Chille's lawyer has filed the official appeal pleading on the case he's in jail for.
You can read the new documents here:
Appeal: Nevada (LVMPD) v DeCastro - The Public Documents
The main outline of his appeal is

1. Mr DeCastro's Convictions must be reversed based upon violations of the 1A
   1. First Amendment Protections
   2. Constitutional Right to Film Public Officials
2. Count 1 Must be dismissed because the Nevada Statutes are void due to being unconstitutionally vague and ambiguous
3. DeCastro was denied fair trial because Judge was prejudiced against him and bias in favor of the Police and State
   1. Legal Standard Implied Bias
   2. Legal Standard Actual Bias
   3. Judicial Bias
4. DeCastro Received ineffective assistance of counsel
   1. Failure of Counsel to File a Pretrial motion dismissing Counts 1and due for violations of Freedom of Speech/Press
   2. Failure of Counsel to file pretrial motion dismissing the counts due to them being vague and ambiguous
   3. Failure of his lawyer to submit Chille's video

I think 1 and 4 are going nowhere.
I think the NV Supreme Court already ruled elsewhere that the Obstruction and Resisting Statutes are not unconstitutional
And as far as the judge being biased, I dont think that's going anywhere either.

https://uk.news.yahoo.com/biden-takes-abortion-fight-florida-153425864.html?

Biden trolls Trump over Bible grift as he slams abortion bans that ‘rip away rights of women’

✂✂

Mr Biden also told rallygoers that Mr Trump “should be held accountable” for the end of Roe, describing that Supreme Court ruling as the outcome of a “deal” his predecessor had made with evangelical Christian voters. He warned that the court’s Dobbs ruling could be a harbinger of the end of other rights, including the right to contraception and same-sex marriage, if Mr Trump and his allies get their way.

The president’s appearance in the Sunshine State is just the latest in a series of political trips which campaign officials hope will lay out a stark contrast with Mr Trump as the likely GOP nominee stands trial for allegedly falsifying business records to cover up a scheme to influence the outcome of the 2016 election. They believe Mr Trump’s record on abortion will come back to haunt the ex-president as he runs to reclaim the White House.
✂✂
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/04/23/senate-advances-aid-for-israel-ukraine-taiwan-tiktok-bill.html

KEY POINTS
A package to provide aid to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan passed a key test vote in the Senate, signaling it has the support it needs for final approval.
The legislation also includes a measure to force Chinese company ByteDance to sell TikTok or else face a national ban of the app in the U.S.
If the Senate passes the package in its final vote, the legislation heads to President Joe Biden’s desk to be signed into law.

✂✂

If the Senate officially passes the legislation in the final vote, it would then go to President Joe Biden, who already said he would sign it into law after the House passed the package as four separate bills on Saturday.
The funding includes roughly $60 billion for Ukraine aid, $26 billion for Israel and $8 billion for Taiwan and Indo-Pacific security.
Spending-wise, the legislation is similar to the $95 billion foreign aid bill passed by the Senate in February, which has been effectively shelved in the House in the weeks since.

https://www.npr.org/2024/04/23/1246682918/senate-appears-set-to-approving-95-billion-in-foreign-aid?utm_medium=mastodon&utm_source=dlvr.it

Senate appears set to approving $95 billion in foreign aid

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/national-enquirer-ted-cruz-father-rafael-lee-harvey-oswald-rcna149027

The Texas senator told NBC News that he's "not interested in revisiting ancient history."
David Pecker, the former publisher of the National Enquirer, testified at Donald Trump's trial Tuesday that the tabloid completely manufactured a negative story in 2016 about the father of Sen. Ted Cruz, of Texas, who was then Trump's rival for the GOP presidential nomination.
The paper had published a photo allegedly showing Cruz's father, Rafael Cruz, with Lee Harvey Oswald handing out pro-Fidel Castro pamphlets in New Orleans in 1963, not long before Oswald assassinated President John F. Kennedy.
Trump repeatedly referred to the story on the campaign trail and in interviews.

https://www.npr.org/2024/04/23/1246645808/truth-social-shares-windfall-trump-media-technology-group

Former President Trump is set to get $1.2 billion richer — at least on paper.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/moderate-republicans-primary-challenges-politics-desk-rcna149036

Moderate Republicans prepare to fend off challenges from the right: From the Politics Desk
Plus, how high voter turnout could benefit Republicans this fall and the latest developments from the Trump trial.

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As online discourse has significantly increased with inflammatory statements this past week with bad actors trying to pin people against each other across all media. I would like to clear up a bit about aid and recent US State Department statements surrounding Israel's actions and compliance with International Law.
This is talking about the upcoming Congressional review on May 8^th pertaining to the NSM-20 which was introduced in February. The credible high-level assurances are not only from Israel Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, but also from Ambassador Jack Lew.
I am glad the State Department are capable, and this is the right statement to make for US interests. The actual statement quoted is from a press briefing on the 26^th where further on it is clarified that there has been no conclusion to the validity of that claim. Which makes sense considering the Congressional review is on the 8^th of May.
There are already a group of 17 senators that have sent a letter to Blinken, the DoD, & DNI. As well as the main driver for the NSM-20, Sen Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), writing a public press release. A more extensive list of concerns some Senators have can be found in Sen Van Hollen's CSIS Interview. A much more stern response was written by Congressman Joaquin Castro (TX-20) and 5 other Congressmen to President Biden & in a press release.
So to be clear, this is not the US completely absolving conduct. But continuing to support an ally, as CHIRG review, & a Congressional review have not been assessed. Not to mention the fact that NSM-18 already gives Biden the power to do any changes NSM-20 would amount to. This is a check by Congress, supported by Biden in February. Thanks to Arms Export Control Act (22 U.S.C. 2751, et seq.), It is highly likely the US is already aware of most of what has been occurring.
This was a strong signal that something was happening that the US did not like. For instance like how President Biden said

"The President welcomed the decision from the Government of Israel to permit the shipment of flour for the Palestinian people directly through Ashdod port while our teams separately work on options for more direct maritime delivery of assistance into Gaza."

to Netanyahu on January 19^th before the administration started to make this issue of Smotrich blocking flour public through private channels on February 13^th , which Smotrich admitted to on the 14^th . Or when Blinken signaled on March 22^nd about how the US felt about Smotrich seizing 800 hectares of land from the West Bank (Maale Adumim) to derail negotiations (again). Which contributed to the decision for the recent Abstain vote in the UN Security Council resolution 2728 for a cease fire.
Since there has been pretty significant inflammatory propaganda being spread on both sides (including on this sub this last week), there are a few other things:

• The UN resolution that the US abstained from is non-binding (1, 2, 3)
  
• The US does not expect Israel to initiate a cease fire without the return of the hostages.
  
• The more important reason for the Abstain was to force Russia & China's hand to make a stance.
  
• Netanyahu knew about the State Department's decision prior to the vote (and is using it to divide Israeli sentiment against the US for some reason). Same with Gvir (Unfortunate[kinda weird]) & Smotrich (Whoopsies) for some reason.
  
• The US is still behind Israel despite what is being introduced into public discourse about the US abandoning Israel. Blinken only warned him of the reality of what the US faced when we had to call fried julienned potatoes "Freedom Fries".
  
• The US could implement the Leahy Law at any point, but has chosen not to towards Israel since it's permanent addition in 2008.
  
• If NSM-20 were to find inconsistencies, theoretically it would only restrict offensive military funding. Only $4 billion of the recent $14 billion aid package is for Israeli armaments or otherwise on an as needed basis. Israel is the 9^th ranked arms exporter in the world.
  
• Of the total US aid given to Israel, the approved $14 billion this year allocates $5.2 billion to the Iron Dome & Iron Beam programs, $9.2 billion to humanitarian needs (including ~$1.7 billion to Palestinian humanitarian needs so Israel cannot claim they are being forced to provide for civilians who are not Israeli citizens). This goes far beyond the normal $3.8 billion average aid given.
  
• Avi posted a decent (for the most part) graph on the aid situation. It falls in line with the "never implemented" Red-Line COGAT papers (English) designating ~118 trucks/day as the starvation level for 2012, to where aid could be legally intentionally restricted. Still need to get up to ~145 trucks/day for 4 weeks to reverse acute malnutrition.
  
• Israeli aid organizations have petitioned the Israeli Supreme Court to order an increase in aid allowed in and reducing dual-use items listed in the GRM.
  
• As the worst impacted pockets are in the North, the new Gate/Crossing 96 is keeping distribution in the North under Israeli controlled hands.
  
• Israel has committed to the creation of a "security bubble" for the JLOT port.
  
• Thanks to Herzi Halevi, Gallant, & others the MoD Engineering and Construction Department/IDF have completed the East-West Road splitting Gaza, are destroying the largest tunnels in the North, are clearing the proposed border buffer, and are aiming to repaiconstruct additional "Gates" pending Crossing 96 pilot program success.
  
• They have designated (unsecured) humanitarian zones & created pop-up hospitals.
  
• Shin Bet has shut out Gvir entirely due to (potentially treasonous) leaking of security information in a time of war.
  
• The US has identified and applied sanctions to terror fundraisers.
  

If the pockets of famine turn into something worse, I am fairly confident the US already knows why. Outside of Shin Bet threatening a US citizen for doxing Netanyahu's son, the IDF and good actors in Israel have been working with the US to ensure international (humanitarian) law is observed. COGAT & the CLA are working with the US to ensure the risk of famine is drastically lowered.
What happened in February will be investigated, this isn't even skimming the surface. I hope any Israeli's in this sub that are left of the fringe totalitarian side of Likud are able to do something about Netanyahu, Smotrich, & Gvir once the hostages are returned and Hamas is eliminated per our State Department's goals.
People claiming that Israel should remove itself from it's "dependency" on US aid are either ignorant (Free money? 9^th largest arms producer???) of Israel's capabilities (and current economic situation) or are sophists at best (self-determination is cool though if you wanna save my tax dollars). The one's claiming on top of that, that they should sell F-35 tech to China or Russia are on a list now. Anyone that only refers to Palestinians as "Palestinians" with quotes, is a racist and probably part of Otzma Yehudit or Mafdal.
We still chillin' for the most part. Log off if the internet is too much, lots of extra weird activity this past week. Don't let the internet scare you.
I know this probably shouldn't be a Shitpost flair, I only Shitpost even if it's not a Shitpost. Blame mental illness, OK.

"If any of you don't want that money in your district, just let me know." - President Biden jabbing all of the Republicans who voted against the American Infrastructure Law then later took credit for it at home

Weight Of The Union

President Biden’s State of the Union address last night was surprisingly strong and spirited, but featured a few notable missteps.

• After showing up late to his own event because he couldn’t stop chatting with every single person he passed (relatable) President Joseph Robinette Biden (kind of shockingly) came out swinging in his State of the Union address. He was energetic, shouty Joe again, ad-libbing and heckling back at his hecklers (unhinged members of the House GOP) and cracking a bunch of jokes. The bar for his performance last night was relatively low, but he certainly exceeded expectations. Even Republican strategist Sarah Longwell said he was “on his game.” She continued: “He somehow managed to have it be incredibly political, he managed to be going right at Republicans, but was also joking with them, smiling with them,” which Longwell said created a nice “balance” to the speech.
  
• Biden, it seems, blasted a bunch of Red Bulls and went on the offensive, highlighting his administration’s policy achievements and dragging disgraced former president Donald Trump—whom he repeatedly referred to only as “my predecessor”—for his disastrous pandemic response, his chummy relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin, and the trillion-dollar tax cut for the wealthy he signed into law in 2017, among many other things. During the portion of the speech about abortion and the disastrous healthcare landscape the Dobbs decisions has wrought, he yelled at the Supreme Court while they were sitting right in front of him, which was pretty cool. Biden framed reproductive rights as not a women’s issue but a freedom issue, which was smart! He also made great points about his role in economic recovery, and the importance of organized labor, giving a personal shoutout to United Auto Workers president Shawn Fain, who was in attendance.
  
• A few days ago, GOP Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (who spent most of the speech looking like the prissiest little elf in the treehouse) had a meeting with his Republican caucus about “decorum” so as to avert a repeat performance of last year’s MAGA heckling spree. It, uh, didn’t really work. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) came to the address wearing head-to-toe MAGA gear, including the notorious red hat (no hats allowed in the chamber!), and regularly heckled the president throughout his speech. When Biden began discussing immigration, Greene began yelling “Laken Riley!”—a reference to the 22-year-old woman killed while jogging at the University of Georgia last month. An undocumented immigrant has been charged with her murder. Biden then ad-libbed a response, calling Riley “an innocent young woman who was killed by an illegal,” (yikes) and redirected back to criticizing Republicans for stymying the bipartisan border security bill. Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-TX) wrote on X: “There was a lot of good in President Biden’s speech tonight, but his rhetoric about immigrants was incendiary and wrong.”
  

In a speech with many pleasantly-surprising highs, the other notable low came when the president, about two-thirds of the way through the hour, finally addressed the elephant in the room: Israel and Gaza.

• Once the president got to the Israel-Gaza portion of his speech, he appeared less fluid and more prone to stumbling. After reaffirming his support for Israel and recounting the October 7 Hamas terrorist attack, Biden’s diction was also less direct than in other portions of the address, using more passive voice, like when he said: “There’s also a fundamental responsibility, though, to protect innocent civilians in Gaza.” Then there was the non-specific: “Thirty-thousand Palestinians have been killed, most of whom are not Hamas”—which felt a bit like saying: “Mistakes were made.”
  
• I asked President Obama’s former Deputy National Security Advisor and co-host of Pod Save the World Ben Rhodes for his thoughts on the Israel-Gaza portion of Biden’s speech. Here’s what he had to say:
  

“In an otherwise successful SOTU, the section on Gaza felt like a disappointment. First, it was striking that Biden led with Ukraine and put Gaza near the end—it was an indication that the White House has come to realize this issue is a political liability. Second, the language felt discordant from the reality on the ground. We heard Biden talk about Israel’s ‘added burden’ to avoid killing innocent Palestinians because Hamas is among civilians, and that ‘Israel must allow more aid into Gaza.’ But the reality is that the Israeli government has dropped hundreds of (U.S.-supplied) two-thousand-pound bombs on densely-populated areas and restricted the flow of aid to the point that there is a risk of catastrophic famine.
“It has been clear for months that the Israeli government is not listening to these requests from Biden, yet there has been no substantive leverage pursued, for instance through conditioning assistance or supporting a cease-fire at the United Nations. The announcement of a new pier to deliver aid to Gaza in a few weeks was an outgrowth of that reality: the U.S. is still pursuing a policy of unconditional support for the Israeli government’s military operation while trying to mitigate the substantive and political consequences of a policy that isn’t working.”

Despite a few lingering disappointments, most reactions to the president’s State of the Union fell along party lines, and pundits across the political spectrum seemed to agree that Biden did well, or certainly better-than-expected. Our own Tommy Vietor told the What A Day podcast: “What I was expecting him to try to do was do a heavy run-down of all the things he’s accomplished, and then lay out a second term agenda. What he ended up doing was something I didn’t expect, which was go right after Republicans right from the top.” He continued: “I think one of Biden’s problems lately is that…he’s lost some support from Democrats. And I think it will probably help him that those Democrats saw him fighting tonight. They want to see him look like a fighter.”

Look No Further Than Crooked Media

Why is Trump having his best polling ever? In the latest subscriber-exclusive episode of Pollercoaster, Dan Pfieffer talks to Jennifer Palmieri, former top aide to Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, about THOSE new polls that show Trump in the lead over Biden. To better understand if and how much you should panic, join Friends of the Pod for access: https://crooked.com/friends.

Under The Radar

Here’s something deeply unsexy that we probably don’t think about enough: America’s electricity power grid. Data centers, cryptocurrency, artificial intelligence, and clean technology factories around the country are all electricity vacuums, so demand for industrial power is surging to record highs. Northern Virginia apparently needs the equivalent of multiple large nuclear power plants to serve all of the new data centers planned for the region. Texas—where electricity shortages are commonplace in the high heat of the summer—faces the same issue. AI is a major factor in the skyrocketing demand for electricity, leading tech firms like Amazon, Apple, Google, Meta, and Microsoft to look for new data centers. The nation’s aging power grid is showing signs of strain, so utilities and regulators are scrambling for credible plans to expand it. Millions of electric cars and energy-efficient household appliances will require electricity to meet state and federal climate goals. Manufacturers of clean technology like solar panels and electric car batteries will require massive amounts of power. Utility projections for the amount of power they will need over the next five years have doubled, and are expected to keep growing according to new findings by the research firm Grid Strategies. These will be necessary transitions as we divest from fossil fuels. But America also needs to innovate on where this electricity will come from.

What Else?

The Senate passed a $460 billion bill to avert a partial government shutdown on Friday, sending it to President Biden for signature.
Donald Trump tightened his grip over the Republican Party on Friday, when his hand-picked candidate, Michael Whatley, and his literal daughter-in-law, Laura Trump, took over as chair and co-chair, respectively, of the Republican National Committee, replacing Ronna McDaniel.
The United Kingdom, the European Union, and the United Arab Emirates announced they would join the United States in helping to establish a coastal corridor to Gaza, as Israel continues to limit the supplies allowed in by land according to international humanitarian aid agencies.
At least five people were killed by airdropped aid that fell on them in Gaza after parachutes on the packages failed to deploy.
The ex-president of Honduras Orlando Hernández was found guilty of working with drug traffickers including El Chapo on Friday.
American lawmakers are coordinating their most-serious attempt to effectively ban TikTok in the United States, or separate the social media/video app from its Chinese owner. The app quickly rolled out notifications urging its 170 million American users to call their representatives and complain about the bill, which it allowed them to do with just a few clicks. The calls quickly overwhelmed congressional phone lines. Scary stuff!
The American Embassy in Moscow said on Friday it was monitoring reports of “imminent” plans by extremists to target large gatherings in the Russian capital.
Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-AZ) has ruled out a third-party presidential bid, probably after coming to the accurate conclusion that nobody likes her.
Sen. Katie Boyd Britt (R-AL) gave the GOP Response to the State of the Union address last night and it was so deranged that even the MAGA faithful refused to defend it.

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Light At The End Of The Email

It’s International Women’s Day! As always, thanks for sparing a whole 24 hours of your time for us and make sure to Venmo every woman you know.
Speaking of Paying Women, Trump posted a $92 million bond in New York to cover the money he owes writer E. Jean Carroll for defamation while he appeals the jury’s verdict.
President Biden is taking his State of the Union act on the road, selling it in-person with campaign stops across America and launching $30 million in new ad buys.

Enjoy

Mason Mennenga on Twitter: "evangelicals: "you should come to my church, we have cool music and a really positive and uplifting message"; catholics:"

Note: this post will use partisan terms such as liberal and conservative. I'm casting no judgment on either movement in doing so.
Earlier this month, a scientific paper that raised concerns about the safety of the abortion pill mifepristone was retracted by its publisher. That paper had been cited favorably by Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk three times in his order issuing a nationwide injunction against the abortion pill. Most of the authors on the paper worked for the Charlotte Lozier Institute, the research arm of anti-abortion lobbying group Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America. One of the original peer reviewers had also worked for the Lozier Institute. The paper was retracted after expert reviewers found that the studies within it demonstrated a lack of scientific rigor that invalidates or renders unreliable the authors' conclusions.
In June 2022, the Supreme Court issued a 5-4 decision which nearly completely overturned 200 years of precedent on tribal law. Prior to the decision in Oklahoma v. Castro-Huerta, the State of Oklahoma spent millions of dollars in advertising to create a perception of rampant crime, and thus the necessity of State intervention in tribal sovereignty.. In arguments before the Supreme Court, Oklahoma stated that it had lost jurisdiction over 18,000 cases per year since the McGirt decision that was partially overruled. Those numbers are dubious at best, and inaccurate and misleading at worst..
In Kennedy v. Bremerton, the Supreme Court took the rare procedural step of deciding a factual issue. The Court's decision took for granted that Kennedy was fired for merely quiet prayer, despite actual photographic evidence that was included in the dissent showing his prayers being extremely public, and loud. The Court, in granting summary judgment to Kennedy, gave him the benefit of every factual inference (which, to be clear, is the exact opposite of what you're supposed to do on a motion for summary judgment).
This is all against a backdrop of a growing influence industry surrounding the court. Those in the know donate to influence peddlers, and are rewarded with introductions to the justices, shared vacations, private dinners, etc. Most notably this has cast a shadow on Thomas and Alito, but none of the justices are necessarily free of suspicion. The Federalist Society is perhaps the largest and most pervasive influence network: providing suggestions for nominations for the Supreme Court, but also providing numerous connections at all levels of the legal industry. Leonard Leo, on the back of the Federalist Society network he helped create, now wields a billionaire's fortune in his efforts to reshape the Court and support conservative amici. The Federalist Society is adamant that they take no position on issues, but the money and connections directed by the Federalist Society certainly does tend to support very specific positions. But influence is a bipartisan thing. While nothing on the liberal side of politics in this country approaches the centralization and power of the Federalist Society, there are decentralized liberal groups aiming to influence the Courts.
All of that to say: the industry of court influence is only growing. It operates on many levels, from amici briefs being paid for, to publicity campaigns, to networking organizations. And it is growing, because the power of the Courts is growing.
Chevron was originally decided after a realization in conservative thought that federal courts had too much power to stymie Ronald Reagan's agenda. It was a power grab. The cases where Chevron will be overturned are nothing more than another power grab: Liberals have begun to wield the administrative power that Chevron created, and Conservatives, who have spent the last few decades taking over the Court system, have decided that the Court system should have more power vs. the Administrative state, which is perceived as favoring liberal causes.
As the Court system consolidates power, the influence industry around it will continue to gain in power as well. As the court shifts doctrine away from questions of law, and more towards questions of expertise, or subjective tests like the Major Questions Doctrine, Judges will increasingly come to rely upon amicus briefs and advice by influence networks to shape their perception. Federal judges are overworked as it is. They do not have the ability to be experts on the Law, History, and any scientific questions presented to them. They will necessarily rely on evidence presented to them. And as demonstrated at the beginning of this post, not all evidence is equal, or presented in good faith, free of bias.
There's not much of a point to this post. But the story about studies being retracted in the milfeprestone case didn't get a lot of traction, and I wanted to highlight it while placing it in the larger context I perceive. I do think it highlights some potential issues with shifting power back to the courts by modifying or undoing Chevron deference. The Administrative State is, in my view, slightly less vulnerable to being mislead by the growing industry of influence. I believe they are less vulnerable by virtue of being subject to removal for doing a bad job; by virtue of being larger organizations with procedures in place for studying problems and evaluating issues, and by virtue of being subject to changing with elections every cycle.

