John Day
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Heavy Israeli Attacks on Gaza Kill More Than 90 Palestinians
Waleed al-Bardaweel, a survivor of the attack, lost three of his sons in the attack: Mohammed, 13, Ahmed, 11, and Abdul Rahman, seven. “The Israeli army called this place a safe zone. Their claims are all lies and slander,” al-Bardaweel told Middle East Eye.
Ziad al-Lulu, another survivor of the attack, told MEE the tent camp was hit at 1 am without any warning. “The next thing we knew, our world was engulfed in flames. Children were torn apart, women were torn apart, it was like the day of judgment,” al-Lulu said. https://scheerpost.com/2025/01/05/heavy-israeli-attacks-on-gaza-kill-more-than-90-palestinians/ Eighth infant dies from hypothermia amid Israeli genocide in Gaza
The infant’s grieving mother describes the unbearable conditions her family faces, borrowing bedding and blankets from other displaced families who are themselves struggling to keep their children warm.
In a heart-wrenching video shared by a Palestinian journalist on social media, the grieving mother, overcome with tears, described finding her child frozen, saying, “It was as if he had been placed in a freezer.” https://english.almayadeen.net/news/politics/eighth-infant-dies-from-hypothermia-amid-israeli-genocide-in Israel denies knowledge of Gaza hospital director’s whereabouts
The Palestinian Prisoner’s Society (PPS) has voiced grave concerns over the fate of Dr Hussam Abu Safiya, director of Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza, especially after the Israeli occupation military denied having any record of his detention.
Abu Safiya was detained on Saturday after occupation forces raided and forcibly evacuated the hospital. Video footage later released by the occupation army showed Abu Safiya entering an Israeli military vehicle and being greeted by occupation forces. https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20250103-israel-denies-knowledge-of-gaza-hospital-directors-whereabouts/ UNIFIL accuses Israeli army of deliberately destroying property in southern Lebanon
The UN Interim Force in Lebanon on Saturday accused the Israeli army of deliberately destroying its property and critical infrastructure in southern Lebanon, leading to a serious escalation in tensions along the border.
In a statement on Saturday, UNIFIL said: “This morning, peacekeepers witnessed an Israeli army bulldozer destroying a blue barrel marking the withdrawal line between Lebanon and Israel in Al-Labbouneh, as well as a watchtower belonging to the Lebanese Armed Forces adjacent to a UNIFIL site in the area.”
The blue barrels, which are markers for the withdrawal line — commonly referred to as the Blue Line — delineate the boundary established after Israel’s withdrawal from southern Lebanon in 2000. https://www.arabnews.com/node/2585251/middle-eastNo deal until Israel agrees to quit Gaza, end war: Hamas https://www.gulf-times.com/article/697918/region/no-deal-until-israel-agrees-to-quit-gaza-end-war-hamas
‘Don’t feed the troll’ – Scholz on Musk
The German chancellor has called the Tesla CEO’s support for Germany’s AfD party “troubling” https://swentr.site/news/610459-dont-feed-troll-scholz-about-musk/ US Deep State: Its Roots, Tools and Enablers
The “deep state”, never part of the Founding Fathers’ design, has turned US democracy into fiction, former US assistant treasury secretary and renowned economist Dr Paul Craig Roberts says. What does he mean?
The deep state, described by US political scientist Francis Fukuyama as a network of “unaccountable professional bureaucrats,” is really a far more extensive entity.
According to Dr Roberts, it encompasses not only bureaucrats but also elected officials, Wall Street, major corporations and even foreign government lobbyists.
The modern-day Leviathan is deeply embedded within the structure of the US government, with professional bureaucrats serving merely as pawns in the games of their overlords, the economist says. But the game begins long before governance — it starts at the very phase of elections...
..”The power that the Constitution gave to individuals now belongs to interest groups that determine elections with campaign contributions,” the former assistant treasury secretary in Ronald Reagan’s government stresses...
..He explains that as a result, elected representatives are beholden to the individuals and interest groups who funded and supported them.
Those include the influential Israel lobby, arms manufacturers, intelligence agencies, pharmaceutical companies, agribusiness corporations, Wall Street and others, all of whom provide funding and favorable publicity to those they help elect. Intelligence agencies also occasionally provide staged false flag events to give a candidate or a policy a boost, he notes...
..For nearly a century, various measures were enacted to curb the influence of big money on the US political system, particularly during elections.
But those efforts were effectively overturned in 2010 by a landmark US Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United versus the Federal Election Commission (FEC), which paved the way for unlimited corporate funding of political campaigns.
That same year, a related federal court decision in the case of Speechnow.org versus the FEC further expanded the influence of money in politics by allowing unlimited contributions to political action groups who distribute the donations to candidates — ostensibly isolating the candidate from receiving funds directly from a donor.
Roberts says that those decisions gave corporations, the Israel lobby and the super rich the power to purchase the US government. “For American democracy to be restored, money must be taken out of politics,” he argues...
..Roberts recalls that last month Trump and Robert F. Kennedy Jr — nominated for secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services — had dinner with Big Pharma executives, including Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla, Lilly CEO David Ricks and Steve Ubl, CEO of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA).
The economist highlights how RFK Jr previously condmened the same Big Pharma firms, accusing them of producing unsafe COVID-19 vaccines that harmed millions and creating treatments that undermined the health of American children. “In other words, even private interests that are harmful have to be negotiated with. This doesn’t leave much room for reform to reach very far,” Dr Roberts says. https://sputnikglobe.com/20250105/us-deep-state-its-roots-tools-and-enablers-1121363450.html Israeli lawmakers demand military destroy all food and energy resources in Gaza
Israeli lawmakers are urging the military to intensify the genocide in Gaza by destroying any possible sources of energy, food, and water in the territory. https://mondoweiss.net/2025/01/israeli-lawmakers-demand-military-destroy-all-food-and-energy-resources-in-gaza/IOF destroyed 815 mosques, 19 cemeteries, 3 churches in Gaza in 2024 https://english.almayadeen.net/news/politics/iof-destroyed-815-mosques–19-cemeteries–3-churches-in-gaza
Elon Musk calls for King Charles to dissolve parliament over ‘grooming gangs’
https://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/elon-musk-calls-for-king-charles-to-dissolve-parliament-over-grooming-gangs-101735897831507.html Biden Regime behind massive child trafficking networks in Guatemala, hidden by NGOs that front as “humanitarian aid” to “save” the kids of this sex slave trade
The Guatemalan Secretary General, Angel Pineda, says the Biden Administration is running the world’s largest child sex trafficking ring. He says, “They’re harvesting the victims from Guatemala. They’re picking them out like they’re going shopping for shoes.”…
Angel Pineda claims the Biden Administration is responsible for running the world’s largest child sex trafficking ring, involving the trafficking of victims from Guatemala.
The U.S. government, particularly the Department of Homeland Security, is alleged to be working with Mexican Cartels and NGOs to create a public/private partnership for child trafficking. Over $800 million from the U.S. has reportedly been used to fund these NGOs in Guatemala over the past four years.
More than 291,000 unaccompanied alien children (UACs) have gone missing or are exploited under the Biden administration. The issue was highlighted in a joint House Homeland Security Subcommittee hearing on November 21, 2024. https://www.naturalnews.com/2025-01-04-biden-regime-behind-massive-child-trafficking-networks-guatemala.html Trump Border Czar: Mass Deportations Of Illegals Starts Day One
President Trump’s incoming border czar Tom Homan unequivocally outlined that mass arrests and deportations of illegal immigrants inside the US will begin on day one of Trump’s second term and will not be delayed under any circumstances. https://modernity.news/2025/01/06/trump-border-czar-mass-deportations-of-illegals-starts-day-one/ OpenAI whistleblower death: Autopsy suggests murder, not suicide
Former OpenAI employee Suchir Balaji made headlines for his revelations about ethical concerns surrounding generative AI
The parents of Indian-American techie Suchir Balaji, who was found dead in his San Francisco apartment on 14 December 2024, have rejected the official suicide ruling, alleging that their son was murdered.
Suchir Balaji, a former OpenAI employee, had made headlines for his whistleblowing revelations about the ethical concerns surrounding generative AI. In an interview with NDTV, his parents claim that the second autopsy report indicates “signs of struggle,” including a head injury and trauma, which contradict the suicide verdict by the medical examiner’s office. Suchir’s mother, Poornima Ramarao, expressed disbelief at the suicide ruling, citing the absence of a suicide note and the findings of the second autopsy.
“We have facts with the second autopsy — head trauma and signs of struggle. This is not a suicide; it’s a murder,” she stated.
His father, Balaji Ramamurthi, recounted their last conversation on 22 December 2024, when Suchir returned from a trip to Los Angeles in good spirits. “He seemed happy,” he said. https://www.nationalheraldindia.com/international/autopsy-reveals-struggle-not-suicide-but-murder-say-parents-of-openai-whistleblower US-based tech mogul Elon Musk has likened liberal billionaire George Soros to Emperor Palpatine, also known as Darth Sidious, the principal villain in the Star Wars movie series. The barb followed Joe Biden’s decision to bestow the Presidential Medal of Freedom on the powerful financier. https://swentr.site/news/610467-musk-compares-soros-emperor-palpatine/
Trudeau Out: Canadian Prime Minister Quits
Trudeau, 53, currently the longest-serving leader of any G-7 country, announced Monday he plans to step down as head of the governing Liberal Party. He will remain as prime minister until a new leader is selected, and parliament has been suspended until March 24 while that process is underway. The winner of the Liberal leadership contest is set to become Canada’s 24th prime minister and will have to quickly prepare for an election, which the Conservative Party is the clear favorite to win, according to public opinion polls. https://www.zerohedge.com/political/trudeau-out-canadian-prime-minister-likely-resign-week Elon Musk exposes the pack raping of a quarter of a million English school girls, Declan Hayes
Elon Musk threw the cat among the pigeons when he recently highlighted the pack raping of over 250,000 English school girls by packs of middle aged Pakistani men, who got away with their crimes for over a quarter of a century, thanks to the collusion of the British judiciary, the British constabulary, the British social services and the British political system, which are now all trying to squirm their way out of taking responsibility for the rankest of crimes they are all fully complicit in...
..Heads have to roll, literally, and the first head on the chopping block must be that of British Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer (who was the Director of the Crown Prosecution Service during these grooming gang rape gang revelations, who was the boss of the CPS lawyer who originally dropped the prosecution of Kabeer Hassan because he believed the 15 year old girl made “a choice to be a prostitute” and who discredited her as a witness even after reviewing DNA evidence and hours of testimony), followed by King Charles, who is not only the brother of Jeffrey Epstein sidekick, Prince Andrew, but who recently knighted Peter Mandelson, another key Epstein (and Tony Blair) conspirator, and who, in his role of Prince of Wales, was also bosom pals with Sir Jimmy Savile, the BBC’s child rapist in chief...
..Not that there is anything new or novel in these crimes. The Pall Mall Gazette, to its eternal credit, exposed the white slave trade in Victorian Britain and, though it is a half a century ago since I first read of it, the crimes they uncovered still sicken me to my core. Then there is the Paedophile Information Exchange and the North American Man/Boy Love Association, both of which were very active in the 1970s and both of which enjoyed widespread political support from senior politicians who remain active to this day...
