Jul 262025
 


Rembrandt van Rijn The Angel Appearing to the Shepherds 1634

 

Absolutely Not – Senators Want Special Counsel to Investigate Obamagate (CTH)
DNI Tulsi Gabbard Reacts to former DNI James Clapper Hiring Lawyers (CTH)
Barack Obama ‘Not Going to Be Indicted’ but There’s Good News (Margolis)
Actually, Obama Can Be Indicted. Here’s Why (Margolis)
Revenge or Justice? (Victor Davis Hanson)
“Baseless?” (James Howard Kunstler)
Zelensky’s Days are Numbered, He’ll Be the Ultimate Loser (Sp.)
Out of Grace: Zelensky Loses US Backing: Larry Johnson (Sp.)
Zelensky Broke The American Controls – and Now Faces The Consequences (RT)
Putin-Zelensky Summit Only Possible To Finalize Peace Deal – Kremlin (RT)
UK Could ‘Easily’ Stab US In The Back – Patrushev (RT)
Trump Makes Alina Habba Acting US Attorney In NJ (ET)
Israel Just Drew A New Map – Without Saying It Out Loud (Blade)

 

 

 

 

Nunes
https://twitter.com/Real_RobN/status/1948415920554324305
Tulsi

Rebate


hack
https://twitter.com/LarryOConnor/status/1947628066974359870

judge
https://twitter.com/RodDMartin/status/1948560536066511060

 

 

 

 

Sundance points out that a special counsel is counterproductive, because it won’t have the cross-agencies (silos) powers that Tulsi has. Guess the fact that Lindsey Graham is the one asking for a special counsel, should alert us.

Absolutely Not – Senators Want Special Counsel to Investigate Obamagate (CTH)

Senator Lindsey Graham (Judiciary Committee) and Senator John Cornyn (SSCI) are requesting Attorney General Pam Bondi to appoint a special counsel to look into the Obama administration’s weaponization of the U.S. Intelligence Community to target Donald Trump with fabricated smears and false evidence using a fraudulent Russia connection. This should be an immediate hard no for a few reasons. Number one, the special counsel process is where investigations go to die intentionally as a design of the legislative branch defense process. Second, the special counsel would not have cross-silo access to exfiltrate information unless it was accompanied by very specific Presidential authority. It just will not work. The intelligence community information that exposes the plot will be found in very distinct ‘silos’, essentially the intelligence agencies that house the information.

Additionally, inside each of the silos there is a formal and informal process to designate that information based on its internally defined national security value. An example of silo retention can be found in the issue of the FBI housing information in “prohibited access” files. These files are not even discoverable by most internal search efforts. Within the Sentinel system there are “Restricted Access” files that are used to control who can view the file information (sources and methods etc.). The FBI or investigative official (think authorized special counsel) can see the file but cannot access the information within it without a higher clearance level. In these files the Special Counsel can request access and then review. However, recently people discovered there are “Prohibited Access” files that makes the file invisible to both outside and inside searches or queries and are exclusively controlled by the FBI Director and FBI Deputy Director.

This is an example of a sub-silo (secret file keeping) within a distinct silo (FBI, Sentinel system). A special counsel would never discover the “prohibited” files, because there’s no way from outside the system to find it. It’s a little complicated but DNI Tulsi Gabbard has been finding, declassifying and releasing these ‘prohibited access’ types of information, because as Director of National Intelligence -her clearance and position- allow her to gain full administrative level access to the entire metadata of IC information. Tulsi can essentially log into all of the 18 intelligence agencies and review everything in the data storage system. A special counsel, regardless of authority, cannot do this. President Trump can demand full administrative access for himself and so can DNI Tulsi Gabbard. The rest of the silo administrators can only see the information inside their silo.

This limited access issue is how the intelligence agencies hide information. They rely on the inability of external reviewers to see the full scope and then cross reference to all other silos using the same terminology, data points and search sequences.

EXAMPLE – Making up an operational name like “Zero Footprint“, when DNI Tulsi Gabbard is looking at that operation, she can see the full scope of information related to Zero Footprint as the information goes from the White House (finding memo) to the CIA, to the State Dept, to the Pentagon, to the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), possibly to the Joint Chiefs and then beyond to international partners (whole or part information shared). DNI Gabbard can see the entire continuum, cross reference each step in the process, see who handled the organization, communication, logistics, assignments and track each process, which enables her to map the inputs and outcomes along with the timeline. She can even see the briefings (or lack therein) to the Gang of Eight or PDB as they are recorded.

A special counsel has nowhere near this capacity. In the example above, the research required to find, extract, cross-reference, organize and then assemble the totality of all information related to such a large intelligence operation (fyi, Zero Footprint was real), takes a lot of time and effort. Tulsi Gabbard is able to designate very specific aides to assist in this process, but the demand on her time is extreme even with help. DNI Gabbard recently told Fox News (video below) she was/is using AI as a tool to do autonomous spider crawls through the various silos looking for information that pertained to specific points, phrases, times, dates and people within the 18-agency silo system. Hundreds of thousands of “return positive” files must then be sifted and reviewed for connection to the participants, and again timelines become the key.

This is a big shift in the use of AI data search engine capability within the national security information space; however, it is exactly what I have been talking about for the past several years as I traveled back and forth to DC. Now, keep in mind what I am describing above is “non-public” information. If you want to really understand the insanity of how the silos operate, you need to accept the same filing and hiding system exists even within public information. The congressional staff don’t even know what the other congressional staff are doing with information from within two different committees, like the Senate Judiciary Committee (FISC oversight) and the Senate Homeland Security Committee (DOJ-NSD), or Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (FBI – Cointel).

In essence, there is little to no information sharing within the silo process, even within the guys on the “same team,” and making matters worse sometimes a research team can gain information that is much more pertinent to the other guys looking at similar issues from within another silo. Discovering this is beyond frustrating; however, it does explain how independent researchers who share on open-source crowd sharing platforms can walk down a research trail much faster. Bottom line, a Special Counsel is an exercise in futility, unless that special counsel has the same review and extraction capability as President Trump and/or DNI Tulsi Gabbard. The best option is a team of investigators within Tulsi Gabbard’s office to continue the digging and connecting the information; then share the discoveries with DOJ officials. Previously, I said a small group within the National Security Council might also be able to deliver a similar outcome. Lastly, a tip-line allowing the private sector crowdsourcing to push puzzle pieces toward the research team might also be a big help.

Read more …

“Our representatives were never representing us. The true DC enemy is ‘We The People‘..”

DNI Tulsi Gabbard Reacts to former DNI James Clapper Hiring Lawyers (CTH)

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard appears with Greta Van Susteren to discuss the ongoing release of Intelligence Community documents showing how President Obama intelligence officials conspired to manufacture a false intelligence assessment, frame Donald Trump and begin the Trump-Russia narrative. At the end of this trail of manufactured evidence, we will inevitably end up at the Robert Mueller investigation. The continuum of the Trump-Russia narrative starts with Hillary Clinton (Fusion GPS, Perkins Coie), then transfers to the FBI (James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok); which includes the DOJ National Security Division (AG Lynch, DAG Yates, Mary McCord), then goes through the backdoor to Barack Obama (Susan Rice, Lisa Monaco) and the Legislative Branch (SSCI), and eventually elevates with DNI James Clapper and CIA Director John Brennan manufacturing the 2017 intelligence product.

All of that collective effort, all of the former created inputs, eventually culminates into the Robert Mueller Special Counsel (Andrew Weissmann) and the Lawfare ideologues charged with upholding the manufactured premise. In my opinion, the greatest legal exposure is going to be with the Mueller team because that group intentionally and purposefully knew the information being received was fraudulent – yet they used it anyway. Keep in mind that John Durham laid the Mueller/Weissmann probe naked to their enemies. Unfortunately, Weissmann and Mueller do not have enemies in Washington DC, amid any party {. Our representatives were never representing us. The true DC enemy is ‘We The People‘ – and we choose to fight them. When Robert Mueller (silo 2) appeared before a congressional committee in June 2019 to answer questions about his Russia election interference report, he was asked about the origination of Trump-Russia.

Mueller’s jaw-dropping response was, “That was not in my purview.” Wait, how can your existence be predicated on investigating Trump-Russia, and yet the origin of Trump-Russia is not in your “purview”? See the problem?!

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The Supreme Court created a lot of leeway for what a president does in his official capacity. In what capacity did Obama sonspire against Trump?

Barack Obama ‘Not Going to Be Indicted’ but There’s Good News (Margolis)

Thanks to the evidence already released by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, it’s now clear that Barack Obama engaged in corrupt efforts to sabotage President Trump. And we’re likely just scratching the surface. More damning revelations are almost certainly on the way. Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean Obama will ever see the inside of a courtroom, let alone a jail cell, even if he deserves it. But don’t confuse a lack of prosecution with vindication. During a recent appearance on Real America’s Voice, investigative journalist John Solomon joined Steve Bannon to unpack the formation of a new Department of Justice Strike Force reportedly focused on unraveling the criminal conspiracy behind the Russia collusion hoax and the government’s weaponization against President Trump. And while Obama’s fingerprints are all over the operation, Solomon made it clear that a formal indictment is highly unlikely.

“What the team will do is they’ll bring in all the different skill sets,” Solomon explained. “I think the National Security Division will be brought in. Ironically, that’s the same division that pursued Donald Trump on the classified documents but took a dive on Joe Biden’s.” According to Solomon, this newly formed strike force is modeled after the methods used to break down organized crime families. The process will focus on collecting “overt acts of the conspiracy,” then analyzing the timeline to determine whether the statute of limitations applies or if charges can be brought due to long-hidden evidence. Grand juries, subpoenas, and strategic interviews are all expected. “There’ll be lots of work and then there’ll be grand jury subpoenas. There’ll be significant interviews going on,” Solomon said. “You’ll look for your cooperating witnesses.”

The goal? Reel in the smaller fish first. “One of the things that they do is they roll up people on the low end of the scale early, and then they try to get them to turn on their bosses and get us the truth,” he said. It’s the same strategy that brought down mob bosses and drug kingpins, and now it’s being turned inward, toward the deep state.Names like John Brennan and James Comey are among those believed to be in the DOJ’s crosshairs. But then came the elephant in the room: Barack Obama. “If the ultimate targets are someone like a John Brennan or … James Comey or Barack Obama — who, by the way, is not going to be indicted. Anyone who thinks Barack Obama’s going to be indicted: it’s not going to happen,” Solomon admitted.

That legal shield, ironically, may come courtesy of Donald Trump himself. “President Trump’s immunity victory last year in the Supreme Court’s gonna protect Barack Obama. Barack Obama should send a thank-you card to Donald Trump,” Solomon quipped. But while Obama may avoid prosecution, that doesn’t mean he’s off the hook entirely. “You could imagine a scenario where they lay out a conspiracy, and Barack Obama is named as an unindicted co-conspirator,” Solomon continued. “That would be one hell of a legacy for the 44th president.” Indeed, while Obama will almost certainly avoid legal consequences, the political and historical fallout could be devastating. If he’s officially named as an unindicted co-conspirator in a plot to frame his successor, and the people who carried out that plot end up in prison, his legacy won’t just take a hit; it’ll be permanently disfigured. It’s hard to claim innocence when everyone who did your bidding goes down for the crime.

A scenario like that isn’t something CNN or MSNBC can memory-hole, no matter how hard they try. No, Barack Obama won’t be frog-marched out of his Martha’s Vineyard mansion. But if this investigation follows through, the myth of his “scandal-free” presidency could collapse under the weight of a conspiracy that once masqueraded as patriotism but now reeks of abuse, corruption, and cover-up. Obama may not go to jail, but history may render its own indictment.

Read more …

SCOTUS: “The President enjoys no immunity for his unofficial acts, and not everything the President does is official. The President is not above the law.”

Actually, Obama Can Be Indicted. Here’s Why (Margolis)

This week, investigative journalist John Solomon told Steve Bannon that despite all the evidence that has been declassified linking Barack Obama to the Russiagate hoax, Obama won’t and can’t be indicted for his role in the Russian collusion hoax. “Anyone who thinks Barack Obama’s going to be indicted: It’s not going to happen,” Solomon admitted. “President Trump’s immunity victory last year in the Supreme Court’s gonna protect Barack Obama. Barack Obama should send a thank-you card to Donald Trump.” But is Solomon right? The case Solomon is referring to, Trump v. United States (2024), was, of course, extremely consequential, but also widely misunderstood. Democrats branded the ruling as the Supreme Court granting “blanket immunity” for presidents, but that’s not what it does at all.

While the Court recognized a degree of immunity for official acts of the presidency, it drew a sharp line between what a president does in his constitutional role and what he does as a private individual or political actor. From the ruling itself: “It is these enduring principles that guide our decision in this case. The President enjoys no immunity for his unofficial acts, and not everything the President does is official. The President is not above the law.” With that in mind, the ruling does not give presidents the power to break the law with impunity. If a president lies to federal investigators, commits fraud, or abuses power outside the scope of his official duties, he can still face prosecution. The Court explicitly left the door open for criminal charges—even against sitting or former presidents—if the conduct in question was personal, political, or unrelated to the legitimate functions of the presidency.

And, let’s be honest: What Barack Obama did during the Russian collusion hoax wasn’t just political—it was a calculated abuse of power far outside the bounds of his official role. If a president lies to federal investigators, forges documents, or uses the office for personal or political revenge, those are not protected actions. He can be charged under the same criminal statutes as anyone else. For example, 18 U.S.C. § 1001 makes it a crime to lie to federal officials. Wire fraud, under 18 U.S.C. § 1343, covers schemes involving deceit through electronic communication. Other statutes—like aiding and abetting (18 U.S.C. § 2), being an accessory after the fact (18 U.S.C. § 3), or even seditious conspiracy (18 U.S.C.§ 2384)—can all apply if the president helps orchestrate or cover up unlawful acts.

That brings us to the documents released by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, which suggest Barack Obama may have done exactly that. The material is nothing short of explosive. It confirms that Obama’s inner circle—including James Clapper and John Brennan, under Obama’s direction—engineered a political smear campaign disguised as an intelligence assessment. According to the files, a high-level meeting in December 2016, led by Obama’s top national security officials, launched the coordinated leaks to the media about so-called Russian election interference—even though pre-election intelligence assessments found no such evidence.

“The evidence that we have found and that we have released directly point to President Obama leading the manufacturing of this intelligence assessment,” Gabbard stated. So obviously, the evidence suggests Obama is not innocent. The only real question now is whether he’ll ever be held accountable—or if the system will once again protect one of its own. That’s an entirely different question.

Read more …

“Obama-era officials and Clinton-campaign activists destroyed President Trump’s own credibility to sustain a workable relationship with a nuclear Russia..”

Revenge or Justice? (Victor Davis Hanson)

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard just released a trove of apparently once-classified documents — with promises of much more to follow. The new material describes the role of the Obama administration’s intelligence and investigatory directors — purportedly along with former President Barack Obama himself — in undermining the 2016 Trump presidential campaign. In addition, their efforts extended to sabotaging the 2016-2017 presidential transition and, by extension, the first three years of the Trump presidency. The released documents add some new details to what over the last decade has become accepted knowledge. Congressional committees, special prosecutors, and the inspectors general had all previously issued reports that largely confirmed the general outlines of the skullduggery that began in 2015-16.

Hillary Clinton’s campaign, later aided by the top echelon of the FBI, CIA, and the Director of National Intelligence, sought — falsely — to seed a narrative that Trump had colluded directly with Russia to win unfairly the 2016 election. When that campaign gambit failed to alter the 2016 results, the Obama administration doubled down during the transition to undermine the incoming Trump presidency. Next, Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s “all-star” legal team found no evidence of direct Trump-Putin collusion to hijack the election. But his investigation did sabotage 22 months of Trump’s first term, marked by constant leaks and hysterical rumors that Trump was soon to be convicted and jailed as a “Russian asset.” By 2020, the frustrated intelligence agencies and former “authorities” now absurdly further lied that Hunter Biden’s incriminating laptop had “all the earmarks” — once again — of Russian interference.

So, what could be new about Gabbard’s latest release? One, after the 2016 election of Donald Trump but before his inauguration, Obama convened a strange meeting with his outgoing intelligence and investigatory heads — CIA Director John Brennan, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, FBI Director James Comey, National Security Advisor Susan Rice, and a few others. Contrary to a four-year Democratic Party narrative that “18 intelligence agencies” had long claimed Russian collusion, the top directors apprised Obama that their expert colleagues had found no such evidence of Trump-Putin collusion. Yet outgoing President Obama allegedly directed them to ignore such an assessment. Instead, they began spreading narratives that President-elect Trump had been colluding with the Russians. Leaks followed. Media hysteria crested. And soon Mueller and his left-wing “dream team” of lawyers targeted President Trump.

Further new information may confirm that Brennan’s CIA — and those he briefed in the Oval Office — had known for some time that the Russians themselves were confused about why they were falsely being accused of colluding with Trump to rig the election. Of course, Russian operatives, like their Chinese counterparts, often seek to cause havoc in American institutions, such as hacking emails or spreading online disinformation. But they may have been nevertheless curious why Hillary Clinton was making such false accusations that they were working directly with Trump, and why the Obama administration was acting upon them. Obama has now claimed these new charges are outrageous and beneath the dignity of the presidency. He did not, however, flatly contradict the new information. He should have issued an unambiguous denial that he had never ordered his intelligence chiefs in December 2016 to ignore their associates’ assessments and instead to assume Trump’s collusion with Putin.

These sustained efforts of the Clinton campaign, Obama appointees, and ex-intelligence chiefs and their media counterparts between 2015 and 2020 severely undermined the 2016 Trump campaign. They bushwhacked the 2017 presidential transition. They hamstrung the Trump presidency. And they may well have hurt Trump’s 2020 election bid. Summed up, here is the damage caused by the Trump-Putin collusion lies: 1. They emboldened “experts” in 2020 to again lie blatantly and shamelessly to the American people that the incriminating Hunter Biden laptop was yet another fake product of Russian interference to help reelect Trump. 2. The media were equally guilty. Journalists partnered with current and ex-Obama appointees by disseminating fake documents like the Steele dossier and working with giants like Twitter and Facebook. During the 2020 campaign, the FBI and social media sought to censor accurate news stories that the laptop was indeed authentic and already verified as such by the FBI.

3. These operations may have had serious consequences for U.S. foreign policy. Dictatorial Russia is an adversary of the U.S. But by needlessly and falsely claiming that Russia had intervened in two elections directly to partner with Trump, Obama-era officials and Clinton-campaign activists destroyed President Trump’s own credibility to sustain a workable relationship with a nuclear Russia. In addition, the lying and extra-legal operations of the FBI and CIA only further convinced the paranoid Russians that they could not trust the U.S. government — given it had been engaging in the very conspiracy lies that were more akin to its own than America’s. Obama, Brennan, Clapper, Comey, and others will likely never face legal consequences for the damage they’ve done to our institutions and foreign policy. But that does not mean they should be exempt from an ongoing and disinterested effort to find and finally expose the whole truth.

Read more …

“If you can arrest a former president named Donald Trump, you can arrest a former president named Barack Obama.” — Peachy Keenan on “X”

“Baseless?” (James Howard Kunstler)

Don’t you think it’s time for The New York Times to stop using the cliché “baseless” when referring to allegations — now, actually, official accusations— of the seditious conspiracy to run President Trump out of office after the 2016 election? Of all the fake “journalistic” blurts emanating from this bastion of degenerate sell-outs, “baseless” is the fakest, as if the word printed in a headline were so magically potent, the sheer assertion of it can make all your problems just — poof! — go away. It’s the thought process of wicked children who fail to develop a sense of true or false, right or wrong, who grow into adults specially licensed, by some new perversion of the social contract, to get away with anything. And those wicked children have become America’s managerial class, the elite who are supposed to do your thinking for you op-ed style, the credentialed experts, such as Tony Fauci, “economist” Paul Krugman, DEI avatar and NPR honcho Katherine Maher, Harvard law prof Lawrence Tribe. . . the list is interminable, but you get the picture.

This class is also the owner / operator of America’s political Deep State, which by 2016 had grown into a colossal racketeering operation, money-laundering gazillions of taxpayer dollars into NGOs dedicated to the country’s cultural and political destruction while it processed campaign donations into fantastic fortunes for people officially earning less than $200-K a year. The racket also managed to pay for the support of multitudes allergic to working for living, as long as they were available for riots and ballot-harvesting drives. It was working at such a high pitch by the end of Barack Obama’s two terms, with the most stupendously privileged creature in the Boomer bestiary ready to take her “turn” in the Oval Office — after amassing a $300-million-plus fortune serving as US senator (salary, $174-K / year) and Secretary of State (salary $199,700 / year, then) — that you must imagine the mighty freak-out at the prospect of one Donald John Trump, outsider vulgarian extraordinaire, promising to step in and drain the whole massive, putrid, necrotic, parasitical nepo-infested quagmire of predatory grifters, leaving them gasping for their lives on the stinking Potomac mudbanks like so many grunions dying on the beach at Redondo.

Barack Obama, apparently, Darth Vadar-ized himself and was handed a light-saber (Hillary’s Steele dossier) by John Brennan, Grand Duke of Planet Intel. . . and the rest should have been history — but instead festered in the US body politic for more than ten years like an inflamed tuberculoma and is now bursting out of the Beltway’s peritoneal cavity in a spectacular spray of ordure, sticking to everyone and everything like a thousand tails pinned on the everlasting Democratic donkey. Alas, Babylon-on-the-Potomac. . . . Also: “baseless,” my ass. . . . The basis for all this mischief is in the process of having proof supplied by the one figure, DNI Gabbard, in a position to retrieve the evidence, in writing, from the various heavily ring-fenced agencies over which she is the ultimate overseer, which has not been done before, especially back in the crucial weeks of late 2020 when John Ratcliffe was in that position. The reason Tulsi succeeded this time where Ratcliffe did not is probably due to newly available A-I systems which make collation of cross-searches much easier through the countless servers of the many intel agencies. And so, now it pours forth day by day.

That’s where things stand and the dust has not even begun to settle, with former President Obama seemingly hoisted on the petard of his own making back in December of 2016. Whether or not all the declassified info can be crafted into prosecutable cases is not yet determined, but you might imagine it will come together soon enough, if at all possible. It may not add up to treason per se, but there are plenty of other serious charges generally proceeding from deprivation of rights under color of law (18 U.S.C. § 242), to seditious conspiracy, i.e., overthrow of the president (18 U.S.C. § 2384) to stuff a number of former officials into orange jumpsuits behind bars.

Read more …

“The longer that Zelensky holds on and continues the fight with the encouragement of the West, he’s going to lose more and more..”

Zelensky’s Days are Numbered, He’ll Be the Ultimate Loser (Sp.)

“Russians hold all the cards. Zelensky has no cards. All he can do is play games and placate Trump,” says Michael Maloof, former senior security policy analyst in the US Office of the Secretary of Defense, in an interview with Sputnik. According to Maloof, Zelensky is stalling for time, hoping to paint Russia as an unreliable negotiator and gain favor with Trump. The Kremlin, however, has stated that any Putin-Zelensky talks are premature, as no common ground exists yet. “The longer that Zelensky holds on and continues the fight with the encouragement of the West, he’s going to lose more and more,” Maloof warns.

Zelensky is also facing unrest at home. On July 22, Ukrainians protested his attempt to take control of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO). “I think the internal strife is going to have to be accelerated to the point where [Zelensky] is going to have to focus all of his attention on that if he intends to survive politically. But I think his days are numbered,” says Maloof. He suggests that Ukrainians may soon act to “get what’s left of Ukraine back on a stable footing with proper governance and representation.”

“Right now, the Russian perspective is that Zelensky is not a valid leader because his term had expired as president and he’s operating under martial law,” the analyst points out. Western support is also faltering, particularly after Zelensky’s controversial NABU/SAPO law, which contradicts the 2015 Ukraine–US–EU agreement on governance and foreign oversight. The West still holds financial leverage over Ukraine, while “the ultimate loser in the end will be Zelensky,” Maloof concludes.

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“There is nothing that Zelensky can point to where he can say, hey, I’ve got great support here, and I’m in good favor with Washington..”

Out of Grace: Zelensky Loses US Backing: Larry Johnson (Sp.)

Volodymyr Zelensky is facing his first wave of mass protests since 2022 — and it’s a bad omen for him, veteran ex-CIA and State Department official Larry Johnson tells Sputnik. The trouble has brewed for the past month, according to the pundit. “We had a news article by Seymour Hersh… that indicated that his sources from the CIA and Department of Defense were telling him that Zelensky was on his way out, that they’re going to get rid of him,” Johnson says. Johnson says the first impression is the protests looked staged: Pre-printed signs, some oddly in English, while Ukrainians mostly speak either Ukrainian or Russian.

Protested Zelensky’s power grab over the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO), but not forced conscription, or the failure to return bodies and pay families who have lost loved ones in the war. “The fact that there are rumors circulating that Washington wants to get rid of Zelensky is a sign that the relationship is not what it was two years ago under Biden,” the CIA veteran says. Zelensky tried to appoint his ex-Defense Minister Rustem Umerov as ambassador to the US, but Washington rejected it. Despite promises, Trump has no weapons to send — just deals to sell arms to Europe to pass to Ukraine. Signs show the US has grown tired of Zelensky. “There is nothing that Zelensky can point to where he can say, hey, I’ve got great support here, and I’m in good favor with Washington,” Johnson concludes.

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If anyone wants to get rid of anyone else in Kiev, they just accuse them of corruption and embezzlement. Can’t miss.

Zelensky Broke The American Controls – and Now Faces The Consequences (RT)

On July 22, large-scale demonstrations broke out in major Ukrainian cities – Kiev, Lviv, Kharkov, and Odessa – and continue to this day. The protests erupted after the Verkhovna Rada (the Ukrainian Parliament) approved a law limiting the authority of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO), effectively placing them under the control of the Office of the Attorney General. This legislation came shortly after NABU and SAPO launched an investigation into former Deputy Prime Minister Aleksey Chernyshov, one of Zelensky’s closest allies. Officials in Zelensky’s Office claimed that the reform was necessary to improve coordination among government bodies amid ongoing military operations and to combat Russian influence over anti-corruption institutions.

