Dec 242023
 
 December 24, 2023  Posted by at 8:50 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , ,


Edward Hopper House on the shore 1924

 

2023 – The Year the World saw the US Emperor as Naked… and Grotesque (SCF)
US, Israel Face A Powerful New Enemy In The Middle East (Robert Inlakesh)
Houthi Red Sea Blockade Could ‘Starve’ Western War Machine of Oil (Sp.)
Pentagon’s Operation Prosperity Guardian “Falls Apart” (ZH)
Chinese, Iranian, Indian Warships Are In The Red Sea, Gulf Of Aden (Helmer)
‘Crazy’ Biden Idea Could Spark Global Financial Crisis – Russian Senator (RT)
Ukraine To See ‘Total Mobilization’ In 2024 – Officer (RT)
Finland To Pay Failed Asylum Seekers For Voluntary Return Home (RT)
Denmark Warns Ukrainian Refugees They Will Have to Go Home After Conflict Ends (Sp.)
Estonia Ready to Extradite Draft-Age Ukrainian Men (Sp.)
Trump Offers Biden ‘Ten Debates’ (RT)
Trump Responds To Hitler Comparisons (RT)
51 Days Later, Tucker Carlson Releases Interview With Julian Assange (CTH)
CIA Must Face Lawsuit for Violating Rights of Assange’s Visitors (LAP)
RFK Jr. Denied Secret Service Protection For 3rd Time (Deseret)

 

 

 

 

 

 


This new Banksy was stolen yesterday in London less than an hour after he announced it.

 

 

Santos
https://twitter.com/i/status/1738259872016404539

 

 

Watters blackmail

 

 

 

 

Chaplin

 

 

 

 

“Based on Nuremberg principles, Joe Biden and Benjamin Netanyahu would be both in the dock, accompanied by Antony Blinken, Jake Sullivan, Lloyd Austin and their counterparts in Tel Aviv…”

2023 – The Year the World saw the US Emperor as Naked… and Grotesque (SCF)

American President Joe Biden likes to talk about “inflexion points” when he is lecturing about world affairs and the supposed superiority of the United States. This year is indeed an inflexion point. It was the year that the entire world saw the truly hideous and criminal nature of U.S. power. Washington’s fuelling of the futile conflict in Ukraine and the despicable slaughter in Gaza is a wake-up call for the entire world. The United States stands barefaced and grotesque as the primary purveyor of war. There can be no doubt about that. For many it is shocking, scandalous and frightening.Tragically, it seems, for the world, every year’s end is an occasion to witness and lament conflicts, wars and suffering over the preceding 12 months. Often the causes of wars and suffering are seemingly unfathomable.

However, this year seems to be unique. The year ends with a horrendous massacre in Gaza that is unprecedented and perpetrated by Israel with the full support of the United States. The scale of deliberate mass killing in Gaza makes it a genocide. The fact that this abomination is occurring at Christmas time when the world is supposed to celebrate the divine birth of Jesus Christ – the Prince of Peace – in the very place where he was born some 2,000 years ago makes the abomination all the more profane and damning. What is particularly wretched is that the heinous destruction of children is happening in full view of the world. There is no remorse or pretence. It is full-blown premeditated murder done with cruelty and sickening impunity. Virtually the whole world is horrified by the devastating, relentless violence and absolute violation of international law.

The butchery by the Israeli regime cannot in any way be rationalized by the previous attack on Israel by Palestinian militants on October 7. Those killings by Hamas have been cynically used as a pretext for the subsequent and ongoing annihilation of Palestinian civilians.This genocide could not happen without the crucial support of the United States for the Israeli regime. Financially, militarily and diplomatically, Washington is sponsoring the horror in Gaza as well as the Occupied West Bank. This week saw the U.S. once again obstructing calls at the United Nations for a ceasefire and the urgent supply of humanitarian aid to more than two million people. The World Food Program has declared a catastrophic famine in the coastal enclave after more than 70 days of bombing and blockade by the Israeli regime.

More than 20,000 people – mainly women and children – have been slaughtered with up to 7,000 more missing, presumably dead. Israeli troops are carrying out mass executions of terrified and traumatized human beings, according to UN rights monitors. The United States is arming Israel to the hilt and enabling it. U.S. President Joe Biden has pointedly refused to join international demands for a ceasefire. The United Nations has voted by an overwhelming majority for a cessation of the violence. Washington has repeatedly rejected the world’s pleas because the Biden administration is obscenely amplifying Israeli lies and distortions. “Unwavering, unshakable support” is how the White House arrogantly boasts about it without a hint of shame that it is self-indicting.

Tens of thousands of tonnes of munitions have been flown to Israel to carry out “indiscriminate bombing” (Biden’s own admission). One-tonne bunker-buster bombs have been dropped deliberately on refugee camps and hospitals. And still, the Pentagon shamelessly refuses to impose any red lines on the use of its munitions.This genocide has Israeli fingers on the triggers but it is ultimately an American-sponsored genocide. Based on Nuremberg principles, Joe Biden and Benjamin Netanyahu would be both in the dock, accompanied by Antony Blinken, Jake Sullivan, Lloyd Austin and their counterparts in Tel Aviv.

Read more …

“The US attempted to help topple the current government in Sanaa, but ended up creating a battle-hardened group that has domestically developed capabilities well beyond those it possessed at the start of the conflict in 2015..”

US, Israel Face A Powerful New Enemy In The Middle East (Robert Inlakesh)

Under former US President Barack Obama, Washington backed the Saudi-led coalition’s intervention in Yemen back in 2015. Since then, some 377,000 people have died, largely as a result of the deadly blockade imposed on the majority of the country’s population, while some 15,000 civilians have died due to direct conflict. The objective of the Saudi-led intervention, which received the backing of the US and UK, was to remove Ansarallah from power in the nation’s capital, Sanaa. Although the group does not enjoy international recognition as Yemen’s governing force, it rules over more than 80% of the population, has the support of two-thirds of the nation’s armed forces, and operates a government out of Sanaa. Ansarallah came to power following a popular revolution against then-Yemeni President Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi in 2014. Months later, Hadi resigned and fled the country after Ansarallah militants had decided to take over by force.

In the midst of a seven-year war, the political, social and armed movement that is often referred to as “the Houthi rebels” operates as the de facto government of Yemen, but is yet to receive recognition at the UN, which instead recognises the ‘Presidential Leadership Council’ that was created in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, in 2022. The context above is crucial for understanding the capabilities of Yemen’s Ansarallah, which was downplayed as a band of “Iran-backed rebels” in Western corporate media for years. While the governments of the collective West have tried to pretend that the Yemeni group is insignificant, Washington’s recent decision to form a multi-national naval coalition to confront the Houthis is an admission that they are a major regional actor. In fact, Ansarallah is the only Arab movement that controls state assets and a standing army that is participating in the ongoing war with Israel.

The reality that the US is now confronting is something that both Saudi Arabia and the UAE came to realize early last year. Following two separate drone and missile attacks on Abu Dhabi and Dubai in January of 2022, it became apparent that the West’s current level of support could not provide sufficient security for the UAE. Up until a nationwide ceasefire was brokered in April 2022, Ansarallah had also demonstrated its developed missile and drone capabilities, striking valuable economic targets inside Saudi Arabia too. Despite receiving a lot less attention than it deserved, Ansarallah forces strategically timed their second attack on the UAE to coincide with the arrival of Israeli President Isaac Herzog in the country.

This was a clear message to the Emirati and Saudi leaderships that Western support will not provide sufficient security. It’s likely because of this threat from Yemen that Riyadh sought a security pact with the US, in order to make a normalization agreement with Israel possible. Such a security pact would have stipulated that an attack on one is an attack on all, hence dragging the Americans into a direct war against Yemen in the event that the conflict was to flare up again. The US attempted to help topple the current government in Sanaa, but ended up creating a battle-hardened group that has domestically developed capabilities well beyond those it possessed at the start of the conflict in 2015. In his first foreign policy address after taking office in 2021, US President Joe Biden pledged to end the war in Yemen. However, instead of pursuing a Yemen-Saudi deal, the White House abandoned its pledge and sought to broker a Saudi-Israeli deal instead. That fatal decision is coming back to bite policymakers in Washington.

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“I don’t know if Saudi Arabia is going to be willing to jeopardize that, to stand with the United States in fighting the Houthis in this war, especially because it’s going to be perceived in the entire region as Saudi Arabia siding with Israel..”

Houthi Red Sea Blockade Could ‘Starve’ Western War Machine of Oil (Sp.)

