Abraham Accords Archives - The Automatic Earth

Elon Musk Drops Truth Bomb: China’s Army of Brilliant, Relentless Talent Is Far More Powerful Than Most Outsiders Realize

Elon Musk, speaking candidly in a recent interview, cut through the noise:

“I want to emphasize the sheer number of smart, talented people in China who work… pic.twitter.com/YHkUStbn7J
— Alvin Foo (@alvinfoo) May 25, 2026

https://twitter.com/VigilantFox/status/2058898081328898210?s=20

What the US buys from China?

→ Smartphones: $51.5B 45% of all US imports
→ Computers: $36.7B 26%
→ Batteries: $18.1B 56%
→ Toys: $14.4B 76%
→ Video game consoles: $7.2B 78%

What China buys from the US:

→ Petroleum gases: $14.0B 16%
→ Soybeans: $12.0B 23%
→… pic.twitter.com/xIvOgBEfSQ
— Jack Prandelli (@jackprandelli) May 25, 2026

https://twitter.com/MehekCooke/status/2058909292388847966?s=20

“This will be the most important Deal that any of these Great, but always in Conflict Countries, will ever sign. “

• President Trump Updates on Current Status of Negotiations With Iran (CTH)

Both President Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio have provided updates on the current status of negotiations with the Iranian regime. President Trump delivered an update from his Truth Social Account:

PRESIDENT TRUMP – “Negotiations with the Islamic Republic of Iran are proceeding nicely! It will only be a Great Deal for all or, no Deal at all — Back to the Battlefront and shooting, but bigger and stronger than ever before — And nobody wants that!
During my discussions on Saturday with President Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud, of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, of The United Arab Emirates, Emir Tamim bin Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim bin Jaber Al Thani, and Minister Ali al-Thawadi, of Qatar, Field Marshal Syed Asim Munir Ahmed Shah, of Pakistan, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, of Türkiye, President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, of Egypt, King Abdullah II, of Jordan, and King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa, of Bahrain, I stated that, after all the work done by the United States to try and pull this very complex puzzle together, it should be mandatory that all of these Countries, at a minimum, simultaneously, sign onto the Abraham Accords.
Those Countries discussed are Saudi Arabia, The United Arab Emirates (already a Member!), Qatar, Pakistan, Türkiye, Egypt, Jordan, and Bahrain (already a Member!). It may be possible that one or two have a reason for not doing so, and that will be accepted, but most should be ready, willing, and able to make this Settlement with Iran a far more Historic Event than it would, otherwise, be. The Abraham Accords have proven to be, for the Countries involved (The United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco, Sudan, and Kazakhstan), a Financial, Economic, and Social BOOM, even during this time of Conflict and War, with the current Members never even suggesting leaving, or taking so much as even a pause.
The reason for this is that the Abraham Accords have been great for them, and will be even better for everybody, and bring true Power, Strength, and Peace to the Middle East for the first time in 5,000 years. It will be a Document respected like no other that has ever been signed, anywhere in the World. Its level of Importance and Prestige will be unparalleled! It should start with the immediate signing by Saudi Arabia and Qatar, and everybody else should follow suit. If they don’t, they should not be part of this Deal in that it shows bad intention.”
“In speaking to numerous of the Great Leaders mentioned above, they would be honored, as soon as our Document is signed, to have the Islamic Republic of Iran as part of the Abraham Accords. Wow, now that would be something special! This will be the most important Deal that any of these Great, but always in Conflict Countries, will ever sign. Nothing in the past, or in the future, will surpass it.
Therefore, I am mandatorily requesting that all Countries immediately sign the Abraham Accords, and that, if Iran signs its Agreement with me, as President of the United States of America, it would be an Honor to have them also be part of this unparalleled World Coalition. The Middle East would be United, Powerful, and Economically Strong, like perhaps no other area, anywhere in the World!
By copy of this TRUTH, I am asking my Representatives to begin, and successfully complete, the process of signing these Countries into the already Historic Abraham Accords. Thank you for your attention to this matter!
DONALD J. TRUMP
PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Secretary of State Marco Rubio spoke of the current status during his trip to India, shortly before his visit to the Taj Mahal. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio addressed reporters in New Delhi before departing for Agra, discussing Iran nuclear negotiations, Hezbollah tensions, India-U.S. relations, Pakistan concerns, and President Donald Trump’s stance on diplomacy. Rubio stressed that Washington will “give diplomacy every chance to succeed” while warning against a nuclear Iran and reaffirming strong ties with India and Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

But Abraham includes Israel?!

• Trump Tells Arab States Joining Abraham Accords Should Be ‘Mandatory’ (ZH)

President Trump is still trying to play the role of the globe’s ultimate deal-maker via Truth Social, using a mix of mandatory diplomacy and ultimate economic carrots, issuing a lengthy missive on Iran talks and the Abraham Accords on Monday morning. He introduced the post by stating that negotiations with Tehran are “proceeding nicely” before dropping a provocative diplomatic bombshell: a demand that a big list of major Middle Eastern nations immediately sign onto the Abraham Accords as a prerequisite for any broader peace framework.

The most unexpected aspect to the post laid out that if Tehran plays ball with Washington, Trump is dangling the prospect of the Islamic Republic itself joining the regional coalition, which it must be remembered hinges on ‘normalization’ with Israel.

“I stated that, after all the work done by the United States to try and pull this very complex puzzle together, it should be mandatory that all of these Countries, at a minimum, simultaneously, sign onto the Abraham Accords,” Trump wrote Monday, referencing a Saturday phone call with Arab leaders. Trump detailed further:
“Those Countries discussed are Saudi Arabia, The United Arab Emirates (already a Member!), Qatar, Pakistan, Türkiye, Egypt, Jordan, and Bahrain (already a Member!). It may be possible that one or two have a reason for not doing so, and that will be accepted, but most should be ready, willing, and able to make this Settlement with Iran a far more Historic Event than it would, otherwise, be. The Abraham Accords have proven to be, for the Countries involved (The United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco, Sudan, and Kazakhstan), a Financial, Economic, and Social BOOM, even during this time of Conflict and War, with the current Members never even suggesting leaving, or taking so much as even a pause.”
The above was coupled with the following ultimatum: “It should start with the immediate signing by Saudi Arabia and Qatar, and everybody else should follow suit. If they don’t, they should not be part of this Deal in that it shows bad intention.” And then he dropped the significant twist related to Tehran, in claiming that several of the regional leaders he spoke with “would be honored, as soon as our Document is signed, to have the Islamic Republic of Iran as part of the Abraham Accords. Wow, now that would be something special!”
Inviting Iran to join the Abraham Accords as a part of a broader final deal framework has resulted in a lot of head-scratching, given that just weeks ago Trump repeatedly threatened to bomb the country ‘back to the stone age’ and effectively end ‘civilization’ there. US rhetoric has been filled with scorn for Iran, and yet it is now being asked to join a grand US-backed alliance. Trump is his very long message issued a final directive in the following:
“Therefore, I am mandatorily requesting that all Countries immediately sign the Abraham Accords, and that, if Iran signs its Agreement with me, as President of the United States of America, it would be an Honor to have them also be part of this unparalleled World Coalition. The Middle East would be United, Powerful, and Economically Strong, like perhaps no other area, anywhere in the World! By copy of this TRUTH, I am asking my Representatives to begin, and successfully complete, the process of signing these Countries into the already Historic Abraham Accords.”
Meanwhile, look who’s fully on board and has returned to singing Trump’s praises (after expressing concern over a ‘bad’ Iran deal in the works)…

President Trump’s most recent proposal requiring expansion of the Abraham Accords as part of a negotiated settlement to the Iran conflict is simply brilliant and would result in the most significant change in the Middle East in thousands of years.

With Saudi Arabia and others…
— Lindsey Graham (@LindseyGrahamSC) May 25, 2026

Whether Trump can single-handedly force countries as far apart in their foreign policies as Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Turkey… or especially Iran, into a binding alignment with Tel Aviv remains a massive question mark (to put it mildly), or rather would be incredible and highly unrealistic. But with the threat of “shooting, but bigger and stronger than ever before” serving as the baseline, the White House has put regional powers officially on notice – in Trump’s logic at least.

That’s why Trump wants to make it mandatory

• Hamas’s Sponsors in Qatar and Iran Won’t Sign the Abraham Accords (Salgado)

President Donald Trump has a dream of the entire Middle East signing onto the Abraham Accords to make peace with Israel. However, two of the countries he specifically mentioned as candidates for signing the accords have made wiping Israel off the map a prime focus for both themselves and their terrorist proxies. Or perhaps this is his last peace offer before he resumes war on Iran’s regime.

Trump wants peace in the Middle East, and so do we all, as have Christians and Jews for the last two or three centuries. The problem is that we are fighting 1400 years of Islam with its sacred texts and laws mandating the killing of non-Muslims and especially Jews. This is not merely a regional dispute or quibbling over specific land patches, but an existential spiritual war. For more in-depth analysis, you can watch Dinesh D’Souza’s “The Dragon’s Prophecy.” So as laudable as Trump’s goal is, it is also improbable. Hopefully he understands that enough to use the Abraham Accords as a litmus test to find his true allies.
Trump called on the governments of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Iran to sign the Abraham Accords. All three are sharia dictatorships that enforce strict Muslim law and persecute Christians within their own countries. They also all have a history of hostility to Israel. Even Saudi Arabia has become more anti-Israel in the last year, and the Qatari regime is the most devoted sponsor of Hamas, while the Iranian regime backs Hamas, Hezbollah, and other terrorist groups that attack not only Israel, but other countries across the region and even around the entire world.
Yes, Qatar pours vast amounts of money into the United States, including our universities, but that is not because they’re our friends or Israel’s. It’s because the regime wants to transform our country into an anti-Israel, pro-Islamist sharia cesspool like its own. It explains why so many U.S. universities have a violent antisemitism problem. It explains why so many politicians both on the right and the left now fixate on hating Israel. I truly wish that America would move its base from Qatar, Hamas’s haven, to the Republic of Somaliland. Why should we endanger our men?
The Iranian regime does not even pretend to be anything but America’s worst enemy. After half a century of terrorism, the Iranian regime has repeatedly violated ceasefires, rejected every peace offer from Trump, and most recently put out a €50 million, or approximately $58 million, price on Trump’s head, just after an Iran-tied assassin made an attempt on Ivanka Trump.