However, public outrage stemmed not only from the law itself but also from the rapid centralization of power in Ukraine. Protests persisted even after Zelensky restored the independent functioning of NABU and SAPO. Below, RT explores the motives behind the dismantling of these anti-corruption agencies and why the protests pose a threat to Zelensky’s administration. When Vladimir Zelensky took office in 2019, he vowed to support anti-corruption efforts, urging anti-corruption agencies to investigate all cases and hold even high-ranking officials accountable. However, those promises were never fulfilled. On July 22, the Rada passed Bill No. 12414, originally addressing amendments to the Criminal Procedure Code related to disappearances of people during wartime.

However, MPs from Zelensky’s Servant of the People party added amendments that effectively restructured NABU and SAPO, placing them under the control of the Attorney General, who is appointed by the president. Notably, many MPs who voted in favor of the bill and received it with applause are themselves under investigation by these anti-corruption bodies. The official justification for targeting NABU and SAPO was the investigation into Chernyshov, a presidential ally considered a candidate for prime minister, who faced allegations of abuse of power and illicit enrichment. A major corruption scandal in the construction sector emerged, making Chernyshov the highest-ranking official within the president’s team to be embroiled in such an inquiry.

According to the publication Ukrainskaya Pravda, Zelensky ordered the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) to protect Chernyshov from arrest. Despite the allegations, the court did not suspend him from his post; however, he was eventually dismissed, and the ministry disbanded. Another notable case involves NABU’s investigation into Rostislav Shurma, the former deputy head of the President’s Office. After the case was initiated, he fled to Germany. In July, German authorities, in collaboration with NABU, conducted a search of his residence in the suburbs of Munich. NABU was preparing charges against Timur Mindich, a long-time friend of Zelensky and co-owner of Studio Kvartal-95, Ukrainskaya Pravda reported. He is suspected of embezzlement in the energy sector and drone production.

Sources indicate detectives may possess recorded conversations involving Mindich in which Zelensky is mentioned. These cases involving the Ukrainian leader’s close associates triggered the crackdown on the anti-corruption agencies. This narrative has been confirmed by The Times and The Economist. On July 21, the SBU and prosecutors conducted extensive searches related to NABU employees, targeting over 80 locations nationwide. Law enforcement acted aggressively, using armed groups to force people to the ground without presenting search warrants. Later, the agency reported the detention of Ruslan Magomedrasulov, the head of NABU’s regional office. Investigators claim his father is a Russian citizen, and he failed to disclose this before obtaining access to state secrets. Allegedly, he assisted his father in conducting business in Russia, and his mother reportedly receives a pension from the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) and “makes pro-Russian comments” online. He is expected to face charges for “aiding Russia.”

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Putin already has a job. He can’t go sit at a table for endless negotiations.

Putin-Zelensky Summit Only Possible To Finalize Peace Deal – Kremlin (RT)

A summit between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky should only take place to finalize a peace settlement, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said. Zelensky has repeatedly called for a face-to-face meeting with Putin in the past several months. The Ukrainian delegation has also proposed the idea during rounds of bilateral talks in Istanbul, framing such a summit as essential to ending the conflict. While the Kremlin has not ruled out a possible Putin-Zelensky meeting, Russian officials have consistently emphasized that the groundwork must be laid first.

“A summit meeting can and should put a final point in the settlement and record the modalities and agreements that are to be developed in the course of expert work. It is impossible to do the opposite,” Peskov told reporters on Friday. Following the third round of Russia-Ukraine talks in Istanbul this week, the Kremlin spokesman accused Kiev of prematurely pushing for a summit. “They are trying to put the cart before the horse,” Peskov said, stressing that “work needs to be done, and only then can the heads of state be given the opportunity to record the achievements that have been made.” Moscow has consistently pointed to concerns about Zelensky’s legal authority.

While Russia has stated it is open to negotiations with him, officials have warned that any documents signed under Zelensky’s name could face legal challenges in the future. Zelensky’s presidential term expired in May 2024. He has refused to hold new elections, citing the ongoing state of martial law in Ukraine. Russia has argued that his status as head of state is no longer valid and that legal authority in Ukraine now lies with its parliament. Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has suggested that Zelensky’s insistence on meeting both Putin and US President Donald Trump may be aimed at getting “a massive legitimacy boost” and using the meetings as a pretext to further delay elections.

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“The United Kingdom would not hesitate to sabotage a potential thaw in US-Russia relations..”

UK Could ‘Easily’ Stab US In The Back – Patrushev (RT)

The United Kingdom would not hesitate to sabotage a potential thaw in US-Russia relations, a top aide to Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed on Friday. Nikolay Patrushev, a longtime national security official and senior Kremlin adviser, accused London of being prepared to carry out a false flag in order to derail efforts by US President Donald Trump to resolve the conflict in Ukraine and normalize ties with Moscow. “If necessary, London would easily stab Washington in the back. I believe officials in the White House realize what kind of ‘ally’ they are dealing with,” Patrushev told RIA Novosti.

His comments followed a statement last month by Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), which alleged that British intelligence was directly involved in orchestrating covert Ukrainian operations. The SVR claimed the UK had acquired torpedoes of Soviet and Russian design for potential use in a false flag incident – specifically, a staged attack on an American naval vessel in the Baltic Sea. Since Trump’s return to office in January and the departure of Joe Biden’s Democratic administration, Russian officials have frequently pointed to London as the primary force behind the continued conflict in Ukraine. They argue that the British government’s firm support is an obstacle to peace and a strategic effort to block reconciliation between Washington and Moscow.

Moscow has portrayed the Ukraine conflict as a NATO-driven proxy war meant to weaken Russia at the expense of Ukrainian lives. Past reporting by The New York Times and The Times of London has confirmed that both US and British officials have played more active roles in directing Ukrainian military strategy than publicly acknowledged by their governments.

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Why did the U.S. district court judges of New Jersey refuse Habba and pick her assistant? i haven’t seen a single reason. Just because they could?

Trump Makes Alina Habba Acting US Attorney In NJ (ET)

President Donald Trump withdrew his nomination of Alina Habba to serve as New Jersey’s top federal prosecutor, a Justice Department official confirmed on Thursday. The development comes after a federal court declined to retain Habba in the role of U.S. attorney for New Jersey and opted to install Desiree Leigh Grace. On Tuesday, U.S. district court judges of New Jersey selected Grace, who was Habba’s first assistant, to serve as U.S. attorney as Habba’s 120-day term in the office was reaching its end. Attorney General Pam Bondi then fired Grace in response to the judges’ decision. “[Habba] has been doing a great job in making NJ safe again. Nonetheless, politically minded judges refused to allow her to continue in her position, replacing Alina with the First Assistant,” Bondi wrote on X after the decision.

“Accordingly, the First Assistant United States Attorney in New Jersey has just been removed,” she said. “This Department of Justice does not tolerate rogue judges — especially when they threaten the President’s core Article II powers.” A Justice Department official told The Epoch Times that Trump withdrew Habba’s nomination to be New Jersey’s U.S. attorney, and she was appointed first assistant U.S. attorney. This means Habba becomes the acting U.S. attorney, as the position is now vacant after Grace’s firing. “Donald J. Trump is the 47th President. Pam Bondi is the Attorney General. And I am now the Acting United States Attorney for the District of New Jersey,” Habba wrote in a statement posted to X. “I don’t cower to pressure. I don’t answer to politics. This is a fight for justice. And I’m all in.”

Earlier on Thursday, Grace wrote on LinkedIn that she’s honored the judges selected her “on merit” and that she is prepared to follow that order and “begin to serve in accordance with the law.” “I’ve served under both Republican and Democratic administrations. I’ve been promoted four times in the last five years by both—including four months ago by this administration. Politics never impacted my work at the Department. Priorities change, of course, and resources are shifted, but the work and the mission were steady,” Grace said.

However, due to Habba now serving as acting U.S. attorney, Grace likely can no longer assume that office. Habba previously served as Trump’s defense attorney in multiple court cases. Last week, Trump’s pick for U.S. attorney of the Northern District of New York, John Sarcone III, was rejected by judges on that district court. Bondi then appointed Sarcone as a “special attorney” to her, granting him the powers of a U.S. attorney indefinitely.

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“By offering the far right a symbolic prize on annexation, Netanyahu appears to be stalling a government collapse..”

Israel Just Drew A New Map – Without Saying It Out Loud (Blade)

In a significant yet non-binding move, the Israeli legislature has overwhelmingly approved a declaration urging the immediate extension of Israeli sovereignty over Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank and the Jordan Valley. The motion, which passed by a vote of 71 to 13, was backed by right-wing and center-right factions including Likud, Shas, Religious Zionism, Otzma Yehudit, and Yisrael Beiteinu. The text declares that the October 7, 2023 attack by Hamas — referred to in Israeli political discourse as the “Simchat Torah Massacre” — proves that the creation of a Palestinian state poses a mortal danger to Israel’s existence. “The Knesset declares that the State of Israel has the natural, historical, and legal right to all parts of the Land of Israel,” the resolution reads.

“The Knesset calls on the Government of Israel to act without delay to apply sovereignty… over all areas of Jewish settlement in Judea, Samaria, and the Jordan Valley.” Though labeled symbolic, Palestinian experts view the vote as laying the bureaucratic foundation for a permanent Israeli presence and governance in the West Bank, the heartland of a future Palestinian state as envisioned by international consensus. Saad Nimr, professor of political science at Birzeit University in the West Bank, told RT the implications of the Knesset’s move are far-reaching. “This is not symbolic at all,” Nimr said. “It means these settlements are now treated as Israeli cities. They’re no longer ‘occupied’ under military law. This is the legal and bureaucratic infrastructure of annexation.”

He continued: “The Israeli ministries — not the military — will now oversee health, welfare, planning, and infrastructure in these areas. It’s not about theory. It’s about bulldozers, budgets, and expansion.” Dimitri Diliani, a member of the Fatah Revolutionary Council, echoed that sentiment. “To describe the vote as symbolic is dangerously naive,” Diliani warned. “In Israeli politics, symbolism is often a precursor to de facto annexation. While the Knesset motion lacks binding legislative authority, it institutionalizes consensus in both government and opposition to expand the State of Israel’s settler-colonial project with new domestic political legitimacy.” Diliani added that members of the Knesset are already pushing legislation to replace the internationally recognized term “West Bank” with the biblical “Judea and Samaria” — further entrenching a nationalist narrative in Israeli law.

Many analysts see the vote not only as ideological, but also as a tactical political maneuver to preserve Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s fragile governing coalition. “It’s quite clear this was a political exchange,” said Nimr. “[The leader of the National Religious Party–Religious Zionism Bezalel] Smotrich and [the leader of the Otzma Yehudit (“Jewish Power”) party] Ben Gvir threatened to leave the government if negotiations in Doha led to a Gaza ceasefire. This vote is Netanyahu’s way of keeping them on board.” By offering the far right a symbolic prize on annexation, Netanyahu appears to be stalling a government collapse – even as truce talks with Hamas continue under Qatari mediation. Diliani described the move as “opportunistic,” adding: “It’s designed to pre-empt mounting international legal scrutiny, particularly after the International Court of Justice advisory opinion in July 2023, which declared Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory illegal.”

The reaction from the international community was swift but toothless. Jordan condemned the vote as “a blatant violation of international law.” The European Union and the Arab League issued similarly worded rebukes, reaffirming their commitment to a two-state solution. But both Palestinian analysts were unshaken by the lack of meaningful repercussions. “The historical record teaches us that international consensus does not always translate into action,” said Diliani. “Israel’s alignment with key Western powers, particularly the United States, has only grown stronger – even amid documented live-streamed Israeli genocide in Gaza and tremendous war crimes in Jerusalem and the rest of the West Bank.” He cited continued US military support, which amounts to $3.8 billion annually in aid and has reached nearly $20 billion in additional military assistance since the war on Gaza began in October 2023.

“Israel continues to enjoy extensive trade privileges with the EU,” Diliani added. “Over three-quarters of a million illegal colonial Israeli settlers reside in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. Yet the response from the international community remains negligible. Absent deterrent sanctions or accountability mechanisms, Israel interprets this as tacit permission to proceed.” Nimr was equally scathing. “Israel went into this decision with an overwhelming majority in the Knesset. That means they don’t care about the international community’s opinion. The EU witnessed with their own eyes the genocide in Gaza, the use of hunger as a weapon, and still didn’t take any real action.” “If there is no punishment,” Nimr said, “it’s interpreted as agreement. So now, they feel they have a green light.”

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Macron


play

hose

 

 

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Mar 252025
 
 March 25, 2025  Posted by at 10:59 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,  65 Responses »


Caravaggio Conversion on the way to Damascus 1600-01

 

“A New World Order With European Values” (Turley)
‘Nazis’ In Ukraine ‘Nurtured’ By Europeans – Lavrov (RT)
Kiev Wants Trump Envoy Witkoff Sacked (RT)
Ukraine Doesn’t Want Peace – Moscow (RT)
US and Russia Engaging In ‘Creative’ Talks – Moscow (RT)
Rubio Accuses ‘Other Countries’ Of Blocking Peace In Ukraine (RT)
DOGE Reveals Mind Shocking Fraud Propping Up Economy – Ed Dowd (USAW)
The Pentagon’s War on Wasted Dollars (RCD)
Mike Davis Cooks Judge Screwing Around With Trump’s Deportation Flights (Vespa)
Anti-Trump Judge Makes Another Outrageous Ruling (Margolis)
New Dirt on Judge Boasberg Raises More Questions (Margolis)
The Last Resort (James Howard Kunstler)
Pentagon Chief Hegseth Comments On ‘Yemen War Plans’ Leak (RT)
Trump Team Unwittingly Sends Yemen Strike Plans to Editor of The Atlantic (Sp.)
Trump Names Alina Habba To Be Interim US Attorney For New Jersey (NYP)
The ‘Real’ Epstein Files Are Coming. Here’s What to Know. (Margolis)
“Tread Carefully”: Pam Bondi Issues Warning Over Musk “Takedown” (ZH)
Elon Musk Disguises IRS Building As Tesla Dealership (BBee)

 

 

Carpe
https://twitter.com/CarpeDonktum/status/1904173446759625176

RFK

2.924

Taxes
https://twitter.com/TONYxTWO/status/1904206868269945336

Gingrich

Zeldin
https://twitter.com/EricLDaugh/status/1904209863128814043

 

 

 

 

“The problem is that this vision for a new Holy Roman Empire lacks a Charlamagne. More importantly, it lacks public support.”

“A New World Order With European Values” (Turley)

“A New World Order With European Values.” Emblazoned across banners and signs, those words met the participants at this week’s meeting of the World Forum in Berlin. Each year, leaders, executives, journalists and academics gather to address the greatest threats facing humanity. This year, there was little doubt about what they view as the current threat: the resurgence of populism and free speech. In fairness to the Forum, “a New World Order” likely sounds more ominous for some civil libertarians than intended. While the European Union is a transnational government stretching across 27 nations, the organizers were referring to a shift of values away from the United States to Europe. As one of the few speakers at the forum who was calling for greater protections for free speech, I found it an unnerving message.

Even putting aside the implications of the New World Order, the idea of building a world on today’s European values is alarming for free speech. Free speech is in a free fall in Europe, with ever-expanding speech regulations and criminal prosecutions — including for having “toxic ideologies.” The World Forum has a powerful sense of fraternity, even an intimacy, among leaders who see each other as a global elite — a cadre of enlightened minds protecting citizens from their own poor choices and habits. There has long been a push for transnational governing systems, and European figures see an opportunity created by the conflict with President Trump. The European Union is the model for such a Pax Europaea or “European peace.” The problem is that this vision for a new Holy Roman Empire lacks a Charlamagne. More importantly, it lacks public support.

The very notion of a “New World Order” is chilling to many who oppose the rise of a globalist class with the rise of transnational governance in the European Union and beyond. This year, there is a sense of panic among Europe’s elite over the victory of Trump and the Republicans in the U.S., as well as nationalist and populist European movements. For globalists, the late Tip O’Neill’s rule that “all politics is local” is anathema. The European Union is intended to transcend national identities and priorities in favor of an inspired transnational government managed by an expert elite. The message was clear. The new world order would be based on European, not American, values. To rally the faithful to the cause, the organizers called upon two of the patron saints of the global elite: Bill and Hillary Clinton. President Clinton was even given an award as “leader of the century.”

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“..the West’s approach to public messaging that “portrays itself as infallible and suffers from an exceptionalism complex.”

‘Nazis’ In Ukraine ‘Nurtured’ By Europeans – Lavrov (RT)

European NATO members are willfully ignoring the “Nazi” character of the Ukrainian government, which they have empowered as an anti-Russian instrument, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has asserted.On Monday, the senior diplomat expressed concern over the “demons of neo-Nazism, Russophobia, and other hateful ideologies” spreading across multiple EU nations. Member states are deliberately overlooking Kiev’s misconduct, even as it persecutes ethnic Russians and violates human rights, he stressed. “Ukraine – ‘that’s different.’ Those Nazis have been nurtured for the latest attempt to unite all of Europe under racist, Nazi banners for a war against the Russian Federation,” Lavrov stated.

The minister was speaking in his capacity as a trustee of the Gorchakov Fund, a Russian NGO aimed at enhancing public diplomacy. He emphasized the organization’s mission of presenting an authentic view of Russia and contrasted it sharply with the West’s approach to public messaging that “portrays itself as infallible and suffers from an exceptionalism complex.” The EU is pursuing a multibillion-dollar rearmament plan, justified by what Brussels labels a growing Russian threat. European officials have warned that a direct NATO confrontation with Moscow may break out within the next few years. Russia, however, denies any hostile intentions toward the US-led military bloc.

Tensions between European NATO members and Washington resurfaced after President Donald Trump assumed office in January. The new US administration has sought a swift resolution to the Ukraine conflict and intends to shift security responsibilities onto Europe once a truce is achieved. Moscow’s goal of ‘denazification’ remains central to its stance on the Ukraine conflict. Russian officials have denounced the Ukrainian government as a “neo-Nazi regime” due to its discriminatory domestic policies, alleged war crimes against Russian citizens, and veneration of historical nationalist figures who collaborated with Nazi Germany during World War II.

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“..this person needs to be removed from this delegation, he should not be a representative of the [US] president. Since he’s either completely unprofessional or simply repeats Putin’s narratives..”

Kiev Wants Trump Envoy Witkoff Sacked (RT)

US President Donald Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, who has played a central role in opening negotiations on resolving the Ukraine conflict, is “spreading Russian propaganda” and should be sacked, according to a senior Ukrainian lawmaker. The head of the Kiev’s Foreign Affairs Committee, Aleksandr Merezhko, made the remark in response to Witkoff’s interview with American journalist Tucker Carlson, during which the envoy spoke about the status of former Ukrainian territories that have joined Russia, describing the issue as “an elephant in the room” that “no one wants to talk about.” “They’re Russian-speaking. There have been referendums where the overwhelming majority of the people have indicated that they want to be under Russian rule,” Witkoff said.

“The Russians are de facto in control of these territories. The question is: Will the world acknowledge that those are Russian territories? Can [Vladimir] Zelensky survive politically if he acknowledges this? This is the central issue in the conflict,” he added. Merezhko strongly condemned the “disgraceful, shocking statements,” accusing Witkoff of acting as an envoy of Russian President Vladimir Putin rather than of Trump. “We are talking about a representative of the president who should have professional expertise in this matter and know some basic things. obvious things. And he doesn’t know this. He spreads Russian propaganda,” the lawmaker insisted in a televised interview.

Merezhko said that [he] wasn’t sure if “ignorance, naivety, or unprofessionalism” was behind Witkoff’s statements and called for the US official to be booted from his role. “We clearly can’t dictate to American friends who should represent them. But this person needs to be removed from this delegation, he should not be a representative of the [US] president. Since he’s either completely unprofessional or simply repeats Putin’s narratives,” Merezhko added.

Moscow and Kiev have taken bipolar positions on the former-Ukrainian Kherson and Zaporozhye Regions and the Donbass republics of Donetsk and Lugansk, all of which officially joined Russia in autumn 2022 following a series of referendums. Kiev also formally claims Russia’s Crimea, which seceded from Ukraine in the aftermath of a violent Western-backed coup in Kiev and joined Russia in 2014, as its own. Moscow has repeatedly signaled that its sovereignty over the territories is not negotiable, while Kiev has repeatedly pledged to seize back control of all the territories it claims as its own. The Ukrainian leadership has seemingly softened its rhetoric as of late, now insisting it will never recognize “occupation” of the territories and Russian sovereignty over them in any form.

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The US should simply leave.

Ukraine Doesn’t Want Peace – Moscow (RT)

Ukraine continues to attack Russian civilian infrastructure, proving that Kiev does not actually want peace, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has said. Last week, following a phone call between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his US counterpart, Donald Trump, Moscow and Kiev agreed to a partial ceasefire and pledged to suspend strikes on each other’s energy infrastructure for 30 days. However, the Russian Defense Ministry has since reported multiple Ukrainian drone strikes on Russian energy facilities such as oil and gas pipelines. The latest attack reportedly took place at 2 a.m. on Monday on the Kropotkinskaya oil pumping station in Russia’s Krasnodar Region. The station is operated by the Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC), which works with US energy giants such as Mobil and Chevron.

Russian air defense systems intercepted a Ukrainian attack UAV some 7km from the facility, with fragments falling in the area of a railway station, according to the Defense Ministry. In an update on Monday, the Russian Defense Ministry claimed that Ukraine had also launched drone strikes on the Glebovskoye gas condensate field in Crimea on March 23 and on a gas distribution center in Belgorod Region on March 22. Commenting on the recent attacks, Zakharova claimed it is typical of Kiev’s behavior, particularly ahead of international events such as this week’s Russia-US talks in Saudi Arabia.

”Every time it’s the same story. Before any contacts, including during visits to Moscow by foreign delegations, the Kiev regime commits terrorist acts, attacks on civilian infrastructure, on civilian objects, extremist acts, and so on… They don’t need peace. They have stated this repeatedly,” Zakharova told reporters. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has stressed that despite Kiev’s repeated violations, Moscow continues to uphold the energy strike truce and that President Putin has not issued any new commands to the country’s armed forces. However, Zakharova warned over the weekend that Russia reserves its right to respond to Ukraine’s attacks, including “symmetrically,” if Kiev continues its “destructive course.”

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The talks will intensify.

US and Russia Engaging In ‘Creative’ Talks – Moscow (RT)

The US-Russian talks held in Saudi Arabia are a “creative” endeavor, though they may not yield a diplomatic breakthrough on Monday, a Russian lawmaker who is part of Moscow’s delegation told journalists. Grigory Karasin, chairman of the International Relations Committee in Russia’s upper chamber of parliament, provided the media an update during a break in the talks in Riyadh. The discussions, which he described as “technical,” focus on maritime security in the Black Sea and the possibility of reviving the Black Sea Initiative, which was originally mediated by the UN and Türkiye. Russia withdrew from the deal in July 2023, citing the West’s failure to provide sanctions relief for its grain exports, as the conditions of the arrangement required.

“Not every negotiation yields a high-profile document or agreement,” Karasin remarked before returning to the closed-door meetings. “What matters is maintaining communication and understanding each other’s positions. In this regard, we are succeeding.” Alongside Karasin, Russia’s delegation includes Sergey Beseda, an adviser to the director of the Federal Security Service. Their American counterparts, as identified by Reuters, are Andrew Peek, a senior director at the White House National Security Council, and Michael Anton, a senior State Department official. When asked about possible outcomes, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov remarked earlier in the day that they “primarily concern the safety of maritime traffic. However, if you recall [the original version] of the deal, there were significant obligations made to our side that were never fulfilled. This remains part of the agenda.”

US President Donald Trump has suggested revisiting the grain deal as part of his efforts to mediate a broader truce between Russia and Ukraine, Peskov added. Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed to Trump’s proposal to suspend attacks on Ukrainian energy infrastructure, while Ukraine committed to reciprocate. However, Kiev has violated the partial ceasefire multiple times, including on Monday morning, according to Russia. Moscow has warned that it reserves the right to withdraw from the arrangement should Ukraine fail to meet its commitments. A Ukrainian delegation is also present at the same luxury hotel in Riyadh where the US-Russian talks are taking place, but they have no direct contact with the Russian team. The Ukrainians had their own talks with the US delegation the previous day.

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There are 27 of them in the EU.

Rubio Accuses ‘Other Countries’ Of Blocking Peace In Ukraine (RT)

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said that unnamed foreign governments are obstructing efforts to end the Ukraine conflict, crediting President Donald Trump with leading negotiations to mediate peace between Moscow and Kiev. Senior Russian and US officials held marathon 12-hour talks in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia on Monday, focused on resolving the Ukraine conflict and ensuring maritime security in the Black Sea. However, the two sides have yet to release details or announce the outcome of the discussions. Speaking during a cabinet meeting at the White House before the talks concluded, Rubio stressed that the conflict “needs to be brought to an end” through negotiations, not military means, and praised Trump as “the only one leader in the world that’s capable of bringing two sides to a table.”

According to Rubio, Trump’s diplomatic initiative has faced resistance from other governments, although he did not name any specific countries. “You’ve done it despite impediments from other countries and others who maybe have different opinions about how this should go,” Rubio said, addressing Trump directly. “Ultimately, I think that the only chance we have for peace is through the President’s leadership.” Following a phone call between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his US counterpart last week, Moscow and Kiev agreed to a partial ceasefire and pledged to suspend strikes on energy infrastructure for 30 days.

However, the Russian Defense Ministry has since reported multiple Ukrainian strikes on Russian energy facilities. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has stressed that despite Kiev’s violations, Moscow will continue to uphold the energy strike truce. In an interview on Sunday, Peskov also remarked that instead of seeking peace and addressing the root causes of the conflict, EU member states are now discussing the deployment of NATO contingents to Ukrainian territory. “This rampant militarist policy of Europe – there is no other way to describe it – is hard to comprehend,” he said.

