Edvard Munch Ashes 1894
Anti Energy
Contrary to the narrative that the Earth is too hot and on the verge of burning, it's actually a place where far more people die of cold than of heat.
And there's no way to keep 8 billion people warm without fossil fuels.
With @KatiePavlich on @JesseBWatters Live, @FoxNews pic.twitter.com/ppOsg6BIKZ
— Alex Epstein (@AlexEpstein) December 30, 2022
A man who dares to waste one hour of time has not discovered the value of life.
– Charles Darwin
“Will mysteries be revealed in 2023? Personally, I think so. Things are lining up in that direction, though who knows whether the damage can even be reversed at this point.”
• Forecast 2023 — Get Out of the Way if You Can’t Lend a Hand (Kunstler)
“The powerful are panicking, and so they should. Their secrets are leaking.” —Miranda Devine
“It’s all just snake oil. We want to save the planet, and the life upon it, but we’re not willing to pay the price and bear the consequences. So we make up a narrative that feels good and run with it.” — Raul Ilargi Meijer
“2023 could be a pivotal year for USA if the pervasive lies can be exposed, digested, and believed. All that exposure has to happen amidst continuing boondoggles toward the Great Reset agenda.” – Truman Verdun
“More borrowing only ever makes sense if you are expecting a larger economy in the future. All economic expansion is based on energy. Countries with energy can expand, those without cannot.” — Chris Martenson
“To be an enemy to America can be dangerous, but to be a friend is fatal.” — Henry Kissinger
It’s hard to contemplate 2023 without spiraling into nausea, tachycardia, and cold sweat. But it is an inescapable duty here to lay out the probabilities ahead. I’ve been doing this forecast thing for some years now, and, of course, I am often wrong, so take some solace in that and relax. Maybe the new year will be all unicorns, rainbows, talking gerbils, and candied violets. 2022 sure was a cold shower. The long emergency I talk so much about finally got up to cruising speed, with the ectoplasmic “Joe Biden” revving our country into economic, political, and cultural collapse — a hat-trick of calamity — and he did it more swiftly and directly than any emperor managed in late-day Rome, with policies and actions 180-degrees contra to America’s public interest — cheered on by a thinking class that had obviously lost it consensual mind.
Was it simply to do the opposite of what the loathed and detested Mr. Trump would do? Could it be that simple or that automatic? The thinking class’s eyes have a zombified glaze these days. It’s obvious, you might agree, that “Joe Biden” is not in charge of anything, really. He’s an animatronic figure programmed to read a teleprompter and not much else. Half the time, he can’t even find his way off-stage after doing that one trick. The claque pulling his strings just may be the crew you see around him (you know, WYSIWYG): Susan Rice, Ron Klain, Jake Sullivan, Antony Blinken, Victoria Nuland, and company. Ms. Rice has kept herself completely hidden backstage at the White House for two years. Nobody ever hears about her or sees her. Weird, a little bit, for the Director of the Domestic Policy Council.
Or else, are there puppeteers deeper in the shadows, say, “JB’s” former boss Barack Obama, Der Schwabenklaus and his WEF retinue, Bill Gates and other tech billionaires, the “systemically important” bankers, George Soros…? Or some coven of super-elite warlocks we’d never heard of? The US leadership dynamic is truly mystifying and has been for two whole years. Will mysteries be revealed in 2023? Personally, I think so. Things are lining up in that direction, though who knows whether the damage can even be reversed at this point. And now onto the shape of things to come….
“Ukraine can continue fighting only as long as the United States supports them with money and weapons. If the Americans want peace, then there will be peace.”
