Menu Icon

Debt Rattle October 16 2026

Oct 162026
 
 October 16, 2026  Posted by at 8:50 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , ,  Add comments


Paul Cézanne Young Italian Woman at a Table c1900


• Zelensky Says ‘We’re Done’ With Trump Energy Truce, Hits Russian Refinery (JTN)
• Trump Begins Highlighting “The Zelenskyy Problem” (CTH)
• “It’s A Pity…”: Zelensky Feels ‘Betrayed’ By Trump & Elon Musk (ZH)
• Millions Are Fleeing Blue States, and It’s Not for the Sunshine (Aaron Hanscom)
• The Problem Of Immigrants Whose Faith Mandates Conquest (Allan J. Feifer)
• Trump Admin Floats Unfreezing Russian Assets In Big Move To Restart Talks (ZH)
• Bulgarian PM Stuns EU With Full-Throated Backing Of Trump-Putin Diesel Deal (ZH)
• Has Trump Handed Dems the Rope with which to Hang Him? (Paul Craig Roberts)
• The Lie Behind the Gaza Genocide Accusations (Victor Davis Hanson)
• Hamas is a Complete Death Cult (Victor Davis Hanson)
• The Masks Were Never About Science (Peter Navarro)
• Nord Stream Sabotage Trial Begins With Explosive Allegations Against Ukraine (RFE/RL)

 

 

 

 


Does Europe tell him to turm his back on Trump?

• Zelensky Says ‘We’re Done’ With Trump Energy Truce, Hits Russian Refinery (JTN)

Ukraine resumed drone strikes on Russian refineries after holding off for the three days to adhere to a unilateral “energy ceasefire” President Donald Trump initiated.


Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky accused Russia of repeatedly attacking its power grid during the ceasefire, and he accused the U.S. of betraying Kyiv by withdrawing support critical to its defense against Russia.

On Wednesday, Ukrainian military officials alleged that SpaceX interrupted military-grade Starlink terminals, which prevented Kyiv from using them to guide drone strikes. Functionality had been restored as of Thursday, NBC News reported, citing an unnamed source in Ukraine’s defense ministry.

Zelensky said in an interview with the Financial Times, published on Thursday, that Ukraine was “done” with the ceasefire, and would resume attacks on Russian refineries. Hours later, the Russian defense ministry said Ukraine “attempted a massive attack on the Ryazan oil refinery.”

“The block (on attacking refineries) is out. We’re done,” he told the newspaper.

Read more …

“Zelenskyy Urgently Sits Down for Interviews as …”

“It is a violation of commercial Starlink terms of service to use the terminal for weapon systems. This applies to all users and is shut down when discovered. There is a separate network called Starshield, which is operated by the US government. This is not under SpaceX control.” ~ Elon Musk, March 2026 “

• Trump Begins Highlighting “The Zelenskyy Problem” (CTH)

It is almost impossible to explain what is happening to those who have not followed the last five years of events closely. In the latest development, yesterday Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy -attempting his best Churchill performance- rushes to British media outlets to give lengthy interviews. Zelenskyy is in London because that is the center of his support system.


If you are a denier of CTH’s long standing outline about Ukraine being World War Reddit, yet you hold some intellectual honesty permitting you to accept uncomfortable truth, you might perhaps pause and think about what is happening carefully. Zelenskyy is in a crisis moment within the Russia conflict. Ukraine is getting pummeled by Russia’s fast moving and highly accurate drones and missiles. Yet, at this moment of consequence, Volodymyr Zelenskyy finds the time to travel to the U.K and give long interviews with pro-Ukraine media outlets.

What exactly is the priority here? …. Zelenskyy is fighting a narrative war. That’s why the term World War Reddit applies. It is transparently obvious what is going on. Zelenskyy has one primary demand, more money. That’s it. The rest is positioning and false presentations of patriotism. The “defense of Ukraine” narrative is not about defending Ukraine in the traditional sense; it’s about using the defense of Ukraine to get money.

Five Days Ago we wrote this on X: “We have been watching everything for many years. Your next move will be for Ukraine intelligence, which we all know is EU-NATO intelligence, to launch a kinetic operation against your own energy infrastructure. You will then blame Russia, and your EU-NATO enablers will cite that example in opposition to President Trump. We can see you.“

In the last four days, exactly this predicted situation has been unfolding. To enhance the sympathetic narrative, Zelenskyy then claims the USA is no longer providing early warning intelligence or permitting Ukraine to launch offensive military strike operations using Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite communications. Again, more nonsense.

“It is a violation of commercial Starlink terms of service to use the terminal for weapon systems. This applies to all users and is shut down when discovered. There is a separate network called Starshield, which is operated by the US government. This is not under SpaceX control.” ~ Elon Musk, March 2026

President Trump, Secretary Rubio and even Elon Musk have had enough. However, from a perspective of money all U.S. and EU interests position sympathy for Ukraine through the same self-interest prism. Secretary Rubio was correct when at his brutally honest moment in February 2025 he said, “Ukraine is a proxy war between the United States and Russia”, and the Trump administration had no interest in maintaining this proxy war of foolishness built upon a foundation of grift, fraud and financial self-interest.

That was and remains the non-pretending reality. Western influence agents, led by the United States (before Trump) created this mess. There is a painful Gordian knot that needs to be cut in order to end this madness. President Trump is now pushing back against the entirety of the false Ukraine constructs. I hope he succeeds because this has been going on far too long.

TRUTH SOCIAL 2025 – “Think of it, a modestly successful comedian, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, talked the United States of America into spending $350 Billion Dollars, to go into a War that couldn’t be won, that never had to start, but a War that he, without the U.S. and “TRUMP,” will never be able to settle.

The United States has spent $200 Billion Dollars more than Europe, and Europe’s money is guaranteed, while the United States will get nothing back. Why didn’t Sleepy Joe Biden demand Equalization, in that this War is far more important to Europe than it is to us — We have a big, beautiful Ocean as separation. On top of this, Zelenskyy admits that half of the money we sent him is “MISSING.”

He refuses to have Elections, is very low in Ukrainian Polls, and the only thing he was good at was playing Biden “like a fiddle.” A Dictator without Elections, Zelenskyy better move fast or he is not going to have a Country left. In the meantime, we are successfully negotiating an end to the War with Russia, something all admit only “TRUMP,” and the Trump Administration, can do. Biden never tried, Europe has failed to bring Peace, and Zelenskyy probably wants to keep the “gravy train” going. I love Ukraine, but Zelenskyy has done a terrible job, his Country is shattered, and MILLIONS have unnecessarily died – And so it continues…..