US oil stockpiles are at their 40-year lows and the Houthi Red Sea blockage can make matters much worse for Washington, Maram Susli, better known as blogger Syrian Girl, told Sputnik’s New Rules podcast. Yemen’s armed forces stepped up attacks on trade vessels linked to Israel in the Red Sea in a bid to force Tel Aviv into halting its ground operation in the Gaza Strip. In response, the US brought together a 10-nation coalition against the government in Sana’a led by the Ansarallah movement — dubbed the Houthis by the West. However, the coalition includes only one Arab state, Bahrain, while Yemen’s other neighbors have so far hesitated to join the US-led Operation Prosperity Guardian. Could they jump on Washington’s bandwagon anytime soon?

“It’s very interesting to see what the surrounding states will do, because, of course, we have Saudi Arabia trying to defeat the Houthis since 2015, which resulted in a lot of economic suffering and instability from Saudi Arabia,” Susli told Sputnik. “And only now have they finally made some kind of a ceasefire or peace treaty with Iran and they both joined BRICS. I don’t know if Saudi Arabia is going to be willing to jeopardize that, to stand with the United States in fighting the Houthis in this war, especially because it’s going to be perceived in the entire region as Saudi Arabia siding with Israel, because what is happening right now is the Houthis are not attacking the vessels that are not related to Israel.” Observers say the US may resort to attacking Yemen launch sites, as they did previously in 2016.

So far the Biden administration has been reluctant to take direct military action against the Houthis, who its claims are backed by Iran. The Yemeni movement issued a stark warning to the US-led naval task force on December 20. “America’s announcement of the establishment of the Coalition of Shame will not prevent us from continuing our military operations… This is a moral and humanitarian position that we will not abandon, no matter the sacrifices it costs us,” Ansarallah spokesman Mohammed al-Bukhaiti tweeted on December 19. “It’s interesting to see the United States put itself in harm’s way in this way and try to launch a war already, because, you know, it’s quite blatant that they’re doing this for Israel and not for the United States,” Susli said. “And it’s going to open up their ranks in Syria and Iraq to even more massive attacks. They’re basically sitting ducks in the Middle East right now.”

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“France, Italy and Spain withdraw from Operation Prosperity Guardian, refusing to put their warships under U.S. command.”

Pentagon’s Operation Prosperity Guardian “Falls Apart” (ZH)

The Pentagon’s formation of Operation Prosperity Guardian, a new task force to protect shipping from Houthi drone and missile attacks in the Bab Al-Mandeb Strait and the Red Sea, requires increased warship patrols by the US and allies. This will create a security umbrella over commercial vessels to defend from attacks. Reuters said about twenty countries have signed up for the Pentagon’s new operation. However, several countries, including Australia, Spain, Italy, and France, have rejected the Pentagon’s request to participate in the operation. Spain’s Defence Ministry said it would only participate in NATO-led missions or European-coordinated operations – not ones commanded by the Pentagon: “We will not participate unilaterally in the Red Sea operation.”

Italy’s Defence Ministry voiced similar concerns, indicating it would send naval frigate Virginio Fasan to the Red Sea but only respond to requests by Italian shipowners. “Operation Prosperity Guardian in the Red Sea has practically Collapsed as France, Spain, and Italy have all announced their Withdrawal from the US Command Structure for the Operation, with the Three Nations stating they will only conduct further Maritime Operations under the Command of NATO and/or the European Union and not the United States,” X account OSINTdefender wrote. Another X user wrote: “France, Spain, and Italy aren’t withdrawing because they don’t want to escalate the conflict. On the contrary, they’re withdrawing because they don’t believe the operation coordinated by Biden regime will protect their vessels. This is the result of a weak ‘President’ / lack of leadership.”

[..] As of Saturday morning, the number of container ships in the Red Sea with destinations to Asia, Europe, and the US is less than five. This once-busy waterway that connects to the Suez Canal has seen a plunge in container ship activity this week. Remember, this critical waterway is responsible for 10-12% of the world’s maritime freight. Vessels are now being diverted around the Cape of Good Hope, adding 1-2 weeks in travel time. Plus, container rates are soaring. The fact that seven major shipping companies, including Taiwanese container shipping line Evergreen and Belgian tanker owner Euronav, have halted sails through the Red Sea shows their lack of confidence in the US protecting the critical waterway.

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Getting busy.

Chinese, Iranian, Indian Warships Are In The Red Sea, Gulf Of Aden (Helmer)

A Russian military blog post posted on Thursday, December 21 at 11:33 Moscow time, has revealed the hitherto secret positions of all warships in the area which the Pentagon has announced for its OPERATION PROSPERITY GUARDIAN. The fresh data and the open map (lead image) were not available when yesterday’s report was published at 09:32 Moscow time of Russia’s “two-track” strategy for opposing the US and NATO, and for protecting Russian oil shipments while the Houthi drone and missile operations are under way against Israel. No Russian Navy vessel is in the area at present although Russian crude oil cargoes are moving through the Red Sea with Iranian and Houthi agreement. Because these ship movements are defying US and NATO sanctions, it has been decided in Moscow to negotiate safe passage with Iran and Yemen rather than deploy the Russian Navy to protect them.
However, the new combined US and NATO operation, targeting the Houthis and their Iranian support and supply systems, increases the possibility of a direct American, allied, or false-flagged attack on a tanker carrying Russian oil.

In yesterday’s morning report, I indicated that “the current whereabouts of the [Chinese] warship group has not been reported in the open press.” The Russian source map is now reporting that the Chinese Navy’s 45th Escort Task Force, comprising the Type-052 destroyer Urumqi, the Type-547 frigate Linyi, and supply ship Dongpinghu were at berth at the Chinese base at Djibouti as of Wednesday, December 20. The Russian map also reveals that the Iranian vessel MV Behshad is in a standing position in the Red Sea. According to the Russian source, it is operating as an electronic surveillance, command and control centre to monitor friendly state ship movements – Russian, Chinese, Indian – and also hostile vessels of the US, British and French navies, tracking their positions; and relaying the data to Iran and probably to shore positions in Yemen. Although US media and Pentagon statements accuse the Ansar Allah government in Yemen and Houthi forces of acting as Iranian proxies in the war against Israel, there has been no disclosure before now of this vessel in the Red Sea.

According to the western vessel tracking service VesselFinder, the Behshad is a “general cargo ship” flagged by Iran. It reportedly sailed from the port of the Iran Shipbuilding and Offshore Industries Complex (ISOICO) to reach its current position, which VesselFinder confirms in the southern half of the Red Sea as of fifteen minutes ago. The western source reports the vessel is at anchor in 6.5 metres of water. In the Pentagon announcement of December 18, US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin claimed that “Operation Prosperity Guardian is bringing together multiple countries to include the United Kingdom, Bahrain, Canada, France, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Seychelles and Spain, to jointly address security challenges in the southern Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, with the goal of ensuring freedom of navigation for all countries and bolstering regional security and prosperity.” The new Russian intelligence now makes clear that the UK, France and Spain are already in the region, with the US.

After Austin’s statement, his Italian counterpart announced that Italy is dispatching a frigate “to protect the prosperity of trade and guarantee freedom of navigation and international law…to increase the presence in the area in order to create the conditions for stabilization, avoid ecological disasters and also prevent a resumption of the inflationary push.” The Greek Defense Minister Nikos Dendias followed the Italian to say that Greece too is sending a frigate to join the US operation. Dendias is claiming the reason is that Greece is “the country with the largest ocean-going fleet [and so] has a primary interest in preserving the freedom of maritime zones and protecting the lives of seafarers.” What he means is that the involvement of Greek shipowners in the sanctions-busting Russian oil trade has been so profitable, Dendias wants to protect the Greek tankers and their owners; and at the same time avoid the embarrassment of being so disloyal to the US and European Union sanctions regime.

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“International judicial and arbitral practice confirms that it is impossible to impose seizure on funds belonging to central banks and sovereign wealth funds..”

‘Crazy’ Biden Idea Could Spark Global Financial Crisis – Russian Senator (RT)

A White House proposal to seize frozen Russian funds and use them to help Ukraine is not only illegal, but also incredibly dangerous, as it could shatter the entire global financial system, according to Konstantin Kosachev, the vice speaker of Russia’s upper house of parliament. The senator’s comments come after the New York Times reported on Friday that the Biden administration had intensified talks with US allies to requisition over $300 billion in Russian foreign exchange reserves frozen after the start of the Ukraine conflict. Writing on Telegram on Friday, Kosachev called the initiative “crazy,” and said it did not have a single leg to stand on in legal terms.

He recalled that central banks’ sovereign funds are shielded by a special immunity under customary international law, and no jurisdiction is allowed to impose any coercive measures on them. Moreover, the senator continued, if the US were to seize Russian assets, it would violate not only international law, but also domestic legislation. He alluded to the 1976 Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act which protects the assets of foreign central banks, adding that many US allies have similar laws. “International judicial and arbitral practice confirms that it is impossible to impose seizure on funds belonging to central banks and sovereign wealth funds,”Kosachev stressed. By disregarding this practice, the US is setting a “very dangerous precedent” that will harm the entire global financial system, he stated.