#ICYMI: #Iranian Officials: €50 Million Reward For Assassinating President #Trump For His Killing Of Supreme Leader #Khamenei; 'Attack Washington' To Stop The Assassinations Of Iranian Regime Officials – Report & audio here https://t.co/3NiqMslH8Y #MEMRI pic.twitter.com/SheJS7Sff0
— MEMRI (@MEMRIReports) May 24, 2026

Again, perhaps this offer is Trump’s way of testing which Arab nations actually want peace with Israel and the U.S. and which are merely lying whenever necessary to hide their true goals. If so, I think he will discover quickly that Qatar and Iran, and possibly also Saudi Arabia, are more interested in destroying Israel than in stopping the missile fire.

It’s by design. Trump will have to break through it. Or the 21st century will arrive first before any deal.

• Report Details Painfully Slow Communication Within Iran’s Leadership (ZH)

According to a Sunday CBS News report citing US officials, Iran’s Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei is still in hiding in a secret location with extremely limited communication to the outside world. Driven underground by a pervasive fear within Tehran’s remaining leadership structure following relentless US and Israeli military strikes, the Supreme Leader is effectively isolated. This information is nothing ‘new’ – but even as talks with the US are now little by little reportedly proceeding – and as a ceasefire has been extended by weeks – the Ayatollah is clearly not taking any chances.

The CIA and Mossad have openly acknowledged that are actively looking for his hideout. But the report seeks to provide an explanation as to why Tehran’s response to any specific updated draft peace deal often takes several days. CBS detailed how the isolation is to keep Western intelligence from mapping his coordinates, which involves only being reached via a slow, archaic network of physical couriers designed to conceal his location.The report further alleges that these heightened security measures have significantly disrupted communication lines within Iran’s government, complicating active negotiations with the Trump administration and at times dragging responses to US peace proposals to a grinding halt.
But this is also to a large degree by design, to allow the different military units autonomy of command in the instance for more ‘decapitation strikes’ targeting governing centers in Tehran.The end result, says CBS, is that “When the U.S. sends proposed details, the difficulty in reaching the supreme leader means there can be a long delay before the U.S. receives a response, two of the officials said.” Yet, it wasn’t long ago that White House officials and mainstream pundits were insisting that the Ayatollah is not actually in charge of the country. But now assumptions have shifted back, apparently. The report claims further: At this point, most Iranian leaders don’t see daylight, spending weeks inside highly fortified bunkers and avoiding speaking to each other unless absolutely necessary, the sources said.
“Watching them try to figure out how to talk to each other is almost like watching a sitcom. They are completely exasperated,” one official said. The most cautious measures are being taken by the supreme leader. By design, even officials at the highest levels of the Iranian government don’t know where he is and have no way to contact him directly.
One official followed with: “This is why you see people saying things like, ‘The supreme leader has agreed to the framework,’ or ‘We’re waiting to hear back on the final deal points.’ Every piece of information he receives is dated and there’s a lot of latency to his responses,” one official said. It has become obvious that the negotiations process has become painfully slow and confused, and so this narrative by anonymous US officials seems an effort to lay blame squarely on the Iranians, instead of Washington’s own often shifting goals and conditions.

“Here’s your feel-good story of the day.”

• Tulsi Gabbard and Others Go Above and Beyond for a Gold Star Widow (Anderson)

Here’s your feel-good story of the day. On the night before Memorial Day, Sharrell Shaw posted a special request on social media. “This is probably a long shot, but if anybody happens to be in D.C. this weekend and plans on visiting Arlington, I would love to see a fresh photo of my husband’s grave in Section 60,” she said. “There’s just something about knowing people still stop by, still say his name, still remember.” The Gold Star widow’s husband was Staff Sergeant Alan W. Shaw. He was killed in action in Iraq on February 9, 2007. Alan was only 31, and while he’s from Little Rock, Ark., he’s buried Arlington in Section 60, Grave 8451 at Arlington.

Sharrell, who goes by @SharrellAnne2 on X, didn’t have high expectations, so I imagine she was mighty surprised on Monday when dozens of patriotic Americans visited her husband’s grave to pay their respects and take a photo for her, including members of the Donald Trump administration.
One of the first was outgoing Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard. A veteran herself, Gabbard posted a response to Sharrell, which included a picture of her placing a challenge coin on Alana’s headstone. “It was an honor to visit your husband’s grave today on your behalf, and to pay my respects,” she said. “It was wonderful to see the beautiful flowers representing many others who did the same. Our nation owes a debt of gratitude to those who made the ultimate sacrifice, and to the loved ones they left behind. Thank you for your service and sacrifice.”
https://twitter.com/TulsiGabbard/status/2058975663160226185?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E2058975663160226185%7Ctwgr%5E6d6b9c68cca1dcbff51b7208babf7e42178f4954%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fpjmedia.com%2Fsarah-anderson%2F2026%2F05%2F25%2Ftulsi-gabbard-goes-above-and-beyond-for-a-gold-star-widow-n4953238
Later, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth and his wife and children also stopped by to pay their respects.

. @SecWar @PeteHegseth and family honored Staff Sgt. James M. Malachowski, Staff Sgt. Alan W. Shaw and other warfighters in section 60 @ArlingtonNatl this afternoon. pic.twitter.com/Xaw9LNs8Rv
— Tami Radabaugh (@TRadabaughDOW) May 25, 2026

Journalist Nick Sortor stopped by and laid fresh roses on Alan’s grave. He also got the challenge coin and plans to mail it to Sharrell and her children.

Good rainy morning from Arlington National Cemetery.

Specifically, the final resting place of your hero husband Staff Sgt. Alan Shaw.

His grave now has some fresh roses placed in front of it, alongside two American flags, a reminder that Americans truly appreciate his… pic.twitter.com/HglXCilTeE
— Nick Sortor (@nicksortor) May 25, 2026

And soon, numerous others were stopping by Alan’s grave to pay their respects for someone who gave his life for our freedom, including this beautiful five-year-old girl. Her parents are definitely raising her right: By Monday evening, Sharrell’s X feed was filled with posts like these:

Thank you, Alan W Shaw! pic.twitter.com/DtS6aijYDJ
— Thomas Almanza (@ThomasAlmanza) May 25, 2026

And Alan’s grave was filled with flags, flowers, and love from so many people who’d never met him before. Sharrell responded with the following message: ”Last night, I made a simple request on X. I asked if anybody visiting Arlington National Cemetery for Memorial Day would stop by Alan’s grave and leave a photo for our family. What happened next honestly caught me off guard. By this afternoon, dozens of Americans from all walks of life had made the walk to Section 60 to visit SSG Alan W. Shaw. Veterans. Families. Complete strangers. People who had never met Alan, but chose to honor him anyway.
For one day on social media, people put aside the constant noise and negativity and came together for something bigger than themselves. My notifications filled with photos, kind messages, prayers, and stories from people honoring not just Alan, but so many of our fallen heroes. I don’t think people fully understand what moments like this mean to Gold Star families. The fear is never just losing them. It’s losing them slowly over time as the world moves on and fewer people remember their name. But today showed me that Alan will never be forgotten.
After years of watching social media reward some of the worst parts of humanity, today gave me a reminder that the good is still out there too. Thank you to every single person who stopped by to visit Alan today, said his name, shared his story, or took a moment to honor the fallen. This right here is the America Alan knew and loved enough to fight and die for. And today, y’all showed us all that it’s still here and it’s still worth fighting for. “
Sharrell also shared a photo of her family, including her husband and three children, as well as some memories and thoughts on what Memorial Day means to her family.

Memorial Day will always mean more to our family than cookouts or a long weekend.

It’s the sound of boots on concrete.
The weight of a folded flag in shaking hands.
Three children growing up with memories instead of a father.
A headstone in Section 60 with a date that changed… pic.twitter.com/djhACxpQBN
— SharrellAnne (@SharrellAnne2) May 24, 2026

All I can say is thank God for people like Alan and Sharrell Shaw who are willing to give so much for our country. And thank God for the patriots who went to Alan’s grave today to pay their respects — people from all walks of life, as Sharrell said, coming together to say thank you. This is what makes the United States great.

Or is it the opposite?

• This is a ‘Jackie Robinson Moment’ (Turleey)

