“Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else.” (Frederic Bastiat)
And the most amazing and disgusting part? While doing so, they claim moral superiority.
Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason
Europe resents its dependence on American military power while criticizing Washington’s foreign policy, exposing the hypocrisy, insecurity, and economic decline undermining its global influence.
Nearly every week, another psychodrama arises between the United States and its NATO partners.
Europeans blame the Trump administration for the usual things—a lack of cordiality and bombastic threats.
But two truths, rarely spoken, characterize all these spats.
One is hypocrisy; the other is insecurity.
Take Trump’s recent demand that Ukraine cease attacks on Russian diesel refineries.
Given the midterms and the critical issue of fuel prices, it was understandable that Trump might request an energy “ceasefire.”
So both Russia and Ukraine were asked to stop their attacks on refineries to calm jittery global diesel markets and help stabilize sky-high prices.
But the American Left, the Ukrainians, and the Europeans went ballistic—given that the aggressor, Russia, is blanketing Ukrainian skies with missiles and drones, while Russia’s critical refining industry remains vulnerable to retaliatory Ukrainian drone attacks.
But the largest purchaser of Russian gas remains Europe. It has been since the start of the war.
For years, Europe literally laughed at Trump’s earlier appeals to close European pipelines to Russia and quit fueling Putin’s war machine.
Are we to assume that Europeans buying most of Russia’s natural gas is acceptable, but Americans asking both Putin and Zelensky not to attack fuel facilities, given the world oil crisis, is somehow a betrayal?
Some like-minded European ministers are still blasting the Trump administration’s supposed efforts to revamp NATO.
They damn the United States for pulling 11 B-1 strategic bombers out of a shared RAF–U.S. base in the United Kingdom.
The cause is usually omitted: the discovery of a dry-run terrorist operation to hit the base and destroy more than $3 billion worth of American bombers.
But in Orwellian fashion, the British government conceded that (1) the arrested terrorist team was Iranian-sponsored and (2) Britain had released all the arrested terrorists on bail!
Perhaps Prime Minister Andy Burnham fears his own unassimilated, pro-Iranian Islamic immigrant voters far more than he feels the need to ensure that Americans are safe while protecting NATO interests.
Europeans are also angry that the United States will likely pull 5,000 troops out of Germany and deploy about the same number to frontline Poland, which is rapidly developing the largest and best-equipped military in Europe.
But again, why the American change of heart?
During the ongoing, eight-month-long Iran war, some NATO partners—France, Italy, Spain, and the United Kingdom—either banned U.S. planes from their airspace or refused them landing rights at joint NATO–U.S. bases—or both.
Apparently, they opposed American efforts to denuclearize Iran and end the 50-year terrorist threat posed by that nation, fearing that it might activate terrorist operations inside Europe.
But do we remember when the French and the British—in what they called a NATO “coalition of the willing”—pleaded with the United States not merely to join them in bombing Serbia in 1999 and Libya in 2011 but also to conduct most of the combat missions?
And America did just that.
Yet Serbia was outside NATO’s purview. The United States certainly was not threatened by unrest in Serbia or Libya—at least not to the extent that nearby Europe, in theory, may have been.
Europe is understandably touchy about any American drawdown of NATO assets in Europe—despite most members’ systematic refusal, until recently, to meet their NATO commitments to spend 2 percent of GDP on defense for some 15 years.
If one were to apply prior European NATO logic consistently to the Russian-Ukrainian war, then the Trump administration might argue that Russia is less of a geostrategic threat to the American homeland than Iran’s nuclear and terrorist agendas are.
Note the further difference: the United States is not asking European NATO members to participate in combat against Iran, as Europe asked America to do against Serbia and Libya.
The United States had requested only occasional overflight rights and some landing accommodations. Both were again refused by some of the largest NATO members.
What causes this constant friction among allies and friends?
The once-promising European Union is becoming anemic. Despite having some 100 million more people, Europe’s GDP is $10 trillion smaller than America’s.
Europe’s borders are wide open. Its often hostile immigrant population is growing.
Its own native population is shrinking because of a fertility rate of about 1.34.
Many European NATO members shut down fossil-fuel and nuclear plants, preferring impractical and unreliable wind and solar energy.
Consider today’s critical technologies: AI, digital media, software, satellite launches, space exploration, and genetic engineering. European companies rarely rank among the global top 10 in these fields, which are overwhelmingly dominated by American corporations.