..Although Musk has probably his own libertarian agenda afoot in turning his guns on the Pakistani pack rapists, they deserve all the incoming Musk gives them and their equally vile white collar collaborators… But Musk, at day’s end, is irrelevant in all of this, at least until the great and the good of Germany and England wrest power away from the Pakistani pack rape enablers. Though Musk has rattled our overlords’ cages, until the great unwashed can storm those gilded cages and finish off what Musk has started, Musk’s protestations, like those of others before him, will only amount to so much hot air that will get lost in the bread and circuses. https://strategic-culture.su/news/2025/01/05/elon-musk-exposes-pack-raping-of-quarter-million-english-school-girls/ Musk renews attack on British PM over mass-rape scandal
The US-based tech billionaire has slammed Keir Starmer as a “national embarrassment” and said he “must go”
Gangs across the UK, involving men of predominantly Pakistani origin, rape-tortured vulnerable girls on an industrial scale over the last thirty years, with multiple independent inquiries indicating systemic failures to investigate the crimes. According to three separate reports published in 2013, 2014, and 2015, local politicians and police alike opted to cover up the rapes partly out of fear that bringing the perpetrators to justice would be seen as “racist.” https://swentr.site/news/610476-musk-attacks-british-pm/ UK’s Starmer Dismisses Rape Gang Outrage As “Far-Right Bandwagon”
After news broke that UK’s ‘safeguarding minister’ Jess Phillips blocked a public inquiry into the country’s prolific rape gangs, Prime Minister Keir Starmer – who allegedly covered for Jimmy Savile, went into victim mode – dismissing the outrage as simply part of the “playbook” of the “far right” – the same thing he said after a Muslim radical stabbed 8 children, killing 3, in the Southport Massacre. https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/uks-starmer-dismisses-rape-gang-outrage-far-right-bandwagon UK responds to Musk’s criticism over child rape scandal
Health Secretary Wes Streeting has said the government is willing to work with the tycoon to tackle sexual abuse of minors
Musk, who is known for his stance against illegal immigration, has been particularly vocal about the scandal, calling it a case of “state-sponsored evil.” https://swentr.site/news/610434-uk-grooming-scandal-rape-musk/Hitting Bottom https://drjohnsblog.substack.com/p/hitting-bottom
A new year may engender false hopes, but it is also true that societies hit-bottom sometimes, and refuse to proceed in the same dysfunctional spiral, particularly when they see obvious paths to immediate and longer term improvements in the manner in which political economy is conducted.
I’m not making any predictions, but there does appear to be an opening for western and BRICS political economies to incorporate better efficiencies in order to meet the human needs of human societies.
The failings of the directions taken since the 2008 global financial crisis have been made more clear by the extreme swings of the narratives during the COVID pandemic, and the revelations that much of this was manipulated to stabilize global financial interests, and that the various strains of coronavirus showed genetic evidence of gain-of-function manipulation in bioweapons labs, funded by the US, China and Canada.
The insult, added to those injuries, appears to be that the gene-therapy “vaccine products”, promoted as the solution to the lab-leak problem, carried the most toxic element of the virus, the spike-protein, as the core mRNA protein-product to be produced in the treated human cells. This has resulted in considerably greater harm than the leaked viruses, as shown by increases in excess deaths in “vaccinated” populations, beginning with the months that treatments began, and still continuing at the present time. The definition of “vaccinated” began 2 weeks after the second injection, which caused most of the immediate deaths to be recorded in the “unvaccinated” cohort, a handy trick. The further waves of excess deaths, notably in workers with employee life-insurance policies, have been dramatic, but more from strokes, autoimmune disease, cancers, myocarditis and heart attacks. They are simply denied by governments, and the recorded evidence is obscured and misinterpreted, but not addressed in detail. This stonewalling defense is beginning to crack in a few public sectors, a few US states, like Florida, for instance. The indignant cohort of society is not lessening with time, rather the vaccination-control-narrative is becoming progressively untenable.
The real, productive economy is enabled by energy and resources, especially oil, but also coal, natural gas, mined resources and farm products. This is the real arbiter of societal wealth, and subject to physical and environmental constraints, particularly as easily obtained fuels and ores are depleted, and many forms of pollution build up. Financial economy is supposed to be the management ledger of real economy, but has been separately gamed in a way which has caused financial ledgers to reflect something like 7X the amount of wealth which real economy embodies, or will ever be able to provide in the near future. This gross mismatch demands that reality be acknowledged, and losses assigned. Most of us would choose to assign the bast book-losses to the ultra-wealthy, who would still survive comfortably, rather than to ordinary people who might well die as a result. The desires of the ultra-wealthy are the opposite, and are better represented in the halls of power, but paradoxically, if the real economy ceases to function, they lose all of their wealth.
This is a moment in history where talented politicians can be helpful in distributing benefits and losses in a society, as fairly as possible, and so facilitate a societal unity of purpose, within an equitable social contract, such as was the case in the US after World War-2.
Looking at all parts of the world, excess debt-service, which parasitizes real economy, needs to be shed, and the perverse-incentives which cripple nations by extracting what is needed for life-support, such as food, fuel, housing, medical care and social health, and giving it to elites, needs to be renounced. The needs of human societies need to be respected first and foremost, for political economy to adapt to the new and less permissive conditions which we now face, and which will tighten further going forward.
Existing political structures can do this and have done it before, but the controlling cultures within them will need to change by eliminating perverse incentives to feed the rich, starve the workers, and maintain the status-quo, which is further extracting wealth from the real economy, weakening it over time. Certain powerful and obviously corrupt people might be made examples of…Tim Morgan at Surplus Energy Economics presents, Predicament, not outcome
What we’re witnessing is the inflexion of the economy from growth into contraction, and this will apply leveraged pressure on the markets for discretionary (non-essential) products and services upon which so many corporate behemoths rely…..As is surely self-evident, energy, resources and environmental tolerance can’t be lent into existence by the banking system, or conjured out of the ether by central bankers. When we allow the supply of credit-money to expand at rates exceeding the current or forward claim-honouring capabilities of the material economy, we set up stresses which can have only one outcome.
This brings us to the inevitability of a much larger “GFC II” sequel to the 2008-09 global financial crisis.
Although the available data is neither complete nor timely, we can estimate that, stated at constant values, worldwide financial assets have increased by at least USD 450 trillion, or 150%, during a twenty-year period in which global real GDP grew by only 70%, or USD 44tn… The apparent implication – which is that more than $10 of new financial claims have been created for each dollar of growth – is a serious understatement of the true severity of the situation… ..Today’s over-centralized, top-down systems and institutions are likely to be replaced by decentralized, bottom-up alternatives operating at a more human scale. Before any of this can happen, though, we have to navigate a financial crisis on a scale that will dwarf the events of 2008-09. Whilst the sheer chaos likely to be caused by this event is apparent, a less obvious consequence will be the destruction of large swathes of what is currently understood as “wealth”. “GFC II” could turn out to be, as the first global financial crisis never was, a great leveller, resetting the relationship between wealth and incomes… ..SEEDS analysis indicates that, other than in the very weakest economies, the provision of the essentials to everyone can remain affordable well into the 2040s, by which time the definition of ‘essential’ will have changed. In other words, if the trend towards the immiseration of millions continues, it will have done so as a matter, not of necessity, but of choice. https://surplusenergyeconomics.wordpress.com/2025/01/06/296-predicament-not-outcome/Michael Hudson: Cracks in the Empire – Is the American Superpower Fading?
I’ve been thinking what a good title for the show should be, and I think it should be, “Today’s world economy is as good as it gets.” I think the United States, Europe, and the Near Eastern economic and political situation is, obviously, it’s unstable. And almost any specific forecast we make is likely to be wrong because there are so many variables at work and competing interests at play. But actually, this is what mathematicians call an optimum position. That may sound optimistic, and I’m never one to be optimistic, but an optimum position is technically one that, wherever you move, it’s going to be worse.
This is mathematically as good as it is. And that’s pretty much the situation you have today. You could say we’re now in the best of all possible worlds, given the policies that have led to the conflicts that we’re seeing: the conflict of national interest, the conflict of domestic interest, the conflict between the United States and Europe, and the United States against all the rest of the world. And I think that this year is going to be more than just change. I think that chaos is now official US policy. And that’s what you do when you’re trying to stop the world from moving in a direction that’s not in your interest… And the basic aim of the U.S. policy is to keep an optimum position from changing by creating such chaos that there’s not going to be an alternative…
..I think there are two areas that we have to concentrate on. One is gas, and the other is debt. And the most immediate problem is gas right now, because that’s the political key as well as the economic key. The United States foreign policy for the last century has been to try to control Near Eastern oil and gas production, because energy is the key to economic production. And the reason the U.S. wants to control it is to prevent other countries from having it if these countries act in a way that the United States opposes…
..United States strategists are, on the one hand, they’re saying, well, we’re going to insist in exporting more to Europe. President Trump is insisting that Europe buys more American LNG, liquefied natural gas, at four times the price it was paying Russia. But if it does this, then that’s going to create shortages in the US and US gas prices will go up. And if US gas prices go up, then the US consumer price index is going to go up. And that’s what the Republicans are in Congress opposing…
..You’re having gas prices now going up for the whole rest of the world. And that includes the global South countries. So something has to give because Africa, Latin America, other very heavily indebted countries can’t afford both to pay more for their gas these days and still keep up with their foreign debt service in hard currency, in US dollars. So the US selling more gas to Europe at high prices is going to create a rise in the dollar… And the US foreign policy doesn’t think of the world economy as a whole system. It’s tunnel vision. How do we hurt Russia? Let’s do that first. And then we’ll think of the rest of the world. So this is why the US policy is creating chaos in the rest of the world…
..I don’t see anyone except the right-wing parties opposing this. The left is completely on board with the U.S. Cold War because the left-wing parties, as I think we’ve discussed before, have been staffed by politicians who have been dependent on very heavy subsidy and grants from non-governmental organizations such as the National Endowment for Democracy to build up. So you really don’t have a domestic formulation of what would a rational European economic policy be to restore prosperity, and in fact, is there a way to restore the dismantling of heavy industry, steel industry, automobile industry, manufacturing industry, even fertilizers and chemicals that have already been dismantled? Or does Europe have to go the way that the Baltics have gone? … The Eurozone, as we’ve discussed before, is basically dominated by NATO and by the United States indirectly. I don’t see much of a solution except poverty for Europe…
..This is an Orwellian 1984 world that we’re seeing in Europe. And I don’t see… it is obviously worst of all in England under Starmer and the Labour Party. But what’s happening to the Labour Party is the same thing that’s happened to the German Social Democratic Party that’s now fallen behind the Alternative for Deutschland in the polls and is going to be pretty much wiped out in this month’s election. And you’re going to have one European country after another going the way of Romania. What are you going to do when people do not vote for the United States, but vote for their own national welfare? …
..The first aim is you need to cope with the foreign debt problem. There is no way that the BRICS countries can grow and at the same time pay the foreign debts that they’ve been saddled with for the last 100 years and especially since 1945 by the neoliberal philosophy that’s been pushed by the United States and the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.
The policies that have been imposed on the BRICS countries have forced them into a chronic balance of payments and trade deficit as a result of their dependency on the United States and its allies that have made them not viable countries. That means that the loans that were made to these countries have no chance of being paid…
..And the fact is that the people that hold these dollar bonds are client oligarchies who don’t want to hold their own currencies because the global south countries and their oligarchies realize the debts can’t be paid… And this is a problem for the BRICS countries. On the one hand, the BRICS countries, in order to grow, have to write down their debts… So the vested interests in many of the BRICS countries are not favoring the national interests. That’s the big conflict you have between the fact that these countries are bifurcated between a U.S.-centered elite and the country as a whole…
..What are you going to do about the fact that as a result of the debt crisis, these countries have been driven by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund and U.S. policy to sell off their oil, mineral rights, their natural resources, their natural monopolies of public infrastructure to foreign investors? How on earth can they grow if all of their national patrimony and all of the revenue, the land rent, the raw materials rents, the monopoly rents from this national patrimony is paid to foreigners? Well, you could look at the BRICS countries in very much the same way as Russia under the kleptocrats…
..The whole logic of industrial capitalism was to free economies from the landlord class and its land rent, to free economies from economic rent. And that was what classical value theory from Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill, Marx, the American economists all said, “we want to prevent rent seeking… to bring prices in line with actual cost of production.” That’s what enabled England first to become the workshop of the world, and then enabled the United States and Germany to replace England by creating a mixed public-private economy with its own national control of money.