Tensions between Washington and European NATO members resurfaced after Trump assumed office in January. The new administration has pushed for a swift resolution to the Ukraine conflict and plans to shift security responsibilities to Europe once a truce is in place. Following an emergency summit in London earlier this month, the UK and France signaled that they are open to sending Western “peacekeepers” to Ukraine once a ceasefire is reached. Moscow has rejected the proposal, stating that it makes no difference under what pretext NATO troops enter the country. Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev warned that this could lead to a direct war between the military bloc and Moscow.

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DOGE vs the NGOs.

“Martin Armstrong says all the gold movement coming to the US is because of a coming war..”

DOGE Reveals Mind Shocking Fraud Propping Up Economy – Ed Dowd (USAW)

Former Wall Street money manager and financial analyst Ed Dowd of PhinanceTechnologies.com is back with an update of a report on “Danger of Deep Worldwide Recession in 2025.” It was not just heavy government spending on illegal immigration, but “mind shocking” fraud that has been revealed with DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency). Investigators have uncovered $115 billion so far with many hundreds of billions more to be exposed. Dowd says, “Both sides of the aisle are probably going to have problems. The DOGE revelations are mind shocking. The clear way in which the government was spending money through NGOs (non-governmental organizations) and people taking kickbacks and profits along the way is going to come out. There may have been theft along the way. What business does Stacy Abrams have getting $2 billion for an NGO? This doesn’t make any sense.

It’s going to be shocking, even shocking to me. I knew there was rot in the system, but the mind blowing way the NGOs were used to facilitate the illegal immigration just blows my mind. The 10 million plus illegals that came in over the last four years, you just don’t wake up one day in Central America and say I am going to the Darien Gap, and go to the Mexican border and then meander my way into the interior of the US without a tremendous amount of aid along the way. NGOs facilitated that and probably took their cut. What was the all-in economic cost of the goodies they got once they got here? Plus, the NGOs spent and what the government spent themselves to facilitate this, it’s not hard to imagine $50,000 to $100,000 all-in cost per illegal. . . . This is the all-in cost up and down the entire economic food chain. . . . It was anywhere between $500 billion to $1.5 trillion depending on the illegals. It was an illegal project funded purposely, and it was very logistical. It was not something that just happened overnight.”

The result, says Dowd, was the US economy was propped up when it should have already tanked. Now, all this spending on this illegal invasion is going away. Dowd says, “When we wrote our report, we were surprised on how fast DOGE would get to work. . . . This is why our thesis is playing out a little quicker than we thought. . . . The housing market was on fragile ground the last year or so. It was held up by illegal immigrants supporting rent prices. So, as that unwinds, we think there will be a mini 2008–2009 housing issue. Housing prices are going to come down, and that is a big driver of consumption in the economy. That needs to happen because home affordability is off the charts.”

Dowd also see a recession coming as the government downsizes, illegal alien funding gets cut and illegals continue to self-deport. Dowd says, “Consumer confidence has taken a nosedive recently, and you can see why. There are 10 million to 15 million illegal immigrants worried about their gravy train coming to an end. So, they may be holding back on their spending. There are millions of government employees worried about their jobs. Then, you have the NGO networks that employ about 6 million people. So, you have about 20 million to 25 million people that are in the workforce . . . worried about where their money is going to come from, and that can cause consumer spending to slow down.”

There is good news with the spending cuts, according to Dowd, and that will come in the form of lower interest rates in the bond market. Dowd still likes gold as a core asset and does not see Trump tariffs as inflationary. Dowd says the problems with tariffs are “overblown” and are a negotiation tool to get fair trade for America around the world. Dowd sees “deflation” and possibly a short but “deep recession” coming before inflation. A possible black swan event is an intensified war in Ukraine and no peace deal along with the EU getting deeply involved in a war with Russia. This could be a plus for the US if it stays out of the conflict. Dowd says, “There seems to be war drums beating in Europe, and capital will flee to the US. Martin Armstrong says all the gold movement coming to the US is because of a coming war, and of all the theories on this, that makes the most sense to me. I am not predicting war, but that is a geopolitical risk out there. That is one of those ‘black swan’ events. Another ‘black swan’ event is a Bank of Japan currency crisis and, also, something going on with Iran and the Middle East. . . . Black swan events add to the risk, and those are hard to predict.”

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“America cannot afford inefficiency..”

The Pentagon’s War on Wasted Dollars (RCD)

So far, Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency has swept through government agencies like the United States Agency for International Development, brushing off cobwebs and uncovering skeletons as it goes. Now, DOGE is set to enter a much bigger agency whose shortfalls demand reform: the Department of Defense. Long criticized for its budget woes, the DOD has recently faced accusations of overspending, underspending, and even simple misspending—criticisms which are all well founded. In fact, the DOD consistently mismanages its budget, a fact that’s led it to fail all of its last seven audits.To address these issues, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth recently announced that he would work with DOGE to conduct a DOD-wide budget review.

Already, this initiative has revealed $80 million in wasteful spending, including $1.9 million in “DEI transformation and training” and $3.5 million in “Defense HR Support for DEI.” While the Pentagon is notoriously resistant to change, additional pressure from DOGE and the administration could finally force the reforms needed to modernize the American military, refocus on warfighting capabilities, and rid the Pentagon of absurd budget line items. But DOGE’s mission isn’t just to slash budgets: it’s also to restore efficiency. Specifically, DOGE’s role is to ensure the federal government makes the most effective use possible of American taxpayer dollars.

Fundamentally, the DOD exists to ensure America’s warfighting capability—a task DOGE has no intention of obstructing. And even as the DOD’s mission grows more and more urgent, Pentagon dollars continue to be misused, a flaw that cries for immediate correction. Hegseth recently announced he’d be implementing a DOD budget “cut” of 8%, or about $50 billion. Rather than simply imposing strict cuts, this plan seeks to “refocus … and reinvest … existing funds” to build a more lethal fighting force, restore “warrior ethos,” and reestablish global deterrence. This shift is essential at a time when our arsenal is severely depleted and outdated and we lack the ships and planes to deter China from launching an attack in the Indo-Pacific.

To fix this, Hegseth should prioritize reinvesting funding cuts into procurement and, specifically, into the construction of new ships, planes, and munitions. Hegseth should also divert dollars from personnel—a category that accounts for almost a quarter of the DOD’s budget. Already, he and Musk have announced plans to reduce the civilian workforce by between 5% to 8%, a cut that will save the DOD between $9 and $14.5 billion. So far, he’s implemented this plan via a hiring freeze and the firing of probational employees and recent hires.

Many have sought to villainize the Pentagon’s budget purge. Yet those in national security should recognize the need to cut defense budget waste, especially given recent developments on the international stage. There, China continues to rapidly modernize its military to challenge U.S. dominance, while Russia persists in its aggression in Eastern Europe. North Korea still pursues its ever-growing nuclear ambitions (and strengthens its support for Russia), while Iran maintains its destabilizing influence in the Middle East.

These various actors all share one common feature: a vicious antipathy toward the United States. The burden falls on the Pentagon and the DOD to protect the American people. DOGE represents a historic opportunity for the DOD to further this mission by rethinking how it organizes, supports, and employs its people. The goal isn’t to cut corners—it’s to reinvest in the capacity and capability of America’s warfighting force. In a world of rising global threats, America cannot afford inefficiency. The Pentagon must embrace DOGE’s mission to break free from outdated bureaucracy and inefficient spending. Only then will the DOD be able to enhance American warfighting capability and ensure our security and prosperity.

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“He publicly exposed an ongoing U.S. military, intelligence, and law-enforcement operation with an American ally dealing with the most vicious terrorists (Tren de Aragua) and international gang member (MS13) in the Western Hemisphere. That public exposure put American and allied lives in grave danger.”

Mike Davis Cooks Judge Screwing Around With Trump’s Deportation Flights (Vespa)

Well, Attorney General Pam Bondi isn’t going to discuss further the details regarding the deportation flights of Tren de Aragua members, a Venezuelan gang that the Trump administration has designated a foreign terror group. Judge James Boasberg, however, wanted to know the classified details regarding this operation. No, sir. This will not happen, as the Justice Department informed the courts that they’re invoking the State Secrets Act. Move on, little man.

It still doesn’t negate the days of judicial overreach and insanity from Boasberg, who thought he was the executive, or at least in charge of deportation policy. He is not,andd never will be. He dabbled in the Russian collusion hoax, ran legal interference for those caught fabricating evidence to secure illegal FISA warrants. This man is a disgrace to the bench. Before Ms. Bondi invokes the state secrets provision, Boasberg insisted that those marked for deportation should be afforded court dates. Mike Davis, a former clerk to Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch, took a hatchet to little Boasberg, arguing that it’s time to impeach for his serial incidents of judicial overreach: Here is the fatal flaw with DC Obama Judge Jeb Boasberg’s order:

“Even if these designated foreign terrorists are entitled to individual court review before their deportation, which is disputed, the DC court is not the proper court. Judge Boasberg did not, and does not, have the power to do what he is purporting to do. For this reason alone, everything he is doing is lawless. But it is much worse; it is also dangerous. Judge Boasberg ran to his courtroom to hold a Saturday hearing, even though he was not even serving as the emergency judge that weekend. (How did he get this case?) He publicly exposed an ongoing U.S. military, intelligence, and law-enforcement operation with an American ally dealing with the most vicious terrorists (Tren de Aragua) and international gang member (MS13) in the Western Hemisphere. That public exposure put American and allied lives in grave danger.

Stunningly, Judge Boasberg even ordered the President to turn around planes full of terrorists over the Gulf of America, without knowing the fuel levels, the security footprint back in America, or other crucial operational details. We saw the enormous security footprint in El Salvador. Why would we have had that same footprint in America, as who could have ever imagined an activist DC judge could or would order the President to return planes full of terrorists? And not completing the mission would have humiliated and politically damaged El Salvador’s president, who had hundreds of military, law-enforcement, and other officials awaiting–and who took a significant political and personal risk by agreeing to take these terrorists. Judge Boasberg’s Saturday hearing and order crossed the red line. But Judge Boasberg is doubling down by demanding details about the military operation, to which he is not entitled.

Judge Boasberg says he has a security clearance, but he definitely does not have the need to know. And allowing judges to meddle in military operations like this is dangerous and unacceptable. Foreign leaders are less likely to work with the President, if they fear an activist American judge may disclose their secrets. This harms the President’s ability to conduct foreign policy and his constitutional duty to keep us safe. The President has a constitutional duty, as the chief executive officer and commander-in-chief, to conduct international affairs, repeal foreign invasion, and protect American lives. The President has a constitutional duty to ignore any clearly unlawful court order that imminently endangers American lives, like Judge Boasberg’s orders. Judge Boasberg is refusing to back down. So the House must move forward with impeachment proceedings for his lawless and dangerous sabotage of the President’s core Article II powers.

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“He dragged us into court on a Saturday without any notice. And then he’s continuing these hearings. He’s trying to ask us about national security information, which he is absolutely not entitled to.”

Anti-Trump Judge Makes Another Outrageous Ruling (Margolis)

U.S. District Judge James Boasberg is at it again. In a mind-boggling 37-page decision, he has blocked the Trump administration from swiftly deporting members of the notorious Tren de Aragua gang. The judge’s ruling reads like a progressive wish list, demanding “individualized hearings” before any deportations can proceed. Because apparently, we need to roll out the red carpet and due process for criminal aliens who shouldn’t be here in the first place. Even more outrageous, the government must now prove these individuals are actually gang members — as if their presence alone isn’t a violation enough of our immigration laws. Boasberg previously ordered a deportation flight for these illegal alien gang members to turn around back to the United States; however, since he made the ruling while the plane was over international waters, he had no jurisdiction, and the deportations continued as planned.

Boasberg’s memorandum opinion, which accompanied the order, maintains that these individuals must have “the opportunity to challenge their designation as alien enemies.” In other words, we’re giving suspected gang members a chance to argue that they’re actually upstanding citizens who deserve to stay in our country. Now he has the audacity to say that the court “need not resolve the thorny question of whether the judiciary has the authority to assess this claim in the first place.” This is an obvious reaction to the Trump administration’s position that district court judges don’t have the authority to micromanage the president of the United States or the executive branch. Boasberg’s opinion continues:

“That is because Plaintiffs are likely to succeed on another equally fundamental theory: before they may be deported, they are entitled to individualized hearings to determine whether the Act applies to them at all. As the Government itself concedes, the awesome power granted by the Act may be brought to bear only on those who are, in fact, “alien enemies.” And the Supreme Court and this Circuit have long maintained that federal courts are equipped to adjudicate that question when individuals threatened with detention and removal challenge their designation as such. Because the named Plaintiffs dispute that they are members of Tren de Aragua, they may not be deported until a court has been able to decide the merits of their challenge. Nor may any members of the provisionally certified class be removed until they have been given the opportunity to challenge their designations as well. The Motion to Vacate will thus be denied.”

This isn’t just judicial overreach; it’s judicial insanity. “This is an out-of-control judge, a federal judge trying to control our entire foreign policy, and he cannot do it,” Attorney General Pam Bondi told Fox News host Maria Bartiromo on Sunday. “He dragged us into court on a Saturday without any notice. And then he’s continuing these hearings. He’s trying to ask us about national security information, which he is absolutely not entitled to.” The plaintiffs now have until Wednesday to request converting the temporary restraining order into a preliminary injunction. If granted, this would further cement this dangerous precedent and extend protection for these gang members from deportation. Because obviously, what America needs right now is more legal shields for criminal aliens. This ruling sets a dangerous precedent that undermines our immigration enforcement capabilities and makes a mockery of our national sovereignty.

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They’re organized.

New Dirt on Judge Boasberg Raises More Questions (Margolis)

The district court judge who recently blocked President Donald Trump’s efforts to deport illegal alien gang members attended a suspiciously partisan legal conference just months before his ruling, according to a judicial ethics report. Judge James Boasberg, who serves on the D.C. District Court, participated in what appears to be nothing more than a Democrat strategy session masquerading as a legal conference in Sun Valley, Idaho. The conference’s agenda items, “Judges in a Democracy” and “State of Democracy,” sound eerily similar to the Democrats’ tiresome 2024 campaign rhetoric about “saving democracy” — which, of course, has become the justification for their using the courts to obstruct Trump’s agenda.

“Called a ‘Privately Funded Seminar Disclosure Report,” the document discloses that Boasberg was in attendance but offers no details of whether Boasberg was paid for his attendance or travel, or what the remuneration was,’ reports Just the News. The outlet was “alerted to the conference and to Boasberg’s attendance by a retired Democrat-appointed judge, who was concerned the July 2024 conference’s focus on judges’ role in a democracy was too close to a political party’s theme for comfort.”

“Overseen by the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, the ethical rules governing federal judges require that a private entity who “issues an invitation to a federal judge to attend an educational program as a speaker, panelist, or attendee and offers to pay for or reimburse that judge, in excess of $480, must disclose financial and programmatic information.” The rules do not require a specific accounting for each judge, or even how much was paid to judges at all. […] It is possible that his “payment” was merely reimbursement for expenses, but Boasberg did not respond to a request for comment from Just the News.”

The entire arrangement reeks of the same swamp politics that President Trump has been fighting since day one. Is it any surprise that after rubbing elbows with fellow liberals at this partisan powwow, Judge Boasberg decided to obstruct Trump’s efforts to remove dangerous gang members from our streets? This is exactly why Americans have lost faith in our judicial system — unelected judges attending partisan conferences, then making decisions based on partisan biases, not constitutionality. The conference was part of the Rodel Institute’s Judicial Fellowship, and each attending judge, including Boasberg, was a first-year fellow, according to the institute’s website. Notably, Rodel receives funding from the same foundations that frequently bankroll anti-Trump organizations, programs, and publications. Additionally, the institute’s faculty advisors — twenty in total — are overwhelmingly outspoken Trump critics or those who have opposed his policies.

The Rodel Institute’s Board of Directors is stacked with Trump critics, including Ian Solomon. Co-founders Bill and Don Budinger have deep ties to Democratic organizations and candidates, with Don opposing Arizona’s immigration enforcement efforts and backing Democratic Senate candidates. Former Montana Gov. Steve Bullock was under consideration for Kamala Harris’s Cabinet, while former Arizona legislator Heather Carter abandoned the GOP and endorsed Democrats like Katie Hobbs. Jamie Woodson co-chaired a report lamenting “political disinformation” in 2016, and former Washington Attorney General Rob McKenna has openly attacked Trump, calling him a “demagogue” and dismissing his legal arguments as “flimsy.” Maybe next time, Judge Boasberg can hold his strategy sessions somewhere less obvious than a millionaire’s playground. But then again, the left has never been particularly good at hiding its contempt for Trump or the rule of law.

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“What is the alternative to presidential oversight and management of the agencies listed in this branch of government? They run themselves? That claim means nothing in practice.” —Jeffrey Tucker

The Last Resort (James Howard Kunstler)

Law is humanity’s instrument for creating order out of the terror and chaos of nature, where anything goes. The result of law theoretically, is a civil society, where only the good, true, and right things can go. These days, lawyers are hard at work to replace civilized order with the terror and chaos of nature — which is to say, the seeking of raw power: this is what I can do to you! That primal despotism is the motivating engine of the Democratic Party in its terminal phase, a feral, power-seeking monster. It was why, in case you hadn’t noticed, the essential drive of Woke politics was the sadistic pleasure it took in exacting its endless punishments — cancellation, personal ruin, censorship — not correcting alleged injustices against marginalized minorities.

And that tells you, by the way, exactly why the J-6 defendants were treated so harshly by the likes of Judge James Boasberg, Tanya Chutkan, and their colleagues of the DC federal district. The enabling device for that monstrous power seeking of the Democratic Party was the colossal racketeering operation they implanted in every corner of the federal government, an insidious process that accelerated during the Obama years, eluded discipline during Trump One — with the many distracting ruses such as RussiaGate — and surged into final overdrive during the perfidious term of “Joe Biden,” America’s first false-front president. The racketeering operation was perfectly illustrated in the DOGE’s recent deconstruction of USAID.

That agency worked as a gigantic money laundering matrix to pay Democratic Party activists for the sole purpose of maintaining and expanding the party’s power — its ability to push American citizens around, control our lives, tell us how to live, how to think, and, ultimately, in the Covid-19 scam, telling us to take our shots, get lost, and die. Pitifully, a lot of those vaxx victims were the Democratic Party’s own rank and file, which shows you how psychotically suicidal the Democratic Party became. By and large, it was conservatives who avoided the vaxxes because they were able psychologically to entertain the evidence that Covid was a nefarious set-up and that, month-by-month, the vaxxes were proving to be both ineffective and harmful. Democrats, in their Woke fugue state, could not do that. Even today, they insist that their vaxx injuries are “long Covid” and would be worse if not for the additional boosters they took. Poor dumb bunnies.

Mr. Trump was played masterfully in the initial 2020 Covid roll-out by the likes of Dr. Fauci, Deborah Birx, and the faithless Veep Mike Pence who directed the Coronavirus Task Force (and whoever was behind it). The president could not bring himself to oppose or cast doubt on their diktats and to this day he must remain embarrassed about how that all worked out. But he also probably learned to not be fooled again. And so, after the fishy 2020 election, and during the disastrous “Biden” years, Mr. Trump had time to lay careful and comprehensive plans for ending the massive racketeering and for restructuring the federal apparatus into a leaner, more efficient, and more lawful enterprise for managing the civil society known as the USA. Which brings us to the present.

Mr. Trump’s lawfully appointed agent, Elon Musk, and his legally chartered investigative advisory unit, called DOGE, has begun making recommendations for severe cuts in agencies and employees, which have been executed by the lawfully confirmed heads of agencies, and the chief executive himself. Thus, the rapid, systematic disassembly of the Democratic Party’s grift machine and the end of its immense revenue stream. No more USAID and its thousands of NGO money laundromats. No more Department of Education and its Grant-O-Matic depredations in the universities. No more work-from-home (but not really) nonsense. No more DEI reverse racism in hiring. No more flooding the swing state voting precincts with illegal aliens. No more stupid proxy war in Ukraine. No more gender pretending chaos. You see how it goes now.

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CNN yesterday didn’t talk about anything else.

Pentagon Chief Hegseth Comments On ‘Yemen War Plans’ Leak (RT)

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has addressed a recent leak of high-level discussions about US airstrikes against Yemen’s Houthi rebels, calling the journalist involved “deceitful” and downplaying the significance of the disclosure. The incident came to light after The Atlantic reported on Monday that its editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, had been accidentally added to a Signal group chat that included top Trump administration officials such as Vice President J.D. Vance, National Security Adviser Mike Waltz, and Hegseth. The group had been actively discussing potential US military operations against the Houthis for days prior to President Donald Trump ordering strikes on Yemen on March 15. Goldberg claimed that one of Hegseth’s final messages before the attack “contained operational details of forthcoming strikes on Yemen, including information about targets, weapons the U.S. would be deploying, and attack sequencing.”

When asked about the leak on Monday, Hegseth dismissed Goldberg as “a deceitful and highly discredited so-called journalist who’s made a profession of peddling hoaxes.” “Nobody was texting war plans, and that’s all I have to say about that,” Hegseth said when pressed on the content of the messages. National Security Council spokesman Brian Hughes told Reuters that the message thread “appears to be authentic” and confirmed that an internal review had been launched into “how an inadvertent number was added to the chain.” “The thread is a demonstration of the deep and thoughtful policy coordination between senior officials,” Hughes added, without clarifying whether national security protocols had been breached or if any disciplinary action would follow.

Trump ordered a “powerful military action” against the Yemen-based Houthi militants last Saturday, accusing them of conducting an “unrelenting campaign of piracy, violence, and terrorism against American, and other, ships, aircraft, and drones.” The group, officially known as the Ansar Allah movement, has controlled large portions of Yemen – including the capital, Sanaa – since the mid-2010s. In what The Atlantic described as a “fascinating policy discussion,” senior US officials reportedly acknowledged the difficulty of building public support for a new military campaign.

“There is a real risk that the public doesn’t understand this or why it’s necessary,” the account labeled ‘JD Vance’ said, arguing that “the strongest reason to do this is, as POTUS said, to send a message.” In response, Hegseth agreed, stating: “I think messaging is going to be tough no matter what – nobody knows who the Houthis are – which is why we would need to stay focused on: 1) Biden failed & 2) Iran funded.” Trump has claimed that the Houthi attacks “emanate from, and are created by, Iran,” warning that from now on, Washington would view every shot fired by the Yemeni group as if it were fired by Tehran. “Iran will be held responsible, and suffer the consequences, and those consequences will be dire,” the president wrote on his Truth Social platform last Monday.

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“..the president dubbing it a “second-” or “third-rate,” “failing magazine” and calling “sleazebag reporter” Goldberg out by name..”

Trump Team Unwittingly Sends Yemen Strike Plans to Editor of The Atlantic (Sp.)

The Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg was included in a confidential Signal messaging chain detailing US planning. Here’s what was revealed. In a message to Pete Hegseth, Vice President Vance said it was at the DoD chief’s discretion whether or not to proceed. “I just hate bailing Europe out again,” Vance said. Hegseth responded by saying he “fully” shared Vance’s sentiments about the “free-loading” Europeans, but added that the US was the only one capable of engaging the Houthis “on our side of the ledger.” A user named S M (presumably WH deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller) chimed in, saying that “as [he] heard it, the president was clear: green light.” In return, the US would look to “extract” “some further economic gain” from the Europeans, S M indicated. A follow-up message by Hegseth titled “TEAM UPDATE” provided operational details on the attacks, targeting details, which weapons the US would be using, and attack sequencing.

By Goldberg’s account, he was added to the confidential chat by National Security Advisor Mike Waltz, and didn’t believe it was real at first, fearing it might be an attempt “to somehow entrap” him or a script “by a particularly adept AI text generator.” The White House has confirmed that Goldberg had been made privy to classified discussions and information by mistake. “We are reviewing how an inadvertent number was added to the chain,” NSC spokesman Brian Hughes said. The Atlantic and its editor-in-chief have been a longtime source of Trump’s ire, with the president dubbing it a “second-” or “third-rate,” “failing magazine” and calling “sleazebag reporter” Goldberg out by name multiple times over what Trump said was false reporting on his private conversations.

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Re-organizing the legal teams. Time for the heavies.

Trump Names Alina Habba To Be Interim US Attorney For New Jersey (NYP)

President Trump on Monday appointed his former personal attorney Alina Habba to serve as interim US attorney in New Jersey — with Habba vowing to clean up “corruption” in her home state. Habba, 40, became a public figure while repping Trump in a defamation case brought by writer E. Jean Carroll between the president’s terms of office, and has held the senior role as presidential counselor since January. “There is corruption, there is injustice, and there is a heavy amount of crime right in [Senator] Cory Booker’s backyard and right under Governor [Phil] Murphy. And that will stop,” Habba told reporters on the White House driveway.

“I look forward to working with [Attorney General] Pam Bondi and with the Department of Justice and making sure that we further the president’s agenda of putting America first, cleaning up the mess and going after the people that we should be going after, not the people that are falsely accused.” Habba declined to say if she viewed the appointment as a stepping stone toward elected office in the Garden State — despite aiming her initial remarks directly at the Garden State’s two most prominent Democrats. “I think Cory Booker and Governor Murphy have failed the state of New Jersey,” Habba said. “If you look at what happened in crime, what’s going on in Newark, what’s going on in Camden, this has been a neglected state. It is one of the most populated states for its size, and it needs to stop. We’re going to do a bang-up job. I cannot wait. It’s a great honor.”

Trump announced Habba’s selection after selecting current interim US attorney John Giordano to serve as ambassador to Namibia. “It is with great pleasure that I am announcing Alina Habba, Esq., who is currently serving as Counselor to the President, and has represented me for a long time, will be our interim U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey, her Home State, effective immediately!” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “Alina will lead with the same diligence and conviction that has defined her career, and she will fight tirelessly to secure a Legal System that is both ‘Fair and Just’ for the wonderful people of New Jersey.”