So one reason Europe seems schizophrenic and hypocritical is that, while it takes for granted its past global influence, military power, and political stature, its current socialist economy cannot support either its staggering welfare costs or its military obligations.
Europe both yearns for and resents U.S. help, hating its dependence as much as it needs that help. Yet so far, the medicine of economic and military reform is seen as worse than the disease.
Victor Davis Hanson, American Greatness
Hold onto your smartphones, folks, because Aaron Sorkin has done it again! The Social Reckoning is not merely a movie. It is a cinematic detonation! An absolute tour de force!
From the dynamic opening scene to the breathless climax, this pulse-pounding masterpiece delivers non-stop excitement, razor-sharp edge, and heart-stopping thrills that will keep you glued to the very edge of your seat. It is, quite simply, one helluva thrill ride! A powerful, provocative, pulse-pounding look at the world we live in — and the world we helped create.
There are films you watch, films you enjoy, and then there are films that grab you by the collar, shake you senseless, and announce, “Ladies and gentlemen, THIS is why we go to the movies.” The Social Reckoning belongs emphatically in that third category.
The Social Reckoning is a full-on David-and-Goliath barnburner about whistleblower Frances Haugen taking on the biggest social network on Earth. And let me tell you: it knocks it out of the park!
Bold, fearless, and absolutely unforgettable, The Social Reckoning grabs hold of today’s most urgent questions and transforms them into a powerful, emotionally charged experience.
Every scene crackles with intelligence, every character feels larger than life, and every moment drives relentlessly toward a conclusion that leaves a lasting impact. There are sequences here that had me thinking, “There is absolutely no way they’re going to top this.” Then the movie looks directly into the camera and effectively says, “Hold my popcorn.”
It’s a movie about Facebook, but it’s really a movie about all of us. And it’s terrific.
The performances? Fantastic. The direction? Electric. The pacing? Like somebody injected an espresso machine directly into the editing bay.
Mikey Madison is sensational as Frances Haugen, bringing intelligence, courage and humanity to a woman who discovers that sometimes doing the right thing means doing something very, very difficult. Madison gives the performance of a lifetime with the kind of on-screen fire that had me cheering in my seat. She’s a revelation. A knockout.
Jeremy Allen White is equally terrific as journalist Jeff Horwitz, proving once again that great journalism can still make a difference.
And then there’s Jeremy Strong. Strong delivers an uncannily perfect Mark Zuckerberg — the hoodie, the cadence, the dead-eyed intensity. You’ll swear he was cloned in a Palo Alto lab. He’s chilling. He’s funny. He’s mysterious. He’s unforgettable. Two thumbs up!
But the real star here is Aaron Sorkin. Sorkin’s dialogue crackles like popcorn in a hot pan. The boardroom showdowns sizzle. The deposition scene? A showstopper! Sorkin doesn’t just tell a story. He makes you think. He makes you laugh. He makes you angry. And sometimes, he makes you want to put down your phone and talk to another human being. That’s a pretty remarkable achievement.
The Social Reckoning takes us behind the scenes of one of the most powerful companies in the world and asks some very uncomfortable questions. What happens when connecting people becomes more important than protecting them? What happens when the algorithm knows what we want before we know it ourselves? And what happens when somebody finally says, Enough? That’s what Frances Haugen does. And that’s what this movie does. It tells the truth.
This razor-sharp thriller is one hell of a ride: crackling dialogue, pulse-pounding revelations, and a story that hits like a freight train. A must-see triumph that’ll leave you cheering!
The Social Network was about the birth of Facebook. The Social Reckoning is about growing up. And sometimes growing up means looking in the mirror.
Sorkin’s screenplay crackles with sharp dialogue, terrific observations and enough memorable lines to fill your news feed for a week. The movie moves like a thriller, plays like a courtroom drama and hits like a wake-up call. It’s also surprisingly funny. Because sometimes the only way to deal with something this serious is to laugh.
And then think about why you’re laughing. That’s Sorkin’s genius. That’s filmmaking. That’s The Social Reckoning.
An instant classic. A powerful, timely, unforgettable masterpiece. A glorious, excessive, wildly entertaining blast of cinema that doesn’t merely reach for the stars, it grabs them, sets them on fire, and throws them through the screen.