The BRICS countries could follow this policy that made first England and then America and Germany able to organize their industrial takeoff. But in order to do that, you have to have a concept of freeing economies from economic rent. You have to have a concept that basically goes back to Adam Smith. His idea of a free market was a market free of economic rent…
..So, if the BRICS economies said, we’re going to recover our natural patrimony from the kleptocrats, not our own kleptocrats only, but the foreign companies that have bought our oil and gas, we’re going to use that as our natural, our fiscal base. And that we’re going to use that fiscal base to finance our own economic development. Well, then you’re going to essentially be able to do in this century what the late 19th century European countries did… And what they do see is China’s remarkable economic takeoff. And China calls this socialism with Chinese characteristics, but it could be called the American economics takeoff with Chinese characteristics, because that’s the American economic takeoff…
..And there’s a third aim that the BRICS countries should have, and that has to be to raise living standards and raise labor productivity. Because you can’t have a class war against labor and expect labor to be highly educated, well-fed, well housed, and productive. If you want productive labor, you’re going to have to raise living standards. And the vested interests in most of these BRICS countries want to keep wages low. If they have factories or whatever their business is, they look at labor’s wages as being antithetical to themselves. And the way that the United States solved this problem was to say, okay, we know that you industrialists don’t want to pay high wages to labor. But what we’ll do is have the government pick up many of the costs of living for labor. The cost of education, the cost of health care, the cost of low-priced transportation, communications. And so that you don’t have to pay labor high enough wages to pay for its own health care, education, and all of that. Well, obviously that’s not what the United States is doing today. You’re having just the opposite…
..Again, you need an economic theory and economic doctrine for this. The doctrine was what 19th century classical economics was all about… The way to create a prosperous economic growth is to avoid private debt. Keep debt and money creation domestic. The debts you owe are in your own currency and you control your own currency in the same way China does, through a public bank, not through private commercial banks. You want to tax economic rent and unearned income to encourage earned income by actually being part of the production process, not part of the rent-seeking… superstructure… And you want to create a prosperous domestic labor force so that it can become high-productivity.
That’s how the United States developed a high productivity labor force itself. The way in which the BRICS countries can follow their national interest is clear, but you need a doctrine for that and an economic philosophy. That’s the missing element that I see right now. https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2025/01/michael-hudson-cracks-in-the-empire-is-the-american-superpower-fading.htmlJim Rickards, Trump’s Plan to End Currency War 3.0
As reported in The Washington Post, Politico, The Wall Street Journal, Yahoo Finance and other outlets, Trump is working on a secret plan to devalue the U.S. dollar. The goal would be to cheapen U.S. exports and thereby help the U.S. balance of trade and create exported-related jobs…
..The critics are wrong and don’t understand what Trump is actually trying to do. Trump is not trying to start a currency war; he’s trying to end it once and for all…
..Far from the reckless, inflationary process the media claim, Trump’s actual plan is based on the highly successful model developed by James Baker for Ronald Reagan and implemented in the Plaza Accord of 1985 and the Louvre Accord of 1987… The parties reached a joint agreement that would devalue the U.S. dollar in an orderly fashion versus the French Franc, Japanese Yen, UK pounds sterling, and the German Deutschemark. Once the targeted level for the dollar was achieved, the parties would use their best efforts, including market intervention as needed to maintain those levels within narrow bands.
A separate meeting in Paris at the Louvre in 1987 agreed that the devaluation phase was over, and the dollar would be maintained at the new parities. This was not currency war; it was currency peace achieved by agreement and implemented in a cooperative fashion…
..Trump’s goal is to repeat the success of the Plaza and Louvre Accords. Trump’s advisor on this is Robert Lighthizer, who is one of the most brilliant financial minds around and was Trump’s U.S. Trade Representative (2017-2021). Lighthizer was also USTR for Ronald Reagan from 1983 to 1985 so he’s a veteran of prior currency wars and was in the administration around the time the Plaza Accord was being developed. Lighthizer is the perfect individual to help Trump achieve the kind of success that Reagan and Baker had in the 1980s. The media are trying to portray Trump as reckless when in fact he’s proposing something highly beneficial for U.S. jobs and U.S. industry. https://dailyreckoning.com/trumps-plan-to-end-currency-war-3-0/Alex Krainer, The political tides in Europe are turning against the Empire
It seems that the same cultural countercurrents seem to be gripping many nations as the recent elections in the United States, Slovakia, Romania, Georgia, Hungary, France, Germany, Croatia and Moldova have shown (yes, Moldova too).
It may be that in spite of the loud banging of the war-drums in mainstream media, and among our political class, very different currents are gathering below the surface. These currents might continue to gain strength; it’s what our ruling establishments like to label as Russia’s malign influence. More likely, the truth is that ordinary people got tired of the lies, hatred, hostility and the wars, as well as the intellectual and cultural junk food that’s become the pervasive staple among Western nations. This is a hopeful sign, because escalating the wars could prove difficult for the imperial establishment. What if peace starts to break out all over the place in 2025? It’s a worthwhile idea to pray for and struggle for. https://alexkrainer.substack.com/p/the-political-tides-in-europe-areHitting Bottom https://drjohnsblog.substack.com/p/hitting-bottom
A new year may engender false hopes, but it is also true that societies hit-bottom sometimes, and refuse to proceed in the same dysfunctional spiral, particularly when they see obvious paths to immediate and longer term improvements in the manner in which political economy is conducted.
I’m not making any predictions, but there does appear to be an opening for western and BRICS political economies to incorporate better efficiencies in order to meet the human needs of human societies.
The failings of the directions taken since the 2008 global financial crisis have been made more clear by the extreme swings of the narratives during the COVID pandemic, and the revelations that much of this was manipulated to stabilize global financial interests, and that the various strains of coronavirus showed genetic evidence of gain-of-function manipulation in bioweapons labs, funded by the US, China and Canada.
The insult, added to those injuries, appears to be that the gene-therapy “vaccine products”, promoted as the solution to the lab-leak problem, carried the most toxic element of the virus, the spike-protein, as the core mRNA protein-product to be produced in the treated human cells. This has resulted in considerably greater harm than the leaked viruses, as shown by increases in excess deaths in “vaccinated” populations, beginning with the months that treatments began, and still continuing at the present time. The definition of “vaccinated” began 2 weeks after the second injection, which caused most of the immediate deaths to be recorded in the “unvaccinated” cohort, a handy trick. The further waves of excess deaths, notably in workers with employee life-insurance policies, have been dramatic, but more from strokes, autoimmune disease, cancers, myocarditis and heart attacks. They are simply denied by governments, and the recorded evidence is obscured and misinterpreted, but not addressed in detail. This stonewalling defense is beginning to crack in a few public sectors, a few US states, like Florida, for instance. The indignant cohort of society is not lessening with time, rather the vaccination-control-narrative is becoming progressively untenable.
The real, productive economy is enabled by energy and resources, especially oil, but also coal, natural gas, mined resources and farm products. This is the real arbiter of societal wealth, and subject to physical and environmental constraints, particularly as easily obtained fuels and ores are depleted, and many forms of pollution build up. Financial economy is supposed to be the management ledger of real economy, but has been separately gamed in a way which has caused financial ledgers to reflect something like 7X the amount of wealth which real economy embodies, or will ever be able to provide in the near future. This gross mismatch demands that reality be acknowledged, and losses assigned. Most of us would choose to assign the bast book-losses to the ultra-wealthy, who would still survive comfortably, rather than to ordinary people who might well die as a result. The desires of the ultra-wealthy are the opposite, and are better represented in the halls of power, but paradoxically, if the real economy ceases to function, they lose all of their wealth.
This is a moment in history where talented politicians can be helpful in distributing benefits and losses in a society, as fairly as possible, and so facilitate a societal unity of purpose, within an equitable social contract, such as was the case in the US after World War-2.
Looking at all parts of the world, excess debt-service, which parasitizes real economy, needs to be shed, and the perverse-incentives which cripple nations by extracting what is needed for life-support, such as food, fuel, housing, medical care and social health, and giving it to elites, needs to be renounced. The needs of human societies need to be respected first and foremost, for political economy to adapt to the new and less permissive conditions which we now face, and which will tighten further going forward.
Existing political structures can do this and have done it before, but the controlling cultures within them will need to change by eliminating perverse incentives to feed the rich, starve the workers, and maintain the status-quo, which is further extracting wealth from the real economy, weakening it over time. Certain powerful and obviously corrupt people might be made examples of…Tim Morgan at Surplus Energy Economics presents, Predicament, not outcome
What we’re witnessing is the inflexion of the economy from growth into contraction, and this will apply leveraged pressure on the markets for discretionary (non-essential) products and services upon which so many corporate behemoths rely…..As is surely self-evident, energy, resources and environmental tolerance can’t be lent into existence by the banking system, or conjured out of the ether by central bankers. When we allow the supply of credit-money to expand at rates exceeding the current or forward claim-honouring capabilities of the material economy, we set up stresses which can have only one outcome.
This brings us to the inevitability of a much larger “GFC II” sequel to the 2008-09 global financial crisis.
Although the available data is neither complete nor timely, we can estimate that, stated at constant values, worldwide financial assets have increased by at least USD 450 trillion, or 150%, during a twenty-year period in which global real GDP grew by only 70%, or USD 44tn… The apparent implication – which is that more than $10 of new financial claims have been created for each dollar of growth – is a serious understatement of the true severity of the situation… ..Today’s over-centralized, top-down systems and institutions are likely to be replaced by decentralized, bottom-up alternatives operating at a more human scale. Before any of this can happen, though, we have to navigate a financial crisis on a scale that will dwarf the events of 2008-09. Whilst the sheer chaos likely to be caused by this event is apparent, a less obvious consequence will be the destruction of large swathes of what is currently understood as “wealth”. “GFC II” could turn out to be, as the first global financial crisis never was, a great leveller, resetting the relationship between wealth and incomes… ..SEEDS analysis indicates that, other than in the very weakest economies, the provision of the essentials to everyone can remain affordable well into the 2040s, by which time the definition of ‘essential’ will have changed. In other words, if the trend towards the immiseration of millions continues, it will have done so as a matter, not of necessity, but of choice. https://surplusenergyeconomics.wordpress.com/2025/01/06/296-predicament-not-outcome/Michael Hudson: Cracks in the Empire – Is the American Superpower Fading?
I’ve been thinking what a good title for the show should be, and I think it should be, “Today’s world economy is as good as it gets.” I think the United States, Europe, and the Near Eastern economic and political situation is, obviously, it’s unstable. And almost any specific forecast we make is likely to be wrong because there are so many variables at work and competing interests at play. But actually, this is what mathematicians call an optimum position. That may sound optimistic, and I’m never one to be optimistic, but an optimum position is technically one that, wherever you move, it’s going to be worse.
This is mathematically as good as it is. And that’s pretty much the situation you have today. You could say we’re now in the best of all possible worlds, given the policies that have led to the conflicts that we’re seeing: the conflict of national interest, the conflict of domestic interest, the conflict between the United States and Europe, and the United States against all the rest of the world. And I think that this year is going to be more than just change. I think that chaos is now official US policy. And that’s what you do when you’re trying to stop the world from moving in a direction that’s not in your interest… And the basic aim of the U.S. policy is to keep an optimum position from changing by creating such chaos that there’s not going to be an alternative…
..I think there are two areas that we have to concentrate on. One is gas, and the other is debt. And the most immediate problem is gas right now, because that’s the political key as well as the economic key. The United States foreign policy for the last century has been to try to control Near Eastern oil and gas production, because energy is the key to economic production. And the reason the U.S. wants to control it is to prevent other countries from having it if these countries act in a way that the United States opposes…
..United States strategists are, on the one hand, they’re saying, well, we’re going to insist in exporting more to Europe. President Trump is insisting that Europe buys more American LNG, liquefied natural gas, at four times the price it was paying Russia. But if it does this, then that’s going to create shortages in the US and US gas prices will go up. And if US gas prices go up, then the US consumer price index is going to go up. And that’s what the Republicans are in Congress opposing…
..You’re having gas prices now going up for the whole rest of the world. And that includes the global South countries. So something has to give because Africa, Latin America, other very heavily indebted countries can’t afford both to pay more for their gas these days and still keep up with their foreign debt service in hard currency, in US dollars. So the US selling more gas to Europe at high prices is going to create a rise in the dollar… And the US foreign policy doesn’t think of the world economy as a whole system. It’s tunnel vision. How do we hurt Russia? Let’s do that first. And then we’ll think of the rest of the world. So this is why the US policy is creating chaos in the rest of the world…
..I don’t see anyone except the right-wing parties opposing this. The left is completely on board with the U.S. Cold War because the left-wing parties, as I think we’ve discussed before, have been staffed by politicians who have been dependent on very heavy subsidy and grants from non-governmental organizations such as the National Endowment for Democracy to build up. So you really don’t have a domestic formulation of what would a rational European economic policy be to restore prosperity, and in fact, is there a way to restore the dismantling of heavy industry, steel industry, automobile industry, manufacturing industry, even fertilizers and chemicals that have already been dismantled? Or does Europe have to go the way that the Baltics have gone? … The Eurozone, as we’ve discussed before, is basically dominated by NATO and by the United States indirectly. I don’t see much of a solution except poverty for Europe…
..This is an Orwellian 1984 world that we’re seeing in Europe. And I don’t see… it is obviously worst of all in England under Starmer and the Labour Party. But what’s happening to the Labour Party is the same thing that’s happened to the German Social Democratic Party that’s now fallen behind the Alternative for Deutschland in the polls and is going to be pretty much wiped out in this month’s election. And you’re going to have one European country after another going the way of Romania. What are you going to do when people do not vote for the United States, but vote for their own national welfare? …
..The first aim is you need to cope with the foreign debt problem. There is no way that the BRICS countries can grow and at the same time pay the foreign debts that they’ve been saddled with for the last 100 years and especially since 1945 by the neoliberal philosophy that’s been pushed by the United States and the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.