U.S. and Haitian authorities agree that a pastor’s ambition to rule Haiti three years ago led to the shocking assassination of the country’s president, Jovenel Moïse. But the two nations’ investigations diverge on whether Haitian-American minister Christian Emmanuel Sanon played a leading or supporting role in the slaying.
Sanon, arrested in Haiti after Moïse’s death on July 7, 2021, is being held in a federal lock-up in Miami. He’s accused in Haiti of collaborating with Miami-area security contractors and recruiting former Colombian soldiers to force Moïse from power using an illegal arrest warrant so Sanon could replace him. In the U.S. Sanon, 65, is charged with violating export laws by smuggling bullet-proof vests for the Colombian commandos before the killing and plotting a “military expedition against a friendly nation,” a violation of the U.S. Neutrality Act. He faces a maximum sentence of 10 years.
Those offenses contrast sharply with the more serious accusation of conspiring to kill Haiti’s president, a charge other defendants in Miami face that carries a possible life sentence.
In the Haiti investigation Sanon is viewed as the catalyst for the assassination, and he’s at the top of the list of a dozen suspects described as “authors” of the plot. Haitian authorities agreed a year ago to extradite Sanon to the U.S. , where he was charged with the less serious smuggling and Neutrality Act offenses. While Sanon awaits trial in Miami and one of his fellow Haitian Americans charged in the case, Joseph Vincent, was sentenced Friday to life in prison after pleading guilty to the murder conspiracy, the slow-moving Haitian inquiry is finally reaching its conclusion.
After two-and-a-half years, Haiti Investigative Judge Walther Wesser Voltaire is preparing to issue formal charges and has shared some of his findings with Port-au-Prince prosecutor Edler Guillaume. A leaked 31-page document penned by Guillaume shows that Haiti’s investigation overlaps to some extent with the U.S. case. Guillaume is recommending that seven suspects charged in Miami also be charged in Haiti.
SIMILARITIES AND DIFFERENCES
But there are major differences in the investigations. Haitian authorities are targeting a much broader range of suspects within their own country, including Sanon and others who were personally and politically close to the slain president. Evidence discovered after Sanon’s arrest at his Port-au-Prince home in the days following the assassination makes it “appear that he is indeed the main author of the crime perpetrated against President Jovenel Moïse,” Guillaume wrote in his report for the judge.
Guillaume is recommending formal charges against about 70 people. Among them: the president’s widow, Martine Moïse, who was wounded during the fatal shooting of her husband; his former prime minister, Claude Joseph, and former national police chief Léon Charles. While the members of Moïse’s inner circle are accused of complicity based on testimony that they were aware of a plan to arrest the president, a dozen others, including Sanon, are looking at charges of murder, attempted murder, illegal detention and illegal possession of firearms and ammunition, along with criminal association and waging a conspiracy against the security of the state.
Martine Moïse, the subject of an arrest warrant in Haiti after she refused Voltaire’s invitation to appear before him, has blamed others for her husband’s murder, while Charles and Joseph have previously denied any involvement.
DUBIOUS CLAIMS OF U.S. INVOLVEMENT
Ultimately, it is up to Voltaire to decide who will be formally charged in Haiti’s case. But interviews with people familiar with his inquiry suggest that unlike federal authorities in Miami, Voltaire is focusing heavily on Sanon, a pastor and physician in Haiti who has also lived in Florida. The judge views Sanon as a major player in the deadly plot, citing his meetings with pastors and politicians in Port-au-Prince as well as security contractors and financial backers in South Florida. Voltaire, who highlights Sanon’s ambition to become Haiti’s president, also cites his contacts with key suspects either personally or through emissaries. Among the suspects who fingered Sanon as the head of the plot: former Haitian government official Joseph Félix Badio, who was arrested in October and is in custody in Haiti, and James Solages, a Haitian American who was extradited from Haiti and is awaiting trial in the Miami case. Suspects in the assassination of Haiti’s President Jovenel Moïse, among them Haitian-American citizens James Solages, left, and Joseph Vincent, second left, are shown to the media at the General Direction of the police in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Thursday, July 8, 2021.
Moïse was assassinated in an attack on his private residence early Wednesday. Solages told Haitian authorities that in March 2021 Sanon called asking for his help and promised him a payment of $80,000, allegedly to serve as an interpreter. Solages testified that Sanon informed him that he had been chosen by the U.S. State Department to lead a presidential transition in Haiti — a claim that was untrue.
In his report, the Haitian prosecutor mentioned the promised payment to Solages, and said Sanon himself admitted to recruiting “national and international attackers,” and had weapons and ammunition in the house where he was staying in Haiti. “In view of the evidence of the facts put forward, it can be deduced that the accused Christian Emmanuel Sanon is one of the main perpetrators of this villainous crime,” Guillaume concluded.
At the time, Moïse was ruling by decree and facing growing opposition protests. Despite the political climate, there was no effort by the U.S. government to remove him from office. In February 2021 the Biden administration publicly supported Moïse’s claims that his presidential term didn’t end for another year. Still, the suspects used the cover of official U.S. support to pull off the killing, which initially was planned as an arrest or kidnapping of the president. An illegal 2019 Haiti warrant issued by a judge was used to recruit the Colombians and to lead people to believe Moïse was wanted by U.S. authorities. When the assault was finally carried out, Solages yelled out, “DEA, U.S. Army operation.” ‘
Zeljka Bozanic, Sanon’s Miami attorney, said although she’s unfamiliar with the Haiti investigation, he was not the mastermind of the conspiracy to kill Moïse. “Whatever case they’re trying to put together in Haiti seems to be different from the case in Miami,” she told the Miami Herald. “He is not charged with being the mastermind in the Miami case. It is clear he was not the mastermind.” During a September detention hearing for Sanon in Miami federal court, prosecutor Monica Castro and FBI Special Agent Mike Ferlazzo portrayed the married father of three as a politically ambitious pastor and physician who plotted with a circle of people in South Florida and Haiti to install himself as president after Moïse’s removal from office. But they said that his involvement in the plot became limited after a botched June 14, 2021, attempt at the Port-au-Prince international airport to arrest Moïse upon his return from a trip to Turkey.
Before being implicated in the July 7, 2021 assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse, a group of Colombian nationals with military experienced spent time in the Dominican Republic before arriving in Haiti for what they said was supposed to be a security gig.
Courtesy of Jose Espinosa After the fiasco, U.S. prosecutors said, Sanon’s co-conspirators abandoned him as the president’s replacement, partly because he could not legally qualify because of his dual citizenship in Haiti and the United States. Instead, the main co-conspirators opted to replace Sanon with a justice on Haiti’s Supreme Court who was on board with the plot to kill him, according to Castro and Ferlazzo.
At that point, despite his continuing ambitions to be Haiti’s next president, Sanon was apparently unaware of the main group’s strategic shift to kill Moïse instead of arresting him, Castro and Ferlazzo said during the detention hearing in the Miami case.
Ferlazzo was asked whether Sanon was present at key meetings in early July 2021 with the main co-conspirators in Haiti where they solidified the new strategy to kill the president. “If you’re asking specifically if he was a party to the conversations in … July, I do not have evidence of that,” Ferlazzo said. “Wouldn’t you agree with me that the plan was changed in the last minute … to kill the president sometime in — a few days before the killing in July?” Bozanic, asked the agent. “So, yes,” Ferlazzo said, “ultimately the last desperation effort was for a kill mission.” Ferlazzo’s testimony underscores why U.S. prosecutors did not charge Sanon with conspiring to kill Haiti’s leader.
HAITI CASE STYMIED BY UNCOOPERATIVE WITNESSES
At the time of Moïse’s death, Haiti was already struggling to control surging gang violence, kidnappings and a political crisis. Since then, the situation has grown worse. Meanwhile, efforts to investigate the president’s killing have been marred by corruption allegations involving the first of five investigative judges, an attempt by another prosecutor to charge current Prime Minister Ariel Henry on accusations he communicated with a key suspect on the night Moïse was killed, and calls by Martine Moïse for Voltaire to be recused.
In addition to Haiti’s former first lady refusing to be interrogated, the Haitian inquiry has also failed to get the cooperation of other witnesses and jailed suspects, and suffered from a lack of information from U.S. investigators and prosecutors. The federal judge overseeing the case in Miami issued a protective order banning prosecutors and lawyers from sharing evidence with Voltaire, the investigative judge, and other authorities in Haiti. Voltaire has struggled to get Haitian government and banking records for his investigation. Some of the police officers involved in the initial investigation have left Haiti. The obstacles have meant that Voltaire has been forced to rely on testimony from individuals who have lied and contradicted themselves, according to the Haitian prosecutor’s report.
Joseph Félix Badio, accused in the assassination of Haiti President Jovenel Moïse, was arrested Thursday, Oct. 19, 2023 by Haiti National Police at a supermarket in Petionville. He’d been a fugitive since July 7, 2021. Haiti National Police More than 40 people have been arrested in Haiti for Moïse’s murder, including 18 former Colombian soldiers recruited for the deadly assault and numerous Haitian policemen taken into custody for standing down during the attack or doing nothing to prevent it. Among them: the head of the presidential security unit, Dimitri Hérard, and his boss, presidential security coordinator Jean Laguel Civil. So far, no one in the Haitian investigation has been officially charged.
CO-CONSPIRATORS IN MIAMI MAY BE CHARGED IN HAITI
Defense attorneys for several men indicted in Miami who are also expected to be charged as leading participants in the Haiti assassination case said their clients will likely never be turned over to Haitian authorities after pleading guilty and cooperating with U.S. prosecutors. The Haiti investigation is recommending charges against seven of the co-conspirators indicted in Miami. They include Sanon, Solages, Vincent and Haitian businessman Rodolphe Jaar, along with two retired members of the Colombian military, Mario Antonio Palacios Palacios and Germán Rivera Garcia.
All but Sanon and Solages have already pleaded guilty and are cooperating with U.S. authorities. “The Haitian government may charge certain people named in the Miami indictment, but I can’t envision their efforts will bear any fruit,” said attorney Brian Kirlew, who is representing former Haitian senator Joseph Joël John. John has pleaded guilty in the U.S. case to conspiring to kill Moïse and hopes to get his life sentence reduced as a cooperating witness.
Known in Haiti as John Joël Joseph, the former lawmaker is also considered a key player in the Haitian inquiry. However, he is one of three suspects who escaped from the country before authorities could question them. “The reality is, they cannot provide for the security and safety of the defendants in Haiti,” Kirlew said. “The U.S. government also would not turn over the defendants convicted here until they have completed their prison sentences.”
The U.S. investigation has moved quickly. Five of the 11 defendants originally charged in the case have pleaded guilty and face life sentences for conspiring to assassinate Moïse. A sixth defendant, Tampa-area businessman Frederick Bergmann, pleaded guilty Friday to conspiracy charges involving backing a military expedition against a friendly nation and smuggling bullet-proof vests from South Florida to Haiti for the Colombian commandos who executed the deadly assault. The maximum prison term under his plea deal is 10 years. Bergmann, who owned an export business in Tampa that shipped medical supplies to Haiti, coordinated the shipment of ballistic vests with Sanon in the months before the Colombian commandos carried out the assassination.
Bergmann is not even mentioned in the Haitian prosecutor’s report — nor are two principals of a Miami-area company named CTU Security, Antonio “Tony” Intriago and Arcángel Pretel Ortiz, who were hired by Sanon to recruit the former Colombian soldiers to provide security for him in his quest to replace Haiti’s president. Also not mentioned: Broward County businessman Walter Veintemilla, who provided a $175,000 loan to CTU for Sanon’s protection. Those three men have been charged in the Miami case with conspiracy to kill Haiti’s leader.
Miami attorney Walter Norkin, a former federal prosecutor who worked on the U.S. investigation into Moïse’s assassination, said the FBI-led investigation in South Florida is significantly different from the one in Haiti for several reasons. For starters, the countries’ laws apply differently. Second, the U.S. case is narrower than the Haitian case because the FBI and prosecutors have focused on a smaller group of people accused of hatching a scheme from South Florida to carry out a violent coup against Haiti’s president.
By comparison, the Haitian case doesn’t have those limitations because investigators are focusing on who plotted the assassination in that country, who participated in killing Moïse at his home, and who stood to benefit politically from the deadly attack. “The U.S. jurisdiction over this crime is limited by what statutes are specifically applicable to the charged facts, which involve the assassination of a foreign head of state in a foreign country,” Norkin told the Herald.
“In contrast, Haitian jurisdiction is much broader because it was the president of Haiti who was assassinated in Haiti. Norkin, a partner with the Akrivis Law Group’s offices in Miami and New York, also explained the U.S. interest in the case. “If no U.S.-based actors were involved and there were no events that took place in the U.S.,” he said, “there would not be a U.S. investigation and prosecution.”
This story was originally published February 9, 2024, 5:30 AM.
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Read more at: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/haiti/article285226967.html#storylink=cpy

Introduction

H.P Lovecraft and his works, often called the "Cthulhu Mythos" is a series that's notorious for it's power and while I do hold firm that it's one of the strongest pieces of fiction to exist, that doesn't excuse some of the absurd wank I've seen the verse getting in this particular sub. When I say "wank", I'm talking out there stuff even for this verse. I'm talking things like somehow even humans being "Immeasurable Layers Into Boundless" or the prospect that Cthulhu scales to anything remotely cosmic in the verse, despite the fact feats indicate otherwise
A bulk of these claims from this and this. Truth be told, I have no ill will towards the creators of these posts but I want to say that I fundamentally disagree with the interpretations presented and I want to use this post as a means to dispel some misconceptions about the verse that essentially don't align with the original stories or the information conveyed in them.
With that being said, let's start with what might be the most controversial aspect of this whole post, which is:

Cthulhu Didn't Destroy The Stars...

For as powerful as Cthulhu Mythos is, the irony to it is that Cthulhu himself isn't actually all that powerful in relation. This isn't to say that Cthulhu is a weak character as he isn't by any stretch of the means but it's just that people have this misconception he has cosmic scale powers or scales to Tier 1 sufficient portion of the verse does
Whenever one brings up Cthulhu, one of the most common feats they'll bring up is him flaring stars and apparently causing destruction to them. The original "feat" for this originates from The Whisperer in Darkness, a short story in which Cthulhu is a very central figure to it. The passage that specifically implies that Cthulhu destroyed stars is

"I learned whence Cthulhu first came, and why half the great temporary stars of history had flared forth."

Now, that sounds pretty neat and impressive but you have to re-contextualize this statement with how it's written and account for the literary device used to convey said information, which was fairly popular during the time of Lovecraft. What do I mean ? Well, simply put Cthulhu wasn't the one who caused the stares to flare, this was just basic literary parallelism and I can prove this using both the context and other works of Lovecraft

"I guessed—from hints which made even my informant pause timidly—the secret behind the Magellanic Clouds and globular nebulae, and the black truth veiled by the immemorial allegory of Tao"

This is an important passage because Lovecraft brings up things that ultimately have no correlation to one another. This is line with the initial context of the statement in which supposedly claims Cthulhu destroyed stars, that context being Henry Wentworth Akeley repeatedly mentioning unrelated things he's learned to Albert N. Wilmarth
This mentioning of two or more things that don't correlate to one another is also compounded by another passage which goes on about Tao but still has fundamentally nothing to do with magellanic clouds or globular nebulae and really is only correlated to grander cosmos

"He rose and strode to the mantel. When he faced me again he was holding a small square box in the palm of his hand. "I have here five pellets of the drug Liao. It was used by the Chinese philosopher Lao Tze, and while under its influence he visioned Tao. Tao is the most mysterious force in the world; it surrounds and pervades all things; it contains the visible universe and everything that we call reality. He who apprehends the mysteries of Tao sees clearly all that was and will be." "Rubbish!" I retorted. "Tao resembles a great animal, recumbent, motionless, containing in its enormous body all the worlds of our universe, the past, the present and the future. We see portions of this great monster through a slit, which we call time. With the aid of this drug I shall enlarge the slit. I shall behold the great figure of life, the great recumbent beast in its entirety." "And what do you wish me to do?" "Watch, my friend. Watch and take notes. And if I go back too far you must recall me to reality. You can recall me by shaking me violently. If I appear to be suffering acute physical pain you must recall me at once."

So that's just an example within this story. This already kind of throws a wrench at the idea that one is supposed to interpret that passage about Cthulhu as him literally destroying stars as opposed to Cthulhu arriving and the stars flaring being two unrelated events that people seem to just believe correlate despite nothing suggesting so
If you don't think that's enough to argue that parallelism was the intent, there's more examples of this even outside of this particular story. In Whispher of Darkness, both Azathoth and Yig are mentioned despite the fact they've never had any connection to one another, not in the the family tree, in thematic or even position and canon

"The legend of Yig, Father of Serpents, remained figurative no longer, and I started with loathing when told of the monstrous nuclear chaos beyond angled space which the Necronomicon had mercifully cloaked under the name of Azathoth."

How about the fact that the Doels are mentioned with the Hounds of Tindalos despite neither having any real correlation to one another, with the former appearing in the Space Eaters, which isn't relevant to the Hounds of Tindalos beyond the fact both exist beyond space-time
At the end of the day, the thing that H.P Lovecraft meant to do when he mentioned Cthulhu and flaring stars in the same breath is to convey a sense of Parallelism, in other words, bringing two elements to create a sense of equal importance between two or more things
What's interesting is even if we assumed the statement was in a literal sense, there's still two fundamental issues that come with saying it scales to Cthulhu

1. We don't know how Cthulhu was exactly able to cause the stares to flare and not enough details are given to provide an Occam's Razor scenario for what is most likely to have been the method in which Cthulhu effected these stars
2. It's highly likely that a cosmic calendrical ritual was the cause behind it, as indicated by the references to stars always being related to such events in Call of Cthulhu

To expand on the second point, here's a passage from Call of Cthulhu that highlights what I was conveying and is essentially what I was referring to:

"Old Castro remembered bits of hideous legend that paled the speculations of theosophists and made man and the world seem recent and transient indeed. There had been aeons when other Things ruled on the earth, and They had had great cities. Remains of Them, he said the deathless Chinamen had told him, were still to be found as Cyclopean stones on islands in the Pacific. They all died vast epochs of time before men came, but there were arts which could revive Them when the stars had come round again to the right positions in the cycle of eternity. They had, indeed, come themselves from the stars, and brought Their images with Them. These Great Old Ones, Castro continued, were not composed altogether of flesh and blood. They had shape—for did not this star-fashioned image prove it?—but that shape was not made of matter. When the stars were right, They could plunge from world to world through the sky; but when the stars were wrong, They could not live. But although They no longer lived, They would never really die. They all lay in stone houses in Their great city of R’lyeh, preserved by the spells of mighty Cthulhu for a glorious resurrection when the stars and the earth might once more be ready for Them."

As you can see here, whenever stars are mentioned, it's usually a buzzword for some cosmic ritual that relates to the summoning or resurrection of beings beyond our understanding. In this particular case, when the stars and the planet align in the right positions, mystical arts could be used to summon or resurrect them
This once more is important because the flaring of the stars and the arrival of Cthulhu could be just that, an event that happened at the same time as Cthulhu's summoning that was essentially a calendrical event caused by rituals. Either way, nothing supports Cthulhu destroying stars, the contexts behind it is indicated to be more akin to parallelism as opposed to a literal event that Cthulhu caused and even in the case we assert Cthulhu was the caused, we don't know how he did it, meaning it shouldn't scale to Cthulhu

"Doesn't Cthulhu Control The Universe ?"

Well no, he doesn't, at least not in any significant way that's relevant to scaling. The extend in which Cthulhu and the other Old Ones control the universe is through knowing all things in it and influencing what happens across it, which doesn't really tell us much of anything in terms of whether The Great Old Ones can significant effect the universe in terms of alteration, destruction, creation and anything meaningful to scaling purposes
At most this would give Cthulhu and The Great Old Ones High 1-B range as the universe in Cthulhu Mythos is an infinite-dimensional structure. That aside though, this doesn't mean anything for scaling and thus we can just disregard this for any indication that Cthulhu holds cosmic destructive power

"Aren't Atoms In Cthulhu Mythos Immeasurable Layers Into Boundless ?"