Read more …

“Switch Starlink on?” Doesn’t he know about Starshield?

• “It’s A Pity…”: Zelensky Feels ‘Betrayed’ By Trump & Elon Musk (ZH)

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky says he feels betrayed by President Trump in the wake of the US deal to buy Russian fuel from Moscow, which was announced last week. Zelensky went on a newly aired episode of Piers Morgan’s show, and he was asked point blank by the British show host if he had been “betrayed” by the Trump administration, to which Zelensky answered, “Really, Yes.” Russian media was quick to seize on the increasingly open schism between Trump and Zelensky…


Zelensky tells Piers Morgan he feels ‘BETRAYED’ BY TRUMP: ‘really YES, really, between us’ “It’s a pity that we are losing a strong partner,” the Ukrainian leader told Morgan on Wednesday. “This is our country, our body, our home, our children… That’s why it’s painful when Trump chooses one side,” Zelensky at one point also stated.

“If you’re in the middle, you have to stay in the middle. Not on the wrong side,” said Zelensky. “This is not the right side of history.” Here, Zelensky seemed to suggest Trump is actually more on the Kremlin side of things at this point. The interview also came amid reports that the US is throttling intelligence-sharing with Kiev. The White House has thus far neither confirmed nor denied the allegations.


But Zelensky has himself for the past two night of Russian airstrikes made a point to publicize that Western partners have not provided the typical early warning notices of inbound missiles that were available in prior such attacks. There’s been another apparently ‘betrayal’ (in Zelensky’s assessment) by the White House of late: reports say that SpaceX has imposed a movement-speed restriction on certain Starlink terminals used in Ukraine. This has deeply impacted Ukraine’s military, which is greatly reliant on Starlink for rapid battlefield communications and functions. Zelensky used the Piers Morgan appears to plead that it be ‘switched on’.


“People will die, of course, if attacks will continue and if Starlink will not work… it’s not helpful,” he continued. The Ukrainian leader expressed home the limitation was merely a “mistake,” suggesting it could “maybe a huge technical problem” at SpaceX. Overall, Zelensky’s message was that Ukraine is ‘losing’ American support and that he feels betrayed not only be Trump, but by Elon Musk too. Musk has directly chimed in on the controversy, clarifying “Starshield systems are owned and controlled by the US government” – and so ultimately it’s the US government, not SpaceX, behind whatever cut happened that impacted Ukraine.



Read more …


Now Zelensky can feel really betrayed…

“European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said that Moscow “must pay for the destruction it has caused. And we are using the proceeds from the immobilized Russian assets to make sure it does.”

• Trump Admin Floats Unfreezing Russian Assets In Big Move To Restart Talks (ZH)

President Trump appears to be busy rolling back years of entrenched Ukraine policy. Starting last week he announced the controversial diesel deal with Putin, and this week Ukraine’s Zelensky is complaining that intelligence-sharing has been throttled, and possibly even cut off.


The possibility or even likelihood of this heading to another TACO moment aside, what’s next? New reporting in the Financial Times gives an idea. The United States has floated a proposal that European countries unfreeze some of Russia’s sovereign assets and deposit them in an entity controlled by Washington.

via Associated Press: The FT report cites four people familiar with the matter, who describe that the idea was formally presented by envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner during a meeting of Western allies and Ukraine in Miami on Oct.10. “The US suggested several possible methods for unfreezing the assets, including for them to be moved into a new special-purpose financial vehicle overseen by Washington,” the sources said.

This US plan would be enacted in the hope of opening up momentum toward a comprehensive Ukraine peace plan. Moscow has of late rejected any ‘temporary’ proposal, including a 60-day pause in fighting recently offered by Zelensky. It wants a lasting political settlement and not a mere ‘pause’ along the front lines. At the Miami meeting were NATO representatives, as well as officials from the US, France, Germany, and the EU.

“Many ideas have been floated as to how Moscow’s frozen assets could be used after the war, the US official added,” the FT says. European officials are said to have balked at any initiative to let go of Russian assets. “They were told that this was just simply not going to happen,” one source said. For example, Germany has voiced its clear position:m”Those are assets that are frozen in Europe and they should remain frozen in Europe. This is our business and we are deciding over “it,” Merz said in Brussels ahead of an EU summit.

At least €260 billion in sovereign assets belonging to Russia’s central bank were frozen in 2022 as a result of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February of that year. Most of this is held at the Belgian securities depository Euroclear. The vast majority, or over €210 billion of the sum, is held in the EU.

The last couple years of war has seen the EU work out a scheme wherein payments are made to Ukraine utilizing interest gained from Russa’s funds. Washington’s sudden willingness to ease off the pressure on Moscow has interesting implications regarding the Iran war…


European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said that Moscow “must pay for the destruction it has caused. And we are using the proceeds from the immobilized Russian assets to make sure it does.” “We are making a further [$1.62] billion of them available to Ukraine. This will support Ukraine’s continued resistance against Russia’s illegal war,” she had announced in August.

Read more …

“It’s the affordability, stupid. Why is everything so darn expensive in blue states?”

• Millions Are Fleeing Blue States, and It’s Not for the Sunshine (Aaron Hanscom)

It’s the weather, stupid.


That’s one of the left’s ready responses when confronted with the fact that millions of people are moving from blue states to red states, economist Stephen Moore says in a new PragerU video. While acknowledging that weather has long explained why people move west and south, Moore points to the state that pokes holes in that argument today: California.

Warm weather isn’t all the Golden State offers prospective residents. Moore mentions its other appeals: beaches, mountains, top-tier universities, Silicon Valley, Hollywood, and a productive economy. So why have nearly 2 million more people left California for other states than arrived since 2012? For the same reasons that New York lost a net of more than 2 million and Illinois nearly 1 million from 2012 to 2024, according to Census Bureau estimates.

It’s the taxes, stupid. Florida, Tennessee, and Texas don’t tax wage income at the state level. California and New York, meanwhile, are near the top of the list of highest state income tax rates.

The Democratic Socialists of America would say we shouldn’t shed any tears over top 1 percenters like Google cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin deciding to leave California, but when wealthy people leave a state, their taxable income goes with them. Moore says it’s not just billionaires and millionaires who suffer in high-tax states: “Taxes affect small business owners, young families trying to buy a house, retirees trying to make their savings last.”

