. Faced with a probable recession, a war at the borders of the eu and a raging cost-of-living crisis, a government headed by Ms Meloni may have little time or inclination to pursue a radical agenda. Another big question mark hangs over its capacity to deal with such a daunting array of challenges.

Ms Meloni, poised to become Italy’s first female prime minister, referred to both issues in a victory speech to cheering supporters in a hotel in Rome. “The situation of Italy, of the eu, now requires a contribution from everyone,” she said. And she issued a message of reassurance, albeit tinged with vigorous nationalism: “If we are called to govern the nation, we shall do so for everyone: to bring together a people, exalting what unites rather than what divides [and] giving to the Italian people a pride in waving the Tricolore [Italy’s national flag of green, white and red]”. Once a Eurosceptic, Ms Meloni now stresses that she wants to work with Brussels. She is a solid supporter of Ukraine in its conflict with Russia.

A second unexpected aspect of the results was the size of the defeat for the Democratic Party (pd), the biggest force on the left. It won 19% of the vote. That was not much worse, in fact, than its showing at the previous general election in 2018. But it was still a hugely underwhelming performance considering that the campaign became a straight duel between the pd’s leader, Enrico Letta, a former prime minister, and Ms Meloni, who Italian progressives regard with fear and disdain. Congratulations poured in from the kind of politicians who horrify those in Brussels, Paris and Berlin who aspire to a more united Europe. First off the mark was Balazs Orban, the political adviser to Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orban (no relation). “In these difficult times, we need more than ever friends who share a common vision and approach to Europe’s challenges,” he tweeted. Mateusz Morawiecki, Poland’s prime minister, issued his congratulations shortly afterwards. Marine Le Pen of France’s National Rally said Italians had “decided to take their destiny into their own hands by electing a patriotic, sovereignist government”.

Aside from Ms Meloni, the main winner was populism⁠—as it was in the 2018 election. The increasingly left-leaning Five Star Movement (m5s) did significantly better than the polls had predicted, taking more than 15% (though that compared with almost one-third of the vote in 2018.) Giuseppe Conte, the Five Stars’ leader and another former prime minister, appeared to have teased out of abstention a significant number of voters in Italy’s poorer south. The right is united in wanting changes to the “citizens’ income” benefit, a Five Stars’ innovation from 2019 intended to provide a safety net for the hard-up.

Several prominent figures, including Luigi Di Maio, the foreign minister in Mr Draghi’s outgoing government, lost their place in the legislature. And in the settling of accounts that is bound to follow Mr Letta, like Mr Salvini, looks ripe for the chop.

How the votes will translate into seats in Italy’s new, smaller parliament is still being calculated...

Republicans Intensify Attacks on Crime as Democrats Push Back

 At the New York Times, "With images of lawlessness, G.O.P. candidates are pressing the issue in places where worries about public safety are omnipresent. Democrats, on the defensive, are promising to fund the police":

In Pennsylvania, Republicans are attacking John Fetterman, the Democratic Senate candidate, as “dangerously liberal on crime.”

Outside Portland, Ore., where years of clashes between left-wing protesters and the police have captured national attention, a Republican campaign ad juxtaposes video of Jamie McLeod-Skinner, a Democratic congressional candidate, protesting with footage of rioters and looters. Ms. McLeod-Skinner, an ominous-sounding narrator warns, is “one of them.”

And in New Mexico, the wife of Mark Ronchetti, the Republican nominee for governor, tells in a campaign ad of how she had once hid in a closet with her two young daughters and her gun pointed at the door because she feared an intruder was breaking in. Though the incident happened a decade ago, the ad accuses Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, Mr. Ronchetti’s Democratic opponent, of making it “easier to be a criminal than a cop.”

In the final phase of the midterm campaign, Republicans are intensifying their focus on crime and public safety, hoping to shift the debate onto political terrain that many of the party’s strategists and candidates view as favorable. The strategy seeks to capitalize on some voters’ fears about safety — after a pandemic-fueled crime surge that in some cities has yet to fully recede. But it has swiftly drawn criticism as a return to sometimes deceptive or racially divisive messaging.

Crime-heavy campaigns have been part of the Republican brand for decades, gaining new steam in 2020 when President Donald J. Trump tried to leverage a backlash to the Black Lives Matter movement to vilify Democrats. But two years later, left-wing calls to defund the police have given way to an effort to pump money back into departments in many Democratic-led cities, raising questions about whether Republicans’ tactics will be as effective as they were in 2020, when the party made gains in the House.

Republicans are running the ads most aggressively in the suburbs of cities where worries about public safety are omnipresent, places that were upended by the 2020 protests over racial injustice or are near the country’s southwestern border. In some of the country’s most competitive Senate races — in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — Republican candidates have pivoted to a message heavily aimed at crime.

“This is something that crosses party lines and everyone says, ‘Wait a minute, why isn’t this something that is dealt with?’” said Mr. Ronchetti, whose state has experienced an increase in violent crime this year. “You look at New Mexico: People used to always know someone with a crime story. Now, everyone has their own.”

Polling shows that voters tend to see Republicans as stronger on public safety. By a margin of 10 percentage points, voters nationwide said they agreed more with Republicans on crime and policing, according to a New York Times/Siena College poll released this month.

National Republican strategists say they always planned to use crime as a so-called kitchen-table issue, along with inflation and the economy. Now, after a summer when Democrats gained traction in races across the country, in part because of the upending of abortion rights, Republican campaigns are blanketing television and computer screens with violent imagery.

Some of the advertising contains thinly disguised appeals to racist fears, like grainy footage of Black Lives Matter protesters, that sharply contrast with Republican efforts at the beginning of Mr. Trump’s term to highlight the party’s work on criminal justice overhauls, sentencing reductions and the pardoning of some petty crimes.

The full picture on crime rates is nuanced. Homicides soared in 2020 and 2021 before decreasing slightly this year. An analysis of crime trends in the first half of 2022 by the Council on Criminal Justice, a nonpartisan policy and research group, found that murders and gun assaults in major American cities fell slightly during the first half of 2022, but remained nearly 40 percent higher than before the pandemic. Robberies and some property offenses posted double-digit increases.

Candidates on the right have tended to be vague on specific policy details: A new agenda released by House Republicans proposes offering recruiting bonuses to hire 200,000 more police officers, cracking down on district attorneys who “refuse to prosecute crimes” and opposing “all efforts to defund the police.”

Still, Republicans see the issue as one that can motivate their conservative base as well as moderate, suburban independents who have shifted toward Democrats in recent weeks.

In the past two weeks alone, Republican candidates and groups have spent more than $21 million on ads about crime — more than on any other policy issue — targeting areas from exurban Raleigh, N.C., to Grand Rapids, Mich., according to data collected by AdImpact, a media tracking firm.

But those attacks are not going unanswered: Over the past two weeks, Democrats have spent a considerable amount — nearly $17 million — on ads on the issue, though the amount is less than half of what Democrats spent on ads about abortion rights over the same period...

 

Jonathan Butcher, Splintered

At Amazon, Jonathan Butcher, Splintered: Critical Race Theory and the Progressive War on Truth.

'Touch Me'

The best live version you'll find. My goodness.

The Doors:

Hoo Boy!

Via Instagram.

California's EV Push Hinges on More Power — and Help From Drivers

At the Wall Street Journal, "Flexibility among electric-vehicle owners in how and when they charge their cars is seen as key to avoiding stress on the electrical grid":

Our idiot governor, @GavinNewsom, is pushing the chimera of an all-electric future. Why buy an electric car if you can't charge it because you have to save electricity? The ridicule writes itself. "Global warming" "climate change" is a false religion resting on blind faith. #EVs

— Donald Douglas 📘 (@AmPowerBlog) September 25, 2022

California aims to add millions of new electric vehicles in the coming years. Charging them without impairing an aging grid will require more power generation and help from EV drivers.

The state’s plan to ban the sale of new gasoline-powered cars and trucks by 2035 means more EVs will be using California’s power supplies to fuel up, adding pressure to the grid.

This summer, the state faced the threat of rolling blackouts during an extended heat wave and asked people to avoid charging and using major appliances during critical hours, raising questions of whether its electrical grid can handle the added demand from charging EVs.

The state’s success depends on a range of factors, which include influencing the behavior of many consumers who are used to accessing gasoline at any time and unaccustomed to thinking about curtailing electricity use outside of weather emergencies.

“Are people going to top off every night? Are people going to wait every few days and then charge up all at once?” asked Dan Bowermaster, senior program manager for electric transportation at EPRI, a nonprofit research group. “There are a lot of questions about customer behavior.”