This is got to be the most ridiculous claim among the ones I've seen in this sub. This is going to be less of knack on Cthulhu Mythos and more so an attack on the stupidity known as "Atom Scaling" because I genuinely can't believe people use these type of arguments but don't think for like 2 seconds as to what the major problem with them
Let's first address one thing. In Cthulhu Mythos, whenever "atoms" are mentioned, it's meant to be in a metaphorical context and often times is in reference to the fractal nature of the multiverse and it's dimensions. One of the most basic examples of this is in The Whisperer in Darkness, where the following is stated:

"I have said that there were things in some of Akeley’s letters—especially the second and most voluminous one—which I would not dare to quote or even form into words on paper. This hesitancy applies with still greater force to the things I heard whispered that evening in the darkened room among the lonely haunted hills. Of the extent of the cosmic horrors unfolded by that raucous voice I cannot even hint. He had known hideous things before, but what he had learned since making his pact with the Outside Things was almost too much for sanity to bear. Even now I absolutely refuse to believe what he implied about the constitution of ultimate infinity, the juxtaposition of dimensions, and the frightful position of our known cosmos of space and time in the unending chain of linked cosmos-atoms which makes up the immediate super-cosmos of curves, angles, and material and semi-material electronic organisation."

As you can say, the mention of "atoms" here is meant to be a metaphor for how the unending chain of universes are pieces of a "super-cosmos" that holds these space-times as atoms within itself. This isn't saying that they are contained in atoms as opposed to that just being a basic comparison to highlight how small these seemingly large universes are in the grand scheme of things
This would align perfectly with the fact the statement of all things infinity just being essentially infinitesimal cross-sections that lead to "archetype infinity", in reference to The Ultimate Mystery (or Yog-Sothoth basically), the only genuine infinity in Cthulhu Mythos

"Then the waves increased in strength, and sought to improve his understanding, reconciling him to the multiform entity of which his present fragment was an infinitesimal part. They told him that every figure of space is but the result of the intersection by a plane of some corresponding figure of one more dimension—as a square is cut from a cube or a circle from a sphere. The cube and sphere, of three dimensions, are thus cut from corresponding forms of four dimensions that men know only through guesses and dreams; and these in turn are cut from forms of five dimensions, and so on up to the dizzy and reachless heights of archetypal infinity. The world of men and of the gods of men is merely an infinitesimal phase of an infinitesimal thing—the three-dimensional phase of that small wholeness reached by the First Gate, where ’Umr at-Tawil dictates dreams to the Ancient Ones. Though men hail it as reality and brand thoughts of its many-dimensioned original as unreality, it is in truth the very opposite. That which we call substance and reality is shadow and illusion, and that which we call shadow and illusion is substance and reality."

So with that being said, there's nothing that states that the basic atoms that exist in the verse contain universes or any cosmological structure within them. The mention of "atoms" have always been metaphorically speaking to denote the small scale of the cosmos that is known by humanity and was never meant to be in a literal sense
Bare in mind, this doesn't even get into the fact that atom scaling in itself is inherently an anti-feat as it denotes that these structures are small as opposed to the atoms being big themselves. There has to be evidence of the inverse otherwise the most logical and default assumption is that the atoms are small and thus the structures are small
Again, obviously atoms in Cthulhu Mythos aren't some large structure and to interpret it that way would be kinda against the work itself, as in straight up headcanon that isn't even remotely applicable to the verse at hand

"If Cthulhu Isn't Some Cosmic Destroyer, How Strong Is He ?"

Even though Cthulhu lacks feats or statements that indicates any type of cosmic destructive powers, this isn't to say Cthulhu doesn't have feats or statements that scale him somewhere. For example, one casual feat that Cthulhu has is causing an earthquake as he slept in the city of R'lyeh, which got 427.82 Teratons of TNT (Country Level)
This was a feat done in Cthulhu's sleeping state, aka when blud wasn't even trying. Obviously this is a lowball for his strength and on top of that, the fact that Cthulhu can be "Miles high", would also put Cthulhu at Large Mountain Level via Sheer Size, which again is another casual feat for Cthulhu and indicates that he's not capped at this level or could be potentially higher
So when it comes to physical strength, the minimum Cthulhu would be at is Country Level although to be fair, AP kinda doesn't even matter because that's not why Cthulhu is a force to be reckoned with as opposed to his insanely stupid hax that a lot of characters can't do anything about.
Let's put it this way...

• Cthulhu has Dream Manipulation, Telepathy, and Mind Manipulation that literally can work on a 1-A scale considering The Great Old Ones can effect dreams through their telepathic powers, which in Cthulhu Mythos, is related to The Dreamlands, a realm that exists beyond the multiverse and it's already large size due to a Low 1-A set of universes
• We already mentioned that Cthulhu's knowledge and ability to influence beings can also span the universe, which is an High 1-B structure
• The Great Old Ones are fundamentally outside of the concept of life and death, with their "death" only being temporary things and their reemergence coming at the command of the stars (meaning they have Type 4 & 5 Immortality)
• Cthulhu and his kin flew to earth from Xoth, a distant binary star and can consistently travel interstellar distances, alongside traveled from one universe to another (meaning he's very easily Massively FTL+, which for his tier is still insane lol)
  • I didn't even get into how Cthulhu scales to The Flying Polp, the same beings who can travel to "immeasurably distant universes" at unknown but implied to be short timeframes
• How about the fact the mere presence of The Great Old Ones can make individuals go insane due to their immense psychic powers, with Cthulhu being able to induce nightmares and extreme fear in his sleep

I can go on and on here. Cthulhu may not be strong but he's not anything to play with and I haven't even went in depth to the amount of stupid shit he has that makes him a force to be reckoned with (and yes, most versions of Godzilla stand no chance against him)

Conclusions

Cthulhu isn't really that strong when it comes to sheer AP and a lot of his strength lies purely in his hax. He's not Large Star Level as that feat is based on a misinterpretation, he's not High Hyperversal because he has no evidence of effecting the universe to a degree that's scalable and he certainly isn't Immeasurable Layers Into Boundless because nothing in Cthulhu even gets to Boundless outside of The Ultimate Void (possibly) and The Supreme Archetype, much less because of some vague interpretation of the passages that somehow indicate that atoms are this big...

This is the second part of the theory. For the first one please check: https://www.reddit.com/asoiaf/comments/194kguu/from_the_winds_of_winter_to_the_call_of_cthulhu/
A Note for Readers
I am tempted to say there has been almost 0 tinfoil so far:

1. The existence of the Deep Ones is given by GRRM himself
2. The parallelism with the Dance of the Dragons is given by GRRM himself
3. It was GRRM who tied the Long Night and the Lovecraftian cult together and encouraged our speculation. There is no way it is just "A Lovecraftian reference" out of respect. It is the Long Night, the most important event to happen, there is nothing random here!

You can however claim that other references to Lovecraft are just references. And some of them indeed used to be. But no longer. I will address this further.
In essence, all I did was to put it all together. For now, we made our assumptions based more or less on facts, references, and parallels. But the following Part IV will require a temporal leap of faith because the hard enough evidence for this part will appear closer to the end of this text.
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An Interlude: The Metaphysics of ASOIAF
Throughout all the books we notice the dualism of Ice and Fire, as the name of ASOIAF itself suggests. I will not and can not state all the examples there, but I think that you know what I am talking about.
But the point is, Ice and Fire are not actually the opposite things. According to the classification of 4 classical elements widely used in Ancient and Medieval philosophy water and fire are the opposite things. And indeed, ice is just water made solid. So, the main fight in ASOIAF is between fire and solid water.
What conditions are needed for the water to become solid ice? Low temperature. And all things equal the temperature drops if the sun stops shining. It is understood by the followers of R'hllor who don't fight ice and snow but fight darkness. They fight the fundamental reason water becomes ice.
With these things in mind let's continue
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Part IV: When The Hell Freezes Over
So, we have the Bloodstone Emperor who continuously sacrifices his own subjects to prolong his life and feeds his men to the sea monsters he struck a deal with. His queen - the Amethyst Empress - urges him to stop. In response, he likely begins a civil war.
Now, he has his new powerful allies - the Great Old Ones - and of course, he wants to use them for battle. The Great Old Ones have an army of Deep Ones (in the Lovecraftian sense, sons of the Great Old Ones) and perhaps another army of Deep Ones Hybrids (Deep Ones in the ASOAIF sense, hybrid children of sea creatures and human women). But all these guys live in the ocean and can't be summoned to conquer the GEotD because they can't walk the Earth for long. I also think that the BSE's reputation may have caused some of his human allies to dump him and turn to the Amethyst Empress. So, the BSE really needed some extra help
The BSE needed a way to make water (Deep Ones) fight fire (Dragons of the GEotD). And we have a solution: Ice. I believe he made a deal with some deity of the pantheon of the Old Ones responsible for the time/space/fabric of the reality/whatever to create a Long Night to make the world freeze and to enable him to create new ice armies out of his water armies.
So, what the climate situation might have looked like?

1. There used to be a change of day/night in the GEotD (associated with the corresponding deities), but no winter present
2. The idea of a future without winters is very popular among the smallfolk. I believe it can be traced to the pre-Long Night times when it was true. The winters are regarded as something that should disappear, something unnatural, disrupting the order of things. At the same time, in many cultures that have winters regularly, it is considered natural, and the legends don't wait for winters to end.
3. The Lion of Night was responsible for maintaining the darkness from day to day. If he created the Long Night to punish the sins of men, why didn't he go back to normal when the Long Night passed? Instead, he retained the practice of shortening days for years to create the effect of Westerosi winter.
4. So, I believe the change of seasons began with the Old Ones arriving. And the winters still occurred afterward, because the Old Ones never left the planet.

It was the BSE who asked the Great Old Ones to make him a Long Night so that he could marshall his armies:

1. He turned the Deep Ones into the White Walkers
2. He turned the Sea Dragons into the Ice Dragons

Yes, the existence of both Sea Dragons and the Ice Dragons is not supported by anything (except, perhaps for Nagga Bones) but the last time they might have been seen was during the Long Night. So, the scientists didn't have much time to describe them. And their bones might be the same as those of ordinary dragons. The Ice Dragons are said to actually melt when slain, so you can't really prove their existence with material evidence anyway.
Conclusion 7: The BSE with the help of the Great Old Ones turned the sea creatures they commanded into the Ice creatures the Bloodstone Emperor led to battle for the throne.
The Others - the former Deep Ones - didn't give up their old habits. As the Deep Ones sired Deep Ones Hybrids on human women, so the Others lay with human women as Bran was told:

"And their women lay with the Others in the Long Night to sire terrible half-human children" [AGOT]

All to replenish their own ranks apparently
In the end, the BSE prevailed and claimed the throne in Asshai and several other regions. Why not the whole empire? Because he never truly conquered it.
Do you remember the oily black stone some of the pre-Valyrian structures are built from and our conclusion that some catastrophe caused it? Well, consider their description:

"On the Isle of Toads can be found an ancient idol, a greasy black stone crudely carved into the semblance of a gigantic toad of malignant aspect, some forty feet high" [on the Isle of Toads]
"Some say as well that the stone of Asshai has a greasy, unpleasant feel to it, that it seems to drink the light, dimming tapers and torches and hearth fires alike" [on Asshai]
"A ruin older than time, built of oily black stone, in massive blocks so heavy that it would require a dozen elephants to move them" [on Yeen]
"...the Seastone Chair, carved in the shape of a great kraken from an immense block of oily black stone. Legend said that the First Men had found it standing on the shore of Old Wyk when they came to the Iron Islands." [ACOK on Seastone Chair]
"The throne of the Greyjoys, carved into the shape of a kraken from an oily black stone"

And now this:

"...some terrible Cyclopean vista of dark and dripping stone..."
"...yet centuries and even thousands of years seemed recorded in its dim and greenish surface of unplaceable stone..."
"...its very material was a mystery; for the soapy, greenish-black stone..."
"Upon retiring, he had had an unprecedented dream of great Cyclopean cities of titan blocks and sky-flung monoliths, all dripping with green ooze and sinister with latent horror."
"The great stone city R’lyeh, with its monoliths and sepulchres, had sunk beneath the waves..."
"...making me see with terrible vividness the damp Cyclopean city of slimy green stone—whose geometry, he oddly said, was all wrong..."
"...the men sight a great stone pillar sticking out of the sea, and in S. Latitude 47° 9′, W. Longitude 126° 43′ come upon a coast-line of mingled mud, ooze, and weedy Cyclopean masonry which can be nothing less than the tangible substance of earth’s supreme terror—the nightmare corpse-city of R’lyeh..."
"Awe at the unbelievable size of the greenish stone blocks..."
"...the mountainous monstrosity flopped down the slimy stones..."
[The Call of Cthulhu: the descriptions of the material the city of R’lyeh was built from]

ASOAIF stones are greasy and oily as if the oil oozes from them, they are dark... I think you can perfectly see that the descriptions are similar, especially in the uneasiness and even terror they evoke. Oily black ASOIAF stone must have smth to do with the local Great Old Ones
The fact that there are clearly the Lovecraftian Old Ones' marks upon the ASOIAF materials further fortifies the idea of the Great Old Ones' presence in ASOIAF.
And of course, we can suggest that the oily black stone was corrupted by the powers of the Great Old Ones when certain regions were conquered by their now icy armies. Asshai and Yeen - big cities - were surely conquered, while I believe the Toad Idol and the Seastone Chair were created specifically for worshipping.
By the way, the Toad Idol fits perfectly with how the Deep Ones looked like in The Shadow Over Innsmouth:

fish-like frogs or frog-like fishes [The Shadow Over Innsmouth]

Conclusion 8: The oily black stone structures were originally the fused stone structures corrupted by the Great Old Ones and the Bloodstone Emperor
Now, how did the Long Night end?
​
Part V: The Night That Ended?
The Long Night allegedly ended after the Battle for the Dawn, when the Others were defeated. But were they?

1. The change of seasons didn't disappear, so the origin of it all - the Great Old Ones and the BSE - was not destroyed
2. The Wall was raised, so the humans knew they were not ultimately victorious.

Looks like a draw: the Others withdrew in order and the humans lacked the resources to finish them off. But if the origin of the Long Night - The Great Old Ones - were not destroyed (else there wouldn't be any winters), why did the Long Night end? Why were the Others defeated? The BSE and his alien friends could have produced the Others in hundreds.
The only conclusion plausible enough is that the source of new Others - The Great Old Ones - went dormant. Consider the Call of Cthulhu again:

"These Great Old Ones, Castro continued, were not composed altogether of flesh and blood. They had shape—for did not this star-fashioned image prove it?—but that shape was not made of matter. When the stars were right, They could plunge from world to world through the sky; but when the stars were wrong, They could not live. But although They no longer lived, They would never really die. They all lay in stone houses in Their great city of R’lyeh, preserved by the spells of mighty Cthulhu for a glorious resurrection when the stars and the earth might once more be ready for Them."
"When, after infinities of chaos, the first men came, the Great Old Ones spoke to the sensitive among them by moulding their dreams; for only thus could Their language reach the fleshly minds of mammals."

In the Lovecraftian novel, the Great Old Ones entered their dormant stance but were able to influence the outside world (by sending humans dreams). In the same way, ASOIAF Great Old Ones might have influenced the change of seasons
So, I believe the following happened:

1. The BSE and his newly created icy servants were unstoppable: they swept through the Empire like an ice storm. Their ranks were constantly replenished by new Others made from the Deep Ones and the Deep Ones, in their turn, were produced by the mating Great Old Ones (In Lovecraftian Universe the Deep Ones were supposedly sired by Dagon and Mother Hydra).
2. The mankind as we know it was doomed
3. Then all of a sudden the stars changed and became not right - hence the Great Old Ones went to sleep and the BSE lost his unlimited source of new troops. The Long Night also ended, but the Great Old Ones still influenced the seasons to some degree even from their dormant stance - thus the phenomenon of winters remained.
4. The BSE was either killed or withdrew to the Lands of Always Winter with the remnants of his army - to the places, where his Others would be preserved.
5. The City of the Great Old Ones likely sank deep into the ocean - you will see later why it is plausible.
6. The armies of the Light knew their victory was NOT THEIRS to claim, so they raised the Wall to protect themselves from future invasions.

Conclusion 9: The only reason the BSE and the Others lost was the change in the stars that made the Great Old Ones inactive. To preserve themselves the Others withdrew to the Lands of Always Winter and the humans raised the Wall to keep them there forever.
Basically, the Lands of Always Winter are filled with Lovecraftian sea-like monsters that walk the Earth. And it has very strong vibes of the Mountains of Madness: the Eldritch Horror on the snow.
And now we are ready to speculate on the Long Night yet to come
​
Part VI: The Shadow Over Oldtown
I will not attempt to cover what Poor Quentyn's Eldritch Apocalypse theory already perfectly did: Euron has a lot of Lovecraftian aura around him and he might well blow the Horn of Winter from the top of the Hightower. I will incorporate the Lovecraftian Euron into my theory and show another previously overlooked (or so I believe) but important Lovecraftian reference about him.
So, we borrow the assumption of Poor Quentyn that Euron is the one who is going to start the Long Night. Supposedly with the Horn of Winter that Sam has. Sam is currently in Oldtown. What is Euron up to?
This question is further complicated by the situation Euron found himself in:
He faces this:

"We are going back to sea. The Redwyne fleet creeps toward us. The winds have been against them rounding Dorne, but they're finally near enough to have emboldened the old women in Oldtown, so now Leyton Hightower's sons move down the Whispering Sound in hopes of catching us in the rear."

The Ironborn are greatly outnumbered and still Euron seems rather optimistic about it. This fact and his new Lovecraftian identity from the Forsaken made a large part of the community believe he is going to perform some kind of magical ritual to crush his enemies. The sea of blood from Moqorro's quote is also considered a part of this ritual.

“Only their shadows,” Moqorro said. “One most of all. A tall and twisted thing with one black eye and ten long arms, sailing on a sea of blood.”

I hold to this idea too and here is what I think is going to happen: Euron is a new Bloodstone Emperor who is going to wake the Great Old Ones from their sleep, strike a deal with them, and thus usher another Long Night the same way the BSE did it.
But to do that he needs to know about the Great Old Ones, right?
First, let us quickly recap what is the source of mysteries in Lovecraftian The Shadow Over Innsmouth:

1. Captain Obed sailed to the distant islands where he learned the locals made human sacrifices to the Deep Ones and mated with them to get plenty of fish, some gold, and immortality for the children sired by those sea creatures.
2. He established a trade with them and learned how they made contacts with the Deep Ones
3. When the hard times hit his town Innsmouth he started making human sacrifices and struck a deal with the Deep Ones. The town's population soon turned into a half-fish one.
4. The Esoteric Order of Dagon was founded that worshipped the Great Old Ones

What about Euron?
He sailed to the distant lands where in port cities he likely learned about the Church of Starry Wisdom and its lore (Much like Obed did). One of the details supporting this idea is his mongrel crue. Why all of them are mongrels? Why this particular detail?

Legrasse had one point in advance of Professor Webb, for several among his mongrel prisoners had repeated to him what older celebrants had told them the words meant. This text, as given, ran something like this: “In his house at R’lyeh dead Cthulhu waits dreaming.”
He fell on a narrow hill street leading up from an ancient waterfront swarming with foreign mongrels, after a careless push from a negro sailor
Waterfront scum was far too common for special mention; though there was vague talk about one inland trip these mongrels had made, during which faint drumming and red flame were noted on the distant hills. [The Call of Cthulhu]

Mongrels are a prominent feature of any Cthulhian cult situated near the sea and it is made quite clear by Lovecraft: he repeatedly mentions them. Now Euron recruits only them. And they are feverishly loyal to him. Well, it may be well that he manipulates them as a greenseer, but I believe they followed Euron because they saw him as a potentially powerful cultist in the first place (and later he started to control them by other means).
So, I believe that Euron learned about the Cult, saw unlimited potential in it, and recruited some of its members for himself. Next:

1. The cultists must have told him about the Great Old Ones and the Deep Ones, how to find them, and how to befriend them (much like they told Obed)
2. And now, when Euron needs additional assistance, he is going to summon the Deep Ones (as Obed did when he thought his town needed them)

Euron's story may have parallels with the Obed's story if we make several assumptions. How exactly is he planning to summon the Deep Ones then?

1. Tribes Obed encountered did blood sacrifices
2. Obed did blood sacrifices
3. Euron does blood sacrifices

"The Crow's Eye has fed your Drowned God well, and he has grown fat with sacrifice. Words are wind, but blood is power. We have given thousands to the sea, and he has given us victories!"

Of course, Euron does not feed the Drowned God. But he sacrifices thousands to the Deep Ones. And these sacrifices cost him nothing as he constantly slaughters his enemies. These sacrifices are a by-product of his military campaign.
Conclusion 10: Euron is going to summon the Deep Ones to help him fight the Redwyne fleet. But the Deep Ones are not the only creatures he is going to summon.
Why? Because we have a matter of priests. One of the most mysterious actions of Euron is his prospective usage of priests in his magical ritual. What do priests have to do with it?

1. The Bloodstone Emperor was the first High Priest of the Church of Starry Wisdom. I believe if not his story then his interactions with the Great Old Ones are well known to the cultists.
2. Euron has parallels to the BSE if not in his actions (yet), then in his symbolism. "He showed the world his blood eye now, dark and terrible" - Euron's hidden eye is bloody with a dark pupil. Red and black colours - the colours of the bloodstone. Moreover, he is seen sitting on the Iron Throne as an emperor with the Gods inferior to him as if he is a God himself. And the BSE was a descendant of the God-on-Earth that wanted to match his ancestor's power.
3. The BSE cast down the true gods to worship a black stone. He probably sacrificed the priests in some ritual to strike a deal with the Great Old Ones. And Euron is going to do the same
4. Euron knows the last time the priests were sacrificed. He does not know whether or not they are really needed, but he has them just in case.