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“I recognize that when you’re dealing with children, it takes much more time. You’ve got to ensure that what you’re sending out publicly is not revealing any personal information.”

The ‘Real’ Epstein Files Are Coming. Here’s What to Know. (Margolis)

The Trump administration is proving once again that promises made are promises kept. After successfully releasing over 80,000 pages of files connected to the assassination of John F. Kennedy on March 18, the focus has now shifted to perhaps what should be an even more explosive collection of documents—the Jeffrey Epstein files. As you know, there was a huge document dump of files related to the Jeffrey Epstein case last month that was, to say the least, underwhelming. Part of the problem, it turns out, was that rogue officials out of the Southern District of New York office had withheld documents from the Department of Justice. So, where’s the good stuff? Well, according to a report from Vanity Fair, it should be coming soon.

It’s the FBI’s flagship field office, with more than a thousand agents and another thousand or so civilian employees. And right now, multiple sources with knowledge of the matter say that one priority at the bureau’s New York field office is taking precedence over all others: the review and redaction of sensitive information in the Jeffrey Epstein case files, to prepare for possible publication.“It’s literally all hands on deck,” one source familiar with the matter tells me, adding that dozens and dozens of agents are working around the clock on the case, instead of on their regular duties. “I even saw an agent walking in with a pillow,” the source added. Attorney General Pam Bondi, appearing on Maria Bartiromo’s “Sunday Morning Futures,” spoke about this massive undertaking. Bartiromo pressed Bondi about the release of files related to Jeffrey Epstein. Acknowledging the complexity of handling such sensitive material, Bartiromo noted,

“I recognize that when you’re dealing with children, it takes much more time. You’ve got to ensure that what you’re sending out publicly is not revealing any personal information.” She then asked Bondi whether more details would be forthcoming. Bondi confirmed that updates were on the horizon, stating, “You’re absolutely right, Maria. You know, tens of thousands of pages of documents and hundreds and hundreds of victims, um, of Jeffrey Epstein.” Bartiromo reacted with a stunned “Wow.” Bondi assured viewers that federal authorities were making progress. “The FBI, they have been working round the clock at my directive, at [FBI Director] Kash Patel’s directive,” she said, adding that FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino is also involved. “Dan Bongino’s there, who is a great asset for all of us at the FBI as well.”

Bondi reiterated the need to safeguard victims while ensuring transparency. “We have to protect their identity, their personal information, to make sure they’re safe,” she said. “But other than that, we are releasing all of these documents as soon as we can get them redacted to protect the victims of… of, of all of these horrific crimes he has committed.” Bartiromo responded, “Understood.” Rest assured, transparency is coming, everyone.

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“She is an elected public official, so she needs to tread very carefully because nothing will happen to Elon Musk..”

“Tread Carefully”: Pam Bondi Issues Warning Over Musk “Takedown” (ZH)

We certainly did not have a member of Congress conspiring with radical far-left NGOs to sabotage the most made-in-America car company and critical to retirement and pension funds for millions of Americans on our 2025 bingo card. But here we are, and far-left Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett (D-TX) joined a “Tesla Takedown” teleconference last week, laughing and rooting for Tesla and Elon Musk’s demise. Other revolutionaries on the call described how they wanted to “kill the Tesla brand” and “drive down the stock price” to push Tesla “into a death spiral.” Now Attorney General Pam Bondi is getting involved, warning Crockett to “tread very carefully” following her support for the Tesla Takedown. “She is an elected public official, so she needs to tread very carefully because nothing will happen to Elon Musk, and we’re going to fight to protect all of the Tesla owners throughout this country,” Bondi said on Fox’s “Sunday Morning Futures.”

Bondi’s warning to the unhinged Democrat comes days after her appearance on the Tesla Takedown teleconference:

Crockett’s alliance with Tesla Takedown is alarming, considering the Soros-funded non-profit Indivisible is preparing a multi-city assault on Tesla service locations nationwide by the end of the month. There have been far-left terrorist attacks on Tesla service centers, showrooms, Supercharging networks, and vehicles that paint the Democratic Party as in disarray and resorting to communist revolutionary tactics. Polling data for the party has collapsed, while the latest ploy by the party to improve optics was entirely disproven to be “inorganic” by GPS data. The American people are finally getting to see the real Democratic Party—filled with hate and violence as its revolutionaries attack Tesla, all because the owner, Elon Musk, is uncovering massive fraud and waste by the Deep State. Remember when Democrats wanted to defund everything after George Floyd? Yet suddenly, now they don’t.

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🙂

Elon Musk Disguises IRS Building As Tesla Dealership (BBee)

Proponents of eliminating the federal income tax rejoiced today as Elon Musk cleverly disguised the Internal Revenue Service headquarters as a Tesla dealership so Democrats would burn it down. The billionaire inventor and entrepreneur hatched the genius plan to cover the main IRS building with Tesla emblems and signage, which goaded angry Democrats to launch a large-scale firebomb attack against the building. “This’ll show Musk who’s boss! Burn it to the ground!” one enraged leftist reportedly shouted before throwing a Molotov cocktail through a window of the IRS building. “This looks different from any other Tesla dealership I’ve ever seen. It’s almost like a really old government building. Oh well. It’s all got to go. Everything he owns must be destroyed.”

When reached for comment, Musk was quietly pleased that his plan had worked. “It was quite a simple idea, really,” he said. “If Democrats are trying to burn down anything belonging to me, why not redirect that anger in a useful way to burn down something that should be demolished? For the cost of a few Tesla signs, we’ve now freed the American people from the terrible burden of excessive taxation. Ironically, once the rubble of the IRS building is cleared, we will, in fact, build an enormous new Tesla dealership in its place.” At publishing time, reports had circulated that the U.S. Capitol would be next to be disguised as a Tesla dealership in a plot to round up and imprison Democrats for attempting a violent insurrection.

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MS

Swan
https://twitter.com/AMAZlNGNATURE/status/1903880749935206439

Rooster

Elephants

Bounce

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Mar 192025
 


Caravaggio The seven works of mercy (Sette opere di Misericordia) 1607

 

Trump, Putin Agree On ‘Energy and Infrastructure Ceasefire’ (RT)
Trump, Putin Reached ‘Consensus’ On Ukraine – Witkoff (RT)
Kiev Thinks Trump ‘Can’t Stand’ Ukraine – The Economist (RT)
Hungary Expects Peace In Ukraine In Just Two Weeks (TASS)
Russian Army ‘Has Gotten Infinitely Smarter’ – Erik Prince (RT)
Trump Administration Releases JFK Assassination Files (RT)
Hunter Biden Whistleblowers Promoted By Trump After Biden-era Retaliation (JTN)
Trump Cancels Hunter Biden’s Costly Secret Service Protection (ZH)
Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act Could End Up Costing Taxpayers $5 Trillion (JTN)
Biden’s Autopen Scandal Just Got a Whole Lot Worse (Margolis)
Is This the Aide Who Abused Joe Biden’s Autopen? (Margolis)
EU Could Take Over US State-funded Media Outlet – Kallas (RT)
SCOTUS Chief Justice Roberts Says Impeaching Judge ‘Not Appropriate’ (ZH)
Obama Judge Rules Against DOGE Shutdown Of USAID (ZH)
Trump Admin Moves To Reinstate Over 24,000 Federal Workers (ZH)
Trump Adviser Alina Habba Sounds Alarm on ‘Human Extortion’ (ET)

 

 

 

 

https://twitter.com/JackPosobiec/status/1901832507080712314

2,900

small r

RPReport

 

 

 

 

Looked like a useless phone call. Don’t think the US side seriously prepared. Subtle difference that came up: were they talking about “energy infrastructure” or about “energy and infrastructure”? Vast difference.

Trump, Putin Agree On ‘Energy and Infrastructure Ceasefire’ (RT)

US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin have agreed that the first step towards ending the Ukraine conflict should be an “energy and infrastructure ceasefire,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt has revealed. The leaders reached the agreement during a 2.5 hour phone conversation on Tuesday. According to the readout of the phone call published on X by Leavitt on Tuesday, both leaders concur that the conflict must conclude with a lasting peace. They also emphasized the importance of strengthening bilateral relations. “The leaders agreed that the movement to peace will begin with an energy and infrastructure ceasefire, as well as technical negotiations on implementation of a maritime ceasefire in the Black Sea, full ceasefire and permanent peace,” the transcript reads.

The Kremlin has confirmed that Putin supported Trump’s proposal for Russia and Ukraine to halt strikes on energy infrastructure for 30 days, and instructed his military accordingly. According to the readout, Moscow and Washington have agreed to hold relevant negotiations “immediately in the Middle East.” Aside from Ukraine, the two heads of state are said to have discussed the situation in the Middle East as well as potential cooperation with a view to preventing future conflicts in the region. Another topic high on the two leaders’ agenda was the “need to stop proliferation of strategic weapons” globally, according to the White House press secretary. “The two leaders agreed that a future with an improved bilateral relationship between the United States and Russia has huge upside,” including but not limited to “enormous economic deals and geopolitical stability,” the readout concludes.

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Witkoff sounds empty. Opportunities missed. There won’t be that many. I don’t see anything that brings Kursk close to a solution.

Trump, Putin Reached ‘Consensus’ On Ukraine – Witkoff (RT)

The US and Russia have agreed that Moscow and Kiev should pause attacks on each other’s energy infrastructure, President Donald Trump’s Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, has said. Witkoff made his comments following a phone call between Trump and Putin on Tuesday. The diplomat previously had a lengthy conversation with Putin in Moscow on March 13. Witkoff highlighted that Putin had agreed to Trump’s proposal to halt strikes on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure for 30 days and backed a ceasefire in the sea. “Up until recently, we really didn’t have consensus around these two aspects – the energy and infrastructure ceasefire and the Black Sea moratorium on firing – and today we got to that place, and I think it’s a relatively short distance to a full ceasefire from there,” Witkoff told Fox News’ Sean Hannity on Tuesday evening.

“I’m certainly hopeful that the Ukrainians will agree to it. We have some details to work out, of course,” he added. “I would commend President Putin for all he did today on that call to move his country close to a final peace deal,” the envoy said. “And I would give all the credit to President Trump, his election, peace through strength, the perception that there are no alternatives, and the fact that a good peace and lasting peace are important for both sides.” “It was these two great leaders coming together for the betterment of mankind,” Witkoff said. According to the Kremlin’s readout of the call, Putin has “immediately” ordered the Russian troops to halt attacks on Ukraine’s energy sites. The president responded “favorably” to the maritime truce proposal and instructed to begin the talks to “further work out specific details of such an agreement,” the Kremlin said.

Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky told reporters on Tuesday that he supports a maritime ceasefire and a moratorium on strikes on energy facilities in principle but will wait for the American side to provide details about the arrangement. Witkoff told Fox News that the talks will continue in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, on Sunday. According to Reuters, it was unclear whether Ukraine would participate in the meeting.

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“In seven weeks, we have switched from being allies to customers, and with largely imagined debts..”

Kiev Thinks Trump ‘Can’t Stand’ Ukraine – The Economist (RT)

US President Donald Trump “can’t stand” Ukraine, an official in Kiev has reportedly told The Economist, claiming that since the Republican returned to office, Washington has shifted from supporting Ukraine to treating it as a “customer.” The report comes as Ukraine continues to suffer military setbacks, particularly in Russia’s Kursk Region, where Kiev launched an incursion last year. According to Moscow, most of the territory has already been liberated while the remainder of Ukraine’s forces have been encircled by the Russian military. According to The Economist, some Ukrainian officials believe Trump’s recent move to temporarily cut off military aid and intelligence assistance to Kiev may have played a role in the country’s frontline setbacks.

One source told the outlet that Trump may have been deliberately seeking to strip Kiev of bargaining power in future negotiations with Russia. A separate government official claimed it may have been a coincidence, but emphasized that Ukraine’s relationship with Washington has changed. “What is clear is that Trump can’t stand us,” the source said. “In seven weeks, we have switched from being allies to customers, and with largely imagined debts,” the source added, apparently referring to Trump’s demand that Ukraine return several hundred billion dollars that was reportedly provided under the administration of former President Joe Biden.

Since his inauguration in January, Trump has taken a starkly different approach to Ukraine than his predecessor. While the former administration pledged to support Ukraine financially and militarily for “as long as it takes,” Trump has instead been pressuring Kiev towards a ceasefire and peace negotiations with Moscow. In February, Trump had a public dispute with Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky during his visit to the White House, where the latter was accused of “gambling with World War III” by refusing to seek peace. After the heated exchange, Trump temporarily halted military aid and intelligence sharing with Kiev.

However, the decision was reversed last week after the two sides held talks in Saudi Arabia, where Ukraine agreed to a US proposal of a 30-day ceasefire. Since then, Washington has been trying to negotiate the terms of a ceasefire with Moscow. Trump is expected to hold a phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday to discuss the initiative. Moscow has signaled openness to negotiations on a truce, although Putin has stressed that a number of issues must be addressed beforehand, including resolving the situation surrounding Ukrainian forces in Kursk as well as guarantees that Kiev would not use a ceasefire to arm and remobilize.

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Be positive!

Hungary Expects Peace In Ukraine In Just Two Weeks (TASS)

Hungary expects the Russia-US talks on Ukraine to succeed and peace to return to Europe as soon as in two weeks, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said, speaking at the Raisina Dialogue international conference in the Indian capital. “I hope <…> in a couple of weeks, we can celebrate peace returning to Central Europe,” the foreign minister said, speaking about Ukraine ceasefire talks. “We are very happy that these talks have started. We’re happy to see the talks in Saudi Arabia between the US and Russia, between the US and Ukraine. We do attach great hopes to these meetings, and we do hope that a ceasefire can be established as soon as possible, and peace negotiations could be started as soon as possible. Because we want peace to come back to Central Europe,” Szijjarto noted. He recalled that from the very beginning of the conflict, the Hungarian government called for its peaceful settlement and advocated for dialogue with Russia.

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“First of all, don’t listen to the idiot politicians that say, yeah, we’ve degraded the Russian army. No, we have chewed up a lot of material..”

Russian Army ‘Has Gotten Infinitely Smarter’ – Erik Prince (RT)

The Russian military has become “infinitely smarter” in countering the US-supplied weapons being used by Ukraine, according to Erik Prince, the founder and former CEO of the private military company Blackwater. Speaking at Hillsdale College on Saturday, Prince also expressed skepticism over claims that the Russian army has been significantly weakened in the conflict. “The thing that the Russians are very good at is electronic warfare,” Prince stated, emphasizing that advanced American weaponry, such as Javelin missiles, HIMARS, and Copperhead guided artillery shells, often become ineffective within weeks. “It works for a week or two, and the Russians figure how to jam the navigation or the command link, and the stuff goes blind.”

Prince also pushed back against assertions that the Russian forces have been significantly weakened. “First of all, don’t listen to the idiot politicians that say, yeah, we’ve degraded the Russian army. No, we have chewed up a lot of material. The Russian army has gotten infinitely smarter.” He pointed to the rapid improvements in Russian counter-artillery capabilities, contrasting the response time between early 2022 and now. “If you shot at a Russian, with artillery in March or April of 2022, it would take them an hour and a half to shoot back accurately. Now, about two minutes, which means if you shoot at them, you better be in your vehicle and hauling ass because they’re going to get you otherwise.” The Russian Defense Ministry provides regular updates on the destruction of Western-donated equipment such as HIMARS and ATACMS missile launchers in Ukraine.

Since the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in 2022, the US has been Kiev’s largest weapons supplier. After US President Donald Trump took office in January, he has made peace in Ukraine one of his top priorities and criticized the administration of former President Joe Biden for spending billions of American taxpayer dollars supporting Kiev. Trump briefly suspended military aid and intelligence sharing following a public dispute with Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky at the White House in February. However, the assistance was restored after Kiev agreed to support a 30-day ceasefire with Moscow. Moscow has repeatedly warned that Western military aid merely extends the hostilities but will not alter the conflict’s outcome and risks a direct confrontation between Russia and NATO.

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“Scholars, historians, and journalists are likely to spend months sifting through the records for new information about Kennedy’s killing, with the newly published files being identified only by record numbers..”

Trump Administration Releases JFK Assassination Files (RT)

The administration of US President Donald Trump has released thousands of pages of government files related to the assassination of former US President John F. Kennedy (JFK) in Dallas on November 22, 1963. The National Archives uploaded some 63,000 pages of documents on its website in two initial tranches on Tuesday, with more files expected to be publish once they are digitized. “All records previously withheld for classification that are part of the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection are released,” it said. Shortly after taking office on January 20, Trump signed an executive order to declassify government documents related to the assassinations during the 1960s of John F. Kennedy, Senator Robert F. Kennedy, and civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr.

The shooting of JFK has long been the subject of speculation in the US regarding the alleged role of rogue elements within the government. A poll by Gallup in 2023 suggested that 65% of Americans did not believe the findings of the official investigation, which concluded Lee Harvey Oswald, a former US Marine, acted alone in killing the 35th US president. Among those surveyed, 20% said they believed that Oswald conspired with the US government, while another 16% suggested that the CIA had been involved. Trump told reporters on Monday that “people have been waiting decades” for the publication of the JFK assassination files. Approximately 80,000 pages of previously classified records would be made available to the public, he added.

“I said during the campaign that I would do it, and I am a man of my word,” the president insisted. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) said in a statement on Tuesday that the records are being released in fulfillment of Trump’s promise of “maximum transparency and a commitment to rebuild the trust of the American people in the Intelligence Community (IC) and federal agencies.” Scholars, historians, and journalists are likely to spend months sifting through the records for new information about Kennedy’s killing, with the newly published files being identified only by record numbers and having no descriptions.

Lyndon

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“..their bravery, courage, expertise, and integrity are all leadership qualities that should be exemplified within the ranks of the IRS.”

Hunter Biden Whistleblowers Promoted By Trump After Biden-era Retaliation (JTN)

The two IRS whistleblowers who shed light on failures to properly investigate Hunter Biden — and who were allegedly retaliated against as a result — have now received promotions from the Trump administration. IRS supervisory special agent Gary Shapley and IRS special agent Joseph Ziegler will serve as senior advisers to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Just the News has learned. “Rewarding merit rather than retaliating against whistleblowers is exactly how government ought to work. At long last, I’m happy that’s finally what is happening for Gary and Joe. They earned these promotions through integrity and hard work for the American people,” Jason Foster, the founder of Empower Oversight, which is representing the IRS whistleblowers, told Just the News. The promotions of the Hunter Biden whistleblowers were first reported by the New York Post on Tuesday morning.

“We are enormously grateful to Secretary Bessent, Senator Grassley, and all of the members of Congress for their leadership and trust,” Shapley and Ziegler said in a statement released by Senator Chuck Grassley’s office. “We have been motivated by one singular mantra: do what’s right, and do it the right way. It has not been easy, but having a clear conscience is worth the effort. We appreciate the opportunity Secretary Bessent is giving us to put our experience and firsthand knowledge to good use for the American people to eliminate waste and reform the IRS.” Grassley had sent a private letter to Bessent in late February, telling the new Treasury Department chief that “their bravery, courage, expertise, and integrity are all leadership qualities that should be exemplified within the ranks of the IRS.”

“Gary Shapley and Joe Ziegler put their entire careers on the line to stand up for the truth, and instead of being thanked, the Biden administration treated them like skunks at a picnic. Far too many whistleblowers share a similar experience of retaliation,” Grassley said. “I hope today is the first of many redemption stories for whistleblowers who’ve been mistreated. By taking a stand for whistleblowers, President Trump and his cabinet are ushering in a new era of transparency and accountability.” Lawyers for the whistleblowers have said that Shapley and Ziegler were removed from the Hunter Biden investigation in May 2023, and alleged that their clients have been repeatedly retaliated against since then. The IRS whistleblowers have consistently argued that they did nothing “unlawful” and followed all of the laws and procedures when they blew the whistle about DOJ and IRS stonewalling on the federal case against Hunter Biden.

Grassley had demanded in a 2024 letter that then-IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel end all retaliation against the whistleblowers. The Iowa senator also sent a letter to President Donald Trump in February telling him that Shapley and Ziegler “were illegally issued gag orders and retaliated against by the IRS under the Biden administration” and that “this is unacceptable, and you have the power to put a stop to it today.” Hunter Biden initially reached a plea agreement with then-special counsel David Weiss on federal charges related to tax crimes and the illegal purchase of a handgun in what congressional Republicans dubbed a “sweetheart deal” in June 2023. The deal collapsed under scrutiny by a federal judge the next month, thanks in part to the revelations made by the IRS whistleblowers. And now, Bessent said Tuesday morning that “I am pleased to welcome Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler to the Treasury Department, where they will help us drive much-needed cultural reform within the IRS.”

https://twitter.com/EricLDaugh/status/1901964818216603652

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18 agents for a holiday trip in South Africa. For a guy who tells a judge he can’t pay his bills because his paintings no longer sell.

Trump Cancels Hunter Biden’s Costly Secret Service Protection (ZH)

After Hunter Biden made headlines by vacationing in South Africa with a Secret Service detail on a week he was scheduled to appear for a deposition in a civil trial he initiated, President Trump on Monday night announced that he was canceling Hunter’s federal protection, and his half-sister Ashley’s too. Trump’s announcement came just hours after a reporter asked him about Hunter’s travel and ongoing, taxpayer-funded security. “I just heard about it for the first time…I would say if there are 18 [Secret Service agents] with Hunter Biden… That will be something I look at this afternoon,” he replied amid a tour of the Kennedy Center, where he earlier this year installed himself as chairman of the board. True to his word, at 5pm Monday, Trump took to his Truth Social account to inform Hunter, Ashley and America that the government would no longer provide security protection for Joe Biden’s adult children:

“Hunter Biden has had Secret Service protection for an extended period of time, all paid for by the United States Taxpayer. There are as many as 18 people on this Detail, which is ridiculous! … Please be advised that, effective immediately, Hunter Biden will no longer receive Secret Service protection. Likewise, Ashley Biden who has 13 agents will be taken off the list.” To get some idea of how much the Bidens’ security details were costing Americans, a Daily Mail Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) inquiry determined that the Secret Service spent more than $4.5 million to protect Hunter over an 18-month period between the start of 2021 and June 2022, while Biden lived in Malibu. During that stretch, the service shelled out $30,000 a month just for a villa to house their agents.

Former presidents and their spouses are assured of life-long Secret Serve protection by federal statute. Protection for children over age 16, terminates along with the president’s term in office — officially, but not in practice. Outgoing presidents frequently extend adult children’s coverage for up to six months, as Biden, Trump, Obama and George W. Bush all did. Already during his second term, Trump has canceled elective federal protection for several other individuals, including former NIAID director Anthony Fauci, Trump’s former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and his former national security adviser John Bolton. It’s not clear exactly when Secret Service agents will step away from Biden’s children. “We are aware of the President’s decision to terminate protection for Hunter and Ashley Biden,” said Secret Service spokesperson Anthony Guglielmi in a statement. “The Secret Service will comply and is actively working with the protective details and the White House to ensure compliance as soon as possible.”

At the same time he was in South Africa, Hunter was scheduled to give a deposition pursuant to a lawsuit he filed against former Trump staffer Garrett Ziegler, accusing him of illegally hacking and then circulating 10,000 photos from Hunter’s infamous “Laptop from Hell.” Earlier this month, Hunter told the judge he wanted to drop the case, on the basis that he had millions of dollars in debt and sales of his artwork and memoir were tanking. Hunter was already in Cape Town when the judge agreed to cancel the case on Thursday. “That means he [was] assuming his daddy’s appointee is gonna rubber stamp what he wants,” Ziegler told the New York Post. In an unusual twist, Ziegler had sought to contest Hunter’s dropping of the case. “Hunter wants to cry uncle,” he said. “We are OPPOSING that. We want our attorney’s fees to be paid, for Hunter to cease lying about us and me, and just generally to shut the f**k up.”

Trump’s Monday announcement took aim at Hunter’s current travel destination. “He is currently vacationing in, of all places, South Africa, where the Human Rights of people has [sic] been strenuously questioned,” wrote Trump, who earnestly supports the governments of Israel, Saudi Arabia, and other countries where the human rights of people have been strenuously questioned. Hunter’s wife, Melissa Cohen Biden, is South African, and we’ll watch to see if Trump condemns South African Elon Musk should he decide to visit family in his crumbling native country where whites are in increasing peril.

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Green subsidies. A bottomless pit.

Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act Could End Up Costing Taxpayers $5 Trillion (JTN)

When former President Joe Biden’s signature Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) passed in 2022, it did so along party lines with not a single Republican voting for it. At the time, a Senate one-pager summarized the law as costing taxpayers $369 billion, based on Congressional Budget Review (CBO) estimates. A new study from the Cato Institute finds that the law could cost as much as $4.67 trillion by 2050. That’s roughly 12 times the stated cost. The study also concludes that the subsidies are undermining innovation and driving investments toward subsidy farming rather than satisfying consumer demand. “The government should not have a hold on the economy in such a way that it can truly distort entire markets, and that’s what the Inflation Reduction Act is,” Joshua Loucks, research associate with Cato Institute and co-author of the analysis, said in a video explaining the study.

The Trump administration has been executing a series of reviews of regulations that federal agencies passed during the Biden years. Repealing some agency decisions may require congressional action. Due to the massive costs and market-impacting effects of the IRA, the study’s authors argue Congress should take a hard look at it. The law, they say, should be fully repealed, or Congress should place limitations on the subsidies, which the IRA mostly lacks. Loucks and his co-author Travis Fisher, director of energy and environmental policy studies at the Cato Institute, explained that the impetus for doing the study was the wildly varying estimates of the costs of the IRA that came out since its passage. While the CBO pegged the figure at $369 billion, Goldman Sachs estimated in May 2023 that it would be closer to $1.2 trillion. There were other estimates as well, all coming to different conclusions.

