Excerpts Fantasy Read a Bonus Excerpt From august clarke’s Metal from Heaven A bloody lesbian revenge tale and political fantasy set in a glittering world transformed by industrial change—and simmering class warfare. By august clarke | Published on October 2, 2024 Comment 0 Share New Share We’re thrilled to share a bonus excerpt from august clarke’s Metal from Heaven, a caustic, dizzying eco-fantasy that addresses labor politics, corporate greed, and the relentless grind of capitalism, while also embodying a visceral lesbian revenge quest against the people and institutions who control and oppress the helpless—publishing with Erewhon Books on October 22nd. If you missed the first excerpt, you can find it here! He who controls ichorite controls the world. A malleable metal more durable than steel, ichorite is a toxic natural resource fueling national growth, and ambitious industrialist Yann Chauncey helms production of this miraculous ore. Working his foundry is an underclass of destitute workers, struggling to get better wages and proper medical treatment for those exposed to ichorite’s debilitating effects since birth.One of those luster-touched victims, the child worker Marney Honeycutt, is picketing with her family and best friend when a bloody tragedy unfolds. Chauncey’s strikebreakers open fire.Only Marney survives.A decade later, as Yann Chauncey searches for a suitable political marriage for his ward, Marney sees the perfect opportunity for revenge. With the help of radical bandits and their stolen wealth, she must masquerade as an aristocrat to win over the calculating Gossamer Chauncey and kill the man who slaughtered her family and friends. But she is not the only suitor after Lady Gossamer’s hand, leading her to play twisted elitist games of intrigue. And Marney’s luster-touched connection to the mysterious resource and its foundry might put her in grave danger—or save her from it. An introduction to the excerpt from the author: Marney Honeycutt has spent years in the Choir, a family of rebels, revolutionaries, and the repressed living in the Fingerbluffs; there, they have kept a pretense that the nobility who used to rule it yet lives, though the ruse may be up any day. With her friends, Marney has become a notable bandit, the Whip Spider, whose touch melts the magic metal ichorite and whose gang gleefully robs from the wealthy.Aboard a riverboat, heist nearly complete, Marney runs into a problem in the shape of a girl with a knife, as elsewhere, the Choir must decide it’s collective future… She was a tall, lean girl. Hair blacker than the shadows surrounding swayed around her hip bones and was slicked back from a sharp face, all bone and diagonal angles save for her watery downturned eyes, long-lashed and burning, and her full painted lips twisted in a horrible smile, or grimace, or leer, I didn’t know. I watched her move her lips soundlessly. She walked like she was Veltuni but wore no lip ring. She held a keen clip-point knife. The girl didn’t blink. She looked like she might cry. She toed off her delicate high-heeled shoes, stood barefoot on the luster-splattered floor, widened her stance. I saw the tension in her thighs and core and shoulders through the dress, saw it release. She pounced knife-first. I threw my body to the side but the knife clipped my collar. Bright slippery pain flowered under the bone. She cut forward again, I stepped back, I closed my hand and found my knife inside it. Behind my eyes pink bubbled. I slashed back, she drove a cut upwards, would’ve knocked my knife from my hand if its metal hadn’t seeped into my skin. This girl was—better. She moved with a viciousness just past efficiency, a studied meanness. Sport dueler, though this—she slashed my upper arm, the cut flowed thickly—was not the restraint and acclaimed elegance of an aristocratic knife duel, not that I had any right to judge an aristocratic knife duel. She was a cat and I was a finch whose wing she’d already torn. Lots of light cuts to watch me bleed because she could. And she could. I chanted in my head, kneaded the ichorite pools underfoot into wires into snares to trip her, but she tore through them like they were nothing before they solidified. The ichorite strings snapped and drooped and became solid again. She seized a fistful of my jacket, fit her knife under my chin, and leaned me over the cargo bay’s edge, balls of my feet on the floor, heels in open air above the drop to the whirling catfish. “You wretch,” she purred through her teeth. “You slime. You’re a carnival barker. You’re a road magician. You’re not a devil, you lack the dignity demanded by a symbol so rich. You’re nothing and nobody. How dare you frighten that girl like that? How dare you interrupt us?” I panted. I didn’t dare move. “You are a stain on our age. You are a blemish on progress.” She leaned over me. Her hair swayed against my slit jacket. Strands clung to where I bled. I felt her breath on my cheek, the sweet liquor on her snarl. Her eyes were enormous. I saw my horror mirrored across the little pink veins there. “You little freak. You little sadist. The look on that server’s face. The disruption you’ve caused, the disrespect you’ve showed my staff, is repulsive. You don’t deserve the air in your lungs. You don’t deserve the blood in your body.” Buy the Book Metal from Heaven august clarke Buy Book Metal from Heaven august clarke Buy this book from: AmazonBarnes and NobleiBooksIndieBoundTarget I willed the ichorite off the ground and felt my vision flicker. The world bruised. It bubbled, I saw the metal effervescing in my periphery, but I couldn’t will it to shape. Yann Chauncey lived. I could not die