The priests are the key there. The only time they are mentioned earlier in anything regarding a great magical ritual is the activity of the BSE
But the Great Old Ones are sleeping, supposedly under the sea, why is Euron sure he will succeed in waking them up and striking a bargain with them?

1. Because the stars are right again!
2. And we even saw a symbol of their right order: the bleeding star from AGOT
3. Now, of course, back in 1996, GRRM had no idea about the Great Old Ones and Lovecraftian staff in his books, but now he can respectfully claim he planned it all along with his comet

So, what is Euron's masterplan?

1. Locate the place where the Great Old Ones are sleeping under the sea. It may well be somewhere he is now: near Oldtown.
2. Use the Deep Ones to tear apart the Redwyne fleet and sacrifice a lot of humans to the sea
3. Perform the proper actions needed to wake the Great Old Ones, perhaps murdering the priests in the process. The Great Old Ones trigger an eternal night
4. Strike a deal with the Great Old Ones and take command of the powers of both water and ice as a new Bloodstone Emperor

In the next chapter you will see how it all makes sense from the writer's point of view
​
Part VII: Why This Theory Is Right: The Narrative Logic
Before I begin the narrative analysis of ASOIAF, I will just state more Lovecraftian references there are:

1. The book "The Death of Dragons" is a local "Necronomicon": a secret tome, the only surviving copy of which is locked up in a university
2. Ironborn's "what is dead may never die" alludes to the “That is not dead which can eternal lie,And with strange aeons even death may die.” by Abdul Alhazred
3. The aetheric reptiles encountered by the protagonist in "The Nameless City" resemble the ghostly aetheric Danny's ancestors from the ghost city of Asshai (it most surely is a coincidence, but this coincidence caught my attention and all this theory emerged from it)

Now let's dive into ASOIAF as a text
We already agreed that the apocalyptic narrative is going to crown the plot of ASOIAF and that all political bickering will be insignificant in the face of an apocalyptic threat:

1. It means that all political plotlines should be gradually finished or halted. The original draft of ASOIAF makes that intention clear: in the Third Book all resources are dedicated to fighting the Others. And of course, it seems logical to the reader.
2. It also means that the "armies of the light" should draw near the probable "front": to the Wall. In the series, Daenerys came to the Wall with her army. In ASOIAF Stannis came to the Wall to help fight the wildlings. If not to the Wall, human armies should at least come closer to it
3. That's where the first problem arises: Westeros is now divided and every ruler cares only for his territory. The Lannisters are not going to care about the White Walkers until they turn up in the Riverlands and the Reach is not going to care until the Others defeat the Lannisters
4. Even if the Lannister-Highgarden dominion rallies to fight in the Riverlands there is no way they are going to recognize Jon Snow's authority and his apparent leadership in fighting the Others. Jon's mission is apocalyptic from the first book. He is the one to fight and defeat the Others (perhaps together with Danny), his whole path as a character is dedicated to it. It is the second problem
5. So, for now, the only force that can supposedly help Jon (if we don't take into account Stannis's 20k mercenaries) is Daenerys. And hopefully, she is finally ready to leave Mereen.
6. But even if she reaches the Wall in time, the fight for the Dawn is not going to be "the final battle for the Light", because the majority of the known world, the majority of Westeros taken separately is not going to participate. It spoils the culmination of the story that should be apocalyptical and that GRRM prepared us all for 5 books.

So, we have the first major difficulty: ASOIAF as it is now is not going to have a final battle of the united Westeros vs the Others. And the reader greatly anticipates exactly that. Yes, we know the Lannisters might be not the best guys, but we hope they are not going to be stupid enough to sit and wait like "Now the Others are busy with the North, we will fight them when they arrive. Maybe they will just conquer the North and stop there".
So, to solve this issue GRRM should have begun moving the armies of humans towards the Neck or at least finish all major confrontations in the South. Instead, we got:

1. Euron. A new archenemy pillages the South
2. An elite army 10k strong with a dragon prince (f)Aegon takes over the Storm's End and is going to fight the Highgarden forces
3. Dorn stirring from its sleep and getting ready to pledge 70k man to literally anyone remotely resembling a Targaryen.

So, instead of moving existing characters and armies closer to the future apocalyptic events in the North, GRRM is actually moving them South. He even has his brand new character - (f)Aegon - moving South with all his army. He deliberately prevents the Southern armies from even hypothetically participating in the saving of the world and leaves the North truly alone.
Why would GRRM betray his own narrative and arch plot he had been building for years?
Because he has a new apocalyptic threat: Euron
And Euron, whether or not you believe my theory, is described as much apocalyptic as it is possible. And whether or not you believe my reasoning about the Great Old Ones and the Deep Ones, Euron as an apocalyptic threat is the one who commands the water
What is the problem with such a twist?
The problem is that there can't be 2 different but equally important apocalyptic plots because they will effectively devalue each other. The readers may consider the Others a minor issue compared to the deep Ones, which is improbable, as the Others have too much lore about them already. Or they may consider the Deep Ones a minor distraction compared to the Others and the South will still be absent from the apocalyptic plot. Or, most probably, the readers will just cringe out, because it won't fit at all.
Imagine learning at the beginning of the Return of the King that there is Sauron 2.0. that sails to Middle Earth from the West. Would it still make the story that great? I doubt it
That is why many, starting with Poor Quentyn, made Euron a part of the Others' movement: they assigned him as a future leader of the Others. It makes the most sense: that way both North and South would be fighting the same great apocalyptic enemy to end the Long Night
But that way Euron does need an army of the Others with him in the South. And he can't get it, because the Others are all stuck in the North.
Moreover, Euron is not surrounded by any "icy" lore associated with the Others:

1. He has a Lovecraftian image, a sea image
2. In no way is he relatable to the Others, snow, ice, winter, etc

Conclusion 11: Euron can't be the leader of the Others in the original meaning of that "title" because he has nothing whatsoever connecting him to the symbolism of the Others. He is a "sea guy", not a "snow guy".
To sum up:

1. To finish ASOIAF with an apocalyptic final battle GRRM prepared his writers for, he needs to engage the Southern armies in a fight with an apocalyptic threat.
2. To make the Northern (The Others) and the Southern (Euron) Apocalyptic threats equal in their significance GRRM needs to relate ICE (the Others) and WATER (Euron) and make them part of the same force

And an extremely important notion: in the first 5 books the Long Night is NOT associated with water in any sense.
So, if in TWOW GRRM suddenly declares that Euron commands an army of sea creatures (the Deep Ones if you believe me) and that they are related to Others - well, it would look cringy at the least, because the readers are completely unprepared for it. And such an approach doesn't fit much into Martin's style as we have seen while reading his books: he likes to build the foundations of every major event in advance.
Conclusion 12: And here we remember our "Conclusion 0.5": in 2014 GRRM publishes a lore book, in which he adds loads of new information on the Long Night and directly ties the Long Night to water and sea creatures via the Bloodstone Emperor and his Cthulhu-like Cult!
This book screams that GRRM decided to somehow edit the original idea about the Long Night! In advance, to have the lore gradually built and have the reader prepared for the reveal just like he likes!
If you are still not persuaded by this literature staff, let's quickly see how the major Lovecraftian references are distributed among the books:

1. The first 3 books (1996, 1998, 2000) feature The Drowned God, "What is dead can never die", Patchface, the Seastone Chair
2. AFFC (2005): Euron appears, the Ironborn culture is more elaborated on
3. ADWD (2011): Patchface is considered dangerous by Melisandre ( “That creature is dangerous. Many a time I have glimpsed him in my flames. Sometimes there are skulls about him, and his lips are red with blood.” ), we learn of the influence the merlings have on the port cultures, "The Death of Dragons" book (ASOIAF Necronomicon), Euron sailing a sea of blood
4. TWOIAF (2014): 3 other oily stone structures, the Thousand Islands' sacrifices to the fish-like race, the Church of Starry Wisdom, the Deep Ones and their parents from the sea, the disappearance of Lorathi mazemakers.
5. The Forsaken (2016): basically a whole chapter is a series of Lovecraftian Horrors

While originally the Lovecraftian references can be considered as "just references", they grow more numerous in ADWD, more and more actions happen at sea, and the sea cultures are elaborated on. TWOIAF is stuffed with a great amount of Lovecraftian Lore and the Long Night is tied to it. Finally, the Forsaken looks like it was written by Lovecraft himself.
The references are not "normally distributed" throughout the books. It is additional proof they are not just random references.
Conclusion 13: From the writer's perspective the existence of the Great Old Ones, their strong connections to the Others and Euron becoming the new BSE is the only good way to finish ASOIAF as it is in its current state.
​
Conclusion
This text appeared to be a bit lengthy, so if you are reading these words - thank you for reading it all up to this point. I hope you don't feel you wasted your time on this. And if you do - forgive me.
Now that I finally put my theory into words, I think its main conclusion is that somewhen around 2010 GRRM decided to add a full Lovecraftian narrative into ASOIAF. I think his intention was further fortified by the way the TV series turned out to finish. And I attempted to formally prove that the Lovecraftian narrative played a major role in the Long Night and that it is going to greatly influence the Long Night yet to come. I believe this theory may look like a madman's diary, the wildest and not-so-smart speculation, the thing that should not be - a tinfoiled tinfoil in short. But I also believe it will look plausible if you put on your Lovecraftian glasses and imagine that the Lovecraftian beings may truly live in ASOIAF. Well, TWOW will judge this theory if they ever come out.
​
​
TLDR: In the Great Dragonlords Empire of the Dawn the future Bloodstone Emperor found the Lovecraftian Great Old Ones that arrived in the ASOIAF world. He struck a deal with them: he received immortality, and they received human sacrifices. His sister - The Amethyst Empress - asked him to stop, but he refused, and the war began. His sister had a lot of dragons, so he asked the Great Old Ones to create the Long Night to turn their sea servants into the icy White Walkers. Having almost prevailed, the BSE found out the stars had changed and the Great Old Ones went to sleep. He lost the source of his armies and their remnants withdrew to the Lands of Always Winter. Humans built the Wall to keep them there.
Euron aka the Bloodstone Emperor 2.0. is going to sacrifice a lot of priests and men to wake up the Great Old Ones (the stars are right again) and summon the Deep Ones. Then he is going to strike a deal with them to begin the Long Night 2.0. and start producing the Others out of the Deep Ones. To defeat him the source of his powers - the Great Old Ones should be destroyed.
Cthulhu fhtagn
​
P.S. This stuff is longer than my Thesis
P.P.S. Upon finishing this text I felt a strange apathy and a longing for the sea. The sea depth with its unthinkable horrors and wonders waits for me and I hear a sad call as if from afar. I went to sleep and beheld a distant mismatched island rising from the depth, whose geometry was not right somehow, though I couldn't tell why. A man was sitting there on the monstrous black stone of ancient masonry, on a monolith that oozed greenish oil and that was unnaturally leaning to both left and right at the same time. He winked at me with his blood eye and smiled, beckoning me forward. I woke up with a ringing in my ears and spent all day planning my coming journey to the sea. I will hear the waves soon

A few times over the last year I have tried to make a coherent text out of this meta-theory of mine and failed - as it requires several insights and a proper vision to grasp, something difficult to put into words. I hope I will succeed this time.
It is a really lengthy text, so please get yourself a cup of tea/coffee or skip to tldr. In fact, it is so long that I had to split it to publish
In general, this theory is based on:

1. The facts described in the books
2. Common sense
3. Possible cultural references
4. Narrative logic. It implies the narrative has a logic of its own, which once established can't be easily changed.

The easiest example: GRRM created too many plotlines and POVs, and now he struggles to develop and finish them.
Another example: after 4 books the North is basically depopulated, while the White Walkers are advancing and the Stannis vs Roose war is still on. Someone has to fight the current war and the future war. Danny is too far away tangled in Martin's Essos plotlines we love so much. So, Martin has the Iron Bank step in and give Stannis 20k future mercenaries. Of course, there is also a point of showing Cersei being rather dumb and Jon being such a good negotiator, but in essence, this episode serves to give the North more manpower. And now we have an extra plotline of Tycho Nestoris and GRRM has one more character to do smth with.

1. GRRM writing logic

First, I assume Martin is planning to unveil every great mystery that has a direct influence on the story. Largely because all great mysteries originated from the readers' current lack of information about smth important. If the topic is important (Jon's parents for example) and GRRM doesn't explain it - we get a great mystery. And the importance of the topic implies GRRM is going to reveal it later, otherwise, we get an unfinished plotline, smth any writer may want to avoid.
Second, I assume Martin is NOT going to introduce key new events/characters the reader is not prepared for. Martin prefers to build stories in advance. For example, Danny's transfiguration at the end of AGOT is preceded by the reveal of her heritage, the appearance of the dragon eggs, her dreams, her unusual bonding with the dragon eggs, etc. Given all that information, we still see the birth of dragons and Dayneris's immunity against fire as a miracle, but a miracle possible in a given universe and, most importantly, a miracle replicable. If we replicate the situation, e.g. have a person with Danny's background (a "proper" Targaryen), 3 dragon eggs, and a fire - we can get dragons. This effect is achieved by building a background for a miracle in advance. Yes, of course, there is a matter of blood magic involved that makes the whole event mysterious. But in general, we believe it, we don't feel like GRRM just made this up to cover his own inferior narrative.
So, I believe GRRM:

1. Is going to solve all major mysteries
2. Is going to gradually introduce relevant information for any reveal to make it look predictable in retrospect. The reader is like: "Of course, how haven't I seen it coming!"

I divided the theory into several parts to make it easier to comprehend:

1. Prologue: The Narrative Around the Long Night
2. Part I: "Fallen City, Living Death"
3. Part II: The Bloodstone Emperor
4. Part III: The Thing That Should Not Be
5. A Note for Readers
6. An Interlude: The Metaphysics of ASOIA
7. Part IV: When The Hell Freezes Over
8. Part V: The Night That Ended?
9. Part VI: The Shadow Over Oldtown
10. Part VII: Why This Theory Is Right: The Narrative Logic
11. Conclusion
12. TLDR

The first post: Prologue-Part III
The second post: Part III-TLDR
Spoiler alert: This text contains spoilers for several novels by Lovecraft. Beware!
​
Prologue: The Narrative Around the Long Night
ASOIAF features 3 main plots (bunches of individual plotlines) first outlined in its "original draft" (do not research). The first is the war for the Iron Throne in Westeros, the second is the journey of Daenerys to claim that Iron Throne for herself, and the third one is the future fight against the Others and the preparation for it. So, we have 2 political plots and 1 apocalyptic. And of course, the apocalyptic one is the most important, and it dwarves all others in the end (it's hard to imagine the Blackwoods and the Brackens fighting each other when the White Walkers turn up). The unique feature of this apocalyptic scenario - the Long Night - is that it happened before.
So, we get 2 parallel stories - the past one and the future one - and the future one mirrors the past one. That's why any information about the Long Night is actually a spoiler. And GRRM as a writer has a tradeoff there: if he tells us nothing about the Long Night, we won't be eager to read the apocalyptic plot because we don't see its importance. If he tells us everything, we still won't be interested, because we know everything that is going to happen.
What should GRRM do? Precisely what he is doing: he gives us the amount of information enough to feed our interest but not enough to fully understand what exactly is at play.
Let's see how much he tells us. We can divide The Long Night into 3 main parts:

1. Its origins: exactly how and why "Thousands and thousands of years ago, a winter fell that was cold and hard and endless beyond all memory of man"
2. Its course: how the Long Night progresses and how it is finally overcome
3. Its direct consequences: what is done afterward

We have 2 blocks of knowledge about The Long Night that appear in the first 5 books:

1. Westerosi legends and folklore
2. Essos legends

We know the course of The Long Night: the darkness falls upon the world, the world is conquered by the demons, and the last hero with a magic sword rallies the virtuous men and defeats the enemy in a final battle. We even get the manual on how to create a super sword and whose help to seek when dealing with the Others. We also learn about the Horn of Winter, though its real properties are still unknown. And the current narrative perfectly mirrors the past one:

1. The winter comes, and we are constantly reminded by Joer Mormont that this winter is going to be different
2. The White Walkers appear and begin moving South.
3. Everyone is fussing around Stannis and his sword, Jon Snow gets a cool sword - there is a question of an ultimate weapon and its wielder.
4. The children of the forest are found and the properties of dragonglass are rediscovered
5. There are at least 2 possible Horns of Winter found

All goes according to plan
We know the aftermath of The Long Night: the Wall is erected, the Night Watch is either established or at least institutionalized as an order that mans the Wall, and the Night King incident takes place. The fact that he supposedly married a female Other and made sacrifices to them as well as the erection of the Wall itself suggests the Others were still around after their defeat and everyone recognized their threat.
So, while we have extensive lore on the course and the consequences of the Long Night, we know almost nothing about its origins. It sort of...just happens. Still, we have some clues:

1. Winters come on a rather regular basis without White Walkers showing up. So, their activity shouldn't cause the winters to occur per se. The unusual winters, in their turn, also can't cause the White Walkers to appear, because they were seen in the Prologue before the winter came.Conclusion: something other than the change of seasons or the simple activity of the White Walkers leads to the Long Night.
2. Melisandre and the cult of R'hllor believe that there is The Great Other, a god of darkness that has the ordinary Others as his servants. It implies that the Others have a leader, so their activity should depend on his will. Thus, their second "awakening" should depend on the Grear Other's activity and their very existence depends on him. We also have a mysterious "heart of winter" that had frightened Bran so much. Perhaps it is a spawning place of the Others...
3. The fact that the Long Night happens all over again means the origin of the Others - the Great Other, - was not destroyed in the first place
4. It also means the final victory over the darkness must feature the destruction of the source of Others (or everything will happen again). And that is why we don't get any exact information on what it is. It is a cornerstone of the future victory of the forces of light and GRRM wants to introduce it later - so that our anticipation is maximized.

Conclusion 0: GRRM does not specify the origins of the Long Night because the ultimate victory over the darkness means eliminating these original reasons for it to occur again. Such a twist shouldn't be introduced too early in the series or the anticipation wanes. GRRM is intentionally not elaborating on the reasons behind the Long Night.
​
Part I: "Fallen City, Living Death"
So, as we have seen, GRRM chose not to elaborate much on the origins of the Long Night and in general about the world of AOIAF before the Long Night - and was true to his idea for 15 years from 1996 to 2011. Then, suddenly in 2014 in the book "The World of Ice & Fire" we get loads of new information about the world of ASOIF, which is rather expected given the title.
But most importantly we get A LOT of new information about the origins of the Long Night.
Conclusion 0.5: For some reason, GRRM forsook his original idea of saving our anticipation and published the vital lore facts in a supplementary book. We will further see why, for now, let's consider the new information we got:
First, apparently, there used to be a pre-Valyrian dragonlords empire: The Great Empire of the Dawn with a capital in Asshai. I am not going to state all the arguments (you can check them in this brilliant theory https://lucifermeanslightbringer.com/2020/02/29/dragonlords-of-ancient-asshai/) except the most important:

1. The existence of pre-Valyrian structures of fused stone that we know is produced only with dragonflame (and using Occam's razor we assume that it can be manufactured using only dragons)
2. The 4 out of 8 Great Empire of the Dawn rulers' names coincide with the eye colours of the ghosts Danny saw in her visions:

"Ghosts lined the hallway, dressed in the faded raiment of kings. In their hands were swords of pale fire. They had hair of silver and hair of gold and hair of platinum white, and their eyes were opal and amethyst, tourmaline and jade."

I believe back in 1996 GGRM had no idea about the Great Empire of the Dawn (GEotD) and he simply made Asshai the most mysterious place on Earth, where you can get any peculiarities like dragon eggs. The colours of Danny's ancestors' eyes were also random. But the fact that GRRM used ALL these colours to describe the emperors of GEotD means he tied the new lore to the old one as if it was intended in the first place. He surely can't rewrite the past, but he can make new pieces of lore built into the existing canon.
So, there used to be a great empire with a capital in Asshai that used dragons to erect fused-stone structures. We know them:

1. The Five Forts
2. The foundations of the Hightower in Oldtown

However, the walls of Asshai (the supposed capital) are themselves made from another material:

"Some say as well that the stone of Asshai has a greasy, unpleasant feel to it, that it seems to drink the light, dimming tapers and torches and hearth fires alike"

While it is drastically different from the smooth fused stone we already know, I believe it is actually the same material altered by some catastrophic event. There are 2 main arguments there:

1. Why build your capital from another unpleasant material if you have plenty of good old fused stone? It drinks the light, which is strange for the dragon empire based on the concept of light.
2. Now Asshai - the largest city in the known world - is largely empty with only a small population. The GEotD is gone too. It is logical to assume that some event caused the GEotD to disappear and altered the material Asshai is built from.

