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Political Scientist Warns Color Revolution Underway In Serbia

Perko Matovic, a Serbian political scientist and a former advisor to the country’s Prime Minister warns that a Color Revolution is underway in Serbia, adding that Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic is leading a struggle against foreign-backed unrest, in defense of democracy and national sovereignty.

In an article published in the Turkish publication, Daily Sabah, Matovic wrote, “The events that have been transpiring in Serbia over the last few months are a clear example of a planned Color Revolution aimed at overthrowing the government without holding elections, completely undermining the democratic process and the will of the Serbian people.”

The Serbian political scientist drew parallels with the 2016 attempted coup in Turkey that sought to overthrow the regime of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. “They attacked Erdoğan because he embodies a sovereign and patriotic leadership style and does not take orders from foreign powers,” he wrote. “He always puts the interests of his people first, works to improve Türkiye’s influence in the world and actively revives the Turkish economy through his policies.”

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Cold War 2.0 Heats Up

Last week the nuclear rhetoric between the US and Russia made some of us feel like we were transported back to 1962. Back then, Soviet moves to place nuclear-capable missiles 90 miles off our coast in Cuba led to the greatest crisis of the Cold War. The United States and its president, John F. Kennedy, could not tolerate such weapons placed by a hostile power on its doorstep and the world only knew years later how close we were to nuclear war.

Thankfully both Khrushchev and Kennedy backed down – with the Soviet leader removing the missiles from Cuba and the US president agreeing to remove some missiles from Turkey. Both men realized the folly of playing with “mutually assured destruction,” and this compromise likely paved the way to further US/Soviet dialogue from Nixon to President Reagan and finally to the end of the Cold War.

Fast forward more than 60 years later and we have a US president, Donald Trump, who last week stated that he had “ordered two Nuclear Submarines to be positioned in the appropriate regions,” meaning nearer to Russia.

Had Russia attacked the US or an ally? Threatened to do so? No. The supposed re-positioning of US strategic military assets was in response to a sharp series of posts made by former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev on social media that irritated President Trump.

The war of words started earlier, when neocon US Senator Lindsey Graham’s endless threats against Russia received a response – and a warning – from Medvedev. Graham, who seems to love war more than anything else, posted “To those in Russia who believe that President Trump is not serious about ending the bloodbath between Russia and Ukraine… You will also soon see that Joe Biden is no longer president. Get to the peace table.”

Medvedev responded, “It’s not for you or Trump to dictate when to ‘get at the peace table’. Negotiations will end when all the objectives of our military operation have been achieved. Work on America first, gramps!”

That was enough for Trump to join in to defend his ill-chosen ally Graham and ended with Medvedev alluding to Soviet nuclear doctrine which provided for an automatic nuclear response to any first strike on the USSR by US or NATO weapons.

The message from the Russian politician was clear: back off. It was hardly Khruschev banging his shoe at the UN screaming “we will bury you,” but it was enough for Trump to make a rare public pronouncement about the movement of US nuclear submarines.

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An Evidence-Driven Critique of the Allegedly Reassuring Study on Aluminum-Adjuvanted Vaccines

Yesterday, U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. published a sharp and comprehensive critique of the recent study by Andersson et al., which was published in the Annals of Internal Medicine. The study made headlines for claiming that aluminum-adjuvanted vaccines administered in early childhood are not associated with increased risks of autoimmune, allergic, or neurodevelopmental disorders.

Kennedy did not mince words. He described the study as “so deeply flawed it functions not as science but as a deceitful propaganda stunt by the pharmaceutical industry.” Among the many questionable features he identified, one stood out to me in particular. Kennedy wrote:

“These sleights of hand magnify the potential for allowing the authors to reach their absurd suggestion that higher aluminum exposure is somehow protective against asthma, allergies, and neurodevelopmental disorders, including autism.”