To help manage the demand on the electrical grid, utilities and auto makers are offering incentives for owners to charge up at certain times and in different ways. Charging usually takes place at home over several hours, with similar kinds of chargers available at places like offices where people are parked for long periods.

Ultimately, vehicle-to-grid technology that can use EV batteries to back up power to homes or send electricity back to the grid will be adopted, analysts say.

In California, managing the stresses on the grid is important because of the expected demand added by charging. The state’s energy commission estimates that in 2030, California will have 5.4 million passenger EVs and 193,000 medium- and heavy-duty EVs, resulting in charging approaching 5% of the electric load during peak hours from less than 1% currently.

California’s strategy includes adding renewable energy supplies and limiting power demand, such as asking people not to charge EVs during critical hours, as it did this month amid the heat wave, said Liane Randolph, chair of the California Air Resources Board, the agency that sets air quality and vehicle emissions standards.

Ms. Randolph said EV charging isn’t going to break the grid because consumers can control when they charge and avoid busier times. “The reality is the grid is only stressed in a limited period, a few hours in the early evening on certain types of days. Most of the time it’s fine.”

A Stanford University study published Thursday found daytime public or workplace EV charging, instead of the more common at-home charging, would be the least stressful for the grid in Western states. With current electricity rate designs, the study also found the grid could face problems late at night—when EV drivers typically charge in home garages—because too many cars could start charging at once and create a demand spike.

“If everyone were doing that, it would cause really big problems,” said Siobhan Powell, the study’s lead author.

California is rapidly overhauling its electricity supplies, retiring older fossil fuel plants and adding more renewable resources such as solar, wind and battery projects, but the addition of new power isn’t coming fast enough to avoid potential problems.

Heat waves, drought and the slow pace to site and permit projects have made setting a target to decarbonize the power grid challenging. A crunchtime arrives on hot evenings when the West’s abundant solar power drops but demand for air conditioning remains high. California lawmakers voted in August to keep the state’s last nuclear plant online in a bid to ease anticipated electricity supply shortages.

“There’s some energy challenges in how we’re bringing on new resources to meet this new growth of electricity demand,” said John Moura, director of reliability assessment and performance analysis at the North American Electric Reliability Corp., a nonprofit that develops standards for utilities and power producers.

Mr. Moura said at-home charging sessions draw about the power of 2.5 air conditioners. He doesn’t expect the increased demand to create a problem with delivering reliable power to homes and businesses, mainly because utilities will manage the connection of new EV chargers. If they had to, utilities would delay charger connections until they could make grid reliability improvements to provide more power. It is an outcome to avoid, Mr. Moura said, because it would anger and inconvenience customers who would have EVs as their only new-car option.

“The disaster kind of comes from the rally cries from the public that utilities aren’t connecting their EVs fast enough,” Mr. Moura said. “And now that bumps up against EV mandates. That’s the train-crash scenario.”

EVs won’t arrive all at once, or even by 2035. Cars typically last more than 15 years, which means the fleet turnover in California will take place over many years, analysts say...

 

Fighting the Culture War Through Christ

 Allie Beth Stuckey makes the case:

There are plenty of practical, scientific, & secular reasons to oppose progressivism, but Christian theology alone is sufficient to combat it. Without Christianity, we have no ultimate “why” to oppose abortion, gender confusion, or state overreach. Here’s what I mean.

— Allie Beth Stuckey (@conservmillen) September 25, 2022

I know this is going to be controversial, even (especially?) for many conservatives. Sorry. This is Twitter. You have to endure my takes & I have to endure yours 😜 Anywho -

We can say, scientifically, that a unique human life is formed at conception. This is a fact. But that fact doesn’t tell us why that human is valuable, why she should be protected, and why it’s wrong to kill her.

We can employ logic & look at history to tell us that dehumanizing any person based on arbitrary reasons like size, age, or location leads to dehumanization of other kinds of people. But this doesn’t tell us why dehumanization or even murder is wrong.

We can look to biology to tell us that humans are sexually dimorphic, that the categories of male & female are fixed. But this doesn’t tell us why these facts are more important than how a person feels.

We can talk about the negative consequences of men identifying as women on girls’/women’s rights, safety & fairness, but we still don’t know why these rights matter more than the rights of men who want to enter women’s spaces.

We can point to economics & history to tell us why socialism and communism are failures. But we are defining “failure” with the assumption that mass starvation & poverty, the murder of dissidents, etc. are evil. Where does that assumption come from? We can say the state shouldn’t go after political opponents. Justice should be impartial. Bad behavior should be punished, good people should be left alone, & the innocent should be protected. But every single one of those words must be defined. Where do we get those definitions?

Admit it or not, our “why” behind the above arguments is the Bible. It’s wrong to kill a baby in the womb because God, who is the creator & authority over the universe, says he made us in His image & therefore it’s wrong to murder (Gen 9:6). There is no substantive, ultimate reason for the existence of human rights of humans are just accidental clumps of matter. The basis for innate humans rights is that humans are uniquely valuable above plants & animals. Christianity insists we are because God says we are.

This God says He made us not only in His image, but as male & female. Feelings don’t override physical reality because we were God-created, not self-created. We don’t have the power to self-declare & self-identify, because God told us who we are when he made us. The right to & legitimacy of private property comes from God (“you shall not steal,” “you shall not covet”). The authority of a government comes from God & He gives its duties to punish evil & reward good (Romans 13).

Good & evil exists because God says that they do and He defines them. “Murder is bad because it is” “women’s rights & privacy matter because they do” will not ultimately be enough against secular progressivism, which is a religion in itself with its own rigid doctrines.

You don’t have to be a Christian to acknowledge the necessity of its worldview in holding together everything that has ever made the West or any civilization lastingly good. There is ultimately no secular way to justify any anti-progressive or conservative argument.

Progressives understand this in a way conservatives don’t. They’re constantly attacking Christianity, because Christianity is and always has been the fundamental threat to their total control. We’ve always been a boil on the back of wicked tyrants and we still are.

God is a God of order, and progressivism constantly seeks disorder. Christians are always to be agents of order, in every place & age. Therefore we will always be - & rightly so - enemies of progressive ideology.

So - while I am happy to link arms with people of all backgrounds to push back against the chaos of today’s leftist lunacy, at the end of the day, simple anti-wokism will never, ever be a match for the threat this ideology poses. No secular movement will. The biggest failure of the conservative movement is thinking we are fighting for neutrality. Meanwhile, the left is playing for keeps knowing every space is for the taking, and nothing is neutral. Everything will be dominated by a worldview. The question is only ever, which one?

 

Pot Legalization Fails in California

Well, it hasn't failed in making weed available at your local dispensary, it's failed to meet up with the claims of Proposition 64 proponents from back in 2016.

An interesting piece, at the Los Angeles Times, "Inside California’s pot legalization failures: Corporate influence, ignored warnings":

SACRAMENTO — Architects of the effort to legalize pot in California made big promises to voters.

But six years later, California’s legal weed industry is in disarray with flawed policies, legal loopholes and stiff regulations hampering longtime growers and sellers. Despite expectations that it would become a model for the rest of the country, the state has instead provided a cautionary tale of lofty intentions and unkept promises.

Compromises made to win political support for Proposition 64, the 2016 initiative to legalize cannabis, along with decisions made after it was approved by voters that year, unleashed a litany of problems that have undermined the state-sanctioned market.

At the root of the failure: an array of ambitious, sometimes conflicting goals.

California officials vowed to help small farmers thrive but also depended on the support of big cannabis operators backed by venture capital funding, who helped proponents of Proposition 64 raise $25 million and won a key concession after its approval. The result was a licensed recreational cannabis system that benefited large companies over smaller growers who are now being squeezed out of the market.

The state set out to simultaneously cripple illegal operators and reduce marijuana-related criminal penalties to address racial injustices imposed by the long-running “war on drugs.” Far from reducing illegal weed, those efforts instead allowed the black market to flourish after legalization with the help of organized crime operations that run massive unlicensed farms and storefront dispensaries in plain view, bringing crime and terrorizing nearby residents. And those raided by police are often up and running again within weeks or days.

While making legal pot available across the state, officials created regulatory loopholes that allowed large swaths of California to ban marijuana sales. Though voters approved legalization, cities and counties have been skittish: Most rejected allowing cannabis businesses in their jurisdictions, resulting in only a fraction of the predicted number of licensed dispensaries operating.

A glut of cannabis produced by licensed and unlicensed farmers has driven down what small farmers can get for their crops, resulting in many facing financial ruin. Licensed businesses complain of stifling taxes and high overhead costs.