while Industry lived. That man didn’t even know where my father was. I couldn’t die. I looked into the eyes of this girl, her liquid black eyes, and did not know how to kill her. “Drop the knife,” said Sisphe thu Ecapa, her gun nestled at the nape of the stranger’s neck. “This is my little freak.” The stranger’s face rippled. She looked furious, then exasperated, then fell into a sullen humor. Her eyebrows danced under her fringe. Her lip twitched. She threw down the knife. It thwunked into the scuffed plank floor. I breathed in sharply. She released me. I felt gravity win. The sky flew up in pink and orange slashes, and the Flip River slapped me, grabbed me with a thousand flapping catfish mouths. My head slipped under. The writhing fish bodies covered the boat above me. They whirred around my body, slimy and muscular, and I clawed at the nothing between their bodies. I saw long algae like hair and a limp, drifting hand. Then fists closed around my upper arms and pulled me upright. I gasped, the evening burned against the lining of my throat and I spat up murky water, and collapsed against Brandegor the Rancid, who clapped me firmly between the shoulder blades so hard that something knocked loose. I shivered. I coughed up a laugh, I laughed so hard I cried, I sobbed into Brandegor’s shoulder. She mussed my curls. The orange darkness behind my eyelids spasmed with luster luster luster. * * * Sometime later we triumphed around the Fingerbluffs. We leaned off our lurchers and gave luxurious silks and fine jewels to everyone who gathered to watch us pass, and the crooked teeth they showed us were beautiful, and the air was perfumed with marmalade and tobacco flowers, and Harlow and Sisphe and I reclined on the cliffs like natural princes, eating fruit and sunning ourselves, drenched with scrapes and bruises. We looked at the place where Candor should be lying and I told Sisphe and Harlow about you. That time you stole raspberries for us. The day I made that ring for you. Pinched it from conveyor belt scraps and kneaded it for your littlest finger. I contemplated and then forbade the contemplation of whether your body wore that ring in whatever unmarked grave Chauncey’s goons had planted you in. Was your body dissolved into my family’s body? Had you fused with Edna and Poesy and the boys who chased you when you were smaller? Were you dissolved into flora? Had you been transformed into endless flying things? I thought about cicadas, underfoot for ages until maturity comes. Screaming flight. It’s easy when it’s hazy to imagine that there is something moving underneath these rocks. Moving gently, breathing. Something deep asleep. It’s easy to imagine a watchful slumber. My old religion has its merits. I rolled my cheek to the side, pressed it flush against the basalt and the forgetme-not sprays, and listened to a heartbeat I could not explain to my friends. My tongue itched. I scraped it with my teeth. I was eager again to eat the guts of Industry Chauncey. I gnashed my molars and yearned. Uthste came and found me. She looked older, her eyebrows were dusted with gray. She stood over us on the rocks, where we passed a bottle between us, some rosy fizzy tonic edged with coca leaves, and her shadow interrupted our murmuring. The sun behind her shaved head looked crownlike. She frowned gently. Her boots glistened by my ear. She said, “It’s the end. Marney. Come along with me, please. Amon’s asked for you.” “Just Marney?” Sisphe put her elbows under her. “Never just Marney,” said Harlow, dragging a comb through her glossy black hair. Uthste nodded curtly. “Marney by name. Come as you’d like. Be quick.” I found my feet. Harlow followed me, and we both took one of Sisphe’s clever faux-limp hands, hauled her upright, whisked her off to Loveday Mansion. I felt small following Uthste. I wondered if she knew what she symbolized to me, herself and Valor and Brandegor, my saviors and bandit-makers. The thought of telling her seemed a repulsive imposition. I reckon she’d know when I showed her. I’d have to demonstrate it in deed. The four of us gathered in the ballroom. Settees and wingback armchairs had been dragged in and arranged around the broad room’s perimeter, and Choir-goers, not full quorum but more than I usually saw in one place, flocked among the velvet furniture in corduroy and rough leather, features hard against the plushness. Younger kids lay on animal-pelt rugs and pulled the tufts of fur. A boy near me braided down a dead bear’s back. He looked eight, maybe. Truly eight. He’d never seen hard labor and it kept him babyish. The abundance of bandits humbled me. I felt grateful and young, but tired. Uthste went and sat on the floor in front of Brandegor’s chair, leaned back against her shin. Valor perched on the chair’s arm, one of Brandegor’s big arms around her waist. I scarcely knew what to do with myself. I looked back to Harlow and Sisphe, ached for Candor, then Sisphe turned my chin with her knuckles and pointed my attention at the room’s far end. Amon sat on the floor with letters and telegrams and newspaper clippings fanned in front of him. Behind him, the Veltuni ancestral congress’s cast hands kneaded and stretched. I leaned my cheek against Sisphe’s hand, felt an old flicker of something I couldn’t entertain, then crossed the cream-and-amber room and knelt beside Amon. Amon smiled but did not look at me. He moved his hands, I moved mine back, an acknowledgement of our mutual faith. Amon said, to the room itself, “Thank you, assembly. I’ll be brief. Our masquerade has always been finite. Twenty years in glorious harmony will imminently meet its abrupt end. I believe this because the