“We decided to go on our own fact-finding endeavor here, and that’s what resulted in this paper,” Loucks said. The subsidies for the IRA come in two forms — production tax credits (PTC), which provide tax credits per unit of energy produced, or investment tax credits, which provide tax credits for various investments in carbon-free energy. Which one developers take depends on the project and their business preferences. With the ITC, the subsidies provide an infusion of cash up front, whereas the PTCs provide payouts over time. Some of these are not capped, and others are only phased out when certain greenhouse gas emission reductions are met.

Using models from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, the study shows there’s little likelihood that these reductions will be met in the next 25 years, meaning the subsidies have no meaningful end date. The authors estimated all the ITCs and PTCs that might come from the various carbon-free eligible projects — whether they be nuclear, wind, solar, geothermal, energy storage, green manufacturing or hydrogen — and using complex models, the authors came to some overall estimates. Over the next 10 years, according to the study, the IRA could cost taxpayers anywhere from $936 billion to $1.97 trillion. By 2050, it will cost between $2.04 trillion and $4.67 trillion.

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Everyone was signing everything, with every kind of pen.

Biden’s Autopen Scandal Just Got a Whole Lot Worse (Margolis)

Earlier this month, we reported that virtually every document bearing Joe Biden’s signature during his presidency was signed by an autopen. The presidential autopen has been in use since the 1950s, with its legality debated for years. In 2013, Barack Obama became the first president to sign a bill into law using an autopen while vacationing in Hawaii, relying on a Bush-era legal memo stating a president’s presence wasn’t required if they had authorized the signature. The key issue with Biden, however, is whether he actually authorized the use of the autopen — or if someone else was running it without his knowledge. The New York Post then uncovered a pattern of potential power abuse within the Biden White House, with insiders suspecting a key aide may have made unilateral decisions on what to sign.

On Sunday night, Trump declared that Biden’s pardons are “VOID, VACANT, AND NO FURTHER FORCE OR EFFECT, because of the fact that they were done by Autopen. In other words, Joe Biden did not sign them but, more importantly, he did not know anything about them!” On Monday, The Oversight Project released a memo exposing 32 instances where the Biden White House used an autopen to sign clemency warrants, granting pardons and commutations to thousands — including preemptive pardons for members of the J6 Committee. The report raises serious concerns about the implications of a presidency governed by autopen rather than by the president himself.

“We analyzed the 51 clemency warrants with President Biden’s signature on them. In those warrants, the Biden Administration granted clemency to 4,245 people—the most of any President,” the memo reads. “We found that the Biden White House used two variations of his signature loaded into an autopen to sign over half of the clemency warrants issued during his Presidency. We identified the two autopen signatures as Autopen A and Autopen B in this Memorandum.” The memo continued, “We calculated that the Biden Administration signed 16 warrants with Autopen A, 16 warrants with Autopen B, and 19 warrants appear to be signed with a wet signature.”

Interestingly enough, the pardon of Hunter Biden appears to have been legitimately signed by Joe Biden, which makes sense. But, here’s where things get really bad: “The warrants we determined to be wet signatures contain significant variations between the signatures. Some warrants spell out the President’s entire first name “Joseph.” Others have only a diagonal line to indicate the letter “J.” Other wet signed warrants have significant variations in the President’s middle initial “R” and “B” in the last name “Biden.” At the time of publication of this Memorandum, the variations of the wet signatures are so severe, that it is unclear whether the same person signed all of the warrants. We are continuing to investigate this issue.”

That’s right: While the Oversight Project hasn’t confirmed it yet, evidence suggests that beyond a rogue staffer using the autopen — possibly without Biden’s authorization — one or more aides may have outright signed his signature on certain pardons and commutations. Could the inconsistencies be a symptom of Biden’s cognitive decline? Perhaps. But the variations in his signature may point to something even more troubling: deliberate forgery. This could be huge because it tells us that staffers were confident Biden was out of it to the extent that they could get away with actual forgery, not just abuse of the autopen. That’s frightening.

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Neera Tanden fits the profile to a tee. Not everyone would be referred to as “the boss”.

Is This the Aide Who Abused Joe Biden’s Autopen? (Margolis)

The latest scandal for the former Biden administration has exploded into the spotlight thanks to Trump’s declaration Sunday night that Biden’s pardons are “VOID, VACANT, AND NO FURTHER FORCE OR EFFECT” because they were signed via autopen, and Biden may not have authorized them. The lingering question, of course, is who may have been using the autopen on Biden’s behalf without his knowledge or consent. An explosive New York Post report revealed a disturbing pattern of potential power abuse within the Biden White House, centered around the controversial use of the presidential autopen. One Biden White House source told The Post they suspect that a key aide to the then-president may have made unilateral determinations on what to auto-sign. The Post is not publishing that staffer’s name due to the lack of concrete evidence and refutations by other colleagues.

The Biden aide, who did not respond to requests for comment, would frequently make mention of what “the boss” wanted, the source said, but compatriots would have “no idea” if it was true because the internal culture was to not ask questions. While the New York Post didn’t name the staffer, speculation is swirling around Neera Tanden. A longtime left-wing operative, Tanden was Biden’s controversial pick to lead the Office of Management and Budget — until her nomination collapsed over a slew of hyper-partisan attacks on Republican lawmakers. She later found a role as White House Staff Secretary. Now, she finds herself at the center of this constitutional crisis. The timeline is damning. On Dec. 30, 2022, while Biden was allegedly golfing in St. Croix, six pardons magically appeared with his signature. Tanden’s response? A desperate attempt at deflection, trying to turn the tables by questioning Trump’s own autopen usage.

https://twitter.com/neeratanden/status/1901593683729772628?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1901593683729772628%7Ctwgr%5E834a907535a976df566b7d17e79689c29ac6fe17%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fpjmedia.com%2Fmatt-margolis%2F2025%2F03%2F18%2Fis-this-the-aide-who-abused-joe-bidens-autopen-n4938019

Nice try, Neera, but there’s a difference between delegated authority and potentially hijacking presidential powers. The Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project, which broke the scandal, called her out specifically.

This isn’t just about pardons or autopenned signatures. It’s about who was actually running our country. Was it Joe Biden? Or was it radical operatives like Tanden, who went from heading a far-left think tank to potentially wielding presidential power without proper authorization? The Biden administration’s deafening silence on social media speaks volumes. They can’t defend the indefensible, so they’re hoping this scandal will just disappear. But Trump’s declaration has ensured this constitutional crisis won’t be swept under the rug. The American people deserve to know who’s really in charge. Was Biden even aware of what was signed in his name? Or did progressive bureaucrats turn the White House into their personal playground, wielding presidential power while the actual president remained blissfully unaware on the golf course? These aren’t just partisan questions; they’re fundamental to our constitutional republic. And the American people deserve answers.

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Voice of America. Brought to you by Europe (or the other way around).

EU Could Take Over US State-funded Media Outlet – Kallas (RT)

The EU will discuss ways to maintain the operation of US state-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), now that President Donald Trump has slashed its budget, the bloc’s top diplomat, Kaja Kallas, has said. RFE/RL was founded during the Cold War to spread pro-Western propaganda in the Eastern Bloc. The organization was initially funded by the CIA and continues to receive US Congressional grants. A reporter asked Kallas following the Foreign Affairs Council meeting in Brussels on Monday whether the EU would offer “temporary protection” to Russian journalists who’d had their contracts terminated. She argued that RFE/RL’s broadcasts during the Cold War were “very valuable.”

“It is sad to hear that the US is withdrawing the funding. Now the question for us is, can we come in with our funding to fill the void?” Kallas said. “The answer to that question is… not automatically because we have a lot of organizations that are coming with the same request.” “But there was really a push from the foreign ministers to discuss this and find a way. So this is the [task of] our side to see what we can do,” she added. The European Commission and officials from EU member states have condemned Trump’s decision to gut the news agency. Czech Foreign Minister Jan Lipavsky wrote on X last week that he would discuss the possibility to “at least partially maintain its broadcasts.” Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski said on Monday that the EU was “brainstorming” how to help RFE/RL, according to The Kyiv Independent.

On March 14, Trump signed an executive order mandating funding and staff cuts at the United States Agency for Global Media, which oversees RFE/RL and other state-funded news organizations, including the Voice of America. The White House said that the move is part of a wider campaign to rid the government of “unnecessary” bureaucracy. Trump has frequently accused media outlets of bias and spreading “fake news” about him and his policies. RFE/RL President and CEO Stephen Capus has described the cuts as “a massive gift to America’s enemies.” In a call with journalists on Monday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov labelled RFE/RL and the Voice of America “purely propagandistic media” and said that the cuts were the domestic affair of the US.

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Roberts takes the easy way out. But that invites a flood of lawfare. Which will hamper the administration.

SCOTUS Chief Justice Roberts Says Impeaching Judge ‘Not Appropriate’ (ZH)

On Tuesday, President Trump said on Truth Social that US District Judge James Boasberg should be impeached for issuing a two-week halt to his efforts to deport criminal illegal aliens – calling Boasberg a “troublemaker and agitator.” Trump’s call to remove Boasberg – the chief judge of the federal district court in Washington DC, marks the first time that he’s asked Congress to seek a judge’s removal. Trump also suggested that “many” of the judges who have ruled against him in other cases should be impeached as well.

Then, hours later, Chief Justice John Roberts pushed back – saying in a rare statement that it would be inappropriate to impeach a judge. “For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision. The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose,” Roberts said Tuesday. Of course, that would be up to Congress – wouldn’t it? As TheLastRefuge notes on X, Roberts and Boasberg go way back… “Yes, Roberts will protect Boasberg, because Boasberg -who Roberts appointed to be presiding judge of the FISC- has major leverage over Roberts. Boasberg has assembled his shields over years, and CTH has outlined every step. The brutally obvious began surfacing when Boasberg appointed *Mary McCord as amicus to the FISC.”

Law professor Jonathan Turley agrees with Roberts, however, writing on Sunday; “I have criticized Judge Boasberg, who was involved in the controversial FISA surveillance during the first Trump term and made a poor choice of the attorney tasked with investigating that matter. I also criticized him in prior treatment of pro-life litigants in a case reversed by the D.C. Circuit. However, he has also ruled against Trump critics). The response for the Administration should be to seek an expedited appeal. The district court cannot drag out a TRO very long before issuing an order that can be appealed. This country is facing novel issues and the Administration is not surprisingly trying to use novel means to address them. I expect that it will prevail in many of these initial fights while losing others. That is part of the process in a nation committed to the rule of law. The Trump Administration can appeal and leave impeachment out of it.”

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“Musk has been ordered to reinstate access to email, payment and other electronic systems for all current USAID employees and personal services contractors [..] after roughly 83% of USAID programs have been officially canceled..”

Obama Judge Rules Against DOGE Shutdown of USAID (ZH)

In the latest legal turn of events – since the United States is now governed by activist judges, an Obama-appointed federal judge on Tuesday found that Elon Musk and DOGE likely violated the constitution when it shut down deep state slush fund USAID, and has ordered them to restore access for current (remaining) employees. US District Judge Theodore Chuang ruled in favor of more than two dozen unnamed current and former USAID employees and contractors who challenged the Trump administration’s efforts to shutter the organization. In a 68-page decision, Chuang granted in part their request for a preliminary injunction, ruling that DOGE and Musk likely violated the Constitution’s Appointments Clause and separation of powers.

Musk has been ordered to reinstate access to email, payment and other electronic systems for all current USAID employees and personal services contractors, while the Trump administration is now prevented from taking any further actions related to the shutdown of USAID – including placing employees on administrative leave, firing USAID workers, closing buildings, bureaus or offices, and deleting the contents of its websites or collections. Of note – the order does not currently require the reinstatement of fired employees, after roughly 83% of USAID programs have been officially canceled according to Secretary of State Marco Rubio. “After a six-week review, 5200 contracts that are now cancelled spent tens of billions of dollars in ways that did not serve, and even harmed the core national interests of the United States,” he said.

This latest judicial move to block the Trump administration comes days after DC District Court judge James Boasberg (who was in charge of the FISA court when the Obama administration was spying on Trump), issued a two-week halt on deporting illegal immigrant gang members. On Tuesday Trump called for Boasberg’s impeachment, drawing a sharp rebuke from Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, who said it was “not an appropriate response.” The Trump administration is also in the process of reinstating over 24,000 federal workers after a different Obama judge, US District Judge James Bredar, ordered the mass reinstatement of employees at 18 federal agencies last week, determining that the administration’s justification for the firings—poor performance—was not supported by evidence. The ruling follows another decision by a federal judge in San Francisco, who also found terminations at six agencies to be illegal.

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This feels upside down. DOGE does not.

Trump Admin Moves To Reinstate Over 24,000 Federal Workers (ZH)

The Trump administration is taking steps to reinstate thousands of probationary federal workers who were fired in an effort to downsize the government, according to court filings in one of two cases where judges deemed the terminations unlawful. U.S. District Judge James Bredar, an Obama appointee, ordered the mass reinstatement of employees at 18 federal agencies last week, determining that the administration’s justification for the firings—poor performance—was not supported by evidence. The ruling follows another decision by a federal judge in San Francisco, who also found terminations at six agencies to be illegal. According to more than a dozen declarations filed by the government Monday night, the administration has moved to reinstate roughly 24,000 probationary workers.

According to the Monday night filings, many of the reinstated employees have been placed on paid administrative leave, while others have returned to full employment. However, officials warn that the reinstatement process could create confusion and operational challenges, particularly for employees who are reinstated only to potentially face termination again if an appellate court overturns the ruling. Reesha Trznadel, the acting chief human capital officer at the Department of Energy, cautioned in a declaration that reinstating employees “could impose burdens on DOE and cause significant confusion and turmoil for the terminated employees.”

Since taking office, the Trump administration has taken aggressive steps to reshape the federal bureaucracy, including dismissing employees during their probationary periods. The recent ruling represents a legal setback for these efforts, reinforcing protections for federal workers and challenging the administration’s justification for its sweeping dismissals. The legal battle is expected to continue, with the possibility that an appellate ruling could overturn Bredar’s decision. Until then, agencies must navigate the complexities of onboarding and retraining employees who may face further job uncertainty in the months ahead.

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Habba is just one among a group of shining young stars around Trump.

Trump Adviser Alina Habba Sounds Alarm on ‘Human Extortion’ (ET)

The Trump administration is committed to taking decisive action against one of the nation’s most pressing yet overlooked crises: human trafficking. In an exclusive interview with The Epoch Times, Alina Habba, senior advisor to President Donald Trump, shared the administration’s plan and her role in addressing this critical issue. But as Habba sees it, this isn’t just about human trafficking—it’s about “human extortion,” a more encompassing term that includes everything from sex trafficking to cyber activity and forced labor. “I’m focused on human extortion, which includes child trafficking,” she said in an interview with Jan Jekielek, senior editor at The Epoch Times and host of “American Thought Leaders.” Habba emphasized that her efforts focus not only on children who are victims of trafficking but also on any individual, regardless of age, who falls victim to sex trafficking, financial extortion through cyber means, or modern slavery.

Habba, 40, who served as Trump’s defense attorney in recent years, now works as a counselor to the president, collaborating closely with government agencies such as the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the Department of Justice (DOJ), and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). She is currently drafting a series of executive orders aimed at strengthening regulations and protecting the victims of human extortion. In her view, the crisis reflects the widespread abuse of vulnerable individuals who are coerced and exploited, often in ways that the public is barely aware of. Habba pointed to examples like cyber-interactive pornography that encourages people to hurt children, calling it a “sick” and disturbing reality of today’s world. She also noted that the issue worsened during the border crisis under the Biden administration.

Many children were, misleadingly, trafficked over the border, she said. “They were displaced from their families and then found themselves in vulnerable positions where they were sex trafficked and labor trafficked.” Since Trump took office, Habba said she has spent nearly two months fully understanding the scale of the problem. The administration is now focused on bringing these children home, providing them with necessary care, capturing their traffickers, and prosecuting those responsible—particularly pedophiles. A DHS report from August 2024 revealed that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) transferred over 448,000 unaccompanied migrant children to the HHS between fiscal years 2019 and 2023. The Office of Refugee Resettlement, a division within HHS, is responsible for placing these unaccompanied children with sponsor homes in the United States.

However, the report indicated that ICE was unable to track the location and status of all the children who had been released from HHS custody. While Habba declined to provide exact numbers, she stated that the absence of familial DNA testing had led to a surge in child trafficking. In 2023, the Biden administration revoked a Trump-era program that required rapid DNA testing for illegal immigrants crossing the border. Without this measure, she said, individuals were entering the country with alleged relatives—such as parents, aunts, or uncles—without any verification. As a result, it was impossible to determine whether those accompanying the children were associated with cartels or engaged in human trafficking. The Biden administration reportedly did not provide specific reasons for ending the program, only stating that it was not renewing the contract with the private company doing the tests.

Since Trump’s return to office in January, the DNA testing program has been reinstated. However, Habba said there are still other critical issues to address. She mentioned that some migrant children were placed in “fake sponsor homes” by HHS. When officials visited these homes for safety checks, they found that the children were no longer there. “So, effectively, they were being re-trafficked,” Habba said. The administration is now working closely with public and private sector individuals to ensure these children are kept safe, provided with necessary rehabilitation, including therapy and medical care, and placed in secure homes.

Habba addressed the recent controversy surrounding the influencer Tate brothers, who are facing human trafficking and rape allegations. She faced criticism after expressing in a January interview that she was a big fan of Andrew Tate. Habba told Jekielek that her comments had been manipulated and taken out of context. She clarified that her support for Tate was based on his political views and should be viewed separately from the accusations being made against him. “The accusations against the Tate brothers are stomach-churning. They are disturbing,” she said. “There is no part of me that condones at all that behavior,” she said of the reports. The Tate brothers are contesting the allegations being made against them. Habba also provided an update on the long-awaited Epstein files.

She said that Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel are leading the investigation to review the files and thoroughly vet the accusations. “We are committed to transparency,” Habba said, urging Americans to be patient during the process. “We’re not going to be off the cuff. We’re not going to shoot from the hip. We’re going to look at things methodically and take them very seriously. And unfortunately, that takes time.” Habba also discussed her upbringing and family, identifying herself as a Middle Eastern Catholic woman. Her parents, both Chaldean Catholics, emigrated from Iraq to the United States in the early 1980s to escape persecution in their home country.

“My family is religious. They are very involved in the church, and I’m proud of that,” she said. Trump praised Habba when announcing her appointment as counselor to the president, highlighting her dedication and loyalty. “She has been unwavering in her loyalty, and unmatched in her resolve—standing with me through numerous ‘trials,’ battles, and countless days in Court,” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Dec. 8, 2024. “As a first generation American of Middle Eastern Heritage, she has become a role model for women in Law and Politics, most recently being named Chaldean Woman of the Year.”

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Puppyducks
https://twitter.com/buitengebieden/status/1901877651179982943

 

 

Fin

 

 

Stopper
https://twitter.com/buitengebieden/status/1901993392696905813

 

 

Kids

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Dec 102024
 


Pablo Picasso Portrait of Dora Maar pensive 1937

 

Western Democracy Is Dead – RT Editor-in-Chief (RT)
Why Trump Needs To Call Putin On Day One (Dmitry Trenin)
Trump Tells Putin to Agree to Immediate Cease-Fire in Ukraine (ET)
Trump Signals Shift From Unnecessary Military Intervention (JTN)
Trump Says Developing Concept to End ‘Ridiculous’ Conflict in Ukraine (Sp.)
Zelensky Rules Out Lowering Draft Age (RT)
Pardon Envy: Democrats Vie to Make the Biden Pardon List (Turley)
Hunter Biden Pardon Raises Expectations For Trump Clemency Wave (JTN)
Senators Introduce Bill to Cap Supreme Court Terms at 18 Years (ET)
Trump Names Alina Habba As White House Counselor: ‘Tireless Advocate’ (JTN)
Biden’s Show In Africa At Europe’s Expense (Dionísio)
Syria, Year 2024, The Fall (Pacini)
Trump Pledges To ‘Drill, Baby, Drill’ (RT)
Georgia Has Prevented Maidan-Style Coup – PM (RT)
LA Times Owner Readies ‘Bias Meter’ To Appear On News Articles And Column (jTN)
Does Russia Have an Intelligence Service? (Paul Craig Roberts)
Twilight of the Race Hustle (Kunstler)
No, the J6 Committee Should Not “Go to Jail” (Turley)

 

 

 

 

Kash J6

SNL Hunter
https://twitter.com/i/status/1865719454434251213

 

 

 

 

“It had already been old, sick, and somewhat half-witted, and now it has perished, unnoticed by anyone..”

Western Democracy Is Dead – RT Editor-in-Chief (RT)

Western democracy is dead and the only thing left is to offer condolences, according to RT Editor-in-Chief Margarita Simonyan. She was commenting on the cancelation of the results of the presidential election in Romania, in which independent candidate Calin Georgescu, a NATO and EU critic and a staunch opponent of aiding Ukraine, won the first-round vote. Ahead of the second round, which had been due to take place on Sunday, Romania’s Constitutional Court annulled Georgescu’s victory, declaring that the entire election would be re-run at a later date. According to Romanian media, the court made the decision based on declassified intelligence documents which allegedly found irregularities behind Georgescu’s performance.

They claimed that Georgescu’s candidacy was improperly promoted online, including on TikTok, by paid influencers and extremist right-wing groups, and that his campaign may have benefited from Russian interference – an allegation that Moscow has denied. In an interview on the Russia 1 TV channel with Vladimir Solovyov, Simonyan slammed the decision by Romania’s court as “absolutely illegal,” and said it was most likely the result of interference from the EU. “The Constitutional Court likely responded to a call from Brussels, which likely said ‘are you nuts? You have a person who is not anti-Russian, whose statements are quite humanistic, normal, pro-Romanian… no, no, no, you can’t do that!’

And the Constitutional Court said, ‘OK, this election was rigged.’” According to Simonyan, the Romanian authorities have thus far failed to give sufficient explanation for the cancelation of the results, and suggesting that Georgescu’s TikTok promotions are reason enough to annul his victory “is just surreal.” “When someone talks about Western democracy, one must immediately understand that the person speaking is either an oligophrenic or a liar and a hypocrite, and it is unclear which is worse,” she stated. “I would like to express my sincerest, deepest condolences to the entire Western world in connection with the death of Western democracy. It had already been old, sick, and somewhat half-witted, and now it has perished, unnoticed by anyone,” she added.

Who in Europe supports the insane, unbridled support for Ukraine to their own detriment? Who supports the economic suicide of countries like Germany?… Who supports the woke ideology, which is built on the denial of the human nature… this is not democracy, this is demonocracy and it is not liberal, it is vomit-inducing. According to Simonyan, the reason for this “death of democracy” is the complete lack of values and scruples in Western politics. Their decisions and policies, she argued, are no longer in line with the values and opinions of their populations, and they act like the “so-called dictators” which they constantly malign. Simonyan also said there are no countries in the West where the majority of the population supports an anti-Russian course, yet their governments still pursue this, contrary to the basic principles of democracy.

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“..if only to see how much room remains for diplomacy in a world increasingly shaped by force.”

Why Trump Needs To Call Putin On Day One (Dmitry Trenin)

The practice of leaking proposed diplomatic plans is standard in Western political culture, making the recent publication of a reported framework for resolving the Ukraine conflict – allegedly authored by US President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for special envoy to Kiev Keith Kellogg — unsurprising. Such moves often serve to test the likely reactions of key players before formal talks begin. From a realpolitik perspective, it would make sense for Trump, after his inauguration, to call Russian President Vladimir Putin and propose sending Kellogg – or another senior figure – to Moscow for negotiations. While the exact content of Trump’s future proposal remains unclear, its general theme — “peace from a position of strength” — seems obvious. If Trump takes this step, it’s likely that Putin will agree to receive the envoy and assign a senior Russian official for the meeting.

The success of any talks, however, will depend entirely on the substance of Washington’s proposal. Judging by what has circulated in the media so far, the terms being floated are clearly unacceptable to Moscow. Russia has its own clearly defined vision for resolving the Ukraine crisis – one focused on addressing the root causes of the conflict, not simply managing its symptoms. The terms for negotiations with Ukraine have been publicly stated and repeatedly reiterated by Russian officials. For the US, the first step toward meaningful talks should be ceasing its involvement in the war altogether. Any hypothetical negotiations between Moscow and Washington would center not on Ukraine, but on the broader military and political stability in Europe and beyond.

If Trump is prepared to pursue this agenda, meaningful progress may be possible. If not, he will likely face a choice: escalate an increasingly dangerous war or shift the responsibility for supporting Kiev onto the European NATO allies. Neither option is ideal. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz faces a tough February election, with polls suggesting he is vulnerable. Meanwhile, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer is eager to project “Global Britain” ambitions abroad. At the same time, French President Emmanuel Macron is presently a lame duck and doesn’t even have a functioning government. All will struggle to sustain Western Europe’s commitment to the war without firm US leadership. For Trump, the clock will be ticking from the moment he enters the White House. A phone call to Moscow may be a necessary first step — if only to see how much room remains for diplomacy in a world increasingly shaped by force.

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“Too many lives are being so needlessly wasted, too many families destroyed, and if it keeps going, it can turn into something much bigger, and far worse.”

Trump Tells Putin to Agree to Immediate Cease-Fire in Ukraine (ET)

President-elect Donald Trump sent a message to Russian President Vladimir Putin following the collapse of the Assad regime in Syria after Islamist opposition fighters captured Damascus. He called for an immediate cease-fire in Ukraine. “Assad is gone. He has fled his country,” Trump wrote on Truth Social on the morning of Dec. 8. “His protector, Russia, Russia, Russia, led by Vladimir Putin, was not interested in protecting him any longer. There was no reason for Russia to be there in the first place.” The incoming president also said that Moscow had “lost all interest in Syria because of Ukraine, where close to 600,000 Russian soldiers lay wounded or dead, in a war that should never have started, and could go on forever.” Trump then said that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy “would like to make a deal” to end the nearly three-year-long war, noting the loss of hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers and civilians.