A potential seizure would trigger swift retaliation from Moscow, with the requisition of Western assets frozen in Russia being on the table, Kosachev warned. He emphasized that Washington’s move would be interpreted as a “bad signal” in many countries like China and Saudi Arabia, which would doubt the wisdom of holding their funds in euros or dollars. As a result, everyone loses. There will be another global financial crisis. [It will be] another step towards (potentially) general chaos and destruction. Russian officials have repeatedly alleged that the West’s decision to freeze Moscow’s assets constitutes theft. On Friday, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov also stated that if the US goes ahead with seizing the funds it could lead to a complete breakdown of relations with Moscow, which are already at an all-time low.

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To the last Ukrainian…

Ukraine To See ‘Total Mobilization’ In 2024 – Officer (RT)

Ukraine is likely to resort to “total mobilization” next year in a bid to contain Russia, Ukrainian officer Vasily Samovar, who commands the aviation and air defense forces of the 3rd Separate Storm Brigade, told a local Dnipro TV channel on Saturday. He reportedly admitted that Russia is superior in many aspects, ranging from economic might to personnel reserves. Kiev is still reeling from the failed summer counteroffensive that has failed to bring about any major changes to the front lines while costing tens of thousands of lives and hundreds of pieces of heavy equipment. In December, Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu estimated that Ukraine had lost over 383,000 soldiers since the start of the conflict, adding that roughly half of the casualties were sustained during its much-hyped summer operation.

Ukraine’s Western backers have also seemingly begun to doubt Kiev’s prospects of winning the conflict in the wake of the failed offensive. In December, US lawmakers said that neither Washington nor Kiev had presented a clear winning strategy following a meeting with Zelensky. Both Washington and Brussels are also struggling to agree on the next aid packages for Ukraine. In his interview with the Dnipro station, Samovar said that “the Ukrainians should prepare for total mobilization and a cold winter.” The next year “will unfortunately be much harder than 2023 and 2022 combined,” he added. The officer explained that Russia is actively building up its forces and adapting its economy to the needs of its military.

If Moscow keeps up like this, it might prevail at some point, Samovar admitted, adding that Ukraine has neither such a “massive mobilization potential nor that much money and resources.” In December, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky said that the nation’s military had proposed calling up an additional 450,000-500,000 people, and that the government wanted to allocate an additional 500 billion hryvnia ($13.3 billion) to the effort. Earlier, the nation’s defense minister, Rustem Umerov, told Germany’s Bild tabloid that all Ukrainian men of military age living abroad were to be summoned to recruitment centers. The Defense Ministry then rushed to deny such plans.

On Friday, it was reported that lawmakers in Kiev were actively working on a bill that would allow Ukrainians living abroad to be drafted. According to Vadim Ivchenko, an MP and member of the parliament’s Security and Defense Committee, the bill will be introduced in January. Zelensky’s administration also supported the measure. A senior presidential aide, Mikhail Podoliak, told Ukraine’s Channel 24 on Friday that Ukrainian men should return home to fight and that a set of punitive measures should be introduced if they don’t up to having their residency permits revoked in their current countries of stay. Estonia then expressed its readiness to extradite Ukrainians of military age at Kiev’s request. Germany, meanwhile, has said it would not send anyone back against their will.

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”..the surge in new arrivals was a “hybrid operation” aimed at “destabilizing our society..”

Finland To Pay Failed Asylum Seekers For Voluntary Return Home (RT)

Rejected asylum seekers in Finland might receive a heavy sum from Helsinki starting next year if they agree to return to their home countries, the Finnish Interior Ministry announced on Thursday as it unveiled the new “voluntary return assistance” program. Under the scheme, a refugee can apply for a grant for voluntary return and get €5,300 ($5,833) if they do so within 30 days after the first negative decision on their asylum application or withdraw the request themselves, the ministry’s statement said. If they do so later, the sum would drop to €2,000 ($2,201), it added. The program, which is to be launched on January 1, 2024, is designed to encourage “leaving the country as quickly as possible and refraining from appealing the asylum decision,” the statement said. An asylum seeker can apply for the grant regardless of their country of origin.

The money can then be spent to cover the travel costs or “commodity support,” according to the Finnish authorities. A returnee can also use the grant to “get education or start a small business” at home. “Returning to the home country must be a sustainable solution,” the statement said, adding that “return counseling” by the immigration authorities would be enhanced and measures to promote voluntary returns would be “intensified.” Victims of human trafficking who have no place of residence in Finland, as well as those who received such a residency permit because they had been prevented from leaving the country can also apply for a grant but the sum for them would be only €3,000 ($3,301) and would not scale, depending on the timing, the Interior Ministry said. Support would not be provided to those seeking to move to another EU or Schengen country or to a nation where citizens can enter Finland without visas, the ministry added.

The announcement comes as Finland struggles to stem the inflow of migrants and asylum seekers on its eastern border with Russia. The Nordic nation had to gradually shut down its border crossings with Russia last month, citing an increase in the number of migrants from third nations seeking to cross into its territory from Russia. Helsinki also repeatedly accused Moscow of being behind the influx, although the Kremlin rejected the claims as “completely baseless.” Interior Minister Mari Rantanen claimed in December that the surge in new arrivals was a “hybrid operation” aimed at “destabilizing our society,” which Helsinki must resist.

Poland, which also shares a border with Russia, said it had offered to deploy a team of “military advisers” to the Nordic nation to provide “on-site knowledge on border security, including in an operational sense.” Finland later denied any knowledge of Warsaw’s offer, while the Kremlin condemned it as an “an absolutely unprovoked, unjustified concentration of military units on the Russian border.” In December, the Council of Europe criticized Helsinki’s decision to close the border, pointing to concerns about effective access to legal entry for asylum seekers and “considerable risks for the health and life” of migrants. Later the same month, the Finnish authorities announced opening two of the eight border crossings with Russia but shut them down in just a day. “Illegal entry on the Finnish border has immediately resumed,” Rantanen said at that time.

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“We have nothing to be embarrassed about. I hope that the Ukrainians are interested in rebuilding their own country, which needs it..”

Denmark Warns Ukrainian Refugees They Will Have to Go Home After Conflict Ends (Sp.)

Denmark has said it is no longer happy to play host to thousands of Ukrainian refugees indefinitely. Once the Ukraine conflict is over, they must return home – that was the message from Minister for Immigration and Integration Kaare Dybvad Bek. “We have nothing to be embarrassed about. I hope that the Ukrainians are interested in rebuilding their own country, which needs it,” Dybvad told daily newspaper Berlingske. A total of 30,278 Ukrainians are currently registered as temporary residents in Denmark under the Danish Special Act — but that is set to expire in March 2025. The law grants them a residence permit, social benefits, access to school, work, health services, a national integration program and temporary accommodation in a Danish municipality — in stark contrast to refugees from other countries.

“We will not change that point of view. We work with temporary accommodation in the context of refugees, and it is regardless of where people come from,” said Dybvad.While insisting that Ukrainians were “culturally closer to us than people from the Middle East,” the minister stressed that they behaved in “completely different ways” than Danes. Dybvad also noted that the Kiev regime had said it wants its citizens to return — for conscription into the army, according to some officials. Denmark “will have to respect that,” he said. “If we go it alone and make our own legislation, which is out of step with the EU, then we risk having a very large influx of people who already have a safe place to be,” Dybvad warned. Some Ukrainians might be able to stay past the March 2025 deadline, Kaare Dybvad added, but only under certain conditions. Anyone able to earn over 375,000 Danish kroner ($55,400) per year could apply for a business permit.

“I think they have the opportunity to stay to a reasonable extent, but we are not going to make an independent opening where we say that everyone who comes from Ukraine can stay in Denmark,” the minister said. Currently there are nearly 6 million Ukrainian refugees in Europe, according to the UNHCR collation of statistics. The most popular destinations for the migrants have been Germany, the Czech Republic, and the Netherlands. The highest number of Ukrainian refugees per thousand inhabitants is recorded in the Czech Republic (33.7), Estonia (26.3), Poland (26.1), Bulgaria (26.1) and Lithuania (25.8), as per the latest Eurostat data. Many have expressed the desire to stay in these countries.

But many European countries that have already felt the blowback from self-harming anti-Russia sanctions over Ukraine are now mulling ways to send the refugees home. The “economic burden” of Ukrainian refugees against the backdrop of soaring inflation, higher global food prices, and other costs, is feeding into the overall “Ukraine fatigue.” Germany has also complained that unemployed Ukrainian refugees have become a drain on its finances. Less than 20 percent of the tens of thousands of Ukrainians who moved there have since found a job in their new host country, one local media outlet announced in November, noting that some 700,000 Ukrainian refugees in the country currently receive unemployment benefits.