heir to Loveday Mansion is of age, and has been summoned to Yann Industry Chauncey’s estate. His ward has a debutante showing. The Loveday heir has been invited by three separate parties, the Montrose barony, the Glitslough barony, and the Chauncey family itself. If we decline, our only option, they will come here. They will send their emissaries. Lately, we had plans for this. But our sweet girl Candor is dead. “The barons of Ignavia alone supposedly own land. Before my friends killed him, Horace Veracity Loveday claimed to own this land. All the people who worked this land rented their homes from him, owed him the fruits of their labor, and the tools with which it was performed, and were subjected to his whim as law. The Baron’s Senate is firm about land ownership remaining in their few fists, but the Baron’s Senate is poor, and the money is in Industry Chauncey’s industry. Chauncey can’t own land. All ichorite refinement centers are clustered around IC, as Baron Ramtha has been enormously lenient with allowing Chauncey’s growth, but Chauncey wants to expand his enterprise. They need land and lots of it, land for mining, land for processing plants, land for the workers who labor in those pits to sleep on. “Chauncey is asking after us because he wants a baron-class spouse for his ward. He wants this because he wants to mine here, or thinks he can. We can refuse. We can put it off. But the emissaries to be sent won’t only ask after the Loveday heir, they’ll scout the Fingerbluffs for mining. The blurring between the capitalists and the barons is already happening. This marriage, whatever it might be, will mean that Chauncey will come to conquer us. He funds the Enforcer Corps. They will come with force and we will battle until we are dead, and then our home will be maimed and stripped for parts.” Gray faces around the room. Nobody blinked. Murmurs rumbled but I caught no words. I put my hands on the floor. I looked at my hands. My fingers were blurring. “We prepare for the war,” said Brandegor. Valor beside her looked stricken but sure. They’d go down blazing. “We leave. Be reasonable,” said a bandit called Alcstei zel Prisis. Alcstei’s man, whose name I did not know, said, “The Choir can claim a new home. This place has served us for twenty good years, but the Choir must be preserved. We find a new stronghold.” “We serve this place. Not the reverse. Have pride,” snapped a bandit called Aturmica thu Artumica Tanner. “Do you imagine we will take with us the community who has defended us and nurtured us for decades? Beg the displacement of thousands upon thousands? Tell them to carry with them their histories on their backs and be dispossessed of all else, we’ve surrendered their home to the slaughterhouse? Or do you suppose we abandon them?” “I was born on the Bluffs,” said Valor. “Here’s where I’ll die.” “We will not suffer the indignity of surrender. We won’t show belly, we won’t scurry under some rock. Be righteous, Alcstei.” Brangedor pulled attention like gravity. She strained against her clothes, against her skin. She held Valor’s waist and Utshte’s shoulder to keep herself seated. I thought she’d kill Alcstei with her hands. “We lost five this month. Five of us. Young Thomas Fortitude shot off the roof of a train, his body caught and brought home by his boys, buried by hand in the fruit grove. Cristhia’s twins, gone. Dash Mercer, dangling up in Geistmouth. Wyatt Piety Stytt, dangling down in the Achrum prairies. We commit ourselves to death when we mark our names across our breasts. We will die for this. I am the last bull rider of Mors Hall. I will die for this place.” Alcstei’s man stood up. “Be fierce and proud for our Hereafter. To die for tomorrow is to die for our children’s rich harvest,” Harlow said. “You don’t have children,” said Alcstei’s man. “We do.” I stood up. My hands shook, I rooted them in my hair. My ribs beat against my jacket. I spread my elbows, looked across the room at nobody in particular, at everybody, at Sisphe. She gave me a sharp nod. Her eyes flashed. I looked down at the papers fanned around Amon, the array of blue and cream off-whites. I couldn’t read the sinuous handwriting. The ink on the pages still looked wet. “The Loveday heir should say yes. I’ll be the Loveday heir. I’m not Stellarine but I can fake it. I studied to be Candor’s valet.” Amon looked up at me. He looked relieved. At last, I’d said it. “Pardon,” I said. I looked to my peers and fixed my tone. “Gentle Choir. I propose that I go feign being Loveday heir.” A bandit whose name I didn’t know said, “Would the charade be worth it? It pushes back war only so far.” “It’s worth it because I’m gonna kill Yann Industry Chauncey,” I said. “That’s true,” said Brandegor the Rancid. “She is gonna kill Yann Industry Chauncey.” “If Marney takes up the role,” Sisphe said, vibrating with such glee that I thought her hairpins might fall, “and I accompanied her as her secretary or her valet, think of the recon! I could squirrel away as many documents as I can. Muddle things up for them. If we’re to have a war, killing Chauncey is a triumphant first blow. Let’s not be passive. Let’s not wait like lambs.” “When Marney takes up the role,” said Harlow, “we’ll have bought ourselves another month or two to strategize. We’ll know what their plans are, we could maybe even shape them, arrange the conditions of our discovery on our own terms. Be keen and ruthless against them, having studied their intentions and so on. Let her take on Candor’s work. Let her be our girl’s remembrance.” “Yes, and it’d be funny,” said Magnanimity, the oldest bandit in the room, who’d served the Choir for forty-seven years, and been