Forget your doomscrolling, folks. THIS is the movie the whole family should be talking about at Thanksgiving dinner!
Powerful, provocative, and impossible to ignore. The Social Reckoning is the event of the year! Don’t walk – RUN!
David Manning, The Connecticut Film Standard
Let’s unpack the latest dystopian tech news—and German cops’ dystopian response.
We’ve reached the point in techno-dystopia where autonomous humanoid robots are out assaulting girls in the street—or so some coverage of a recent incident in Cologne, Germany, might have you believe. But dig into what really happened, and it’s human actions that appear more worrying.
For dystopian police-state flavor, we’ve got Cologne cops warning that simply commenting about this on Facebook in an unapproved way could be criminal. Without specifying exactly what kinds of comments are off limits or what law might be broken, the North Rhine-Westphalia Police of Cologne (Polizei NRW Köln in German) warned that social media comments about what happened could cross the line and potentially be a criminal offense.
Then there are the humans who were operating the robot that made lewd gestures at passersby and stands accused of grabbing the butt of a 16-year-old girl on a city street in Cologne around midnight. From the looks of things, the humans—not some artificial intelligence system—were in control.
This doesn’t appear to be a case of an AI humanoid robot going rogue and getting pervy, but some teenagers engaging in a performance or prank that may have gone too far.
I say may here because it’s not entirely clear what happened. There is video footage showing the robot—dressed in gold chains and a fake mustache like some sort of 1980s sleazeball—thrusting in a sexual manner and making jerking-off gestures in front of people gathered on city sidewalks. (Some of them appear annoyed or alarmed; some laugh.) But none of the videos that I could find clearly show any groping. We do see the robot bumping into people, but it’s not entirely apparent what was touched or how purposeful these collisions were.
Maybe the alleged “sexual assault”—which is technically the correct term for a nonconsensual butt grab, I guess, but still seems a bit too strong—was totally intentional. Or maybe this is a case of clumsily controlled technology brushing against someone in a way that felt violating but was nonetheless an accident.
What appears to be beyond a doubt is that the robot was being made to engage in lewd gestures, which were played for laughs by teenagers (one 16 and one 19, according to police) who were filming these encounters and posting them to social media.
Is it a crime to make your mustachioed robot thrust its pelvis at passersby?
I don’t know enough about German sexual harassment law to say whether this qualifies. In any event, Cologne police have not announced any charges yet; they’ve only stated that they’re investigating on suspicion of sexual harassment and that they have confiscated the robot and the phones of the two boys suspected of operating it.
We probably don’t want sleazebots just going around making obscene gestures in public, whether of their own volition or controlled by humans. But, in the U.S. at least, sexual harassment requires some things beyond just making a crude gesture. Laws vary by state, and by the context in which the alleged harassment takes place, but it generally has to be pervasive, severe, or carried out with a specific intent. I don’t think this robot’s actions would qualify (though there are perhaps other charges that could be brought, involving disturbing the peace or something like that).
But I wish people would chill out with the breathless coverage that attempts to make this into some sort of super grave and alarming incident. If it turns out these two teens did deliberately instruct their robot to touch a girl’s butt, that’s certainly not OK, and should be dealt with in whatever manner we might deem just if a teen did so directly. But we’re not looking at rogue robots attacking girls on the street, or at teenagers cruelly directing their tech toy to seriously sexually assault someone while they filmed it. At worst, we’re looking at a livestreamer stunt that was in poor taste, not the imminent coming of robot rape squads.
And setting aside the alleged violation of bodily autonomy—which may or may not have been intentional—the other antics of this robot are kind of funny? Can I say that? I don’t think we want to create norms where it’s OK to take a robot dressed like a movie pimp out on the streets and have him make sexual gestures at people, but…I laughed. Don’t tell the German police.
In The News
A woman named Carli Heller was arrested for telling Anthropic’s Claude that she was going to shoot up the sheriff’s office in Lee County, Florida. Anthropic notified the FBI, which notified local authorities, and she was arrested for making a threat of mass shooting or terrorism, a felony.
“Heller’s is at least the third case in the U.S. since August in which messages typed to an Anthropic chatbot ended up with the police, following incidents in San Antonio and San Francisco,” reports Devin Pavlou at Straight Arrow News:
The cases raise questions about how private chatbot conversations are, when companies can hand them to police without a warrant, and whether words typed to a machine can be a crime. Eugene Volokh, a First Amendment scholar at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, told Straight Arrow he doubts they can in this case.…
In the past, Florida courts have required proof that a person meant to threaten or knew the message would be viewed as a threat, according to Volokh, who has taught law for 30 years. He said a jury is unlikely to find that beyond a reasonable doubt.