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“..the Estonian authorities know where the Ukrainian refugees who have arrived in the country are and what they are doing..”

Estonia Ready to Extradite Draft-Age Ukrainian Men (Sp.)

Estonia is ready to locate and extradite Ukrainians of draft-age and those undergoing mobilization to Kiev, the country’s Interior Minister Lauri Laanemets told local media. “If Ukraine tells the state of Estonia that they want to mobilize these individuals and asks to send them home, then Estonia will certainly help Ukraine,” Laanemets explained. According to him, the Estonian authorities know where the Ukrainian refugees who have arrived in the country are and what they are doing. Laanemets noted, however, that no official request for the extradition of Ukrainians of military age has yet been received from Kiev.

The minister promised that in the coming days he will submit a written proposal for a corresponding agreement between the two countries. More than 7,000 Ukrainian men of mobilization age have so far applied for temporary protection in Estonia. Earlier, the German authorities refused to extradite Ukrainians who had left Ukraine country to Kiev for mobilization. According to the head of the German Ministry of Justice, Marco Buschmann, Berlin is primarily trying to employ people from Ukraine.

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“..he will focus on “the existential threat to democracy that Donald Trump represents.”

Trump Offers Biden ‘Ten Debates’ (RT)

Former US President Donald Trump said on Friday that he would be willing to debate current President Joe Biden multiple times if they both become the nominee of their respective parties. During an interview with radio host Hugh Hewitt, Trump responded to a question about whether he would face Biden if the opportunity arose. “Oh, I look forward to that. How about 10 debates? How about 10,” Trump said. He also argued that the Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD), which is responsible for organizing the events, is “totally corrupt” and “Democrat-leaning.” Referring to a showdown between him and Biden that was scheduled for October 2020 and canceled by the CPD, Trump affirmed that he would “do 20 debates even if it was organized by them.”

“I’ll do as many debates as they want. I’d do a debate every night with this guy. But he’ll never show up to a debate,” he added. In November, Trump announced that he would run for office again in 2024. He did so despite finding himself at the center of multiple lawsuits in recent months, four of which have resulted in indictments. In total, he faces 91 criminal charges. He has pleaded not guilty to all of them.

At a rally in New Hampshire last week, Trump referred to his court cases by quoting Russian President Vladimir Putin. The Republican said he had been subjected to “Biden’s politically motivated persecution,” which showed “the rottenness of the American political system, which cannot pretend to teach others about democracy.” Biden announced in April that he would run for re-election. His campaign strategy memo for the 2024 race, shared by CNN on Thursday, declares he will focus on “the existential threat to democracy that Donald Trump represents.” A Morning Consult and Bloomberg poll released last week showed Trump leading the incumbent in seven swing states: North Carolina, Georgia, Wisconsin, Nevada, Michigan, Arizona and Pennsylvania.

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“..attempt to install himself as “president for life” if successful in 2024..”

Trump Responds To Hitler Comparisons (RT)

Former US President Donald Trump has defended his assertion that illegal immigration is “poisoning the blood” of America, claiming that he had no idea Adolf Hitler used similar language in his book, Mein Kampf. Speaking at a campaign rally in New Hampshire last weekend, Trump declared that the flow of illegal immigrants into the US – which hit an all time record this fiscal year – was “poisoning the blood of our country,” adding that “they’re coming into our country from Africa, from Asia, all over the world.” He made similar statements at a rally in Iowa later in the week, and in a campaign video on Thursday. Trump was excoriated for the remark by liberal media outlets and by President Joe Biden’s campaign team, who accused him of “parroting Hitler.” The Nazi dictator wrote in Mein Kampf that “inferior races” were a “contamination of the blood” of Germany.

Asked by conservative talk show host Hugh Hewitt whether he used the term in the same way Hitler did, Trump said on Friday that he did not. “No, and I never knew that Hitler said it either, by the way,” Trump told Hewitt. “And I never read ‘Mein Kampf.’ They said I read ‘Mein Kampf.’ These are people that are disinformation, horrible people that we’re dealing with.” “I’m not a student of Hitler. I never read his works,” Trump continued. “They say that he said something about blood. He didn’t say it the way I said it either, by the way, it’s a very different kind of a statement.” Trump then repeated his argument against illegal immigration, declaring that “they’re destroying our country. They’re coming in from every continent, and we have no idea who they are, what they represent. Are they from jails? Are they from prisons? And I will tell you, a big percentage of the people coming in are from prisons and from mental institutions and are terrorists… and that is poisoning our country.”

With less than a year to go until the 2024 presidential election, Trump is the presumptive Republican nominee and is leading Biden in most polls. If elected, Trump has promised to use executive powers to close the US-Mexico border, reinstate his ‘Remain in Mexico’ asylum policy, and end the Biden administration’s practice of ‘Catch and Release’, under which illegal immigrants are released into the US after apprehension with orders to show up for court dates up to 10 years later. The furor over Trump’s “poison blood” remarks comes after several leading liberal pundits claimed that the former president would abandon NATO, sic the military on protesters, and attempt to install himself as “president for life” if successful in 2024. All of the articles’ authors were prominent critics of Trump during his presidency.

Read more …

Yeah, why the delay?

51 Days Later, Tucker Carlson Releases Interview With Julian Assange (CTH)

Using his Twitter/X platform to promote the 5-minute-long teaser, Tucker Carlson has finally released the interview with Julian Assange that took place on November 2, 2023. Why wait 51 days? Your guess is as good as mine. [..] As the Yahoo News article begins, they outline how those within the Trump administration viewed Assange as a risk in 2017. Here it is critical to accept that many people inside the Trump administration were there to control events, not to facilitate a policy agenda from a political outsider. In the example of Assange, the information he carried was a risk to those who attempted and failed to stop Trump from winning the 2016 election. Julian Assange was not a threat to Donald Trump, but he was a threat to those who attempted to stop Donald Trump. In 2017, the DC system was reacting to a presidency they did not control.

As an outcome, the Office of the President was being managed and influenced by some with ulterior motives. Yahoo, via Michael Isikoff, puts it this way: “Some senior officials inside the CIA and the Trump administration even discussed killing Assange, going so far as to request “sketches” or “options” for how to assassinate him. Discussions over kidnapping or killing Assange occurred “at the highest levels” of the Trump administration, said a former senior counterintelligence official. “There seemed to be no boundaries.” As we overlay the timeline, it is prudent to pause and remember some hindsight details. According to reports in November of 2019, U.S. Attorney John Durham and U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr were spending time looking carefully at CIA activity in the 2016 presidential election. One quote from a media-voice increasingly sympathetic to a political deep-state noted:

“One British official with knowledge of Barr’s wish list presented to London commented that, “It is like nothing we have come across before, they are basically asking, in quite robust terms, for help in doing a hatchet job on their own intelligence services”“. It is interesting that quote came from a British intelligence official, as there was extensive pre-2016 election evidence of an FBI/CIA counterintelligence operation that also involved U.K. intelligence services. There was an aspect to the FBI/CIA operation that overlaps with both a U.S. and U.K. need to keep Wikileaks founder Julian Assange under tight control. To understand the risk that Julian Assange represented to FBI/CIA interests, and effectively the Mueller special counsel, it is important to understand just how extensive the operations of the FBI/CIA were in 2016.

It is within this network of foreign and domestic operations where FBI Agent Peter Strzok was clearly working as a bridge between the CIA and FBI operations. By now, people are familiar with the construct of CIA operations involving Joseph Mifsud, a Maltese professor generally identified as a western intelligence operative who was tasked by the FBI/CIA to run an operation against Trump campaign official George Papadopoulos in both Italy (Rome) and London. John Durham ignored him. In a similar fashion, the FBI tasked U.S. intelligence asset Stefan Halper to target another Trump campaign official, Carter Page. Under the auspices of being a Cambridge Professor, Stefan Halper also targeted General Michael Flynn. Additionally, using assistance from a female FBI agent, under the false name Azra Turk, Halper also targeted Papadopoulos. Again, John Durham ignored it.

The initial operations to target Flynn, Papadopoulos and Page were all based overseas. This seemingly makes the CIA exploitation of the assets and the targets legal and much easier. If Durham went into this intelligence rabbit hole, there would be a paper trail that leads back to Robert Mueller. Durham didn’t go there.

Read more …

“This important ruling sets the stage for the plaintiffs to gather documentary evidence and take depositions under oath exposing the details of the CIA’s alleged wrongdoing..”

CIA Must Face Lawsuit for Violating Rights of Assange’s Visitors (LAP)

In a stunning decision on December 19, a federal court in New York ruled that attorneys and journalists may pursue their civil complaint against the Central Intelligence Agency. The plaintiffs allege their constitutional rights were violated by illegal surveillance during their visits with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange between January 2017 and March 2018 at the Ecuadorean Embassy in London, where he had been granted asylum. The 27-page decision in Kunstler v CIA, written by US District Judge John G. Koeltl, , denied the CIA’s motion to dismiss the case. This important ruling sets the stage for the plaintiffs to gather documentary evidence and take depositions under oath exposing the details of the CIA’s alleged wrongdoing. The result may be a public trial as early as next year. The case presents a rare opportunity for the clandestine operations of the CIA – an agency that prides itself on secrecy – to be subjected to public scrutiny and accountability.