present for Horace Veracity Loveday’s execution. She rolled her wrist, clanged her bangles together, and smiled at me. “That’s as good a reason as any.” “Marney deserves to kill Chauncey,” said Uthste. “And we deserve him dead for the threat he poses.” Magnanimity clapped her hands. “Those who want to flee, flee. Take a civilian’s portion of treasure and be gone from our graces. Show of hands. Marney as Loveday heir to kill Yann Industry Chauncey?” Hands drifted up. The ancestral congress stretched their fingers behind my head. It felt like dusk bleed when I was small, all the floating palms. Such pride I had for the whole world. Such pride I had in my own survival. Such love for the Fingerbluffs, for the Choir, for my families, for you. My blood was thick and vibrant. Cut me and find grenadine. Cut me and find white hot light. Excerpted from Metal from Heaven, copyright © 2024 by august clarke. The post Read a Bonus Excerpt From august clarke’s <i>Metal from Heaven</i> appeared first on Reactor.

Violence, crime, and drug-related deaths in the U.S. have been on the rise for some time now, thanks to Mexican drug cartels, but a new report is revealing that a different kind of cartel is flooding the U.S. with a different kind of drug—namely, abortion pills. A new in-depth study, “Beneath the Surface: Exposing the Abortion Pill Drug Cartel,” published by the American Life League, dives into how abortion pill companies ship the deadly drugs to states with stringent pro-life laws. The American Life League observed, “To the casual observer, this pill network is modeled after the drug cartel, creating an abortion pill crisis similar to our nation’s narcotics crisis.” The abortion pill cartel operates using “community partner networks,” groups of volunteers who help women in the U.S. order abortion pills from foreign countries and then ship those drugs. These community partner networks encourage women to request abortion pills using secure networks and unhackable email accounts, in order to evade prosecution. One community partner network affiliate, based in Mexico, even told women, “To be on the safe side, you should erase messages and emails about your abortion from your phone.” The group even told women that if they suffer bleeding after their chemical abortion, they should visit an emergency room and claim to be experiencing a miscarriage. “Do not reveal that you took abortion medications—there is absolutely no way for them to know. The pills will not show up in blood tests or scans,” the group warned women. “This also applies to interactions or consultation with your doctor or gynecologist: There is no need to tell them that your miscarriage was self-induced.” ALL_AbortionPillReport2024Download Community partner networks also give women instructions on how to hide their search and request for abortion pills online. Some advice offered includes using untraceable VPNs, end-to-end encryption on messaging apps, using specific browsers that don’t store or share data, and clearing out internet history frequently. Women are even advised to wear disguises or cover their faces with sunglasses, a hat or hoodie, and a face mask when visiting abortion facilities. Other community partner networks help underage girls circumvent state laws requiring parental consent or notification, providing a “resource guide” on how to get abortion pills without parents finding out. The American Life League pointed out that the Food and Drug Administration’s 2023 decision to allow abortion pills to be administered via mail, instead of requiring that they be administered in-person at certified facilities, makes it all the more difficult to prevent the expansion of the abortion pill cartel. “The FDA’s 2023 ruling to permanently allow the mailing of abortion pills has opened the floodgates for clinicians to prescribe abortion pills everywhere,” ALL noted. “In order to acquire the abortion pills via telemedicine, women must complete either a video or online form consultation with an abortionist, who will then prescribe and mail the pills to the woman.” In addition to in-person abortion facilities, pharmacies, and tele-abortions operated by American abortion businesses, ALL noted that the abortion pill cartel thrives on the internet. One of the community partner networks, called Plan C, explained, “Websites that sell pills are e-commerce websites that sell and ship pills to addresses in all U.S. states. They do not require a prescription for the medications, do not require you to upload your ID, and do not provide a medical consultation or any kind of support.” ALL discovered that most of the websites recommended by Plan C and other community partner networks sell generic or off-brand abortion pills unregulated by the FDA. “This means that without identification and a prescription, anyone can order these pills from an online vendor to use themselves or on women who are pregnant,” the report explained. ALL continued, “Because the abortion pills provided by online vendors are not inspected or approved by the FDA, no one can be certain what the pills contain, how they will affect the mother’s health, and where to even trace the origins of the abortion pills.” The FDA has done little to regulate the abortion pill market, instead simply recommending that women not order the deadly drugs from sources not approved by the FDA. “The abortion pill drug cartel is alive and well, especially in so-called ‘abortion-free’ states. These networks aim to groom vulnerable women on how to obtain these pills secretly. These community networks work to traffic the pills across our nation’s border right under the noses of federal agencies,” ALL