The policies that have been imposed on the BRICS countries have forced them into a chronic balance of payments and trade deficit as a result of their dependency on the United States and its allies that have made them not viable countries. That means that the loans that were made to these countries have no chance of being paid…
..And the fact is that the people that hold these dollar bonds are client oligarchies who don’t want to hold their own currencies because the global south countries and their oligarchies realize the debts can’t be paid… And this is a problem for the BRICS countries. On the one hand, the BRICS countries, in order to grow, have to write down their debts… So the vested interests in many of the BRICS countries are not favoring the national interests. That’s the big conflict you have between the fact that these countries are bifurcated between a U.S.-centered elite and the country as a whole…
..What are you going to do about the fact that as a result of the debt crisis, these countries have been driven by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund and U.S. policy to sell off their oil, mineral rights, their natural resources, their natural monopolies of public infrastructure to foreign investors? How on earth can they grow if all of their national patrimony and all of the revenue, the land rent, the raw materials rents, the monopoly rents from this national patrimony is paid to foreigners? Well, you could look at the BRICS countries in very much the same way as Russia under the kleptocrats…
..The whole logic of industrial capitalism was to free economies from the landlord class and its land rent, to free economies from economic rent. And that was what classical value theory from Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill, Marx, the American economists all said, “we want to prevent rent seeking… to bring prices in line with actual cost of production.” That’s what enabled England first to become the workshop of the world, and then enabled the United States and Germany to replace England by creating a mixed public-private economy with its own national control of money.
The BRICS countries could follow this policy that made first England and then America and Germany able to organize their industrial takeoff. But in order to do that, you have to have a concept of freeing economies from economic rent. You have to have a concept that basically goes back to Adam Smith. His idea of a free market was a market free of economic rent…
..So, if the BRICS economies said, we’re going to recover our natural patrimony from the kleptocrats, not our own kleptocrats only, but the foreign companies that have bought our oil and gas, we’re going to use that as our natural, our fiscal base. And that we’re going to use that fiscal base to finance our own economic development. Well, then you’re going to essentially be able to do in this century what the late 19th century European countries did… And what they do see is China’s remarkable economic takeoff. And China calls this socialism with Chinese characteristics, but it could be called the American economics takeoff with Chinese characteristics, because that’s the American economic takeoff…
..And there’s a third aim that the BRICS countries should have, and that has to be to raise living standards and raise labor productivity. Because you can’t have a class war against labor and expect labor to be highly educated, well-fed, well housed, and productive. If you want productive labor, you’re going to have to raise living standards. And the vested interests in most of these BRICS countries want to keep wages low. If they have factories or whatever their business is, they look at labor’s wages as being antithetical to themselves. And the way that the United States solved this problem was to say, okay, we know that you industrialists don’t want to pay high wages to labor. But what we’ll do is have the government pick up many of the costs of living for labor. The cost of education, the cost of health care, the cost of low-priced transportation, communications. And so that you don’t have to pay labor high enough wages to pay for its own health care, education, and all of that. Well, obviously that’s not what the United States is doing today. You’re having just the opposite…
..Again, you need an economic theory and economic doctrine for this. The doctrine was what 19th century classical economics was all about… The way to create a prosperous economic growth is to avoid private debt. Keep debt and money creation domestic. The debts you owe are in your own currency and you control your own currency in the same way China does, through a public bank, not through private commercial banks. You want to tax economic rent and unearned income to encourage earned income by actually being part of the production process, not part of the rent-seeking… superstructure… And you want to create a prosperous domestic labor force so that it can become high-productivity.
That’s how the United States developed a high productivity labor force itself. The way in which the BRICS countries can follow their national interest is clear, but you need a doctrine for that and an economic philosophy. That’s the missing element that I see right now. https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2025/01/michael-hudson-cracks-in-the-empire-is-the-american-superpower-fading.htmlJim Rickards, Trump’s Plan to End Currency War 3.0
As reported in The Washington Post, Politico, The Wall Street Journal, Yahoo Finance and other outlets, Trump is working on a secret plan to devalue the U.S. dollar. The goal would be to cheapen U.S. exports and thereby help the U.S. balance of trade and create exported-related jobs…
..The critics are wrong and don’t understand what Trump is actually trying to do. Trump is not trying to start a currency war; he’s trying to end it once and for all…
..Far from the reckless, inflationary process the media claim, Trump’s actual plan is based on the highly successful model developed by James Baker for Ronald Reagan and implemented in the Plaza Accord of 1985 and the Louvre Accord of 1987… The parties reached a joint agreement that would devalue the U.S. dollar in an orderly fashion versus the French Franc, Japanese Yen, UK pounds sterling, and the German Deutschemark. Once the targeted level for the dollar was achieved, the parties would use their best efforts, including market intervention as needed to maintain those levels within narrow bands.
A separate meeting in Paris at the Louvre in 1987 agreed that the devaluation phase was over, and the dollar would be maintained at the new parities. This was not currency war; it was currency peace achieved by agreement and implemented in a cooperative fashion…
..Trump’s goal is to repeat the success of the Plaza and Louvre Accords. Trump’s advisor on this is Robert Lighthizer, who is one of the most brilliant financial minds around and was Trump’s U.S. Trade Representative (2017-2021). Lighthizer was also USTR for Ronald Reagan from 1983 to 1985 so he’s a veteran of prior currency wars and was in the administration around the time the Plaza Accord was being developed. Lighthizer is the perfect individual to help Trump achieve the kind of success that Reagan and Baker had in the 1980s. The media are trying to portray Trump as reckless when in fact he’s proposing something highly beneficial for U.S. jobs and U.S. industry. https://dailyreckoning.com/trumps-plan-to-end-currency-war-3-0/Alex Krainer, The political tides in Europe are turning against the Empire
It seems that the same cultural countercurrents seem to be gripping many nations as the recent elections in the United States, Slovakia, Romania, Georgia, Hungary, France, Germany, Croatia and Moldova have shown (yes, Moldova too).
It may be that in spite of the loud banging of the war-drums in mainstream media, and among our political class, very different currents are gathering below the surface. These currents might continue to gain strength; it’s what our ruling establishments like to label as Russia’s malign influence. More likely, the truth is that ordinary people got tired of the lies, hatred, hostility and the wars, as well as the intellectual and cultural junk food that’s become the pervasive staple among Western nations. This is a hopeful sign, because escalating the wars could prove difficult for the imperial establishment. What if peace starts to break out all over the place in 2025? It’s a worthwhile idea to pray for and struggle for. https://alexkrainer.substack.com/p/the-political-tides-in-europe-are@Oxymoron in Oz: Thanks for the story about the battle between citizens and gestapo.
;-(King Chuck has some kind of terminal cancer, they say. He probably doesn’t have the energy to do the right thing these days. I wonder what his true feelings about it are.
Funny how Musk has this weird affinity with the UK, huh?
😉@Zerosum: Thank you for the further FBI pipe-bomb-investigation-burial details.
This stalwart Amish dairy farmer has gone through hell during attacks by state, and Federal government. Amish Farmer Celebrates “Big Win For Food Freedom”
Robert Barnes, an attorney for raw milk producer and Amish farmer Amos Miller, revealed on X late Friday night that the Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania “affirmed the trial court decision allowing Amish farmer Amos Miller to continue to make his wonderful food available to customers outside the state.”…
..Recall that the government raided Miller’s farm in early 2024 for selling raw milk, organic eggs, grass-fed beef, and other nutritious foods to consumers, citing repeated failures to comply with overly burdensome federal farming regulations.
The USDA tried to bring Miller’s farm into compliance with federal regulations, but the Amish farmer spent many months in court rather than obtaining a license to produce raw milk for sale.
Since last January’s search warrant, the “Pennsylvania Dutch” community became outraged and mobilized in a rare vote in federal elections for Trump-Vance to stand up against rogue federal agencies captured by the processed foods industrial complex…
..Under the MAHA movement, led by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the nation’s food supply chain must be restored into the hands of the people – not continued mega corporations poisoning consumers with seed oils and highly processed foods. https://www.zerohedge.com/political/amish-farmer-celebrates-big-win-today-food-freedom I have cared for a “brain dead” young man, whose mother knew “Frankie is in there”. He was. It was a long road back to communicating and feeding himself, partly paralyzed.
“Brain Stem Death” Is A Myth To Fuel Organ Industry, According To Expert Dr. Paul Byrne: They Register Pain, But Can’t Respond
Kate Shemirani’s Daughter Was Declared Brain Dead, Yet Cried To Hear Her Sister’s Voice. Here, Shemirani Interviews The Foremost Crusader Against The Cruel Lies Of “Brain Death.” https://celiafarber.substack.com/p/brain-stem-death-is-a-myth-to-fuelBird Flu ‘Fearmongering’ as CDC Finds ‘No Evidence’ of Human-to-Human Transmission https://lumennews14.substack.com/cp/154081940
Blowback online to Jewish Chronicle article claiming Palestinian solidarity is antisemitic
The piece was written by British commentator Melanie Phillips and published on Tuesday with the headline “If you support the Palestinian cause in any form, you’re facilitating Jew-hate.” It was subsequently edited and the headline changed…
..She wrote: “Jew-hatred has not only been normalized. It’s been rebranded as social justice because support for Palestinianism, which seeks to write the Jews out of their country, their history and the world, is what now passes for a moral sense among swathes of the public, the entire intelligentsia and even — heaven help us — many Jews.”
Phillips continues: “Let’s not hear any protests that you were once a member of Habonim or have a holiday home in Herzliya … If you support the Palestinian Arab cause today, you are facilitating deranged and murderous Jew-hatred. Own it.” …
..One social media user wrote: ‘Your exploitation of antisemitism is seriously disturbing. But why would Zionists care that they endanger Jews by merging their identity with Israel?’ https://www.arabnews.com/node/2585075/media Elon Musk Jumps on Tommy Robinson’s Side – Blasts UK for Allowing Child Grooming and Rape Gangs
Elon has been on a terror pointing out the child sex trafficking crimes in the UK that the politicians ignore and allow to happen. https://joehoft.com/elon-musk-jumps-on-tommy-robinsons-side-speaks-out-about-uk-child-grooming-and-rape-gangs/#google_vignetteBernie Sanders: Elon Musk Wants to ‘Replace’ Americans With ‘Indentured Servants From Abroad’ https://www.informationliberation.com/?id=64794
Biden Quietly Bans Most Gas Powered Tankless Water Heaters
Trump has expressed intentions to roll back many of Biden’s climate initiatives to bolster energy production and stimulate economic growth. This regulatory push on water heaters is part of a series of actions targeting household appliances, including gas stoves and refrigerators, aimed at reducing carbon emissions and promoting electric alternatives.
Ben Lieberman, a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, criticized the move, stating, “It bans an entire category of tankless water heaters and the ones that are most affordable. This is all part of the climate change agenda…an antipathy towards natural gas because they want to electrify everything.” https://www.zerohedge.com/energy/biden-quietly-bans-most-gas-powered-tankless-water-heaters Trump Calls on the UK to Open Up the North Sea and Get Rid of Wind Farms
U.S. President-elect Donald Trump has called for opening up the UK North Sea to oil and gas and getting rid of windmills, in response to the recent announcement by Texas-based Apache that it would cease oil and gas production in the region due to the uneconomical windfall tax.
“The U.K. is making a very big mistake. Open up the North Sea. Get rid of Windmills!” President-elect Trump posted late on Thursday on social media platform Truth Social. https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/Trump-Calls-on-the-UK-to-Open-Up-the-North-Sea-and-Get-Rid-of-Wind-Farms.html The majority of Palestinians in Gaza, 77 percent, lack essential relief items, international NGO ActionAid revealed on Wednesday, amidst ongoing calls for increased humanitarian aid and access.