• Ukraine Lashes Out At Orbán’s Pro-Peace Stance On Russia-Ukraine Conflict (ZH)
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has been harshly criticized by the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry, according to remarks published on the ministry’s website on Tuesday, Dec. 27, German news agency dpa reports. Orbán’s statements “demonstrate a pathological disregard for Ukraine and the Ukrainian people who are fighting against Russian aggression,” the Ukrainian ministry said, accusing the Hungarian leader of “political short-sightedness.” As Denis Albert reports at Remix News, the comments came in response to a statement by Orbán that the war could end if the United States stopped supplying arms to Ukraine. Orbán was working in this way towards Ukraine’s defeat, even if it would increase the danger of Russian aggression directed at Hungary, the Ukrainian ministry said.
“The Hungarian leader should ask himself if he wants peace,” the ministry said in a statement. In an earlier interview Orbán said, “Ukraine can continue fighting only as long as the United States supports them with money and weapons. If the Americans want peace, then there will be peace.” As Remix News reported, in a recent interview Orbán said that while it is important for his government that Russia poses no security threat, continued economic relations is essential for not only Hungary, but also for the entire European economy. “The answer to the question of whether we are on the right or wrong side of history is that we are on the Hungarian side of history. We support and help Ukraine, it is in our interest to preserve a sovereign Ukraine, and it is in our interest that Russia does not pose a security threat to Europe, but it is not in our interest to give up all economic relations with Russia. We are looking at these issues through Hungarian glasses, not through anyone else’s,” Orbán said.
“A state that would apply such provisions simply has no place in the European Union..”
• Zelensky Gives His Government More Censorship Powers (RTN)
On Thursday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky signed off a controversial bill that substantially increases the government’s regulatory authority over the news media. The new law will give the government new censorship powers and is a fresh blow to press freedoms in the country. The legislation significantly increases the powers of Ukraine’s state broadcasting regulator to allow it to regulate both the print and online news media. Further, it allows for fines to be imposed on media outlets, their licenses to be revoked without due process, and even some websites to be temporarily blocked without going through the courts. Finally, it gives the regulator authority to order search giants such as Google and other social media platforms to remove content.
Zelensky’s actions are already being criticized by press freedom advocates. As this bill moved through Parliament, members of international organizations such as the European Federation of Journalists and the Committee to Protect Journalists expressed their concerns about its provisions. “The coercive regulation envisaged by the bill and in the hands of a regulator totally controlled by the government is worthy of the worst authoritarian regimes. It must be withdrawn. A state that would apply such provisions simply has no place in the European Union,” said EFJ General Secretary Ricardo Gutiérrez. “Media regulation should be implemented by a body independent of the government and its objective should be media independence, not media control,” Gutiérrez added.
“Ukraine’s media bill seriously imperils press freedom in the country by tightening government control over information at a time when citizens need it the most,” remarked Gulnoza Said, CPJ’s Europe and Central Asia program coordinator, in a statement. “Ukrainian legislators should abandon the bill, or at least pause its progress in parliament until the European Union can weigh in with recommendations.” Members of Ukraine’s National Union of Journalists strongly opposed the bill due to its potential to reduce fundamental freedoms within the country. Nevertheless, Yevheniia Kravchuk, the deputy chairperson for Parliament’s Information Policy Committee contradicted those worries by stating that Ukraine’s media legislation had not been updated since the absence of the internet 16 years prior. This new broader bill was needed to bring their media laws up to date and provide greater access to accurate information and technologies.
“Multipolarity is “not against the West as such,” Dugin said, but “against the claim of the West to be the model, to be the unique example” of history and human understanding..”
• Ukraine Is ‘First Multipolar’ Conflict – Dugin (RT)
The conflict in Ukraine is the world’s “first multipolar war,” in which Russia is fighting for the right of every civilization to choose its own path while the West wishes to maintain its totalitarian hegemonic globalism, Aleksandr Dugin told RT in an exclusive interview on Friday. Multipolarity is “not against the West as such,” Dugin said, but “against the claim of the West to be the model, to be the unique example” of history and human understanding. The current Russophobia and hatred of Russia, he argued, are a relic of Cold War thinking and the “bipolar understanding of the architecture of international relations.” When the Soviet Union self-destructed in December 1991, it left the “global Western liberal civilization” in control of the world, Dugin noted.