summarized. The group pointed out that abortion pills have been used to drug women and have also been used to cover up evidence of rape. “Abortion regulations are useless in ending this problem. By placing arbitrary numbers and limits on when a baby can be killed in the womb, we continue to waste time in the fight to protect all preborn children from abortion,” ALL declared, adding: The horrifying reality we are facing is that while in-person clinics may not be able to perform abortions depending on the circumstances in various states, women are able to get abortions without leaving their homes through the abortion pill, despite their state’s regulations. The sobering report concluded: “This report is proof that the claim of the abortion-free state, or pro-life state, is a myth. As long as the abortion pill regimen is trafficked across our nation’s borders into heavily restricted states, abortion numbers will continue to rise. And as there is no required reporting, we will continue to be left in the dark regarding how many women’s and children’s lives are claimed by the abortion pill crisis.” Originally published by The Washington Stand The post ‘Abortion Pill Cartel’ Circumventing State Pro-Life Laws, Study Finds appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Anti-Trump historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat is scheduled to lecture midshipmen on “authoritarianism” next week at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, an event that is part of the Bancroft Lecture series but, in a break with tradition, will not be public. We know of Ben-Ghiat’s scheduled Oct. 10 speech only because she announced the event, as well as a problematic partisan political agenda for her lecture, via a Substack post. “I will be speaking about what happens to militaries under authoritarian rule, touching on Fascist Italy, Pinochet’s Chile and the Russian military during the war on Ukraine,” Ben-Ghiat, a professor of history and Italian studies at New York University, writes in the Sept. 4 post. The historian abruptly transitions, writing “that brings us to today’s post, on why Donald Trump insults the military,” and drawing an explicit link between authoritarianism and Trump. “Why does he do it?” Ben-Ghiat writes of the former president. “His authoritarian character, desire to destroy democratic values and ideals, and loyalty to autocrats who see the powerful U.S. military as an obstacle to their geopolitical aims.” Many Americans would view these assertions as untethered to facts or experience, politically charged, and evidently calculated to fuel animosity toward one candidate in the Nov. 5 presidential election. In her 1,000-word post, Ben-Ghiat goes on to suggest that the Republican nominee engages in “ritual humiliation,” uses people as “props,” and mirrors “authoritarians … who see people as assets to exploit and plunder for their grandiose goals.” Toward the end, Ben-Ghiat explicitly lists several people, strategically influential to the military audience she means to reach, who “will be voting for Vice President Kamala Harris.” Many who have worked with Trump, not only when he was president but as a businessman and real estate developer, would of course push back against such assertions. Regarding Ben-Ghiat’s specific reference to Trump and his team’s showing disrespect for the military at Arlington National Cemetery, others who were there dispute the claim. It isn’t known what limitations the Naval Academy has put on Ben-Ghiat’s Oct. 10 lecture, if any. What is known from her own words is that she intends to speak on fascism linked to Trump’s candidacy, going so far as to suggest that the military audience vote a certain way. It looks highly probable that Ben-Ghiat’s lecture will fail to be politically neutral. Welcoming a passionate partisan such as Ben-Ghiat to make her assertions to the midshipmen about Trump represents a perilous politicization of the Naval Academy, especially with less than four weeks before an election. The danger derives from the necessary separation of the military and politics. midshipmen at the Naval Academy swear an oath to “support and defend the Constitution,” pledging their allegiance to a set of ideals rather than to a person or political party. This is enforced by the Defense Department’s Directive 1344.10, which explicitly states that service members shall “not engage in partisan political activity.” The nature of Ben-Ghiat’s scheduled Bancroft Lecture casts doubt on whether the Naval Academy is in line with this Pentagon directive. It calls into question the nonpartisan nature of leadership at the academy and by extension the Department of the Navy. By allowing Ben-Ghiat’s lecture at this time, without offering opposing viewpoints, it appears that the Naval Academy is acting in a political fashion. Perhaps it would be a different story if the Naval Academy had welcomed speakers from both sides and not so close to an election to decide America’s next commander in chief. As it stands, the Naval Academy should retract the invitation to Ben-Ghiat to lecture midshipmen Oct. 10 or perhaps postpone the event until after the election. If, however, the event is rescheduled, it also would be prudent to invite another lecturer to argue that Kamala Harris’ past actions and policy proposals resemble those of Marxist and socialist leaders, posing a threat to our rights enshrined in the Constitution. Better to avoid this mess altogether. The Naval Academy can keep out of politics by taking a pass on this particular Bancroft Lecture. The post Naval Academy Allows Bancroft Lecture Series to Become Politicized appeared first on The Daily Signal.