Many of the serious problems the state now faces were predicted seven years ago by a blue ribbon commission chaired by Gavin Newsom, then California’s lieutenant governor.

The commission urged restraint on taxing the legal market and limits on licensing to prevent big corporate interests from dominating the industry. The panel, which included law enforcement and civil liberties activists, also recommended robust enforcement, particularly against large illegal growing operations.

This is the story of how the promise of Proposition 64 went so wrong, and how the state’s grand vision proved so elusive...

RTWT.

Israel's Choice: Independence or Appeasement

From Caroline Glick, "For 12 years, under Benjamin Netanyahu and the Likud, Israel pursued a foreign policy based not on dependence on the U.S. but on Israeli economic and military power. The results speak for themselves. The results of the Benny Gantz-Yair Lapid U.S.-reliant appeasement policies also speak for themselves":

Caretaker Prime Minister Yair Lapid and his supporters in the media went berserk Tuesday after Opposition Leader Benjamin Netanyahu spoke out against the gas deal the Biden administration is mediating between Israel and Hezbollah-controlled Lebanon."

Since Hezbollah launched two drones against Israel’s Karish gas platform in July, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah has repeatedly threatened to blow up Karish if Israel brings Karish online without first surrendering to Hezbollah-controlled Lebanon large swathes of sovereign Israeli land underneath Israel’s recognized maritime economic zone, including the Qana gas field.

Rather than stand with Israel against Hezbollah, the Biden administration is siding with Hezbollah—Iran’s Lebanese foreign legion against Israel. U.S. mediator Amos Hochstein has pressed Israel to surrender to most of Hezbollah’s outrageous demands. And Israel has folded to the combined U.S.-Hezbollah extortion. Lapid has agreed to give “Lebanon” the Qana field. Together with his partner in strategic collapse Defense Minister Benny Gantz, Lapid insists that with the Qana field, “Lebanon” will be economically saved and once that happens, the Hezbollah-controlled country will magically free itself from Hezbollah’s grip and sign a peace deal with Israel.

Netanyahu’s statement popped their balloon. Summarizing the negotiations to date, Netanyahu warned, “Lapid has entirely collapsed to Nasrallah’s threats. Nasrallah threatened him that if we operate the Karish platform before we sign a gas deal with Lebanon, he’ll attack Israel. Lapid got scared and didn’t bring Karish online.

“Now he plans to turn over to Lebanon, with no Israel control or oversight, a gas field valued at billions of dollars that Hezbollah will use to purchase thousands of missiles and rockets that will target Israel’s cities.”

Netanyahu was right, of course, and that is the problem for Lapid and Gantz. For months the media have hidden the dangers implicit in the deal, and sufficed with parroting government talking points. Lapid intended to avoid public scrutiny, ram the deal through before the Nov. 1 elections and declare himself a genius statesman. When Netanyahu exposed the bluff, Lapid threw a tantrum, accusing Netanyahu of harming Israel’s national interests by interfering with the talks.

The gas deal with Lebanon—and Netanyahu’s decision to tell the public the truth about the deal—is one of three Lapid-Gantz foreign policies that have come under the full gaze of the public this week. Together they highlight the disparity between the Lapid-Gantz foreign policy they will continue to enact if elected Nov. 1, and the foreign policy Netanyahu and the Likud enacted during their 12 years in office, and will restore if they form the government after the elections.

On Tuesday, Lapid let it be known that in his speech before the U.N. General Assembly, he would announce his support for the establishment of a Palestinian state. On the face of it, Lapid’s PLO advocacy makes no sense. There already is a de facto Palestinian state in Gaza. It is an Iranian-backed terror state which has waged five separate missile, rocket and terror campaigns against Israel since Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005.

As for Judea and Samaria, the Palestinian Authority, which is supposedly the responsible adult of Palestinian governance, controls little of the territory it ostensibly governs. It uses its sparse resources to prosecute a legal, diplomatic and economic campaign against Israel and to facilitate and participate in terrorist operations by Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Fatah against Jews.

To the extent U.S. funded Palestinian security forces take action against Hamas, they do so not to prevent terror attacks against Israel, but to prevent Hamas from taking over the P.A. Of course, the easiest way for Hamas to take over the P.A. would be through elections. Hamas has led P.A. head Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah party in every poll since Hamas won the Palestinian elections in 2006. This is why Abbas keeps cancelling scheduled elections, stretching his four-year term into its 16th year without end in sight. Abbas knows that any elections will oust him and his Fatah cronies from power.

Leaving aside the fact that Israel’s rights to Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem are far stronger than the Palestinians, the fact is that there is absolutely no prospect that a Palestinian state in Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem could possibly live at peace with Israel today or in the foreseeable future. So Lapid’s advocacy is at a minimum ill-timed and irrelevant.

But it is also devastating. In opting to advocate for the awarding the P.A. with a state, Lapid is legitimizing and empowering Israel’s enemies at Israel’s expense.

And Lapid isn’t alone. While Lapid does PR for a Palestinian terror state at the U.N., his partner Gantz is building one on the ground in Judea and Samaria. Over the past two years, Gantz has given the Palestinians and their European funders free rein to build illegal villages and seize agricultural land throughout Area C, which is administered entirely by Israel under the Oslo peace deals. Gantz has simultaneously barred Israelis from building in the areas and ordered the IDF to block all Israeli construction efforts. Thousands of acres of Area C, which were slated for Israeli settlement have been seized under Gantz’s watch by the Palestinians. These wholesale land seizures now threaten to turn flourishing blocs of Israeli communities like Gush Etzion into isolated enclaves.

Likewise, Gantz has been permitting Palestinian security forces to operate in areas where they are barred from operating under the peace agreements. He has even turned a blind eye to the illegal deployment of Canadian military forces in Area C. As Regavim documented last week, Canadian military forces which operate under the authority of the U.S. Security Coordinator in Jerusalem have been seen in uniform in Gush Etzion and the south Hebron hills harassing Israeli civilians and attempting to enter closed military zones. These operations are breaches of both Israeli and international law. But Gantz has been enabling them.

Gantz has renewed political contacts with Abbas and violated Israeli anti-terror laws by shoveling hundreds of millions of shekels into P.A. coffers. Gantz justifies his illegal policies by proclaiming them part of a strategy to “limit the conflict”—a euphemism for unilateral concessions to Palestinian terrorist groups.

For 10 years, Netanyahu worked quietly to render the P.A. irrelevant on the ground and in the region. This week, we marked the second anniversary of the Abraham Accords, the greatest demonstration of his success. Reached despite Palestinian opposition, the Abraham Accords showed that Israel does not need to appease Palestinian terrorists to end the Arab conflict with Israel. Through their Palestinian-centric policies, Gantz and Lapid not only legitimize Palestinian terrorists, by returning the Palestinians to center state, they undermine the Abraham Accords by forcing Israel’s Arab partners to stand with the Palestinians against Israel.

This brings us to the third disparity between the Lapid-Gantz foreign policy and the Netanyahu-Likud policies...

Still more. 

A New Counterculture?

From N.S. Lyons, who writes "The Upheaval" Substack page.

At City Journal, "If the Right captures some of the Left’s youthful energy and rebellious cachet, it would represent a tectonic cultural and political shift":

In July, the New York Times posted a job announcement seeking a reporter-cum-anthropologist to cover an important new beat: infiltrating the “online communities and influential personalities making up the right-wing media ecosystem” and “shedding light on their motivations” for the benefit of Times readers. Establishing this “critical listening post” would not be a role for the faint of heart. The daring candidate would have to be specifically “prepared to inhabit corners of the internet” where “far-right” ideas were discussed, all for the higher goal of determining “where and why these ideas take shape.”

You could be forgiven for questioning why the paper needed yet another reporter to shape the narrative about the political Right, given its constant focus on Donald Trump and the populist MAGA movement since 2016. But the timing of the announcement seemed to suggest that the Times had something else in mind. It arrived amid an explosion of media interest in understanding a strange new tribe, discovered suddenly not in the wilds of Kansas but right under their noses.

Back in April, an article by James Pogue in Vanity Fair revealed the emergence of a collection of “podcasters, bro-ish anonymous Twitter posters, online philosophers, artists, and amorphous scenesters”—sometimes called “‘dissidents,’ ‘neo-reactionaries,’ ‘post-leftists,’ or the ‘heterodox’ fringe . . . all often grouped for convenience under the heading of America’s New Right”—who represented the “seam of a much larger and stranger political ferment, burbling up mainly within America’s young and well-educated elite.” That last bit about the demographics of this so-called New Right may have been what got the Times’s attention. But Pogue had even more striking news: these dissidents, he wrote, had established “a position that has become quietly edgy and cool in new tech outposts like Miami and Austin, and in downtown Manhattan, where New Right–ish politics are in, and signifiers like a demure cross necklace have become markers of a transgressive chic.” This may have been the most alarming news of all for the paper of record: somehow, traditionalist right-wing conservatism had perhaps become cool.