This sentence stopped me in my tracks because I had noticed the exact same thing. While Kennedy voiced this concern from the standpoint of public health advocacy, I approached the same issue from an academic and data-driven perspective. What I found not only aligns with his observation but adds further empirical grounding to it. In fact, this very point was at the heart of a formal comment I submitted to the Annals of Internal Medicine. The authors of the study responded — but, in my view, did not adequately address the core contradiction. In this short article, I lay out the full story, supported by the data, to show why this implausible pattern of protective effects cannot be ignored.

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Here’s What Gabbard’s Russiagate Report Missed

“An easing of tensions and improved relations with Russia — from a position of strength — is possible. Common sense says this cycle of hostility must end.” Candidate Donald Trump said that on April 27, 2016. At first glance that might sound rather irrelevant to Gabbard’s Russiagate revelations. But let me connect the dots for you.

The first point is that Russiagate has inflamed US-Russia tensions. That action actually had a number of beneficiaries. Their interests would be harmed by Trump’s aspiration.

Who are they? Primarily I’m talking about the US defense industry and those connected in some way. Certainly a strong defensive capability is of vital importance. But the demand for defense production becomes inflated by provocations like Russiagate. However, such demand is not essential for a strong defense posture.

It is natural behavior for an industry to try to protect itself and to grow. That means the defense industry would be receptive to provoked demand. And there is evidence that many American politicians would be motivated to support that unnecessary production. Here’s why. First, if there were no politically provoked demand there would be a lesser need for defense production. Congressional district and state economies could be negatively impacted by fewer defense contracts, there would be fewer jobs, out of work people would spend less money thus impacting local economies, there might be fewer revolving-door opportunities for politicians leaving government service, and there could be fewer campaign contributions, free trips including foreign visits, and a reduction in other favors provided to politicians (such as supporting pet charities or projects of a politician).

In short, a peace dividend from better US-Russia relations would be felt quite negatively by the foregoing. And that’s where my cited Trump quote favoring better relations with Russia connects. His aspiration runs counter to certain political interests by compromising them.

Perhaps that’s why just 36 days after Trump’s cited aspirational statement, Hillary Clinton said, “If Donald gets his way, they’ll be celebrating in the Kremlin. We cannot let that happen.”

Now, I don’t think she meant literally celebrating like a birthday party. Being very happy might fit the metaphor.

But why wouldn’t both countries be happy over the advent of better relations? Certainly that was the case back when President Ronald Reagan made friends with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. For comparison, wouldn’t the US administration be happy if it convinced the leadership of Iran to honestly seek better relations with us?

Countries enjoying solidly good relations generally don’t fight each other directly or by surrogacy.

So this is what Gabbard’s reports missed: They omitted the greater context concerning the benefits for some from undertaking the Russiagate hoax. Gabbard makes it sound simply like a big untoward political squabble. She missed the point that it is within some commercial interests to vilify Russia as did Russiagate.

Her reports expose the political culprits responsible for the hoax. But they ignore that greater context in which they did it. And that context is far more consequential than the political angle that has dominated the Gabbard news story. Even putting Obama in jail, as some have mused about, wouldn’t solve the fundamental problem.

There are real problems created by those who benefit from conflict in the world. Those problems are inextricably related to the onset of the Russiagate hoax. All the perpetrators of the hoax may not have been astute enough to realize that. Yet it remains at the heart of the matter.

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Biden Put This Harmless Mechanic In Prison. Now, Troy Lake Is Asking Trump for Help.

Troy Lake was born and raised in Wyoming, where his father owned an automotive shop. Troy, who is now 65 years old, also went into the family business. He eventually moved to Colorado and opened Elite Diesel. By all accounts, he lived a quiet family life with his wife, Holly, and their son, TJ. He was also the “go-to mechanic for over-the-road truckers and others running diesel engines.” 

Until 2018. One day in October of that year, the Lakes and one of their employees were enjoying a meal at a local Olive Garden when the federal government executed a search warrant on Elite Diesel. They watched via an app on their phones that accessed the shop’s cameras.  