It’s the poor education and high crime, stupid. Leftists like to say that more government spending will lead to safer streets and better schools. Moore explains why that’s not the case:

From 2000 to 2024, New York’s per capita government spending quadrupled compared to Florida’s. You’d expect then New York to be cleaner, safer, and [to have] better public schools than Florida. But that’s not the reality. By most measures, while taking far less of its citizens’ money, Florida delivers better municipal services than its high tax counterpart and its educational outcomes are equal, if not better.

It’s the inequality and uneven law enforcement, stupid. Income inequality is worse in New York than in Florida, and in blue states the gap shows up in how the law is enforced, too. Michael Shellenberger describes a progressive Los Angeles that is all but lawless in certain parts: In wealthy neighborhoods, the law is still enforced. In poor and working-class neighborhoods, it is not. If you torch a car in Beverly Hills, you’re arrested. If you do it in East LA while shouting political slogans, you’re “engaging in protest.”

This two-tiered enforcement is not progressive. It is segregation by another name. It creates one set of expectations for the politically connected and another for the disposable. And in that framework, working people, especially immigrants, families, and hourly wage earners, are abandoned. They are the ones who walk their kids past open-air drug markets. They are the ones whose shops are looted and whose cars are stolen. They are the ones who call 911 and wait, and wait, and wait.

It’s the affordability, stupid. Why is everything so darn expensive in blue states? Moore offers one reason:

“Let’s look at energy prices. Eight of the 10 most expensive states for electricity were blue states, while nine of the 10 cheapest were red states. Among the large states, electricity prices in blue states were almost double those in red states. And higher electricity costs raised the price of everything: rent, transportation, groceries.

Moore says that because of our federal system, we can treat the states as “laboratories of democracy” and study their successes and failures in taxing, regulating, spending, and governing. And the best way to grade them? “Watch where Americans decide to live and work,” he says.

It’s not cheap to move out of state, yet from 2012 to 2024, Florida gained a net 1.7 million-plus residents, Texas 1.5 million-plus, and Tennessee 400,000-plus.

Roger L. Simon, a PJ Media co-founder, is one of the many Californians who decided to leave for the Volunteer State. He moved in 2018 after living in California since 1968, and wrote about it in his book American Refugees: The Untold Story of the Mass Exodus From Blue States to Red States. He had no regrets when he wrote a post titled “Thank God I Left California” on his Substack in 2025, in which he said, “The leadership of California is a litany of some of the most immoral politicians in the country, every one of them a hypocritical fake: Governor Gavin Newsom, Mayor Karen Bass, Sen. Adam Schiff, Rep. Maxine Waters, and former VP Kamala Harris, among a raft of malignant narcissists in a one-party state.”

In the upcoming midterms, voters should ask whether the records of Democratic candidates like Abdul El-Sayed, James Talarico, and Peggy Flanagan show the same self-serving politics Simon describes in California.

Read more …

“These are not the hard-working economic immigrants of old; this is a whole new type of immigrant, and America must address the change soon.”

• The Problem Of Immigrants Whose Faith Mandates Conquest (Allan J. Feifer)

In Wednesday’s Pluralism Is Broken, I argued that pluralism only works when cultural differences operate within a shared civic framework. Multiculturalism reverses that premise by asking America to accommodate differences without requiring assimilation. When immigration policy no longer reinforces a common framework—and when we become unwilling to examine its consequences—we are not preserving pluralism; we have sown the seeds of our own destruction.


The central question is whether a society committed to individual liberty can remain coherent when it loses the will to reject individuals or groups whose norms contradict its foundational values. Over time, we have deliberately bent our rules to accommodate two categories: those who come here solely for economic reasons and those who seem to come in a spirit of religious conquest.

Economic migration has existed since the nation’s founding, but two modern developments transformed it from beneficial to detrimental: easier entry from around the globe and a benefits system that attracts those seeking opportunity regardless of their ability to contribute.

That created a second, more complex challenge: the arrival of migrants whose religious framework is not merely a set of private beliefs but a complete system governing how believers live, their obligations to others, and a requirement to proselytize or even conquer—and that makes welfare not a gift, but a mandate from the new host country.

Classical Islamic scholarship draws this distinction through ibadat—acts of worship governing the relationship between God and the believer—andmuamalat—rules governing relationships among human beings, including family, inheritance, commerce, sexuality, and community life. Islam is not merely a faith; it also prescribes how believers must live and what to believe. Devout Muslims accept these obligations as divinely mandated, not optional. The concept of the ummah reinforces this: believers are members of a religiously defined community with obligations toward one another that extend across national boundaries.

In a religiously tolerant country like ours, we have no natural immune system to fend off a culture with a high birth rate that frequently rejects assimilation. This leads to an unavoidable question: whose culture will survive? This unprecedented question demands that we rethink our laws and beliefs while we still can.

The problem is not that Muslims are different; America has always absorbed differences. The question is whether those differences encompass fundamentally exclusionary ideas. America’s original social compact was built around the individual. The people who came here differed in nationality, language, and denomination, but generally shared a recognizable conception of society: individual liberty bounded by responsibility, private property, family, voluntary association, rule of law, and government constrained by citizens’ rights. We need not be homogeneous; we need only function within the same framework.

Islam is different. Muslims may understand and practice their faith differently, but Islamic obligations encompass family, inheritance, commerce, sexuality, charity, and relationships with the broader community. A religious obligation is different from a cultural preference. One can abandon a custom; abandoning a religious obligation can be understood as violating God’s commandments.

That confronts an American assumption: that religion can be neatly separated from civic life. And it raises the question America increasingly avoids: What happens when religious obligation and the American civic can no longer be reconciled? The First Amendment protects free exercise, not parallel legal systems. Americans are free to practice their religion and organize religious communities, but American law governs. A religious obligation can compel the believer, not someone else.

The problem comes when religious obligation involves matters American law treats differently: marriage, divorce, inheritance, women’s status, sexual conduct, speech, and religious criticism. When Islamic law addresses these areas, the issue is no longer merely private religious belief. It becomes a question of whether a religious framework can coexist with a civic framework built around individual autonomy and our Constitution.

Our society accommodates religious belief and practice—but not without limits. Muslims may pray, observe Ramadan, eat halal food, and establish a mosque, as long as they respect others’ rights. But religious freedom does not shield practices that violate our laws or undermine core civic norms. Customs that impose coercive dress requirements, restrict women’s autonomy, or involve genital mutilation, among other customs, are categorically incompatible with American legal and moral standards. Tolerance has boundaries; beyond them, accommodation constitutes societal surrender.