Moreover, we have a whole list of other objects made from greasy black stone also predating Valyria, scattered all over the map:

1. The Seastone Chair
2. Yeen, a ruined city in Sothoryos
3. The Toad Stone in Basilisk Isles
4. Already mentioned Asshai

Let's for the sake of the argument assume they were not built by GEotD. The use of unique and now unavailable material in 3 different places in the world suggests a great empire that controlled Asshai, Sothoryos and the islands near it, and the Iron Islands in Westeros. The scope of Asshai (if we attribute its creation to another empire) means it was at least of the same might as the GEotD was. And this Hypothetical Empire existed at the same time as the GEotD, they even had a border between future Oldtown and future Pyke. Yet we know nothing about this empire, while we know relatively a lot about the GEotD. This Hypothetical Empire's absence from all records is highly unlikely in my opinion, especially since we do have information about a similar empire from that time. It is better to assume it used to be a single empire covering all this territory and it was the Great Empire of the Dawn - at least we know it existed.
Conclusion 1: It is easier and more logical to assume that all black stone buildings were constructed by the GEotD and then some of them got later corrupted by some catastrophe.
Here I will introduce a description of a place that has strong Asshai vibes. It will make sense later:

"When I drew nigh the nameless city I knew it was accursed."
"...a viewless aura repelled me and bade me retreat from antique and sinister secrets that no man should see, and no man else had ever dared to see."
"...so that all the tribes shun it without wholly knowing why"
"I saw that the city had been mighty indeed, and wondered at the sources of its greatness"

​
Part II: The Bloodstone Emperor
Now that we have established that at some point in its history, the Great Empire of the Dawn suffered a terrible catastrophe that altered the very material some of her cities were built from, let's dive into its immediate history.
Its history began with the reign of the God-on-Earth, who happened to be the son of 2 opposite deities: Lion of Night and Maiden-Made-of-Light. We can safely assume the Lion of Night represented darkness and Maiden-Made-of-Light represented light. Their coexistence is rooted in the very change of day and night. This guy reigned for 10,000 years and had 100 wives and at least 2 sons.
His eldest son succeeded him, so we can assume that in the GEotD the throne was inherited by the eldest son. I believe the God-on-Earth must have sired at least several daughters over the course of 10k years with 100 wives. And the fact he was succeeded by his eldest son means daughters were the last to inherit anything. It is not something unusual in ASOIAF, so I think we can assume it is true
Then we get this:

Dominion over mankind then passed to his eldest son, who was known as the Pearl Emperor and ruled for a thousand years. The Jade Emperor, the Tourmaline Emperor, the Onyx Emperor, the Topaz Emperor, and the Opal Emperor followed in turn, each reigning for centuries … yet every reign was shorter and more troubled than the one preceding it, for wild men and baleful beasts pressed at the borders of the Great Empire, lesser kings grew prideful and rebellious, and the common people gave themselves over to avarice, envy, lust, murder, incest, gluttony, and sloth.

What can we derive from this information?

1. Of course, we can't trust the numbers. GRRM plays a medieval chronicler and anyone familiar with the medieval chronicles or any ancient sources knows they usually significantly overstate or understate the figures (the size of armies for instance). And although they can turn a small fight of 2 scores of men into a grand battle, they usually don't make up the fact of the battle itself.
2. So, we can trust the processes and events that are described in Yi Ti sources to some extent. And we observe a trend of diminishing of the reigns of the emperors. We can surely attribute it to the thinning of the "divine blood" in the heirs of the God-on-earth: he was 100% a God, his son - 50% a God, his grandson - 25% a God, etc. Of course, it may be true they married brother to sister to keep the line more or less divine, but we don't have this information. And I think at first they just didn't care. If you reign for 1000 years (and live for even more) it is still a great span to be content with your fate. We have already seen such a trend somewhere....the Numenorian blood in Aragorn and his heirs!
3. There is also a rising instability on the borders and people becoming more sinful...but it may just be a trope, added by the chronicler in retrospect to show how people are punished for their sins.

And then out of the blue, we get this:

"When the daughter of the Opal Emperor succeeded him as the Amethyst Empress...."

Excuse me, what? Ah, apparently there weren't any male heirs, so the daughter of the Opal Emperor succeeded him, understandable. And then:

"...her envious younger brother cast her down and slew her, proclaiming himself the Bloodstone Emperor and beginning a reign of terror"

Excuse me, what? So, there was a male heir, but the female succeeded her father? How does it align with the tradition established by the God-emperor himself?
It is an extremely important part of the story because we basically just got a succession crisis with a daughter coming before a son. Sadly, we don't have any information on the origins of this phenomenon. Not in this book. But we have literally the same situation described in extreme detail 4 years later, a situation known to everyone in Westeros back in the 1st book, - The Dance of Dragons. The detail about a younger brother fighting against his older sister appears as early as in the Feast for Crows.
I think it can't be a coincidence, 2 events mirror each other:

1. The situation takes place in an empire ruled by dragonlords
2. The succession rule is "son first"
3. An older daughter succeeds her father before his younger son, contradicting the rule
4. A conflict begins
5. It may also be a deliberate hint from GRRM for us to see that Targaryens are ultimately the descendants of the GEotD

As both events are so much alike, I will assume we can fill the gaps in the facts and logic of the ancient "Dance" with the details from the more recent Dance. And if we see something very improbable in the course of events of an Ancient Dance we can reasonably assume it to be a mistake of the chronicles and change it according to the Modern Dance logic.
So, do we have any inconsistencies with the description of the Bloodstone's coup? We have:

1. We can assume the Opal Emperor declared his daughter an heir in advance, much like Viserys did. It seems especially plausible since the GEotD emperors had longer life spans and so, if they had an idea, say, at 30 years, a longer period passed between the declaration of the idea and the need to implement this idea
2. It means there should have formed a circle of supporters of the future queen: nobility wishing to capitalize on their loyalty in the future
3. There should also have formed a circle of supporters of the future Bloodstone emperor: conservative elites that didn't believe or didn't want to believe in the finality of the emperor's decision. Much like it was before the Modern Dance when two parties emerged: the Greens and the Blacks.
4. Inconsistency 1: Despite the formation of 2 parties there is no information about the armed conflict that most surely must have erupted as it did during the Modern Dance. The Bloodstone Emperor just:

"...cast her down and slew her, proclaiming himself the Bloodstone Emperor and beginning a reign of terror"

This inconsistency is highly unlikely because the supporters of both parties faced death or exile if the opposite party took the throne. If the new ruler took the throne without shedding much blood, he would have found himself in a vulnerable position: his rights to the throne are compromised and his opposition still chills around. So, he will shed blood. That's why I believe both parties would have fought to the death, especially given the dragons that greatly increase someone's self-esteem and a feeling of self-superiority.
Conclusion 2: So, I believe there indeed was a great civil war between the Bloodstone Emperor (BSE) and the Amethyst Empress for some reason overlooked in the eastern chronicles.
Or was it overlooked? We will find out

In the annals of the Further East, it was the Blood Betrayal, as his usurpation is named, that ushered in the age of darkness called the Long Night. Despairing of the evil that had been unleashed on earth, the Maiden-Made-of-Light turned her back upon the world, and the Lion of Night came forth in all his wroth to punish the wickedness of men.
How long the darkness endured no man can say, but all agree that it was only when a great warrior—known variously as Hyrkoon the Hero, Azor Ahai, Yin Tar, Neferion, and Eldric Shadowchaser— arose to give courage to the race of men and lead the virtuous into battle with his blazing sword Lightbringer that the darkness was put to rout, and light and love returned once more to the world.

Next, we are informed the usurpation made way for the Long Night itself.
So, we have:

1. A singular event: the Blood Betrayal
2. Followed by a continuous event: the rule of the BSE ("and beginning a reign of terror")
3. Followed by another continuous event: the Long Night

We have every reason to believe these 2 events are the same event:
The description of the atrocities of the BSE is followed by this:

Despairing of the evil that had been unleashed on earth, the Maiden-Made-of-Light turned her back upon the world, and the Lion of Night came forth in all his wroth to punish the wickedness of men.

It is reasonable to assume that "the evil that had been unleashed on earth" refers to the atrocities mentioned earlier. They triggered the light to disappear and the darkness to rule supreme: that's basically what a Long Night is when it comes to the balance of light and darkness.
So, the Long Night is a period of the BSE rule when total darkness covered the Earth.
And the Long Night was supposedly - according to the Western sources - accompanied by the Others invading the World and overpowering the realms of men
We have the following chronological order then:

1. The BSE decides to overthrow the Amethyst Empress
2. [A great civil war starts] - not mentioned, but should have happened
3. The BSE wins and establishes the rule of terror named the Long Night
4. [The Others invade the world] - not mentioned, but mentioned in Westerosi legends
5. The Lion of Night came forth in all his wroth to punish the wickedness of men

If we consider the Yi Ti and Westerosi sources to be 100% correct and faithful in their representation of the events and also assume our idea of the Ancient Dance of Dragons to be true, we get the following:
The world is devastated by the great civil war that features the extensive use of dragons. Then the BSE terrorizes his empire and enslaves its people. After that, the Others invade from the North. And then an eastern deity - the Lion of Night - unleashes his horrors upon the world. A bit too much, right?
Some events surely overlap or mean the same thing. So, how do we reconstruct what really happened?

1. The Lion of Night is the deity of darkness. So, him "coming forth" simply means the total darkness that fell on Earth. And I think he doesn't command anything on his own. The terrors that come with the night are associated with him but are separate from him. So, I conclude that he didn't really come to punish the wickedness of men. The eternal night coincided with someone else (The BSE for instance) punishing the wickedness of men, and so those actions were attributed to the Lion of Night
2. If the BSE started the Long Night, and the Long Night is associated with the Others, the BSE must be the one in command of the Others. That way we keep things plausible and less complicated. And it should be 100% correct because GRRM himself names the BSE the reason for the Long Night and makes it clear the Long Night's main villains are the Others. There is no way the BSE is not connected to the Others. If they acted independently, then the Others would have attacked the BSE's empire and got mentioned in the chronicles. They were not, because they were associated with the BSE. So, the Others never invaded the world during the rule of the BSE, they helped him begin his rule

We now have a far more plausible chronological order:

1. The BSE decides to overthrow the Amethyst Empress
2. [A great civil war starts] - not mentioned
3. The BSE wins with the help of Others and establishes the rule of terror named the Long Night accompanied by the long night (eternal darkness)

But if the BSE wins with the help of the Others, they must have fought in the great civil war by his side!
Conclusion 3: So, I am sure the Ancient Dance of the Dragons and the Long Night represent the same event: the Others under the command of the Bloodstone Emperor vs the forces of the Amethyst Empress. The chronicles later explained the Long Night by the Blood Betrayal as an ultimate sin that on top of aforementioned gluttony, incest, etc led humanity to its doom. And the fact that the Long Night was actually a civil war got overlooked: the apocalyptic narrative dwarfed the political one.
It explains why the Ancient Dance of the Dragons is never described anywhere.It explains the motivation of the Bloodstone Emperor way better, as you will see later
It also means that the Bloodstone Emperor became the leader of the Others before the Ancient Dance the Others actively participated in. And later led the Others against the GEotD to claim it for himself. But how and why does he command the Others?
We will soon find out.
​
Part III: The Thing That Should Not Be
So, what does the Bloodstone Emperor have to do with the Others?
Let's begin by stating that the guy most probably was born just a regular prince. And after that one day, he somehow turned into the leader of the Others and started performing atrocities:

He practiced dark arts, torture, and necromancy, enslaved his people, took a tiger-woman for his bride, feasted on human flesh, and cast down the true gods to worship a black stone that had fallen from the sky.

As we have already seen, he likely turned into a monster before he actually secured a throne (by siding with the Others), but the chronicle for some reason attributed it to his reign only. We shall see why.
So, what happened to the prince? I think the answer can be found by examining his actions and by trying to find something unusual that can trigger a change in a man, something external that is the origin of all other kinks. "Dark arts, torture, necromancy, enslaving of his people, tiger-woman for his bride, feasting on human flesh" - all that seems bizarre, but not so much as this:

"...and cast down the true gods to worship a black stone that had fallen from the sky."

It is followed by the single most important sentence in the whole book:

"Many scholars count the Bloodstone Emperor as the first High Priest of the sinister Church of Starry Wisdom, which persists to this day in many port cities throughout the known world"

From now on we are going full Lovecraftian:

1. What is a Church of Starry Wisdom? In the Lovecraftian universe, it is dedicated to Nyarlathotep and has nothing to do with "many port cities throughout the known world".
2. But the description of the cult "which persists to this day in many port cities throughout the known world" fits perfectly with another sinister cult of Lovecraftian Universe: The Cthulhu Cult.

This cult's members live close to the sea:

"Esquimau diabolists and mongrel Louisianans" [The Call of Cthulhu]

While all around the world the ports teem with cultists ready to kill those who know too much:

"...my uncle’s death was far from natural. He fell on a narrow hill street leading up from an ancient waterfront swarming with foreign mongrels, after a careless push from a negro sailor"
"...but in Norway a certain seaman who saw things is dead."
During a walk through a narrow lane near the Gothenburg dock, a bundle of papers falling from an attic window had knocked him down. Two Lascar sailors at once helped him to his feet, but before the ambulance could reach him he was dead.
I now felt gnawing at my vitals that dark terror which will never leave me till I, too, am at rest; “accidentally” or otherwise [The Call of Cthulhu]

And the man we learn a great deal about the cult from had traveled to distant ports:

What the police did extract, came mainly from an immensely aged mestizo named Castro, who claimed to have sailed to strange ports and talked with undying leaders of the cult in the mountains of China. [The Call of Cthulhu]

The Cthulhu cult persists among sailors and in the places these sailors usually stop by: in the ports. There is another story by Lovecraft "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" that features “The Esoteric Order of Dagon” we will cover later. But the cultists of this order too persist in the cities near the sea.
Conclusion 4: Although the name of the Church of Starry Wisdom is a reference to Nyarlathotep, the description of this cult fits the cults of Dagon and Cthulhu - the sea-based Great Old Ones.So, we will consider it a reference to Cthulhu and Dagon, not Nyarlathotep
Conclusion 5: If there is a church founded by the Bloodstone Emperor (BSE) (direct book evidence) that worships the sea Great Old Ones (our reconstruction based on the reference), there must be the Great Old Ones in Westeros in the first place.
The existence of the Great Old Ones in Westeros is not however such a mind-blowing statement. Consider this incomplete list of Lovecraftian references in ASOIAF:

1. The Drowned God of the Ironborn: a deity that dwells on the bottom of the ocean and that requires sacrifices from time to time. The process of creating new followers and priests of the Drowned God: basically temporarily drowning people
2. The merling culture of peoples near the sea and the apparent existence of merlings
3. Patchface that must have spent a couple of days on the bottom of the ocean and survived (with the help of some creatures)
4. A mysterious sea race destroyed the mazemakers of Lorath: "We do not know why they disappeared, though Lorathi legend suggests they were destroyed by an enemy from the sea: merlings in some versions of the tale, selkies and walrus-men in others"
5. On Thousand Islands "They speak no known tongue and are said to sacrifice sailors to their squamous, fish-headed gods, likenesses of whom rise from their stony shores, visible only when the tide recedes."
6. The Deep Ones are speculated to have built the Seastone Chair and the foundation of the Hightower (we will address these claims later) by Maester Theron in his manuscript Strange Stone. They are:

"queer, misshapen race of half men sired by creatures of the salt seas upon human women"

In the Lovecraftian universe, this description means the Deep Ones Hybrids, while the "creatures of the salt seas" are the Deep Ones. And the Deep Ones in the Lovecraftian Universe are the children of Dagon himself, the Great Old One. So, we can assume that the "creatures of the salt seas" in ASOIAF are fathered by the local Great Old Ones too
There are other more evident Lovecraftian references we will cover later, but for now, we can conclude there must be a sentient race of sea creatures in ASOIAF. Likely fathered by the Great Old Ones
The Bloodstone Emperor started to worship the Great Old Ones (who somehow appeared in ASOIAF) after a black stone fell from the sky. What does this stone have to do with the Great Old Ones? Everything:

There had been aeons when other Things ruled on the earth, and They had had great cities
They had, indeed, come themselves from the stars, and brought Their images with Them.
When the stars were right, They could plunge from world to world through the sky; but when the stars were wrong, They could not live. But although They no longer lived, They would never really die. They all lay in stone houses in Their great city of R’lyeh, preserved by the spells of mighty Cthulhu for a glorious resurrection when the stars and the earth might once more be ready for Them. [The Call of Cthulhu: Old Castro about the Great Old Ones]

So, in Lovecraftian Universe, the Great Old Ones arrived from the stars to Earth, after a while went dormant, and began communicating with the first men by sending them dreams and showing them the idols brought to Earth. We can assume the same happened in ASOIAF.
The black stone that fell from the sky in ASOIAF may mean either a giant city of the Great Old Ones or the idol they gave to men to worship. It doesn't really matter though. What matters is their appearance in ASOIAF
How does it align with the Bloodstone Emperor? There are 2 possibilities:

1. The Great Old Ones were "always" present in Westeros, the Bloodstone Emperor communicated with them and started to worship the black stone (with their images on it) they had directed him to.
2. They arrived during the youth of the Bloodstone Emperor and he was the first one to make contact with them

I tend to consider the second possibility, as the Bloodstone Emperor is "the first High Priest of the sinister Church of Starry Wisdom", so he must have been the first one to get the guidance of the Old Ones.
A personal note: the Great Old Ones from ASOIAF are immensely powerful but to a far lesser extent than their Lovecraftian peers. They couldn't destroy all the world if they wanted to.
But why would the Bloodstone Emperor start worshipping them? We may assume he made a deal and got something in return. But what? Consider this:

1. The BSE knows the lifespan of his dynasty is diminishing and approaching that of ordinary humans. It is unnerving and it is increasing the fear of death
2. The shortening of the lifespans coincides with the degradation of the state and society. It may lead anyone to believe an increase in the lifespan can reverse the trend and bring things back to normal.
3. As a prince with a divine heritage in the greatest empire known to men he already has everything he may want, except something his dynasty is losing...

Moreover, let's consider the properties of Bloodstone (copypasted from Wikipedia):

Pliny the Elder (1st century) mentioned first that the magicians used it as a stone of invisibility.
Damigeron (4th century) wrote about its property to make rain, solar eclipse, and its special virtue in divination and preserving health and youth.
A Christian tradition states that the red spots come from blood falling upon the stone during the crucifixion of Jesus, as he was stabbed in the side by a Roman soldier.
Ancient Roman soldiers believed that the stone had the ability to slow bleeding and wore it for this reason
In India it is held that one can staunch the bleeding by placing upon wounds and injuries after dipping it in cold water
The Gnostics wore the stone as an amulet for longevity, for wealth and courage, to strengthen the stomach, and to dispel melancholy.
In the Middle Ages it was considered useful for animal husbandry.
The ancient Greeks and Romans wore the stone to bring renown and favor, to bring endurance, and as a charm against the bite of venomous creatures.
Greek and Roman athletes favored it as a talisman for success in their games.

As we can see many sources feature the prolonged life or the health bonuses of this stone and the Internet widely recognizes it as a stone to prolong lifespan. Referring to the Internet is not a good argument, but it conveys a general superstitious consensus GRRM may have stumbled upon when he searched for a good name for this emperor.
Conclusion 6: So, I believe the BSE was desperate to find a way to prolong his life to the levels of his forebearers
And so he struck a deal with the Great Old Ones he encountered when they arrived in the ASOIAF's world. They made him de facto immortal but apparently asked something in return. What?
There are 3 possibilities:

1. They required blood sacrifices for themselves
2. The immortality of BSE depended on daily human sacrifices (only death can pay for life), so he needed them himself.
3. The Great Old Ones asked for people to turn them into their sea servants.

It may be a combination of any of these 3 possibilities, but I personally believe that it is the 2nd for sure (and any others optionally) because that way we take into account the basic magic rule of ASOIAF (only death can pay for life)
That is why the BSE must have begun to commit his first atrocities to feed the machine that prolonged his life and to honor his deal with the Old Ones. People started to go missing and I believe sooner or later the Amethyst Empress ordered him to stop
By that point, the BSE was already deep into all this dark stuff and apparently, he couldn't stop if he wanted to retain his immortality. So, he decided to oppose the Amethyst Empress and started searching for the means to do so. Again, probably he didn't want to take the throne for himself, he simply protected his newfound immortality.
So what did he do?
P.S. So, his atrocities were largely unknown before he secured a throne. He most likely used the subjects of his personal feud to make sacrifices. After claiming all empire he brought his terror to a whole new level - and the chronicles registered this. That is why they never mentioned he committed his atrocities before the coup.
This is the first part of the theory. For the second part please check: https://www.reddit.com/asoiaf/comments/194kh4j/from_the_winds_of_winter_to_the_call_of_cthulhu/ (it may be currently awaiting moderator approval)

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Colorado

The Colorado Supreme Court ruled last month that Donald Trump is disqualified from appearing on the state's ballot for his participation in an “insurrection.” The court—made up entirely of Democratic appointees—split 4-3 on the issue, with the dissenters focusing on whether Colorado law allows the state to resolve the issue in the first place.
A group of Colorado voters brought the lawsuit, arguing that Trump is ineligible to hold the office of president under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment.

• The relevant portion of the 14th Amendment reads: No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.