“It looked like a military operation,” Holly told Cowboy State Daily. She said black SUVs were lined up outside, and “agents in tactical gear” raided the place, going through every corner of the building, rifling through their equipment, and reading their personal files. 

After what the Lakes call the “raid,” nothing happened for several years. The family eventually decided to move back to Wyoming, taking Elite Diesel with them. They even contacted the feds to let them know they were moving and stayed in touch, trying to do everything on the up-and-up. 

But today, Troy Lake sits in federal prison in Colorado, where he has spent the last six months. 

So what did he do that’s so bad? Was his shop part of some sort of money laundering scheme?  Was he using it as a base for human trafficking? Was he hiding murdered bodies in there?

Nope. Troy was helping truckers by removing Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)-mandated emissions systems that were preventing their trucks from operating correctly.

According to TJ, during the mid-2000s, shortly after the EPA created stronger emissions standards on heavy diesel trucks, drivers began having problems with brand-new vehicles. They’d bring those trucks to Troy, asking if he could fix them. He found that the problem was these new systems, which were built to limit exhaust by recirculating dirty air. They may have helped with emissions, but they were killing the engines’ lifespans. 

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The Left’s Overreaction Addiction

Sunny Hostin claims Stephen Colbert’s show cancellation is an instance of the “dismantling of our democracy.” An X commentator wrote, “Democracy is when Colbert is on television.” Sunny must have fallen off Venus and is unused to Earth gravity—or she’s just a host on The View. She epitomizes the overreaction that has overtaken rational thought and replaced political discourse in America.

As background for those who have not fallen with Sunny, Stephen Colbert is a political shouter who has been a fixture on late night TV for decades, starting out on The Daily Show, then his own satire show The Colbert Report, and now The Late Show. Democracy in America predates Colbert by some 200 years. Things came to an unfunny conclusion of sorts in July when parent company CBS announced Colbert would go off the air next year for financial reasons. That last thing is what set off the Venusians.

Colbert was a Trump critic. That is to say whatever Trump did or said on any particular day, later that night Colbert would mock, ridicule, and otherwise shout hatred toward, in front of a woke audience pre-triggered to bray for more blood. It wasn’t funny and didn’t even try to be funny; it was just the Two Minutes of Hate each night. As Orwell wrote, this forced expression of negativity was a key mechanism for maintaining social control, reinforcing the Party’s ideology and preventing independent thought. It is a baseline for processing information. So it was with Colbert—plus a musical guest.

Nobody among his audience, or for that matter apparently anybody who voted Democrat, thought the reason for Colbert’s demise was “financial reasons.” Every X post, every statement issued by a hip Democratic senator said the same thing: Colbert was canceled because he criticized Trump, often characterized as “the regime” or something Hitler-esque. We have gotten to the point, said one Facebook meme, “where those who make fun of the Dear Leader are disappeared.” They all seemed to believe it, and “I Stand with Colbert” signs appeared at the usual protests. On air Colbert told CBS to “F**k off,” while his mentor Jon Stewart composed an entire musical number consisting of the words “F**k off” to CBS. Biting satire.

It was several late nights of this until little bits of “truthiness” (a Colbert term) came out. The Late Show’s ad revenue had plummeted after the pandemic. Gutfeld! beat The Late Show in the ratings for 21 straight months. Rational sources explained the Colbert show loses $40 million for CBS every year. Of the network late night shows, Colbert’s had the smallest footprint on social media. The format of late-night television, wrote the Guardian, “was a living relic of a different time, when a youth-skewing audience would reliably pop on linear television at 11:30 pm. The field has been contracting for years, with programs hosted by Samantha Bee, James Corden, and Taylor Tomlinson ending without replacement.” Ad revenue for the genre as a whole was down 50 percent from Trump 1.0 and the Covid years. 