The problem intensifies when accommodation shifts from religious practice to reshaping society, allowing religious requirements to become institutionalized and requiring others to acquiesce. Beware exceptions granted on religious grounds; more will endlessly follow. Over time, tolerance of an individual practice can become pressure on institutions to accept norms fundamentally at odds with our culture.

At that point, we are no longer discussing religious freedom; we have breached the boundaries of our common civic order. We can’t stop at diagnosing incompatibilities; we must establish policies that prevent the erosion of civic order—not by restricting religion, but by restricting practices that violate American law, undermine individual rights, or create parallel social systems. What we must do:

First, the United States must enforce laws against coercive or abusive practices more consistently. Customs such as forced marriages, genital mutilation, or dress requirements imposed through religious strictures are not protected expressions of faith; they violate individual rights. Immigration screening should identify applicants who endorse or participate in such practices and deny entry to those who will not swear allegiance to American legal norms and our Constitution.

Second, the government must prohibit parallel legal systems. Any institution—religious or otherwise—that attempts to adjudicate family law, inheritance, or criminal matters outside the American legal system should be sanctioned.

Third, immigration policy must incorporate cultural compatibility as a legitimate criterion. This does not necessarily mean excluding people based on belief, but evaluating whether an applicant’s stated expectations and social media history align with America’s constitutional order and societal structure.

Fourth, assimilation must be a requirement for naturalization. This includes English proficiency, civic education, demonstrated lack of criminality, self-sufficiency, and a verifiable understanding that American law—not religious obligation—governs public life.

Finally, policymakers must recognize that immigration scale matters. Even compatible cultural differences will overwhelm our society when numbers exceed our capacity to integrate immigrants. Immigration levels must reflect not only economic needs but the nation’s ability to maintain our civic identity.

These policies do not directly target Muslims; they target their practices and frameworks that conflict with the American civic order. A pluralistic society can welcome many faiths, but it cannot survive the institutionalization of norms that contradict its foundational principles. Policy does not punish difference; it preserves the norms that make differences possible.

We have treated immigration as though the primary question is: how many people can we absorb? The more important question is what America becomes by absorbing them. A constitutional society can tolerate individual differences, but not indefinitely competing conceptions of the proper social order without becoming something different itself.

That is the transformation we should be discussing—not whether America is tolerant enough, but whether tolerance has become the mechanism by which a tolerant society is transformed, and what decisions we must undertake to preserve our own civic culture.

God Bless America.

Read more …

“Prime Minister Radev told the summit “Any step in reducing fuel prices and to guarantee our competitiveness, we appreciate” – in a clear reference to the US-Russia diesel agreement.”

• Bulgarian PM Stuns EU With Full-Throated Backing Of Trump-Putin Diesel Deal (ZH)

Bulgaria has just broken ranks amid widespread European criticism over the Trump-Putin diesel deal announced last week, with the NATO country’s Prime Minister Rumen Radev stunning Brussels in fresh remarks. “You know what is our problem right now in Europe? High fuel prices,” Radev said in English as he attended a two-day summit of leaders.


Reuters described of the top level meeting in Brussels, “the European Union began a packed summit on Thursday that quickly underscored wrangles over how to tame soaring energy prices, design a budget to keep the bloc competitive and curb surging exports from China that are blamed for job losses.”

Prime Minister Radev told the summit “Any step in reducing fuel prices and to guarantee our competitiveness, we appreciate” – in a clear reference to the US-Russia diesel agreement.

And even as most continue to vocally support Ukrainian President Zelensky in his ongoing standoff with Trump and defiance of US wishes, Radev criticized Ukraine’s strikes against Russia’s oil refineries, again siding with the White House. “I don’t support strikes on any refineries,” Radev said, at a moment Trump is strongly warning that Kiev better halt this tactic.

“I don’t support strikes on any energy power plants, like Russian attacks on energy power plants in Ukraine, because this hits us back,” he added. “The prices in Europe are (skyrocketing).” Fellow European leaders voiced wide disagreement, with EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas echoing Zelensky’s words that the diesel deal was a “gift” to Vladimir Putin.

“The question is: what has he (Putin) given in return? What we see is that he’s actually increasing the attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure. The ceasefire that was also announced is not really working on the Russian side,” Kallas said. The recently installed Radev, whose Progressive Bulgaria party won the April election, has been busy rolling back the NATO ‘eastern flank’ country’s prior policy on Ukraine, including related to arms shipments.

The new government has made clear it has a new peace agenda, and its position is that nothing will be resolved by just pouring more heavy arms into the conflict, now in its fifth year. It was given a new mandate. This was also notable amid the AfD’s continued rise in Germany…


He has repeatedly criticized EU overreach on green-energy mandates, sanctions policies and what he describes as moral posturing in a “world without rules.” While analysts have lately noted he is unlikely to ultimately jeopardize the flow of EU funds that sustain Bulgaria’s economy, the result installs a distinctly Russia-friendly government at the heart of the EU’s southeastern flank – a shift that has been drawing close scrutiny in Brussels, Washington and Kiev.

Read more …

“The Democrats will use lawfare to turn the US into a one party political system.”

• Has Trump Handed Dems the Rope with which to Hang Him? (Paul Craig Roberts)

Alexander Dugin thinks that if the Republicans lose control of Congress in the November 3 midterm elections, the Democrats will renew their attempt to prosecute Trump as a criminal and members of his administration as well. This is a real possibility.


We witnessed the Democrats during Trump’s term and during Biden’s four years use lawfare against Trump. It was Trump’s reelection in 2024 that saved him from being turned into a criminal by the Democrats. Since then Democrats have made further inroads into transforming law from serving justice to serving Democrat agendas.

As Democrats have become ideologues convinced that whites are racists whose speech needs to be curtailed along with their 14th Amendment protection to equality under law, Democrats in the justice (sic) system have been perfecting their ability to use their offices not to serve justice but to serve their ideological agendas. This is what ideological parties always do.

New York Assistant Attorney General Rick Sawyer explained to the Jewish Anti-Defamation League in a 2022 conference that “Attorney General’s offices have a massive amount of power within their jurisdiction.” He pointed out that they do not have to charge a crime in order to bankrupt a target with subpoenas, massive investigations, and force them to enter into “creative settlements” without ever going to court. Sawyer explained that these means of harassment and intimidation can be used to negate free speech rights. Peter Brimelow and Emerald Robinson discuss how NY Attorney General Letitia James used these highly unethical tactics to close down the immigration website Vdare by imposing a $1 to $2 million legal bill caused by complying with subpoenas.