“I doubt that this is a punishable threat, unless there is evidence that the woman subjectively realized at the time that the message would be communicated to a human being who would perceive it as a threat,” Volokh said.
Heller’s lawyer, Scott Moore, “said he plans to challenge whether a chatbot message can be a written threat under Florida law,” adds Pavlou.
On Substack
Tara Burns has a good/infuriating roundup of recent “sex trafficking” busts that involve no trafficking charges and in which police just charge people with prostitution and seize their cash. Here’s just one of multiple examples:
On October 6, Virginia Beach police announced the results of a months-long human trafficking investigation that culminated in September 24 raids on four massage businesses and a residence. Police said their surveillance showed several women living together and traveling between their home and massage businesses. Apparently, when Asian women work and live together it warrants the attention of the ICE led Hampton Roads Human Trafficking Task Force.
Three apparent sex workers (Xiaochung Peng, Xiaoqin Wu, and Ping Zhang) were arrested on charges involving maintaining a bawdy place, aiding prostitution, and using a vehicle in the commission of a crime. Police seized $55,085, four vehicles, phones, computers, and a security DVR.
No trafficking charges were announced, and police did not report identifying a trafficking victim.
Follow the Money: This investigation involved at least seven law enforcement entities, including two SWAT teams, federal investigators, and a federally funded, ICE led regional human trafficking task force.
Burns also points out that new anti-trafficking grant money from the Department of Justice’s Office for Victims of Crime gives priority treatment to programs that support immigration enforcement.
“To help meet its mission, OJP may give priority consideration to applications proposing … projects designed to advance” five particular goals, including “directly supporting law enforcement operations (including immigration law enforcement operations),” it says.
Elizabeth Nolan Brown, Reason
Archaeologists in Egypt have uncovered the remains of two colossal statues believed to depict Ramses II after a local landowner reported finding an inscribed stone block in the village of Behbeit El-Hagar.
The discoveries were made by an archaeological mission from Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA). According to Dr. Hisham El-Leithy, Secretary-General of the SCA, the first find was a stone head more than five-feet-high from a massive statue. It depicts a man wearing a double crown, a symbol of the unification of Upper and Lower Egypt worn by ancient Egyptian rulers.
Nearby, archaeologists found part of the statue’s back pillar. An inscription on the pillar gives one of Ramses II’s five royal titles, “Hor-Ka-Nakht-Mery-Maat” (The Strong Bull, Beloved of Ma’at), identifying him as the sculpture’s subject.
The second find consists of part of a statue of a royal personage along with its head, which was adorned with the striped cloth associated with ancient Egyptian rulers. Not including the head, the surviving section of the figure, which is missing its legs and base, measures almost eight feet high. Based on the similarity of this statue’s face to that of the first, researchers believe it may also represent Ramses II, though the identification has not been confirmed.
The archaeological mission also found a pink granite block about four feet long not far from the statues. It bears traces of hieroglyphic inscriptions that include two more titles of Ramses II: “Nesu-Bity” (King of Upper and Lower Egypt) and “Sa-Ra” (Son of Ra).
Ramses II, known to historians as Ramses the Great, was the third king of ancient Egypt’s 19th Dynasty (1292–1191 BCE). He presided over the final peak of Egypt’s imperial power and is remembered for his 66-year rule, military campaigns, extensive building programs, and monumental temples and statues. Because of his popularity, longevity, and talent for political propaganda, inscriptions and artworks bearing his name and image can be found throughout Egypt.
Excavations and archaeological work are continuing in the area.
Anne Doran, ARTNews
Rarely does a day go by that people don’t talk to me about their jobs. I believe that the best motivation for work is happiness and fulfillment. It’s true that fulfillment might not happen all at once, but the activity should be productive, and your life should be better for having done the work. Motivation can range from doing what you like for a modest hourly wage all the way to a lucrative career. But no matter who signs your paycheck, always work in your own self-interest.
In that sense, all employment is self-employment. Though it might take a while to find the right job, the key to avoiding resentment is to take command of your life and make your job a means to an end – the “end” being something that makes you happy. If you feel like you’re going nowhere, you can make it a stepping stone to something better.