Is it true—and if so, how is it possible? For at least a century, the Left has held a firm monopoly on “transgressive chic,” profitably waging a countercultural guerilla war against society’s hegemonic status quo. For the Right to capture some of the Left’s youthful energy and rebellious cachet would represent a tectonic cultural and political shift. We shouldn’t be shocked if it happens.

Few things are more natural for young people than to push back against the strictures and norms of their day, even if only to stand out a little from the crowd and assert their independence. A counterculture forms as a reaction against an official or dominant culture—and today, it is the woke neoliberal Left that occupies this position in America’s cultural, educational, technological, corporate, and bureaucratic power centers. In this culture, celebration of ritualized, old forms of transgression is not only permitted, but practically mandatory. Dissent against state-sponsored transgression, however, is now transgressive. All of what was once revolutionary is now a new orthodoxy, with conformity enforced by censorship, scientistic obscurantism, and eager witch-hunters (early-middle-aged, zealously dour, tight-lipped frown, NPR tote bag, rainbow “Coexist” bumper sticker, pronouns in email signature—we all know the uniform).

Moreover, young people living under the permanent revolution of today’s cultural mainstream often tend to be miserable. Their disillusionment opens the door to subversive second thoughts on such verities as the bulldozing of sexual and gender norms, the replacement of romance by a Tinder hellscape, general atomized rootlessness, working life that resembles neo-feudal serfdom, and the enervating meaninglessness of consumerism and mass media. In this environment, the most countercultural act is to embrace traditional values and ways of life—like the vogue among some young people for the Latin Mass. We shouldn’t be too surprised if at least a subset of those youth seeking to rebel against the Man might, say, choose to tune in to Jordan Peterson, turn on to a latent thirst for objective truth and beauty, and drop out of the postmodern Left...

He's good. 

Keep reading.

 

 

California to Allow Composting of Human Remains (VIDEO)

This makes me sick.

Watch, at KCBS Los Angeles, "California legalizes eco-friendly human composting."

And from Ed Driscoll, at Instapundit, "GOV. NEWSOM SIGNS LAW ALLOWING HUMAN COMPOSTING AS BURIAL METHOD."

Linked there, "Decades ago, movies imagined a futuristic 2022."

Full Fixed-Blade, Mossy Oak 14-inch Bowie Knife

At Amazon, MOSSY OAK 14-inch Bowie Knife, Full-tang Fixed Blade Wood Handle with Leather Sheath.

Ottessa Moshfegh, My Year of Rest and Relaxation

This book is hilarious.

At Amazon, Ottessa Moshfegh, My Year of Rest and Relaxation.

Isn't It Common Sense to Protect Our Borders (VIDEO)

Here's Will Witt, for Prager University:

9 MM vs. .45 ACP – A Different Kind of Comparison

At Instapundit, "LET THE COMMENTING BEGIN."

The Day After One of His Cultists Murders What He Claims Is an 'Extremist Republican' 18-Year-Old Boy, Joe Biden Urges His Demented Followers to ... 'Fight Extremist Republicans'

 At AoSPHQ, "Via Twitchy, despite having just incited one of his crazed followers to murder a teenager in the name of "fighting Republican Extremists," Joe Biden put out a statement telling his cultists to... fight Republican extremists some more."

Fentanyl Crisis Is an International Attack on America

From Greta Van Susteren, "Fentanyl crisis is an international attack on America. We must fight back":

Nearly 3,000 people were murdered on 9/11 by terrorists who entered the United States. Immediately, our government took action to prevent future attacks and protect Americans. We tightened security. We put checkpoints in our airports – and we began special screening procedures for people entering America from overseas. We changed our cockpit access. We created "no fly" lists. We didn’t just sit there and hope that the threat would go away.

After COVID-19 surfaced in January 2020, it was quickly apparent that our nation was again under attack, very much like that sunny Tuesday morning in September 2001. Except that this time the culprit was a virus from abroad. To respond, our government – and governments around the world – took similar decisive action to slow the spread. The United States and other nations temporarily closed their borders and restricted international travel until we could fully identify the problem and get this enemy under control. When travel reopened, we created new checks and tests to try to prevent infections from overwhelming our health care systems, until we had treatment options and a less lethal form of the coronavirus.

Yet when it comes to a third enemy coming from abroad, one that killed more than 71,000 Americans last year – many of them young people – our government is relying on outdated tactics and old ideas.

Fentanyl kills 195 Americans every day

I am talking about the fentanyl crisis, which is killing 195 Americans a day – one of those is country singer Luke Bell, who recently died of an accidental fentanyl overdose.

Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid that is 50 times stronger than heroin and up to 100 times more potent than morphine, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. A lethal dose may be as small as 2 milligrams.

When used illicitly, it can kill on the first use. The raw ingredients for illegal fentanyl come from China and are then sent to Mexico, where they are often pressed into pills – including what appear to be legitimate prescriptions like Xanax and valium or prescription pain medication. They could also be made into a powder, or combined with other illegal drugs to lower the cost and create a bigger “high” – a grisly imitation of putting fillers into foods to cut costs.

In one weekend, Sept. 17-18, U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers in Nogales, Arizona, confiscated about 400,000 fentanyl pills arriving from Mexico.

Are fentanyl deaths 'overdoses'? Or 'murders'?

Legitimate fentanyl is used in medical settings, but illicit fentanyl is different. We politely label fentanyl deaths “overdoses,” but a truer term would be “poisonings” – or, given the explosive rise in deaths over the past few years, “murders.”

Fentanyl kills far more Americans each year than gun violence. More and more schools around the nation have “Narcan stations,” the rescue drug that can reverse a fentanyl overdose.

According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, law enforcement seized nearly 10 million fentanyl-laced pills last year, an astronomical rise from the fewer than 300,000 pills seized in 2018.

And what is our federal response to this deadly killer coming into our country?

When it comes to fentanyl, drug control is too late

The Biden administration is asking Congress for $42.5 billion for drug control programs – $3.2 billion more than this year. But when it comes to fentanyl, drug control – which is predominantly a combination of prevention and rehab strategies – is too late.

Fentanyl poisoning is often a one-time mistake. A teenager ingesting a fentanyl-laced pill does not simply become an addict needing rehab. Too often, tragically, all we can offer their family is a funeral home.

Last January, a 16-year-old high school sophomore and junior varsity basketball player in Bethesda, Maryland, died in a bathroom in his home after taking what turned out to be a counterfeit Percocet pill, laced with fentanyl. The pills were sold to him by a 23-year-old, according to Montgomery County police.

What about interdiction? The administration did set aside $275 million to disrupt drug trafficking across the nation through law enforcement programs. But by that time, fentanyl is already inside the USA.

It’s past time for all of us, Washington included, to uncover our eyes and see the situation for what it is: an international attack on our people...

 

Lucy Pinder Television X (VIDEO)

Old Lucy's still got it going!

Sofia

Is it October yet, dang?!!

On Instagram.

Where Online Hate Speech Can Bring the Police to Your Door

It's Germany, which obviously has good justification for suppressing online right-wing extremism.

At the New York Times, "Battling far-right extremism, Germany has gone further than any other Western democracy to prosecute individuals for what they say online, testing the limits of free speech on the internet":

When the police pounded the door before dawn at a home in northwest Germany, a bleary-eyed young man in his boxer shorts answered. The officers asked for his father, who was at work.

They told him that his 51-year-old father was accused of violating laws against online hate speech, insults and misinformation. He had shared an image on Facebook with an inflammatory statement about immigration falsely attributed to a German politician. “Just because someone rapes, robs or is a serious criminal is not a reason for deportation,” the fake remark said.

The police then scoured the home for about 30 minutes, seizing a laptop and tablet as evidence, prosecutors said.

At that exact moment in March, a similar scene was playing out at about 100 other homes across Germany, part of a coordinated nationwide crackdown that continues to this day. After sharing images circulating on Facebook that carried a fake statement, the perpetrators had devices confiscated and some were fined.

“We are making it clear that anyone who posts hate messages must expect the police to be at the front door afterward,” Holger Münch, the head of the Federal Criminal Police Office, said after the March raids.