Another trick Democrats have devised is when a state attorney general transgresses on a target’s First Amendment rights, the Democrat federal judge to whom the First Amendment issue is brought refuses to hear the case and reassigns it to the state. In this way Democrat federal judges condone trampling on the victim’s First Amendment rights by state prosecutors serving some Democrat agenda.

This development is hardly surprising. American law schools have been teaching for a couple of decades that the purpose of law is not to serve justice but to transform society in a leftward direction. Shutting up one’s opponents advances the leftward direction. The same has happened in journalism schools where the students are taught that their purpose is not to objectively report the news but to use “news” as a weapon to transform society. The American people are unaware of these developments, because it is not in the interest of those bringing changes in this way to tell them.

It was not only Trump who was a victim of Democrat lawfare, but also others such as Mike Lindell, General Flynn, and Rudy Giuliani. When the Democrats return to power, expect to see an increase in the use of lawfare to destroy Republicans. The Democrats will use lawfare to turn the US into a one party political system.

In contrast, Trump has been unable to bring justice to the Democrats who abused power in efforts to frame the President of the United States. NY Attorney General Letitia James, who attempted to frame Trump for mortgage fraud when there were no complaints is herself known to have committed mortgage fraud. But Democrat prosecutors and judges in the state with jurisdiction prevent charges from being brought against her. We hear a lot about alleged “white privilege,” but here we see real black Democrat privilege.

Trump might have handed both the rope and tree limb to the Democrats to hang both him and the Republican Party by letting Netanyahu and the Israel Lobby drag the US into a war with Iran that has imposed hardship on Americans by reducing energy flows and sending up energy costs and inflation at the very time that AI data centers championed by Trump are driving up the cost of electricity. In effect, Netanyahu has succeeded in pushing America leftward into more policies destructive of the economy and the Constitution.

Read more …

Victor Davis Hanson has 2 articles about October 7. He makes some good points.

• The Lie Behind the Gaza Genocide Accusations (Victor Davis Hanson)

We’re at the third anniversary week, just last week, of the Oct. 7, 2023 massacres. Remember what happened? About 4,000 terrorists from Gaza, Hamas terrorists, accompanied by 2,000 opportunistic Gazan civilians, swarmed into Israel in a pre-planned assault. They penetrated 17 miles. They would have gone a lot further had the IDF and armed civilians not beaten them back. They killed almost 1,000 of the terrorists and their accompaniment.


But the question I have is: Why is Gaza now in rubble? We hear about genocide, we hear about settler colonialism, we hear about apartheid, but why is Gaza in rubble? And I think I can answer that in two ways. What happened before Oct. 7, and what happened after.

Let’s go first to what happened after. The Israeli government on Oct. 8, and subsequently for the next 20 days, asked Hamas, such as it is, to do two things: turn over the 251 hostages and turn over the architects and those who participated in the murder. They waited 20 days before invading Gaza. In those 20 days, the Gazans sent about 8,500 rockets into Israel’s civilian centers. These were not aimed at military targets or even dual-use targets. They were aimed at civilian targets.

So for 20 days, while Israel waited for them to give back the hostages before they invaded, give back the architects of this terror, they refused both counts, and they sent about 8,500 rockets. They would altogether send 13,000 rockets, we forget that, at Israel. So that’s number one and two.

And next, they exposed civilians at the entries and exits into the tunnels below Gaza. There was almost 500 miles in this labyrinth, and to get in and out, you had to go through a hospital, a mosque, or a school, or in some cases private homes. The Hamas terrorists, the people responsible for killing everybody, were hiding in this labyrinth quite safe while they were exposing their own civilians to retaliation for the crimes that they had committed.

Can you imagine during the Blitz, for example, if British civil defense people who were manning the barricades and were afraid of bombing went down into the subway and they denied the use of the subway to British civilians? That would be unheard of. But that’s exactly what Hamas did.

So number three, there were about 2,000 to 3,000 civilians that either planned all along to go into Israel to be opportunistic killers, looters, thieves, and rapists. And they participated in the mutilation and the desecration and the hostage taking. We know that. We had about a couple of hundred people who were captured. We had their GoPro cameras. We had security cameras in the kibbutzes.

And by the way, of the 6,000 who participated, the Israeli government has taken out about 4,000. The next 2,000 must know that they are marked people, and they will not be here very long.

Another reason. Why, when they brought back hostages and corpses and they paraded them in the streets of Gaza, were they not only met by a mob that was cheering, but the mob actually tried to spit, hit, club those hostages who were alive and mutilate the bodies of those who were dead and brought back as trophies?

In other words, the civilians, think of this, the civilians of Gaza that we say were innocent had to be stopped from further atrocities by the people who created the atrocities, the Hamas terrorists.

Let’s ask another reason why Gaza is in rubble, and in the context of before Oct. 7.

In September 2005, all Israelis were out of Gaza. There was not one Jew, there was not one Israeli inside Gaza. American philanthropic organizations and donors bought key infrastructure, especially greenhouses, and the Israelis turned them over to the Gazans, who immediately looted them and destroyed them against their own self-interest. They were very lucrative businesses, and they could have been using them.

So my point is, there were no Jews in Gaza. This is 22 years ago, or 18 years ago by the time of the October massacres. So Gazans and Hamas terrorists wanted to kill Israelis even though no Israelis were in Gaza. And they had not been there for about 18 years on Oct. 7.

And the West, mainly the United States and Europe and the U.N., had given Gaza in that period from 2005 to the date of the massacres about $40 billion. Did they build a Dubai-like resort? Did Hamas have regular elections? Did they have a constitution that encouraged the equality of the sexes, that allowed religious freedom, that called for protection of individual civil liberties? No.

Did they take their 25 miles or so of pristine Mediterranean beaches and turn it into a Dubai? No. What did they do? First thing they did is they murdered any contestant to the election. They held the election in 2006. They got elected, and then they canceled the election. And then for the next 18 years, they killed anybody who questioned this Hamas theocratic terrorist clique that ruled Gaza.

Let me emphasize again, they diverted $40 billion and built a tunnel labyrinth for one reason, to protect the terrorists and to expose their own civilians to retaliation when they committed their next planned atrocity.

Think of the argument. They are essentially telling the world we expect the Israelis to be more humane about our own civilians than we are. Therefore, we are putting our entries and exits in places where civilians will be there, in schools, mosques, and hospitals, because we think the Israelis are so humanitarian they won’t bomb those places and we will be safe. In other words, We don’t care if they get killed, but we want to save ourselves and we think the Israelis will treat our civilians better than we do who are exposing them.