“It’s long been assumed,” continued the Guardian, “the hosts currently in these once-coveted chairs would be the last, their programs expiring when they decided to step down.” And if Paramount axed Colbert because the White House didn’t like it, why did they give $1.5 billion to South Park, which literally the next day attacked the president harder than Colbert ever has (it portrayed Trump begging for sex from Satan)? That night Colbert riffed off South Park to make a micropenis “joke” about Trump.

Colbert actually was canceled for financial reasons. None of that mattered, because the Orange Man had scuttled another piece of democracy and we were one step closer to fascism. Everybody said so. If Trump supported it, the left must oppose it. If the left opposed it, it must be part of America’s creep toward fascism. Nothing is just a problem, a disagreement, a fact anymore. Everything is life or death, at least until the next meme spikes the bloodstream of the mainstream media and social media to call the left again to arms. It should be seen as the kind of biting satire The Daily Show used to be capable of before it started to view itself as the last gasping voice of freedom (plus commercials.)

As with Colbert, the overreaction compulsion finds leftists getting tangled up supporting the most bizarre things.

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Forced Hospitalization Increases Suicide and Violent Crime

States are rolling out more and more aggressive forced treatment policies, ever widening the range of people who can be targeted for involuntary hospitalization. Yet a new study shows that this system is actually increasing the very problems it is meant to alleviate: Forced hospitalization substantially increases the risk of death by suicide, death by overdose, and violent crime—nearly doubling these effects.

“This result is surprising,” the researchers write in an accompanying FAQ. “Involuntary hospitalizations are a public safety measure, and the finding that they are driving more of the outcomes they seek to prevent in the judgement call subpopulation we study has important policy implications. The significance is especially pronounced since many locations across the country are seeking to scale up involuntary hospitalizations.”

Although the layperson may think that involuntary hospitalization is rare, the researchers note that it is “a widespread practice,” with 1.2 million people forcibly hospitalized each year. That makes it more than twice as common as death from cancer, they write. And this practice is growing more common every year, with many states implementing policies to expand forced treatment.

It has been difficult for researchers to study whether involuntary hospitalization is actually helpful or not. Research consistently shows that those who get hospitalized are at greater risk of suicide and other negative outcomes after hospitalization. However, this is confounded by the fact that, supposedly, those who get hospitalized are those who are already at a much higher risk of these outcomes.

The current study aimed to get around this limitation. They used quasi-random assignment (a way of mapping real-world outcomes that simulates a randomized trial) and focused solely on the cases that were considered “judgment calls”—cases in which one clinician might hospitalize, while another might not—to remove that confounding factor. Thus, the current study is probably as close as we will ever get to having a true randomized, controlled trial to answer this question.

Of course, this also means that their study results only apply to those “judgment call” cases—but the researchers estimate that they add up to 43% of all involuntarily hospitalized patients.

Ultimately, although they can’t say that all involuntary hospitalization is detrimental, they are able to say that it is detrimental on average for nearly half of those who experience it—and thus, in “judgment call” cases, clinicians should err on the side of not forcibly imprisoning their patients.

And the policy implication is that involuntary hospitalization should be drastically reduced, not rolled out as a policy to capture more and more people.

“Does involuntary hospitalization achieve its goals?” the researchers ask. “Our results suggest that, on the margin, the system we study is not achieving the intended effects of the policy.”

The study was conducted by Natalia Emanuel at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Pim Welle at the Allegheny County Department of Human Services, and Valentin Bolotnyy at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. It was published sans peer review in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York Staff Reports.

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Texas Democrats’ Walkout Over Redistricting Endangers Hemp Ban Legislation

Texas Democratic House lawmakers are leaving the state to prevent a vote on redrawing the state’s congressional district map in Republicans’ favor—a move that could lead to a stalemate on a Senate-passed bill to ban hemp products containing any THC.

The cannabis legislation moved through the Senate on Friday and is now in the House’s court. But without a quorum, the chamber won’t be able to conduct legislative business as Democratic lawmakers flock to other states such as Illinois and New York—a strategy that’s produced mixed results in the past.