Hate speech, extremism, misogyny and misinformation are well-known byproducts of the internet. But the people behind the most toxic online behavior typically avoid any personal major real-world consequences. Most Western democracies like the United States have avoided policing the internet because of free speech rights, leaving a sea of slurs, targeted harassment and tweets telling public figures they’d be better off dead. At most, Facebook, YouTube or Twitter remove a post or suspend their account.

But over the past several years, Germany has forged another path, criminally prosecuting people for online hate speech.

German authorities have brought charges for insults, threats and harassment. The police have raided homes, confiscated electronics and brought people in for questioning. Judges have enforced fines worth thousands of dollars each and, in some cases, sent offenders to jail. The threat of prosecution, they believe, will not eradicate hate online, but push some of the worst behavior back into the shadows.

In doing so, they have flipped inside out what, to American ears, it means to protect free speech. The authorities in Germany argue that they are encouraging and defending free speech by providing a space where people can share opinions without fear of being attacked or abused.

“There has to be a line you cannot cross,” said Svenja Meininghaus, a state prosecutor who attended the raid of the father’s house. “There has to be consequences.”

But even in Germany, a country where the stain of Nazism drives a belief that free speech is not absolute, the crackdown is generating fierce debate:

How far is too far?

A Turning Point

Walter Lübcke was a well-liked if unassuming local politician in the central German state of Hesse. He was known among constituents more for his advocacy of wind turbines and a bigger airport than provocation. But as a supporter of then-Chancellor Angela Merkel’s immigration policies, he became a regular target of online abuse after a 2015 video of him had circulated in far-right circles. In the video, he suggested to a local audience that anyone who did not support taking in refugees could leave Germany themselves.

In June 2019, he was shot and killed by a neo-Nazi on the terrace of his house at close range, shocking the public to the depths of far-right extremism in the country and how online hate could lead to grave real-world violence.

Publicly displaying swastikas and other Nazi symbolism is illegal in Germany, as is denying or diminishing the significance of the Holocaust. Remarks considered to be inciting hatred are punishable with jail time. It is a crime to insult somebody in public.

But authorities struggled to translate the speech laws to the internet age, where the volume of toxicity is seemingly endless and often masked by anonymity.

At first, policymakers in Germany attempted to put more pressure on internet companies like Facebook to crack down. In 2017, the country passed a landmark law, the Network Enforcement Act, that forced Facebook and others to take down hate speech in as little as 24 hours of being notified or face fines.

Companies beefed up their content moderation efforts to comply, but many German policymakers said the law did not go far enough because it targeted companies rather than the individuals who were posting vile content. Hate speech and online abuse continued to spread after the law passed, as did the rise in far-right extremism.

The assassination of Mr. Lübcke represented a turning point, intensifying efforts to prosecute people who broke the speech laws online. And in the last year, the government adopted rules that made it easier to arrest those who target public figures online.

Daniel Holznagel, a former Justice Ministry official who helped draft the internet enforcement laws passed in 2017, compared the crackdown to going after copyright violators. He said people stopped illegally downloading music and movies as much after authorities began issuing fines and legal warnings.

“You can’t prosecute everyone, but it will have a big effect if you show that prosecution is possible,” said Mr. Holznagel, who is now a judge...

 

Louise Mensch on Putin's War

From September 16th, on Twitter:

1/ I don’t think this war, or Putin, are going to make it to next summer.

in case you haven’t been paying attention, Putin just went to China and was snubbed. Tiny Eastern European countries are making him wait around.

He’s finally being treated like the dog he is.

2/ It’s tempting to say I think the war will be over by the end of the year. That certainly possible, but sources say Kherson itself is going to take a little while. Most likely Ukraine is thinking about the push to Crimea. Ukraine WILL be retaking Crimea. cc @Dominic2306

3/ Putin enjoys being hated and feared. Instead, he’s now being hated and mocked. that’s a lethal combination. And the first whiff of future rationing has just hit Russia.

4/ Militarily, I would expect all Ukrainian territory to be liberated by spring 2023, however, if there is a coup in Moscow, (and there is a significant chance of that) before then, I would expect the war to end immediately afterwards with total Russian withdrawal

5/ in any event, surely no serious person can now envisage anything other than the utter defeat of the Russian Federation, and the total victory and complete liberation of Ukraine. Glory to Ukraine. 6/ following the complete victory of the Armed Forces of Ukraine @DefenceU over the Russian Army @MOD_Russia, I believe a coup against Vladimir Putin is inevitable. The only question is whether it will come before, or after, Russia’s total military defeat in Ukraine

7/ the coup, in my view, is marginally more likely to happen after Russia is driven out of Crimea. The reason for this is that Ukraine is going to insist on retaking Crimea, and it would be very difficult indeed, for any Russian president, domestically, to give Crimea back.

8/ it is another thing entirely, if your predecessor has “lost” @Crimea (Crimea is Ukraine, but the Russians lie that it is part of Russia), than if you, the new guy, “surrender” it back to the Ukrainians. Putin’s replacement may want that loss to be on Putin, not them.

9/ I cannot see Putin, surviving this situation, and I take great pleasure in knowing the fear that he must feel every morning when he wakes up. He is a dog. He is utterly despicable. I have often been told by more than one source that there is worse behind him.…

10/ … that Putin cares only about Vladimir Putin, and real Russian nationalists are waiting in the wings, but I’m not going to ‘be careful what I wish for’.

I want justice done against Vladimir Putin, and I want justice to be seen to be done. #смертьворогам

11/ Vladimir Putin is the enemy of the free world, he invaded Ukraine, he committed war crimes against civilians, he propped up Assad’s genocidal regime, he interfered in a sovereign election in the United States, and in two British referendums; all, imo, acts of war.

12/ Putin committed information warfare against every democracy in the world, spreading anti-vaccination propaganda during the Covid pandemic. It’s unacceptable to me that he end his life with nothing worse than humiliation.

*Whoever* is behind him: fiat iustitia ruat caelum.

13/ after Russia is driven from Crimea and Putin is violently deposed in Russia, there must be war crimes trials at the Hague. And large amounts of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund must be simply given to Ukraine as compensation. Glory to Ukraine. Destruction to the Kremlin. Ends.

 

Nicholas Eberstadt, Men Without Work

At Amazon, Nicholas Eberstadt, Men Without Work: Post-Pandemic Edition.

Jonathan Tobin on Martha's Vineyard

He's a very thoughful man.

On Twitter.

Liberal criticism of @GovRonDeSantis' Martha's Vineyard stunt illustrates cluelessness about the consequences of the open-borders immigration policies they support. I explain in @JNS_org. https://t.co/sDz4KtofEU

— Jonathan S. Tobin (@jonathans_tobin) September 21, 2022

Émilie

On Instragram.

'A Brutal, Needless War ... Chosen by One Man': Biden, at United Nations, Slams Putin's Invasion of Ukraine (VIDEO)

Following-up, "Putin Orders Draft of Reservists for War in Ukraine, Threatens Nuclear Response."

At the Los Angeles Times, "The president says Putin ‘attempted to erase the sovereign state from the map’ and urged the United Nations to add additional members to the Security Council to weaken Russia’s influence":

NEW YORK CITY — President Biden excoriated Russian President Vladimir Putin and announced another $1.2-billion aid package for Ukraine during his annual address to the U.N. General Assembly on Wednesday.

“Let us speak plainly: A permanent member of the United Nations Security Council invaded, attempted to erase the sovereign state from the map,” Biden said, calling Russia’s invasion of Ukraine “a brutal, needless war” that was “chosen by one man.”

Russia and China’s standing as two of the five Security Council members is undermining the U.N.'s ability to fulfill its mission, Biden went on to argue. Intent on signaling to allies and adversaries alike that the United States will not waver in its defense of Ukraine and support for other sovereign nations, the president urged the United Nations to add additional members to the Security Council to weaken Russia and China’s influence. But he did not go as fas as to call for revoking their Security Council membership, and with it, their veto power.

“The time has come for this institution to become more inclusive,” Biden said.

The annual week of meetings at U.N. headquarters, the first in-person gathering in three years, comes as Putin, his military having suffered major setbacks in recent weeks, has indicated he now plans to annex occupied regions of Ukraine. Moscow-aligned puppet governments there are preparing to hold sham referenda on joining Russia.

“The world should see these outrageous acts for what they are,” Biden said of the planned votes.

Just hours before Biden’s speech, Putin announced an immediate partial mobilization of 300,000 reservists in a pre-recorded address airing on Russian state television. Characterizing the conflict as a war with the West, he went as far as to threaten to deploy nuclear weapons.