Let me just sum up.

After Oct. 7, they had 20 days to come to an agreement and turn over the perpetrators and give back the hostages. They refused. Instead, they answered that with rockets aimed at Israeli civilians. When the Israelis went in there to get the perpetrators, they hid in tunnels, committed terrorist acts, sent thousands more rockets into Israel, deliberately at civilian areas, and put their civilians as human shields to ensure there would be civilian casualties even as the Israelis were dropping leaflets and texting individual apartment dwellers to get out and not be collateral damage.

Before Oct. 7, Israel had completely evacuated Gaza for 18 years. They had allowed an election. They were supplying, I should say, about 20% to 50% of the food, water, sewage treatment, chemicals, fuel, and power to Gaza. Gaza had a border with Egypt. Did Egypt want to let Gazans in there, and did they want to help? No. They wanted nothing to do with them. Nothing to do with them.

They had an election, then they canceled all elections, and they tormented and terrorized their own people. And we are supposed to believe now that Israel created a genocide when the population of Gaza, when they left in 2005, was what? It’s about 1.3 million. And what was it on Oct. 7? About 2.4 million. Nations or countries that want to commit genocide do not pull all of their military and civilians out of the area that is targeted and then see it increase by one million people in a mere 20 years.

The charge is absurd. The whole situation is absurd. And what’s most absurd, Westerners still parrot this word genocide, which applies to a lot of places in the world that they omit, but it surely doesn’t apply to what Israel did after Oct. 7.

Read more …

“Why Are Campuses Not Condemning Them?..”

• Hamas is a Complete Death Cult (Victor Davis Hanson)


Jack Fowler: Well, Victor, let’s go to some campuses—two campuses. I’ll throw both stories out there and your take on them. They both have to do with antisemitism, and one is at Columbia, which has always been a hotbed since Oct. 7 for antisemitism.

And the headline here is, from Fox News: “Columbia University Says Oct. 7 Dining Menu Listing Was a Mistake.” And part of what it said here on the menu at the school was Oct. 7 blush sauce, which is like—what the f–? This is, this is… “Oh, that was a printing typo.” How the hell does that get to be a printing typo? Anyway, that was one thing.

The other thing that’s antisemitic and really troubling has to do with this professor at Haverford College in Pennsylvania. Professor Guangtian Ha he’s been arrested and charged with cyberstalking a Jewish colleague. He was posing as a MAGA anonymous person on X.

Let me just read this. It says, “In addition to posting vile antisemitic messages, he allegedly posted his colleague’s home address, infant child’s name, a photograph of the family’s mailbox, countless antisemitic slurs and threats, and reference of real-time observation of their home,” etc. And he was a wackadoo, I think, if you look at the courses he was teaching. But someone with that mentality could be hired at a prestigious college, maybe it shouldn’t be surprising, Victor.

Victor Davis Hanson: He’s DEI. He’s DEI. Remember what DEI is. DEI is just as if you and I go into an insurance company and say, “We’re gonna go take a trip, and we wanna get insurance. We’re gonna fly, and wanna get airline insurance.” And so we’re indemnified. I have a small little 40 acres, and I have a renter now, and I get insurance that says if anyone who wants to sue me, I have X amount.

Basically, in California, it’s happened five times. If you’re drunk, and you’re driving at a high speed, and you go aerial, and you go into an orchard or vineyard and you destroy $30,000 or $40,000 worth of damage, you get nothing, and the person leaves the scene of the accident. And if you try to take the car, of course you’ll be arrested as a deposit.

But they can… We’ve had cases where they sue people if they hit a pipe or something or, “Well, that pipeline shouldn’t be there.” So you get these expensive policies. Well, that’s what DEI is. It’s basically saying, “I got a DEI policy, and that means that if I want to make up a false identity and attack this person, I’m not a part of the oppressor class. I’m the oppressed class, so I get an exemption. If I wanna walk out of this store and shoplift, I get an exemption if it’s under $950, maybe even above.”

And that’s the very worst thing about DEI. And that’s all these things have something in common. If you are a victim and you say, “The Jews did this,” or “The Jews did that,” then you’re going to be protected.

I think the Jewish community, I think, knows that. I mean, there are right-wing antisemites. I think you can make the argument that Tucker [Carlson] detests Israel and is an antisemite, given the things he said. And I say that because I remember I had no evidence of that, but I remember when he, in his early career, he was a critic of Pat Buchanan, remember? And he said that Buchanan was really sending coded antisemitic themes. Tucker said that. So I think he’s gone from that to something completely opposite.

But what I’m getting at is if it’s [Nick] Fuentes or Candace [Owens] or Tucker, that’s an isolated group. What we’re talking about is the whole left-wing party now is antisemitic. Basically, the mixture of socialism and the whole Islamism, you get the people in the United States who are always accusing the Jews of running cabals, and you get the people from the Middle East who say Israel is the source of all of our self-inflicted problems, and they combine, and they’re powerful, and people are not speaking out against it.

But it’s from the Left, and that professor will be found out to be on the Left. That’s why he disguised himself as a MAGA person. But I think it’s accelerating so fast, Jack, I don’t think they’re ashamed of it. I think they’re happy about it. You know, you can see that with [Zohran] Mamdani. They’re talking now about firing Police Commissioner [Jessica] Tisch in New York. You know, the only Jewish member of his… I mean, mainstream Jewish. You know, she’s done a wonderful job.

And Hasan Piker, whom they all invite to be seen with, he said that Orthodox Jews are inbred, and he said you will not see a Jew nominated ever again as a Democratic candidate for president. So they’re open about it, and it’s gonna keep going.

Jack Fowler: By the way, we should just, since you stumbled into—you didn’t stumble into this, you brought us into this. About Mamdani, he did on Oct. 7 paid lip service to what happened three years ago. But then, of course, he also added all those other things. It was some event— But now he’s being attacked by — could you be further left than Mamdani? By those who say that his participation at an event that recognized the murders on Oct. 7 was inexcusable…

Victor Davis Hanson: Well, people who have been flying—at some of these demonstrations, not all, but some, they fly Hezbollah flags. They’re happy. They believe in terrorism. [Abdul] El-Sayed said, “Hurt people hurt people,” i.e. translated, people that are hurt by Jews then hurt Jews. What do you expect? Right.