This hegemon is now refusing to accept the future in which it would be “not one of the two, but one of [the] few poles,” put in its proper place as “just a part, not the whole, of humanity.” Dugin described the West as “pure totalitarian liberalism,” which pretends to have the absolute truth and seeks to impose it on everyone. “There is inherent racism in Western liberalism,” the philosopher told RT’s Donald Courter, because it “identifies the Western historical, political, cultural, experience [as] universal.” “Nothing universal exists in multipolarity,” Dugin insisted, explaining that each civilization can and should develop its own values. Russia specifically needs to overcome centuries of Western ideological dominance, he said, and create something “new, fresh, creative” that would nonetheless stand “in direct refutation of the Western liberal hegemony, against open society, against individualism, against liberal democracy.”
He rejected the “dogmatic” approaches of Marxism, fascism or liberalism to politics and economics, saying that Russia ought to strive for a “holistic” approach in which the spiritual would be more important than the material. Obsession with material goods ends up enslaving people, Dugin told RT. Dugin lamented the December 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union as a “suicide” perpetrated by the power-hungry bureaucrats in Moscow. He echoed Russian President Vladimir Putin’s description of it as a “geopolitical disaster” and described it as a major victory for “Sea Power.” While the USSR was the polar opposite of the Russian Empire in terms of ideology, he explained, in geopolitical terms the two were one and the same, the strongest power in what English geographer Harold Mackinder described as the global Heartland.
While some Western observers have dubbed Dugin “Putin’s brain,” the 60-year-old philosopher and author has no official relationship with the Kremlin. He is an outspoken supporter of the current military operation in Ukraine – whose independence he considers a Western imperial project aimed against Russian sovereignty. Dugin’s daughter Darya, 29, was assassinated in August by a car bomb planted by Ukrainian agents. Though Kiev has officially denied it, US intelligence officials later said they believe someone in the Ukrainian government was responsible.
MIT Adopts Free Speech Resolution: “We Cannot Prohibit Speech as Offensive or Injurious.”
• MIT Adopts Free Speech Resolution (Turley)
We recently discussed schools joining the University of Chicago free speech alliance. Now, the faculty of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have adopted a resolution defending freedom of speech and expression, including speech deemed “offensive or injurious.” It is a triumph for free speech. However, while 98 faculty voted for the resolution, 52 professors voted against the free speech principles. The Free Expression Statement is a balanced affirmation of the essential role of free speech in higher education. “A commitment to free expression includes hearing and hosting speakers, including those whose views or opinions may not be shared by many members of the MIT community and may be harmful to some. This commitment includes the freedom to criticize and peacefully protest speakers to whom one may object, but it does not extend to suppressing or restricting such speakers from expressing their views. Debate and deliberation of controversial ideas are hallmarks of the Institute’s educational and research missions and are essential to the pursuit of truth, knowledge, equity, and justice.”
What is unnerving is that a third of the faculty disagreed with the resolution despite the following reservation: “MIT does not protect direct threats, harassment, plagiarism, or other speech that falls outside the boundaries of the First Amendment. Moreover, the time, place, and manner of protected expression, including organized protests, may be restrained so as not to disrupt the essential activities of the Institute.” However, the statement makes the key acknowledgment that “we cannot prohibit speech that some experience as offensive or injurious.” That is clearly unacceptable for many in academic. Silencing opposing views or voices has become a core principle for many professors who now refer to free speech as an ever present danger on campuses. MIT has not always stood by free speech. As we previously discussed, the university yielded to cancel culture by barring a guest lecture to be given by University of Chicago geophysicist Dorian Abbot in 2021.