“To defend Russia and our people, we doubtlessly will use all weapons resources at our disposal,” Putin said. “This is not a bluff.”

Putin’s remarks won’t come as a surprise to the White House, where national security officials continue to believe the war is nowhere near a resolution despite Ukraine’s success in pushing back Russian forces from formerly occupied territories in the country’s east.

Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February, Biden’s guiding principle has been keeping the United States and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization unified and out of any direct confrontation with Russia. Speaking to the world some seven months later, he looked to bolster the resolve of the world’s leading democracies in continuing to stand behind Ukraine, even as the drawn-out conflict has upended energy markets and exacerbated inflation, creating domestic issues for leaders in London, Paris and Berlin.

He will hold his first meeting with new British Prime Minister Liz Truss later Wednesday.

At the same time, he is trying to ward off a potential attack on Taiwan by China. In an interview Sunday on CBS’ “60 Minutes,” Biden said he would respond militarily to any act of aggression by Beijing that violates Taiwan’s sovereignty — the kind of response he took off the table from the get-go when Russia was getting ready to invade Ukraine.

U.N. Secretary General António Guterres, in his remarks Monday, implored world leaders to rally together in support of the principles enshrined in the organization’s charter, offering a bleak summation of a world where democratic principles and institutions are increasingly under attack and multilateral organizations have been unable to muster the responses necessary to combat climate change, food insecurity, diseases, human rights violations and other challenges...

Watch the full speech is here: "Biden denounces Russia in speech to U.N. General Assembly."

Putin Orders Draft of Reservists for War in Ukraine, Threatens Nuclear Response

A big day in great power politics.

At the Wall Street Journal, "The Russian president’s move sought to bolster his faltering military, while China urged the Kremlin to de-escalate":

MOSCOW—Russian President Vladimir Putin raised the threat of a nuclear response in the conflict and ordered reservists to mobilize, an escalation of the war in Ukraine as Moscow seeks to buttress its army’s flagging manpower and regain the offensive following stinging losses on the battlefield.

“Russia will use all the instruments at its disposal to counter a threat against its territorial integrity—this is not a bluff,” Mr. Putin said in a national address that blamed the West for the conflict in Ukraine, where he said his troops were facing the best of Western troops and weapons.

The speech is the clearest sign yet that seven months into the biggest conflict in Europe since World War II, Russia is unable to counter Ukraine and the West, which has largely united in the face of the Russian invasion. It also raises the stakes for Ukraine’s backers, which have sent billions of dollars of military aid since the beginning of the conflict.

Without providing evidence, Mr. Putin said top officials at the North Atlantic Treaty Organization had said that it would be acceptable to carry out nuclear strikes on Russia. He also blamed Ukraine for strikes against the nuclear-power plant in the Zaporizhzhia region, which has been occupied by Russian troops since near the start of the war.

“To those who allow themselves such statements, I would like to remind them, Russia also has many types of weapons of destruction, the components of which in some cases are more modern than those of the countries of NATO,” said Mr. Putin.

In his speech, Mr. Putin cast the partial mobilization—Russia’s first since World War II—as a response to what he called a decadeslong Western plot to break up Russia. He repeated false accusations that the West had stirred rebellion inside the country’s borders, armed terrorist rebels in the Muslim-dominated south, arranged a coup in Ukraine in 2014 and transformed Ukraine into an “anti-Russian bridgehead, turning the Ukrainians themselves into cannon fodder.”

The bellicose address to the nation comes after officials in Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine on Tuesday announced plans for Russia to annex four regions in the country’s east and south. The move would allow Mr. Putin to describe a Ukrainian offensive on that territory as tantamount to an attack on Russia.

“He has been pushed into a corner and his only hope is to demonstrate resolve and readiness for escalation to compel the Ukrainians to sit down at the negotiating table,” said Abbas Gallyamov, a Russian political analyst and a former speech writer for Mr. Putin. “I don’t think he believes in victory any longer. He wants to show Ukrainians that victory will be too expensive and it’s better to negotiate.”

Shortly after Mr. Putin’s speech, China urged the Kremlin to de-escalate.

“We call on the parties concerned to achieve a cease-fire and an end to the war through dialogue and negotiation, and find a way to take into account the legitimate security concerns of all parties as soon as possible,” said Wang Wenbin, spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry. “We also hope that the international community will create conditions and space for this.”

Western leaders expressed their resolve to continue supporting Ukraine despite Mr. Putin’s threat.

The partial mobilization and annexation of parts of Ukraine are “an admission that [Mr. Putin’s] invasion is failing,” U.K. Defense Secretary Ben Wallace said in a tweet Wednesday. “No amount of threats and propaganda can hide the fact that Ukraine is winning this war, the international community are united and Russia is becoming a global pariah.”

Mr. Putin has sought to avoid a full mobilization of troops, fearing that the broad support for the war could become fragile once average Russians are forced to serve.

While both state-run and independent polls show that most Russians support the war, the enthusiasm has been more subdued than eight years ago, when Mr. Putin ignited the conflict with Ukraine by seizing the southern peninsula of Crimea and announcing its annexation to great fanfare in a Kremlin ceremony.

In its mobilization efforts, the Kremlin has so far taken a calibrated approach, avoiding a widespread call-up that would be a shock to Russian society.

The decision, however, is likely to silence nationalist critics of Mr. Putin’s approach, which has seen him stop short of declaring war.

“Nuclear signaling is directed to the West and Ukraine, but it’s also meant to satisfy radical domestic critiques that are turning into a serious opposition,” said Dmitry Adamsky, a Russian expert at the School of Government, Diplomacy and Strategy at the Reichman University in Herzliya, Israel...

 

‘Crime Is a Construct': My Morning With the Park Slope Panthers

From Suzy Weiss, at her sister's Substack, Common Sense, "A Brooklyn man with politics ‘to the left of Lenin’ tries to organize a neighborhood watch. It didn’t go quite as planned":

In the last couple of months in Park Slope—the baby bjorn-wearing capital of bourgeois-bohemian New York—a thief absconded with $200,000 worth of jewelry in a smash and grab, three boys stole a bunch of iPhones off of subway riders, a ticked off customer attacked the owner of a bike store, $6,000 was stolen from an auto shop, and a beloved pet was catnapped from a bodega on Seventh Avenue.

But it was the death of a golden retriever mix named Moose that activated the residents of the South Brooklyn enclave.

Early in the morning on August 3, Moose and his owner—Jessica Chrustic, 41—were out on a walk when a homeless man who lives in the park gave chase. He hit them both with a large stick and threw a container of urine on Moose, while muttering about immigrants taking over the park. The dog died a few days later from internal injuries, after two emergency surgeries. The man who killed him is still at large.

A few weeks later, on August 20, Kristian Nammack issued a call to action on Nextdoor, a social media site for local organizing: “Do we want to organize a community safety patrol, and take our park back? Think what the Guardian Angels did to take back the subways in the 70s/early 80s. We may also get to wear cool berets. I’m being serious.”

Nammack, 59, had been part of the Occupy Wall Street protests in 2011, and his financial consultancy firm focuses on themes of “climate, renewable energy, gender lens, racial equity, economic advancement.” “How about PARK SLOPE PANTHERS as a group name?” he suggested. When I got to the inaugural Park Slope Panthers meeting—held last Saturday in Prospect Park, near where Chrustic was attacked—there were six people, including Nammack. We were overlooking a sloping meadow that was bathed in sunshine and filled with giggling kids and hipster couples on dates. It was one of those early fall days that reminds you why you’re willing to live in a city with more rats than human beings. Nammack was handing out pale yellow t-shirts that said “Park Slope Panthers” with a logo—two “P”s nested together—printed on the front.

Nammack explained that while we were all there because of Moose, there were other things to be concerned about. It seemed like there were more homeless people sleeping in the park, in the subway station, and on the trains and streets. There was more garbage everywhere in the neighborhood, more crappy vape shops and stores that sold Delta-8 weed, and more delivery guys on bikes blasting faster through crosswalks. Packages, bikes, and catalytic converters were getting stolen. Nammack told the group how he’d tried to help a local store owner while a group of 15-year-olds robbed his store. One of the teens had a knife.

The group—a few older, white women who love their pets; a young white man who said he was there for the sake of his younger sister’s safety; a forty-something Asian woman who wanted to “elevate Park Slope culture as a whole”—nodded along.

The Venn diagram for Park Slopers and Democratic voters is pretty much a circle. No one wanted to be labeled Park Karens. This made the whole crime-fighting thing a bit awkward: “It’s about finding a way that’s non-biased to report these things and have people feel like it’s safe here,” said Emily, one of the Panthers.“You don’t want to fall into that stereotype of privilege.”