Gov. Greg Abbott (R) has threatened to remove those legislators from the House if they fail to show back up, and he also said members who received any financial support to leave the state could be subject to prosecution for felony bribery violations.

But in any case, time is running short in the special session the governor convened to address a series of outstanding issues, including legislation related to hemp cannabinoid products. Abbott vetoed an earlier version of the controversial ban, and he recently outlined what he’d like to see in a revised version of the bill.

The special session started on July 21. Under the state constitution, special sessions cannot last longer than 30 days, meaning a quorum would need to be reestablished before August 20 if any bills are to move. Of course, nothing prevents the governor from calling another special session once that deadline passes.

“The path forward for legislation during this special session is unclear, including whether or not a THC ban could advance,” Heather Fazio, director of the advocacy group Texas Cannabis Policy Center, told Marijuana Moment on Monday.

“The status quo is certainly better than THC being banned outright, but we hope the legislature can sort through their differences and find a way to pass common sense regulations that restrict youth access, at minimum,” she said. “We are continuing our advocacy and working with those remain in the building to ensure they understand, the issue can make good decisions when the time comes. That could be later during this first special session or during the next one.”

Austin Zamhariri, executive director of Texas Cannabis Collective (TCC) said that “Texans have been fighting a total hemp consumable ban since it was announced by Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick (R) in December of last year.”

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Startup Says It Can Transform Mercury into Gold

A Californian startup, Marathon Fusion, aims to produce gold through nuclear fusion by converting mercury-198 into gold-197 using neutron radiation from fusion reactors. Unlike particle accelerators like CERN’s Large Hadron Collider—which produce negligible amounts of gold at enormous costs—Marathon Fusion proposes using a standard fusion reactor fuel mix (deuterium and tritium) to create the necessary neutron flux, theoretically enabling substantial gold production. Their estimates, derived from a fusion reactor’s “digital twin,” suggest a plant could yield several tons of gold annually per gigawatt of thermal power. However, the feasibility of this process remains untested, as no commercial fusion reactors exist, and the gold produced would initially be radioactive, requiring careful management. Significant scientific, technological, and economic challenges must be addressed before this ambitious concept can lead to a modern-day gold rush.

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EU Revives Plan to Ban Private Messaging

The European Union is still wrestling with a controversial plan that would turn private messaging services into surveillance tools. For over three years, talks have stalled over whether providers should be forced to scan every user’s messages for possible illegal material and forward anything suspicious to law enforcement.

The European Commission is still pushing for a universal scanning requirement.

In contrast, the European Parliament insists any checks should apply only to unencrypted messages from people already under suspicion. Attempts to strike a deal have repeatedly fallen apart, with Poland the latest presidency to walk away without an agreement.

July brought a change in leadership of the Council of the EU, with Denmark stepping in and putting chat scanning back at the top of the legislative pile. Copenhagen wants this handled as a priority and wasted no time tabling a new draft on its very first day in charge.

Leaked records from a closed door July meeting show the Danish text closely tracks earlier proposals from Belgium and Hungary, with no concessions for encrypted conversations. A softer version from Poland, which would have made scanning voluntary and left encrypted chats alone, has been dropped entirely.

Out of 27 EU countries, 20 spoke during the July debate, each lodging what officials call a “comprehensive audit reservation.” Germany summed up the atmosphere by noting, “the familiar mood was clear.”

Italy, Spain, and Hungary have been in favor of mandatory chat scanning from the start. France could tip the balance since blocking the plan requires four countries representing at least 35 percent of the EU’s population. Paris has moved from tentative support to saying it could “basically support the proposal.”

Others remain cautious or opposed. Belgium, despite earlier enthusiasm, admits encrypted scanning is “a difficult topic nationally.” Estonia reports a “national conflict between security authorities and data protection officers regarding encryption and client-side scanning.” Austria is bound by a parliamentary vote against mandatory scanning or undermining encryption, a stance shared by the Netherlands. Luxembourg and Slovenia say they are still “not yet convinced.”

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