Assange is a journalist and publisher and the founder of WikiLeaks, a multi-national media organization and library. The US indicted Assange for allegedly violating the Espionage Act of 1917 and other charges regarding computer intrusion. If extradited to the US, he faces 175 years in prison. Assange, fearing even before the indictment that he would be extradited and face charges, took refuge in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London until April 2019, when he was abruptly arrested by British authorities. He has been detained in HM Belmarch Prison ever since. In August 2022, Margaret Ratner Kunstler, Deborah Hrbek, John Goetz, and Charles Glass sued the CIA and former director Mike Pompeo, as well as David Morales Guillen and his professional security firm based in Spain, Undercover Global S.L. Kunstler and Hrbek are attorneys practicing law in New York, and Goetz and Glass are journalists who report on national security issues.

Their civil complaint alleges that in April 2017, Pompeo announced in one of his first speeches that “as CIA Director he would target whistleblowers who exposed clandestine and/or illegal efforts by the United States government aimed at countries perceived to be hostile to U.S. interests.” Pompeo specifically labeled WikiLeaks as “a nonstate hostile intelligence service.” He called Assange a “narcissist,” “fraud,” and a “coward,” and “pledged that his office would embark upon a ‘long term’ campaign against WikiLeaks.”

Read more …

“..part of this trend of our enforcement agencies being weaponized to serve a political agenda.”

RFK Jr. Denied Secret Service Protection For 3rd Time (Deseret)

Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s third request for Secret Service protection has been denied, according to a letter obtained by the Deseret News. The letter, signed by Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, says that USSS protection for Kennedy is “not warranted.” The letter’s veracity was confirmed Friday night by the Kennedy campaign. “I have consulted with an advisory committee composed of the Speaker of the House, the House Minority Leader, the Senate Majority Leader, the Senate Minority Leader, and the Senate Sergeant at Arms,” Mayorkas wrote. “Based on the facts and the recommendation of the advisory committee, I have determined that Secret Service protection for Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is not warranted at this time.” Kennedy has submitted three requests for Secret Service protection since launching his campaign in April, each with the same result.

Federal law authorizes Secret Service protection for “major” presidential and vice presidential candidates. The DHS secretary is given authority to determine who qualifies as a “major” candidate, in consultation with the top congressional leaders in the House and Senate. In 2017, criteria were established to help guide the DHS’ decision making, including a threat assessment conducted by the Secret Service to determine whether the candidate is in danger, and whether the candidate meets specific polling thresholds. For independent candidates, the threshold is “polling at 20% or more of the Real Clear Politics National Average for 30 consecutive days.” Historically, Secret Service protection has been reserved for the two major-party nominees and their vice presidents, though others — like Herman Cain in 2012 and Ben Carson in 2016 — received protection just under one year before Election Day.

The Kennedy campaign has argued that Kennedy meets the criteria to receive protection. When it submitted its second request, Kennedy said he provided a 67-page report from Gavin de Becker and Associates, the security firm Kennedy hired, “detailing unique and well-established security and safety risks aside from commonplace death threats.” In an interview with the Deseret News in October, Kennedy said he’s spent almost $2 million on private security. He called DHS’ decision “political,” saying it is “part of this trend of our enforcement agencies being weaponized to serve a political agenda.” “I can’t look into the heads of the people who are making these decisions at the White House,” Kennedy continued. “But I think they’d probably rather me spend money on protection than spending it on field organization or advertising.”

Read more …

 

 

 

 

GVB

 

 

 

 

Idle
https://twitter.com/i/status/1738610597921522052

 

 

Panther?

 

 

 

 

Bing and Bowie

 

 

 

 

Support the Automatic Earth in wartime with Paypal, Bitcoin and Patreon.

 

 

 

 

 

Home Forums Debt Rattle Christmas Eve 2023

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  • #149094

    Edward Hopper House on the shore 1924   • 2023 – The Year the World saw the US Emperor as Naked… and Grotesque (SCF) • US, Israel Face A Powerful
    [See the full post at: Debt Rattle Christmas Eve 2023]

    #149095
    Dr. D
    Participant

    “Pentagon’s Operation Prosperity Guardian “Falls Apart” As Spain, Italy, France Reject Request
    “This is the result of a weak ‘President’ / lack of leadership.”

    Well, not exactly, it’s because they’re too broke to threaten, bribe, and blackmail people. You didn’t think the actual “leader” had anything to do with it, did you? The President hasn’t run anything since Nixon.

    No One Has Really Grokked How Big The Suez/Houthi Gambit Is

    Okay, they got the “Thucydides Trap” (not actually what that means) to put the U.S. in a lose-lose. But WHY is that true? Sure the U.S. is broke, sure their blackmail is going nowhere, but WHY. And on the opposite, WHY does everything Russia, BRIICS do always wins? Always seems like genius strategy, 5D, always comes through?

    Look, it’s not their personal genius, Biden and Putin, Lavrov, whatever, although that’s glaring and true. We have Lavrovs here, WHY are they not allowed into power? (Btw, Whitney Webb discussed why Blinken, raised by a guy who testified before Congress about how they were going to have corporations run everything and supersede governments. Like Quinn. Speaking of, Nikki Haley follows Luongo’s note everyone is Indian these days, that is: British Empire. HOW this works, I can’t figure out, but Google, Ramaswamy, that waterboy in London, etc. The other anointed are Canadian, like Rubio)

    What happens over the wheel of time is much, much deeper. POWER, as I say, means you don’t HAVE TO be smart, learn things, get punched. Your kids don’t either. Again, that’s the whole POINT of bothering with power. This lack-of-needing-to-align your daily actions with “Reality” slowly spreads everywhere, like or especially with bad money. Meanwhile, the marginal guys are hit with a brick the instant they step out of line, like Russia, Hungary, Iran. Therefore they have to be AMAZINGLY accurate, clever, strategic, and quick. Any deviation is collapse, so they are trained to be strategic and smart. Any failures are replaced.

    Sad system, since of course we would love to give our kids comfort and protection, but you can’t. It would make them weak and useless, without inner strength and direction. Life is just like that.

    So the West, at the top of the wheel, has this “Decay of Power” everywhere, in every institution, and far worse, in every MAN, inside their mind, their hearts. None are hardened with challenge, or that is to say, all of us, down here are, but no one in power. And all of us down here although tough, are still subsumed by lies, believing self-serving morons, and haven’t come around the corner of cagey and strategic.

    What does that mean? All our INSTITUTIONS are wasting infinite resources, energy, doing nothing. Health care is the best example. YES it’s a scam that’s overpriced, but if it were actually healing anyone we might not mind. What we have here is it being 500% overpriced but 80% of its cost is just paperwork pushers doing nothing. Creating obstacles and confusion. In geopolitical terms, the Defense is the same thing. The economy can’t function because we’ve got 80% overhead in banking fees and obstacles. Etc.

    So anytime we want to do something, we are stuck in the mud, have no money for it, and no talent to apply the strategy, and no one intelligent to develop it, as they are each idiot sons of idiot sons.

    Meanwhile in Russia, the have zero fat and drag, and no time to promote idiots to anywhere. So when THEY need to do something, they have 12 timezones of mines, mills, oil wells, and railroads ready to go. If they need a railroad to the new arms factory, you just build one, by calling on functionaries who only have the job because they’ve built one before. Same in Iran, China in a different way, etc.

    So when the two sit down to play paintball, what happens? It’s a blowout. It LOOKS like it’s just Blinken is stupid, but really you could put Lavrov in our seat and he’d have his work cut out for 20 years straightening out our system first. ‘Cause they just spent 30 years fixing their OWN system in Russia. But the point is, they wouldn’t ALLOW it. They’d get together, ring fence, and remove Lavrov exactly so that he COULDN’T fix things. …That’s what they just did to Trump. Or JFK Jr. Or whoever. Even stating that is their GOAL gets you shot at regularly and plans to undercut, overtake, and destroy you. Even if you’re just some former addict who sells mattresses. Or some brain surgeon who got appointed.

    Anyway, so that’s why it is so EASY for BRIICS to go around NATO, the U.S., and control the Red Sea, therefore destroying all shipping and the Empire of Oceana. If they weren’t ALREADY morons, wasting 90% of every dollar, we would ALREADY have ships – or something – that dealt with drone attacks since this-aint-rocket-science guys. Rumsfeld put this in in 2001. Just like Bill Gates said Windows needed to be secured or they’d lose to Linux worldwide. …And then, knowing this at the topmost level, THEY DIDN’T.