“It’s a Jackie Robinson moment.” That declaration by House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries struck a curious chord because Jeffries was calling for Black athletes to boycott SEC conference teams to protest not the existence but the elimination of racial discrimination. Jeffries was upset that the court had ended racial gerrymandering designed to guarantee the election of non-white (and largely Democratic) House members. It was as if Jackie Robinson were to join a protest calling for the return of race-based discrimination in baseball.
Robinson played his first year in the Negro League with the Kansas City Monarchs before becoming the first African-American player in the Major Leagues when he took the field for the Brooklyn Dodgers on April 15, 1947. He ushered in a new era in baseball, in which race had no role in competitive sports. There would be no racial division of leagues, no race quotas and no segregation — just an equal playing field. Almost 50 years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court found that racial quotas in university admissions violated the 14th Amendment. The court later declared all racial preferences to be unconstitutional. Yet, for decades, a form of political affirmative action has persisted under the Voting Rights Act, where federal courts required racial gerrymandering to guarantee the election of minority members to Congress.
That ended with the Court’s decision in Louisiana v. Callais, which found that was also unlawful racial discrimination.The Callais decision brought something long missing from our constitutional jurisprudence: consistency. In 2007, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that “the way to stop discriminating on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.” Yet for decades, certain forms of racial discrimination were tolerated in the name of diversity or equity. The Callais decision put an end to this pretense and declared all such racial gerrymandering is illegal and discriminatory.
In response, the NAACP called for both players and fans to boycott SEC teams. MS NOW host Chris Hayes asked whether Jeffries would support the effort. Jeffries declared that black athletes should turn down potential career-making offers from SEC powerhouse teams to preserve political affirmative action. He said that existing students should “abandon SEC schools,” even though such moves might effectively end their careers. “There should be no athletic or sports participation. … You know, this is a Muhammad Ali moment. This is a Bill Russell moment. It’s a Jackie Robinson moment.”
Jeffries acknowledged that such moves will “require a level of courage and character and conviction,” but he added that it would be worth it. Politicians often ask others to make sacrifices that would benefit them, but this was truly the Super Bowl of self-serving political pitches. Some of these young athletes would give up their hopes for an NFL career, just to fight for racial gerrymandering so that Black voters can be either cracked or packed into districts. It is a system that has yielded Democratic districts for decades. But are these athletes’ careers really worth sacrificing to Jeffries’s all-consuming desire to be the next Speaker of the House?
Self-serving demands are nothing new for politicians. They often ask for sacrifices from others to further their own ambitions. This week, Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) called on Californians to boycott Chevron after the company launched a campaign reminding them that they are paying the highest gas prices in the nation. For years, Democrats have added gas taxes to both pay for bloated budgets and to encourage the expansion of public transportation. Environmental policies have devastated the state’s oil and gas industry and increased its reliance on foreign oil.
Newsom’s response was to call for Californians to potentially pay more at other stations, in order to punish Chevron for telling the truth about his policies. “Californians,” he tweeted, “if you’re hitting the road this holiday weekend, be sure to AVOID Chevron.” In fairness to Newsom, though, asking residents to potentially pay a little more at the pump to punish Chevron for embarrassing him is trivial in comparison to the ask of athletes to derail or discontinue their football careers.
What is particularly dishonest is how the Callais decision has been portrayed by many pundits, professors, and politicians. What neither the NAACP nor Jeffries will mention is that the Supreme Court preserved the original intent of the VRA to ban intentional racial discrimination in the design of electoral districts. Far from being “gutted,” the law will still be used to bar efforts to deny minority voters their equal voting rights. It will also now bar racial discrimination in any form in the design of these districts.
To invoke Jackie Robinson to support racial discrimination in politics is to denigrate his legacy. Ironically, Robinson was a Republican who spoke out against what he saw as the rise in racial politics in the 1960s in the Republican Party. He warned that there is “a new breed which is seeking to sell to Americans a doctrine which is as old as mankind — the doctrine of racial division.”
He added what could be the perfect retort to Jeffries today in the use of his name to support racial gerrymandering: “It would make everything I worked for meaningless if baseball is integrated but political parties were segregated.”
So, maybe Jeffries is right. This is “a Jackie Robinson moment” after all.

“I told my staff today that we need an ICD code for Trump Derangement Syndrome, because it is a real thing … It should be studied.” Robert F. Kennedy, Jr

• For the Honored Dead (James Howard Kunstler)

As of this holiday morning, America is informed that the negotiations between the US and Iran may take several more days to resolve. You better believe that Iran is going to make a deal. One way or another, they will give up their stash of sixty-percent enriched uranium. Nobody believes they would not attempt to make bombs with it, especially Mr. Trump. So, Iran will not be going back to whatever is considered normal life until they agree to give it up, and then make it happen. Iran is like a demon-possessed teenager with a firearm getting its head banged into the sidewalk. What part of give-it-up don’t you understand?

The news media apparently forgot what it broadcast a couple of weeks ago: Iran’s oil storage capacity was nearing the red-line. If the wells have to be shut-in, such is the geology that it would wreck the oil fields themselves. Perhaps this is happening now. Nobody is reporting on it. But the news media doesn’t really report on anything. It opines. It spins. It constructs story-lines for advantage, it gaslights, it perverts the consensus about reality out of existence, it just plain lies.
If Iran is jerking the US around again, this will be the last time. They will prove to be negotiation-incapable, as the Russian phrase goes. They will punch their own express ticket back to the 12th century, lights out, bridges down across the rugged terrain, back to donkey carts, magic lamps, and vizeers instead of mullahs.
Why does America’s lefty-left beat its drum for an Iranian victory when 1) it’s not happening, and 2) it’s hardly in the interest of Western Civ for anything like that to happen? You can conclude that they hate and despise Western Civ, especially anything that resembles America’s traditional sense-of-self: a republic based on civic and economic liberty. Liberty means individuals making their own decisions within an armature of laws written in good faith, to mean what they say.
The Lefty-left is mainly about acquiring power through bad faith in order to push everyone around, tell them what they’re allowed to want out of life, and severely punish anyone who objects to that treatment. What’s often overlooked is the role that sadism plays in the psychology of the Lefty-left. They seem to love it when illegal aliens rape and strangle 19-year-old American girls. (You don’t hear them deplore it, do you? Their house-organ, The New York Times, won’t even report it.) More than anything they want to subject you to the most savage humiliations.
We are at a dangerous pass this Memorial Day. Mr. Trump and his people are methodically rearranging the works to expel these grifting demons. Their resistance to being expelled will manifest in ever more dirty fighting as spring blossoms into a summer of violent “activism.” They will try as hard as possible to wreck the country’s 250th birthday celebrations. It might look like civil war. They will not stop trying kill Donald Trump and possibly other figures around him. Even if they manage that, it will not stop what it is coming for them.
This time around nobody believes their sob stories, their whining about “oppression,” their bullshit about “equity” and “justice.” This time, they will not be allowed to get away with sheer lawlessness. They will not be able to pass off fake martyrs such as George Floyd. The elections this time — if they can happen — will be clean and fair. That can be the only way they will be allowed to happen.
This will be the most emphatic counter-revolution in modern history, a complete rejection of childish unreality — the cavalcade of absurdities you have been told to swallow for a mad decade: that you can change your sex “assigned at birth.” (Assigned by whom? By some cosmic committee of gender komisars?) That merit has no merit (don’t be good at anything). That men and maleness represent some inferior way of being human? That people from outside American society, from faraway lands, deserve to live here under a special gift economy of vast subsidies, at your expense, to set up antagonistic counter-cultures? That words don’t mean what they mean?
Expect the pace to quicken now, even with Tulsi Gabbard gone. Her operational deputy DNI, Aaron Lukas, is a proven, capable warrior. Most of the critical information has already been recovered from the Deep State’s vaults, hidden rooms, burn bags, and SCIFs. The adjudication of crimes against our country will be spooling out the next hundred days as a vivid and orderly counterpoint to whatever nose-ringed chaos the Democrats send out into the streets. The republic will celebrate its 250th birthday by carrying-on as it was designed to do, while the demons skulk to back into the shadows until the next great turning.

“The UK, France, Spain, Italy, and Canada “aren’t very enthusiastic about the idea,” a source within the bloc has told the paper”

• Five NATO Countries Block Plan For Mandatory Ukraine Funding – Telegraph (RT)

The UK, France, Spain, Italy, and Canda have rejected a proposal for NATO member states to spend 0.25% of their GDP on military assistance to Ukraine, The Telegraph has reported. NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte was hoping that mandatory funding for Kiev would be approved at the bloc’s summit in Ankara, Türkiye on July 7-8, The Telegraph said in an article on Sunday. A NATO insider told the paper that Britain, France, Spain, Italy, and Canada “aren’t very enthusiastic about the idea.” Out of the 32 member-states, the proposal was only supported by seven nations, all of which already spend 0.25% or more of their GDP on assisting Ukraine, The Telegraph said.

According to data from the Kiel Institute, the Netherlands, Poland, and the Nordic and Baltic countries currently spend 0.25% of their GDP or more on arming Kiev. Last week, Rutte conceded that the plan did not have the unanimous backing within NATO required for it to be accepted. “I don’t think this one will be proposed” in the Turkish capital, he told journalists. Mandatory funding had been intended to serve as a show of continued commitment to Ukraine by the bloc’s European members after American assistance to the government of Vladimir Zelensky ebbed significantly under US President Donald Trump, it added. A British foreign office spokesperson told the paper that “the UK continues to engage with NATO allies on all proposals to ensure the alliance can best support Ukraine.”
Moscow has repeatedly decried Western aid to Kiev, saying that it will not prevent it from achieving its goals in the Ukraine conflict and only prolongs the fighting, increasing the risk of a direct clash between Russia and NATO. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said last week that NATO has been using Ukraine “with the blatant goal of creating problems for the existence of our country and setting up a springboard for threats to our security right on our borders.” The idea of “decolonizing” Russia has not yet been given up by the bloc, he warned.

Hawaii is far away, but it’s still US. And she can’t stay in Washington.

• The US Admin Lost A Patriot and Truth-teller In Tulsi Gabbard (Scott Ritter)

Once the darling of the Democratic Party, Tulsi Gabbard had a hard-earned reputation as a no-nonsense proponent of fact-based truth, which she assiduously incorporated into her eloquent defense of Constitutional due process and moral integrity when it came to the national security of the United States.