“There should be an immediate cease-fire and negotiations should begin,” Trump said. “Too many lives are being so needlessly wasted, too many families destroyed, and if it keeps going, it can turn into something much bigger, and far worse. I know Vladimir well. This is his time to act.” Moscow, a backer of Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad, whom it intervened to help in 2015 in its biggest Middle East foray since the Soviet collapse at the end of 1991, is scrambling to protect its position, with its geopolitical clout in the wider region and two strategically important military bases in Syria on the line. Russia has yet to respond to Trump’s remark, although its foreign ministry confirmed that Assad left Syria amid the conflict. “As a result of negotiations between B. Assad and a number of participants in the armed conflict on the territory of the Syrian Arab Republic, he decided to resign from the presidency and left the country, giving instructions for a peaceful transfer of power,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Dec. 8. “Russia did not participate in these negotiations.”

Russia operates the Hmeimim air base, in Syria’s Latakia Province, which it has used to launch airstrikes against rebels in the past, and has a naval facility at Tartous on the coast. The Tartous facility is Russia’s only Mediterranean repair and replenishment hub, and Moscow has used Syria as a staging post to fly its military contractors in and out of Africa. The ministry’s statement said Russia’s two military facilities in Syria had been put on a state of high alert but played down an immediate risk to them. “There is currently no serious threat to their security,” the ministry said. Over the weekend, in a separate Truth Social comment, Trump said the United States should not intervene in the Syrian conflict. A top adviser in the Biden administration made a similar remark, stressing that the United States would not send troops to the restive Middle Eastern country.

“The United States is not going to … militarily dive into the middle of a Syrian civil war,” President Joe Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, told reporters in California. Sullivan stressed that the U.S. military would act out of necessity to keep the ISIS terrorist group from gaining a foothold in Syria should it happen. The insurgents who took over Damascus are led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, which the United States has designated as a terrorist group and says has links to the al-Qaeda terror organization, although the group reportedly has since broken ties with al-Qaeda. One of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham’s main leaders is Abu Mohammed al-Golani, or Muhammad al-Jawlani, who is considered a terrorist by the State Department and has been blamed for a number of terrorist attacks that have left civilians dead in Syria.

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“The Biden-Blinken-Rice-Sullivan-Sherman team has done enough damage. Just get out of the way….”

Trump Signals Shift From Unnecessary Military Intervention (JTN)

The unexpected fall of the Assad regime in Syria to a ragtag team of Islamist insurgents plunged the Middle East into a new era of uncertainty and opportunity while putting the world on notice that Donald Trump’s return to power was already uprooting decades of interventionist foreign policy in America. Trump signaled the shift in dramatic fashion, yawning at the Islamist rebels’ final push into Damascus to oust Bashar al-Assad as not a battle America needed to fight and then using its aftermath to urge Russia, long a backer of Assad, to focus instead on seeking a peaceful end to its war against Ukraine. “There should be an immediate ceasefire and negotiations should begin,” Trump implored Sunday as he pressed Russia and Ukraine in the aftermath of Assad’s stunning ouster.

“Too many lives are being so needlessly wasted, too many families destroyed, and if it keeps going, it can turn into something much bigger, and far worse. I know Vladimir well. This is his time to act. China can help. The World is waiting!” Trump’s reaction stood in stark contrast to the man he is replacing, President Joe Biden, who declared he was communicating with the Islamist rebels who overthrew Assad and ordered massive air strikes against ISIS camps to make sure the terror group doesn’t advance in the country. The strategy is laden with risks, as Biden noted himself. “Make no mistake, some of the rebel groups that took down Assad have their own grim record of terrorism and human rights abuses,” Biden said Sunday. “We’ve taken note of statements by the leaders of these rebel groups in recent days and they’re saying the right things now. But as they take on greater responsibility, we will assess not just their words but their actions.”

Former CIA analyst and National Security Council chief of staff Fred Fleitz said Sunday that Trump was right to avoid direct intervention in Syria and to focus instead on stabilizing other ongoing conflicts. “We have to stay out of this and Trump is exactly right. Trump’s America first. That means a strong and decisive president that keeps our country out of new and unnecessary wars,” Fleitz told Newsmax. Trump gave a matter of fact response when Assad fled Syria for Russia, seeing it as an opportunity in Eastern Europe far from the civil-war-torn Mideast nation. “Assad is gone. He has fled his country. His protector, Russia, Russia, Russia, led by Vladimir Putin, was not interested in protecting him any longer,” Trump said. “There was no reason for Russia to be there in the first place. They lost all interest in Syria because of Ukraine, where close to 600,000 Russian soldiers lay wounded or dead, in a war that should never have started, and could go on forever,” he wrote in Truth Social on Sunday.

“Russia and Iran are in a weakened state right now, one because of Ukraine and a bad economy, the other because of Israel and its fighting success. Likewise, Zelenskyy and Ukraine would like to make a deal and stop the madness. They have ridiculously lost 400,000 soldiers, and many more civilians,” he added. With just six weeks before the inauguration, Trump must navigate a turbulent world with a lame-duck U.S. president eager to continue his interventionist, world cop tactics from arming Ukraine to bombing ISIS. Former Acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell implored Biden to stand down in Syria, noting he stood still for a year as the country’s situation deteriorated. “The best thing @JoeBiden and @JakeSullivan46 can do now is let @realDonaldTrump and his team take over,” Grenell wrote on X. “The Biden-Blinken-Rice-Sullivan-Sherman team has done enough damage. Just get out of the way….”

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“..Zelensky wants peace and a ceasefire, Trump added. “He wants to have a ceasefire … He wants to make peace. We didn’t talk about the details. He thinks it’s time..”

Trump Says Developing Concept to End ‘Ridiculous’ Conflict in Ukraine (Sp.)

US President-Elect Donald Trump has said that he is developing a concept to put an end to the “ridiculous” conflict in Ukraine. “I’m formulating a concept of how to end that ridiculous war,” Trump told The New York Post. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky wants peace and a ceasefire, Trump added. “He wants to have a ceasefire … He wants to make peace. We didn’t talk about the details. He thinks it’s time,” the President-elect said. Trump previously said that if he had been the US president instead of Joe Biden, the conflict in Ukraine would never have started. He also emphasized that if re-elected, he intends to achieve a settlement of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine in just 24 hours. Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov, commenting on Trump’s words, called the conflict too complex a problem to be solved in one day.

In June, Russian President Vladimir Putin put forward initiatives for a peaceful settlement of the conflict in Ukraine: Moscow will immediately cease fire and declare its readiness for negotiations after the withdrawal of Ukrainian troops from the territory of Russia’s new regions. The Russian leader also said Kiev must abandon its plans to join NATO, it must carry out demilitarization and denazification, and also adopt a neutral, non-aligned and non-nuclear status. Putin also mentioned in this context the lifting of sanctions against Russia.

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They fear a revolt.

Zelensky Rules Out Lowering Draft Age (RT)

Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky has rejected the idea of lowering the military mobilization age in his country, dismissing calls from the West to do so. Earlier this year, Ukraine lowered the mandatory conscription age from 27 to 25. Some former Western officials have urged Kiev to drop it further to 18, and the administration of outgoing US President Joe Biden has reportedly pushed for this behind closed doors. “The priority should be providing missiles and lowering Russia’s military potential, not Ukraine’s draft age,” Zelensky said, commenting on the idea in a post on X on Tuesday morning. “We must focus on equipping existing brigades and training personnel to use this equipment. We must not compensate the lack of equipment and training with the youth of soldiers,” he wrote.

The issue was raised on Monday during a regular briefing at the US State Department, with spokesman Matthew Miller stating that the decision was Kiev’s to make. “What we have made clear is that if they produce additional forces to join the fight, we and our allies will be ready to equip those forces and train those forces to enter battle,” he added. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken previously suggested that Kiev has some “hard decisions” to make in terms of mobilization. “Getting younger people into the fight, we think, many of us think, is necessary,” the top US diplomat said in an interview last week. The lowering of the draft age was part of a major overhaul of the Ukrainian military service system, which Kiev hoped would bolster conscription rates to replace battlefield losses sustained in the fight with Russia.

However, many Ukrainian men prefer to hide from draft officers or even flee the country illegally, taking a precious and sometimes fatal trip across the border. Over the weekend, Zelensky met with US President-elect Donald Trump, who has pledged to wrap up the hostilities after he is inaugurated in January. Following the meeting in Paris, the Ukrainian leader said he would talk to Biden about his request for an invitation to NATO, because “it makes no sense discussing with Trump” something that he does not yet have an influence on. Ukraine’s bid to join the US-led military bloc and the West’s promise to eventually grant it are among the primary causes of the conflict, according to Moscow. The West intends to fight Russia “to the last Ukrainian,” Russian officials have said.

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Being on that list paints you as guilty. Wonder who will openly refuse to be on it.

Pardon Envy: Democrats Vie to Make the Biden Pardon List (Turley)

Liberal pundits and press in Washington are facing a growing nightmare in Washington. No, it is not the victory of President-elect Donald Trump or the Democrats’ loss of both houses of Congress and the popular vote in this election. It is the possibility that democracy may not collapse as predicted, and Trump might not even round up his opponents en masse. For months, liberals have been telling voters that this will likely be their last election and that democracy is about to end in the U.S. ABC host Whoopi Goldberg declared on “The View” that Trump will immediately become a dictator who will “put you people away … take all the journalists … take all the gay folks … move you all around and disappear you.” Many predicted they would be on the top of the enemies list and the first to be rounded up.

Now, the moment is nearly here, and pundits are dreading that the public may notice there is no line of democracy champions being frog-marched down Pennsylvania Avenue. Faced with such a scenario and a further loss of credibility, many are coming up with the next best thing — pretending they stopped the roundup by having Biden pardon everyone. The spin will be that Trump would have gone after rivals but was prevented from doing so by Biden. The idea is to portray yourself as a white knight, riding down to protect the vulnerable and timid from the coming hoard. Even if democracy inconveniently survives, Biden can preserve the narrative with sweeping pardons. The White House is reportedly exploring giving preemptive pardons to figures ranging from Dr. Anthony Fauci, Sen.-elect Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.).

Cheney previously declared that this “may well be the last real vote you ever get to cast.” A pardon would preserve her persona as a modern-day Joan of Arc who avoided being burnt at the stake only by the grace of a Biden pardon. Others seem to be panicking that there may be a list of pardoned people, but they will be left off. Call it “Pardon Envy.” The only thing worse than not being on a Trump enemies list is not being on a Biden pardon list.Before the election, MSNBC host Al Sharpton and regular Donny Deutsch warned viewers that they would likely be added to an “enemies list.” MSNBC host Rachel Maddow ominously told her viewers that, “Yes, I’m worried about me — but only as much as I’m worried about all of us.”Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin seemed apoplectic that she and others might be omitted from both lists.

One has to be somewhat sympathetic to Rubin. To be left both unpardoned and unarrested is to lose all standing among the “save democracy” social set.Rubin, once dubbed the Post’s Republican columnist, has called for the Republican Party to be burned down and recently advised people how to keep panic alive despite the election: “You can’t talk broad themes. You have to boil it down to nuts and bolts, and you have to be pithy. What do I mean by pithy? How about this: Republicans want to kill your kids. It’s true.” In a podcast, Rubin explained that Biden should pardon “thousands” to blunt Trump’s “initial round of revenge” from journalists to the “little guy and gal” counting votes.

She advised that he should pardon whole “categories” of people to pardon anyone Trump may have “identified by name or type” to offer “protection from a maniac.” In her most recent column, Rubin repeated the call for Biden to pardon “scores of Americans” due to a “reasonable fear that a weaponized FBI directed by a vengeful president will carry out threats to pursue his enemies.”The key is to issue broad pardons to suggest that, absent such extraordinary action, “this maniac” would have purged whole areas of blue states. It is like telling everyone that you are wearing a tin-foil hat to prevent aliens from snatching you. When someone points out that they have not seen any aliens, you can respond, “See, it worked!”

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“..they will go after whoever doesn’t have that kind of pardon, and there are plenty of targets who they can assail.”

Hunter Biden Pardon Raises Expectations For Trump Clemency Wave (JTN)

President Joe Biden’s controversial pardon of his son Hunter may give President-elect Donald Trump a blank check to issue his own round of pardons upon taking office.Trump suggested as much earlier this week in his response to the president’s pardon, a wide issuance of forgiveness for any potential crimes dating back a decade. “Does the Pardon given by Joe to Hunter include the J-6 Hostages, who have now been imprisoned for years?” Trump said in a statement. “Such an abuse and miscarriage of Justice!” Trump promised on the campaign trail to set free many Jan. 6 protesters who stormed the U.S. Capitol. “I am inclined to pardon many of them. I can’t say for every single one because a couple of them, probably, they got out of control,” Trump said at a CNN Town Hall in 2023. “I would say it will be a large portion of them and it would be early on,” he added.

Many lawyers involved in protesting the 2020 election results have faced prosecution as well. However, defendants facing state charges can receive little help from Trump, barring an extraordinary action from the president-elect. Trump could issue a blanket pardon for lawyers that worked with him broadly covering at least federal crimes for more than a decade, similar to Hunter’s pardon and the ones under consideration for other Biden officials.“Christmas is coming, and as the old saying goes, what’s good for the goose is good for the gander,” Colin Reed, a Republican strategist, former campaign manager for U.S. Sen. Scott Brown, R-Mass., and co-founder of South and Hill Strategies, told The Center Square. “After thumbing his nose at the idea that ‘no one is above the law,’ President Biden has undermined the entire Democratic Party’s messaging apparatus and robbed their ability to claim the moral high ground.

The Department of Justice has signaled that its own cases against Trump will be dropped, keeping with a longstanding policy preventing prosecution of sitting presidents. It may be the season of grace because media reports indicate that Biden’s team is considering issuing many more pardons preemptively protecting Biden allies from prosecution by a Trump administration, such as Dr. Anthony Fauci. Democratic Sen. Blumenthal said on CNN this week that he would “strongly oppose” those kinds of blanket pardons. “The way to stand up to a bully like Donald Trump is not to run and hide,” Blumenthal said. “It’s to confront him. And that’s what we ought to do if they misuse the Department of Justice. I was a prosecutor, U.S. attorney and then state attorney, and I believe that the way to confront Donald Trump is to put together a defense team and a defense fund.

“I’d be happy to join it,” he added. “And what we should do is support those people who are potentially in jeopardy but there is no way to offer this kind of immunity to anyone who may be a target of Donald Trump because they will go after whoever doesn’t have that kind of pardon, and there are plenty of targets who they can assail.” Despite Trump’s pledges in the 2016 cycle to drain the swamp and prosecute Hillary Clinton, his DOJ never prosecuted political opponents. “By issuing the pardon so early in the lame duck period rather than on his way out the door, President Biden also provided President Trump time to plan his next moves,” Reed told The Center Square. “The Hunter pardon and its implications will live on long after the Biden presidency has reached its final chapter.”

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Changing the Constitution is forever dangerous.

For once I can agree with Lindsey Graham: “They have no desire to make the court better. They’re just trying to make it more liberal.”

Senators Introduce Bill to Cap Supreme Court Terms at 18 Years (ET)

Two senators introduced a proposed amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would impose term limits for members of the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court unanimously adopted a code of conduct in November 2023 governing the justices’ behavior. The new resolution, introduced on Dec. 5 by Sens. Peter Welch (D-Vt.) and Joe Manchin (I-W.Va.), would limit newly appointed justices to 18 years on the bench, and lead to a new opening roughly every two years. To become effective, a constitutional amendment has to be passed by a two-thirds majority of both houses of Congress and ratified by three-quarters of the states. According to a summary provided by Welch, the amendment would not change the number of sitting justices, currently set at nine by law, and would establish a transition period to ensure vacancies occur at regular intervals.

“Taking action to restore public trust in our nation’s most powerful Court is as urgent as it is necessary. Setting term limits for Supreme Court Justices will cut down on political gamesmanship, and is a commonsense reform supported by a majority of Americans,” Welch said in a joint statement issued with Manchin on Dec. 7. “I’m proud to lead this effort with Senator Manchin, which will restore Americans’ faith in our judicial system.” During the transition period, 18-year terms will start every two years, without regard to when a sitting justice steps down. When a sitting justice retires, the incoming justice will complete what remains of the next upcoming 18-year term. Manchin, a former Democrat whose term in the Senate ends when the new Congress convenes on Jan. 3, 2025, said the current lifetime appointment structure is broken and “fuels polarizing confirmation battles and political posturing that has eroded public confidence in the highest court in our land.”

“Our amendment maintains that there shall never be more than nine justices and would gradually create regular vacancies on the court, allowing the president to appoint a new justice every two years with the advice and consent of the United States Senate,” he said. Other measures are pending in Congress that would limit the tenure of Supreme Court justices. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), who chairs a Senate subcommittee overseeing federal courts, introduced a bill that would limit justices’ tenure to 18 years. Reps. Don Beyer (D-Va.) and Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) filed a similar bill in the House. Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Ga.) introduced legislation that would force out justices after 18 years of regular active service, at which point they would assume senior status, a kind of semi-retirement for federal judges, and continue to draw a federal paycheck for life.

Superannuated justices are already allowed to serve on lower courts by a 1937 law that allows justices to sit “by designation” on those courts. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), ranking member on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said in the summer that he opposes Supreme Court reform proposals, including term limits for justices, that are backed by Democrat lawmakers and President Joe Biden. “They want to pack the court. They want … to undercut the conservative court,” Graham said during a July 28 interview on CBS’s “Face The Nation.” “They have no desire to make the court better. They’re just trying to make it more liberal.” The Epoch Times reached out to the Supreme Court for comment but did not receive a reply by publication time.

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“As a first generation American of Middle Eastern Heritage, she has become a role model for women in Law and Politics,”

Trump Names Alina Habba As White House Counselor: ‘Tireless Advocate’ (JTN)

President-elect Donald Trump on Sunday night appointed attorney Alina Habba as White House counselor, hailing her as a tireless advocate for America First policies. Habba was a relentless defender on television and in the courtroom as Trump battled four indictments while working his way back to the White House. Trump said she was well versed in the weaponization of the “injustice” system. “Alina has been a tireless advocate for Justice, a fierce Defender of the Rule of Law, and an invaluable Advisor to my Campaign and Transition Team,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “She has been unwavering in her loyalty, and unmatched in her resolve – standing with me through numerous ‘trials,’ battles, and countless days in court.” “As a first generation American of Middle Eastern Heritage, she has become a role model for women in Law and Politics,” he added.

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“The objective is very clear: Joe Biden cannot leave office without a legacy..”

Biden’s Show In Africa At Europe’s Expense (Dionísio)

From north to south, east to west, desperate moves are multiplying, most of them failing dramatically. The objective is very clear: Joe Biden cannot leave office without a legacy. During the election campaigns, the still U.S. president, with no restraint whatsoever, promised all sorts of things, which, perhaps out of arrogance or lack of proper advice, he thought achievable: the strategic defeat of the Russian Federation on the battlefield; the isolation of the Russian Federation on the international stage; the containment of the People’s Republic of China and its submission to Washington; the control and submission of Iran; the protection and security of Israel; the (re)industrialization of the USA, etc….

There was no shortage of praise, but of all Joe Biden’s achievements, the only ones that stand out are those that he couldn’t promise directly and forthrightly: the destruction of the German economy and, in turn, of the EU economy; the takeover of the European LNG market, through the destruction of NordStream; the takeover, from within, of the military industrial complex of the EU countries; the destabilization, and consequent installation of puppet regimes in countless countries geografically connected to their main enemies; the destruction and destabilization of supply chains, as a way of attacking confidence in Chinese industrial capacity; the partial decoupling, no matter who it hurts, of the Western economy from the Chinese economy; the destruction of the international trade system and confidence in the legal-institutional architecture built up after the Second World War.

These objectives have been satisfactorily achieved, I would say. But none of them will save the U.S. from losing its hegemony and supremacy on the international stage. On the verge of abandoning ship, without producing any results worthy of being placed on the pedestal of measures capable of counteracting the degradation of U.S. hegemonic dominance, Joe Biden’s departure from the scene is in itself a vivid image of the bankruptcy of what has come to be called “American democracy”. A candidate who was elected by the grassroots of the Democratic Party, after a primary in which he had no worthy competitors, was later rejected and passed over by the party’s donor oligarchies.

After the debacle in Ukraine, which is becoming increasingly difficult to hide, and the (until now) failed attempts at a “colored revolution” in Georgia, Venezuela, Mozambique and Serbia, where not even NATO’s biggest fanboys can hide the argumentative debacle that followed the repetition, as predictable as it was desperate, of the accusation that elections are always rigged when the chosen ones of the Olympus of democracy that is the G7 don’t win, now it’s Syria’s turn, a country in which the bold manoeuvre to repeat the “Arab Spring”, conceived and operationalized using the return of emblematic “rebel movements” that are nothing more than terrorist groups and Islamic fundamentalists that the U.S. and Israel move around as needed (Uighurs, mujahideen from Iranian Balochistan, Al-Nusra terrorists and many other “moderates”).

Faced with a threat of destruction, Israel cannot live with an axis of resistance linking the Shiite peoples from Iran all over to Lebanon, nor can the U.S. let Israel fall. But this maneuver, too, seems to be falling apart. At the same time, without obtaining any practical results, the U.S. has made it known to the world that Erdogan, who is so critical of Israel, is in fact nothing more than a paint-switch and cannot be trusted. Ukraine, meanwhile, has once again sought to gain an advantage in Syria by supporting the operation – to threaten the warm water port that the Russian Federation has there? – which it has not been able to achieve on the battlefield, and which it needs for any negotiation that could end with a NATO member state at the gates of the Donbass. Something which, of course, the Russian Federation will never accept.

But don’t be fooled into thinking that Biden’s desperate maneuvers are limited to the military. The military plan is just the most brutal way of guaranteeing the main objective: the domination of the world economy and the continued exploitation of the world’s great sources of wealth.

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“..the ‘unexpected’ consequences will soon create a new supra-regional crisis; new refugees are already on the march towards Europe, estimated at up to 1.5 million. A terrifyingly difficult figure to manage.”

Syria, Year 2024, The Fall (Pacini)

What the hell happened? How could the Syrian army surrender so much territory in a matter of days? How did it happen that years of diplomatic and secret agreements, with the deployment of foreign armed forces and the activation of known and hidden military bases, collapsed in a matter of hours? What happened behind the scenes? It will not be easy to answer these questions. We will try, helping ourselves with the little information currently available and some cold, rational reasoning. The first step to understanding this is to note that the Syrian army was ordered to withdraw from Aleppo/Hama. The soldiers did not flee and there was no mutiny. The al-Qaeda hordes did not defeat the army, because they did not fight them. They simply gave ground. To understand why such a heartbreaking decision was made, we have to look at the broader picture.

This was a ‘blitzkrieg’, a true Blitzkrieg: a surprise attack with a military force concentrated at a specific point to overwhelm the enemy. Once the Al-Qaeda hordes broke through the M4 highway, the attempt to keep the city in the mode of chaos would have resulted in mass casualties among both civilians and soldiers. Not much can be done in such cases. The first option is to fall back, grinding ground until it reaches a point where it does not have enough resources to keep pushing. That point was reached in Homs. One can otherwise play the air superiority card, because it is clearly much easier to bomb convoys of al-Qaeda terrorists from the air on the highways than to fight them inside the cities. Or one can opt for flanking, separating the enemy into more easily manageable pockets. Part of this strategy was seen when Russia blew up the bridge from Hama to Homs in Rastan.

Sticking to a purely strategic-military calculation, the Syrian army did not suffer many casualties during the retreat, managing to preserve ‘human strength’ in a country with a total of less than 20 million inhabitants, a low percentage of whom are in military service and can be recalled in the event of war (which in any case requires minimal preparation time). The Syrian army was fighting a war on several fronts: the Turkish hordes in the north, the Americans in the east, the Americans and Takfirists in the south, and finally Israel. Hezbollah’s war against ‘Israel’ and Russia’s war against Ukraine increased the manpower shortage. Trying to counter-attack with a large deployment of men would most likely have meant the fall of Damascus well before it happened.

As journalist Vanessa Beeley testified while fleeing Syria, ‘Chaos reigns supreme, looting, thuggery and thievery. It has the stamp of approval of the US and Israel because that is what they believe in. Crossing the border was a succession of gunfire, infighting and looting in every single shop and market. Terrorists on motorbikes, gunmen and criminals. An incredibly sad experience. The house was surrounded by ‘rebels’ drunk on ‘victory’ from 5am, with continuous celebratory gunfire, and around 10am they tried to break down the outer door to loot the contents of the house. Early in the morning, Israel destroyed Syria’s air defence with bunker bombs. The whole house shook. The CIA road map is always the same. The Resistance is broken and I doubt it can be repaired, but extremist mercenaries in Israel’s pay will tell you they ‘support Palestine’. Go then, you are on the border now’.

Israel is the most interesting footnote: it was already ready to go in, it was just waiting for the right moment, and it did so as soon as things started to come to a head and victory – very quickly – was near. This is perhaps the most important reason for the withdrawal from Hama and Aleppo. The intention was probably to create a land grab and label it a ‘buffer zone’. The Golan had already seen an additional deployment of soldiers to deal with the attacks that began after 7 October. Israel is the biggest threat to Syria, the al-Qaeda hordes are just a distraction.

It is no coincidence that in recent months Turkey and Israel have both occupied new portions of territory to expand their neo-colonial ambitions. From Azerbaijan seizing Armenian villages using Turkish weapons and NATO diplomatic pressure on Yerevan, to the invasion of the Gaza Strip, or the new land grab after the collapse of Syria, which fell into the hands of Turkish-backed terrorist groups, and Israeli expansion into the Golan Heights. After two decades of Western intervention in the Middle East and the transformation of several countries into battle zones, the ‘unexpected’ consequences will soon create a new supra-regional crisis; new refugees are already on the march towards Europe, estimated at up to 1.5 million. A terrifyingly difficult figure to manage.