The funny thing is, you take away Oct. 7 right now, and there would be no problem in Gaza. We would still go back to square one. The Gaza wall would be pathetic. It’s nothing compared to pictures of the Gaza Egyptian wall. In other words, the Egyptians were firmer that they didn’t want Gazans going into fellow Muslim Arab Egypt than the Jews were into Jewish Israel.

There would be 18,000 work permits, with people still going in making $11 to $13 an hour in Israel working side by side. All the buildings would be there, da, da, da. All they had to do was not go in under the guise of being workers and conduct intelligence operations, find out where the kibbutzes are, plan the whole thing.

Iran was the brain and the bank of the whole thing. Hezbollah was supposed to join in. The Houthis were supposed to join in. And they really did believe they would get further than 17 miles. They thought they were gonna go 50, 60, 80 miles because they thought that 150,000 rockets from Hezbollah would come in, Houthis would come in. They did fire right after—People forget this. They fired about 4,000 rockets after, Oct. 7 into civilian centers, before Oct. 20 when the Israelis went in. And then they ended up firing almost 14,000 in total. But they really did, and Iran really did believe that it could have deniability of culpability, and everything that we’re looking at now wouldn’t have happened. I mean, we might have —

– Jack Fowler: But on that point, on that point, Victor, it’s still hard to grasp that on Oct. 8 what happened and that it wasn’t latent. It was there. It wasn’t created on Oct. 8.
– Victor Davis Hanson: Absolutely.
– Jack Fowler: It was sitting there waiting to be unleashed.
– Victor Davis Hanson: Yeah. That’s what I pointed out.

They were trying to hide it. And everybody thought people on both sides of good intelligence and a good heart said, “This was a horrible atrocity. We have to look at this.” Never in their right mind did they think that people would come out and cheer and think, oh my gosh, we killed 1,200 and we got to rape them and mutilate them and dismember them and torture them and take hostages. This is so wonderful. Now we’re going to celebrate. This is so…

And then they really did go to the next leap, And the Israelis are losing. We’ve got inside Israel with only 6,000 people, and now they’re surrounded, and the Hezbollah is gonna wipe them out with the Houthis, and everything’s gonna get better, and Hamas has got 50,000, and Hezbollah’s got 100,000, and the Houthis got 20,000 rockets and drones, and Iran’s got all … It’s gonna be wonderful. Let’s celebrate. That was the whole climate.

And the only reason Gaza is in rubble today, the Israelis said we want all of them back. We want all the people who did this. Send them back here. We want to try them. And by the way, give up the 251 hostages. That’s all we’re asking. And they said no. Why did they say no? Because we’re winning. We’re winning. We got people in the United States that are cheering on campuses. We got all of Europe is on our side. We’ve got 250,000 rockets, missiles, and drones in our ring of fire in Iran. We’re gonna win. And then Israel went in. And, when they went in, they were attacked.

Probably 40,000 missiles and rockets have been shot at Israeli civilians from Lebanon, from Hamas, from Yemen, from Iran. And they lost. They lost badly. And that was all they had to …

And if they didn’t wanna give them up, and they didn’t wanna give the hostages up, all they had to do was do this. They had to say, “You know what? The Israelis are gonna blitz us. We’ve got over 300 miles of tunnels. They have food. They have water. They’re safe from bombing. We want all you Gazan people who live anywhere near us, who might be in danger, get in those tunnels, because we’re gonna go out and fight these Jews. We’re gonna go out and fight the Israeli, the IDF. We’re gonna fight house to house. But we don’t want you hurt.”

They did just the opposite. They put the entries and exits under hospitals, private homes, mosques, and schools, and they kept the civilians out. And they used it because they really did believe the Israelis would be more reluctant to inflict damage or death on their own Gazan brotherhood than they were in exposing them to that.

So basically, Hamas made the calculation. You know, it’s easy. Anybody who knows any logic, A plus B equals C, will see that they said, “You know what? Those awful Jews in Israel, in their naivete, care more about human life than we do. And no, even worse for them, they care more about the Gazans than we do. So if we put our people out there to be killed, a lot of them are gonna get killed, but they’re not going to hit our entries and exits in the hospitals, the mosques, and the schools because they’re gonna pull back from those places. So we’re gonna sit here safe, and the Gazans will get killed, and that’ll be good for propaganda.”

What they didn’t count on was the Israelis went down and got them and pulled them out and fought. But that would have all been avoided. And we’re not even getting into not one Jewish person was in Gaza for 18 years—since 2005. Or we’re not getting out, they had an election. All they had to do was say, “We’re gonna have an election. Let’s not kill Palestinian Authority rivals. They’re a different party, but please, Hamas people, don’t throw them off houses anymore. Please, that’s all we’re asking. Don’t kill 150 of our own people and throw them off. And don’t go to people’s houses and threaten them to vote for us. And then, once we elect Hamas, let’s have a free press, habeas corpus, a constitution, and let’s every four years hold regular elections.”

They couldn’t even do that. And then if they couldn’t even do that, they could say, “Well, we’re gonna be an autocracy like, oh, the UAE or Saudi Arabia, but we’re gonna show the Jews in Israel that we’re smarter and better, so we’re gonna build a Kuwait City or a Dubai right here on 24 miles of priceless Mediterranean beaches, and we’re gonna make this. We’re gonna put the Israelis to shame. We’re gonna have more money, nicer places, tourists.”

They couldn’t even do that. They were a complete death cult.

Read more …

Navarro was there, as part of Trump1.

• The Masks Were Never About Science (Peter Navarro)

On March 8, 2020, Anthony Fauci told “60 Minutes” that a healthy person had “no reason to be walking around with a mask.” Within a year, he was applauding the idea of wearing two. The official explanation is that the science changed—that we learned about presymptomatic and asymptomatic spread. Fauci’s own diary destroys that explanation twice, in his own hand, and what it leaves behind is inventory management, sold to a frightened country as medicine.


I pull back the curtain on the mask war in my new book, “Why Fauci MUST Rot in Prison”—and I can tell you what the other side of it looked like, because I was fighting it. While Fauci was on television explaining why Americans did not need masks, I was in the West Wing getting them some—the good kind, the N95 kind essential for first responders.

On Feb. 9, 2020—31 days before the World Health Organization declared a pandemic—I wrote a memo to the Coronavirus Task Force warning that China produced about half the world’s N95 masks, was blocking their export, and that “The U.S. therefore faces the real prospect of a severe mask shortage!” I asked for an export halt, purchase guarantees for every domestic producer at maximum output, and Buy American rules for the masks that cover an American face.