    Idiot sons of idiot sons, all the way down. Every person who tries to limit the corruption is ringfenced and taken out.

    How did we get in a state with EGYPT, which is the real goal here, as Luongo rightfully states. — And for a change, they did NOT openly declare their goals and strategy in the news for all to see, how I don’t know. Getting Suez via Egypt was an obvious necessary BRIICS move. So Israel attempting Hail Mary to shove 2 Million refugees in there is the obvious response to this. Or obvious there WOULD be a response, but this one is so evil, and so ineffectual, it hardly rates as a Strategy.

    Why doesn’t it work this time? A: They’ve ALREADY gutted all Egypt, ALREADY extracted everything, ALREADY burned all bridges, ALREADY revealed their hand, and how evilly and cynically we, the West, behave. So Egypt is ALREADY done with us. Since Arab Spring, Obama tried to kill every black and brown person, so they ALREADY know they all need to leave. You already stole and ate that, Wendigo. It’s not left there.

    So all Egypt can do is bide their time for a doorway to exit, and BRIICS finally gave them one that won’t starve their what 5 Million people on foreign grain? With CIA/MI6 “Muslim Brotherhood” gol-durned EVERYWHERE in there, raising a new Kashoggi every day?

    They did, and then what? Well NATO needs to wipe out Egypt, but how? Since any Empire is an EXTRACTION MACHINE, they have nothing to offer. BRIICS will pay all their IMF loans. Russia will stabilize their military. Support with Saudi, etc will contain the Muslim Brotherhood coups. Why? BRIICS have the money, have the strategic talent, they have goals. So they protect client state Egypt – to gain trade routes and all Oceana – by fighting via Yemen.

    Again WE have this kind of talent here. We have this kind of work ethic. We have hardened fighters. But when they say we should close our borders, start manufacturing, when you say we should fix things, they have an aneurysm of opposition. Okay, fine: THEN YOU HAVE NO MUNITIONS. No railroads, no mines, no steel mills. You’ve chosen to keep the Idiot sons in power instead of the hardened fighters. Therefore you lose. We told you so, and shocker: here it is.

    THAT is why it looks so easy for them and the West can’t catch a break. They DID catch a break. If the system was only 20% less bad because Trump started manufacturing supported unions, fixed the rails, opened the steel mills, imagine how much s—tier the Ukraine war would have been. We’d be only half as hollow and dottering. But THEY, Blinken, Obama, Biden, Austin, REFUSED. They didn’t WANT manufacturing and jobs for black workers.

    So here we are. No ships, no drones, no factories to make them in. No control over chips. Why? At each tiny point, they chose CORRUPTION. They put their Idiot sons in power who smoked crack and banged children on camera where they could be blackmailed instead of adding that one extra Kissinger, evil as he may be.

    Aggregate the individuals, here we are. Again, the good news: We HAVE all the smart, capable people here. They’re everywhere. But you need to be a meritocracy where they get into power and fix and decide things, organizing and directing the less capable, less strategic people we have.

    That’s the wheel of history and it can’t be stopped. That’s the arc of “Power” as long as any power shall exist anywhere. They’ll claim “we don’t have them” but we do. Since we’ve been beaten senseless and starved white, we probably have more than usual. However they will NEVER allow any of them — the Deplorables, aka “The Workers” — in until the very last grain of their unearned power is pawned off for bread. Or crack. Because their power is all inherited, and they would be a school janitor without it. They can’t take the ego, and it would shut off their crack and hookers. They can’t.

    So you can see the turn here, the nation is finally REALIZING what needs to happen, but having a plan is a very long way from completing it. Like 20-30 years. We’ll already be at the bottom, cut off and not global by them, and China/BRIICS will already be consolidating the top. But IDGAF, what can you do?

    “Sexually blackmailed”?

    Yes, but you can’t blackmail people with just “slept with a gal”. Nobody cares about that. It has to be much, MUCH worse than that. We’re talking about people who are openly gay, openly bathhouse with it, and openly run OnlyFans sites (CA). What do you think they’re blackmailing them with?

    Okay, problem solved. Now WHO do you think they blackmail them with? GMC blackmails Burchett with a motel as he says. So he calls the FBI, doesn’t he? Why not? And the FBI then uses all the resources of the entire U.S. government to find and stop these guys, end blackmail, in order to preserve our Democracy, right? Top Priority, right? No. Never. And that tells you all you need to know. The FBI ARE the blackmailers. Since J Edgar. The CIA ARE the blackmailers. Not GM, or only in coordination with GM, Pfizer, Monsanto.

    “Ansarallah came to power following a popular revolution against then-Yemeni President Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi in 2014.”

    One of Obama’s many genocides on black and brown people worldwide. As above, WHY have they taken the country, and we are unable to stop them long before, decade before, their chess piece was brought into play? We had no focus. We had no resources, having embezzled them all. We have no talent since we protect idiots and oppose merit.

    Stop any of these and it’ll be fixed. But if you re-instate them, you would be re-instating the Constitution, Law, and the American Way, and they can’t have that. They would all be broke, poor, and mopping floors at Publix. Your choice: therefore we will collapse in this DIFFERENT way, and you will mop floors at a different time. But as that guy said, “Globalism is done. It’s over.”

    “it’s going to be perceived in the entire region as Saudi Arabia siding with Israel..”

    This is just MBS having to make some eyewash for domestic and U.S. consumption saying “he can’t”. Obviously he wouldn’t be anywhere near joining Iran, who is backing Yemen, if it weren’t already signed and sealed. That means we say “Saudi” attacks Yemen. …But that’s impossible, isn’t it? The King himself, in a dictatorship, is supporting the Houthis. Iran, directly, for decades, supports the Houthis. What does that leave? Saudi was never big on this, or not for a long time: the UNITED STATES has been fighting Yemen, alone, the whole time, merely using KSA as a military base.

    That’s why it’s so easy for MBS to switch, and why after he switches the war still doesn’t stop. I mean, hold on: MBS, Iran, they are all Pro-Houthi now. So WHO is opposed? They’re like the ONLY people involved, right? Again: the United States is the one running non-stop genocide in Yemen, that’s why it’s not in the news. Like the attack on Egypt, finally some competency somewhere to keep their mouths shut and not say “Yeah, we always meant to break every treaty, arm Ukraine and double-cross Russia” on national TV. Ferme la bouche. Loose lips sink ships. They’re too moronic to grasp this.

    Now as Luongo says, is this a pipeline world or a tanker world? Is this ocean surrounding by land, or land surrounded by ocean? Is this Empire of Oceana, or Empire of Eurasia? The U.S. embargoed Saana to kill a million civilians. Like Gaza, except nobody DGAF if Yemen hillbillies died. Now Saana is embargoing the United States. Aren’t they? Water surrounded by land, or land surrounded by water? Saana and the BRIICS are saying LAND is more important now. Water is past-tense. It’s the U.S. that can’t move goods.

    “France, Italy and Spain withdraw from Operation Prosperity Guardian, refusing to put their warships under U.S. command.”

    Translation: EUROPE. DAVOS. They wouldn’t lift a finger without permission. Strategy? Not sure. Guessing they want this to be Oceana’s (British Empire with American Bully-Idiot control) “Suez moment” (1954.) Ironically in the Suez again? So if UK/London/Brexit double-crosses Davos and they fail, then EUROPE becomes preeminent, right? Well…not exactly, Europe is even worse than we are. But they may think that’s the play right now. Sink London and U.S. first, then deal with it all later.

    Europe is abandoning London and Oceana, attacking them and hoping they’ll die.(First). They are still not in the open about this, just as they are not in the open about running our Secret State and institutions (like media, all pro WEF/Davos) This is too obvious not to notice though. It’ll get through even to the numbskulls in DC and Pentagon.

    “• Finland To Pay Failed Asylum Seekers For Voluntary Return Home (RT)

    I am SO. THERE. So I just need to land, apply, and they pay for my $5000 vacation? I can do this all day! If they kick me out, I’ll just be an illegal refugee in Florence.

    “The Nordic nation had to gradually shut down its border crossings with Russia last month, citing an increase in the number of migrants from third nations”

    But I though Borders and walls don’t work. All humans are legal. What gives? Russians, Slavs, aren’t humans I guess.

    “• Trump Responds To Hitler Comparisons (RT)

    No matter what happens the insanity can’t break. We could have a BILLION immigrants and no one would change their minds. We really need the immigrants to take all the PMC jobs and suddenly they’d SUPER care. Like when they bused immigrants to Chicago and THE NEXT DAY the Black Caucus there was protesting on the courthouse steps, having flipped sides.

    Nope. SO LONG AS THEY ARE INSULATED FROM THEIR DECISIONS, as above. That’s what Power, and MONEY is for, right? It can literally be “Infinity Immigrants” and has no effect on their views, which they shield in fake “morality”.