With a resume that boasts years of honorable military service, including a tour of duty in war-torn Iraq, Gabbard was a staunch advocate of looking out for the welfare of the men and women in the US military – whom she regularly referred to as her “brothers and sisters in arms.” She, as much as anyone, understood the age-old mantra, “if you lie, they die” when it came to the relationship between intelligence and troops in the field. She held herself to a high standard and applied that same standard to those she worked with.
Her appointment as the Director of National Intelligence was seen by many as a bright shining light of hope when it came to injecting fact-based truths into a Trump administration known to be loose with the facts. Her resignation this past week, ostensibly for personal reasons, is a great disappointment to those Americans who were looking to her for clarity and truth in a world that has degenerated into lie-fueled chaos.
Tulsi Gabbard was always somewhat politically inclined. In 2002 she followed in her father’s footsteps, running for and winning a seat in the Hawaii State Legislature, becoming the youngest woman ever to hold a seat there. Gabbard joined the Hawaiian Army National Guard shortly after winning office, and deployed to Iraq shortly thereafter, where she earned the Combat Action Badge in the performance of her duties. Gabbard’s tenure as a state legislature was cut short by her military service (she was not allowed to vote on issues while on active service), but in 2011, following a second tour of duty in the Middle East, Gabbard ran for and won a seat on the Honolulu City Council. Shortly thereafter, the Congressional seat for Hawaii’s 2nd Congressional District became vacant, and Gabbard threw her hat in the ring, winning handily. She was quickly seen as a rising star in Democratic national politics and was invited to speak at the 2012 Democratic National Convention.
As a US congresswoman, Gabbard served on several prominent committees related to national security, including Homeland Security, Armed Services, and Foreign Affairs. Her political profile was rising, and in 2013 she was appointed as the vice chair of the Democratic National Committee (DNC). Gabbard resigned from this position in 2016, during a contentious presidential primary campaign where she accused the DNC Chairwoman, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, of favoring the candidacy of Hillary Rodham Clinton over that of Bernie Sanders. Gabbard went on to endorse Sanders in the primary (he lost). While many viewed her resignation as the political kiss of death, Gabbard’s reputation for integrity and courage was burnished, paving the way for her to enter the 2020 US presidential race.
The 2020 presidential campaign saw Gabbard’s willingness to challenge the conventional narrative regarding US national security priorities, especially when it came to America’s involvement in the seemingly endless wars in the Middle East, transforming her into a target for the mainstream American media, which had a record of supporting establishment candidates and promoting establishment narratives. Her visit to Syria in 2017 as a member of Congress became fodder for her political opponents and their mainstream media allies who sought to paint Gabbard – who had served in combat – as being sympathetic to Islamic terrorists and Middle Eastern dictators.
Gabbard’s pragmatic approach to US-Russian relations likewise opened her up to being labeled as an agent of Russian disinformation and as someone under the control of Russian President Vladimir Putin (Hillary Clinton led the charge in this regard, infamously calling Gabbard a “Russian asset”). She was never able to gain traction amongst a Democratic constituency that had long been under the sway of the Democratic Party’s elite, and she ended her presidential bid in March 2020.
Gabbard became active on social media, starting her own podcast and frequently interacting with popular conservative media personalities such as Tucker Carlson. During this time, her resentment toward the Democratic Party came to a head, and in 2022 she announced she was going independent. As an independent, she began gravitating toward the policies and positions espoused by Donald Trump, between presidencies at the time, and came out in support of several pro-Trump candidates during the 2022 midterm elections. Gabbard’s star was rising among the ranks of pro-Trump Republicans and following a speaking appearance at the 2024 CPAC conference, Gabbard’s name was often mentioned as a possible Vice President selection for Donald Trump, who had thrown his hat into the ring for the 2024 Presidential race.
While Gabbard wasn’t asked to be Trump’s Vice President (that honor went to J.D. Vance), she and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. were brought into the campaign and played a huge role in bringing out a very substantive independent voting constituency for Trump, helping push him comfortably ahead of the Democratic Party nominee, Kamala Harris. In October 2024 Gabbard joined the Republican Party and, following Trump’s victory in November, was nominated by the president-elect for the position of Director of National Intelligence, America’s senior-most intelligence official.

‘Should shut his stupid mouth’

“Mike Pompeo has no idea what the f— he’s talking about,” White House Communications Director Steven Cheung. wrote on X.

• White House Rips Pompeo For Prematurely Criticizing Iran Deal (JTN)

Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo ripped the reported contents of a potential Iran agreement that’s still being negotiated by President Donald Trump and his team, warning that the emerging framework resembles the Iran deal from the Obama administration. Some reports said that Iran and the U.S. might agree to a 60-day ceasefire while negotiations over Tehran’s nuclear program continue. “The deal being floated with Iran seems straight out of the Wendy Sherman-Robert Malley-Ben Rhodes playbook,” Pompeo wrote on X, describing the reported framework as “not remotely America First.”

He said the U.S. should “deny Iran access to money” and “take out enough Iranian capability so it cannot threaten our allies in the region.” Pompeo’s criticism drew a fiery response from White House Communications Director Steven Cheung. “Mike Pompeo has no idea what the f— he’s talking about,” Cheung wrote on X. “He should shut his stupid mouth and leave the real work to the professionals. He’s not read into anything that’s happening, so how would he know.”

“Cruz warns of Senate ‘revolt’ if White House, DOJ refuse to revise $1.8 billion weaponization fund “

• Cruz Warns of Senate ‘Revolt’ Over $1.8 Billion Weaponization Fund (JTN)

Cruz described a meeting between the Senate GOP and Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche as “one of the roughest meetings I’ve seen in my entire time in the Senate”Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, is warning the White House that it could face a “full-on revolt in the Senate” unless the Trump administration revises a controversial $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund that has triggered growing backlash among Republican lawmakers.

The dispute erupted after Senate Republicans held a tense closed-door meeting with acting Attorney General Todd Blanche to discuss the fund, which was created as part of a settlement tied to President Donald Trump dropping lawsuits against the IRS and other federal entities. Speaking afterward on his podcast, Cruz described the meeting as “one of the roughest meetings I’ve seen in my entire time in the Senate,” saying Republican senators were “screaming” at Blanche over concerns the fund could become politically toxic ahead of the midterm elections.
“If the administration doesn’t fix this, they’ve got a full-on revolt in the Senate,” Cruz said.The proposed fund is intended to compensate individuals the administration says were victims of government “weaponization” or politically motivated prosecutions. “The legal basis is quite sound,” Cruz said.Several GOP senators have objected to the lack of congressional oversight and the possibility that people convicted in connection with the Jan. 6 Capitol riot could receive payouts, reports have said.

The graph is painfully clear. But everybody believes the climate religion.

• It Was Never About The Climate (Silvio Canto Jr)

Here is a question for your long weekend: Why haven’t you ever seen a climate change protest before the Chinese embassy anywhere? Why is it always the US or capitalism messing up the environment? Why don’t they show up at all when China is a bigger threat to clean air than any US city?The answer is obvious, but I’ll say it.

It was never about the climate but rather capitalism or the US. Check this out: In 2024, climate activists in New York City protested alongside anti-Israel protesters at a rally headlined “Climate Justice Means Free Palestine.”nLast year, climate change celebrity icon Greta Thunberg tried to storm Israel by sea on a flotilla protesting the country’s war in Gaza, yelling “Free! Free! Palestine!” when she was refused entry. And, last week, activists from CodePink, a far-left feminist activist group that has received funds from an American expatriate, Neville Roy Singham, living in Shanghai, took a break from their rallies supporting the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Cuba Communist Party to circulate a video on Instagram, attacking a Utah data center project backed by investor Kevin O’Leary.
That’s a busy bunch protesting against the West. Maybe someone should tell them that the clean air in Cuba is due to a collapse of industrial activity. Or we can always remind them of how they treat gays in Palestine or women in general. As the article points out, these marches were always about hating the West and what we stand for. So don’t be fooled by the slogans or some well-meaning people showing up to protest. The root of all of this is hatred of the West and our individual freedoms.

This graph should be shown to every school child! We need to reverse the climate brainwashing. https://t.co/cajGWB9xg6
— Dr Jennine Morgan (@jemmm85517813) May 25, 2026

A billion a month.

• Musk: SpaceX-xAI Is Actively Seeking More AI Compute Customers (DCD)

SpaceX’s xAI subsidiary is looking to score more data center compute lease deals, after it sold all of the capacity of Colossus I to Anthropic. That deal will see Grok’s competitor pay $1.25 billion a month over the next three years for the 300MW facility. The deal can be terminated by either party, with 90 days’ notice. “As the recently expanded partnership with Anthropic demonstrates, SpaceX is offering AI compute as a service at significant scale,” CEO Elon Musk said. “We are in discussions with other companies to do the same. “Over time, especially with orbital data centers, we expect to serve AI at extremely high scale.”

In April, AI code editing startup Cursor announced that it would also be using space at xAI data centers – although SpaceX is set to acquire the business within 30 days of its IPO. SpaceX is expected to go public on June 12, with the company looking to raise upwards of $75 billion. IPO documents reveal that xAI spent $12.7bn on AI infrastructure in 2025, and has already invested $7.7bn in the first quarter of 2026.Alongside the first Colossus data center, xAI is developing Colossus 2. It acquired the land last March, and the data center came online in January. Despite Musk claiming it offered 1GW of capacity at launch, satellite imagery taken in January reportedly showed it had cooling equipment installed capable of managing 350MW.
The IPO document makes multiple mentions of the 1GW of data center capacity at SpaceX’s disposal, but describes it as “nameplate compute draw.” It explains this is calculated by taking “the number of GPUs installed in our data centers at the end of the period multiplied by their respective all-in power draw. According to a chart in the IPO filing, the company’s nameplate compute draw was 1GW in March 2026, up from 300MW a year before. However, it also notes that this figure “reflects installed capacity and does not represent actual power consumption or utilization.” So while the GPUs are installed, they may not yet be powered up, suggesting the company’s actual useful compute power could be significantly less than 1GW.
How much capacity at the xAI data centers is actually reserved for Grok, the company’s own generative AI effort, is unclear. The platform has seen dwindling usage, while increasing numbers of staff have left the company – including all non-Musk co-founders. SpaceX, meanwhile, plans to launch up to one million space data center satellites in the years to come.

https://twitter.com/mamboitaliano__/status/2058575591217963296?s=20

Elon Musk: "There's a very high probability we're living in a simulation."

In a conversation with Nikhil Kamath, Musk explained how video games evolved from Pong to photorealistic worlds with millions of players in just 50 years. He noted that if this trend continues, games will… pic.twitter.com/wrdOh4QBxb
— Interstellar (@InterstellarUAP) May 25, 2026

This graph should be shown to every school child! We need to reverse the climate brainwashing. https://t.co/cajGWB9xg6
— Dr Jennine Morgan (@jemmm85517813) May 25, 2026

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Debt Rattle October 12 2023

Oct 122023

October 12, 2023 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 8:25 am Finance Tagged with: Abraham Accords, beheaded babies, Biden, Civil War, DSA, Gaza, Hamas, Israel, smartest people, Zelensky 38 Responses »

Pablo Picasso Self portrait with palette 1906

• Israeli Assault on Gaza is Doomed to Fail (Scott Ritter)

• Western Virtue Signaling Goes Hypersonic Over Israel (Marsden)

• The Silence Of The Bears – Russia Is Reorienting Towards The Arabs (Helmer)

• Russia Always Supported Establishment Of Palestinian State – Putin (TASS)

• How A US ‘Peace Plan’ Brought War To Israel’s Doorstep (Fomenko)

• Source of Dubious ‘Beheaded Babies’ Claim Is Israeli Settler Leader (GZ)

• Extensive Gas Reserves Off The Gaza Coastline (Monotti)

• Scott Ritter: Untracked US Arms to Client Regimes Land in Terrorist Hands (Sp.)