A group of four who looked to be in their early twenties—three women and one man—rolled up about 15 minutes into the meeting. “Are y’all the Park Slope Panthers?” The one who asked was dragging a speaker on wheels and playing electronic music, presumably to drown out the meeting. “We are super not into you guys having your meeting or doing anything in the park.”

The young activist—who was white, wore glasses, grew up in Park Slope, and had a medical-grade face mask on, like his three comrades—was also super not into the cops, or anything resembling the cops. When Nammack told him we were taking turns introducing ourselves, the activist informed Nammack that he wasn’t “super into abiding by the structure that you’re setting up.”

Nammack asked them to just move along. When the glasses kid replied, “Yeah, we’re not going to do that,” Nammack invited them to sit, prompting the group of Conscientious Interrupters to decamp to a nearby tree to game plan. The park was filling. There were barbecues and birthday parties underway. Eventually the young activists decided to join the circle.

“What’s with you calling yourself the Panthers?” said another dude who had just appeared wearing a black hoodie and looking to be in his forties. He seemed more of a weathered activist, a bit more hardcore than the kids, and he didn’t want to wait his turn. He said his piece, followed by another newcomer named Damien, who wanted to join the group rather than protest it.

Nammack picked up the thread again. Back during the Occupy Wall Street days, he informed us, they took turns speaking. “I think it’s your turn, then your turn, then your turn, then your turn, then your turn,” he said. When it was his turn to introduce himself, Nammack said, “I have a non-profit and two companies. I’m too busy to run a neighborhood watch group, but I can’t help but be community-concerned.” He was from Long Island and had lived in Sweden, which he loved because it was “less hierarchical.” Nammack said he was “left of Lenin” when one of the activists accused him of being a vigilante. (When Tucker Carlson reached out to have Nammack on his show, he told Carlson to “fuck off.”)

As far as the name, and the fortysomething dude’s problem with it: “There’s two statues of panthers at an entrance to the park,” Nammack pointed out, gesturing toward the two limestone pedestals designed by Stanford White. The panthers had been sculpted by Alexander Phimister Proctor, and had been there since 1898.

Didn’t matter. “Using the Panthers as your group’s name is kind of abhorrent to me,” said one of the girls. She was white, wearing cut-off jean shorts, loafers with socks, and a Baggu purse. “It feels antithetical to what the Black Panthers would stand for.” The next girl to speak said her name was Sky. She, too, was white, and had also grown up in the neighborhood: “It’s easy to be wrong about who you’re going after, particularly when those are some of the few black people still living in the neighborhood, and they’ve been pushed out on the streets by all white, ultra-wealthy people.”

“We can be the tigers!” suggested Dionne, the middle-aged woman next to me. Sweet Dionne...

Keep reading.

Ross Douthat, The Decadent Society

At Amazon, Ross Douthat, The Decadent Society: America Before and After the Pandemic.

Bookends to the Life of a Queen (VIDEO)

Queen Elizabeth II's funeral was today.

At the New York Times, "From Coronation to Funeral: Bookends to the Life of a Queen, and a Generation":

LONDON — It has become a kind of badge of honor among baby boomers to recall how they watched on tiny black-and-white television sets on that day in June 1953, when Elizabeth II was crowned as postwar Britain’s first and thus far only queen.

It almost seemed as if an army had gathered around grainy screens set in walnut cabinets to follow the coronation, enthralled by the harnessing of old tradition to the miracle of new technology that became such a hallmark of the second Elizabethan era.

Then, on Monday, with lives fast-forwarded into a time of huge flat screens, and bright streaming images on smartphones and tablets, and with their numbers depleted by the years, they watched again, this time to follow her funeral. She had last been seen in public two days before her death on Sept. 8 at her Scottish castle, Balmoral, bowed and frail yet seeming still indomitable.

And it seemed, perhaps fancifully, that those two moments had become the bookends of a generation and of a nation’s frayed sense of equilibrium. With her death, a man of that same baby boomer generation, her eldest son, now King Charles III, has assumed the monarch’s role — if not, until his coronation, the crown and scepter — as the anchor of a nation’s identity in troubled times of change and flux.

For much of Britain, the queen’s accession to the throne offered a gleam of renascent hope after the depredations of World War II. Both her coronation and funeral unfolded at London’s Westminster Abbey, where, in 1947, she had married Prince Philip, who died in 2021. Her reign of more than 70 years set a record of longevity among British monarchs, reconfirming the notion that the monarchy provides the ballast of her subjects’ sense of continuity.

The new king’s rise, by contrast, is set against the tapestry of a pandemic and a new European war in Ukraine. Economies reel from inflation and the uncounted costs of Brexit. The question that has not really been asked in this time of national grief is whether the anchor will slip and a perilous drift will begin.

I saw the queen’s coronation at the home of a work-friend of my parents in blue-collar Salford, near Manchester, at one of those prefabricated bungalows that freckled Britain in the wake of the war. I was 6. The queen was 27. (King Charles was then 4.)

Of course, as a Briton, I am aware of the narrow line, often overstepped, between whimsy and mawkishness. But it was tempting, watching the state funeral and recalling the coronation, to marvel at the newness, the brightness of that moment in 1953, when even the possibilities of life had yet to be revealed to this British schoolboy. Who would have known then that a life would — or could — unfold in such primary colors of achievement, advance and loss? And who knows now what the legacy of it all would turn out to be? On the radio on Monday, someone quoted the poet John Donne’s injunction to ask not for whom the bell tolls, because “it tolls for thee.” But what is the bell saying?

Watching the funeral it seemed as if a pendulum was swinging between decline and renewal in the natural course of things. But it was hard to define where exactly Britain now stands in the cycle of national life.

The event itself played out in choreographed near perfection. Not a soldier in the procession that accompanied the queen’s cortege put a wrong foot forward. Draped in her regal standard, her coffin provided a platform for priceless crown jewels adorning the symbols of monarchy — crown, orb and scepter. The brass shone. The boots glowed. The tunics provided a palette of color. Horses pranced. The coffin itself was mounted on a ceremonial gun carriage pulled along by 142 sailors of the Royal Navy, marching as if one to the solemn strains of a funeral march.

It was possible to forget that, as a constitutional monarchy, Britain’s Royal House of Windsor wields only ceremonial powers. In her last public act at Balmoral, the queen presided over the political transition from Boris Johnson to Liz Truss as prime minister. Routinely the monarch holds a private, weekly audience with the prime minister but has little say in the identity of the official, or in the maneuverings that suffused the switch of office holder.

But there was a power on display in the solemnity of the service and the sheer spectacle of an event that brought Britons out in the thousands to line the streets, on occasion to cheer, at least to bear witness in reflective silence.

And another kind of soft power was on display in a guest list that included world leaders — President Biden among them. Many of those who tried to analyze the event reached for anecdotes reflecting the queen’s less public role as a subtle force promoting the interests of her realm beyond the headline-seeking purview of politicians.

In 1957, the queen said in a Christmas broadcast: “It’s inevitable that I should seem a rather remote figure to many of you, a successor to the kings and queens of history.”

“I cannot lead you into battle. I do not give you laws or administer justice. But I can do something else. I can give you my heart and my devotion to these old islands and to all the peoples of our brotherhood of nations.” With her astonishing longevity — she was 96 when she died — the queen seemed to keep the promise...

 

Mossy Oak 14-inch Bowie Knife

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Loving Liberals of Martha's Vineyard Force Illegal Aliens on Bus to be Concentrated at a Camp Run by the Military

Leftists are absolutely enraged at how easily Ron DeSantis exposed their hypocrisy. This is a stunning move, and it worked. 

At AoSHQ, "Update: The Illegals Are Thanking DeSantis For Busing them to Martha's Vineyard."

None of this is about politics. None of this is about race. It's about class: progressive elites mistaking economic privilege for higher virtue—even while expelling the very people their lawn signs promise are welcome—then imposing the cost of their vanity on the working class.

— Batya Ungar-Sargon (@bungarsargon) September 18, 2022

Angelica

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Republicans Won’t Promise to Accept 2022 Results

This is supposedly the biggest threat to the American democracy.

Though the New York Times comes up with just 6 Republican candidates who say they won't concede if they lose. 

Hype much?

See, "These Trump-Backed Candidates Won't Promise to Accept Election Results":

Six Republican nominees for governor and the Senate in key midterm states, all backed by Donald Trump, would not commit to accepting the November outcome. Five others did not answer the question.