MIT also attracted criticism over abandoning standardized testing to achieve greater diversity. It later reversed that decision. The new resolution is a victory for the “MIT Free Speech Alliance,” which has fought to defend free speech against a growing number of faculty. University of Chicago emeritus biology Professor Jerry Coyne raised some good-faith objections on his Why Evolution Is True blog, including the resolution “calling for ‘civility and mutual respect’, as well as ‘considering the possibility of offense and injury’. You simply cannot have free speech without offense and injury. Abbot’s invitation provoked precisely such offense and injury, with many people supporting his deplatforming.” However, the references are part of a graph that refers to the personal responsibility of faculty to maintain civility and mutual respect. It follows an express protection for offensive speech:
“We cannot prohibit speech that some experience as offensive or injurious. At the same time, MIT deeply values civility, mutual respect, and uninhibited, wide-open debate. In fostering such debate, we have a responsibility to express ourselves in ways that consider the prospect of offense and injury and the risk of discouraging others from expressing their own views. This responsibility complements, and does not conflict with, the right to free expression. Even robust disagreements shall not be liable to official censure or disciplinary action. This applies broadly. For example, when MIT leaders speak on matters of public interest, whether in their own voice or in the name of MIT, this should always be understood as being open to debate by the broader MIT community.”
“..we still don’t have randomized trials for so many drug recommendations, including the new bivalent vaccine, COVID vaccine boosters in young people, the optimal vaccine dosing interval, and even the antiviral drug Paxlovid in vaccinated people.”
• Fauci Leaves a Broken Agency for His Successor (Makary)
After 54 years at the NIH, tomorrow marks Dr. Anthony Fauci’s last day in office as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). While many were angered by his changing and conflicting recommendations, I am not. They are mere symptoms of a much larger and deeper problem. Dr. Fauci’s agency failed to promptly fund key research during the pandemic. That research would have abruptly ended many of the COVID controversies that divided our country. In a study of NIH funding published in The BMJ, my Johns Hopkins colleagues and I found that in the first year of the pandemic, it took the NIH an average of five months to give money to researchers after they were awarded a COVID grant. This should be unacceptable during a health emergency.
Consider the question of how COVID spread—was it airborne or spread on surfaces? (Remember all those people wiping down their groceries?) It lingered as an open question without good research for months, as Fauci spent hundreds of hours on television opining on the matter. Finally, on August 17, 2021—a year and a half after COVID lockdowns began—Dr. Fauci’s agency released results of a study showing the disease was airborne. Thanks for that. The announcement on the NIAID website, titled “NIH Hamster Study Evaluates Airborne and Fomite Transmission of SARS-CoV-2” came 18 months too late. Imagine if, in February 2020, Dr. Fauci had marshaled his $6 billion budget, vast laboratory facilities, and teams of experts to conduct a definitive lab experiment to establish that COVID was airborne.
On this question and many others throughout the pandemic, our problem was not that the science changed—it’s that it wasn’t done. NIH funding for COVID research was also erratic. The NIH spent almost $1.2 billion on long COVID research, but virtually nothing on masks, natural immunity, COVID in children, or vaccine complications. Ironically, the NIH spent more than twice as much on aging research as it did on COVID research in the first year of the pandemic, according to my team’s analysis. I’m all for aging research, but not when a novel virus is killing thousands of Americans per day. A randomized controlled trial is the gold-standard method to establish a drug’s effectiveness. Yet remarkably, for COVID, we still don’t have randomized trials for so many drug recommendations, including the new bivalent vaccine, COVID vaccine boosters in young people, the optimal vaccine dosing interval, and even the antiviral drug Paxlovid in vaccinated people.
More disturbing, our country has been deeply divided for years about whether to mask children. The partisan arguing and harm to children could have been avoided if a proper study settled the science early. Because the NIH moved at glacial speed, most of our COVID knowledge came from overseas. The critical discovery that steroids reduce COVID mortality by one-third came only after European researchers did a randomized trial that Fauci’s agency should have commissioned quickly. Similarly, a conclusive study showing that Vitamin D reduces COVID mortality, published last month, arrived two years too late.
Zeroburger.