By inviting a speaker, history professor Ruth Ben-Ghiat of New York University, who has already said that she plans to attack presidential candidate Donald Trump in the annual Bancroft Lecture at the U.S. Naval Academy on Oct. 10, the academy is violating Defense Department directives prohibiting the military from engaging in partisan political activity. In addition to constituting a clear violation of a long-standing, mandatory policy, families whose sons and daughters are attending this august military institution should be outraged by the academy’s partisan indoctrination of future officers of the U.S. Navy. The Bancroft Lecture is held in October of each year and “was established by the Naval Academy’s History Department to honor the academy’s founder, George Bancroft.”  Bancroft was the secretary of the Navy during President James Polk’s administration in the 1840s and became a good friend of Republican President Abraham Lincoln. According to the academy, which was founded in 1845, the lecture is supposed to bring in historians to speak about “their research and the relevance of the historian’s craft to today’s world.”  But that’s a far cry from delivering a partisan screed attacking a major political candidate in the midst of a hotly contested presidential campaign, which is precisely what Ben-Ghiat has indicated she’s going to do next week. She claims that what motivates former President Trump is his “authoritarian character, desire to destroy democratic values and ideals, and loyalty to autocrats” such as Russia’s Vladimir Putin and China’s Xi Jinping. Going further, she claims that Trump has an “attachment to America’s enemies.”  One can debate the hallucinations that apparently inhabit the mind of this so-called historian from New York University, but the more important point is that her venomous, partisan attack on a political candidate involves the Naval Academy, which is sponsoring her lecture in direct violation of Defense Department rules. Department of Defense Directive No. 1344.10 (Feb. 19, 2008) bans active members of the military, which includes the naval officers who are administrators and teachers at the academy, from engaging in “partisan political activities.”  20241002_DOD NonpoliticalDownload By putting the academy’s official imprimatur on this rancorous harangue, the academy is doing exactly what the directive says its shouldn’t do: “appear to imply official sponsorship, approval, or endorsement” of what is patently a partisan, political speech. In an op-ed about what she intends to say to the plebes at the Bancroft Lecture, Ben-Ghiat claims Trump has a “consistent habit” of “insulting and mocking the military.”  According to her, Trump’s “personal predilections and attitudes … mirror those of authoritarians more generally,” and that authoritarianism will be part of her lecture on “Fascist Italy, Pinochet’s Chile, and the Russian military.”  She claims that Trump’s supposed repeated “attacks” on the military show “what side he favors in the struggle between democracy and autocracy.” Even if you agree with Ben-Ghiat’s wild, unsupported claims, that isn’t the point.  The point is that the Naval Academy should not be inviting, sponsoring, or in any way endorsing lecturers who are at the academy to give what is clearly a political speech, whether it’s attacking or supporting Donald Trump, or attacking or supporting Kamala Harris. The mission of the Naval Academy, it says, is to “imbue” its midshipmen “with the highest ideals of duty, honor, and loyalty” so they will be able “assume the highest responsibilities of command, citizenship, and government.”  Whoever invited Ben-Ghiat to speak on campus used extremely poor judgment.  Our military service academies are publicly funded, government-run institutions, designed to train future warfighters to serve this country with honor and distinction, regardless of who is the commander in chief.  Graduates serve under presidents of both parties and focus on the defense of our country. That’s how it’s been—and should be. The academy should disinvite this speaker now.  The post Why Is the Naval Academy Engaging in Election Interference? appeared first on The Daily Signal.