Finding rewarding work can be a challenge. You want (and probably need) the paycheck, and the work may be tolerable, but that’s about it. If that sounds familiar, now’s the time to start planning and building something more rewarding. Just as people sometimes take a second job for extra money, your “second job” can start as something that has the potential to be more fulfilling. And if it earns money, all the better! It could even lead to a career change.
Many people who find change difficult can often suffer the most in their occupations. Even if you’re a professional, and no matter how much time and money you put into training, if you hate your profession then you owe it to yourself to start assembling an exit strategy. If you don’t at least try to develop an alternative plan, then you’re sentencing yourself to a life of unhappiness. And it’s nobody’s fault but your own.
Change by itself is neither good nor bad. It all depends on the circumstances. If you avoid change simply because it is change, then you’re denying yourself the opportunity for growth. Like it or not, life is not static. Physical and emotional change happens every day, with or without your consent. So why not use it to your advantage?
You might be thinking, “Well, that might be good for some people, but I have to get my paycheck every week. I don’t have time for anything else. And what about my paid vacation and insurance?” Or, “I went to law school for three years! I hate it, but what about all that time and money?” These traps are easy to fall into, but you have to look at the big picture. There’s got to be more to life than those three years in school or the daily trudge to a job that makes you miserable.
If you feel trapped, start planning your exit strategy. Think about moving yourself toward where you’d really like to be. Demystify it by making the details concrete and real. Be sure to evaluate your emotions along the way, i.e., “What if my plan works and I get the job I want. How do I feel about it?” If you’ve been realistic, then the prospect of making the change will bring you a sense of happy anticipation. If you’re afraid that your plan won’t work, then what’s the worst that can happen? You stay where you are until you think of something better. Change can’t be wrong if it makes your life more fulfilling.
No matter what you do, work for your own benefit. Be at peace with the changes required to make it happen. An attitude of self-employment can help you embrace the modifications you might never have made otherwise. The saying, “Do what you love, and the money will follow” makes total sense, because you’re at your happiest when you’re doing what you love. There’s no better goal than that.
Michael J. Hurd, Life’s a Beach
According to the media, Texas is about to elect a woke Governor and a U.S. Senator who claims Jesus was transgender; Florida is about to get a Democrat Governor pretending to be a moderate; and South Carolina is about to fill Lindsey Graham’s seat with an out-of-state Soros hack claiming to be a pediatrician who wants gender alteration for all children on demand (without parental consent). If true, then we all deserve to lose our freedom — those of us who actually vote for it, and those of us who won’t speak out against it while we still can. I am not prepared to believe we are finished yet, of course. Remember: The entire media is a propaganda arm of the Democratic Party.
President Trump made an error in judgment when he endorsed Darline Graham over Ralph Norman, an authentic Republican, to succeed the late Lindsey Graham.
However, the Democrat candidate for this seat, Annie Andrews, is a Communist freak show, as everyone running for office in her Party now is.
She claims to be a pediatrician in favor of coercing children into gender alteration surgery; and of course she’s a socialist, censor and medical fascist to boot.
It would be a much bigger error in judgment to let her take Lindsey Graham’s seat in the U.S. Senate this January. Please, South Carolina voters, DO NOT LET THAT HAPPEN.
People say you can’t accept the lesser of two evils, because either way it’s evil. This may be true, but Republicans, on the whole, are not evil. They’re cowardly, contradictory and confused. But Democrats — the ones running for office — are not confused. And they are not afraid, because they sense their opposition is afraid. They mean to destroy America, its heritage of liberty, and to eradicate individual rights (including private property) in the name of what they consider the common good. There is no common good without the rights of the individuals who compose the society.
Mayor Mamdani openly brags of collectivism. Collectivism means a government body — always a dictatorship — imposes its will on everyone in the name of “the common good.” Collectivism always ends in piles of bodies, because it’s the only way to achieve it. And America will fare just as badly as all the other places who tried it.
Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason
Dr. Anthony Stephen Fauci has had everything the American establishment could bestow upon a bureaucrat: magazine covers, prayer candles, presidential medals, the highest salary in the federal government, a record pension, and finally a sweeping presidential pardon. What Tony Fauci has never had is you, the jury.