• Trump Tax Returns Released By House Committee: He Paid Little In Taxes (NBC)
A House committee on Friday made public six years of former President Donald Trump’s tax returns, which showed he paid relatively little in federal taxes in the years before and during his presidency. The House Ways and Means Committee had voted to make the thousands of pages of federal returns public in a party-line vote last week, but their release was delayed while staffers redacted sensitive personal information like Social Security numbers from the documents. Friday’s release, the culmination of years of legal wrangling and speculation, included both personal and business records. Trump on Friday blasted the release in a statement and on his Truth Social platform, saying “the Democrats should have never done it, the Supreme Court should have never approved it, and it’s going to lead to horrible things for so many people.”
He also maintained the returns he fought to keep hidden — despite modern precedent that presidents make their returns public — “show how proudly successful I have been and how I have been able to use depreciation and various other tax deductions as an incentive for creating thousands of jobs and magnificent structures and enterprises.” The panel’s top Republican, Rep. Kevin Brady of Texas, called the release of the documents “unprecedented,” and said Democrats had unleashed “a dangerous new political weapon that reaches far beyond the former president, overturning decades of privacy protections for average Americans.” “This is a regrettable stain on the Ways and Means Committee and Congress, and will make American politics even more divisive and disheartening. In the long run, Democrats will come to regret it,” Brady said.
The returns confirm much of what was contained in a 39-page report from the Joint Committee on Taxation released last week, including summaries from Trump’s personal tax forms and business entities, but also some new information as well. The returns show that in the 2020 tax year, Donald and Melania Trump reported $78 million in gross income from 16 foreign countries — including the United Kingdom, Ireland and St. Martin, where Trump has properties. The gross income also included a reported $1.2 million from “other countries” — abbreviated as “OC” — that were not specified.But the couple also appeared to owe nothing in federal taxes, after reporting large deductions and expenses that resulted in a net loss of $15 million. Trump then claimed a $5 million refund, according to the return.
Trump also reported zero charitable donations that year, the returns show. That was an outlier for Trump during his time in office — he reported $1.8 million in charitable giving in 2017, and just over $500,000 in charitable donations in 2018 and 2019, the returns show. Trump pledged to donate his $400,000 presidential salary while in office, money he gave to various government agencies.
You can bet it’s all legal.
• Trump’s Tax Returns Reveal President’s Foreign Bank Accounts (Az.)
Newly released tax returns for former President Donald Trump have shed light on his business losses, complicated tax set-ups and tax payments during his White House years. However, they are unlikely to have a major political impact as he eyes another presidential run, experts say. The documents confirmed that Mr Trump paid no federal taxes in 2020 and only $750 (£622) in 2016 and 2017. He paid close to $1m in 2018, however. A long legal battle led to the release of the records, and Mr Trump criticised the disclosure, warning that it will deepen the US political divide. He added that the returns “show how proudly successful I have been and how I have been able to use depreciation and various other tax deductions as an incentive for creating thousands of jobs and magnificent structures and enterprises.”
Although there’s no law requiring it, it is tradition for presidents to publish their tax returns. US presidents are paid a salary like any worker, but many also earn income from their personal businesses and investments. The newly released documents include tax returns and related documents for Donald Trump, the Donald J Trump Revocable Trust and seven corporate entities. They represent only a fraction of the former president’s over 400 separate business interests. Previously released figures show that Mr Trump paid a total of $1.1m (£906,587) in federal income taxes from 2016 to 2019, all but $1,500 of which was paid in one year. He paid no taxes in 2020, the final year of his presidency.
The documents also show that Mr Trump, who had international business dealings, held bank accounts in Ireland, the United Kingdom and China for a period that ran from 2015-17. The overseas accounts were notable, as Mr Trump held the White House in 2017, giving him significant power over US foreign policy. From 2018 onward, Mr Trump only reported having an account in the UK.
“The President is quoted as saying “Look, the Secret Service are never up here. It didn’t happen.“
“..female agents complained about his exposing himself to them by insisting on swimming in the nude..”