Section 3, enacted after the Civil War to prohibit Confederates and their sympathizers from serving again in public office, does not define an “insurrection or rebellion” and does not provide a legal minimum for proving such an action. Further, the presidency is not explicitly mentioned as an office covered by the clause.
Four of Colorado’s Supreme Court justices explain in a lengthy 133-page analysis that the “most obvious and sensible reading of Section Three” holds that the president is an “officer of the United States” and thus covered by Section 3. “[T]he events of January 6,” the majority continued, “constituted a concerted and public use of force or threat of force by a group of people to hinder or prevent the U.S. government from taking the actions necessary to accomplish the peaceful transfer of power in this country…Under any viable definition, this constituted an insurrection.”
Finally, the court considered whether Trump “engaged in” the insurrection, as required by Section 3:

We conclude that the foregoing evidence, the great bulk of which was undisputed at trial, established that President Trump engaged in insurrection. President Trump’s direct and express efforts, over several months, exhorting his supporters to march to the Capitol to prevent what he falsely characterized as an alleged fraud on the people of this country were indisputably overt and voluntary. Moreover, the evidence amply showed that President Trump undertook all these actions to aid and further a common unlawful purpose that he himself conceived and set in motion: prevent Congress from certifying the 2020 presidential election and stop the peaceful transfer of power…
Moreover, the record amply demonstrates that President Trump fully intended to—and did—aid or further the insurrectionists’ common unlawful purpose of preventing the peaceful transfer of power in this country. He exhorted them to fight to prevent the certification of the 2020 presidential election. He personally took action to try to stop the certification. And for many hours, he and his supporters succeeded in halting that process.

The three dissenters, on the other hand, based their decisions on procedural and legal deficiencies of the state’s process for disqualifying a candidate.
Chief Justice Boatright wrote that the “action to disqualify former President Donald J. Trump under Section Three of the Fourteenth Amendment presents uniquely complex questions that exceed the adjudicative competence” of Colorado’s election code, which requires an expedited five-day trial to determine qualification:

Section 1-1-113 provides for the resolution of potential election code violations in a timely manner…Although a claim that a candidate is not thirty-five years old may be easier to resolve than a claim that a candidate is not a natural born citizen, these presidential qualifications are characteristically objective, discernible facts. Age, time previously served as president, and place of birth all parallel core qualification issues under Colorado’s election code. Conversely, all these questions pale in comparison to the complexity of an action to disqualify a candidate for engaging in insurrection…Unlike qualifications such as age and place of birth, an application of Section Three requires courts to define complex terms, determine legislative intent from over 150 years ago, and make factual findings foreign to our election code…
Dismissal is particularly appropriate here because the Electors brought their challenge without a determination from a proceeding (e.g., a prosecution for an insurrection-related offense) with more rigorous procedures to ensure adequate due process. Instead, the Electors relied on section 1-1-113 and its “breakneck pace” to declare President Trump a disqualified insurrectionist.

Justice Carlos Samour’s dissent explains that his objections rest with the idea that Colorado can enforce Section 3 without a prior adjudicative proceeding from either the federal courts (like a conviction) or Congress (legislation).

My colleagues in the majority turn Section Three on its head and hold that it licenses states to supersede the federal government. Respectfully, they have it backwards. Because no federal legislation currently exists to power Section Three and propel it into action, because President Trump has not been charged under section 2383, and because there is absolutely no authority permitting Colorado state courts to use Colorado’s Election Code as an engine to provide the necessary thrust to effectuate Section Three, I respectfully dissent.

As expected, the Colorado Republican Party petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to hear the case last week. The Colorado ruling will thus remain on hold for the foreseeable future, potentially resulting in Trump remaining on the ballot for the state’s primary on March 5 (pending further action by the Supreme Court).

Maine

Unlike in Colorado, Maine voters can directly challenge a candidate’s qualification before the Secretary of State, who is empowered by state law to keep unqualified candidates off the primary election ballot.
A group of voters brought these challenges before Maine’s Secretary of State Shenna Bellows (D) seeking to have Donald Trump barred from the state’s primary ballot for violating Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment. Bellows concluded that Trump’s primary petition is invalid because he engaged in insurrection, thus making him unqualified to hold the office of the President:

I conclude… that the record establishes that Mr. Trump, over the course of several months and culminating on January 6, 2021, used a false narrative of election fraud to inflame his supporters and direct them to the Capitol to prevent certification of the 2020 election and the peaceful transfer of power. I likewise conclude that Mr. Trump was aware of the likelihood for violence and at least initially supported its use given he both encouraged it with incendiary rhetoric and took no timely action to stop it…
I do not reach this conclusion lightly. Democracy is sacred… I am mindful that no Secretary of State has ever deprived a presidential candidate of ballot access based on Section Three of the Fourteenth Amendment. I am also mindful, however, that no presidential candidate has ever before engaged in insurrection. The oath I swore to uphold the Constitution comes first above all, and my duty under Maine’s election laws, when presented with a Section 336 challenge, is to ensure that candidates who appear on the primary ballot are qualified for the office they seek.
The events of January 6, 2021 were unprecedented and tragic. They were an attack not only upon the Capitol and government officials, but also an attack on the rule of law. The evidence here demonstrates that they occurred at the behest of, and with the knowledge and support of, the outgoing President. The U.S. Constitution does not tolerate an assault on the foundations of our government, and Section 336 requires me to act in response.

Bellows therefore removed Trump from Maine’s primary ballot but stayed the decision to allow Trump to appeal to the state’s Superior Court.

Other states

Michigan: The state Supreme Court rejected a request to remove Trump from the 2024 primary ballot but left open the possibility of hearing legal challenges to his candidacy on the general election ballot. As Judge Welch explains, under Michigan law, the Secretary of State “lacks the legal authority to remove a legally ineligible candidate from the ballot once their name has been put forward by a political party in compliance with the statutes governing primary elections.”
Minnesota: The state Supreme Court dismissed a petition to remove Trump from the 2024 primary ballot but left open the possibility of hearing legal challenges to his candidacy on the general election ballot. “[T]here is no state statute that prohibits a major political party from placing on the presidential nomination primary ballot, or sending delegates to the national convention supporting, a candidate who is ineligible to hold office,” the court explained.
Oregon: Secretary of State LaVonne Griffin-Valade (D) announced in November that she does not have the authority to remove Trump from the state’s primary ballot. “Unique among Oregon elections, [presidential primaries] do not determine who is elected to office or even who will appear on the general-election ballot. Rather, they effectively serve as a straw poll of party members to determine their preferred candidates and to guide the delegates to the party’s national convention,” Oregon Solicitor General wrote to Griffin-Valade. Free Speech for People, a national nonprofit, filed a lawsuit appealing Griffin-Valade’s decision and, like in Michigan and Minnesota, the issue could be revisited for the general election ballot.
Virginia: Roy Perry-Bey and Carlos Howard, two Virginia voters, brought a lawsuit seeking to have Trump disqualified from appearing on future ballots. “Under the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution,” the suit states, “Mr. Trump is constitutionally ineligible to appear on any future ballot for federal office based on his engagement in insurrection against the United States.” The court will hear arguments to dismiss the case on Friday.
Wyoming: Tim Newcomb, a lawyer from Laramie, filed a lawsuit attempting to bar Trump and Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R) from appearing on future ballots. “Mr. Trump disqualified himself from appearing on Wyoming's ballot when he refused to defend the Constitution's transfer of presidential power under Article II, Section 1, adhering to its enemies,” Newcomb argues. “Ms. Lumnis disqualified herself from appearing on Wyoming's ballot when she refused to count Pennsylvania's electoral ballots to the electoral count required by Article II, Section 1, adhering to its enemies.” Wyoming Secretary of State Chuck Gray (R) filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit last month, calling it “outrageously wrong and repugnant to our electoral process.”
Alaska, Nevada, New Mexico, New York, South Carolina, Texas, Vermont, and Wisconsin: John Anthony Castro is a little-known Republican candidate who filed lawsuits in over 20 states seeking to have Trump disqualified from appearing on their ballots. Eight of the cases are still active at various stages. A decision from a federal judge in New Mexico is imminent, following a Nov. 28 hearing on the matter.

• Castro’s other cases were either dismissed voluntarily—as in California, Connecticut, Delaware, Idaho, Kansas, Massachusetts, Montana, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, and Utah—or dismissed by the courts, like in Arizona, Florida, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and West Virginia. In the latter instances, the courts determined that Castro lacked standing. “Castro is not genuinely competing with Trump for votes or contributions, and therefore is not suffering a concrete competitive injury,” U.S. District Judge Douglas Rayes wrote in Arizona. Similarly, a federal judge in West Virginia ruled that Castro could not prove any political activity aside from the lawsuit.

I would respectfully ask that you read this to its entirety before voting or commenting. I will attempt to keep it as concisely as possible due to the character limit, but the focal reason I stopped believing in Sam Harris’s views is an in-depth legal matter and so depressing to me that I can only give very general information and not the full extent. If anyone’s interested in further information, I made a blog post a few months ago and added citations at the bottom of the blog post to more thoroughly explain the ongoing human rights injustices that still exist to this day insofar as I understand them. Also, while I would like to believe this would provide convincing evidence, I think the way we as humans disassociate, detach, and rationalize factual evidence will make that highly unlikely. For anyone who has read Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman, I’d like to point out the aspect of the book where he explains that studies have shown that people subconsciously substitute complex questions for how they feel about the questions and respond to even serious issues with real world consequences in what would appear a thoughtless way, because they’re not actually thinking over the questions presented, but rather how they feel about the questions. Please keep that in mind while reading this to completion.
Before I go into my reasons why I stopped believing in the superiority of Western values, I want to be clear that this is not an anti-Sam Harris hate rant and I do agree with him on some other issues. He’s fully convinced me that freewill is a myth, reading counterarguments to freewill being a myth only strengthened my belief that freewill was a myth, and I think he’s the only one in public celebrity circles speaking honestly about it. His detractors erroneously try to argue on the consequences of what that would mean and how it makes people feel, but that isn’t an argument based upon honesty and evidence. His arguments specifically against religious superstition are superb, he’s completely right based on evidentiary methods and rational inquiry, and nothing further really needs to be said there. When it comes to topics that are generally in the realm of his expertise, he’s amazing. When I was in high school, I believed him to be just as intelligent and articulate about the superiority of Western values due to the enlightenment, the focus on human wellbeing based on utilitarian principles of the most good for the most people, and more specifically, Christopher Hitchens arguments in favor of the values of Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson, and Voltaire. In college, I had some internal disagreements based upon what Chris Hedges argued in his various books, news articles, and blog posts. Hedges “War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning” was required reading for one of my Political Science classes in college and that’s how I learned of him. A few years after college, after listening to various discussions by the nonprofit group, Ex-Muslims of North America and comparing it to how nihilistic Hedges eventually became, I eventually changed my mind to support enlightenment values with less disagreements to Sam Harris’s views. However, as of now, I completely reject all his arguments about Western values in their totality. I view it as equally harmful as neologisms like Islamophobia to shut down criticism of Islam and I feel disgusted with myself for ever having believed it. His views on the superiority of Western values are what I find to be called “Western Triumphalism” and I believe it is harmful; ironically, I first learned of this term and its application from a bemused reading of Christian missionary pamphlets in the 2010s attempting to rationalize the over 500 years of failed conversion attempts in India to Christianity. I agree with some of Sam Harris’s other views and I would go so far as to say that the New Atheist movement and main advocates like Harris, the late Hitchens, and Dawkins should be considered the most prominent and influential Western philosophers of the early 2000s. I believe it was their cultural influence that has led to the rapid decline of Christianity and religious superstitions more generally throughout the Western world. Nevertheless, I believe Western Triumphalism is built on a falsehood. I wanted to make all of that clear so that I’m not misperceived as some ignoramus that isn’t familiar with Sam Harris’s views.
The reason I’ve given up on believing in the superiority of Western values is because of the most successful and ongoing genocidal conditions imposed upon Native Americans living within the United States of America. These conditions are solely due to unilateral US legal policy forced upon Native Americans living in reservations and which have emboldened sex offenders throughout the United States to rape and murder Native Americans who live outside of the reservations too. In the Supreme Court decision of Oliphant vs Suquamish (1978), Supreme Court justice William Rehnquist in the majority decision stated that Native American reservations, upon becoming domestic dependent nations to the United States, had no jurisdiction to arrest and prosecute non-Native people coming into reservations. It also stated that the plenary power of the US Congress extended to being able to limit, modify, or remove any legal powers that Native American reservations had. In effect, non-Natives could not be arrested or prosecuted by Native American “tribal” court systems. This has led to widespread rape epidemics and murder sprees of Native American women and even men by predominately white male registered sex offenders for over forty years. These rape and murder sprees are not some bygone era of the past, they still occur to this day and have never stopped. The Supreme Court of the United States under Rehnquist effectively legalized rape upon Native Americans living in reservations because only Federal prosecutors were allowed to prosecute non-Native registered sex offenders coming into reservations to harm Native Americans. Indigenous court systems and Native American police could not arrest or prosecute them for over forty years and I’ve read articles where Indigenous police essentially admitted that if they did attempt to, then registered sex offenders could call on local police in their towns outside reservations to shoot and kill Indigenous reservation police because it isn’t a crime to harm Native Americans living in reservations and Indigenous police are committing a crime by trying to stop registered sex offenders from raping and murdering Indigenous people.
As I read more deeply into this issue, it sickened me how they’ve imposed legal decisions on reservations for crimes between Native Americans too; please bear in mind, bad actors exist in all groups and I’m not trying to disparage any person or ethnic group. Nearly a century prior to this decision, the Major Crimes act of 1885 passed by the US Congress effectively stated that only the US Congress had unilateral rights to define punishment for crimes like rape and murder on Indigenous reservations; the US Congress limited crimes of murder and rape upon reservations to six months prison or a $500 fine. In 1986, they updated it to one year in prison and a $5000 fine, and only in 2010 has the US Congress updated this to $15,000 fine and a three-year prison sentence. As many of you may know, that is far short of a 25 to life sentence for murder and five or more years in prison for rape. Native American court systems have no legal ability to update their own court systems even on crimes within their communities between their community members. Even outside of the issue that predominately white male sex offenders can come in to rape and murder an Indigenous child, Native American groups have protested and begged for over forty years for there to be updates in the penal code or for federal prosecutors to visit reservations only for prosecutors not wanting to make the trip and closing cases pre-emptively allowing no legal recourse to hold registered sex offenders accountable throughout the United States when they rape and murder Indigenous people living in reservations. There’s a disincentive for Federal prosecutors to pursue these cases due to there being more legal challenges as a result of the jurisdictional nightmare created by Oliphant vs Suquamish of 1978 and Federal prosecutors have discretion on cases they can choose to pursue. Vast majorities of cases were not prosecuted throughout the forty years of rape and murder sprees upon Indigenous people and the US federal government didn’t have a systematized measurement of cases until 2020, despite criticisms over this by Amnesty International back in 2007. Amnesty International’s own research between October 2002 and September 2003 found that Federal prosecutors declined 60 percent of cases of sexual assault in reservations where the perpetrator was a non-Native man who sexually assaulted an Indigenous woman according to their first Maze of Injustice research publication back in 2007. The updated 2022 report found nearly 57 percent of Indigenous women are likely to be sexually assaulted in their lifetime, it is usually multiple times in their lives, and approximately 30 percent of those sexual assaults were rape. In other words, approximately one in two Indigenous women will be sexually assaulted and approximately one in three Indigenous women will be raped in their lifetime throughout the United States. In both the first Amnesty International report and the local news reports by KX News of North Dakota found that approximately between 84 – 86 percent of the sexual violence comes from non-Native men; KX News of North Dakota clarified that the non-Native perpetrators are overwhelmingly violent sex offenders who use reservations as safe havens to rape or rape and kill Indigenous women.
If not for the studies by Amnesty International USA, US news agencies that originate from Great Britain, independent news organizations like Reveal News, and local news reports from various US State locales; I would never have learned of or known any of this. The majority of US-based national news agencies like NBC News deliberately obfuscate and try to re-contextualize the information as a Native-on-Native problem to protect predominately white male, registered sex offenders. They claim that Indigenous reservations are sovereign territories when they’ve been legally defined as domestic, dependent nations since Cherokee Nation vs Georgia (1831). In Johnson vs McIntosh (1823), Supreme Court justice Marshall legally defined Native Americans as “wards” of the US government and what that meant was that US penal code and US law define Native Americans as having no legal ability for rational thinking faculties. The basis of this was the Christian doctrine of discovery which Thomas Jefferson had reinterpreted into secular terms. Even as recent as City of Sherill v. Onedia Indian Nation (2005), Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg cited the Doctrine of Discovery as the reason for why the Oneida nation had to pay taxes for land it had legally re-purchased that was lost to it during colonial expulsion by white settlers. The reason the Supreme Court would decide on that basis is because currently the two competing legal theories defining US law is the originalist or textualist theories of law. What that means is, the Supreme Court of the United States can only interpret the laws on the basis of either a literalist reading of the text of the law or on the basis of the original intent of the Founding Fathers of the United States in accordance with the US Constitution and US Constitutional amendments. Therefore, because Thomas Jefferson supported the Doctrine of Discovery for all non-Christians, due to legal affirmations like the two Supreme Court cases in the early 1800s, and the Founding Fathers own racist writings such as the Declaration of Independence referring to Indigenous people as “merciless Indian savages” which was written by Thomas Jefferson himself; the Supreme Court of the United States can only pass judgments based upon that and that means the US legal system is deliberately organized to violate the human rights of Native Americans. Unless there’s a Constitutional amendment allowing genuine self-determination or simply allowing Indigenous court systems to prosecute non-Native sex offenders, these horrific conditions will not change at all. In more recent times there have been piecemeal efforts to bandage this barbaric legal system that the US created, the Supreme Court decision of United States vs Cooley (2021) now allows Indigenous police to hold and detain perpetrators while waiting for non-Indigenous police to come and arrest them and the Supreme Court decision of Oklahoma vs Castro-Huerta (2021) allows local non-Native police to arrest and prosecute non-Natives going into Indigenous reservations to harm Indigenous people. However, as Amnesty International USA reiterated, the core problem is the Supreme Court decision of Oliphant vs Suquamish (1978) which allowed registered sex offenders carte blanche access to assault, rape, and murder Indigenous people for over forty years and remains in legal effect to this day. The most recent analysis by the US House of Representatives in the Violence Against Women’s Reauthorization bill of 2021, that seems to have been killed in the US Senate’s Committee of the Judiciary, is that 86 percent of Native American men and 96 percent of Native American women have been physically or sexually violated by a non-Native offender.
I feel utterly ashamed of myself for having believed in the superiority of Western values after learning all of this. The first time I had heard of this issue was back around the early 2010s and I had misunderstood the Violence against Women’s Reauthorization act of 2013 for having covered non-Native perpetrators and not solely domestic partners; imagine my surprise when years later, I re-read the information and the actual applicable law to find out how wrong I was after reading about how rapes and murders of Indigenous people had increased throughout the years. The Republican majority Congress and President Obama had only focused on the 15 percent of sexual violence in Indigenous reservations and not the 84 – 86 percent of registered sex offenders coming in to rape and kill people including innocent kids. I feel ashamed of myself for living in ignorance thinking that Republican and Democrat politicians of the US Congress had come together to fix a pertinent human rights issue. My thinking was: why would a first-world, Western country that I’ve lived in and believed in all of my life allow registered sex offenders to rape and kill innocent women due to their ethnic background just because the Founding Fathers had antiquated beliefs? Why would a bunch of dead people’s bigotry matter more to US politicians, US court systems, and the US public than Indigenous people living here and now fearing for their lives of being raped and killed? It was irrational to me to believe that the US legal system could ever operate in such a way, but as I delved deeper after learning it still continued, I learned just how stupid I was. I couldn’t help but think of all the times I believed in and supported Sam Harris’s views on the superiority of Western values; I recall how he claimed, without any hint of irony or humor, that Christianity had modified itself to not be as violent as Islam and yet, there is an ethnic minority group – the Indigenous peoples of the Americas – being raped and killed because of a modified form of the Christian Doctrine of Discovery as a core component of US law and US legitimacy over the modern form of the US today. Even worse, this doesn’t cover the litany of historical abuses upon Native Americans even prior to Oliphant v. Suquamish (1978) that the US still legally defends in modern times: the downright genocidal boarding schools of the 1870s – 1960s which brutalized Indigenous children, the US government legally owning the Indigenous reservations and not allowing Indigenous people to legally hold them, the dumping of toxic waste that has increased child mortality among Indigenous mothers, the failed “Termination Era” policies by the US Congress trying to end Indigenous reservations by forcing Indigenous people into cities which began a legacy of pimps forcing Native American women into prostitution with local law enforcement penalizing Native women after they were drugged and pimped out by non-Native men, the sterilization campaign by several US State government agencies upon Indigenous women along with other minority women and even lower-income white Americans, and the ongoing legal justification for violations upon the human rights of Native Americans today. There is so much to this legacy of abuses that undermine Sam Harris’s arguments about the superiority of Western values.
When rethinking the arguments and beliefs of Sam Harris in his blogs about the superiority of Western values in consideration with my lessons in Political Science; I’ve come to understand that human rights is just used as a tool of convenience to support US national interests and US policy objectives. As many of you undoubtedly experienced in our lifetime, we in the US went from arguing over the brutal conditions of women in Afghanistan to forgetting about it and talking about the importance of Ukraine’s right to sovereignty and the human rights of Ukrainian children in international courts. We have constant discussions about the Israel-Palestine conflict, Syria, and briefly, about Libya when Qaddafi was deposed. Why not Sudan? Why not Tibet? And, why not the horrific conditions happening to Indigenous people in our own backyards throughout the United States? It is because the conflicts taking focus on the US national news by US corporations serve the US’s national interests and those human rights issues that do not serve the national interests of the US are ignored. The US has a national interest in conflicts like Ukraine because it puts NATO and US hegemony at risk. The US has interests in Iraq, Syria, and Libya because of the petrodollar system in which the US promised to defend specific dictatorships throughout the Arab Spring so long as they sold oil on the US dollar; thereby making the US the world reserve currency, allowing the US Federal Reserve and Banking CEOs to have significant influence over international markets to further US financial power, and making the US into the most dominant superpower in world history in terms of global military expansion. The US has a national interest in Israel predominately because of the religious majority of Americans being of an Abrahamic religious denomination who view it as their holy land, Israel helps keep a balance of power to threats like Iran, the combat experience with US-made weapons probably helps the US arms industry with working out improvements when IDF soldiers war with Palestinians and Hamas, and the cultural strife between Israel and its neighbors allow for the US to give it free billions in weapons while the US makes approximately $90 billion in sales to countries like Saudi Arabia who then sell those US-made weapons to terrorists like Hamas. The US stopped concerning itself with Afghanistan and Afghan women’s rights after the US government could get the Taliban to agree not to support any international terrorism that would negatively impact US national interests. Likewise, the attempts to downplay or re-contextualize the evidence by the US mainstream news media when they falsely proclaim sexual violence among Indigenous populations to be “intimate partner violence” as the main issue or the false claims that the Indigenous reservations are sovereign territories despite the actual legal definition; these are falsehoods to comfort people into supporting US national interests. Please think about this and I swear I do not say this lightly: I’ve come to understand that terms like “complex jurisdictional maze”, “legal loopholes”, “US trust responsibility” are merely euphemisms for the deliberate, state-sponsored genocide of the Indigenous people of the US by the US government. That is what all of what I previously mentioned about the jurisdictional issues amounts to. The Wisconsin Law Review argued the Supreme Court decision of Oliphant v. Suquamish (1978) to be legal auto-genocide. That is genuinely what the US legal policies towards Native Americans still are to this day and they’ve only been updated in response to outcries of repeated ongoing human rights catastrophes of rape crimes and murder sprees. The US government has only acted after worst-case scenarios happened, only reluctantly upon widespread condemnation from some subsets of the US public, and the US still refuses to simply allow Indigenous reservation police and court systems to prosecute non-Native registered sex offenders. Why? Because US politicians want to preserve US hegemony, US legal scholars and US prosecutors want to maintain that the institutions are perfect as defined by a “God-given” right of the US being exceptional, and the majority of us in the US public believe in this delusion of Western values being superior to all others. Sam Harris follows this deluded script about the superiority of Western values without being cognizant of how equally harmful it is to neologisms like Islamophobia.
Finally, one of the focal reasons that I have reinterpreted concepts of the superiority of Western values and Western universalism as Western triumphalism is because it is based upon a falsehood that ignores the cultural genocide of the Native Americans. Many within modern US liberal and conservative circles may recognize the physical genocide and sexual exploitation, but they still have trouble recognizing the impact of cultural genocide that persists to this day. The belief in the superiority of Western values thoroughly erases Indigenous cultural contributions to the modern United States. Many of you may recognize how terms such as Western values and Western universalism are falsely viewed as Judeo-Christian values by many Christian groups and some Jewish groups and how they attempt to co-opt the idea that two of the three Abrahamic faiths are somehow the origins for human rights. Unfortunately, US and European atheists have largely done exactly the same by conflating enlightenment values with women’s rights. Due to ignorance and whitewashing of Indigenous history in US history classes for decades, very few seem to know that while 1920 was the year in which US women finally gained national suffrage from the ratification of the 19th amendment; Indigenous women had been voting for approximately over a millennium or more prior to the arrival of white settlers within clan-based confederacies in the north-east of the Americas. Two of the three original women’s rights activists had become adopted members of the Haudenosaunee confederacy (the people of the long-house which is now more popularly called by its French name, the Iroquois Confederacy); women’s property rights, legal punishment for marital rape, women having the voluntary right to form legal and business contracts without anyone else’s approval or influence, women having sole ownership of their own land and property, child custody of children given to the woman in a divorce, women having the right to divorce, women holding legal office in official capacity, women participating in binding international treaties, women’s suffrage, and denunciations against rape within a wider society allowing women to live freely without fear of men attacking and raping them at night were all cultural contributions of the Haudenosaunee confederacy. That was how the North-Eastern Indigenous societies functioned; women held the sole authority to vote in what referred to as a Fire Council, each head of a Clan was referred to as a Clan-Mother, and women could vote the elected male chief out of power. The elected chief was more a Commander-in-Chief and not the one making domestic or national policy decisions which were reserved for the Fire Council of Clan-Mothers. Interestingly, in similar fashion to the stereotypes of patriarchal European Noble Houses, Clan-Mothers were selected based on the eldest daughter or the eldest woman that was most closely related to the previous Clan-Mother. These were a few aspects of what their societies were like, and I am not denying there were problematic aspects, but just think about how Hollywood throughout the early 1900s and US societal ignorance has stereotyped Indigenous cultures as primitive, patriarchal, and filled with rape until the white settlers came with Euro-centric values. It’s deliberate cultural genocide and a falsehood to perpetuate the idea that Indigenous cultures somehow caused the current problems of rape and murder that keep occurring. I personally do not believe that I will ever forgive myself for not recognizing these problems sooner. I don’t believe that I’ll ever forgive the national news media for continuing to falsely claim that it is due to sovereignty and not the deliberate policies that have given carte blanche access to rapists and murderers throughout the US. The US writ large imposed euro-centric, Western policies diminishing Indigenous women’s rights, livelihoods, and capacity to sue for rape and murder and then blamed Indigenous communities for it. The majority of the US public likely still believe that these changes are somehow correcting some weird or quirky “tribal” problem among Indigenous communities, when the truth is that the US has committed and is still committing state-sponsored rape campaigns upon Indigenous women even now. The two earliest women’s rights advocates would later argue for a revised Christianity in which they wrongly believed that there was a universal womanhood among more “tribal” religions all across the world; modern anthropology and archaeology has debunked much of those claims, but not those of Indigenous people’s ancient history. For example, in Missouri, the ancient site of the city of Cahokia, it was found that most of the dynastic human sacrifices were due to women competing for power and fame against each other and presumably sending the men to fight over their dynastic feuds. Brutal? Yes. Showing women held dominance in society? Also, yes. Moreover, the ignorant attempt by the two originators of feminism to reinterpret Indigenous women’s cultural contributions to US society as something that all ancient societies around the world presumably had; was a form of whitewashing the unique contributions of Indigenous societies and more specifically, the Haudenosaunee confederacy. It was the chain reaction of the Haudenosaunee having dialogue, explaining their culture, sharing their culture amicably, and allowing the white women who would become the earliest feminists and feminist theorists to participate in their culture that eventually pushed for women’s advocacy reforms and changes in US law centuries later for accomplishments like women’s suffrage in the 1920s; the push for changes in US law would later influence women’s rights globally over the centuries after World War 2. The centuries of feminist theory and influence is the result of the amicable sharing of Indigenous cultural belief structures, legal systems, and social views and the only thing the US has ever given in return is dispossession, dehumanization, cultural genocide, sterilization campaigns, dumping toxic waste into the reservations forced upon them by the US government, state-sponsored campaigns of rape and murder, and legal auto-genocide. All of these reasons are why I find Sam Harris’s political views to be incredibly shallow and ill-informed; Sam Harris’s views on the superiority of Western Values is Western Triumphalism and it is a harmful belief system that still promotes genocide to this day. I say this with all sincerity, it is historically as damaging as puritanical Islamism and both are equally false and dangerous ideas that spread genocidal levels of violence, bigotry, and hate.
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Works Cited