Reham Al-Jaafari, Director of Support and Advocacy at ActionAid, told Voice of Palestine on Wednesday that the past three months have been the harshest for Palestinians due to Israel limiting entry of relief supplies, widespread famine, disease outbreaks, and the collapse of the health sector. https://www.newarab.com/news/77-palestinians-without-basic-relief-supplies-ngo-says Nightmare in Gaza: Israeli military accused of sexually assaulting Palestinian women, executing civilians in hospital raid
Israeli forces conducted a violent raid on the Kamal Adwan Hospital in Gaza on December 27, resulting in the sexual assault of women, execution of unarmed civilians and widespread violence against staff and patients.
Reports from the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor detail the forced removal of hijabs from women, leading to the sexual assault of some women, who were stripped and violated under threats and coercion.
Eyewitnesses reported that Israeli forces executed patients and detainees, including a man carrying a white flag, and a child with a psychological disorder who was shot dead by a tank. https://www.naturalnews.com/2025-01-02-israelis-assault-palestinian-women-execute-civilians.html Israeli airstrike targets south Gaza ‘safe zone’ killing 11 as seventh infant dies from cold
The Israeli attack targeted a tent sheltering displaced Palestinian families in al-Mawasi area, already devastated after months of bombardment
“Eleven people were martyred, including three children and two women, and 15 were injured after the occupation aircraft bombed a tent housing displaced people in the Al-Mawasi area, west of Khan Yunis city in the southern Gaza Strip,” Gaza’s civil defence agency said in a statement. https://www.newarab.com/news/israel-strikes-south-gaza-safe-zone-killing-11 Israeli attacks kill 71 more Palestinians in the past 24 hours
Israel’s genocide in Gaza — now in its 454th day — has killed at least 45,581 Palestinians and wounded 108,438 others. In Lebanon, Israel has killed 4,048 people since October 2023 and keeps breaching the November 27 truce deal. https://www.trtworld.com/middle-east/live-blog-israeli-attacks-kill-71-more-palestinians-in-the-past-24-hours-18249578Water is Life. Israeli army bombs Damascus outskirts, seizes control of Syrian water sources
Tel Aviv now controls the six most important water sources in southern Syria and continues to expand its occupation in the country https://thecradle.co/articles/israeli-army-bombs-damascus-outskirts-seizes-control-of-syrian-water-sourcesSurprise! House Releases Bombshell Report on January 6 Pipe Bomber Revealing FBI Engaged in Massive Coverup and Refuses to Cooperate with Investigators https://discernreport.com/surprise-house-releases-bombshell-report-on-january-6-pipe-bomber-revealing-fbi-engaged-in-massive-coverup-and-refuses-to-cooperate-with-investigators/
On the first vote: Johnson Wins Speakership After Reps Switch Votes https://www.zerohedge.com/political/house-vote-speaker-trump-wishes-mike-johnson-good-luck
Assassination Attempt Upon Bashar Assad in Russia
8:56 AM on 2 January 2025, a single report came out of Russia claiming there has been an “Assassination attempt” on Bashar al-Assad.
Assad reportedly sought medical attention after experiencing severe symptoms, including coughing and choking.
Tests revealed traces of poison in his blood. Assad received medical treatment and is now in stable condition. https://halturnerradioshow.com/index.php/news-selections/world-news/report-assassination-attempt-upon-bashar-assad-in-russia ‘Remember us’: Palestine’s UN envoy breaks down in tears at UNSC
Tears at the UNSC as Palestine’s ambassador Riyad Mansour shares heartfelt plea of Gaza doctor who wrote a powerful message on Al Awda Hospital whiteboard before Israel killed him in a strike. https://www.trtworld.com/middle-east/remember-us-palestines-un-envoy-breaks-down-in-tears-at-unsc-18250206Israeli airstrikes kill more than 110 Palestinians over two days amid new ceasefire push https://www.independent.ie/world-news/middle-east/israeli-airstrikes-kill-more-than-110-palestinians-over-two-days-amid-new-ceasefire-push/a1485462650.html
Cyber truck bomber Matthew Livelsberger leaves family stunned, claims he ‘loved Trump and the Army’
His uncle Dean Livelsberger told The Independent that his nephew was ‘100 percent a patriot’, and described him as a ‘Rambo-type.’ https://endtimeheadlines.org/2025/01/cyber-truck-bomber-matthew-livelsbergers-leaves-family-stunned-claims-he-loved-trump-and-the-army/ A patriot sacrificing his life to warn America? “TIME TO WAKE UP!”: ‘Cybertruck Bomber’ Had Several Manifestos, Warned Of Drones Using ‘Gravatic Propulsion’
The details surrounding Cybertruck bomber Matthew Livelsberger continue to drip – with two ‘manifesto’ letters found in the Cybertruck itself, and another ‘manifesto’ he allegedly emailed to retired intelligence officer Sam Shoemate.
In the letters found in the Cybertruck, Livelsberger described the USA as “terminally ill,” and said his actions were meant as a “wake-up call,” and not a terrorist attack...
..You can read the entire email below:
“In case I do not make it to my decision point or on to the Mexico border I am sending this now. Please do not release this until 1JAN and keep my identity private until then.
First off I am not under duress or hostile influence or control. My first car was a 2006 Black Ford Mustang V6 for verification.
What we have been seeing with “drones” is the operational use of gravitic propulsion systems powered aircraft by most recently China in the east coast, but throughout history, the US. Only we and China have this capability. Our OPEN location for this activity in the box is below.
China has been launching them from the Atlantic from submarines for years, but this activity recently has picked up. As of now, it is just a show of force and they are using it similar to how they used the balloon for sigint and isr, which are also part of the integrated comms system. There are dozens of those balloons in the air at any given time.
The so what is because of the speed and stealth of these unmanned AC, they are the most dangerous threat to national security that has ever existed. They basically have an unlimited payload capacity and can park it over the WH if they wanted. It’s checkmate.
US needs to give the history of this, how we are employing it and weaponizing it, how China is employing them and what the way forward is. China is poised to attack anywhere in the east coast
I’ve been followed for over a week now from likely homeland or FBI, and they are looking to move on me and are unlikely going to let me cross into Mexico, but won’t because they know i am armed and I have a massive VBIED.
I’ve been trying to maintain a very visible profile and have kept my phone and they are definitely digitally tracking me. I have knowledge of this program and also war crimes that were covered up during airstrikes in Nimruz province Afghanistan in 2019 by the admin, DoD, DEA and CIA.
I conducted targeting for these strikes of over 125 buildings (65 were struck because of CIVCAS) that killed hundreds of civilians in a single day. USFORA continued strikes after spotting civilians on initial ISR, it was supposed to take 6 minutes and scramble all aircraft in CENTCOM. The UN basically called these war crimes, but the administration made them disappear.
I was part of that cover-up with USFORA and Agent [redacted] of the DEA. So I don’t know if my abduction attempt is related to either. I worked with GEN Millers 10 staff on this as well as the response to Bala Murghab. AOB-S Commander at the time [redacted] can validate this.
You need to elevate this to the media so we avoid a world war because this is a mutually assured destruction situation. For vetting my Linkedin is Matt Berg or Matthew Livelsberger, an active duty 18Z out of 1-10 my profile is public. I have an active TSSCI with UAP USAP access.” https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/elon-musk-dismisses-cybertruck-bomber-fsd-theory-autopilot-requires-attentive-driverLarry Johnson, Las Vegas Bomber Story Takes An Alarming Turn
The alleged driver of the Tesla cybertruck that exploded in front of the Trump building in Las Vegas is Matt Livelsberger aka Matt Berg. The “facts” the FBI is telling the public do not add up. Livelsberger was an active duty US Army Green Beret…
..The IED in the back of Livelsberger’s truck was crude — it consisted of canisters of gasoline and fireworks. This is not the kind of device designed to damage or destroy a building. We’re told that Livelsberger shot himself in the head before the IED detonated. I call that the first red-flag. We’re told that his body was burned beyond recognition but that his military ID card survived the conflagration. That is red-flag number two…
..I saw Sam Shoemate’s interview with Shawn Ryan. The email from Livelsberger and Sam’s reporting suggest that something darker and more nefarious is afoot. Was Livelsberger murdered to silence him? Why? Because of information he had about Unidentified Aerial Phenomena aka UAPs. According to the email, Livelsberger claimed to hold a TSSCI clearance with “UAP USAP access.” USAP means, Unacknowledged Special Access Program. https://sonar21.com/las-vegas-bomber-story-takes-an-alarming-turn/ Matthew Livelsberger is a patsy, the question is for who and what purpose?
The first and most obvious reason is because the police have reported that he died from a GSW to his head ‘prior’ to the explosion, yet there were no reported gunshots in the 15-20 seconds before the Cybertruck exploded.
Needless to say, it is odd that one would shoot themselves in the head with a 50-caliber Desert Eagle right before blowing themselves up. It simply makes no sense…
..The third reason is that his Signal safety number changed just before the explosion, and then somehow his photo and safety number changed AFTER the explosion. Clearly this was manipulated by somebody other than him, as he was deceased and would not have been able to change anything. Find who changed his signal info and you find who shot him in the head. https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1874932093081571618.html Worried Supporters Implore Trump To Cancel Massive Victory Rally A Day Before Inauguration
https://modernity.news/2025/01/03/supporters-implore-trump-to-cancel-massive-victory-rally-a-day-before-inauguration/Matthew Livelsberger’s Fireworks Manifesto https://drjohnsblog.substack.com/p/matthew-livelsbergers-fireworks-manifesto
8 hours of work, in the form of a completed blog post draft, was discarded by gmail. This keeps “happening”. I have started over..
Gilbert Doctorow, Transcript of ‘Judging Freedom’ edition of 2 January
Napolitano:
President Putin has indicated a desire to speak with President-elect Trump after he’s inaugurated, and Donald Trump has indicated a reciprocal desire. What do you think Putin wants from Trump? What will he ask for? What will his goal be in whatever conversations they have?
Doctorow:
The Russian goal is to put the discussion of a peace in Ukraine in the broader context of a revised security architecture for Europe. And that can only be discussed between Putin and Trump. They do not have an interest in Moscow in talking to the European Union or NATO member states in Europe, because they consider them all to be the proxies for the United States. They consider them all to be taking direction from the United States.
So they want to go to the source, which is not surprising. If you were a student of the Soviet Union as I was, you know that the Russians never had much interest in dealing with individual West European countries... I think that Mr. Putin wants to discuss with Donald Trump how, what NATO will look like going forward, how all sides, European and Russian, can find security if the role of NATO is redefined or if it’s dissolved. This will be the subject. And here, when you speak about dissolution or downscaling NATO, I think Mr. Trump is the right person... They’re not put off by these various proposals that have been produced by Kellogg and have gone to the press. They understand that this is not coming from number one, it’s coming from his advisors, and that in fact Mr. Trump takes counsel of himself, or perhaps with Elon Musk...
..Napolitano:
So how does the war end, Professor?
Doctorow:
With the collapse of the Ukrainian army. I think that once the army goes, then the political establishment around Mr. Zelensky will crumble, and they’ll all be looking for their first plane out. They are there because the army has resisted and resisted valiantly...
..Napolitano:
What happens if Donald Trump closes the spigot of military supplies and ammunition and cash on January 21st?
Doctorow:
I think the capitulation of the Ukrainian army would follow in a few weeks. The Europeans are in no position to provide the artillery shells, the new artillery pieces, the rapid-fire missile launchers, like HIMARS, they don’t have that. So the ability of the Ukrainian army to defend itself would be reduced to nil in a very few weeks. And the ultimate result would be capitulation...
..Napolitano:
What are the consequences to consumers and industries in Europe, to Zelensky’s decision to close down that pipeline, literally in the past 48 hours?
Doctorow:
Well, the most vulnerable country is Slovakia, and That’s why Fico made this unexpected visit to Moscow– this is what, comes back a week– to discuss with Vladimir Putin what his alternative sources of gas may be and what action he could take or Russia would take to ensure that he gets gas. There are three countries in Central Europe that are affected by this. There’s Austria, Hungary, and Slovakia. Slovakia is the most exposed.