• President Bites Agent (Turley)
“It didn’t happen.” According to published excerpts, President Joe Biden is denying an account of the Secret Service about an agent being attacked by his German Sheppard, Major, at the White House. The statement from the President raises some interesting legal questions after he effectively called an agent a liar about an official report on one of many bite incidents with the Biden dogs. If the quote is accurate, the criticism could not only be viewed as defamatory but another unfounded attack on the integrity and veracity of federal employees by the President. This should not be dismissed as some sensational “President Bites Agent” story. It raises long-standing concerns over the lack of recourse for agents endangered or abused by protected individuals. Indeed, the controversy raises some of the issues litigated during the Clinton Administration over the status of Secret Service agents.
The book, “The Fight of His Life,” by author Chris Whipple details Biden’s continued mistrust of the Secret Service and his alleged avoidance of saying anything in front of agents. Biden has long had tense relations with the Secret Service, particularly after female agents complained about his exposing himself to them by insisting on swimming in the nude. The book claims that Biden has his own “deep state” conspiracy theories. Biden reportedly views the Secret Service as essentially the enemy within, suggesting that it is populated by “MAGA sympathizers” due to the fact that the service “is full of white ex-cops from the South who tend to be deeply conservative.”
However, this is a major escalation in that reportedly strained relationship. Some of us previously discussed the problem of the Biden dogs (including his other dog Champ) biting agents, attacks that would ordinarily lead to liability. In one eight-day period, agents were bitten every day. Indeed, outside of the White House, the Biden dogs would qualify for strict liability under the common law as displaying a vicious disposition. Under the common law, the Bidens could claim that Major and Champ were entitled to “one free bite.” The “one free bite rule” is a commonly misunderstood torts doctrine — suggesting that you are not subject to strict liability until after the first time your dog bites someone. In fact, you are subject to strict liability whenever you know or have reason to know of the vicious propensity of your animal. That can be satisfied by conduct such as frequent snapping or aggressive behavior.
[..] Now Biden is quoted as saying that he does not trust the Secret Service and believes that one agent is outright lying about one attack by Major. The President is quoted as saying “Look, the Secret Service are never up here. It didn’t happen.” The incident was reported by the agent and photos were taken to document that attack. The President’s denial of the location ignores the confirmed attack itself. Other agents complained about the disregard of the agents by the Bidens in the repeated attacks, including on agent who reportedly insisted that the president personally pay to repair a ripped coat after one attack on March 6, 2021.
What a loser. No, not the mother.
• Ex-Stripper Seeks To Change Name Of Hunter’s Child To Biden (RT)
Lunden Roberts, the former exotic dancer who gave birth to Hunter Biden’s love child in 2018, is reportedly seeking legal permission for her daughter to use her father’s surname. The 4-year-old girl, who has never met her father or her paternal grandfather, US President Joe Biden, would “benefit from carrying the Biden family name,” Roberts said this week in an Arkansas court filing. The request, which was first reported by the Northwest Arkansas Democrat Gazette on Thursday, was filed in a paternity case that Hunter Biden reopened in September to seek a reduction in his child support payments. The “Biden name is now synonymous with being well educated, successful, financially acute and politically powerful,” Clinton Lancaster, a lawyer representing the ex-stripper, said in the filing.
He added that while the daughter remains estranged from her father’s family, “to the extent this is misconduct or neglect, it can be rectified by changing her last name to Biden so that she may undeniably be known to the world as the child of the defendant and member of the prestigious Biden family.” Roberts, now 31, filed her paternity case in 2019, after Biden denied that he fathered her child. At one point, he claimed to have “no recollection” of meeting the woman, a former college basketball player who was performing under the stage name ‘Dallas’ at a Washington strip club. At the time, he was reportedly dating the widow of his deceased brother, Beau Biden. A DNA test showed that Hunter Biden was the child’s father. He agreed in January 2020, when his father was running for president, to pay child support to Roberts.