In my new book, Why Fauci Must Rot in Prison, I’m the prosecutor; you will render your verdict, and I show that the most damning witness against Fauci is Fauci himself, speaking privately in a diary he never expected you to read.
The case I make against Fauci begins with a simple proposition. There was never just one Tony Fauci. There were many.
Playing God Tony thought he could first create deadly viruses and then create the vaccines that would contain them — playing God indeed.
To execute this Frankenstein vision, Fauci’s agency funded EcoHealth Alliance, which in turn sent American taxpayer money to the Wuhan Institute of Virology. In effect, Fauci offshored a dangerous gain-of-function technology that, in the hands of Chinese scientists — including bioweapons experts — resulted in the pandemic virus.
Then came Cover-Up Tony. In January 2020, at the dawn of the pandemic, a dozen of the world’s leading virologists told Fauci the COVID virus was likely from the Wuhan lab. That was behind closed doors.
Realizing his own possible culpability, Fauci set in motion the cover-up. He “prompted” several scientists awaiting grant funding to pen an academic paper called Proximal Origin, making the “virus from nature” case. Fauci then waved that propaganda to the world from the White House podium without ever acknowledging his own role in its manufacture.
Then came Lockdown Tony, who earnestly told us to hole up at home to stop the spread.
Schools closed. Businesses died. Children lost classrooms — and development. Families watched loved ones die through glass.
I said at the time Lockdown Tony would harm far more Americans than the virus itself, and I was right. Years later, Fauci would claim he never supported the lockdown. Yet, his own diary shows him pushing it hard while manipulating gullible politicians like California’s governor Gavin Newsom and New York’s governor Andrew Cuomo.
Most tragically, there was Hydroxy Hysteria Tony.
On March 18, 2020, Fauci privately described hydroxychloroquine as an approved drug with “tons of experience” behind it and said he was comfortable using it to treat COVID.
Seventeen days later, when Donald Trump’s name had become attached to the drug, Fauci dismissed it. Same molecules. Different politics.
As the Defense Production Act Policy Coordinator at the time, I had 65 million hydroxy tablets Fauci prevented the distribution of — and thousands of Americans needlessly died.
Most tragically-comically, there was Double-Mask Tony. First, he told us there was “no reason” for ordinary Americans to walk around wearing masks. Then masks became essential. Then two masks were better than one.
Each new Faucian pronouncement which eclipsed the old recommendation arrived with the confidence of the position it had just replaced. A parody of science from a fool.
Then came the Orwellian twins: Forced Jab Tony and Bad Booster Tony.
The first vaccines were an extraordinary achievement of President Trump’s Operation Warp Speed. They provided important protection against severe disease for older and vulnerable Americans with comorbidities.
The problem came when Fauci turned a medical tool into a universal and authoritarian mandate. Young or old. Previously infected or not. Healthy or sick. Never mind the real science. Take the jab. Then take another. Refuse and lose your job.
Which brings us to Myocarditis Tony.
Fauci’s own diary shows he knew myocarditis was a significant risk in younger men. Yet Fauci ignored that risk and pushed for universal vaccinations.
Why? Because it was simpler for the government to message — young men sacrificed on the altar of Fauci.
That was the same mindset of Miscarriage Tony. Again, in his diary, Fauci privately raised the possibility that post-vaccination fever could cause first-trimester miscarriage.
Did he tell pregnant women about that risk? Hell, no. Who does that? Fauci!
And how did Fauci do all of this? By wearing the face of Grantsman Tony. For thirty-eight years, Fauci sat atop one of the largest pools of infectious-disease research funding on earth.
A lab is not just a room with microscopes. It is a payroll. Graduate students. Postdocs. Technicians. Equipment. Careers. Scientists knew where the money came from.
Fauci’s own diary records a Nobel laureate publicly warning that researchers who disagreed with Fauci and NIH Director Francis Collins feared losing their grants. In his diary, Fauci acknowledged this was not the first time he had heard the accusation. Then he wrote that he “blew him out of the water.”
Those are the Ten Ugly Faces of Tony Fauci that serve as the foundation of the prosecution of one of the most heinous men in medical history. Are you ready to read the case against Fauci and render your verdict?
Peter Navarro is the author of Why Fauci Must Rot in Prison. He serves as White House Senior Counselor for Trade and Manufacturing.
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Mohamed Soltan, the son of antisemitic senior Muslim Brotherhood official Salah Soltan, served as a ‘media activist’ for a Brotherhood-affiliated protest movement.