Austria has found alternative sources, mostly coming, this is LNG gas, that is sent on through the European-wide gas pipelines to Austria. Some of the same solution has been found by Mr. Orban, though he seems to be receiving substantial deliveries of Russian gas through the Turkish pipelines. I don’t know whether that can be extended to Slovakia to help Mr. Fico out of his problem...
..Napolitano:
I don’t mean this to sound in a snarky way, but has the Nord Stream pipeline been repaired?
Doctorow:
I’ve seen various accounts that– they are not substantiated, and I can’t say that they are reliable– that the Russians have linked up the Nord Stream pipeline with Kaliningrad. So they would get some benefit from their own gas. https://gilbertdoctorow.com/2025/01/02/transcript-of-judging-freedom-edition-of-2-january/Andrew Korybko, Creative Energy Diplomacy Can Lay The Basis For A Grand Russian-American Deal
The key to this is the US offering Russia a decent deal in Ukraine with lucrative sanctions-waived energy and tech opportunities that would incentivize Russia into informally agreeing to deprive China of decades-long access to ultra-cheap resources for fueling its superpower rise at the US’ expense. This grand deal is Trump’s to lose, and the world will know that he fumbled it if Russia makes progress on new pipelines to China, which could accompany or be followed by him “escalating to de-escalate”.
For as politically difficult as these compromises might be for each side, the US could spin them as having stopped Russia from controlling all of Ukraine and thus preventing it from planting its boots on the Polish border, while Russia could spin them as having stopped Ukraine from joining NATO and thus preventing that bloc from planting their boots on its exposed western border. Moreover, Russia would relieve pressure upon it in Europe, while the US Navy would control the bulk of China’s energy imports. https://korybko.substack.com/p/creative-energy-diplomacy-can-lay German MP calls for NordStream to be reactivated
Sevim Dagdelen has accused her country’s government of “happily watching the destruction of European industry” https://swentr.site/news/610404-german-mp-nordstream/I am inclined to believe Stockman that this “crisis” is worse and critical. David Stockman on the Brewing US Debt Ceiling Crisis
The MAGA folks are going to be in for a rude awakening. That’s because Donald Trump has been taking to the public stage in recent weeks promising a new “golden age” of American prosperity upon his return to the Oval Office, but nearly the opposite is just around the corner. What’s actually coming down the pike is the UniParty’s revenge— a financial and economic shitshow that is likely to dwarf all that has gone before...The US Treasury’s current cash burn rate is the real revenge of the UniParty. It insures that whatever the Trump Administration and its DOGE advisors might have had in mind on the fiscal front will be quickly overtaken by the Mother of All Debt Ceiling Crises within months and weeks of the inauguration... And if the GOP seeks to move Trump’s $5 trillion tax cut bill on Capitol Hill, the revenge of the bond vigilantes will be even more virulent. https://internationalman.com/articles/david-stockman-on-the-brewing-us-debt-ceiling-crisis/White-Hat guy… “TIME TO WAKE UP!”: ‘Cybertruck Bomber’ Had Several Manifestos, Warned Of Drones Using ‘Gravatic Propulsion’
https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/elon-musk-dismisses-cybertruck-bomber-fsd-theory-autopilot-requires-attentive-driver
You can read the entire email below:“In case I do not make it to my decision point or on to the Mexico border I am sending this now. Please do not release this until 1JAN and keep my identity private until then.
First off I am not under duress or hostile influence or control. My first car was a 2006 Black Ford Mustang V6 for verification.
What we have been seeing with “drones” is the operational use of gravitic propulsion systems powered aircraft by most recently China in the east coast, but throughout history, the US. Only we and China have this capability. Our OPEN location for this activity in the box is below.
China has been launching them from the Atlantic from submarines for years, but this activity recently has picked up. As of now, it is just a show of force and they are using it similar to how they used the balloon for sigint and isr, which are also part of the integrated comms system. There are dozens of those balloons in the air at any given time.
The so what is because of the speed and stealth of these unmanned AC, they are the most dangerous threat to national security that has ever existed. They basically have an unlimited payload capacity and can park it over the WH if they wanted. It’s checkmate.
US needs to give the history of this, how we are employing it and weaponizing it, how China is employing them and what the way forward is. China is poised to attack anywhere in the east coast
I’ve been followed for over a week now from likely homeland or FBI, and they are looking to move on me and are unlikely going to let me cross into Mexico, but won’t because they know i am armed and I have a massive VBIED.
I’ve been trying to maintain a very visible profile and have kept my phone and they are definitely digitally tracking me. I have knowledge of this program and also war crimes that were covered up during airstrikes in Nimruz province Afghanistan in 2019 by the admin, DoD, DEA and CIA.
I conducted targeting for these strikes of over 125 buildings (65 were struck because of CIVCAS) that killed hundreds of civilians in a single day. USFORA continued strikes after spotting civilians on initial ISR, it was supposed to take 6 minutes and scramble all aircraft in CENTCOM. The UN basically called these war crimes, but the administration made them disappear.
I was part of that cover-up with USFORA and Agent [redacted] of the DEA. So I don’t know if my abduction attempt is related to either. I worked with GEN Millers 10 staff on this as well as the response to Bala Murghab. AOB-S Commander at the time [redacted] can validate this.
You need to elevate this to the media so we avoid a world war because this is a mutually assured destruction situation. For vetting my Linkedin is Matt Berg or Matthew Livelsberger, an active duty 18Z out of 1-10 my profile is public. I have an active TSSCI with UAP USAP access.”
@Celticbiker: Good on ya riding a bicycle! That’s a positive thing.
“Faith Hope & Love” are “the works of the spirit”.New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan has rejected an attempt by President-Elect Donald Trump to dismiss his business records case and ordered sentencing for Jan. 10.
“This Court finds that neither the vacatur of the jury’s verdicts nor dismissal of the indictment are required by the Presidential immunity doctrine, the Presidential Transition Act or the Supremacy Clause,” Merchan said on Jan. 3.
“Finding no legal impediment to sentencing and recognizing that Presidential immunity will likely attach once Defendant takes his Oath of Office, it is incumbent upon this Court to set this matter down for the imposition of sentence prior to January 20, 2025,” Merchan wrote.
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/hush-money-case-judge-orders-trump-sentenced-ahead-inauguration-signals-no-punishment@Phoenixvoice: I’m sorry. Do keep the chicks away from migrating Mallard ducks…
;-(@Formerly T-bear:
Bill Gates is not on my diet. Eating Bill would not be good for anybody.
Plant an oak tree over his corpse?Anastassia Makarieva is co-discoverer of the Biotic Pump mechanism, whereby large, mature forests draw moist ocean air currents across continents.
How much wild nature do we need? And do we really understand how it functions? https://bioticregulation.substack.com/p/how-much-wild-nature-do-we-needPeter McCullough MD makes a strong circumstantial case that: Current Bird Flu Outbreak is Man-Made
USDA Serial-Passage Gain-of-Function Research Extended Host Range to Migratory Waterfowl, Cattle, Sea Mammals https://petermcculloughmd.substack.com/p/current-bird-flu-outbreak-is-manNew CDC Study Confirms Current H5N1 Bird Flu Strain is Very Mild; Mass Culling Results in Chicken-to-Human Transmission
100% of poultry-linked human cases traced to reckless mass depopulation efforts. https://petermcculloughmd.substack.com/p/new-cdc-study-confirms-current-h5n1Bird Flu Should Be the Subject of a Criminal Investigation
Current discussion about the reality of H5N1 – i.e., whether it’s fact or fiction – ignores that the matter should be the subject of a criminal investigation, not merely scientific debate. https://petermcculloughmd.substack.com/p/bird-flu-should-be-the-subject-ofMeryl Nass MD, Updated WHO Bird Flu cases and deaths, 1/1/2015-12/13/2024 by year and nation From 1/1/2020 to 12/13/2024 there were cumulatively 9 reported HUMAN deaths worldwide https://merylnass.substack.com/p/updated-who-bird-flu-cases-and-deaths
More from Dr. Nass. Bird-flu is an excuse-vehicle for totalitarian policies.
New info on bird flu
While I have shown that bird flu is a psy-op, it is still important to closely observe what the federal agencies are doing so we can protect our food supply and call them out on bad policies https://merylnass.substack.com/p/new-info-on-bird-fluNearly 3,000 Israeli attacks reported against Palestinian Bedouin communities in 2024: Rights group https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20250101-nearly-3000-israeli-attacks-reported-against-palestinian-bedouin-communities-in-2024-rights-group/
Yemen’s Houthis report 12 US-UK air strikes on capital Sanaa https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20241231-yemens-houthis-report-12-us-british-air-strikes-on-capital-sanaa/
Yemeni Armed Forces YAF carried out two ‘top-tier’ operations, targeted USS Truman
The first targeted Ben Gurion Airport in the city of Yafa (Tel Aviv) in occupied Palestine using a hypersonic ballistic missile of the Palestine-2 type, Saree said, adding that the second operation targeted a power station in southern occupied al-Quds with a Zulfiqar-type ballistic missile. According to the spokesperson, both missiles successfully hit their targets. https://english.almayadeen.net/news/politics/yaf-say-carried-out-2–top-tier–operations–targeted-uss-trFocus on being healthy, not weight, but exercise daily, avoid all sweet drinks, eat your vegetables, use olive oil and sleep all night. Cardiologist, Peter McCullough MD
New Data on Exercise and Weight Loss for the New Year Aerobic Exercise Pays Off https://petermcculloughmd.substack.com/p/new-data-on-exercise-and-weight-lossMeryl Nass MD, COVID-19 shots: North Group announces 19 countries’ experts and politicians have now joined the movement to end the shots https://merylnass.substack.com/p/north-group-announces-19-countries
US Establishing New Military Base In Aleppo Province US troops are not only maintaining their bases in the northeast, where Syria’s oil and gas fields are located, but are actually expanding the Pentagon presence, and very close to the border with Turkey.
On Thursday the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), which has long been known as an anti-Assad opposition outlet in exile, said that US forces are making preparations to establish a new military base in the northern city of Ain Al-Arab, or Kobani. https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/us-establishing-new-military-base-aleppo-provinceMaybe he was just against slaughtering families. That used to be ok. MIT Student Banned From Campus, Facing Suspension After Pro-Palestine Activism “I miss being in school, I miss going to my classes, I miss seeing my friends on campus,” Iyengar said. “But I have the luxury of being able to miss those things. The schoolchildren of Gaza, the college students of Gaza, their campuses have been bombed. None of their campuses are still standing.” https://scheerpost.com/2025/01/01/mit-student-banned-from-campus-facing-suspension-after-pro-palestine-activism/
Israeli strikes kill 12 in Gaza as war grinds into the new year with no end in sight A strike a home in northern Gaza killed seven people, including a woman and four children.
Another on Bureij refugee camp killed a woman and a child. https://www.arabnews.com/node/2584925/middle-eastIsraeli government considers ordering army to occupy Gaza City https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20250101-israeli-government-considers-ordering-army-to-occupy-gaza-city-report/
Threats of more-of-the-same genocide: Israel To Intensify Gaza Fight If Hamas Doesn’t Release Hostages https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/israel-intensify-gaza-fight-if-hamas-doesnt-release-hostages
Catherine Austin Fitts (CAF), Publisher of The Solari Report, says the real work for the Trump Administration is happening now. CAF is a financial expert and former Assistant Secretary of Housing (Bush 41 Admin.) who managed hundreds of billions of dollars in her career…
“You had a lot of people who voted for Trump that wanted to see him protect freedoms. You also have a lot of people voting and donating for Trump because they think he can get them the control grid. The centralization and decentralization are both hoping Trump will give them what they want. . . . Trump has to do something that works economically. The first day, Trump will be asked to fill the top 10 or 20 positions. Ultimately, after you fill the cabinet and the other top positions, then there are another 10,000 positions to be filled. The President does 1,000 positions, and those thousand do the rest of about 10,000 positions.