If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. In the US, the Democrats continue with their sustained efforts to pressure major social media platforms, now about a month ahead of the presidential election. The Twitter Files give some idea about what may be happening behind closed doors (if previous campaigns/elections are any indication), but this is about public pressure. This time, Congressman Adam Schiff’s turn is to “demand action” from companies behind social media. Meta (Instagram separately), X, Google (and YouTube separately), TikTok, Snapchat, YouTube, and Microsoft are the recipients of a letter Schiff signed along with seven fellow members of the House of Representatives (four of them, like Schiff, California Democrats). We obtained a copy of the letter for you here. The demand is this: disclose what plans these companies with the most influence and reach in the online space have to counter what the congressman and his colleagues consider to be the spread of mis- and dis- information – but also, “potential incitement of violence on their platforms in the lead-up to the 2024 elections.” Schiff’s letter doesn’t clarify if (repeated) attempts to assassinate a candidate count as “incitement of violence,” or really, what kind of violence he has in mind – but he does mention “attacks on our democracy.” Yet, the companies are supposed to let him know what they are doing to stop it. Along the way, the assertion is made that they have all “rolled back” their previous election policies. “This almost universal reversion on the issue of combating election mis- and disinformation is incredibly troubling,” the letter reads. Meta, Google, X, etc. are also asked, among other things, “Will your company commit to sharing data and metrics on the effectiveness of your enforcement systems in relation to US elections and political speech?” On the other side of this political maelstrom, Republicans – notably the House Judiciary Committee – continue trying to shed light on how the White House and government agencies pressured and then colluded with major social platforms during previous campaigns and elections, all in the name of supposedly combating “misinformation.” This has produced some visible, public results – like Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg writing to the committee to apologize for succumbing to that pressure on issues like Covid and the Hunter Biden laptop story suppression. The revelations that the government and Big Tech colluded to usher in unprecedented levels of censorship in the past continues to be tested in the courts as well. If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The post Rep. Adam Schiff and Other Democrats Demand Social Media Companies Censor “Misinformation” and “Disinformation” This Month appeared first on Reclaim The Net.

Focus Groups: Vance Won the Debate And a Few Converts. What About the Media?

It's Been a Bad News Week for Lithium Ion Batteries

Media Research Center founder and president Brent Bozell appeared for a post-debate segment on Varney & Co. on the Fox Business Network on Wednesday morning. Varney began by displaying the most recent NewsBusters study showing that the CBS Evening News was 89 percent positive for Democrat Tim Walz and 89 percent negative for Republican J.D. Vance.  He asked Bozell if moderators Norah O'Donnell and Margaret Brennan were fair. Bozell replied "shocker," they were not. He offered the MRC count of the moderator questions. There were 19 CBS questions from the left-wing agenda and only two from the right (on restraining deficits). There were 15 challenging questions to Vance, and only seven to Walz. CBS forced follow-ups on Vance on ten occasions, but Walz only drew two. "That tells the story," Varney said.  Varney also asked about reports that Donald Trump refused an interview request from 60 Minutes, showing video of CBS reporter Lesley Stahl in 2020 that you couldn't prove anything was corrupt in the Hunter Biden laptop documents. Bozell said Trump should refuse to do interviews with CBS.  Also on Wednesday morning, Bozell shared the MRC research with Larry O'Connor on WMAL radio in Washington.   

Google didn’t get the memo. At the Tuesday night debate, J.D. Vance said that the real  “threat to democracy is censorship, but an MRC Free Speech America study performed this morning found that Google’s priority is promoting 100 percent leftist news, not preserving American freedoms. The morning after the debate, MRC Free Speech America conducted a search in the Google News tab for “jd vance.” MRC analysis revealed that 100 percent of the results came from outlets with a leftist political bias. Google News tab did not display a single article from an outlet that did not have a predominantly leftist political bias This overt leftist bias is especially concerning considering that according to a November 2023 Pew Research survey, a rising number of American adults receive their news from search. The study found that 15 percent of U.S. adults prefer to get their news from search engines which is up from 13 percent in 2022 and 11 percent in 2021. The leftist news outlets Google News tab provided in its results for “jd vance,” included articles from the likes of The New York Times, BBC, CNN, TODAY, CBS News, USA Today, NBC News, The Hill, The Washington Post and Politico. One of the most slanted headlines was: “The Moment When Vance Dodged a Question but Said Plenty” published by The Times. The Post also piled on with an opinion piece headlined “At debate, Vance whines: You weren’t supposed to fact check me!” In a follow-up search for “tim walz,” Google wasn’t much better. MRC analysis found that 90 percent of the results came from leftist outlets. Just one of the results came from America’s third most-viewed online news site, according to Statista, Fox News Digital. The Google News tab results for “tim walz” included articles from The Guardian, BBC, CNN, The Post, Fox News, USA Today, NPR, CBS News, Slate and The Times. The NPR article was actually about Vance; The Times piece finally acknowledged that Walz was not in Hong Kong during the Tiananmen Square massacre; but the majority of outlets took a piecemeal approach, asking who won the debate and ignoring what even numerous leftist reports have declared was a clear victory for J.D. Vance. Slate even went to the pain of framing a piece on why Walz lost instead of how Vance won in an article with the headline: “The Brutal Tim Walz