In a 2021 article on a since-deleted Substack account, the left-wing Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed defended a man he described as his “friend” after he was jailed for funding the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. The man, Mohamed Soltan, is the son of a senior Muslim Brotherhood official who called to kill “those Zionists” and argued for “obliterating America.”
The October 2021 article, headlined “The hypocrisy of police rejecting vaccine requirements,” warned of the “bluntest form of government power” wielded by police in the United States, asking readers to “imagine living long ago under a monarch whose caprice could have you arbitrarily taxed … or jailed or hanged.”
“But you don’t even have to go back in time,” El-Sayed continued. “Go to Egypt, where the personal whims of a dictator may mean you’ll find yourself in the bowels of an Egyptian prison, as happened to my friend Mohamed Soltan, an American citizen.”
Soltan was born in Egypt to Salah Soltan, a former professor of Islamic Law at Cairo University and “senior member” of the Muslim Brotherhood. The elder Soltan was one of 50 Muslim Brotherhood leaders charged with spearheading the 2013 protests aimed at reinstating Egypt’s deposed president, Mohamed Morsi, a longtime Brotherhood leader who chaired the Islamic group’s Freedom and Justice Party. Mohamed Soltan was sentenced to life in prison in Egypt, according to NBC News, which reported that he “faced terrorism-related charges, including belonging to the now-banned Muslim Brotherhood.” ABC News described Soltan as “one of the main liaisons” between the Muslim Brotherhood and the press.
Lorenzo Vidino, the director of the Program on Extremism at George Washington University, described the elder Soltan as “Brotherhood royalty,” noting his service on the organization’s most important jurisprudential bodies in both North America and Europe, and the younger Soltan as “the polished version of the father.”
El-Sayed made no mention of the Muslim Brotherhood, Soltan’s father, or the circumstances surrounding Soltan’s arrest in his Substack post, instead linking to a Georgetown University School of Foreign Service article saying Soltan “spent nearly two years as a political prisoner in what he describes as ‘an Egyptian dungeon.'” El-Sayed set his Substack publication, The Incision, to private as he faced criticism on the campaign trail for old posts and videos.
The Substack post marks the latest example of El-Sayed’s close personal ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamist group that spawned Hamas in Gaza in the 1980s. Though El-Sayed told Meet the Press on Sunday that neither he nor his family have connections to the Brotherhood, his half-sister, University of Chicago professor Eman Abdelhadi, has said that her “family has long been MB,” the Washington Free Beacon reported. She has also discussed her and El-Sayed’s mother’s “activism in the Muslim Brotherhood during the early 70s while she was in college” in Egypt.
While the precise nature of El-Sayed and Soltan’s personal relationship is unclear, Soltan is just three years younger than El-Sayed and lived in Dearborn, Mich., the heavily Arab city near the Detroit suburb where El-Sayed grew up, as a child. El-Sayed’s parents are also Egyptian, and the Democrat said as recently as 2016 that he has “dual citizenship” in the United States and Egypt, something his campaign now denies. Soltan has contributed the maximum amount allowed to El-Sayed’s campaign, while the nonprofit he leads, the American Committee for Middle East Rights, sent $25,000 to a PAC supporting El-Sayed in June, the Midwesterner reported.
Neither El-Sayed nor Mohamed Soltan immediately responded to requests for comment.
Soltan attempted to distance himself from the Muslim Brotherhood in the wake of his release from Egyptian prison and return to the United States in 2015, writing in a New York Times op-ed—which identified Soltan as a “human-rights advocate”—that he is “not a member of the Muslim Brotherhood.” He also downplayed both his father’s affiliation with the Islamist group and his radicalism, writing, “My father, a respected authority on Islamic jurisprudence, lived most of his life outside of Egypt but was affiliated with a progressive, moderate vision of Islamism.”
Salah Soltan, however, has long been known as a “prominent Muslim Brotherhood member.” He “gained notoriety” in 2013 after posting a letter on behalf of the Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party “apologizing for the mistakes the Muslim Brotherhood has made” as it ruled over Egypt during Morsi’s brief presidency, according to Egyptian media reports. In 2023, the Muslim Brotherhood released a statement thanking a slew of left-wing groups in the United States that called for Salah Soltan’s release from prison and identified him as “the professor of Sharia (Islamic Law) at Cairo University and founder and former president of the Islamic American University (IAU) in Michigan.”