• Western Political System Doesn’t Bring Smartest People To The Top – Putin (RT)

• Zelensky ‘Starting To Annoy’ Everyone In US, Europe – Peskov (TASS)

• Elon Musk Predicts ‘Civil War’ In Europe (RT)

• Biden Classified Doc Scandal Deepens (ZH)

• VP Biden Emailed About Son’s Business 29,000+ Times (Fed.)

• The EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA) May Undermine Fundamental Rights (BR)

Nap/Ritter

Assad

President of Syria, Bashar Al-Assad, gave a masterful speech at the start of the Russian Ukrainian conflict.

"The West has proven that it does not have friends or enemies. It only has one enemy – anyone who stands in the way of its material interests."

The lie that the WEST… pic.twitter.com/fkJGaSXaCY

— DD Geopolitics (@DD_Geopolitics) October 11, 2023

Rand Paul
https://twitter.com/i/status/1712108710909091959

RFK

My first campaign ad! What do you guys think — run it during the Super Bowl? #Kennedy24 pic.twitter.com/PZ60UV9XQZ

— Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@RobertKennedyJr) October 11, 2023

“The Israeli military today is more comfortable making TikTok videos and posting Instagram photographs..”

• Israeli Assault on Gaza is Doomed to Fail (Scott Ritter)

Israel has amassed some 300,000 troops, armed with tanks, infantry fighting vehicles, and artillery, and supported by helicopters and fixed wing aircraft. Their mission is to secure the perimeter around Gaza to make sure that Hamas fighters are not able to sortie forth and commit atrocities against the citizens of Israel like those that occurred on October 7 and 8. At some point it is estimated that these troops will be ordered into Gaza for the purpose of destroying Hamas as an organization. But the sad fact is that the Israeli Army today is not up to such a mission. It lacks the training and fortitude for a task like that, regardless of outcome, and will cost Israel thousands of lives if seen to fruition. Any Israeli assault on Gaza is doomed to fail before it even begins.

A short look back at the preparedness and training of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) helps underscore the reasoning behind such a bleak assessment. Earlier this year, over the course of two weeks, stretching from late May through early June, the IDF carried out a massive exercise, code named “Firm Hand,” which tested the Israeli capability to wage war on multiple fronts. Like a similar exercise held the year before, code named “Chariots of Fire,” the “Firm Hand” event focused on a major air campaign being waged against Iran, and a major ground war being waged against Hezbollah, in northern Israel/southern Lebanon. Both exercises envisioned that there would be outbreaks of localized violence in the West Bank and along the Gaza Strip that would need to be contained by forces allocated to the Central and Southern military commands, respectively.

The focus of effort for both exercises was the Northern Command, and more specifically, the border with Lebanon. There, beyond the border, were located the forces of Hezbollah, a Lebanese political party which maintained a militia larger, better trained, and better equipped than most armies. Israel fought a 34-day war with Hezbollah in August 2006, pitting a force that had grown to over 30,000 troops, backed by tanks, artillery, helicopters, and fixed wing aircraft, against a lightly armed unit of around 3,000 fighters. The war was an unmitigated disaster for the IDF. Hezbollah commanders found that Israeli troops were by and large poorly organized and disciplined, with very little training that was relevant to the rigors of modern war. Israeli tank operators were unfamiliar with tactics relevant to the terrain they were operating in, leaving themselves open to Hezbollah attacks that ended up destroying 20 of Israel’s vaunted Merkava tanks.

Israel has been struggling to overcome the stain of its 2006 defeat at the hands of Hezbollah. In 2016, the IDF embarked on Project Gideon, a five-year plan designed to reconfigure and retrain the Israeli Army so that it would not repeat the mistakes of 2006. When Project Gideon was completed, Israel then embarked on what it called the “Tnufa” (“Momentum”) plan, intended to build on the changes effected under Project Gideon. Part of the Tnufa plan is something called Ground Horizon, a series of technical innovations designed to make Israeli ground forces more effective. The IDF forces participating in both the Chariots of Fire and Firm Hand exercises had been at the receiving end of the Project Gideon/Tnufa/Ground Horizon changes. Two of the IDF’s premier units, the 91st “Galilee” Division, responsible for defending against Hezbollah from Lebanon, and the 36th Ga’ash (“Golan”) Armored Division, which is responsible for the Syrian border, took the lead in the exercises.

They carried out a multidivisional exercise where they conducted combined arms training against a Hezbollah-like foe. The Central Command and Southern Command practiced several counterterrorism exercises which emphasized the security of residents in Judea and Samaria. When the Firm Hand exercise was completed, the IDF high command declared it a success. They had not exercised against an event like the Hamas attacks of October 7-8 of this year. Urban combat is extraordinarily difficult. It is made even more so when a defender can settle in amongst the rubble of a destroyed city. Ask the Germans at Stalingrad. Ask the French, British, Indians, and Poles who fought at Monte Casino. Ask either the Ukrainians or Russians about Mariupol and Artemovsk (Bakhmut).

The Israeli military today is more comfortable making TikTok videos and posting Instagram photographs than they are in perfecting the skillsets needed to close with and destroy your enemy through firepower and maneuver. This is a military that, with a few exceptions found in the elite reconnaissance units of the IDF, has grown accustomed to a peacetime ritual more akin to the life of a corrections officer than soldier. The IDF has become experts at arresting children, beating up women, and murdering unarmed men. Digging a competent enemy out of the rubble of a destroyed city, especially when they have prepared and organized for such a battle, is deadly work. The Israeli troops who have been assembled outside of Gaza are not ready for this fight. They are not trained or equipped for this fight. They are not psychologically prepared for this fight.

“..some egghead in Brussels is watching coverage of all the gas guzzling pickup trucks used by Hamas to raid villages and kidnap people and asking, “What’s the carbon footprint on those?”

• Western Virtue Signaling Goes Hypersonic Over Israel (Marsden)

“Israel has the right to defend itself – today and in the days to come. The European Union stands with Israel,” tweeted European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, effectively blessing a carte blanche response by the notoriously measured and restrained Israeli leadership in response to the Hamas attacks. “Who do you think you are? You’re unelected, and have no authority to determine EU foreign policy, which is set by @EUCouncil,” replied Irish MEP Clare Daly. “Europe does NOT ‘stand with Israel’. We stand for peace. You do not speak for us. If you’ve nothing constructive to say, and you clearly don’t, shut up.” In a single tweet, von der Leyen managed to position all of Europe as more militant than even the editorial staff of one of Israel’s main national newspapers, Haaretz, which placed blame for the attacks squarely on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, accusing him of “annexation and dispossession” which “openly ignored the existence and rights of Palestinians.”

The implication is that no action occurs in a vacuum absent the risk of sparking a reaction. The danger of Europe’s unelected Queen Ursula unilaterally launching hypersonic virtue signaling missiles in a knee-jerk emotional response is that it can’t possibly substitute for foreign policy decided in more sobering moments. Yet these days, more often than not, it’s the only kind of foreign policy we get, on everything from Israel to Ukraine. In yet another example of symbolism getting ahead of policy pragmatism, the EU announced withdrawal of its support for Palestine … before walking back the move just hours later. On Monday, Israel’s defense minister announced that the IDF was going to blockade Gaza even more than usual by preventing any entry of water, food, fuel, and electricity.

And just a couple hours later, EU Neighborhood and Enlargement Commissioner Oliver Varhelyi said the bloc was joining the cause – by withholding its humanitarian funding for the Palestinian people. Germany and Austria were the first to get the ball rolling on funding withdrawal. However, a few hours later, the EU aid freeze was reversed by the bloc’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, after an apparent epiphany that it would only end up “punishing all the Palestinian people” and would have “only further emboldened terrorists.” There’s no way Brussels may have been inadvertently funding those terrorists in the first place, is there? [..] Or maybe, given all the climate-conscious verbiage attached to the aid, the EU just got angry that Hamas’ hang gliders were motorized. You just know that some egghead in Brussels is watching coverage of all the gas guzzling pickup trucks used by Hamas to raid villages and kidnap people and asking, “What’s the carbon footprint on those?”

All the virtue signaling in the world can’t now compensate for a lack of due diligence that the schizophrenic withdrawal and subsequent reinstatement of Palestinian funding suggests. It wouldn’t be the first time that innocent people suffered because of Brussels’ incompetence. Just ask the people of the entire European bloc currently facing seemingly endless economic hardship so their leaders can keep patting themselves on the back for supporting Ukraine. And just like in Ukraine, Brussels doesn’t seem too interested in availing itself of an opportunity to play any kind of a mitigating or thoughtful role amid this conflict, but is rather taking its usual seat in riding shotgun to the US neocons on whatever the current thing happens to be.

While even Secretary of State Antony Blinken says that there’s no “smoking gun” tying Iran to the latest Hamas attacks, that hasn’t stopped the usual neocon warmongers on the American side of the Transatlantic alliance from substituting sloganeering for actual policy, either – in favor of Iranian regime change, of course. “This is one of history’s best cases for regime change,” said former US National Security Advisor John Bolton. Because, when it comes to drumming up Iranian regime change, neocons are suddenly willing to take Hamas’ word to the bank as their trustworthy source for Iran’s involvement. “The Biden Administration should get a spine and pin the blame on Tehran where it belongs,” Bolton later added. It “belongs,” facts and policy be damned, because it fits the radical neocon narrative, even if it ends up being to the detriment of American lives and interests.

“..Erdogan and Putin are contemplating a Turkish ship convoy of aid to Gaza, protected from Israeli attack by the Russian Navy from its Tartous base on the Syrian coast, and by the Russian Air Force from Hmeimim..”

