EUGENICS: Iceland Eliminates People with Down Syndrome.

One might be forgiven for assuming that Iceland has developed an innovative treatment for the chromosomal disorder. It turns out Iceland’s solution is much simpler, and much more sinister: using prenatal testing and abortion to systematically exterminate children with Down syndrome. This isn’t progress; it’s eugenics.

Prenatal testing is optional in Iceland, but the government mandates that doctors notify women of that option. About 85 percent of expectant mothers undergo the test, and close to 100 percent of those women choose to abort if their child is diagnosed with Down syndrome. Just two children with Down syndrome are born in Iceland each year, often as the result of faulty testing.

The CBS article does little to accord this subject the moral gravity it deserves. “Other countries aren’t lagging too far behind in Down syndrome termination rates,” the authors note casually. CBS News’s tweet promoting the story read simply: “Iceland is on pace to virtually eliminate Down syndrome through abortion.”

But Iceland isn’t “eliminating Down syndrome” at all. It’s eliminating people.

You might be reminded of this quote from doomsday cultist Paul Ehrlich:

I have understood the population explosion intellectually for a long time. I came to understand it emotionally one stinking hot night in Delhi a couple of years ago… The temperature was well over 100, and the air was a haze of dust and smoke. The streets seemed alive with people. People eating, people washing, people sleeping. People visiting, arguing, and screaming. People thrusting their hands through the taxi window, begging. People defecating and urinating. People clinging to buses. People herding animals. People, people, people, people.

People — they’re the worst, aren’t they?

ALL THE VIEWS THAT’S FIT TO SUPPRESS: The A.C.L.U. Needs to Rethink Free Speech.

THE SCORPION STINGS THE FROG, EVERY TIME: Washington Post Reporter Smears Iraq War Vets as Potential Extremists. “This was after she shilled for Hezbollah terrorists.”

PUTIN AND UKRAINE WAR VETS: It’s complicated. “Gore, But No Glory For Russia’s Ukraine War ‘Veterans’.”

These Russian vets didn’t return to a hero’s welcome. Most bear permanent scars, both physically and mentally, and with no veterans benefits and few jobs available they struggle to make ends meet. Moreover, infighting among different groups of them over ideology, strategy, and legacy has kept them from uniting as a more influential voice.

They include the Union of Volunteers of Donbas, a group headed by Aleksandr Borodai, the former leader of the self-proclaimed “Donetsk People’s Republic.” The group is closely tied to the Kremlin through Vladislav Surkov, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s point man on the conflict, and seen by some volunteers as being elitist. RFE/RL spoke with some members of the group in a village outside Kaluga, where they were participating in war games on July 30.

Another is the Public Movement of Novorossia, an organization headed by Igor “Strelkov” Girkin, a Russian who commanded separatist forces in the first months of the war but is viewed by many volunteers as a traitor for retreating and relinquishing territory in Ukraine to Kyiv. Girkin, who was eventually recalled to Moscow by the Kremlin, didn’t respond to RFE/RL’s request for an interview.

Kamayev does what he can to help by running Veterans of Novorossia, a St. Petersburg-based NGO whose name (“New Russia”) draws on an imperial-era term denoting large parts of today’s southern and eastern Ukraine. His deputy, 41-year-old Denis Shchinkorenko, fought in arguably the bloodiest action of the Ukrainian war — the battle for Ilovaysk.

They assist Russian volunteers who fight or fought in eastern Ukraine, many of whom are frustrated and disappointed with the uncertainty of their future, Kamayev says.

They’re paying the price for Russia’s dependence on oil income, and for Putin’s reliance on plausible deniability in Ukraine.

RETIRED MARINE CORPORAL JONATHAN LAFORCE: America Already Has A Single-Payer System, And It’s Killing Veterans Like Me.

In addition to medical care, the VA also provides compensation and pension for those who are injured in service. You go in, speak with a veteran services’ officer, present your medical records, file for the injuries (while continuing to lack treatment), and then you wait.