    The morality is they GUT the home nations with brain drain – like Ukraine in Europe – and then SAVAGE and destroy the poor, black, and immigrant communities, citizens here. And, then GIVE THEMSELVES A MEDAL for it. Did they, the AWFL PMCs, — ASK – anyone if this is what they wanted? Surely you jest. PMCs don’t ASK, they TELL. They don’t take advice, they give commands. That’s what defines them as the “Superior People.” We don’t ASK anyone. Pshah! I clutch pearls at the very notion! If our entire call center collapsed I wouldn’t ASK. That’s for the Little People. The sort that don’t work on spreadsheets, but scrape around in the dirt like cavemen.

    “there was extensive pre-2016 election evidence of an FBI/CIA counterintelligence operation that also involved U.K. intelligence services. There was an aspect to the FBI/CIA operation that overlaps with both a U.S. and U.K.”

    As I say daily, they are essentially all one agency, all one Groupthink, all “The Lettermen”. That includes all 5 Eyes, Israel, Japan, and half-includes Europe, along with certain factions in Korea, Iran, etc.

    Calvin and Hobbes: Watterson has a new book out.

    Tesla safety is interesting, but probably irrelevant. People only turn on their autopilot in safe conditions. You’d have to correlate and adjust for this. It is NOT common for human drivers to cruise around the city until they find police and fire lights and crash into them full speed. If you adjusted for this, you’d probably find human drivers are still safer than Tesla when they’re only on long stretches of superhighway, etc.

    They said it: Therefore it was a lie. For money and in this case, murder. Must be a day ending in “Y”.

    #149096
    zerosum
    Participant

    Highlighting – Lost control of the narrative
    LOOK at 2023
    A unique, a wake-up call.
    World Wide Peace Demonstration
    It is an eye-opener of the violence and lawlessness.

    Tragically, heinous, horrendous, abomination, suffering, shocking, scandalous and frightening, cruelty and sickening impunity.

    The year ends with a horrendous massacre in Gaza that is unprecedented

    Financially, militarily and diplomatically, Washington is sponsoring the horror in Gaza as well as the Occupied West Bank.

    The death toll from American imperialism runs to tens of millions of people with victims on every continent.

    The U.S. continues to weaponize the Neo-Nazi regime in Kiev, a regime that Washington and its European NATO allies installed in 2014 through a coup d’état.
    The hostilities in Ukraine – the biggest in Europe since the Second World War – were fomented by the United States as a proxy war to defeat Russia.

    The whole of humanity can now see that all the American rhetoric and vanity is nothing but an ugly lie.

    2023 – The Year the World Saw the U.S. Emperor as Naked… and Grotesque


    2023 – The Year the World Saw the U.S. Emperor as Naked… and Grotesque
    December 22, 2023
    ———-
    Peace to All

    #149097
    Figmund Sreud
    Participant

    Interesting article by a Jew, Russian Jew, … now residing in Sweden. Traveling world a lot. Difficult to decipher. Prolific writer in the past, not so now. At one point and another suggested in his writings that he was – once – a member of Knesset, but kicked out out of it not long after, … that he is a son of one of the past prime ministers. He claims to “love” Palestinian people, … is proponent of “One State Solution” – Israel annexing West Bank and Gaza.

    Anyway, … the article, it’s dated December 3, 2023 … large snip up front:

    Gaza and Muslim Immigration to Europe
    https://www.unz.com/ishamir/gaza-and-muslim-immigration-to-europe/

    We are trying our best to figure out – why is Jewry so keen to import as many Muslims to Europe and USA as possible, and at the same time prepare the Gaza genocide? Do they do it out of sheer idealism? Out of compassion (hard to believe)? Or out of silliness? Could it be that this calculating people didn’t take into account that Muslims might react to genocide against Palestinians? Granted, Europeans and Americans did their fair share of protesting, but Jews knew they could shut down the Goyim any time they wanted simply by uttering the magic Jewish spell “Holocaust – Auschwitz”.

    Yet Jews understand better than anyone that their “fellow Semites” from the Middle East have not accepted the yoke of Holocaust Guilt. Jews are more aware than anyone that Muslims still chafe over the fact that their Palestinian brothers have been kept in an “open air concentration camp” for the last 50 years. So how can we explain the apparent tactical error when the ADL and other Jewish organizations twisted the arms of European and American leaders to accept hordes of fighting age Muslims just before an Israeli incursion into Gaza? Surely no! They do not make such mistakes!

    When on Friday in Dublin a Muslim émigré from Algeria stabbed an Irish family and incited an anti-Muslim pogrom, we finally got the missing piece of this puzzle. I was waiting for “the rest of the story”, and it was unveiled at a crucial point in the drama – just as Dublin demonstrated en masse against the brutal murder of Gaza children, just when the Irish parliament threatened to expel the Israel ambassador, just as reports of anti-Semitism reached new highs. Just then it seemed that the Jews were beset from all sides, and that the whole world was against them. Of course, in every good story the darkest tidings come just before the dawn.

    Jews are professional victims. They are good at it. They are willing to play the bad guy, but only in stories where Jewry is eventually vindicated and expendable Jews martyred. Jewish leaders believe that revenge is best served cold. […]

    F.S.

    #149098
    Oroboros
    Participant

    .

    #149099
    zerosum
    Participant

    Not the Narrative – Yemen

    • US, Israel Face A Powerful New Enemy In The Middle East (Robert Inlakesh)
    • Houthi Red Sea Blockade Could ‘Starve’ Western War Machine of Oil (Sp.)
    • Pentagon’s Operation Prosperity Guardian “Falls Apart” (ZH)
    • Chinese, Iranian, Indian Warships Are In The Red Sea, Gulf Of Aden (Helmer)

    ————-
    Must control the Narrative
    • 51 Days Later, Tucker Carlson Releases Interview With Julian Assange (CTH)
    • CIA Must Face Lawsuit for Violating Rights of Assange’s Visitors (LAP)
    ———-
    Important distraction from the narrative – Xmas spending, and traveling with money you aint got.
    ———-
    Merry Christmas
    ———-

    #149100
    Oroboros
    Participant

    .

    #149101
    Oroboros
    Participant

    #149102
    Dr. D
    Participant

    Swedish Jewry: Or “Not Jews”. This would all make sense if they want “Three World Wars” a exhaustive battle of all against all until the world, shattered and brought to its knees, will then the majesty and light of their God, their Savior, the true Angel-with-a-bad-rap, Prometheus himself, the Morning Star.

    Any other way doesn’t make much sense, does it?

    #149103
    Red
    Participant

    Dr.D sense? Making sense of the machinations of psychos? Is this not folly? Senselessness is senseless. Trying to find some thread of sense in senselessness is senseless!

    #149104
    Dora
    Participant

    Sasha Latypova’s substack.
    Just a few degrees away from the truth lies not the truth
    https://sashalatypova.substack.com/p/dr-mike-yeadons-post-on-telegram

    #149105
    jb-hb
    Participant

    That’s what defines them as the “Superior People.” We don’t ASK anyone. Pshah! I clutch pearls at the very notion! If our entire call center collapsed I wouldn’t ASK. That’s for the Little People. The sort that don’t work on spreadsheets, but scrape around in the dirt like cavemen.

    Indeed, there are COUNTLESS times I have, as a call center worker, explained a specific thing that was broken or half-broken and an easy way to fix it. Maybe do something a little bit different with the existing systems. Maybe change a few words on a document. Spell out the specific costs of not fixing/improving anything vs the minimal cost and greater benefit of the new thing.

    It’s the sort of thing that is locked down at the middle manager level – only THEY can say “we’re changing this thing.” It’s what they’re there for, TO manage.

    I have this lecture in my head I have never given a middle manager:

    Look man/lady. Implicit in the word “management” is that there are finite resources. If you had INFINTE resources and you saw a problem, you’d just say give me 1,000 more inbound reps to fix this, give me $100,000 more for training each one to a fever-pitch of call center rep perfection, give me instant new software that does everything with a great workflow and zero glitches. Right? If we had infinite resources , we’d have no need for managers and you would have no job. You would be completely superfluous.

    (When I have said far lesser things, they give me a look like I just ran over their dog and forever after, if they see me in the call center without expecting to see me, have a hurt look on their faces for just a moment… it’s kind of rare that peasants speak truthfully and bluntly to middle managers in a call center and it hurts their feelings in ways they think couldn’t happen… thoughts of themselves being superfluous cut just a little too close. And I promise I TRY to spare their feelings, structure my speaking, choose the right language, to not trigger them when I am trying to accomplish something)

    Part of it is, the middle managers don’t want to shake things up. ANY statement of “we need to change this” by THEM risks challenging someone somewhere, of having to convince someone who might disagree. And their entire careers have been a careful process of not annoying ANYONE who can be of benefit to their careers. The peasants cannot benefit their careers. They can only lose by doing something.