Then the phone rang. On March 12, a Honeywell vice president told me the company could stand up two new N95 manufacturing lines, in Rhode Island and Arizona, if Washington moved fast. Washington does not move fast. So I gave her my word—no signature, no paper.

Within 24 hours, Honeywell’s trucks, on my word, were hauling production machinery out of Massachusetts. By the end of the first Trump administration, those two manufacturing lines were turning out tens of millions of American-made N95s a month and employing more than a thousand Americans.

That was my mask war. Making masks. Now Fauci’s.

Here is the first thing his diary kills: his alibi for switching his position on masks. Supposedly the guidance changed when science learned that people without symptoms could spread the virus. But in the first days of February 2020, George Gao—the director of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention—told Fauci directly, in Fauci’s words, “that infected people can be asymptomatic and that asymptomatic people can transmit.”

He knew in the first week of February. He told “60 Minutes” there was no reason for a mask a month later.Here is the second thing, and it is worse. On June 23, 2020, after a six-hour House hearing, Fauci recorded a run-in with a West Virginia congressman who was “giving me s— about saying early on that we should not wear masks to save them for the HCWs [health care workers] at a time when there was a shortage.”

Read it again. Save them for the health care workers. On Fauci’s own telling, the “no reason” of March 8 was never an assessment of the evidence. It was supply triage. Tell the public not to worry about getting masks—so the masks stay on the shelf for the people who need them, in his judgment, more.

In the same March weeks Anthony Fauci was managing a shortage by misleading Americans about masks, Honeywell’s trucks were rolling toward Rhode Island on nothing but my word, and two factories were preparing to end the shortage he was lying to accommodate. One of us treated it as a production problem and fixed it. The other treated it as a communications problem.

And watch the staircase he climbed. March 31, in the diary: “We probably were too strong in saying masks do not work.” Not the science changed—we were too strong.By summer: “There’s no doubt that wearing masks protects you.” By autumn: “begging people to wear masks.” By February 2021, two of them.

No reason, to too strong, to no doubt, to begging, to double up—each certainty delivered with exactly the confidence of the one it silently replaced. A scientist updating his communication based on evidence says what he said, what changed, and why. This was a ratchet.

Let me be precise, because flattening this debate was itself the trick. I was never anti-mask; I ran mask production. The mask on those trucks had a federal filtration standard, a fit requirement, and a nurse’s face to protect. What Washington eventually sold under that same four-letter word ran down to a damp and floppy bandanna on a 5-year-old.

And the children paid for it. Fauci’s influence imposed years of face covering on small children at low risk from the disease, without evidence of benefit at that age, while treating the developmental cost to children as not important enough to measure. Everything I did in that war was supply. What President Trump and I never did was order one free citizen to wear anything.

As for Tony, there is an old line that you can tell when he is lying because his lips are moving. Maybe that is the real reason he wore the mask.

Read more …

Oh no, the CIA didn’t do it. No!

Do the Germans get together a show trial to please Langley?

To piss off Kiev?

• Nord Stream Sabotage Trial Begins With Explosive Allegations Against Ukraine (RFE/RL)

A German court is trying former Ukrainian officer Serhii Kuznetsov over his alleged role in coordinating the September 2022 Nord Stream pipeline sabotage. German prosecutors allege the operation was conducted on behalf of Ukrainian state authorities, although Kyiv denies involvement and no Ukrainian political leadership role has been established. The trial could intensify political disputes in Germany over continued military assistance to Ukraine, particularly among opposition parties critical of Berlin’s support.


After four years of speculation, leaks, and briefings by anonymous sources, the world is finally about to hear evidence given publicly under oath in a German courtroom about how the Nord Stream gas pipelines were blown up – in a case that could prove politically explosive. German prosecutors have identified seven Ukrainian suspects, but just one of them is in the dock in the trial beginning on October 14. He is named as Serhii K. in court documents that say he is suspected of being an accomplice to a war crime.

That classification has caused outrage. But German prosecutors have further raised the stakes by stating the suspects were operating “on behalf of state authorities in Ukraine. Kyiv has always strictly denied any involvement in the attack, which damaged crucial energy infrastructure serving Germany – one of its most important military backers in its fight since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022. Serhii K., who has been identified elsewhere as Serhiy Kuznetsov, says he is innocent.

‘Two Crazy Military Men’
Nord Stream is majority-owned by Russia’s state-controlled Gazprom and co-financed by major European energy companies. It was constructed to deliver Russian gas directly to Germany, bypassing transit states such as Ukraine and Poland, which had tense relations with Moscow. The suspected sabotage and subsequent gas leaks happened in September 2022, rendering the pipelines as inoperable.

Western governments originally accused Russia of carrying out the blasts, but German investigators started forming a case that said a group of Ukrainian divers hired a yacht and planted explosives on the seabed. They say Kuznetsov, a former military officer, was the ringleader. “

At the end of February 2022, he and other military personnel, on behalf of state authorities in Ukraine, developed the plan,” says a summary of the indictment released by prosecutors. “The aim was to permanently halt gas deliveries via the pipelines and prevent Russia from using the revenue from the natural gas trade to finance its war efforts.” The prosecutors have not stated publicly the full extent of the alleged conspiracy.

The full indictment contains some further details, according to three German media outlets that say they have seen it: public-service TV station ARD and two print-era heavyweights, Sueddeutsche Zeitung and Die Zeit. They all reported that, while in custody in Italy, Kuznetsov had phoned his wife in Kyiv and investigators were secretly listening in as he said he’d been advised by a lawyer that it was time to admit this had been “an official military operation.” His commander should state that they were not just “two crazy military men.”

Kuznetsov’s Italian lawyer, Nicola Canestrini, has played down the importance of this evidence, saying there was “no smoking gun” in the case. “It is hard to believe that, after Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine, a German court should hold a war crimes trial against a Ukrainian serviceman,” he added in comments to RFE/RL.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Home › Forums › Debt Rattle October 16 2026

Viewing 1 post (of 1 total)
  • Author
    Posts
  • October 16, 2026 at 8:50 am #253184
    Raúl Ilargi Meijer
    Keymaster

    Paul Cézanne Young Italian Woman at a Table c1900 • Zelensky Says ‘We’re Done’ With Trump Energy Truce, Hits Russian Refinery (JTN) • Trump Begins Hig
    [See the full post at: Debt Rattle October 16 2026]

  • Author
    Posts
Viewing 1 post (of 1 total)
  • You must be logged in to reply to this topic.