Why wait? What are we waiting for? Good question. First, the electronic paperwork has to move through a labyrinthian process of review, after which you get a letter telling you the VA has now received the paperwork you filed a month or more prior and somebody will be getting in touch with you to determine what’s next. A couple months will pass (if you’re lucky), after which you will receive a phone call telling you that appointments have been scheduled for examination. You must make those appointments or you cannot receive a rating.

Notice what’s missing? If you said a human being to check if this exam is compatible with your schedule, you’d be correct. The appointments are filed without any input or knowledge on your part. You’ve got work and can’t make it? Tough luck, Joe. You’re a single parent and don’t have anybody to watch your kids so you can make your appointment? Too bad. Guess you’ll have to do without.

Nor can you go into a local doctor with forms for them to fill out and mail to the VA.

Read the whole thing.

THIS IS NOT NEWS TO INSTAPUNDIT READERS: Russia’s new Su-57 ‘stealth’ fighter already looks like a disappointment.

Russia first flew the Su-57 in 2010, demonstrating that it would enter the race towards fifth-generation aircraft after the US revolutionized aerial combat with the F-22, and later the F-35.

But in the years since, the Su-57 has failed to present a seriously viable future for Russian military aviation. Russia already fields some of the most maneuverable planes on earth. It has serious firepower in terms of missiles and bombs, and long-distance bombers and fighters. But what Russia doesn’t have is a stealth jet of any kind.

While Russian media calls the Su-57 an “aerial ghost,” a senior scientist working on stealth aircraft for the US called it a “dirty aircraft,” with many glaring flaws that would light up radars scanning for the plane.

Additionally, two of the plane’s most fearsome weapons, the Kh-35UEm a subsonic, anti-ship cruise missile, and the nuclear-capable BrahMos-A supersonic cruise missile, can’t fit in the internal weapons bay and must hang from the wings, as the Diplomat’s Franz-Stefan Gady reports.

Since a stealth plane needs every single angle of the jet to perfectly contour to baffle radars, hanging weapons off the wings absolutely kills stealth.

The United States has produced an entire range of stealth jets — attack, air superiority, multirole, and heavy bomber — since the F-117 first flew more than 35 years ago. Our adversaries have been trying, and failing, to play catch-up ever since.

WASHINGTON, JACKSON, AND… LENIN? Find out what they all have in common in Liz Sheld’s morning brief.

SHEP SMITH: We couldn’t find a Republican willing to come on and defend Trump.

“Our booking team — and they’re good — reached out to Republicans of all stripes across the country today,” Smith said on his show “Shepard Smith Reporting.”

“Let’s be honest, Republicans don’t often really mind coming on Fox News Channel. We couldn’t get anyone to come and defend him here because we thought, in balance, someone should do that,” he continued.

“We worked very hard at it throughout the day, and we were unsuccessful. And of those who are condemning the president’s condemnable actions, I’ve not heard any prominent leaders, former presidents, members of the House or the Senate use his name while speaking in generalities,” he said.

Smith’s show isn’t my cup of tea, but finding GOP surrogates isn’t usually a problem for Fox’s bookers.

CONFIRMATION: Ukraine’s space agency: North Korea engine identical to ours.

This is a followup to Monday’s unconfirmed report that North Korea is getting its missiles from a Ukrainian factory “with historical ties to Russia’s missile program.”

IT’S ON: Anonymous Plans Ops to Take Down Confederate Monuments at 11 Sites Friday.

BLUE STATE BLUES: Michigan City Indoctrinates Kids in Lefty Protest Tactics but Won’t Let a Conservative Farmer Sell His Vegetables.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: How to Convert a Container Ship into a World-Class Superyacht Explorer.

Given the current trends in superyachts, $72 million for a one-of-a-kind vessel seems like kind of a steal. I have noticed though that the interiors tend to look less yacht-y and more Hollywood-idea-of-a-corporate-headquarters.

THE DARK NIGHT OF FASCISM IS ALWAYS DESCENDING IN THE UNITED STATES, AND YET LANDS ONLY ON ANTIFA: Conservative Student Attacked at Charlottesville Vigil in Syracuse for Wearing YAF Cap.

THAT DOESN’T SOUND GOOD: Powerful backdoor found in software used by >100 banks and energy cos.

SPENGLER: The triumph of inequality.

PAULA BOLYARD: Are your views correct enough to shop at my store, comrade?