1. “2 the Never-Ending Maze: Continued Failure to Protect Indigenous Women …” Https://Www.Amnestyusa.Org/Maze/, Amnesty USA, http://www.amnestyusa.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/AmnestyMazeReportv_digital.pdf. Accessed 29 Oct. 2023.
2. “687. Tribal Court Jurisdiction.” The United States Department of Justice, 22 Jan. 2020, http://www.justice.gov/archives/jm/criminal-resource-manual-687-tribal-court-jurisdiction#:~:text=The%20Supreme%20Court%20held%20in,the%20tribe%20in%20Duro%20v.
3. “City of Sherrill v. Oneida Indian Nation of N. Y., 544 U.S. 197 (2005).” Justia Law, supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/544/197/. Accessed 28 Oct. 2023.
4. Cooper, Renee. “Behind the Grim Statistics for Sexual Violence on Reservations.” KX NEWS, KX NEWS, 22 Dec. 2020, http://www.kxnet.com/news/local-news/being-raped-is-a-right-of-passage-behind-the-grim-statistics-for-native-american-women/.
5. “Doctrine of Discovery.” Legal Information Institute, Legal Information Institute, http://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/doctrine_of_discovery. Accessed 28 Oct. 2023.
6. Golden, Hallie. “US Indigenous Women Face High Rates of Sexual Violence – with Little Recourse.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 17 May 2022, http://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/may/17/sexual-violence-against-native-indigenous-women.
7. Maher, Savannah. “Supreme Court Rules Tribal Police Can Detain Non-Natives, but Problems Remain.” NPR, NPR, 9 June 2021, http://www.npr.org/2021/06/09/1004328972/supreme-court-rules-tribal-police-can-detain-non-natives-but-problems-remain.
8. Martinez, Clara. “The Evolution of Judicial Power: How the Supreme Court Effectively Legalized Rape on Indian Reservations.” Linfield Journal of Undergraduate Research, Lindfield University, digitalcommons.linfield.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1012&context=quercus. Accessed 29 Oct. 2023.
9. “Maze of Injustice.” Amnesty International USA, 15 May 2017, web.archive.org/web/20111018194106/www.amnestyusa.org/pdfs/MazeOfInjustice.pdf.
10. “The Never-Ending Maze: Continued Failure to Protect Indigenous Women from Sexual Violence in the USA.” Amnesty International USA, Amnesty International USA, 19 July 2023, http://www.amnestyusa.org/maze/.
11. Oweiss, Ibrahim M. “Petrodollars: Problems and Prospects.” Economics of Petrodollars, faculty.georgetown.edu/imo3/petrod/petro2.htm. Accessed 28 Oct. 2023.
12. Pastino, Blake de. “Infamous Mass Grave of Young Women in Ancient City of Cahokia Also Holds Men: Study.” Western Digs, 5 Aug. 2013, web.archive.org/web/20221004092858/https://westerndigs.org/infamous-mass-grave-of-young-women-in-ancient-city-of-cahokia-also-holds-men-study/.
13. Supreme Court of the United States, http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/21pdf/21-429_8o6a.pdf. Accessed 29 Oct. 2023.
14. Text – H.R.1620 – 117th Congress (2021-2022): Violence against Women …, http://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/1620/text?r=6&s=1. Accessed 29 Oct. 2023.
15. “Tribal Governance.” Crow Dog Case (1883) Tribal Governance, http://www.uaf.edu/tribal/academics/112/unit-1/crowdogcase.php. Accessed 28 Oct. 2023.
16. “United States v. Cooley, 593 U.S. ___ (2021).” Justia Law, supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/593/19-1414/. Accessed 28 Oct. 2023.
17. Vogue, Ariane de. “States Can Prosecute Non-Tribal Members Who Commit Crimes on Native American Reservations, Supreme Court Says CNN Politics.” CNN, Cable News Network, 29 June 2022, http://www.cnn.com/2022/06/29/politics/oklahoma-supreme-court-mcgirt-castro-huerta/index.html.
18. Wagner, Sally Roesch. “Sisters in Spirit: Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Influences …” Goodreads, Goodreads, http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/989655.Sisters_in_Spirit. Accessed 28 Oct. 2023.
19. Williams, Robert A. “THE ALGEBRA OF FEDERAL INDIAN LAW: THE HARDTRAIL OF DECOLONIZING AND AMERICANIZING THEWHITE MAN’S INDIAN JURISPRUDENCE.” UW Law Digital Repository Media · University of Wisconsin Law School Digital Repository · University of Wisconsin Law School Digital Repository, University of Wisconsin Law Review, repository.law.wisc.edu/s/uwlaw/media/35536. Accessed 28 Oct. 2023.

Hey everyone! I do these conference rankings every year so it's finally that time when rosters are more or less set for the upcoming season. This one is focused on the Big East. I will also do the SEC, Pac-12, American, WCC, MWC, A-10, and MVC. If you want me to do another one not listed let me know. As always happy to here your opinions, thoughts, suggestions, etc.
If you want to see the ACC, Big 12, and Big Ten they are already up:
https://www.reddit.com/CollegeBasketball/comments/1622t7x/202324_acc_preseason_rankings
https://www.reddit.com/CollegeBasketball/comments/164npzz/202324_big_12_preseason_rankings
https://www.reddit.com/CollegeBasketball/comments/168bdyp/202324_big_ten_preseason_rankings
Also, I have * next to players who are injured for the start of the 2023-24 season or else confirmed to redshirt this season or out for another reason.
It's the reigning national champs vs. the reigning Big East champs for the top spot this season. I am giving the nod to Marquette who only lost OMP to the draft but returns everyone else of note including Big East POY Tyler Kolek. Jones, Ighodaro, and Mitchell contribute experience and Shaka adds a trio of solid freshman (one or two of which I expect to contribute immediately). If guys like Joplin, Ross, Jones, and Gold can take a leap I think this Golden Eagles squad can be just as good as last year. UConn is coming off a national title but they lose Sanogo, Hawkins, and Jackson to the draft. Donovan Clingan figures to step into Sanogo's role and contribute big numbers. Karaban and Newton should be focal points too. Rutgers transfer Cam Spencer and freshmen Castle, Ball, Stewart, and Ross should mitigate some of their losses. I'm also very high on Samson Johnson who was injured last season. UConn should be great again.
Creighton lost PG Ryan Nembhard and Arthur Kaluma but everyone else is back. Kalkbrenner down low and Alexander and Scheierman on the wing to go with Utah State transfer Steven Ashworth who is also deadly from deep should get Creighton back to the Dance. Villanova was disappointing in Neptune's first year. Some of that was due to injury. All-Big East caliber guys Justin Moore and Eric Dixon should lead this squad bolstered by a trio of transfers in Tyler Burton, T.J. Bamba, and Hakim Hart all of whom have experience and can score. Armstrong moves to a 6th man role and we will see what Nova can get out of former UK enforcer Lance Ware. This team should be much better this year if they can stay healthy. Xavier loses Souley Boum and Colby Jones but replaces them with WKU transfer Dayvion McKnight and Rice transfer Quincy Olivari. Freemantle and Hunter should be good too once they are healthy. Another tourney team for Miller. Slick Rick is back in the big times, baby! And boy did he reload. Joel Soriano is one of two holdovers from Anderson's tenure and he should be a force down low. Two former Ivy stars in Jordan Dingle and Chris Ledlum should put up big numbers. And then you add high major transfers Zuby Ejiofor, Glenn Taylor Jr., and Naheim Alleyne as well as former UNC commit Simeon Wilcher. This is gonna be the best SJU's team in quite some time and I think Pitino gets them to the dance in Year 1. Ed Cooley left for Georgetown so in comes Kim English. Bryce Hopkins and Devin Carter will be called upon to lead once again and English brings with him a trio of GMU players including big man Josh Oduro. I am really bullish on freshman Garwey Dual who I think contributes immediately. Providence should be a tourney team too but perhaps a little bit lower than they have been in the past.
This Pirates team is in a tier by themselves. The Hall is not what I figured it would be when they hired Shaheen Holloway. Richmond and Dawes are back and they bring in St. John's transfer Dylan Addae-Wusu and a pair of mid-major centers to take over down low. Not going to be horrible but don't expect this Pirates team to make the tourney.
I thought Thad Matta was just what Butler needed. But this squad did not inspire last year nor does it this year. Posh Alexander is a solid PG but beyond that this squad is made up of too many mid and low major transfers to factor into the BE race. Georgetown ended the Patrick Ewing experiment and poached Cooley from Providence. A good hire and I think G'town is on the rise but not this year. Jayden Epps is a good get and I like the additions of Massoud, Cook, and Styles. But not enough to do anything special. Watch out for Cooley in a year or two though. DePaul. Oh DePaul. As per usual they will fair ok in the non-con but are in for a rude awakening come conference play especially given how good the Top 6-7 teams are in this league. Sorry Blue Demon fans.
Tier Rankings:
Tier 1 (Big East Favorites) - Marquette, UConn
Tier 2 (Tourney Teams) - Creighton, Villanova, Xavier, St. John's, Providence
Tier 3 (No Man's Land) - Seton Hall
Tier 4 (Better Luck Next Year) - Butler, Georgetown, DePaul
Predicted Number of Tourney Bids: 7
Here are my rankings (but keep in mind the tiers where I could realistically see those teams finishing in any order within their respective tiers):
​
#1 Marquette Golden Eagles
Departures: Olivier Maxence-Prosper, Emarion Ellis, Zach Wrightsil, Keeyan Itejere
Returning: Tyler Kolek, Kam Jones, Oso Ighodaro, Stevie Mitchell, David Joplin, Chase Ross, Sean Jones, Ben Gold
Additions: Tre Norman, Al Amadou, Zaide Lowery, Caedin Hamilton
Projected Starting Lineup: Kolek, Mitchell, Jones, Joplin, Ighodaro
​
#2 Connecticut Huskies
Departures: Adama Sanogo, Jordan Hawkins, Andre Jackson Jr., Joey Calcaterra, Naheim Alleyne, Richie Springs, Yarin Hasson
Returning: Tristen Newton, Alex Karaban, Donovan Clingan, Hassan Diarra, Samson Johnson, Apostolos Roumoglou
Additions: Cam Spencer, Stephon Castle, Solomon Ball, Jaylin Stewart, Jayden Ross, Youssouf Singare
Projected Starting Lineup: Newton, Spencer, Castle, Karaban, Clingan
​
#3 Creighton Bluejays
Departures: Ryan Nembhard, Arthur Kaluma, Shereef Mitchell, Ben Shtolzberg, John Christofilis
Returning: Baylor Scheierman, Trey Alexander, Ryan Kalkbrenner, Francisco Farabello, Mason Miller, Frederick King, Jasen Green
Additions: Steven Ashworth, Johnathan Lawson, Isaac Traudt, Josiah Dotzler, Brock Vice, Sterling Knox
Projected Starting Lineup: Ashworth, Alexander, Scheierman, Miller, Kalkbrenner
​
#4 Villanova Wildcats
Departures: Cam Whitmore, Caleb Daniels, Brandon Slater, Angelo Brizzi
Returning: Justin Moore, Eric Dixon, Mark Armstrong, Chris Arcidiacono, Jordan Longino, Brendan Hausen, Trey Patterson, Nnanna Njoko
Additions: T.J. Bamba, Tyler Burton, Hakim Hart, Lance Ware, Jordann Dumont
Projected Starting Lineup: Moore, Bamba, Hart, Burton, Dixon
​
#5 Xavier Musketeers
Departures: Colby Jones, Souley Boum, Jack Nunge, Adam Kunkel, KyKy Tandy, Deionte Miles, Elijah Tucker, Cesare Edwards
Returning: Zach Freemantle, Jerome Hunter*, Desmond Claude, Kam Craft
Additions: Quincy Olivari, Dayvion McKnight, Abou Ousmane, Logan Duncomb, Trey Green, Lazar Djokovic, Dailyn Swain, Reid Ducharme, Kachi Nzeh, Gytis Nemeiksa
Projected Starting Lineup: McKnight, Olivari, Claude, Freemantle, Ousmane
​
#6 St. John's Red Storm
Departures: Posh Alexander, David Jones, Andre Curbelo, Dylan Addae-Wusu, A.J. Storr, Montez Mathis, Esahia Nyiwe, Rafael Pinzon, O'Mar Stanley, Kolby King, Mohamed Keita
Returning: Joel Soriano, Drissa Traore
Additions: Jordan Dingle, Daniss Jenkins, Chris Ledlum, Glenn Taylor Jr., Zuby Ejiofor, R.J. Luis, Naheim Alleyne, Simeon Wilcher, Sean Conway, Brady Dunlap, Cruz Davis, Sadike Ibine Ayo
Projected Starting Lineup: Jenkins, Dingle, Taylor Jr., Ledlum, Soriano
​
#7 Providence Friars
Departures: Jared Bynum, Ed Crosswell, Noah Locke, Clifton Moore, Quante Berry, Alyn Breed
Returning: Bryce Hopkins, Devin Carter, Jayden Pierre, Corey Floyd Jr., Rafael Castro
Additions: Josh Oduro, Davonte Gaines, Justyn Fernandez, Garwey Dual, Donovan Santoro, Richard Barron, Marcus Scott V
Projected Starting Lineup: Pierre, Carter, Floyd Jr., Hopkins, Oduro
​
#8 Seton Hall Pirates
Departures: Femi Odukale, KC Ndefo, Jamir Harris, Alexis Yetna, Tyrese Samuel, Tray Jackson, Tae Davis, Abdou Ndiaye
Returning: Al-Amir Dawes, Kadary Richmond, Dre Davis, Jaquan Sanders, JaQuan Harris
Additions: Dylan Addae-Wusu, Elijah Hutchins-Everett, Jaden Bediako, Isaiah Coleman, Sadraque NgaNga, Arda Ozdogan, David Tubek
Projected Starting Lineup: Richmond, Dawes, Addae-Wusu, Davis, Hutchins-Everett
​
#9 Butler Bulldogs
Departures: Simas Lukosius, Jayden Taylor, Manny Bates, Ali Ali, Chuck Harris, Eric Hunter Jr., Pierce Thomas, Myles Tate, Myles Wilmoth, D.J. Hughes
Returning: Jalen Thomas, Connor Turnbull, John-Michael Mulloy
Additions: Posh Alexander, Jahmyl Telfort, Pierre Brooks, D.J. Davis, Landon Moore, Andre Screen, Boden Kapke, Finley Bizjack, Augusto Cassia
Projected Starting Lineup: Alexander, Davis, Brooks, Telfort, Thomas
​
#10 Georgetown Hoyas
Departures: Primo Spears, Brandon Murray, Akok Akok, Dante Harris, Qudus Wahab, Jordan Riley, Denver Anglin, Bradley Ezewiro, Bryson Mozone, Malcolm Wilson, D'Ante Bass
Returning: Jay Heath, Wayne Bristol Jr., Ryan Mutombo
Additions: Jayden Epps, Supreme Cook, Ismael Massoud, Dontrez Styles, Rowan Brumbaugh, Drew Fielder, Drew McKenna
Projected Starting Lineup: Epps, Heath, Styles, Massoud, Cook
​
#11 DePaul Blue Demons
Departures: Nick Ongenda, Javan Johnson, Umoja Gibson, Eral Penn, Yor Anei, Philmon Gebrewhit, Ahmad Bynum, Tyon Grant-Foster
Returning: Da'Sean Nelson, Caleb Murphy, Jalen Terry, Zion Cruz, K.T. Raimey
Additions: Chico Carter Jr., Jaylen Fisher, Jeremiah Oden, Jaden Henley, Mac Etienne, Keyondre Young, Churchill Abass, Dramane Camara
Projected Starting Lineup: Terry, Carter Jr., Murphy, Nelson, Etienne