• The Silence Of The Bears – Russia Is Reorienting Towards The Arabs (Helmer)

From a policy of equivalence and equivocation between Israel and the Arabs, Russia has reached the policy of engagement on the Arab side. The driver has been the US war to defeat and destroy Russia through the Ukraine. The longer the new Palestinian war lasts, the more clearly Russian military and political strategy in the Middle East will pursue a new anti-American line. The consequences are as great as the defeat of the US and NATO which Russia is now inflicting in Europe, and of the western sanctions war in the global commodity markets and the trading lanes at sea. “We are witnessing a sharp deterioration of the situation in the Middle East,” Putin said in his public welcome for Iraq’s prime minister, Muhammed Shia al-Sudani, at the Kremlin on Tuesday morning.

“I think that many will agree with me that this is a clear example of the United States’ failed policy in the Middle East, which tried to monopolise the settlement process, but, unfortunately, was not concerned with finding compromises acceptable to both sides, but, on the contrary, put forward its own ideas about how this should be done and put pressure on both sides, truly both — first on one, then on the other. But each time without considering the fundamental interests of the Palestinian people, bearing in mind, first of all, the need to implement the decision of the UN Security Council on the creation of an independent, sovereign Palestinian state.” The Foreign Ministry followed Putin later in the afternoon, when the regular weekly briefing by Maria Zakharova was advanced several days early in order to report there have been direct negotiations with the leaders of Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, the Arab League, Iran, and Turkey – not with Israel.”*

“The US bet on the ‘freezing’ of the status quo and the promotion of ‘economic peace’, as well as the use of collective formats tailored for crisis response, has not justified itself,” Zakharova said. “Everyone sees the result…The statements of American politicians and public figures calling for ethnic cleansing in the region look monstrous. They openly call for one group of people [to be] near-doomed to complete destruction. Once again, aggression, violation of the rule of law, and the caveman’s hatred have emerged on the surface of the American declarations of good looks and human rights dogmas.” In the first direct Russian warning to the US Navy force in the Eastern Mediterranean, Zakharova added: “So far we see that the situation is developing along the path of escalation. There is a great risk of involving third forces in this conflict. And this is fraught with long-term consequences for the region and for the world.”

Putin followed in the evening on the telephone with the Turkish President, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. “The need for an immediate ceasefire by both sides and the resumption of the negotiation process was emphasised,” according to the Kremlin’s communiqué. “Mutual readiness to actively contribute to this was expressed…Separate issues of Russian-Turkish cooperation in various fields were also touched upon.” Erdogan’s press release was more revealing. He and Putin had “touched upon what initiatives can be taken to meet humanitarian needs in the region, as the Turkish president told Putin that targeting civilian settlements is worrying and Türkiye does not welcome such move.” Erdogan’s twitter announcement adds: “President Erdogan and President Putin of Russia also exchanged views on potential initiatives to meet humanitarian needs in the region.”

This is a hint that Erdogan and Putin are contemplating a Turkish ship convoy of aid to Gaza, protected from Israeli attack by the Russian Navy from its Tartous base on the Syrian coast, and by the Russian Air Force from Hmeimim. This humanitarian operation by sea would aim at breaking the blockade of the coast by the Israelis, and running the gauntlet of the USS Gerald Ford and its squadron further offshore. If this operation, a reminder of the Gaza Flotilla of 2010, is in planning now – the open signals are warning Washington and the US Navy to expect it – then the confrontation, and the risk to the US and Israel of strategic defeat at sea, are unprecedented.

“..those who have been trying for decades to solve this problem by force have the upper hand. Unfortunately, this leads to such tragic events as we are witnessing now..”

• Russia Always Supported Establishment Of Palestinian State – Putin (TASS)

Russia has always advocated the implementation of the UN Security Council’s decision on the creation of an independent Palestinian state, Russian President Vladimir Putin said at the plenary session of the Russian Energy Week. “We have always supported the implementation of the decisions of the UN Security Council, I mean, first of all, the creation of an independent Palestinian state. This is the root of all problems,” Putin pointed out. He also said that Russia’s position on the settlement of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict did not emerge as a result of the recent tragic events, but was formed over the past decades. “And this position is well known both to the Israeli side and to our friends in Palestine,” the Russian president added.

He noted that the Palestinian-Israeli issue has been accompanied and aggravated by “mediation activities” of a number of countries in recent years. According to the Russian president, there are still political figures and experts in these countries today who believe that it is necessary to follow the path of creating an independent state. “And there are such people in Israel. But those who have been trying for decades to solve this problem by force have the upper hand. Unfortunately, this leads to such tragic events as we are witnessing now,” Putin said.

Abraham Accords. Trump, Kushner, Pompeo.

• How A US ‘Peace Plan’ Brought War To Israel’s Doorstep (Fomenko)

Conflict between Israel and Palestine is about as common as the sun rising in the East, but this time it is different, not only because of the frightening number of victims on both sides over just a few days, but because such conflicts have not constituted a formal war since 1973, and the legally recognized territory of Israel has not been invaded by an enemy since 1948. The stakes are huge, but one might question, how exactly did it come to this? Why is this happening now? And how does it relate to the broader context of not only the Middle East, but the world? Two words: Abraham Accords. The United States’ push to create a one-sided, unbalanced and effective appeasement of Israel’s actions, coupled with an attempt to use such to isolate Iran, has led to the calculation by Hamas that the only way to salvage its cause is to unleash a full-scale armed struggle.

In doing so, the militants’ goal is not to destroy Israel head on, because we must acknowledge that such an outcome is not possible. Rather, it is to turn the diplomatic and political tide in the region against Israel and the US in the name of a new Jihad. The Abraham Accords are a peace initiative started in 2020 by the Trump administration that seeks to get Arab countries to unilaterally recognize the State of Israel, without West Jerusalem itself making any concessions regarding the issue of Palestinian statehood. Through the accords, driven by the pro-Israel fanaticism of former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, the US was successful in getting the United Arab Emirates, Sudan, Morocco, and Bahrain to open up diplomatic relations with Israel. The US typically incentivized this by making unilateral concessions to these countries as part of a deal, such as removing Sudan from the State Sponsor of Terrorism list or recognizing Morocco’s sovereignty over the Western Sahara.

The Abraham Accords were not a serious peace initiative because all they did was bribe countries to effectively side with Israel and abandon Palestine, instead of seeking peace in one of the most prominent simmering conflicts in the region. Moreover, the accords’ true geopolitical intention was to facilitate the diplomatic isolation of Iran by weakening and splitting the anti-Zionist cause. The grander strategy, by extension, was to facilitate American hegemony over the Middle East, given Israel’s very close relations with the US. Opposition to the US in the region has always gone hand-in-hand with opposition to Israel, be it through Arab nationalism (Syria, Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and, historically, Gamal Abdel Nasser’s Egypt) or Islamic fundamentalism (Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas).

In line with this, the US hoped that, by diplomatically isolating Iran, imposing tough sanctions on it and attempting to force it to capitulate on its nuclear and ballistic missile programs, Washington could sustain its order over the Middle East and maintain its favourable security relationships in the region. The Abraham Accords, to this end, encouraged appeasement of Israel, rather than making a mutually acceptable compromise which sought to move towards a two-state solution. In promoting this, the US was happy to allow Israel under Netanyahu to continually move the goalposts towards a “one-state solution” and to effectively ignore Palestinian resistance, which it now describes as “unprovoked.”

”..who incited riots to ‘wipe out’ Palestinian village..”

• Source of Dubious ‘Beheaded Babies’ Claim Is Israeli Settler Leader (GZ)

After an Israeli reserve soldier named David Ben Zion told a reporter Palestinian militants “cut [off] heads of babies,” Biden, Netanyahu, and the international media amplified the dubious claim. The Grayzone has identified Ben Zion as a fanatical settler leader who incited riots by demanding a Palestinian town be “wiped out.” An international outcry erupted when Israel’s Foreign Ministry announced that Palestinian militants from the besieged Gaza Strip had killed 40 “babies,” and beheaded several of them during an incursion into Kfar Aza, a kibbutz on the Gaza border. President Joseph Biden repeated the inflammatory claim during an October 10 White House Rose Garden address, while networks across the West carried the story without a shred of critical scrutiny.

According to CNN correspondent Nic Robertson, apparently citing Israeli military sources, Palestinian militants carried out, “ISIS-style executions,” in which they were “cutting the heads off of people,” including babies and pets. The Grayzone has now identified a key source of the claim that Palestinian militants beheaded Israeli babies. He is David Ben Zion, a Deputy Commander of Unit 71 of the Israeli army who also happens to be an extremist settler leader who incited violent riots against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank earlier this year. In an October 10 interview with reporter Nicole Zedek of the Israeli state-sponsored i24 network, Ben Zion stated, “We walked door to door, we killed a lot of terrorists. They are very bad. They cut heads of children, they cut heads of women. But we are stronger than them.” He added, “We know that they are animals,” referring to Palestinians, “but we found that they don’t have any heart.”

Hours after his interview with i24, still in the village of Kfar Aza, a uniformed Ben Zion could be seen repeatedly grinning ear-to-ear in a video posted to his Facebook – an odd disposition for a supposed witness to the methodical butchering of babies. Earlier that day, i24’s Zedek declared during a live report from Kfar Aza, “About 40 babies were taken out on gurneys… Cribs overturned, strollers left behind, doors left wide open.’” Zedek’s report has been viewed tens of millions of times on Twitter and promoted by Israel’s Foreign Ministry – which underwrites her network. Hours later, she qualified her statement, stating, “Soldiers told me they believe 40 babies/children were killed. The exact death toll is still unknown as the military continues to go house to house and find more Israeli casualties.” Yet the unverified tale quickly made its way to the highest levels of leadership, as if by design.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s spokesman stated unequivocally that babies and toddlers were found with their “heads decapitated,” while President Joe Biden himself vaguely gestured towards “stomach-churning reports of babies being killed.” Likewise, cable news has flown into a frenzy, breathlessly reporting the story despite the IDF walking back its initial confirmation. Meanwhile, some reporters who initially carried the official Israeli allegations about beheaded babies began issuing qualifications of their own. Oren Ziv, an Israeli reporter who joined the military’s official tour of Kfar Aza, commented on Twitter, “I’m getting a lot of question about the reports of ‘Hamas beheaded babies’ that were published after the media tour in the village. During the tour we didn’t see any evidence of this, and the army spokesperson or commanders also didn’t mention any such incidents.”