Tactical Error that Cost him the Debate.” When MRC researchers conducted the same Google News tab searches hours prior to the debate, Google produced similarly biased results. MRC analysis revealed 90 percent of the search results in both searches were from left-leaning news outlets. Each set of results included only one article from Fox News Digital. Although Fox News pieces appeared first and fourth in the Google News tab results, it was the only news outlet that the platform produced that does not consistently demonstrate a leftist political bias. The continued bias from anti-free speech Google comes after the search giant dismissed an MRC study further uncovering the search engine’s bias favoring the left in searches for “donald trump presidential race 2024” and “kamala harris presidential race 2024.” Researchers caught the company promoting an avalanche of left-leaning news above the two presidential candidate’s websites. Google told Fox News that MRC’s study was based on a “single rare search term on a single day several weeks ago.” The Big Tech company also insisted in comments to CNBC that it “absolutely” does not manipulate results to favor candidates. By now it should be clear, this is not an isolated incident. This is the 21st election-related Google study MRC has conducted, and each study has yielded similar results. For example, an October 1 study showed that when MRC Free Speech America researchers searched for “kamala harris presidential race 2024,” no U.S.-based news outlet rated “lean right” or “right” by media ratings firm AllSides appeared until Google placed Fox News as the fifth result on the 13th page of results. Similarly, in a search for “donald trump presidential campaign websites” Google buried the first U.S.-based “lean right” result, a New York Post article, as the third result on the 14th page. Last week, when MRC Free Speech America researchers conducted the same two searches, again not a single “right” or “right-leaning” outlet appeared on the first page of Google’s search results. Researchers saw this same pattern the day after the second Trump assassination attempt, and during the 2024 National March for Life. MRC even compiled an expose on the 41 times Google or its executives helped push their favored Democrat candidates across the finish line. This meta-analysis included studies conducted by MRC as well as studies by research psychologist Dr. Robert Epstein and many others who have come to a similar conclusion–that Google uses search results to interfere in elections, and has been doing so for years  Methodology: For this report, MRC Free Speech America analyzed the Oct. 1 and Oct. 2 Google News results of the innocuous words “jd vance” and “tim walz.”  MRC Free Speech America created an algorithm to automate this process in a clean environment. A “clean environment” allows for organic search to populate results without the influence of prior search history and tracking cookies. Conservatives are under attack. Contact your representatives and demand that Big Tech be held to account to mirror the First Amendment while providing transparency, clarity on hate speech and equal footing for conservatives. If you have been censored, contact us using CensorTrack’s contact form, and help us hold Big Tech accountable.

Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz appeared to use the Bible on Tuesday to support Democrats' agenda on the border crisis.While discussing the immigration crisis, Walz repeatedly asserted that the immigration bill Democrats sought to pass earlier this year — but twice failed to pass — would solve immigration problems. There is, of course, no evidence to support that, and President Joe Biden doesn't need, and never needed, new laws to enforce existing immigration law.Where Walz seemed enthusiastic to interject his faith into a discussion about immigration policy, any citation of that faith was noticeably absent when Walz defended radical pro-abortion policiesAfter claiming that bill adheres to "American principles," Walz interjected a line about his faith."I don't talk about my faith a lot, but Matthew 25:40 talks about, 'To the least amongst us, you do unto me.' I think that's true of most Americans. They simply want order to it. This bill does it. It's funded, it's supported by the people who do it, and it lets us keep our dignity about how we treat other people," he said.It appears, then, that Walz was suggesting that Americans — and especially Christians — have a religious, moral, and ethical duty to pass legislation that Democrats want.The only Christ-like solution, Walz seemed to suggest, is the one Democrats demand.But there are two significant issues with Walz's biblical argument.First, the passage from which Walz cited — Matthew 25:31-46 — has nothing to do with the moral or ethical implications of a nation-state's immigration policy. Rather, Matthew 25:31-46 tells an apocalyptic vision of Christ's final judgment, containing a teaching with significant moral and ethical implications for Christians.As New Testament scholar R.T. France wrote in his commentary on the Gospel of Matthew: For the striking feature of this judgement scene is that both sheep and goats claim that they did not know that their actions were directed toward Jesus. Each is as surprised as the other to find their actions interpreted in that light. They have helped, or failed to help, not a Jesus recognized in his representatives, but a Jesus incognito.It is dishonest, therefore, to invoke Jesus' teaching to imply that Americans are bound by a Christian obligation to pass legislation that Democrats want. Christians, indeed, have a duty to serve the poor and downtrodden, and they're doing that. Christians are responsible for creating and operating most of the charitable infrastructure invented over the last 2,000 years. Christian organizations, moreover, help provide for the needs of immigrants every day. But that duty to love and serve is not a duty to pass Democrats' bills.Second, where Walz seemed enthusiastic to interject his faith into a discussion about immigration policy, any citation of that faith was noticeably absent when Walz defended radical pro-abortion policies. The question, then, is this: Are unborn children among the "least" of us? Perhaps Jesus answered that question for us when he declared, according to Matthew 18:5, that "whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me."Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!