    Or they say “I’m a manager. That’ means I’m supposed to do general things. Doing specific things is beneath me. In fact, even the general things, I should only look at the 80% I think matters the most – I read that in a book.”

    Uh sir, do you realize how fucked an experience it is for customers trying to get from A to B in a system that is 20% fucked up? 1/5 fucked up? No you idiot, your management book is not applicable. Will your fucking CAR run if it is 20% fucked? You have to actually fix the things that are broken – the reason for you to have this position with a lock on changing/not changing things. What is the POINT of you? But this is prevalent for middle managers. If you’ve ever had a hard time interacting with a corporation, I promise you, somewhere in the background was a manager following The 80/20 Rule. It’s a RULE.

    Sir. I never ever do general things. My customers never ever do general things. We all only ever do specific things. The UNIVERSE only has discrete specific events occurring. So… the things we do have to be specific that we do. And that’s why I am coming to you because you forbid any consideration of specific things and that’s the only thing possible in this universe. Oh god that headache from explaining that things exist to you again and that look of my running over your dog again.

    Anytime an underling says “this thing here is making my job more difficult.” (ie inefficient use of company resources and making our customers needlessly unhappy) translates as oh, life is hard for peasants? Well, it’s supposed to be hard. You’re supposed to have problems. Yeah, we hear them complain but they are complaining losers, so yeah, they’re annoying sometimes. …but gathering information to judiciously assess reality and then taking specific appropriate action in response would be managing.

    #149106

    Merry Christmas for everyone here. Thank you so much for your attention, your curiosity, your support and your donations. It is always humbling. And that will not stop as we move into the next year. Neither will I.

    #149107
    zerosum
    Participant

    Canada is after everyone, bloggers, who are not following the approved narrative.

    The truth, the narrative is what the gov. says

    The gov. set up, “Inquiry into Foreign Interference in Federal Electoral Processes and Democratic Institutions.”

    Justice Hogue is mandated to examine and assess interference by China, Russia and other foreign states or nonstate actors, including any potential impacts, to confirm the integrity of, and any impacts on, the 43rd and 44th federal general elections at the national and electoral district levels.
    (The biggest influencers are USA, Ukraine, Israel
    The narrative is affected every day by the “bloggers”)

    the creation of a Foreign Influence Transparency Registry in Canada to ensure transparency and accountability from people who advocate on behalf of a foreign government;
    Establishing a new National Counter Foreign Interference Coordinator in Public Safety Canada to coordinate efforts to combat foreign interference; and
    investing $5.5 million to strengthen the capacity of civil society partners to counter disinformation.

    https://www.canada.ca/en/democratic-institutions/news/2023/09/government-of-canada-launches-public-inquiry-into-foreign-interference.html
    Government of Canada launches public inquiry into foreign interference

    https://www.canada.ca/en/democratic-institutions/services/reports/countering-evolving-threat.html
    Countering an evolving threat: Update on recommendations to counter foreign interference in Canada’s democratic institutions

    https://www.canada.ca/en/democratic-institutions/services/reports/countering-evolving-threat.html#toc2
    Annex A – Table of recommendations and associated actions
    National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians (NSICOP) Annual Report 2019

    #149108
    thomasjkenney
    Participant

    Cigarettes and Whiskey – Peter Sellers, The Muppets

    ———————————————————————–

    In Frederik Pohl’s The Knights of Arthur, a disembodied brain, Arthur, gets wired into a stolen cruise ship in New York Harbor. He and his friends sail off to new adventures. Published January, 1958.

    #149109
    jb-hb
    Participant


    #149110
    Dr. D
    Participant

    I wish it were fraud and nepotism that made these middle managers exist, that would be easier to take. There would be a POINT.

    But there isn’t. They’re just middle managers because they HATE. They hate the company, they hate the customers, they hate the employees, they hate money, they hate capitalism, and they hate themselves. That’s why they’re there and how they recognize each other for promotion. If you don’t hate but FIX, you are Enemy #1. Because FIXING something is love. It creates love, goodness, harmony, and #Logos. And THEN what would happen to them? They’d have to love and come into work and help people nicely too, and where does it all end? With a happy population and an economy that works? The madness. The humanity I tell you.

    This must be put and end to, and I am just the man to do it.

    #149111

    Merry Christmas everyone!

    Teach kids how to cook.

    You are so very welcome, RIM. Merry Christmas! And to all your folks at the kitchen and the website, too.

    Gotta go.

    #149112
    jb-hb
    Participant

    I want to add, I have worked for okay managers. I’ve worked for excellent managers I’d gladly drag myself through broken glass for. I’d feel fucking honored to do so. Middle management does not mean automatically awful.

    Best Directors I ever had, I hardly ever saw, but the way they ran the ship, the intermediate level leaders they chose showed their virtue. AND they had in common that, on a regular basis, they went into the cubicle farm, found an unused cubicle, put on a headset, and damn well TOOK CALLS. Spoke with the customers directly, felt THEMSELVES being the bagholders – the customer in front of them, requiring (god forbid!!) EXPLANATIONS for things, an END to their woes (horrors! Unrelenting specific demands? but but but…)

    They never ever claimed glory or virtue for taking calls. This is like Alexander when his army was tromping through the Gedrosian desert. They could find and gather one helmet worth of brackish muddy water for this emperor and Alexander, presented with it, after discussing that this was IT, all there was, dumped it out on the ground, and to the men, it was worth more than a gallon of water for themselves. They damn well got in the foxhole where everyone could see and just DID it.

    A time came years later when I was continually managing 25-35 of squirrely new hires of every mindset, description, walk of life. Management of the time was awful, super awful, incredibly demotivating at every turn. Running things badly, treating everyone badly. I did 70 hour weeks offloading administrative time to when they weren’t there so I could have time to pretend to be a mere lead, rushing around helping people individually on their calls, and logging into the phones 4 hours before my shift as sup, so that I could be SEEN taking calls like a grunt, and then saying absolutely NOTHING about it. No chest beating. And if anyone asked, just a quick “A sergeant that couldn’t or wouldn’t dig a trench or tear down their rifle and put it back together couldn’t lead anyone” I saw satisfaction in the faces of the people who heard this answer and they never took it further. They had zero followup questions because none were needed.

    And it turned out my training project was under the banner of an interim manager fighting a call center knifefight with 3 other interim managers for 1 open manager position. 2 interim managers were fucking excellent, the type I’d drag myself through broken glass for. Super competent, human, everything you would want. Not in the running. The remaining 2 interim managers were horribly toxic, but one was way, way more cunning than the other. The loser was in charge of my training bay project.

    It was necessary that my work be labeled as a failure to knock this guy out because it was his work, so they deleted the records of my work and then gave me a review as a failure. but I had a hinky feeling beforehand and had printed out all this information. When I asked to discuss my performance after the fact, the manager above me as a no-show at the agreed and scheduled meeting 3x in a row. Waiting outside with my hard copy proving my actual work in front of a dark, locked office like an asshole, people continually waking by giving me, the rumored failure, the side eye. 3x And that is how it goes. Don’t know, don’t want to know. I was under the wrong banner. Certainly, the manager-loser was awful, toxic, negligent, worse than unhelpful, but I managed to turn out people ready for the production floor anyway. So it goes.

    But I imposed MY vision on reality regardless. Roughly 200 people passed through me. I made cheat-sheets and training documents of my own, used the font and format of approved documents and stacked them where approved documents go. On my own, not asking for anyone’s permission. After years and one or two job changes within the company and back to the same building as a brand new Tier 2 Tech Support rep in training, what did I find on the walls of the tech support reps I was shadowing for training? MY documents. They had migrated within the building, been repeatedly Xeroxed, to a completely different group under a different part of the org chart. Still in use years later. Now just part of What We Do. I said not a word.

    I was a little person. Thrust into a petty position of minor responsibility. Extremely petty. I have never ever risen above such a level. But these battles are fought every day and your journey as a customer from A to B happens because these battles are constantly happening. The stupidest thing is possibly how they might fractally mirror actually important things. And at 3am sometimes I wonder… was I middle management?!?!

    #149113
    Celticbiker
    Participant

    You’re being deluded by a false multipolar world. China, Russia and India run on rothschildbucks, same as we do.. Its bread and circus, us vs them, theatre, so you can pretend you’re in democracies and not a giant jewmeatgrinder. China is the template for the world, constant surveillance, 1984. The West is being dismantled and disgraced. Gooks will be the new worldcop, industrial powerhouse in a satanic JWO. Put Christ back in Christmas, we’re all gonna need Him. Merry XMAS.

    #149114
    V. Arnold
    Participant

    Indeed: Merry Christmas everyone! And may the coming year bring joy and contentment…

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