X thread.

• Extensive Gas Reserves Off The Gaza Coastline (Monotti)

Discovered in 2000, there are extensive gas reserves off the Gaza coastline: “It should be noted that 60 percent of the gas reserves along the Gaza-Israel coastline belong to Palestine. The BG Group drilled two wells in 2000: Gaza Marine-1 and Gaza Marine-2. Reserves are estimated by British Gas to be of the order of 1.4 trillion cubic feet, valued at approximately 4 billion dollars. These are the figures made public by British Gas. The size of Palestine’s gas reserves could be much larger.

Who Owns the Gas Fields?
The issue of sovereignty over Gaza’s gas fields is crucial. From a legal standpoint, the gas reserves belong to Palestine. The death of Yasser Arafat, the election of the Hamas government and the ruin of the Palestinian Authority have enabled Israel to establish de facto control over Gaza’s offshore gas reserves. British Gas (BG Group) has been dealing with the Tel Aviv government. In turn, the Hamas government has been bypassed in regards to exploration and development rights over the gas fields.

In 2006, British Gas “was close to signing a deal to pump the gas to Egypt.” (Times, May, 23, 2007). According to reports, British Prime Minister Tony Blair intervened on behalf of Israel with a view to shunting the agreement with Egypt.

Gaza and Energy Geopolitics. The military occupation of Gaza is intent upon transferring the sovereignty of the gas fields to Israel in violation of international law.”

“We do that everywhere we go. We just give the weapons away and we walk away…

• Scott Ritter: Untracked US Arms to Client Regimes Land in Terrorist Hands (Sp.)

US military aid to its client regimes goes unaccounted for — and often finds its way to terrorist groups, says a former UN weapons inspector. Video emerged this week of a Hamas guerrilla thanking the US for the rifle he carried in the groups incursion into Israel, saying it came from a shipment of weapons to Ukraine that had found its way onto the black market. Scott Ritter told Sputnik that Washington is lackadaisical when it comes to keeping track of arms it gifts to its foreign proxies. “We’ve seen the weapons some of the Hamas assault squads are making use of American-made M4 rifles,” Ritter noted. “So it’s not a question of whether or not they have them. We know they have them. The question is, where did they get them from?” “Historically we tend to flood a client state with weapons as part of our security agreement,” Ritter said.

“The American calculation is never about the quality of the assistance being provided, but the quantity, because the quantification is linked to a dollar figure that the US Congress has established.” “That dollar figure needs to be translated into a deliverable that could be reported back to Congress, saying that we have provided this much money for this and that. And so weapons is the easiest thing we will send in,” he added. He recalled how during the Western occupation of Iraq, advisers to the new police force asked for rifles and handguns from the US — which corrupt officers then sold on the black market. The firearms ultimately ended up in the hands of Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK)* militants in neighboring Turkiye, where they were captured by police and traced back to the US.

“We do that everywhere we go. We just give the weapons away and we walk away,” Ritter said. Washington’s failure to keep track of its arms handouts to the Kiev regime is also being felt acutely in West Africa.”We see the same thing in Africa, where weaponry that we provided to Ukraine, in particular handheld anti-tank missiles, are showing up in the Lake Chad region in the hands of Boko Haram, the Islamist terrorist group that’s using them against Niger forces, the forces from Chad, forces from Nigeria, forces from Cameroon, many of these forces whom we train,” Ritter said. “Our weapons that we send to Ukraine get in the hands of the people that are fighting the forces that are ostensibly friendly to us. So this is a big problem.”

The former US Marine said government officials seemed unconcerned where the billions of dollars’ worth of military aid ends up. “There’s literally no accounting for these weapons,” Ritter warned. “There’s no quality control in terms of being able to tell Congress or tell anybody, American policymakers, what the status of these weapons is.”

“Europe could have just said: ‘Open this route now. We need it to support our economy. But no..”

• Western Political System Doesn’t Bring Smartest People To The Top – Putin (RT)

Russia sees absolutely no sense in the EU’s current policy of forgoing Russian energy supplies, particularly gas, President Vladimir Putin told the Russian Energy Week forum on Wednesday. He added that “the modern political system in [the West] obviously sometimes brings not the smartest people to the top.” Speaking about the issue of Russian gas exports to Europe, he pointed to what he called a lack of common sense in some European capitals. “There is no sensible explanation to why some European economies, including Germany’s, should behave like this,” the president said, referring to the situation in the European energy market. He called it “surprising” that European nations did not demand that Kiev reopen one of the Russian gas pipelines going through Ukraine after it was shut down.

Ukraine halted Russian gas transit along one of the routes running through its territory back in May, arguing that it had lost control over one of the gas compressor stations. The station in question is located in the Lugansk People’s Republic, which voted to join Russia last year. The Ukrainian pipeline operator claimed that Russian forces controlling the compressor station were somehow “interfering” with its technical processes and shut down its part of the line. Moscow denied the allegations and warned that Russian gas exports could not be effectively re-routed to other pipelines to compensate for the shutdown. In July, Kiev said that it might cut Russian gas supplies to Europe altogether as it does not intend to renew the transit deal with Moscow. “I believe, by the winter of 2024, Europe will not need Russian gas at all,” Ukrainian Energy Minister German Galushchenko told Politico.

The 2019 transit agreement allows Russia to export some 40 billion cubic meters of gas per year via Ukraine until the end of 2024. A third of this volume should have reached Europe via a pipeline that Kiev has already cut off. “Europe could have just said: ‘Open this route now. We need it to support our economy. But no,” Putin said, commenting on Kiev’s actions. A similar approach could have been used when Poland terminated a supply contract with Russia ahead of its end-2022 expiry date. Warsaw rejected Moscow’s demand for ruble payments in May 2022 and started using its leg of the Yamal-Europe Pipeline to pump stored gas from Germany. The Yamal-Europe Pipeline, which links European customers to the natural gas fields in Russia’s north, used to carry nearly half of Gazprom’s westbound gas deliveries.

Moscow repeatedly stated that it was ready to restart supplies of natural gas to the EU via this route, adding that the shipments had been halted in the first place for political reasons. Germany might have pointed to the fact that it was the biggest donor to the EU common budget while Poland was the largest recipient of EU funds, Putin said, adding that Berlin might have told Warsaw “not to bite the hand that feeds you.” The German government could have also approved the use of the Russian Nord Stream 2 pipeline, the Russian leader stated. One of the two pipeline strings remained operable after a series of underwater explosions that destroyed the other three strings of Nord Stream and Nord Stream 2. “Nord Stream 2 is a direct [route] to Germany,” Putin said, adding that it could have “delivered 27.5 billion cubic meters of gas per year.” Instead, Germany “opts to buy [gas] with a 30% premium and not use our energy resource. That’s their choice,” the president added.

“People are starting to wonder: What is this man spending our money on if Ukraine is a country most famous for, you know, being such an oasis of corruption on Earth?”

• Zelensky ‘Starting To Annoy’ Everyone In US, Europe – Peskov (TASS)

Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky has found himself in a rather challenging situation, as he is getting on the nerves of everyone in the United States and Europe, Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in an interview with the Moscow. The Kremlin. Putin TV program, an excerpt of which was posted on anchor Pavel Zarubin’s Telegram channel. “Zelensky is in a rather tricky position. First of all, he is starting to touch a nerve. He is starting to annoy everyone both in America and Europe,” Peskov said. “People are starting to wonder: What is this man spending our money on if Ukraine is a country most famous for, you know, being such an oasis of corruption on Earth?” the Kremlin spokesman said.

“Certainly, nobody likes it, and this dissatisfaction with Zelensky will grow,” Peskov concluded, pointing out that the Ukrainian president feels this and “is beginning to crack.” Moreover, the Kremlin spokesman continued, “he [Zelensky] still has that professional greed: How could the weapons promised to me be given to Israel?” “That is why things are not so easy for him. Things are not so easy. Traditionally, they are already spoiled and are used to this sort of mentorship. We will wait and see how [the situation] unfolds from here,” the Russian presidential spokesman added.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1712198515244630379

Immigration.

• Elon Musk Predicts ‘Civil War’ In Europe (RT)

US entrepreneur Elon Musk has suggested that European Union may face the prospect of civil war due to its immigrant-welcoming policies. Two weeks ago, he visited the US southern border, wading into the bitter debate over immigration in his home country. “If current trends continue, civil war in Europe is inevitable,” he claimed in a post on X (formerly Twitter) on Wednesday. Musk was responding to a thread by Moscow-born British satirist and political commentator Konstantin Kisin. He denounced what he called “people celebrating rape and murder by a proscribed terrorist organisation as the police stand and watch in major European cities.” Kisin was referring to pro-Palestinian demonstrations in the wake of the deadly incursion by Hamas into southern Israel last week.

Some residents of European nations focused on condemning Israel for mistreatment of people in the West Bank and Gaza rather than condemning the killings and kidnappings of Israelis by the Palestinian militant movement. “We import more people who think this way every day,” Kisin noted, decrying the lack of “a sensible immigration policy” screening for people with “cultural values that match our own.” He was presumably referring to the EU rather than the UK, where Conservative governments have ramped up immigration controls since Brexit. Kisin concluded that British author Douglas Murray was correct when he argued that European civilization was committing suicide in his 2017 book ‘The Strange Death of Europe’. Immigration is a hot-button issue in the US as well, as critics of the administration of President Joe Biden accuse him of turning a blind eye to illegal border crossings for the sake of ideological and political goals.