He married a South African woman, environmental activist Melissa Cohen, in May 2019, just six days after meeting her. The couple had a son in March 2020. Last September, Biden asked the Arkansas court to cut his child support payments because he could no longer afford them. He cited a change in his “financial circumstances, including but not limited to his income.” His young daughter currently goes by the name Navy Joan Roberts. President Biden reportedly refused to provide Secret Service protection for the girl, even after she and her mother received threats. The elder Biden has been criticized for refusing to acknowledge his granddaughter.
A bit more of this. Because this may prevent Hunter from walking away.
Note: he denies being the father, despite the DNA, and the family even disowns the child?! What a graceful step.
“Roberts has requested a list of Hunter’s residences for the past 10 years, along with vehicles he’s owned or driven for the past five years in order to obtain evidence of his “well-established history of a lavish lifestyle.”
• Biden Family Disowns Hunter’s 4-Year-Old Daughter (ZH)
The woman who mothered Hunter’s secret lovechild, Lunden Alexis Roberts, filed paperwork on Tuesday requesting that an Arkansas court allow the child, Navy Joan Roberts, be given the Biden name, claiming that the toddler would “benefit from carrying the Biden family name” because it’s “now synonymous with being well educated, successful, financially acute, and politically powerful.” The Bidens, meanwhile, have completely ignored the President’s grandchild – striking her attendance from the 46th presidential inauguration and allegedly refusing to offer security aid to the mother-daughter pair, despite domestic violence threats from Roberts’ ex. The filing cites President Biden, Jill Biden and Hunter’s late brother Beau as examples of successful individuals bearing the last name, and says that the Biden family remains “estranged from the child.
To the extent this is misconduct or neglect, it can be rectified by changing her last name to Biden so that she may undeniably be known to the world as the child of the defendant and member of the prestigious Biden family.” Roberts, originally from Batesville and an Arkansas State University graduate, met Hunter Biden while she was living in Washington, D.C., and worked for him, Lancaster previously said. The child, initially referred to in the case as “Baby Doe,” was born in August 2018; the paternity suit followed in May 2019, days after Hunter Biden’s marriage to a South African filmmaker, the former Melissa Cohen. A DNA test showed, “with near scientific certainty,” that Biden is Baby Doe’s father, Judge Holly Meyer declared in a January 2020 order. That month the parties agreed on temporary child support until the issue was resolved. -Northwest Arkansas Democrat Gazette
Hunter Biden wrote in his 2021 book “Beautiful Things” that he fought Roberts’ paternity suit because, being a crackhead, he had no recollection of the incident that led to the pregnancy. “The other women I’d been with during rampages since my divorce were hardly the dating type. We would satisfy our immediate needs and little else,” wrote Hunter, adding “I’m not proud of it.” According to Roberts, Hunter has a “long, and lengthy, history of attempting to avoid discovery by filing endless and recurrent motions for protective orders. Additionally, this case was finally resolved the first time when this court denied the defendant’s motion for a protective order relating to discovery.”
Roberts has requested a list of Hunter’s residences for the past 10 years, along with vehicles he’s owned or driven for the past five years in order to obtain evidence of his “well-established history of a lavish lifestyle.” “[Biden] objects and refuses to provide all the requested information. Instead, [Biden] seeks a protective order,” reads a filing. She’s also requested information related to a federal investigation into Hunter’s “tax affairs.” “This information is relevant to determine if, as Federal authorities insinuated, the defendant failed to disclose all his income as this goes to earning capability and Mr. Biden’s credibility.”
This case stinks like few others.
• Uncharged J6 Witness Ray Epps Transcript Released (ZH)
Ray Epps, the uncharged man identified as a key instigator behind the January 6, 2020 Capitol Breach for telling people to storm the Capitol, said in a text message to his nephew that he “orchestrated” things, according to newly released witness transcripts from the January 6th Committee. “At that point, I didn’t know that they were breaking into the Capitol,” Epps told Congressional investigators, adding “I didn’t know anybody was in the Capitol. … I was on my way back to the hotel room.” But the night before, Epps was seen going around to various groups of Trump supporters, telling them they need to storm the capitol. In two interviews with the FBI in 2021, Epps explained his actions on Jan. 5 and Jan. 6. He admitted he was guilty of trespassing on restricted Capitol grounds and confessed to urging protesters to go to—and into—the Capitol on Jan. 6.