NO. NEXT QUESTION? The Oscar winners seek to publicly shame Neo Nazis, but have they really thought this through?

THAT’S DIFFERENT BECAUSE SHUT UP:

CRYBULLIES: This Picture Of Mike Pence ‘Triggered’ An Entire Campus Of California Private College Kids.

When McKenzie Deutsch posted a picture of herself posing with the Vice President of the United States at the White House she probably didn’t expect to set off a mass ‘triggering’ event at her ritzy Southern California private institution of higher indoctrination, Scripps College, but that’s exactly what happened.

According to the Daily Caller, Deutsch, a rising junior at Scripps, was an intern this summer in the office of U.S. Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA) and was excited by the opportunity to meet the Vice President. So, after snapping the pic below she posted it to Facebook with the caption: “The places you’ll go, the things you’ll see, the people you’ll meet… What a day it was in DC!”

Of course, it wasn’t long before Deutsch was effectively tried and convicted of a hate crime by her peers at the ritzy, $70,000-per-year college.

Read the whole thing.

21ST CENTURY PROBLEMS: The Slippery Slope of Internet Blacklisting.

JAMES “SPIDER” MARKS: Kim’s Last Chance to Sit at the Grown-up Table.

Interesting article, but I’m not sure Li’l Kim wants a seat at the grownup table more than he wants to keep blackmailing the grownups into providing him with the cash and food he needs to stay in power.

DAN NIDESS: Why a Universal Basic Income Would Be a Calamity.

Finland has been testing a basic income for 2,000 of its unemployed citizens since January, and UBI proponents say the Nordic country is providing an example for the U.S. It will be interesting to see the Finnish results, but Americans shouldn’t read too much into the outcome of a small-scale, early-stage trial. Look instead to Saudi Arabia, which for decades has attempted the wholesale replacement of work with government subsidies. Perhaps more than half of all Saudis are unemployed and not seeking work. They live off payments funded by the country’s oil wealth.

And what has Saudi Arabia’s de facto UBI created? A population deeply resistant to work. Efforts by the Saudi government to diversify the economy have been hamstrung by the difficulty of getting Saudis to trade in their free income willingly for paid labor. Regular citizens lack dignity while the royal family lives a life of luxury. The technocratic elite has embraced relatively liberal values at odds with much of the society’s conservatism. These divisions have made the country a fertile recruiting ground for extremists.

It’s true that Saudi Arabia has a host of other social problems. For one, it is ruled by a hereditary monarchy and a strictly enforced set of religious laws. Yet the widespread economic disempowerment of its population has made it that much harder for the kingdom to address its other issues. Don’t expect the U.S. to fare any better if divided into “productive” and “unproductive” classes.

UBI is being sold in part as a way to enable entrepreneurism, by giving people enough financial security to enable risk-taking. But it seems more likely that risk-takers don’t require security to forge ahead, and that those willing (or even eager) to have their necessities provided for aren’t likely to ever become risk-takers.

MARK RIPPETOE: Media Spreads Dangerous Lie That Bodybuilder Was Killed by Protein Shakes.

WELL, GOOD: Pence downplays possibility of military intervention in Venezuela.

In Venezuela, we are seeing tragedy of tyranny play out before our own eyes in our own hemisphere,” said Pence at the Tuesday press conference. “The U.S. will not stand by as Venezuela crumbles,” he added.

As Macri told reporters he was reassured by the “levels of agreement” between the U.S. and Argentina on how to tackle the issue of Venezuela, he also urged an emphasis on “diplomatic and economic skills” instead of military options. Venezuela has been stricken by violent protests in recent months amid massive inflation, food shortages, and efforts to quell dissent by the country’s socialist government.

“We do not see force as an option to resolve the conflict in Venezuela,” Macri said flatly.

Aid to Venezuela’s neighbors, particularly friend Colombia, would be appropriate in the event of a civil war or other refugee crisis — but I can’t imagine what longterm good would come out of a sticky US occupation of the Bolivarian socialist workers’ paradise.

GUILTY UNTIL PROVEN INNOCENT, IF THEN: Turkey Asks Germany to Extradite Top Coup Suspect.