Musk weighed in on the debate in late September, when he visited the border city of Eagle Pass in Texas. The US should “smooth out legal immigration and stop a flow of people that is of such magnitude that we’re leading to a collapse of social services,” Musk urged at the time. He declared himself “extremely pro-immigrant,” citing his own status as a naturalized citizen. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York attacked her colleague, Tony Gonzales of Texas, who gave Musk a tour of the border area. She said the Republican “decided to skip town to joyride with a billionaire” instead of staying in Washington DC and working on ways to avoid a government shutdown. Congress has since passed a compromise stopgap spending bill, prolonging the fight over budgetary priorities. Musk has previously branded Ocasio-Cortez “not very smart” on immigration issues.

“There is no reasonable explanation as to why this many White House employees and lawyers were so concerned with retrieving boxes they believed only contained personal documents and materials..”

1/ He was not allowed at any time to have any of the -highly classified- docs. Period.
2/ He now says (paraphrased) that he didn’t know they were there.
3/ That only makes it worse.

• Biden Classified Doc Scandal Deepens (ZH)

More than a year before White House lawyers claim to have ‘discovered’ classified documents at the Penn Biden Center in November of 2022, evidence has emerged that White House employees ‘inspected’ or ‘took inventory’ of them, while another official removed “a few” boxes containing Biden materials that October, according to the House Oversight Committee. According to a letter to White House counsel Edward Siskel from Committee Chairman James Comer (R-KY), the official timeline of events provided by the Biden team “omitted months of communications, planning, and coordinating.” Comer says that a Penn Biden Center employee told the committee that on March 18, 2021, senior White House aide Annie Tomasini “[took] inventory of President Biden’s documents and materials” stored at the center, where he established a private office after his vice presidency.

The same witness also said that on Oct. 13, 2022, Oval Office deputy director of operations, Ashley Williams, removed “a few” of Biden’s boxes. The White House has previously claimed that all relevant documents were either moved to the National Archives or the DOJ, while Biden’s personal attorney, Bob Bauer, said that the documents were discovered on November 2, 2022 – a total lie. The committee, which has conducted three witness interviews, says on five occasions, White House employees, including former White House Counsel Dana Remus, and the president’s former assistant Kathy Chung, a current Department of Defense employee, went to the Penn Biden Center to take inventory, pack up or remove materials. These visits occurred between March 2021 and mid-October 2022. -CBS News

“There is no reasonable explanation as to why this many White House employees and lawyers were so concerned with retrieving boxes they believed only contained personal documents and materials,” said Comer in his letter. The letter requests transcribed interviews with Remus, Williams, Tomasini, Anthony Bernal, a top adviser to the first lady, and Katie Reilly, a West Wing aide, according to CBS News. It is also asking for documentation and communication related to the documents. The committee has already interviewed Chung, who was then-Vice President Biden’s assistant. Democrats, of course, have resorted to whataboutism…

“Former President Trump’s willful retention of hundreds of highly classified documents, his defiance of court-ordered subpoenas, his reported disclosure of our country’s most sensitive national security information, and false statements to law enforcement should worry the Chair of a congressional committee with jurisdiction over government records,” said a spokesman for Democrats on the House Oversight Committee. “Instead Chairman Comer is using the Committee to focus on President Biden whose complete cooperation with the Special Counsel’s investigation stands in stark contrast, including voluntarily participating in a two-day interview with the Special Counsel, and opening the doors to his Penn Biden Center office and private residence to investigators.”

As Jonathan Turley noted earlier, the ‘ultimate punchline’ here could be that Special Counsel Robert Hur may be in a sticky situation if he actually finds evidence of a crime. On its face, the President claims that he had no knowledge of these documents appears dubious at best. Some classified material reportedly goes back to Biden’s time as a senator — material that he would have had to remove from a sensitive compartmented information facility or secure room on Capitol Hill. More importantly, the documents from the Obama Administration were removed when Biden left as vice president. They were then divided and repeatedly moved to different locations. That suggests not just knowledge but a purpose. Why were they divided and some documents were found in his garage and possibly his library?

If Hur found fingerprints that contradict Biden’s statements, he could face not just some of the same charges brought against Trump but also possible false statement or obstruction charges. Notably, Biden used counsel to conduct searches and (as in the Trump case) additional classified materials were found after the Biden team said that they had finished their searches. There are serious questions over whether, in allowing uncleared counsel to search through these documents, evidence may have been lost in how they were stored or appeared in locations like the garage. Hur can bring charges against third parties, who would not be barred from indictment under the DOJ policy. But what does Hur then do if he has evidence against the President himself?

4 years as VP is some 1450 days. That’s 20 mails per day, every single day. That’s a lot. Doesn’t mention the pseudonym accounts.

• VP Biden Emailed About Son’s Business 29,000+ Times (Fed.)

President Joe Biden denied long before he was inaugurated that he ever discussed business with his son. A new FOIA obtained by America First Legal via lawsuit, however, revealed that Joe emailed his son Hunter Biden, his brother James “Jim” Biden, and their respective firms tens of thousands of times over the course of his vice presidency. In a joint status report published by the Washington D.C. District Court on Friday, the National Archives and Records Administration reluctantly admitted that it knew of 4,243 emails between then-Vice President Joe and Hunter Biden, another 1,751 emails between Joe and Jim, 19,335 emails between Joe and Hunter’s private equity firm Rosemont Seneca, and 3,738 emails between Joe and Jim’s Chinese-communist party connected consulting firm Lion Hall Group.

Joe, Hunter, Jim, and the firms listed in the court documents are at the center of the GOP investigation into the Biden family influence-peddling operation. “These damning numbers further confirm that there was never a wall separating the Office of the Vice President and Hunter Biden’s business endeavors. In fact, there was extensive commingling between them,” AFL wrote in a statement posted to X, formerly known as Twitter. It’s unclear what exactly the emails said since NARA claimed it would take more than 15 months to sort through the data requested by AFL. The existence of the emails, however, is proof alone that Biden has lied about his involvement in his family’s scheme to sell political favors to foreign oligarchs.

Biden insisted in 2019 that “there will be an absolute wall between personal and private [business interests] and the government.” “I have never discussed, with my son or my brother or with anyone else, anything having to do with their businesses. Period,” Biden said. From the October 2020 debate stage, the then-presidential candidate specifically denied that Hunter “made money” on China. At the time, the New York Post had already reported on emails from Hunter’s abandoned laptop detailing how the younger Biden pursued business deals with one of China’s largest energy companies with hopes of cashing in “for me and my family.” Since then, receipts, White House visitor logs, testimonies from Biden business partners, text messages, and documents eviscerating Joe’s lies have surfaced.

Hunter’s text messages, obtained by the House Ways and Means Committee, indicate the Bidens saw Joe as the one and “only asset” of the Biden family “brand” that they sold to foreign businessmen in exchange for cash. This pay-to-play racket, receipts suggest, enriched members of the Biden family, including Hunter and Jim, by at least $20 million. Despite corporate media trying to cover for his flip-flop by claiming that his relationship with Hunter’s business partners has “long been known,” Joe’s involvement as the “big guy,” who would receive a cut from a deal with Chinese energy company CEFC and other foreign players, was apparent from the start.

“Trusted Flaggers..”

• The EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA) May Undermine Fundamental Rights (BR)

The Digital Services Act (DSA) aims to provide a European solution to an important societal challenge: illegal content and misinformation online. These are real and significant problems, for which new legislation was needed indeed. The DSA was developed and approved during the pandemic. It is a lengthy and complex text, and I believe it has received insufficient political and public scrutiny. The DSA does contain highly valuable provisions, e.g. providing mechanisms for fighting child abuse and for enforcing transparency requirements in online advertising and recommendation systems. However, there are also concerning parts, which may undermine fundamental rights, especially freedom of expression and information, a cornerstone of European democracies and enshrined as Article 11 of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights. Hereunder, I summarize my understanding of some key points in the DSA, omitting technical details and nuances, and emphasizing those potential risks.

• The DSA requires that online platforms make it easy for anyone to report allegedly illegal content. Online platforms (and providers of so-called ‘hosting services’ more generally), such as social media platforms, must provide user-friendly mechanisms that allow anyone to ‘notify’ (i.e. flag or report) content on the platform (e.g., a message on X) that they believe to be illegal (Art 16).

• Online platforms become liable for reported content. Once notified, platforms (e.g., X) become liable for the notified content, if it is indeed illegal (Art 6, and Art 16 paragraph 3). They then must quickly take appropriate action against it (suppression, removal of the content, suspension or blocking of the author…) (Art 16).

• Notices submitted by so-called Trusted Flaggers must be handled with priority. Trusted Flaggers are organizations that will be certified as such by the so-called national Digital Service Coordinators (DSCs) (see below and Art 49-51). Platforms must handle notices submitted by Trusted Flaggers as a matter of priority (Art 22). Trusted Flaggers that notify content too often inaccurately can lose their privileged status, but they risk nothing more than that (Art 22, par 6-7).

• Complaint and redress procedures must be established, but they will take time. Complaint and redress procedures must be established and clearly communicated (see e.g. Art 16 par 5, and Art 17 par 3(f)). Such procedures must include an internal complaint-handling system (Art 20), out-of-court dispute settlement bodies (Art 21), and judicial redress. However, these procedures can drag on for months, during which time the measure (suppression, removal, etc.) remains in force.

• Terms & Conditions (T&Cs) are used as a means against undesirable (but not illegal) content. Notifications can compel a platform to take measures for two possible reasons (e.g., Art 17 par 1):
1/ because the platform also deems the content to be illegal (or, perhaps more often, because it does not have the time or resources to investigate, and thus prefers to err on the side of caution), or
2/ because the content violates the platform’s T&Cs (but is not necessarily illegal).

Vampire squid

Vampire squid propelling itself across the sea floor by flapping the fins on its side
pic.twitter.com/r74UzHWxdq

— Science girl (@gunsnrosesgirl3) October 11, 2023

Cuttlefish

The giant cuttlefish also known as the Australian giant cuttlefish (Sepia apama), is the world's largest cuttlefish species, growing to 50 cm (20 in) in mantle length and up to 100 cm (39 in) in total lengthpic.twitter.com/O0ZXTYbdTq

— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) October 11, 2023

Dogs
https://twitter.com/i/status/1712336414795334018

Turtle
https://twitter.com/i/status/1712120874944598105

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