WASHINGTON — Nearly two years after President Donald J. Trump refused to accept his defeat in the 2020 election, some of his most loyal Republican acolytes might follow in his footsteps.

When asked, six Trump-backed Republican nominees for governor and the Senate in midterm battlegrounds would not commit to accepting this year’s election results, and another five Republicans ignored or declined to answer a question about embracing the November outcome. All of them, along with many other G.O.P. candidates, have pre-emptively cast doubt on how their states count votes.

The New York Times contacted Republican and Democratic candidates or their aides in 20 key contests for governor and the Senate. All of the Democrats said, or have said publicly, that they would respect the November results — including Stacey Abrams of Georgia, who refused to concede her 2018 defeat to Brian Kemp in the state’s race for governor. Mr. Kemp, now running against her for another term, “will of course accept the outcome of the 2022 election,” said his press secretary, Tate Mitchell.

But several Republicans endorsed by Mr. Trump are hesitant to say that they will not fight the results.

Among the party’s Senate candidates, Ted Budd in North Carolina, Blake Masters in Arizona, Kelly Tshibaka in Alaska and J.D. Vance in Ohio all declined to commit to accepting the 2022 results. So did Tudor Dixon, the Republican nominee for governor of Michigan, and Geoff Diehl, who won the G.O.P. primary for governor of Massachusetts this month.

The candidates and their aides offered an array of explanations. Some blamed Democratic state election officials or made unsubstantiated claims that their opponents would cheat. In Alaska, a spokesman for Ms. Tshibaka pointed to a new ranked-choice voting system that has been criticized by Republicans and already helped deliver victory to a Democrat in a House special election this year.

An aide to Ms. Dixon, Sara Broadwater, said “there’s no reason to believe” that Michigan election officials, including Jocelyn Benson, the Democratic secretary of state, “are very serious about secure elections.”

To some degree, the stances by these Republican candidates — which echo Mr. Trump’s comments before the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections — may amount to political posturing, in an effort to appeal to G.O.P. voters who do not believe the former president lost in 2020. An aide to one Republican nominee insisted that the candidate would accept this year’s results, but the aide declined to be publicly identified saying so.

And unlike Mr. Trump two years ago, the candidates who suggest they might dispute the November results do not hold executive office, and lack control of the levers of government power. If any were to reject a fair defeat, they would be far less likely to ignite the kind of democratic crisis that Mr. Trump set off after his 2020 loss.

But they do have loud megaphones in a highly polarized media environment, and any unwarranted challenges from the candidates and their allies could fuel anger, confusion and misinformation.

“The danger of a Trumpist coup is far from over,” said Rosa Brooks, a law professor at Georgetown University who in early 2020 convened a group to brainstorm ways Mr. Trump could disrupt that year’s election. “As long as we have a significant number of Americans who don’t accept principles of democracy and the rule of law, our democracy remains in jeopardy.”

The positions of these Republican candidates also reflect how, over the last two years, some of those aligned with Mr. Trump increasingly reject the idea that it is possible for their side to lose a legitimate election.

“You accept the results of the election if the election is fair and honest,” said John Fredericks, a syndicated talk radio host who was a chairman of Mr. Trump’s campaigns in Virginia in 2016 and 2020. “If it’s not fair and honest, you don’t.”

Still, many Republican candidates, including several who have cast doubt on the 2020 outcome, said they would recognize this year’s results. Darren Bailey, the Republican nominee for governor of Illinois — who said in a June interview that he did not know if the 2020 election had been decided fairly — responded that “yes,” he would accept the 2022 result.

In Nevada, the campaign of Adam Laxalt, the Republican nominee for Senate, said he would not challenge the final results — even though Mr. Laxalt, a former state attorney general, helped lead the effort to overturn Mr. Trump’s 2020 defeat in the state, spoke last year about plans to file lawsuits to contest the 2022 election and called voter fraud the “biggest issue” in his campaign.

“Of course he’ll accept Nevada’s certified election results, even if your failing publication won’t,” said Brian Freimuth, a spokesman for Mr. Laxalt.

How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.

And Dr. Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania, who said during his successful Republican primary campaign for Senate that “we cannot move on” from the 2020 election, promised to uphold voters’ will.

“Yes, Dr. Oz will accept the result of the PA Senate race in November,” Rachel Tripp, an Oz spokeswoman, wrote in a text message.

Three other Republican Senate candidates — Herschel Walker in Georgia, Joe O’Dea in Colorado and Senator Lisa Murkowski in Alaska — committed to embracing their state’s election results. So did several Republicans running for governor, including Mr. Kemp, Joe Lombardo in Nevada and Christine Drazan of Oregon.

Aides to several Republican nominees for governor who have questioned the 2020 election’s legitimacy did not respond to repeated requests for comment on their own races in November. Those candidates included Doug Mastriano of Pennsylvania, Kari Lake of Arizona, Tim Michels of Wisconsin and Dan Cox of Maryland.

Ms. Lake was asked in a radio interview this month whether she would concede a defeat to Katie Hobbs, her Democratic rival and Arizona’s secretary of state. “I’m not losing to Katie Hobbs,” Ms. Lake replied...

Pekka Hamalainen, The Comanche Empire

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Jade

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Russia’s Battered Army Has No Quick Fix in Ukraine (VIDEO)

 At the Wall Street Journal, "Kyiv’s counterattack tests Moscow’s forces and raises stakes for Kremlin at home":

Russian forces sent fleeing by Ukraine’s recent counterattack are attempting to establish defensive positions and regain their footing. It is a difficult pivot even under ideal conditions, and so far Moscow’s forces show signs of struggling to adapt.

Battlefield setbacks are just one challenge facing the Kremlin as it tries to secure its territorial gains in Ukraine and fend off nascent criticism at home. Kyiv’s forces this month have retaken dozens of settlements and more than 3,500 square miles of Russian-controlled ground in the northeastern Kharkiv region, according to government officials.

Ukraine continued attacking Russian-held territory on Friday, hitting the easternmost parts of the Kharkiv region and other parts of eastern Ukraine. They hope to capitalize on those gains to advance their offensive in the southern city of Kherson. Attacks on government buildings in Kherson and the eastern city of Luhansk killed two Moscow-installed officials, local Russia-backed authorities said.

On the battlefield over recent weeks, Russia has lost hundreds of heavy military vehicles, including over 100 tanks, according to open-source intelligence reports. It also lost several pieces of classified electronic-warfare equipment that are now in the hands of Western-allied forces. Many Russian soldiers—in the thousands, by some estimates—have either surrendered or will become prisoners of war.

Ukraine’s advance will also allow its rockets to hit targets deeper within Russian-controlled areas, potentially in occupied parts of Ukraine such as Crimea and in Russia itself.

Within Russia, criticisms of President Vladimir Putin and his regime remain limited but are growing. Spreading wariness about the war could limit Mr. Putin’s options for responding, such as a limited mobilization or a draft, which under Russian law likely would require an outright declaration of war.

“We gave up the strategic initiative,” said Vladimir Soloviev, a popular host on state-run television this week.

Russian TV pundits acknowledged Ukraine’s successes in its counteroffensive, which they credited to U.S. intelligence, Western weapons and even fighters from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization disguised as mercenaries. They showed clips alleging cruel punishment of Russian sympathizers by Ukrainian forces in retaken areas as supposed proof of Ukrainians’ Nazi-like nature.

Russia still retains significant forces deployed in and around Ukraine and vast stores of weaponry and ammunition, giving it the potential to react and hit back. While Kyiv has seized the initiative in routing some of Moscow’s front-line troops, it is far from uprooting all Russian forces occupying its territories.

Ukraine could also face more opposition in pushing further into Russian-controlled regions, military analysts say. Kyiv’s recent gains near Kharkiv, in the northeast, were achieved using surprise and by finding weak points in Russia’s long and thinly protected front line, according to soldiers involved in the fight. Achieving such surprise again may be difficult and Ukrainian forces are advancing into regions where Russian forces are more dug-in than near Kharkiv.

Eastern parts of Ukraine under pro-Russian occupation since 2014 have been bound more closely to Moscow, so Kyiv’s forces may receive less support from local populations there than they have so far.

“I think it does become somewhat harder for the Ukrainians going forward,” said Dmitry Gorenburg, a Russian military expert at CNA, a defense-research organization in Arlington, Va. As the area Russia is defending shrinks, its ratio of forces to territory should rise, he said.

Working against Russia is low morale, an inflexible military command structure and equipment that has proved to be poorly maintained. Energized Ukrainian forces, who have shown themselves to be nimble in battle, are using new and well-kept equipment...