The elder Soltan, meanwhile, has a long history of making extreme antisemitic statements. In 2011, he issued an Islamic religious decree ordering the death of Israel’s ambassador and of “Zionists” traveling to Egypt, saying, “As someone who has studied Islamic law, specializing in Islamic jurisprudence, I am calling to kill the [Israeli] ambassador, not just expel him,” according to a translation provided by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI). “Any Zionist—tourist or other—who enters Egypt must be killed. … We stress that this fatwa is directed only toward those Zionists, who destroyed our country, killed our people, and shed our blood on our land.”
One year later, in 2012, Soltan was asked during an Egyptian TV interview if he supported a war with the United States. “Why not? Indeed, we will fight Israel and all those who are behind it,” he responded, according to a MEMRI translation. “Allah is present in this equation, and He is capable of obliterating America and any other oppressor. This is a divine law.”
Mohamed Soltan has nonetheless worked to secure his father’s release from Egyptian prison through a Washington, D.C.-based group he founded, the Freedom Initiative. He received support from congressional Democrats like disgraced former New Jersey senator Robert Menendez and Virginia congressman Don Beyer, both of whom called for Salah Soltan’s release after accepting thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from Mohamed Soltan.
The younger Soltan visited the Obama White House in 2017 after it worked to secure his freedom. He maintains a close relationship with his father, who provided an audio recording played at Soltan’s 2017 wedding reception in Virginia. “I am with you,” Salah Soltan said, according to the Times, which profiled the wedding and described the elder Soltan as “a prominent Islamic scholar.” “Look amongst you and you will see me in your faces and eyes. I am with you as you are with me.”
The United States considers the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, one of the largest and most violent branches in the sprawling Islamist network, to be a terrorist organization due to its support for Hamas. El-Sayed has expressed support for that branch: In 2012, he signed an open letter expressing support for Egypt’s then-president Morsi and calling on the Muslim Brotherhood to “purge” media and police in the country.
Collin Anderson, Washington Free Beacon
Huawei, the Chinese telecom giant banned in the U.S. and Europe, seeks to strengthen ties with Mexico. In recent months, Mexico’s secretary of Science and Technology, secretary of Energy, Anti-Corruption secretary and members of the Mexican Senate have held key meetings with senior executives from the Chinese firm.
The new head of Huawei Mexico, David Tao, has made it clear that the company wants to deepen and expand their operations in telecommunications, power grids and artificial intelligence.
During the last two decades, Huawei has generated bipartisan concern in America. The company has been charged with allegations including espionage, racketeering and conspiracy to steal American trade secrets. Huawei has denied this and other allegations against it.
Despite this background, Huawei has increased its growth fivefold in Mexico since 2022, has invested $64 million in the country and has installed a technical support center that covers Mexico and Latin America.
Mexico — America’s neighbor and largest trading partner — has also welcomed a Chinese state-owned telecommunications company, Unicom, offering it a broad license to operate freely for 30 years. Huawei and Unicom maintain close cooperation in promoting AI in sectors such as government and manufacturing in different countries.
Huawei has been charged with violating U.S. sanctions by working with North Korea and Iran. Last year, the European Parliament shut down a major infiltration of Huawei’s lobbyists into one of the most important centers of political power in the region. Authorities reported cases of bribery and corruption involving the communist technological giant.
Huawei has managed to position itself as a leader in 5G technology. However, it remains under the shadow of distrust due to allegations of control and collection of private and highly sensitive information. In 2019, the Trump administration instructed all government agencies to eradicate the use of telecommunication equipment made by Huawei because this technology presented a serious threat to national security.
The Chinese company grew under the approval of the Communist Party. It was officially launched in 1987 and during the years has grown from a telephone importer to a global conglomerate valued at $178 billion with a presence in 170 countries.
Last week, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission announced that it will vote to bolster telecom border security with Mexico and Canada. The rules would also enhance foreign ownership reporting, mandate disclosures on the use of untrusted equipment or service providers and require carriers to adhere to cybersecurity standards, among other measures.
While the U.S. seeks to improve its telecom security, Mexico must reverse and review its relationship with the Chinese company that wants to expand its technological eyes and ears at the border. This is the right time to make the right decisions.
Arturo McFields, The Hill