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“We’re going to drill, baby, drill. We’re going to bring down your energy costs.”

Trump Pledges To ‘Drill, Baby, Drill’ (RT)

US President-elect Donald Trump has confirmed a campaign pledge to focus on increasing oil and gas output once he returns to the White House in January. Trump has made clear his strong support for the oil and gas industry by pledging to ease availability of drilling leases for energy companies, as well as building more energy infrastructure. Other policies are expected to include potentially allowing energy firms to sell more natural gas abroad, as well as increasing drilling on federal land. In an interview with NBC News, the president-elect said that he would stick to his promise of pumping more oil. Asked if he would direct the US authorities to punish those he believes crossed the line in investigating his actions over recent years, Trump said, “No, not at all. I think that they’ll have to look at that, but I’m not going to – I’m going to focus on drill, baby, drill.”

The phrase was a Republican campaign slogan first uttered in 2008, and then used repeatedly by Trump during his campaign earlier this year. Trump has criticized the administration of current President Joe Biden over energy prices, telling supporters at a rally in Las Vegas in June: “We’re going to drill, baby, drill. We’re going to bring down your energy costs.” Last month, Trump announced plans to select North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum as his secretary of the interior. Burgum previously helped open millions of acres of public land for fracking. The role is expected to focus on streamlining policies related to oil, gas, and coal production in order to boost supply rather than limit demand.

Ranked as the world’s number one oil producer, the US is expected to continue increasing its oil output to 13.5 million barrels per day next year, compared to 12.9 million and 13.2 million recorded in 2023 and 2024, respectively, according to the Energy Information Administration.

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“It took the [Georgian] Ministry of Internal Affairs exactly five days to neutralize the resource of violence of the radical opposition..”

Georgia Has Prevented Maidan-Style Coup – PM (RT)

Georgia has prevented an attempted overthrow of the government orchestrated by foreign powers, Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze has said. He compared the scenario allegedly prepared for the nation with the situation in Ukraine in 2014. Speaking on Monday, Kobakhidze referred to the US-backed Maidan coup in Kiev a decade ago, which ousted Ukraine’s democratically elected president, Viktor Yanukovich, and precipitated the current conflict between Moscow and Kiev. “It took the [Georgian] Ministry of Internal Affairs exactly five days to neutralize the resource of violence of the radical opposition,” Kobakhidze said at a cabinet meeting, thanking the head of the ministry, Vakhtang Gomelauri, and police officers. He added that the ministry had acted in accordance with standards “higher than the American and European ones.”

“This is how the attempt of Maidan in our country was stopped in exactly five days,” Kobakhidze concluded. The Georgian capital, Tbilisi, has been rocked by anti-government and pro-EU rallies since late November, when Kobakhidze announced that the country would halt negotiations on potential accession to the bloc until 2028, citing “blackmail and manipulation” from EU officials. Brussels has since imposed personal sanctions against members of the Georgian government. Protestors have repeatedly clashed with law enforcement, shot fireworks, and thrown Molotov cocktails at riot police, who have deployed tear gas and water cannons in an effort to disperse the demonstrators.

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“Press a button and get both sides of that exact same story, based on that story, and then give comments..”

LA Times Owner Readies ‘Bias Meter’ To Appear On News Articles And Column (jTN)

The Los Angeles Times is preparing to unveil a “bias meter” to appear on news articles and columns on the news outlet’s website, according to the news outlet’s owner. The bias meter, which could launch as early as January, will be operated by Artificial Intelligence (AI). “Whether it be news or opinion — more likely the opinion or the voices — you have a bias meter so somebody could understand as they read it that the source of the article has some level of bias,” Patrick Soon-Shiong, a billionaire entrepreneur, said Wednesday on “The Mike Gallagher Show” podcast. “Press a button and get both sides of that exact same story, based on that story, and then give comments,” he added. Shortly after the 2024 election, Soon-Shiong, who purchased the outlet in 2018, announced that he would be installing a new editorial board and that he was looking for more conservative columnists to balance out the opinion section.

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“The rapidity of Syria’s collapse raises the question whether Washington purchased Syria’s collapse with payments to generals and officials..”

Does Russia Have an Intelligence Service? (Paul Craig Roberts)

I think not. There is a bureaucracy, an office, and someone with a title, but there is no intelligence. Putin did not know that a US trained and equipped Georgian Army was about to invade South Ossetia and went to the Olympics in China. Putin didn’t know that the US was about to overthrow the Ukrainian Government and went to the Sochi Olympics. Putin didn’t know that the West was deceiving him with the Minsk Agreement. This cost him 8 years and left him behind the eight ball and locked into a military conflict now 3 years old, a conflict that has expanded into US/NATO missile attacks into Russia. And still Russia stands down. Has Putin not been informed of the attacks? Lavrov told Carlson that Russia was not at war with the West.

Putin didn’t know that the US was about to overthrow Syria. In his interview with Tucker Carlson Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov spoke as if the renewal of the conflict in Syria allowed plenty of time to find a diplomatic solution. He had no idea that Syria would be overthrown by about the time the interview ended.

Russia had no realization, despite Biden explicitly telling them, that the Nord Stream Pipeline was going to be blown up by the US. How is it possible that the Russian government never has a clue about imminent events that have adverse consequences for Russia? Have the fearsome days of the NKVD and KGB convinced Russian liberals like Putin and Lavrov that intelligence services are dangerous and unnecessary in a democracy? The sudden fall of Syria has completely changed the matrix. The US and Israel have gained tremendously at the expense of Russia and Iran. The Israeli government sees an enormous situational change that has greatly weakened the ability of Iran and Hezbollah to oppose Greater Israel.

The Jerusalem Post reports that Israel Defense Force Operations Command Chief Major General Israel Ziv said the fall of Syria has weakened the Axis of Resistance to Greater Israel and presents a historic opportunity that Washington and President Trump should capitalize on to remove Iran as an obstacle to US and Israeli interest. The year 2024 ends with the erasure of Palestine and Syria by Washington and Israel. During 2025 the targets will be Lebanon and Iran. And Russia, of course. The rapidity of Syria’s collapse raises the question whether Washington purchased Syria’s collapse with payments to generals and officials. The Syrian military had successfully repelled the previous assault with the aid of Russian airpower. But this time the army retreated from its positions and refused to fight, leaving the cities open for enemy opposition.

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“Unlike the original Jacobins of 1794 in Paris, who were ultra-extreme idealists, our Woke Jacobins are extreme cynics..”

Twilight of the Race Hustle (Kunstler)

Were you thinking of Daniel Penny this weekend? A year and a half ago, the US marine veteran, age 26, subdued one Jordan Neely, 30, a homeless schizophrenic with a record of 42 arrests who was menacing riders on a New York City subway car. Neely was, at the time, a fugitive on an arrest warrant for felony assault on a sixty-seven-year-old woman. Penny applied a choke hold after Neely declared he was of a mind to kill somebody on the train. Neely was still alive when the cops came, but they declined to give him CPR because he was filthy and an apparent drug-user, and they feared getting AIDS or hepatitis from giving him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. . . so Neely died there in the subway.

Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg indicted Penny for manslaughter in the second degree and secondarily for criminally negligent homicide. His trial has been going on all month. On Friday, the jury reported its inability to reach a verdict on the manslaughter charge. Instead of declaring a mistrial, Judge Maxwell T. Wiley dismissed the primary charge and directed the jury to continue deliberations this week on the secondary negligent homicide charge, a procedurally dubious action. Everybody knows that the trial is an absurd injustice, but that has been the temper of our society for many years now in the age of the Woke Jacobins. Unlike the original Jacobins of 1794 in Paris, who were ultra-extreme idealists, our Woke Jacobins are extreme cynics, imagining only the worst about the project of civilization. Hence, their alt-project to de-civilize the rest of us.

[..] One signal result of all this has been the increasing reluctance of police to stop criminal behavior, which, of course, leads to ever more bad behavior. Add to that new modes of law enforcement that make it difficult to hold violent criminals in custody — no cash bail, down-charging, catch-and-release. This has been the mode in New York under state AG Letitia James and Manhattan DA Bragg.It was the decision out of Bragg’s office to keep Jordan Neely on the street despite the danger he posed to the public, as denoted in his arrest record. Daniel Penny stepped in where law enforcement failed. Jordan Neely was not dehumanized by the system. He dehumanized himself and his death was the result of his own recklessness. He wasn’t anyone else’s victim. He doesn’t deserve a statue. The father who abandoned him does not deserve a multi-million-dollar payout from New York taxpayers.

I’ll be surprised if the jury returns with a guilty verdict against Daniel Penny on the secondary charge of negligent homicide. That charge is just as unreasonable and dishonest as the primary charge was, and, anyway, a conviction will likely get thrown out on appeal due to the procedural mistakes of Judge Wiley. The Penny case, I’m sure you realize, is not the only bit of professional mischief that Alvin Bragg has engaged in. A case might be made that he has systematically tried to deprive non-black citizens of their civil rights. The Department of Justice in a new administration ought to contemplate prosecuting him for it.

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It’s up to Kash Patel to investigate that. Why introduce another blanket pardon?

No, the J6 Committee Should Not “Go to Jail” (Turley)

President-Elect Donald Trump gave President Joe Biden and his critics a major boost this weekend by stating on NBC’s Meet The Press that he believes that the entire J6 Committee “should go to jail.” Despite weeks of saying that he did not plan any campaign of retribution and “success will be my revenge,” Trump undermined those statements with the statement, which the media is now playing up as proof that he is going to unleash a vengeance campaign. Many in the media are also omitting that Trump immediately said “no” to whether he would direct either the Attorney General or the FBI director to indict or investigate.The fact, however, is that there is no viable criminal case to be made against the J6 Committee members for their investigation or report. We need to move beyond the rage rhetoric if this country is going to come together to face the tough challenges ahead.

In the Sunday interview, Trump was referring to how Cheney and the “committee of political thugs” deleted all the evidence from their investigation: “Cheney did something that’s inexcusable, along with [Chair Bennie] Thompson and the people on the un-select committee of political thugs and, you know, creeps.” He added, “Cheney was behind it. And so was Bennie Thompson and everybody on that committee. For what they did, honestly, they should go to jail.” I have been one of the most vocal critics of the J6 Committee, having written over a dozen columns on their misrepresentation of evidence, false claims, burying of evidence, and political bias. I consider the J6 Committee to be not just a colossal failure but a missed opportunity for a bipartisan look at that tragic day. I also fully support the effort of the House committees to finish its own investigation into the security failure at the Capitol and the record of the J6 Committee.

Having said that, these are ethical and political failings, not criminal violations. Politicians routinely distort facts on both sides of scandals, including Presidents Biden, Trump, and Obama. We have elections to allow the public to hold such politicians accountable. In the case of Liz Cheney, the people of Wyoming overwhelmingly removed her from office. Cheney’s work on the committee was rife with false claims and the manipulation of evidence. What could have been her finest hour in forcing a balanced and honest approach to the investigation proved to be her undoing (at least with her prior political base). Members, however, are protected from prosecution for expressing their opinions or advancing legislative measures. This includes Article I, Section 6, Clause 1, which states that members of Congress “shall in all Cases, except Treason, Felony, and Breach of the Peace, be privileged from Arrest during their attendance at the Session of their Respective Houses, and in going to and from the same; and for any Speech or Debate in either House, they shall not be questioned in any other Place.”

The Supreme Court has held that “to the extent that [congressional officers] serve legislative functions, the performance of which would be immune . . . if done by Congressmen, these officials enjoy the protection[s] of the Speech or Debate Clause.” Doe v. McMillan, 412 U.S. 306, 320 (1973). More importantly, the omissions and unfairness of the process do not constitute crimes. That brings us to the focus of Trump’s remarks: the alleged destruction of evidence by the Committee. Over a hundred files were allegedly destroyed, though Thompson insists that they were not required to be preserved. It does appear that the Committee may have violated the House’s archiving rules. However, this is not ordinarily a case for criminal prosecution. These rules have sufficient room for interpretation to make any such claim difficult to prosecute. Moreover, the responsibility of any given member of the Committee for such violations is doubly difficult to establish.

Clearly, a false statement to federal investigators or an effort to obstruct an investigation can be separate criminal violations, but there is no indication of such allegations. Most importantly, presidents do not send people to jail. Juries and judges do that. We have the oldest and most successful constitution in history. J6 Committee members, like all citizens, are fully protected under that system. Trump’s statement, however, has given a boost to his critics who are trying to preserve the narrative that blanket preemptive pardons are needed to protect his political opponents. As I recently wrote, some are suggesting up to thousands of such pardons. In a statement to The New York Times, Cheney immediately used Trump’s statement to keep the narrative alive:

“This was the worst breach of our Constitution by any president in our nation’s history. Donald Trump’s suggestion that members of Congress who later investigated his illegal and unconstitutional actions should be jailed is a continuation of his assault on the rule of law and the foundations of our republic.” The media is widely reporting Trump’s statement and omitting his prior insistence that he was not going to unleash a retributive campaign against political opponents. Trump gave his critics a windfall benefit, which they can now cite as the basis for the blanket pardons. The press and pundits have been dreading the rather awkward prospect of democracy not ending as predicted or the chance that this is not (as figures like Cheney claimed) our last election. The “white knight pardons” are a way of arguing that Biden prevented the collapse.

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WMD
https://twitter.com/i/status/1865894197183529374

 

 

Wreath Rome
https://twitter.com/i/status/1865835458803933243

 

 

Elephants camera
https://twitter.com/i/status/1865441139559428249

 

 

Sea horse

 

 

Maasai boma

 

 

Lennon
https://twitter.com/i/status/1865876485107531848

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Apr 232024
 


Gustav Klimt The Park 1909

 

Alina Habba Rages As Judge Approves Trump’s $175 Million Bond (ET)
Will Trump Testify? (Victoria Taft)
Trump Urges “Peaceful Protest” As Day 1 In Hush-Money Case Ends (ZH)
Trump Sold-Out His Base to Shovel $95 Billion to Ukraine and Israel (Whitney)
Supreme Court Denies Bid to Expand No-Excuse Mail-In Ballots in Texas (ET)
Biden Targets Radical IDF Unit With Sanctions to Placate His Voters (Sp.)
US Forced Israel To Abandon Larger Attack On Iran – NYT (RT)
Will Zionism Self-Destruct? (Alastair Crooke)
US Goes ‘Slippery Slide’ With Sending Its Military Personnel to Ukraine (Sp.)
The Bad Faith Olympics (Kunstler)
Polish President Rejects Own PM’s ‘Pre-war’ Warning (RT)
Biden Fears RFK Jr. as He Gets on Another Ballot (Sp.)
Michael Brenner: The Moral Depravity of Western Imperialism (Sch.)
No, It Does Not Matter Why the Man Lit Himself on Fire (Turley)

 

 

Still trying to understand this.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1782508137582608427

 

 

Bannon
https://twitter.com/i/status/1782461540442263664

 

 

Something Amazing is Developing with this Presidential Immunity SCOTUS Case…

Mike Davis:
— Can the Trump 47 Justice Department charge Obama for Capital Murder for murdering 2 Americans in a drone strike?
— Can the Trump 47 Justice Department charge Biden for the illegals pouring into the US, and their resulting crimes?

What to do? What to do? Trump says he should have “ABSOLUTE Immunity” . “Absolute” is the key word here… As it stands, the Constitution does say a President has Absolute Immunity from many lawsuits (not all)… BUT…. Trumps case is under legal dispute to determine whether or not a President has immunity from CRIMINAL Liability or Prosecution. No President in history has ever been charged for a crime, as the Constitution currently stands. A major precedent will be set with this SCOTUS ruling this Thursday… I believe this ruling may be closing some loopholes to go after others.. The wordage is going to be very very important.

 

 

Tulsi Kamala 2019

 

 

Tucker Ukr

 

 

Zel

Zel 2006

 

 

Founding Fathers

 

 

 

 

“…in one hour, that judge and the attorney general realized they had no idea what they were talking about… and we came to an agreement that everything would be the same…”

Alina Habba Rages As Judge Approves Trump’s $175 Million Bond (ET)

Former President Donald Trump and New York Attorney General Letitia James reached an agreement on April 22 regarding his $175 million bond in his New York civil case, imposing additional restrictions while resolving concerns about the funds’ security. The attorney general argued that Knight Specialty Insurance Company (KSIC) lacked a “certificate of qualification” and that President Trump still had access to the Charles Schwab account pledged to the insurer as collateral. Judge Arthur Engoron accepted the April 22 agreement, which gave KSIC exclusive control over the account. The state made the offer after Chris Kise, President Trump’s attorney, provided oral argument. The attorney general established five bond conditions this morning that allow President Trump to use a non-New York company as a traditional license surety to cover the $175 million he was ordered to pay.

KSIC is unauthorized by the New York Department of Financial Services, which bond experts have said is a victory for President Trump. “[The company] is probably charging Trump less and they accepted a pledge rather than actually receiving $175 million in cash,” Bruce Lederman, a commercial and real estate litigator who has dealt in bonds for more than 40 years, said. All of President Trump’s attorneys agreed to the settlement stipulations, which are expected to be memorialized by the end of the week. The five bond conditions include retaining the collateral in a Schwab account and restricting KSIC from trading or withdrawing any of the funds for anything other than payment of the bond. “The state was not looking to be vindictive,” Mr. Lederman told The Epoch Times. “They are looking simply to be guaranteed that they are geting paid if they win the appeal, and they were sufficiently satisfied that if these five conditions were met, they would get paid.”

[..] President Trump defended the bond outside the courtroom at his criminal trial. “We put up cash and the number is 175,” President Trump said. “She shouldn’t be complaining about the bonding company. The bonding company would be good for it because I put up the money. I have plenty of money to put up.” After the hearing, President Trump’s lawyer in the case, Alina Habba, fumed at the judge’s incompetence, “he doesn’t even understand basic principles of finance,” and at AG James’ “this is where your taxpayer dollars are going America…witch hunt after witch hunt after witch hunt…” Habba continued to excoriate the whole farce: “…in one hour, that judge and the attorney general realized they had no idea what they were talking about… and we came to an agreement that everything would be the same…”

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“The media have called this case a “hush money” case, but one of our crafty commenters called it the Hush Trump case. Touche’.

Will Trump Testify? (Victoria Taft)

Will Donald Trump testify at his New York City at the Hush Trump bookkeeping trial? Testimony is underway in the trial of former President Trump, who is charged with a bookkeeping issue of misreporting payments in 2017 as legal fees instead of campaign expenses. His overarching crime, by the Manhattan district attorney’s lights, is a federal election crime, which boils down to Trump stealing the 2016 election. Hillary Clinton won New York in 2016 by a nearly two-to-one margin, so clearly this trial is on the up-and-up. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg dredged up this trial from the dead after federal elections officials and the previous DA as well as Bragg himself declined to bring this case years before. But after Biden’s DOJ parachuted in a Trump specialist attack dog to go after the former president, the Democrats decided to throw everything against the wall to prevent him from being reelected.

Former Trump Attorney General Bill Barr, who can’t stand the former president, calls this case an “abomination… obviously political …and a real threat to liberty.” Better late than never, Bill. He’ll be out with his 2020 observations by, hmmm, let’s say next year. The witness list is out, and the first person to take the stand in this non-televised drama will be the former publisher of the National Enquirer, who paid porn performer Stormy Daniels money for exclusive rights to her story and then killed it. That’s not a crime, but it will dovetail nicely with the prosecution’s index horribilis that they will use as distractive chaff from this “abomination.” The Enquirer paid Daniels $150,000 while Trump’s lawyer, Michael Cohen, who will also testify, paid her $130,000. Trump personally paid Cohen for his legal activities by more than doubling the amount and giving him a $60K spiff for his legal services.

This is the “crime” for which Trump is dragged through the courts. Since it has been, as the lawyers like to say, “bootstrapped” to an unspecified federal elections crime (which the feds said wasn’t a federal elections crime) it has suddenly gone from a civil case to a criminal case. Robert Costello, Cohen’s former attorney, will testify for the defense, according to the witness list. Trump is not on the witness list, but a defendant can always decide if he wants to testify during the trial. Trump has told the world he will testify. “I don’t know, I’m testifying. I tell the truth. I mean, all I can do is tell the truth,” he said recently. “And the truth is,” he continued, “that there’s no case, they have no case.” Last week he answered “yes” when a reporter yelled the question as he entered the Manhattan courthouse. One of Trump’s appellate attorneys, Will Scharf, told CNN recently that he thinks if he decided to testify Trump would do well. “If the jury decides based on the facts and the law, there’s no way President Trump can be convicted,” he said. Scharf says Trump “would be a compelling witness” if he chooses to testify.

In the E. Jean Carroll defamation trial, Trump testified for less than four minutes. One can imagine the cross-examination of Trump by prosecutors using the list of bad acts that have nothing to do with his case, getting him flustered and angry and showing the jury what a bad guy he is. Trump can be cool and calm, but they’ll do everything they can to rattle him on the stand, obviously. The media have called this case a “hush money” case, but one of our crafty commenters called it the Hush Trump case. Touche’. When a judge shuts up the defendant but not the other trial participants you can’t help but wonder if the fix is in. Where else will you read that in this censorious media world that we’re living in?

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“His entire financial livelihood depends on President Trump’s destruction,” he said of Mr. Cohen. “You cannot make a serious decision about President Trump relying on the words of Michael Cohen.”

Trump Urges “Peaceful Protest” As Day 1 In Hush-Money Case Ends (ZH)

Day one of former President Donald Trump’s so-called “hush-money” trial concluded early on Monday after Judge Juan Merchan said that an alternate juror can visit a dentist appointment (despite previously telling Trump he would have attend every day without fail – missing his son’s graduation – or face jail). Judge Merchan had previously planned to adjourn the trial at 2 p.m. ET due to the Passover holiday. But he said Monday that it would adjourn at 12:30 p.m. He previously said he would end at 2 p.m. on Tuesday for the holiday. Jack Phillips reports, via The Epoch Times, that the early adjournment came after prosecutors and defense lawyers make their respective cases for why the former president should be convicted or acquitted. In the case, President Trump is accused of falsifying business payments during the 2016 campaign by allegedly paying a former lawyer, Michael Cohen, to bury negative stories.

At issue were claims from an adult film performer, Stormy Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, that she was engaged in a relationship with the former president. President Trump has denied her claims and has pled not guilty. An attorney for the former president spoke to the jury, asking them to “use your common sense” when they assess the case. “We’re New Yorkers. It’s why we’re here,” Todd Blanche said. “There will be a very swift not guilty verdict” if they decide based on the evidence involved, he said. “You told all of us, you told the court, you told me, you will put aside whatever views you have of President Trump,” Mr. Blanche told the jury as he wrapped up his arguments. “The 34 counts, ladies and gentlemen, are really just pieces of paper,” Mr. Blanche said of the indictment. “None of this was a crime.”

Mr. Blanche was critical of Ms. Clifford, saying that she has earned income and fame from her allegations about an alleged affair that occurred in 2006. “She also wrote a book. She was paid for a documentary,” Mr. Blanche says of Ms. Clifford, adding that courts have sided with President Trump’s legal disputes with Ms. Clifford. As for Mr. Cohen, Mr. Blanche accused him of profiting off his criticism of President Trump. “His entire financial livelihood depends on President Trump’s destruction,” he said of Mr. Cohen. “You cannot make a serious decision about President Trump relying on the words of Michael Cohen.” “He has a goal, an obsession with getting President Trump,” Mr. Blanche said of Mr. Cohen, who is expected to be a witness. “I submit to you that he cannot be trusted.”

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Mike Whitney. A different view.

Trump Sold-Out His Base to Shovel $95 Billion to Ukraine and Israel (Whitney)

The man who is most responsible for the $95 billion giveaway to Ukraine and Israel, is the same guy who pretends to oppose America’s “wasteful” foreign wars. Donald Trump. It was Trump who consulted with Speaker Mike Johnson about the contents of the Ukraine aid package, just as it was Trump who concocted the idea of issuing loans instead of dispersing the standard welfare handout. It was also Trump who said: “I stand with the Speaker, (Mike Johnson)” after which he added that Johnson is doing “a very good job.” A “good job”?? So, secretly collaborating with the Democrat leadership to push through a bill that “reauthorizes FISA to spy on the American people without a warrant, (bans Tik Tok) fully funds Joe Biden’s DOJ that has indicted President Trump 91 times, and giving Biden’s political gestapo a brand new FBI building bigger than the Pentagon,” while not providing a dime to protect the southern border from the swarms of people entering the country illegally, is doing a “good job”?

The question we should all be asking ourselves is why has Trump decided to participate in this scam? He keeps saying that if he was president, he’d end the war in Ukraine in a day. If he’s sincere about that, then why did he collaborate on a bill that will drag the war out for another year or two? This is from a Twitter post by political analyst Michael Tracey: “Mission Accomplished. It is done: Donald Trump and the House GOP just completed one of the most epic swindles in political history, with Trump personally effectuating the largest-ever dispersement of Ukraine funding through his emissary, “MAGA Mike Johnson” (as Trump lovingly calls him) The $61 billion passed this afternoon is likely enough to underwrite the brutal, pointless trench warfare for at least another year or two. This after the same old endless media screeching that Trump and MAGA Republicans were being brainwashed by Putin and would never fund Ukraine. That fundamental hoax continues — only this time Trump was in on it…. Michael Tracey, Twitter.

And the response from Luca Cabrilo: “Michael you’re 100% spot on. Trump could have at any point killed this monstrous bill if he wanted to, but he didn’t. He even let MAGA Mike go on TV and say that he and Trump are “100% agreed” on the Ukraine funding Trump screwed his base on this one, no other way about it.” Michael Tracey again: “He didn’t just “not kill it,” he personally facilitated its passage..” Here’s more background from Tracey: “The bill, designed after consultations between Mike Johnson and Trump, mysteriously gives the President the ability to forgive the purported “loan” to Ukraine — immediately after the November election…

And if that’s not brazen enough for you, here’s the catch: The funds eligible for “loan forgiveness” are the direct budgetary infusions to Ukraine — meaning the money that pays for the salaries of Ukrainian government workers and so forth — NOT the military “aid,” which comprises the vast majority of the package. So, only $8 billion of the $61 billion allocated to Ukraine is even *eligible* for “loan forgiveness” under the terms of this gargantuan bill. And even that was a fake “loan” to begin with — it never had to be paid back at all!