Epps also told members of the Committee that he found himself playing peacekeeper between Trump supporter “Baked Alaska” and the police – who called Epps a Fed. “I was trying to find some common ground,” said Epps. “This guy was trying to turn people against me…he was calling me ‘boomer,’ and it’s his generation’s fault that we’re in the position we’re in.” Despite the admissions, the FBI never arrested Epps and he was not charged by the U.S. Department of Justice with any Jan. 6 crimes. The non-action has fueled a crop of theories that he might have been working for the FBI or another agency. Epps, 61, has repeatedly denied those suggestions through his attorney. Speculation that Epps was a ‘fed’ intensified after a Revolver News reported with the headline: “Meet Ray Epps: The Fed-Protected Provocateur Who Appears To Have Led The Very First 1/6 Attack On The U.S. Capitol”
“Revolver also determined, and will prove below, that the the FBI stealthily removed Ray Epps from its Capitol Violence Most Wanted List on July 1, just one day after Revolver exposed the inexplicable and puzzlesome FBI protection of known Epps associate and Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes. July 1 was also just one day after separate New York Times report amplified a glaring, falsifiable lie about Epps’s role in the events of January 6. Lastly, Ray Epps appears to have worked alongside several individuals — many of them suspiciously unindicted — to carry out a breach of the police barricades that induced a subsequent flood of unsuspecting MAGA protesters to unwittingly trespass on Capitol restricted grounds and place themselves in legal jeopardy. -Revolver News. As speculation over Epps grew, Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) claimed that Epps had “cooperated with the Jan 6 committee,” and was removed from the FBI’s most wanted list “because apparently he broke no laws.”
SBF.
Sam is done. Two of his chief lieutenants, including his former lover, have turned on him, pled guilty to criminal offenses that will almost-certainly lead to a decade or more in prison, and are cooperating against him. Among the offenses they pled guilty to are installing specific bypasses of the risk-control and auto-liquidation rules on certain accounts which were utterly essential to propagate the robbery of client funds. Absent that most, if not all of the loss would not have occurred, with Alameda being forced into liquidation before the damage was severe enough to implicate customer money. That’s an intentional act and the other two admitted to being involved in doing it so its perfectly legitimate to state it as fact rather than speculation.
How far down the rabbit hole this all goes is an open question, but the real underlying issue is that the sort of nonsense with so-called “stable coins” and similar games have repeatedly been exposed and the entire house of cryptocurrency “value” rests on said claims that this is not the case. It is the case, however, and only an idiot after seeing it happen several times sequentially has any reason to believe its not present in every single one of these instances. At the core of the issue is that somewhere everyone has to get paid for what they do. If you think you found an example where this is not the case you are being scammed; you just haven’t figured out how or why yet. If there’s enough indirection you can hide this for a good long time, but eventually the market will turn against you.
This is the essence of why “cryptocurrencies” are all valueless; each transaction has a cost, someone has to pay said cost, the more complex and secure the system is the higher said cost is and all of those costs exceed that of other currency systems thus without some means of cheating so your transaction “appears” to be inexpensive to process compared against the alternatives nobody would use it unless what they were doing is fundamentally illegal and thus to use any of the “legitimated” currency systems exposes said person to immediate arrest and prosecution. What’s possibly worse, however, is that all crypto systems by definition result in an indelible and immutable forensic transaction trail that fully meets all requirements to be admissible in court and therefore the claim that somehow they are “safe” to use for illegal acts is also both false and thus an active fraud.
Phasmid
https://twitter.com/i/status/1608822281496850432
Support the Automatic Earth in virustime with Paypal, Bitcoin and Patreon.