After filing a lawsuit this week in New Hampshire to block Trump from the Republican primary ballot there under the 14th amendment to the U.S. Constitution, fringe Republican Presidential candidate John Anthony Castro said Pennsylvania is among the states where he intends to file a similar suit.
<< ...Castro, a Texas-based attorney running a longshot bid for the GOP nomination, filed a lawsuit in Merrimack Superior Court this week seeking an injunction that would force New Hampshire's Secretary of State to keep Trump's name off the ballot.
In the court filing, Castro argues Trump violated the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which bars anyone who engaged in or provided aid or comfort to an insurrection from holding office.
In an interview with News 9, Castro pointed to then-President Trump telling members of the Proud Boys to "stand back and stand by" during a 2020 debate ahead of the November election, and his messages posted to social media during the violent attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, as instances of "providing comfort" to an insurrection.
"We had someone who was watching TV giddy as a school kid, seeing the U.S. Capitol getting attacked," Castro said. "He can't hold any office, local, state or Federal. He can't even get elected in the Palm Beach city council. That's how serious it is....."
Castro said he is filing similar lawsuits in important swing states, including Pennsylvania, Ohio and Georgia. >> [Emphasis added.]
https://www.wmur.com/article/republican-candidate-files-lawsuit-trump-nh-ballot/44943129#
See Section 3 of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution here:
<< No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability. >> [Emphasis added.]
https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/amendment-14/
Any lawsuit filed by Castro in Pennsylvania seeking to ban Trump from any Pennsylvania ballots likely will be resolved in the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, and perhaps finally by the U.S. Supreme Court. The U.S. Supreme Court more likely will hear this 14th amendment case if lawsuits filed in different states are resolved in different ways, especially both for and against allowing Trump onto state ballots.
Conviction of Trump on insurrection charges either in Georgia or federal court cases already filed likely would enhance greatly the outcome of any lawsuit attempting to ban Trump from Pennsylvania or other state ballots, but such convictions are not necessary to adjudicate lawsuits under the 14th amendment, according to legal scholars. So 14th amendment trials can proceed regardless of any other law actions against Trump on insurrection charges.
The merits of a 14th amendment lawsuit against Trump are discussed in more detail in this thread, contemplating a lawsuit under the 14th amendment in Ohio by Castro also seeking to ban Trump from Ohio ballots.
https://www.reddit.com/Ohio/comments/16662mg/secretary_of_state_frank_larose_ohio_supreme/
​

After filing a lawsuit this week in New Hampshire to block Trump from the Republican primary ballot there under the 14th amendment to the U.S. Constitution, fringe Republican Presidential candidate John Anthony Castro said Georgia is among the states where he intends to file a similar suit.
<< ...Castro, a Texas-based attorney running a longshot bid for the GOP nomination, filed a lawsuit in Merrimack Superior Court this week seeking an injunction that would force New Hampshire's Secretary of State to keep Trump's name off the ballot.
In the court filing, Castro argues Trump violated the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which bars anyone who engaged in or provided aid or comfort to an insurrection from holding office.
In an interview with News 9, Castro pointed to then-President Trump telling members of the Proud Boys to "stand back and stand by" during a 2020 debate ahead of the November election, and his messages posted to social media during the violent attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, as instances of "providing comfort" to an insurrection.
"We had someone who was watching TV giddy as a school kid, seeing the U.S. Capitol getting attacked," Castro said. "He can't hold any office, local, state or Federal. He can't even get elected in the Palm Beach city council. That's how serious it is....."
Castro said he is filing similar lawsuits in important swing states, including Pennsylvania, Ohio and Georgia. >> [Emphasis added.]
https://www.wmur.com/article/republican-candidate-files-lawsuit-trump-nh-ballot/44943129#
See Section 3 of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution here:
<< No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability. >> [Emphasis added.]
https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/amendment-14/
Any lawsuit filed by Castro in Georgia seeking to ban Trump from any Georgia ballots likely will be resolved in the Supreme Court of Georgia, and perhaps finally by the U.S. Supreme Court. The U.S. Supreme Court more likely will hear this 14th amendment case if lawsuits filed in different states are resolved in different ways, especially both for and against allowing Trump onto state ballots.
Conviction of Trump on insurrection charges either in Georgia or federal courts likely would enhance greatly the outcome of any lawsuit attempting to ban Trump from Georgia or other state ballots, but such convictions are not necessary to adjudicate lawsuits under the 14th amendment, according to legal scholars. So 14th amendment trials can proceed regardless of any other law actions against Trump on insurrection charges.
The merits of a 14th amendment lawsuit against Trump are discussed in more detail in this thread, contemplating a lawsuit under the 14th amendment in Ohio by Castro also seeking to ban Trump from Ohio ballots.
https://www.reddit.com/Ohio/comments/16662mg/secretary_of_state_frank_larose_ohio_supreme/
​
​
​

John Anthony Castro this week filed a lawsuit seeking to bar Trump from the New Hampshire primary ballot under the 14th amendment to the U.S. Constitution as a result of Jan. 6 events. Castro said he also will file a similar lawsuit in Ohio, among other states. See Section 3 here:
<< No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability. >> [Emphasis added.]
https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/amendment-14/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourteenth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution
<< John Anthony Castro, a Texas-based attorney running a longshot bid for the GOP nomination, filed a lawsuit in Merrimack Superior Court this week seeking an injunction that would force New Hampshire's Secretary of State to keep Trump's name off the ballot.
In the court filing, Castro argues Trump violated the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which bars anyone who engaged in or provided aid or comfort to an insurrection from holding office.
In an interview with News 9, Castro pointed to then-President Trump telling members of the Proud Boys to "stand back and stand by" during a 2020 debate ahead of the November election, and his messages posted to social media during the violent attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, as instances of "providing comfort" to an insurrection.
"We had someone who was watching TV giddy as a school kid, seeing the U.S. Capitol getting attacked," Castro said. "He can't hold any office, local, state or Federal. He can't even get elected in the Palm Beach city council. That's how serious it is....."
Castro said he is filing similar lawsuits in important swing states, including Pennsylvania, Ohio and Georgia. >> [Emphasis added.]
https://www.wmur.com/article/republican-candidate-files-lawsuit-trump-nh-ballot/44943129#
The 14th amendment challenge to Trump's ability to run for federal office was first raised by two Federalist Society scholars. The Federalist Society in recent decades has dominated Republican judicial theory and served as a screening authority for Supreme Court and other Republican federal judicial nominees. A majority of current U.S. Supreme Court justices are current or former Federalist Society members.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federalist_Society
<< “In our view, on the basis of the public record, former President Donald J. Trump is constitutionally disqualified from again being President (or holding any other covered office) because of his role in the attempted overthrow of the 2020 election and the events leading to the January 6 attack,” law professors William Baude and Michael Stokes Paulsen wrote for the University of Pennsylvania Law Review. “The case for disqualification is strong.”
In writing about Trump’s speech from the Ellipse on January 6, 2021, to his supporters who then overran the Capitol, Baude and Paulsen said Trump delivered a “general and specific message” that the election was stolen, calling on the crowd to take immediate action to block the transfer of power before falling silent for hours as the insurrection progressed.
“Trump’s deliberate inaction renders his January 6 speech much more incriminating in hindsight, because it makes it even less plausible (if it was ever plausible) that the crowd’s reaction was all a big mistake or misunderstanding,” they write. >>
https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/19/politics/donald-trump-fourteenth-amendment-2024-race/index.html
The law professors emphasize that the 14th amendment does not require conviction in a court preceding in order to be enforced. So presumably legal action to exclude Trump from state ballots can proceed immediately before even any Trump trials get underway.
<< Baude and Paulsen also noted that Trump’s “overall course of conduct disqualifies him” from eligibility as a candidate, regardless of whether he is convicted of criminal charges related to the 2020 election – which he now faces in Georgia state court and in federal court – or whether he is held liable in a major civil conspiracy lawsuit related to the attack.
“If the public record is accurate, the case is not even close. He is no longer eligible to the office of Presidency,” the law review article said....
“Not since the Civil War has there been so serious a threat to the foundations of the American constitutional republic,” Baude and Paulsen wrote about the Capitol attack and Trump’s illegitimate attempt to hold on to power.
They note that more people died and were injured as a result of the January 6, 2021, attack than in the 1861 Battle of Fort Sumter that began the Civil War. >>
The question hasn't been addressed whether a conviction of Trump in any of the court cases claiming he led an insurrection would allow a 14th amendment challenge again to be raised. The above CNN article noted one convicted rioter has been removed from a county office, but didn't clarify if this was based on the 14th amendment, which also bans persons from state office when applicable.
<< However, one convicted Capitol rioter, Couy Griffin, was removed by a judge from an elected county office in New Mexico. >>
Trump's refusal to deploy the National Guard, despite repeated requests while the Capitol was under attack and while he watched the event on TV, may be the most damning evidence against him. Amazingly, Trump posits he could only have deployed the National Guard if requested to do so by Congressional leaders. Eventually Vice President Pence reportedly ordered the deployment of National Guard troops that subsequently helped clear the Capitol.
https://www.cnn.com/2022/07/26/politics/chris-miller-house-select-committee/index.html
https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2022/aug/10/facebook-posts/no-proof-trump-asked-troops-jan-6-or-democrats-den/
https://www.militarytimes.com/news/pentagon-congress/2022/06/10/pence-not-trump-asked-guard-troops-to-help-defend-capitol-on-jan-6-panel-says/
Trump even has attempted falsely to shift the blame for failure to deploy the National Guard to Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House on Jan. 6. After Jan. 6, surely one or more of his legal advisors alerted Trump to how his inaction while the Capitol was under attack created his jeopardy of being excluded from office under the 14th amendment. This perhaps explains Trump's "Big Lie" propaganda claim that blamed Pelosi for the failure to deploy the National Guard before or promptly during the Jan. 6 attack.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2021/12/16/fact-check-no-trump-request-10000-guard-troops-jan-6/8929215002/
Will current House Speaker Kevin McCarthy be subpoenaed to testify against Trump in any 14th amendment legal case?
https://thehill.com/homenews/house/3682571-mccarthy-told-trump-that-jan-6-rioters-were-trying-to-ing-kill-me-book/
https://www.politico.com/news/2021/01/13/mccarthy-trump-responsibility-capitol-riot-458975
Not mentioned yet is the reality that many Republican party stalwarts, perhaps even including the Federalist Society, don't want to see Trump as the Republican nominee. The general perception is that Trump would have difficulty winning a general election even against a weak President Biden candidacy. The Federalist Society clearly doesn't want to lose control of the Supreme Court, a possibility if the Republicans don't win the next Presidential election. So some Republican Secretaries of State and Supreme Courts in Republican-controlled states may use the 14th Amendment as a means to avoid the consequences of a Trump candidacy. Even the U.S. Supreme Court Federalist Society judges may welcome the opportunity to end Trump's Presidential candidacy.
Republicans still are reeling from the failure to regain control of the U.S. Senate, perceived to have largely occurred because of Trump intervention in key Senate races.
Also not discussed yet is that Trump may even more likely be excluded from ballots in highly populous, Democratic Party-controlled states such as California, NY, and Michigan, as a result of 14th Amendment challenges in those states, unless such state actions are blocked by the U.S. Supreme Court. Supreme Court justices who block enforcement of the 14th amendment may have to worry about the consequences, such as impeachment in the future, or expansion of the Supreme Court by a Democratic President and concurring Democratic Congress in order to eliminate the Republican/Federalist Society majority on the court.
​
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"The foundation for the project ZEDE (Zone for Employment and Economic Development) was laid in 2011 under President Porfirio Lobo Sosa but was declared invalid by the Honduran Supreme Court in 2012 because it would violate Honduras' national sovereignty. Subsequently, a modified plan was approved by the Supreme Court after the judges were replaced. American economist Paul Romer was initially involved in the project but left soon after.[5]
By early 2021, the project was in the starting blocks and the city's first buildings were constructed. German architect Patrik Schumacher is involved in the design of the apartments.[5]
In 2022, Honduran President Xiomara Castro repealed the enabling legislation for the ZEDEs, leaving developments like Prospera in limbo. [8]"
Próspera Demands Honduras Pay $11 Billion for Outlawing Privately Run City -
https://www.corpwatch.org/article/prospera-demands-honduras-pay-11-billion-outlawing-privately-run-city
Honduras threatens ICSID withdrawal over $11 billion ‘neo-colonial’ special economic zone claim -
https://www.brettonwoodsproject.org/2023/07/honduras-threatens-icsid-withdrawal-over-11-billion-neo-colonial-special-economic-zone-claim/
33 Democrats urge ban on investor-state dispute provisions in all U.S. trade deals -
https://www.reuters.com/article/usa-trade-honduras-disputes-idTRNIKBN2WU0RK
Prospera website -
https://www.prospera.co/
You can find the google for and find the CEO on linkedin.

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/july-21-2023-friday
On June 8 the Supreme Court affirmed the decision of a lower court blocking the congressional districting map Alabama put into place after the 2020 census, agreeing that the map likely violated the 1965 Voting Rights Act and ordering Alabama to redraw the map to include two majority-Black congressional districts.
Today the Alabama legislature passed a new congressional map that openly violates the Supreme Court’s order. By a vote of 75–28 in the House and 24–6 in the Senate, the legislature approved a map that includes only one Black-majority district.
Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) and many of the other members of Alabama’s congressional delegation had spoken to the Republicans in the state legislature about the map. Editor of the Alabama Reflector Brian Lyman reported that the map’s sponsor said he had spoken to House speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) too: “It was quite simple,” the sponsor said. McCarthy “said ‘I’m interested in keeping my majority.’ That was basically his conversation.”
Alabama governor Kay Ivey, a Republican, signed the bill into law.
Today, assistant U.S. attorney general Todd Kim and U.S. attorney for the Western District of Texas Jaime Esparza wrote to Texas governor Greg Abbott and Texas interim attorney general Angela Colmenero warning that the actions of Texas in constructing a barrier in the Rio Grande between the U.S. and Mexico “violate federal law, raise humanitarian concerns, present serious risks to public safety and the environment, and may interfere with the federal government’s ability to carry out its official duties.”
The floating barrier violates the Rivers and Harbors Act, which prohibits the construction of any obstructions to navigation in U.S. waters and requires permission from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers before constructing any structure in such waters. Abbott ignored that law to construct a barrier that includes inflatable buoys and razor wire.
Mexico has also noted that barrier buoys that block the flow of water violate treaties between the U.S. and Mexico dating from 1944 and 1970, and has asked for the barriers to be removed. So has the owner of a Texas canoe and kayaking company, who says the buoys prevent him from conducting his business. And so have more than 80 House Democrats, who have noted Abbott’s “complete disregard for federal authority over immigration enforcement.”
Unless Texas promises by 2:00 Tuesday afternoon to remove the barrier immediately, the U.S. will sue.
Abbott has made fear of immigration central to his political messaging. He is now faced with the reality that Biden’s parole process for migrants at the southern border has dropped unlawful entries by almost 70% since it went into effect in early May, meaning that border agents have more time to patrol and are making it harder to enter the U.S. unlawfully.
Abbott’s barrier seems designed to keep his messaging amped up, accompanied as it is by allegations that troops from the National Guard and the Texas Department of Public Safety have been ordered to push migrants, including children, back into the river and to withhold water from those suffering in the heat. There are also reports that migrants have been hurt by razor wire installed along the barrier.
Abbott responded to the DOJ’s letter: “I’ll see you in court, Mr. President.”
Yesterday, on the same day that Shawn Boburg, Emma Brown, and Ann E. Marimow added to all the recent stories of Supreme Court corruption an exclusive story showing how then-leader of the Federalist Society Leonard Leo funded a “a coordinated and sophisticated public relations campaign to defend and celebrate” Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, the Senate Judiciary Committee voted along party lines to advance a bill that would require the U.S. Supreme Court to adopt a binding code of ethics.
“We wouldn’t tolerate this [behavior] from a city council member or an alderman," committee chair Dick Durbin (D-IL) said. “It falls short of ethical standards we expect of any public servant in America. And yet the Supreme Court won't even acknowledge it’s a problem.” “The Supreme Court Ethics, Recusal, and Transparency Act,” Durbin said, “would bring the Supreme Court Justices’ ethics requirement in line with every other federal judge and restore confidence in the Court.”
Senator Lindsay Graham (R-SC) disagreed that Congress could force the Supreme Court to adopt an ethics code. “This is an unseemly effort by the Democratic left to destroy the legitimacy of the Roberts court,” he said, although he agreed that the justices need “to get their house in order.”
Today, Dahlia Lithwick and Anat Shenker-Osorio noted in Slate that voters of both parties strongly support cleaning up the Supreme Court.
As signs of an indictment for his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election grow stronger, Trump has taken to threats. When asked about incarceration, Trump said earlier this week: “I think it’s a very dangerous thing to even talk about, because we do have a tremendously passionate group of voters, much more passion than they had in 2020 and much more passion than they had in 2016. I think it would be very dangerous.”
His loyalists are working to undermine the law enforcement agencies that are supporting the rule of law. On July 11, 2023, Representative Jim Jordan (R-OH), chair of the House Judiciary Committee, wrote to chair of the Committee on Appropriations Kay Granger (R-TX) asking her to defund Biden’s immigration policies as well as the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), which investigates crime.
It is notable that, for all their talk about law and order, the Republican-dominated legislature of Alabama and the state’s Republican governor have just openly defied the U.S. Supreme Court, which is hardly an ideological enemy after Trump stacked it to swing to the far right.
The Republican governor of Texas is defying both federal law and international treaties. After rampant scandals, the Republican-dominated Supreme Court refuses to adopt an ethics system that might restore some confidence in their decisions. And, aided by his loyalists, the front-runner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination is threatening mob violence if he is held legally accountable for his behavior.
The genius of the American rebels in 1776 was their belief that a nation could be based not in the hereditary rights of a king but in a body of laws. “Where…is the King of America?” Thomas Paine wrote in Common Sense. “I'll tell you Friend…that in America THE LAW IS KING. For as in absolute governments the King is law, so in free countries the law ought to be King; and there ought to be no other.”
Democracy is based on the rule of law. Undermining the rule of law destroys the central feature of democracy and replaces that system of government with something else.
In Florida today, U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon set May 20, 2024, as the date for Trump’s trial for hiding and refusing to give up classified national security documents.
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Notes:
https://www.democracydocket.com/news-alerts/alabama-republicans-send-congressional-map-without-second-majority-black-district-to-governo
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/elections/alabama-gop-refuses-draw-second-black-district-supreme-court-order-rcna94715
https://www.tpr.org/border-immigration/2023-07-21/doj-to-sue-texas-over-gov-abbotts-operation-lone-star-border-security-program
https://apnews.com/article/mexico-texas-rio-grande-buoys-immigration-a0ddf07c9d91c0c0413cf2bbfb16d9c1
https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/08/us/texas-floating-barrier-migrants-lawsuit/index.html
https://thehill.com/opinion/immigration/4074720-bidens-parole-program-is-the-immigration-success-story-weve-been-waiting-fo
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/07/12/us-mexico-border-migrant-crossings/
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/07/21/abbott-doj-border-lawsuit-warning-00107650
https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2023/07/20/leonard-leo-clarence-thomas-paoletta/
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/key-takeaways-senate-hearing-supreme-court-ethics/story?id=99017432
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/supreme-court-faces-senate-ethics-bill-amid-justices/story?id=101496678
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2023/07/supreme-court-ethics-reform-support-from-americans.html
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/while-defending-supreme-court-graham-cant-help-but-admit-justices-need-to-get-their-house-in-order
https://castro.house.gov/media-centepress-releases/congressman-castro-leads-80-house-democrats-calling-on-the-administration-to-intervene-in-operation-lone-star
https://www.mediaite.com/news/trump-threatens-would-be-very-dangerous-if-jack-smith-sends-him-to-jail-in-new-interview/
https://www.ushistory.org/Paine/commonsense/sense4.htm
https://judiciary.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites/republicans-judiciary.house.gov/files/evo-media-document/2023-07-11-jdj-to-granger-appropriations.pdf
Twitter:
lyman_brian/status/1682482571567939584
SenatorDurbin/status/1682136618554015745