The guys who want the control grid are trying to get their people in place. The guys who want freedom are trying to get their people in place. . . . After you get the people in place, it’s going to have to be battled out one policy at a time. https://www.zerohedge.com/political/let-battle-commence-trump-admin-begins-war-freedom-over-deep-state-controlMusk accuses Biden of ‘treason’ The tech billionaire was commenting on the incumbent president’s border policies https://swentr.site/news/610343-musk-biden-treason-border-wall/
Good form: Trump says he is planning to attend Jimmy Carter’s funeral https://apnews.com/article/trump-carter-funeral-new-years-eve-2d7fc241ff0be4eb99b9c6547010bd03
Putin’s New Year’s Speech Marks Exactly 25 Years In Power: ‘Russians Should Be Proud’ https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/putins-new-years-speech-marks-exactly-25-years-power-russians-should-be-proud
The Russian Intelligence Service has revealed US-UK plots to further destabilize Syria and the region through continuous occupation and attacks on Russian military bases. https://english.almayadeen.net/news/politics/us-uk-directing-attacks-on-russian-military-bases-in-syria
Army vets: Feds Probe Possible Military Link Between Suspects In Bourbon Street Massacre & Trump Hotel Cybertruck Blast https://www.zerohedge.com/political/feds-probe-possible-military-link-between-suspects-bourbon-street-massacre-trump-hotel
Billionaires against American workers in wage-arbitrage class-warfare. Negotiate fast, guys. Tesla Replaced Laid Off Americans with Foreign Workers https://www.independentsentinel.com/tesla-replaced-laid-off-americans-with-foreign-workers/
Negotiate, Vivek. Billionaire Vivek Ramaswamy Is a Wall Street Speculator Accused of Pump-and-Dump Schemes, Not a Scientist https://scheerpost.com/2024/12/31/billionaire-vivek-ramaswamy-is-a-wall-street-speculator-accused-of-pump-and-dump-schemes-not-a-scientist/
Yves Smith, The Truth About H-1B Visas This is something everyone who’s worked in high tech has known for decades. As I put it a few days ago: “H-1B is a wage-theft scam, because the rich aren’t rich enough yet.” https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2025/01/the-truth-about-h-1b-visas.html
Make a deal, Donald: Trump backs skilled foreign workers, says US needs them https://www.yenisafak.com/en/news/trump-backs-skilled-foreign-workers-says-us-needs-them-3696580
Polish FM slammed for celebrating gas cutoff
Radoslaw Sikorski has been criticized online for declaring the end of Russian gas imports via Ukraine a “victory” https://swentr.site/news/610277-poland-russian-gas-victory/Ukraine is slaughtering all the men who didn’t get out, and plans to lower the draft age. Staggering Toll: Ukraine Lost Nearly 600,000 Troops in 2024 https://sputnikglobe.com/20250101/staggering-toll-ukraine-lost-nearly-600000-troops-in-2024-1121324133.html
Moon of Alabama illustrates how Ukrainian recruiting and training is failing. Ukraine – The Story Of The 155th Brigade
The well regarded Ukrainian journalist Yuri Butusov has published the background story (in Ukrainian) of the newly crated 155th brigade which had recently failed when it was hastily deployed to fill some holes in the Ukrainian positions on the eastern front near the city of Pokrovsk. https://www.moonofalabama.org/2025/01/ukraine-the-story-of-the-155th-brigade.html#moreTrump’s leverage to force Ukraine to make a deal, cut off the grift-money: Hold Ukraine accountable for corruption, misspent aid https://thehill.com/opinion/international/5060257-zelensky-ukraine-corruption-waste/
This looks like a “message” to Trump and Musk from the deep-state: Musk Confirms “Large Fireworks &/Or Bomb” Exploded Cybertruck At Trump Vegas Hotel https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/cybertruck-blew-outside-trump-hotel-vegas
2024 saw the end of the collective “west”, including “legacy media”, even pretending to respect international law and human rights. Simplicius: End of year wrap-up and a look ahead to 2025
Given the bizarre coordinated nature of every Western nation’s mirrored crack downs on fundamental freedoms like freedom of speech, the total delegitimization of democracy and elections, the absolute spiteful disgust that our ruling elites have shown to the common man, the farmer, the blue collared laborer, the wage slave—given all these things, and how remarkably coordinated they have been across the governments of the West, 2025 has taught us that the entire Western order must necessarily be taking direction from a centralized node of governance somewhere. That somewhere may be in the backrooms of the WEF or Bilderberg or what have you, but the rule by fiat from above is now clearer than ever.
Quoting Mearsheimer, B writes: “Most horrifying though is the breakdown of humanitarian concepts the ‘west’ once claimed to hold high. Mearsheimer says it best when he decries the the moral bankruptcy of the West.” https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/onward-ho-end-of-year-wrap-up-andThe Honest sorcerer looks at the geopolitics of declining energy resources, and wars over supply chains in 2025. What Comes in 2025? https://thehonestsorcerer.substack.com/p/what-comes-in-2025
Cutting off cheap gas and oil from Russian pipelines chokes Europe, with little economic benefit to LNG exporting countries like the US, but it holds the vassal states in control as they wither. Nationalism arises and spreads in this repression. EU faces energy dilemma over halt in Ukraine gas transit – The Yamal-Europe gas pipeline through Poland has been inactive since 2022, and Nord Stream was damaged in a terrorist attack. Vladimir Putin said in December 2024 that some pipelines could be reopened. https://en.topcor.ru/55197-es-stalkivaetsja-s-jenergeticheskoj-dilemmoj-iz-za-prekraschenija-gazovogo-tranzita-cherez-ukrainu.html
Andrew Korybko, The Political Consequences Of Ukraine’s Decision To Cut Off Russian Gas To Europe
The combined effect resulted in the share of Russia’s pipeline gas in EU imports plunging “from over 40% in 2021 to about 8% in 2023” according to the European Council. Nevertheless, the EU “narrowly avoided” a recession that year in CNN’s words, though it could enter into one later this year if Germany’s economic struggles deepen. Even so, it won’t be directly affected by Ukraine’s latest decision since this route only concerns 5% of EU imports, with the main clients being Slovakia, Hungary, and Moldova.
The first two are led by conservative-nationalists who are fiercely opposed to NATO’s proxy war on Russia through Ukraine while the third is ruled by a pro-Western figure who wants to reconquer her country’s separatist region of Transnistria in which several thousand Russian peacekeepers are still based. This observation lends credence to the earlier claim that Ukraine’s decision is much more political than anything else since it punishes Slovakia, Hungary, and Transnistria without harming other countries…
..Slovakia and Hungary won’t be harmed anywhere as much as Transnistria since each can import costlier LNG – whether from Russia, the US (which has poached a lot of its rival’s former EU market share), Algeria, and/or Qatar – from Lithuania/Poland or Croatia. Poland can connect Slovakia to Lithuania’s Klaipeda LNG terminal while Croatia’s Krk LNG terminal can supply Slovakia and Hungary. Hungary is also already getting some pipeline gas from TurkStream, which is Russia’s last pipeline to Europe.
All three are therefore being punished for political reasons, but it’s only Transnistria that risks an all-out crisis as a result, which could lead to an outcome that deals political damage to Russia if the government there is overthrown through an upcoming Color Revolution or that polity is captured by its neighbors… ..Regardless of whatever may or may not happen in Transnistria, Ukraine’s decision to cut off Russian gas to Europe leads to the possibility that this route could be reopened once the conflict ends, thus representing a card that could be played to entice concessions from the Kremlin during negotiations. The same holds true for the Yamal pipeline and the last undamaged part of Nord Stream. https://korybko.substack.com/p/the-political-consequences-of-ukrainesThis kills people. Moldova plunges into blackout after gas supply cutoff
Since January 1, the Moldovan State District Power Plant in Transnistria has stopped supplying electricity to Moldova, which previously covered 80-90% of the country’s needs. The plant has switched to coal, the reserves of which, according to experts, will last only 50 days.
Residents of Moldova complain about the cold in their apartments, which have turned into “freezers”. People are trying to warm up in any way possible. Trolleybuses have stopped running in the capital of the country, and there is no electricity in many apartment buildings, as well as in private ones.
It is especially difficult for residents of rural areas, where autonomous heating has stopped working without electricity.
The situation in Transnistria is no better. On the morning of January 1, heating and hot water supplies were completely cut off, Tirasteploenergo reported. Gas is still being supplied to apartment buildings, but only for cooking. https://en.topcor.ru/55200-moldavija-pogruzhaetsja-v-bljekaut-posle-ostanovki-postavok-gaza.htmlBOE Still Needs World War Three https://drjohnsblog.substack.com/p/boe-still-needs-world-war-three
On August 28, 2024 I posted BOE Needs World War Three https://drjohnsblog.substack.com/p/boe-needs-world-war-three
This drew upon Alex Krainer’s analysis of the desperate condition of the Bank of England, and other City of London financiers, due to investment which gambled to collapse the Russian government and asset-strip the country again, as was done in the Yeltsin years, the 1990s. Exacerbating the crisis, those entities “hold” a lot of “Ukrainian assets” that are now in Russia, and will not return to Ukraine, so they are fictional. Ukraine has only been spared from default by massive new lending, backed by the UK and others.
Alex Krainer revisits and updates his analysis here, in transcribed Audio/video: The fall of Britain (part 2)
Britain’s finances are “catastrophic.” The imminent unravelling will be for the history books… https://alexkrainer.substack.com/p/the-fall-of-britain-part-2What false-flag event could be large and convincing enough to convince citizens of NATO countries to openly wage war upon Russia? Asking for a friend.
Biden Presented With Options To Strike Iran Nuke Sites If Tehran Speeds Toward Bomb https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/biden-presented-options-strike-iran-nuke-sites-if-tehran-speeds-toward-bomb
Russia is clear and consistent that the end of the war in Ukraine will need to permanently guaranty Russian security by excluding NATO and foreign alliances from Ukraine. That cannot budge after so much Russian blood and treasure has been spilled. Trump can find that Ukraine has embezzled and diverted US aid and cut it off. Trump can eliminate sanctions on Russia to strengthen the $US as global reserve currency, which he has advocated. EU countries demand that Russia rebuild Ukraine before it can have its $300 billion back. Russia can do that, since they share infrastructure from the Soviet era. Russia would do this with Russian industry and labor, rebuilding ties with Ukraine, whatever Ukraine might look like by then. This would not serve globalist interests; quite the contrary.
Russian rejection of Trump team’s proposals puts wrinkle in pursuit for peace
After Trump appointed retired Lieutenant-General Keith Kellogg to serve as his special envoy to Ukraine, Lavrov expressed an interest in working with Washington, saying “If the signals that are coming from the new team in Washington to restore the dialogue… are serious, of course, we will respond to them.”
Kellogg himself has suggested that “both sides are ready” for negotiations, highlighting the reported death tolls on both sides as motivating a desire for peace.
Willingness to negotiate, however, does not indicate a willingness to concede on key points and the distinction could prove the difference between successful dialogue and further escalations. https://justthenews.com/government/security/wedrussian-rejection-trump-teams-proposals-casts-doubt-his-ability-end-war@jb-hb: Thanks for the insights on being commanded by incompetent bureaucrats who only know generalities.
Dr. D is storing treasures in Heaven, which has its own blockchain-ledger.
Trump will attend Carter’s funeral. Good Form, Sir!
Tesla truck bombed, killing patsy-driver, in front of Trump Tower Las Vegas, signaling that Trump and Musk will be killed together with a bomb.
Change my mind.Take activity breaks hourly. Too Much Sitting Can Still Be Harmful Even if You Exercise, Study Warns https://www.sciencealert.com/too-much-sitting-can-still-be-harmful-even-if-you-exercise-study-warns
In 2018: “Self-spreading vaccine” means a mild infectious-virus.: Drones Spray ‘Self-Spreading’ COVID-19 Vaccine for ‘Large-Area Inoculation of Humans’ in ‘DEFUSE’ EcoHealth/DARPA Project
Was the COVID-19 pandemic a premeditated operation involving aerosolized bioweapons deployed on unsuspecting populations? (duh) https://jonfleetwood.substack.com/p/drones-to-spray-self-spreading-covid Sasha Latypova always said Ken was taking a blind-alley on purpose. Breaking: The lawsuit v Pfizer by TX Attorney General, Ken Paxton is dismissed
PREP Act and EUA law pre-empt civil lawsuits. These suits are theater/political campaigning. AGs serious about prosecution should bring criminal charges, not civil complaints. https://sashalatypova.substack.com/p/breaking-the-lawsuit-v-pfizer-byUgo Bardi explains specifics, which matter. Clouds: do they Warm or Cool the Atmosphere?, Complex systems are always full of surprises. https://livingearth.substack.com/p/clouds-clouds-clouds
Joshua Stylman, Engineering Reality: Part III
In my research on the tech-industrial complex, I’ve documented how today’s digital giants weren’t simply co-opted by power structures – many were potentially designed from their inception as tools for mass surveillance and social control. From Google’s origins in a DARPA-funded CIA project to Amazon’s founder’s familial ties to ARPA, these weren’t just successful startups that later aligned with government interests.
What Tavistock discovered through years of careful study—emotional resonance trumps facts, peer influence outweighs authority, and indirect manipulation succeeds where direct propaganda fails—now forms the foundational logic of social media algorithms. Facebook’s emotion manipulation study and Netflix’s A/B testing of thumbnails (explored in detail later) exemplify the digital automation of these century-old insights, as AI systems perform billions of real-time experiments, continuously refining the art of influence at an unprecedented scale...
..Understanding these systems is the first step toward liberation. As the machinery of control reaches its peak, so too does the opportunity for resistance. The endgame for centralized power presents a paradox: the same systems designed to limit freedom also expose their own vulnerabilities…
..The battle for freedom of consciousness is now our most fundamental struggle. Without it, we are not autonomous actors but non-player characters (NPCs) in someone else’s game, making seemingly free choices within carefully constructed parameters. Each time we question an algorithmic recommendation or seek out independent voices, we crack the control matrix. When we build in-person local communities and support decentralized platforms, we create spaces beyond algorithmic manipulation. These aren’t just acts of resistance – they’re steps toward reclaiming our autonomy as conscious human actors rather than programmed NPCs. The choice between authentic consciousness and programmed behavior requires daily discernment… https://stylman.substack.com/p/engineering-reality-part-iii Mom of OpenAI Whistleblower Speaks Out on His Suicide Days After His Birthday
The family of former OpenAI researcher and company whistleblower Suchir Balaji has arranged for a second autopsy to be conducted
In an interview with Business Insider published on Thursday, Dec. 26, Poornima Ramarao spoke about her 26-year-old son, whose body was discovered in his San Francisco apartment on Nov. 26, according to CNBC. “He was upbeat and happy,” Ramarao said of Balaji. “What can go wrong within a few hours that his life is lost?”
Balaji had celebrated his 26th birthday on Nov. 21 with his friends while on vacation, the outlet reported. He later contacted Ramarao to let her know when his flight home was to take place, and he spoke on the phone with his father who wished him a happy birthday. https://people.com/mom-of-openai-whistleblower-who-died-by-suicide-days-after-his-birthday-speaks-out-8766991 ‘Godfather of AI’ issues new warning to humanity
Artificial intelligence could lead to human extinction within three decades with a likelihood of up to 20%, according to Geoffrey Hinton, a pioneering figure in AI and recipient of the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics. This marks an increase from a 10% risk, his estimate just a year ago. https://www.theburningplatform.com/2024/12/29/godfather-of-ai-issues-new-warning-to-humanity/ Catherine Austin Fitts, BITCOIN BAILOUT: Why a Bitcoin Strategic Reserve Is a Bailout of the Big Boys https://home.solari.com/bitcoin-bailout-why-a-bitcoin-strategic-reserve-is-a-bailout-of-the-big-boys/
The bear has been playing this game a very long time. Western satellites record construction of major Russian airbase in southeastern Libya https://en.topcor.ru/55187-zapadnye-sputniki-fiksirujut-stroitelstvo-krupnoj-rossijskoj-aviabazy-na-jugo-vostoke-livii.html
Who has been cutting the payroll checks? US, Turkey and Israel: How will the new Syria handle its ‘Greater Israel’ problem? https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20241231-how-will-the-new-syria-handle-its-greater-israel-problem/
Setting low expectations: Syria may take four years to organize elections — new authorities
“Before any real elections, we need to hold a general census,” Ahmed Sharaa pointed out https://tass.com/world/1895223Like Russia in the 1990s. Steal it & charge rent: Privatising Syria: US Plans Post-Assad Selloff https://scheerpost.com/2024/12/29/privatising-syria-us-plans-post-assad-selloff/
Google ads know the aisle you are shopping, already. AI may soon shape human decision-making, study warns
Cambridge University researchers say artificial intelligence could influence choices from voting to online shopping https://www.aa.com.tr/en/artificial-intelligence/ai-may-soon-shape-human-decision-making-study-warns/3438086 Israel threatens to escalate conflict with Yemen’s Houthis
Israel’s UN ambassador warned Yemen’s Houthis to stop missile attacks or face the same fate as Hamas, Hezbollah, and Assad. https://www.newarab.com/news/israel-threatens-escalate-conflict-yemens-houthisMilitary escalation | Turkish forces and their proxies fire heavy artillery shells on three villages, silos and water station in Al-Hasakah and Al-Raqqah countryside https://www.syriahr.com/en/352526/
al-Jolani/al-Sharaa offers Kurds to keep their weapons if they join his army. Syria’s de facto leader al-Sharaa holds talks with Kurds
In the past month, deadly clashes have erupted in northern Syria between Turkish-backed factions and the SDF.
Earlier Tuesday, Turkish-backed fighters killed three pro-Kurdish security personnel in Syria’s second city Aleppo, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
On Sunday, Sharaa told Al Arabiya TV that the Kurdish-led forces should be integrated into the new national army.
“Weapons must be in the hands of the state alone. Whoever is armed and qualified to join the defence ministry, we will welcome them,” he said. “Under these terms and conditions, we will open a negotiations dialogue with the SDF… to perhaps find an appropriate solution.” https://www.newarab.com/news/syrias-de-facto-leader-al-sharaa-holds-talks-kurdsThis fellow, Jolani/Sharaa seems to be supported long term by the US, Israel and Turkey. Syria to target Iran with $300 billion compensation demand https://www.iranintl.com/en/202412254184
It’s way too early to poke the bear. New Syrian leader wants close ties with Russia
Speaking of Moscow’s military bases in the country, Ahmed al-Sharaa has said Damascus has “strategic interests” with one of the world powers https://www.rt.com/news/610166-syrian-leader-russia-relations-bases/“I don’t think it means what you think it means.” Israel violates cease-fire with Lebanon 6 times on 32nd day
The Israeli military violated the cease-fire with Lebanon six times on its 32nd day, marking ongoing tensions in the region, the authorities said on Saturday.
Since the cease-fire was declared on November 27, the Israeli army has committed a total of 325 violations, resulting in 33 deaths and 37 injuries. https://www.aa.com.tr/en/middle-east/israel-violates-cease-fire-with-lebanon-6-times-on-32nd-day/3437038Israel might stay in southern Lebanon beyond 60-day cease-fire deal: Report https://www.yenisafak.com/en/world/israel-might-stay-in-southern-lebanon-beyond-60-day-cease-fire-deal-report-3696446
Uh, “Yes”? Did the U.S. Army THAAD System Just Fail its First Ever Combat Test? Why Advanced Yemeni Missiles Pose New Challenges
On December 26 the U.S. Army for the first time employed a THAAD surface-to-air missile system to attempt to neutralise an airborne target. The system’s first combat test has long been anticipated, with THAAD having first entered service in 2006 with the promise of revolutionising American ground forces’ ability to intercept intermediate range ballistic missiles in the upper atmosphere… While the primary threat against which THAAD was deployed was the Iranian ballistic missile arsenal, its target on December 26 was a ballistic missile fired by Yemeni Ansurullah Coalition forces, with an unnamed American military source cited by local media stating that it was not confirmed whether the system hit its target...
..Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment Bill LaPlante in November highlighted the growing consensus to this effect, stating that its arsenal included missiles which “can do things that are just amazing.” “I’m an engineer and a physicist, and I’ve been around missiles my whole career. What I’ve seen of what the Houthis [Ansurullah] have done in the last six months is something that — I’m just shocked,” he stated. https://militarywatchmagazine.com/article/us-army-thaad-fail-first-combat-test-yemeni-missiles US, UK renew airstrikes on Yemen
According to Arab sources, the warplanes of the United States and the United Kingdom bombed the southern Al Hudaydah province of Yemen two times.
There were no immediate reports of possible casualties...
..Yemeni Armed Forces have said that they won’t stop their attacks until unrelenting Israeli ground and aerial offensives in Gaza, which have killed at least 27,948 people and wounded another 67,459 individuals, come to an end. https://en.mehrnews.com/news/226271/US-UK-renew-airstrikes-on-YemenGood video of the shoot-down: Houthi forces use Soviet Kub SAM to down the 13th MQ-9 drone https://bulgarianmilitary.com/2024/12/29/houthi-forces-use-soviet-kub-sam-to-down-the-13th-mq-9-drone/
UN experts say Israel ‘must face consequences’ for undermining international law
A group of UN experts on Monday said that Israel “must face the consequences” of its campaign to undermine the legal framework for the protection of civilians in armed conflicts as the military aggression continues unabated…
..“Indiscriminate attacks, including on shelters for displaced persons and the Kamal Adwan Hospital and its vicinity, and the intensification of siege conditions on northern Gaza for the last three months run contrary to Israel’s legal duty to ensure the protection of the civilian population,” they said.
“We are disturbed that this siege, coupled with expanding evacuation orders, appears intended to permanently displace the local population as a precursor to Gaza’s annexation in further violation of international law.”
Although Israel’s presence in the occupied Palestinian territory was labeled “unlawful” by the International Court of Justice and International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defense minister, the experts said: “Nonetheless, Israel continues to face no real consequences, largely due to protection offered by its allies, who have gone so far as to join Israel in delegitimizing international institutions and besmirching Special Procedures mandate-holders.”
The experts reiterated the urgency of allowing independent and thorough investigations of serious violations of international law.
“Israel’s continued impunity sends a dangerous message suggesting that parties to other conflicts around the world need not comply with their obligations under international humanitarian law,” they said. “We cannot afford to lose the force of the multilateral system. Israel and its leaders must be held accountable.” https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20241230-un-experts-say-israel-must-face-consequences-for-undermining-international-law/ Israel won’t allow Kamal Adwan Hospital to reopen
Footage released by Israeli occupation forces captures the moments leading up to the detention of Dr Hussam Abu Safiya, director of Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza, during a raid on Friday. The video shows Abu Safiya entering an Israeli military vehicle. He was subsequently detained and his current whereabouts remain unknown. Israel has since said it detained 240 Palestinians, including hospital staff, during the raid on the medical facility, which was then set on fire and rendered out of service. https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20241230-report-israel-wont-allow-kamal-adwan-hospital-to-reopen/ Israeli army damages Baptist Hospital in Gaza
The Israeli army targeted the Baptist Hospital in Gaza on Sunday, escalating the ongoing destruction in the northern areas of the Gaza Strip, reports Anadolu Agency.
Eyewitnesses told Anadolu that an Israeli artillery shell struck the top floor of the Baptist Hospital.
The hospital remains the last functioning medical facility in northern Gaza after the Kamal Adwan Hospital was rendered inoperable after the Israeli army destroyed and partially burned the Kamal Adwan Hospital, according to Anadolu’s correspondent. https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20241229-israeli-army-damages-baptist-hospital-in-gaza/ Another Palestinian detainee from Gaza dies in Israeli custody
Ashraf Fakhri Abu Warda, 51, breathed his last at Soroka Medical Center in the southern city of Beersheba, two days after he was transferred from the Negev Desert Prison in southern Israel, the Commission of Detainees’ Affairs and the Palestinian Prisoner Society said in a joint statement…
..Palestinian detainee Ashraf abu Warda has been declared killed due to harsh torture in #Israeli investigation slaughterhouse...
..His family said that Abu Warda, who was detained by Israeli army forces in Gaza on 20 November 2023, had no known health issues before his detention. https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20241229-another-palestinian-detainee-from-gaza-dies-in-israeli-custody/ At least 7 killed in Israeli strike on hospital in Gaza City
At least seven people were killed in an Israeli airstrike on a hospital in Gaza City on Sunday, the Civil Defence Service said, Anadolu news agency reported.
Spokesman Mahmoud Basal said several people were also injured in the attack that targeted the upper floor of Al-Wafa Hospital in the centre of the city.
According to witnesses, an Israeli fighter jet hit the upper floor of the hospital, where scores of displaced civilians have taken shelter. https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20241229-at-least-7-killed-in-israeli-strike-on-hospital-in-gaza-city/