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“..in the long run, we need the French model: Everybody votes on the same day, everybody has a photo ID, everybody’s accounted as a person..”

Supreme Court Denies Bid to Expand No-Excuse Mail-In Ballots in Texas (ET)

The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to hear a legal challenge to a Texas law that requires voters under the age of 65 to provide justification to vote by mail, meaning that the Democrat-aligned attempt to sharply expand “no-excuse” mail-in ballots in the Lone Star state has failed, with implications for other states. According to an April 22 order list, the high court denied petition for a writ of cetriorari in a case that stems from a federal lawsuit filed in 2020 on behalf of the Texas Democratic Party and several voters who requested that Texas lift its age-based limitations on no-excuse mail-in voting. Texas law only allows individuals to vote by mail without a qualifying excuse, like sickness, if they are 65 years or older. In their original complaint, which made its way through a number of lower courts before ending up before the Supreme Court, the petitioners alleged that the Texas voting law violates the 26th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which prohibits denying the right to vote due to age.

The Supreme Court’s refusal to hear the appeal means that the Texas law stays in place, delivering a win to election integrity advocates who argue that no-excuse mail-in voting is prone to fraud and makes elections less secure. At the same time, the high court’s decision to deny certiorari is a setback for groups who see laws like Texas’s age-based limits on no-excuse mail-in ballots as “voter suppression” or an unfair attempt to impose barriers to voting for certain groups, in this case younger voters. The high court’s decision not to hear the appeal has broader implications, however, since six other states–Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Tennessee–have similar laws on the books that let older voters to request absentee ballot without having to provide any justification. Public opinion in Texas over the issue of no-excuse mail-in voting is split, according to some polls.

In their initial petition filed in 2020 on behalf of the Texas Democratic Party and a group of voters amids the COVID-19 pandemic, the plaintiffs requested that Texas lift its age-based restrictions to no-excuse mail-in voting, citing public health risks related to the outbreak. A district court judge sided with the plaintiffs in May 2020, temporarily blocking the Texas law. Led by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, Texas officials then filed an appeal with the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which paused the district court’s ruling while the appeal played out. The plaintiffs then asked the U.S. Supreme Court to reimpose the district court’s decision to freeze enforcement of the age-based limits to no-excuse mail-in voting, or to take the case up for review, but the high court rejected both requests.

Ultimately, the 5th Circuit voided the lower court’s May 2020 order in full. This led the plaintiffs to file an amended complaint in the district court, this time asserting other claims, including ones of racial discrimination under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act and arguing that the age limitations on mail-in ballots violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th and 26th Amendments. In a July 2022 order, the district court judge dismissed all of the plaintiffs’ claims, leading to another appeal before the 5th Circuit, which ultimately affirmed the district court’s decision to dismiss. The plaintiffs filed a petition for a writ of certiorari in the U.S. Supreme Court in December 2023, asking the high court to declare Texas’s age-based voting law unconstitutional.

[..] The Supreme Court ruling comes amid a broader fight between those who see election integrity efforts as “voter suppression” and those who believe that the security of U.S. elections is too lax and should be tightened. According to a running tally by the left-leaning Brennan Center for Justice, expansive voting laws far outpaced restrictive ones in 2023. At least 53 expansive voting laws were introduced last year in at least 23 states, compared to 17 restrictive laws being passed in 14 states, suggesting that the election integrity movement is falling behind. Amid concerns over voter fraud, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich recently suggested that to win the presidential election in November, Republicans need to outvote Democrats by a significant margin. “Everybody who wants an honest election should know that in the long run, we need the French model: Everybody votes on the same day, everybody has a photo ID, everybody’s accounted as a person,” Mr. Gingrich said in a February interview on Fox News.

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All else remaining equal…

Biden Targets Radical IDF Unit With Sanctions to Placate His Voters (Sp.)

Axios reported Saturday that Secretary of State Antony Blinken is planning to imminently announce sanctions against the IDF’s Netzah Yehuda battalion, with the measures expected to stop the battalion’s fighters from being able to receive US military assistance and training. Officials confirmed the looming sanctions to the Times of Israel, indicating on Monday that other Israeli military and police units accused of human rights abuses may also be targeted. However, one of Axios’s sources said others will not be affected after being probed and deemed to have “remedied their behavior” in unspecified ways. The US investigation into Netzah Yehuda goes back to before the current Palestinian-Israeli escalation, with the State Department starting a probe of the unit in December 2022 after troops were caught engaging in violence against Palestinian civilians. One such incident led to the death of a 78-year-old Palestinian-American man.

“Sanctions must not be imposed on the Israel Defense Forces,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned Saturday, assuring that his government would “act by all means against these moves.” Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant echoed Netanyahu’s sentiments, heaping praise on Netzah Yehuda and assuring that its soldiers operate “in accordance with the values of the IDF and in accordance with international law.” Gallant warned that even if the infantry unit was the only one targeted by sanctions, it would cast “a heavy shadow on the actions of the IDF” and affect “the entire defense establishment.” The Israeli military moved the Netzah Yehuda battalion – which consists mostly of ultra-Orthodox and hardcore Zionist forces, out of the West Bank and away from contact with the Palestinians in late 2022, but no actions were taken to punish members suspected of human rights abuses. Gallant said the unit has been used in Israel’s operation “to dismantle Hamas brigades in Gaza” after last fall’s escalation.

It’s not clear what impact the sanctions will have. The US has donated tens of billions of dollars in military equipment to Israel (including $26 billion in a tranche approved by the House of Representatives on Saturday), and it’s unclear how Washington plans to keep track of weaponry to assure that it doesn’t fall into the Netzah Yehuda battalion’s hands. Netzah Yehuda is a distinct unit within Israel’s armed forces in that it’s made up almost entirely by radical Zionists, Dr. Simon Tsipis, a Tel Aviv-based international relations expert, told Sputnik, commenting on the US plans These forces have “an aggressive attitude toward the Palestinians, and there have been many cases of the violation of the rules of war, aggression toward civilians who live around these Jewish settlements” in the West Bank, the observer explained, noting that this aggression stems from the fighters’ Zionist perspective that all Palestinians are “direct enemies.”

As far as the US administration’s sanctions plans, “this is an attempt to kill two birds with one stone,” Tsipas believes. In the first place, sanctions are designed “to create the appearance of punishing Israel,” he said, with Biden and the Democrats seeking desperately to regain “at least part of the Arab and Muslim vote” in the upcoming election amid the president’s plunge in the polls. The restrictions are not meant to weaken Israel’s military capabilities overall, Tsipis stressed, suggesting the decision to target Netzah Yehuda signals the Democrats’ displeasure with Netanyahu’s hard-right Zionist and religious right coalition. “This is a blow to Zionism as an ideology, not an attempt to influence Israel so that it stops, suspends or is otherwise unable to continue its military operations in the Gaza Strip, or even the [potential] upcoming war with Iran,” the observer said.

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“Israeli and American officials stressed that Washington wanted West Jerusalem to avoid provoking Iran into an escalating series of tit-for-tat strikes and counterstrikes..”

US Forced Israel To Abandon Larger Attack On Iran – NYT (RT)

Israeli leaders planned a “much more extensive counterstrike on Iran” after Tehran launched a drone and missile barrage on Israel last weekend, but were pressured to pare down the operation by the US and its allies, the New York Times reported on Monday. Israel targeted Iran with a handful of drones and air-launched missiles on Friday, according to US officials and anonymous Israeli sources who spoke to the newspaper. While Western officials believe that an Israeli missile hit an Iranian airbase, Tehran has only acknowledged being attacked with small quadcopter drones, with Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian describing the aircraft as “children’s toys” that were easily shot down. West Jerusalem initially intended a much wider wave of strikes targeting military sites across the country, including near Tehran, anonymous Israeli officials told the outlet.

However, the US, UK, and Germany exerted “concerted diplomatic pressure” on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and forced him to settle for a more limited response, the officials said. Such a response “avoided significant damage, diminishing the likelihood of an escalation,” the New York Times reported. The Israeli military has not commented on the report, and has stuck to its usual policy of refusing to confirm or deny strikes on foreign soil. The latest round of escalation between Israel and Iran began on April 1, when an Israeli airstrike allegedly hit the Iranian consulate in the Syrian capital of Damascus. The strike killed seven officers of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Quds Force, including two high-ranking generals. Tehran warned that it would retaliate, and two weeks later launched multiple waves of missiles and kamikaze drones at Israel. Most of the Iranian projectiles were intercepted, but with more than 300 drones fired, air defenses were overwhelmed and multiple missiles reached their target, damaging an Israeli air base.

Netanyahu initially planned immediate retaliatory strikes, but was talked out of it during a phone call with US President Joe Biden, the New York Times reported last week. In both last week’s report and Monday’s, Israeli and American officials stressed that Washington wanted West Jerusalem to avoid provoking Iran into an escalating series of tit-for-tat strikes and counterstrikes. The plan appears to have succeeded. “As long as there is no new adventurism by Israel against our interests, then we are not going to have any new reactions,” Amirabdollahian stated on Saturday. With some of Netanyahu’s hardline political allies criticizing the supposedly “lame” response, the officials who spoke to the New York Times insisted that the strikes demonstrated “the breadth and sophistication of Israel’s military arsenal,” the paper paraphrased.

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“Iran’s missiles were able to penetrate directly into Israel’s two most sensitive and highly defended air bases and sites. Behind the whooping western rhetoric lies Israeli shock and fear. Their bases are no longer ‘untouchable’. ”

Will Zionism Self-Destruct? (Alastair Crooke)

In the summer following Israel’s 2006 (unsuccessful) war on Hizbullah, Dick Cheney sat in his office loudly bemoaning Hizbullah’s continuing strength; and worse still, that it seemed to him that Iran had been the primary beneficiary from the U.S. 2003 Iraq war. Cheney’s guest – the then Saudi Intelligence Chief, Prince Bandar – vigorously concurred (as chronicled by John Hannah, who participated in the meeting) and, to general surprise, Prince Bandar proclaimed that Iran yet could be cut to size: Syria was the ‘weak’ link between Iran and Hizbullah that could be collapsed via an Islamist insurgency, Bandar proposed. Cheney’s initial scepticism turned to elation as Bandar said that U.S. involvement would be unnecessary: He, Prince Bandar, would orchestrate and manage the project. ‘Leave it to me’, he said. Bandar separately told John Hannah: “The King knows that other than the collapse of the Islamic Republic itself, nothing would weaken Iran more than losing Syria”.

Thus began a new phase of attrition on Iran. The regional balance of power was to be decisively shifted towards Sunni Islam – and the region’s monarchies. That old balance from the Shah’s time in which Persia enjoyed regional primacy was to be ended: conclusively, the U.S., Israel and the Saudi King hoped. Iran – already badly bruised by the ‘imposed’ Iran-Iraq war – resolved never again to be so vulnerable. Iran aimed to find a path to strategic deterrence in the context of a region dominated by the overwhelming air dominance enjoyed by its adversaries. What occurred this Saturday 14 April – some 18 years later – therefore was of utmost importance. Despite the bruhaha and distraction following Iran’s attack, Israel and the U.S. know the truth: Iran’s missiles were able to penetrate directly into Israel’s two most sensitive and highly defended air bases and sites. Behind the whooping western rhetoric lies Israeli shock and fear. Their bases are no longer ‘untouchable’.

Israel also knows – but cannot admit – that the so-called ‘assault’ was no assault but an Iranian message to assert the new strategic equation: That any Israeli attack on Iran or its personnel will result in retribution from Iran into Israel. This act of setting the new ‘balance of power equation’ unites the diverse Fronts against the U.S.’ “connivance with Israeli actions in the Middle East, that are at the core of Washington’s policy – and in many ways the root-cause of new tragedies” – in the words of Russian Foreign Minister, Sergey Ryabkov. The equation represents a key ‘Front’ – together with Russia’s war against NATO in Ukraine – for persuading the West that its exceptionalist and redemptive myth has proved to be a fatal conceit; that it must be discarded; and that deep cultural change in the West needs to happen. The roots to this wider cultural conflict are deep – but finally have been made explicit. Prince Bandar’s post-2006 playing of the Sunni ‘card’ was a flop (in no small part thanks to Russia’s intervention in Syria).

AndIran, has come in from the cold and is firmly anchored as a primary regional power. It is the strategic partner to Russia and China. And Gulf States today have switched focus instead to money, ‘business’ and Tech, rather than Salafist jurisprudence. Syria, then targeted by the West and ostracised, has not only survived all that the West could ‘throw at it’ but has been warmly embraced by the Arab League and rehabilitated. And Syria is now slowly finding its way to being itself again. Yet even during the Syrian crisis, unforeseen dynamics to Prince Bandar’s playing of Islamist identity versus Arab socialist secular identity were playing out:

I wrote then in 2012: “Over recent years we have heard the Israelis emphasise their demand for recognition of a specifically Jewish nation-state, rather than for an Israeli State, per se”; – a state that would enshrine Jewish political, legal, and military exceptional rights. “[At that time] … Muslim nations [were] seeking the ‘undoing’ of the last remnants of the colonial era. Will we see the struggle increasingly epitomised as a primordial struggle between Jewish and Islamic religious symbols – between al-Aqsa and the Temple Mount?” To be plain, what was apparent even then – in 2012 – was “that both Israel and its surrounding terrain are marching in step toward language which takes them far away from the underlying, largely secular concepts by which this conflict traditionally has been conceptualised. What [would] be the consequence – as the conflict, by its own logic, becomes a clash of religious poles?”

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“I’m not quite sure how big the US embassy is in Kiev, but I doubt it’s enough to set up a maintenance workshop for, I don’t know, Abrams tanks or something like that..”

US Goes ‘Slippery Slide’ With Sending Its Military Personnel to Ukraine (Sp.)

Troops from the US and other NATO countries will be in Ukraine fighting Russian troops within a year, security and international relations expert Mark Sleboda predicted on Sputnik’s The Critical Hour on Monday. “We (The United States) were at trainers and advisers and CIA and special forces [in Ukraine], and now already, we’re at logistics and maintenance personnel. It’s quite clear where this is going,” Sleboda began. “US troops and [troops] from several other NATO member states will most likely be on the ground in Ukraine fighting the Russians within a year.” On Saturday, the US House of Representatives passed a bill that includes $61 billion earmarked to support Ukraine, however, Sleboda explains that it will not have a major effect on the battlefield. “It will, maybe, slow Russian forces down a little bit. That’s the extent of what the $61 billion [will do].

And, in another six months or perhaps a year, they’ll be back, demanding more from the US taxpayer to try to prop up the Kiev regime a little longer.” One underreported aspect of the bill is that a large portion of it is going towards replenishing US weapon stockpiles and not weapons that will end up on the battlefield in Ukraine. “I would say, that of the $61 billion, actually only $14 billion of that is going to go to Ukraine for direct military aid and weapons,” Sleboda explained. “It sounds like a lot of money, it’s really not considering that just one Patriot battery of 6 to 8 launchers costs more than $1 billion, and they’ve already lost several of them.” The Patriot surface-to-air missile system is considered the most advanced anti-aircraft system in Ukraine’s arsenal. However, the first confirmed Russian destruction of a Patriot system occurred back in May 2023. Since then, several more have been taken out, including two last month.

The reports of an increased US presence in Ukraine were presented as “they’re going to be working out of the US embassy,” in Kiev, Sleboda said, but that assertion is far from reality, he argued. “I’m not quite sure how big the US embassy is in Kiev, but I doubt it’s enough to set up a maintenance workshop for, I don’t know, Abrams tanks or something like that,” Sleboda jokes. “So it almost certainly means that these US troops will be out and about in Ukraine, probably not too far from the front line. And you can certainly see the slippery slide. While the aid shows that, despite some hype in the media, the US is not “giving up on Ukraine,” Sleboda notes that it doesn’t change the calculus for the Russian government, who expected the aid to pass last year after US President Joe Biden requested it in August. “You already have Ukrainian military commanders speaking anonymously, of course, to the Financial Times, saying that this isn’t actually going to change much,” Sleboda recounted.

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“Very soon, Ukraine will be reduced to medieval living conditions — no lights, no phones, no Internet, no shopping, no ability to conduct modern warfare. End. . . of. . . story.”

The Bad Faith Olympics (Kunstler)

Did it warm your heart to see all those blue and yellow Ukrainian flags waved by our elected officials in Congress Saturday night with the passage of the $60-plus-billion aid bill to the Palookaville of Europe? You realize, don’t you, that the tiny fraction of that hypothetical “money” — from our country’s empty treasury — that ever reaches Ukraine will rebound on the instant into Mr. Zelensky’s Cayman Islands bank account. The rest of the dough enters the recursive shell-game between US weapons-makers and the very hometown folks in Congress waving those blue and yellow flags, who will receive great greasy gobs of fresh “campaign donations” from the grateful bomb and missile producers. No wonder they’re cheering. What the $60-plus-billion won’t do is provide any fresh arms and equipment to Ukraine’s sad-sack army soon enough to prevent Russia from bringing this cruel, stupid, and unnecessary war, which we started, to a close.

Yes, we started it, not Russia, in 2014 with our Intel blob overthrowing elected President Viktor Yanukovych in the so-called “Maidan Revolution of Dignity” (what Wikipedia calls it). And for what reason? To jam Ukraine into NATO as a prelude to “weakening” Russia sufficient to bust it up and gain control over Russian oil, ores, and grain. Yes, that was actually the neocon’s game, equal parts megalomania and hubris, a fiasco as strategically ill-fated as Hitler’s push to gain control of Russia’s oil fields via Stalingrad in 1942-3. With failure and humiliation looming in Ukraine, the blob’s objective for now, in theory, is the vain hope of prolonging the hostilities just long enough to get its hologram president, “Joe Biden” re-elected, so that said blob can continue its amoebic digestion of what’s left uneaten by it in our sore-beset republic. You’ve got to wonder, of course, what this blob thinks will remain to rule over when it’s done gobbling up everything and jailing everyone from sea to shining sea who objects.

You tell me what conceivable way Ukraine can prevail in this proxy war now without just tripping off the civilization-ending nuke exchange? America does not have enough tactical missiles and artillery shells at hand to send over there. What we did have is gone. NATO never had much to begin with. Ukraine has run out of available cannon-fodder to conscript from its dwindling population. Despite Mr. Macron’s recent bluster, NATO can’t raise a credible army, or even agree on which country would send what. Nobody is riding to the rescue. Instead, Russia is fortifying its home-grown armaments industry and its military while systematically turning off the electricity all over Ukraine by blowing up the power stations. Very soon, Ukraine will be reduced to medieval living conditions — no lights, no phones, no Internet, no shopping, no ability to conduct modern warfare. End. . . of. . . story.

This is apt to play out much faster than America’s blob-controlled news media will be able to lie about. I’d guess it can be functionally over before mid-summer. The result will be yet another humiliation on the “Joe Biden” scorecard. When it’s over, you can be sure the Russians will abstain from an end-zone dance so as not to provoke America’s genius-losers into some final petty grand act of requital. Russia will just soberly declare what is self-evident: that for centuries Ukraine has been in its sphere-of-influence, as Mexico is in ours, and that they have reestablished the natural order of things in that corner of the world.

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Tusk and Duda don’t belong together.

Polish President Rejects Own PM’s ‘Pre-war’ Warning (RT)

There is no imminent threat of a military conflict breaking out in Europe, Polish President Andrzej Duda has said, contradicting the country’s prime minister. Late last month, Donald Tusk claimed that the continent was in a “pre-war era.” The prime minister argued at the time that “literally any scenario is possible.” Tusk also warned that “no one in Europe will be able to feel safe” if the West fails to provide Ukraine with enough weapons, allowing Russia to prevail in the conflict. When asked whether he shared the prime minister’s grim outlook during an interview with Poland’s Fakt media outlet on Monday, Duda replied in the negative.

“If we act responsibly, and we are acting responsibly so far, there will never be a war, because we will always be powerful enough to not be worth attacking,” he said. According to the Polish president, credible deterrence helped the West to prevent the Cold War from turning into a military confrontation. He suggested that the West today should emulate this strategy by arming up. He also said his country was ready to host the nuclear weapons of NATO allies as part of a sharing scheme within the bloc if such a decision were made. Earlier this month, UK Defense Secretary Grant Shapps echoed Tusk’s assessment, claiming that “we have moved from a post-war to a pre-war world.” He argued that the West needed to beef up its defense spending.

EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell also subsequently stated that the “possibility of a high-intensity conventional war in Europe is no longer a fantasy.” Moscow has repeatedly denied having any intention of attacking NATO member states. Russian President Vladimir Putin has dismissed such claims as “nonsense,” suggesting that Kiev’s backers were using the supposed threat of a Russian attack to “extract additional expenses from people, to make them bear this burden [of funding Ukraine] on their shoulders.”

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“RFK Jr. has been even more of a staunch supporter of Israel than Biden or Trump. In December, he said that Palestinians are arguably “the most pampered people by international aid organizations in the world.”

Biden Fears RFK Jr. as He Gets on Another Ballot (Sp.)

US President Joe Biden’s campaign and the DNC are upping their efforts to stop the presidential campaign of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., including opening up a department dedicated to stopping the independent’s campaign. On Friday, the Biden campaign released an ad featuring several members of the Kennedy family endorsing the President over their relative who is running for the same spot. Fifteen members of the Kennedy family have also publicly endorsed Biden. Additionally, according to US media, the Biden campaign has been dumping opposition research and claiming in press conferences that a vote for RFK Jr. is a vote for former President Donald Trump. They have also been challenging RFK Jr.’s ballot access, like in Hawaii where their efforts were shot down by a judge on Saturday.

Democrats have long blamed third-party candidates for their election failures. In 2000, Green candidate Ralph Nader was blamed for George W Bush’s victory over former Vice President Al Gore, despite more registered Democrats in Florida voting for Bush than Nader. Then in 2016, Green candidate Jill Stein was blamed by Democrats for Trump’s 2016 victory over Hillary Clinton, despite the Libertarian candidate (and former Republican governor) Gary Johnson far outperforming Stein. Nevertheless, Democrats are worried yet again about third-party candidates, particularly since Kennedy is already on the ballot in four swing states: Michigan, New Hampshire, Nevada and North Carolina. Kennedy has qualified for nine ballots so far. “There will be a clear choice facing voters this November and the more they learn about RFK Jr, the more they will recognize that a vote for him is a vote for Donald Trump,” Matt Corridoni, a spokesperson for the DNC, told US media.

But polling data and Kennedy’s donor list don’t seem to back that up. In a recent national poll, Trump leads Biden by 2% in a two-way race, 46% to 44%. But when the race is expanded to include Kennedy, Green candidate Jill Stein and former Bernie Sanders surrogate Cornel West, Trump’s lead flips, with Joe Biden leading 39% to 37%. Kennedy receives 13%, Stein grabs 3% and West pulls in 2%. The poll also notes that 15% of people who said they would vote for Trump in a two-way race say they would vote for Kennedy, compared to just 7% of Biden supporters who switched to Kennedy when given the chance. Meanwhile, an analysis of Kennedy’s donor list revealed that he has received roughly $224,000 in donations from donors who gave to Trump’s 2020 campaign, compared to $105,000 that came from supporters of Biden’s 2020 campaign.

Despite these metrics, Trump and his campaign have treated Kennedy with a lighter touch. Trump previously said he likes him personally. He also seems to be working on making Democrat fears that Kennedy will siphon off votes from Biden become a reality. In March, Trump called Kennedy the “most Radical Left Candidate by far” in the 2024 race and slammed his support of environmental issues. “I guess that would mean that RFK Jr. is going to be taking away votes from Crooked Joe Biden. And he should because he is actually better than Biden. He’s much better than Biden. If I were a Democrat, I’d vote for RFK Jr. every single time over Biden,” Trump said in the video.

However, one group of disaffected former-Biden voters who will likely not be voting for RFK Jr., are the ones upset with the Biden administration for its support of Israel and its campaign in Gaza Sixty-nine percent of young Democratic voters disapprove of Biden’s handling of the war, and RFK Jr. has had some good polling numbers among young voters in the past. However, RFK Jr. has been even more of a staunch supporter of Israel than Biden or Trump. In December, he said that Palestinians are arguably “the most pampered people by international aid organizations in the world.”

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“..mass psychosis of government leaders who consistently make global decisions through a distorted lens completely detached from reality..”

Michael Brenner: The Moral Depravity of Western Imperialism (Sch.)

Professor Michael Brenner joins this episode of Journalists for Sale to discuss the moral emptiness of Western empire, most visibly expressed through its unequivocal support of the ongoing Israeli genocide in Gaza. Brenner details how this depravity manifests not only in the form of mass slaughter and total disregard for human life, but also through mass psychosis of government leaders who consistently make global decisions through a distorted lens completely detached from reality. Only this can explain their escalations in Ukraine at every turn, their “acknowledgement” of Palestinian life yet total complicity in its destruction and the mass censorship being imposed upon dissidents by the ruling class, most recently at the University of Southern California. Brenner’s wealth of knowledge and impressive ability to articulate the philosophical implications of this ongoing lunacy form a unique analysis one can’t quite get anywhere else but from the man himself.

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“..as lay persons, most of us would hazard to say that it is not “normal” or “valid” to set oneself on fire in a protest..”

No, It Does Not Matter Why the Man Lit Himself on Fire (Turley)

The scene outside of the New York courthouse holding the Trump trial has become a microcosm of our deep political divisions and rage this month. Images of citizens screaming at each other from across security barriers have played out nightly on news programs. But few were prepared for what occurred Friday night, when a man threw flyers in the air, poured a flammable liquid on himself and lit himself on fire. Some immediately rushed to use the incident to fuel their own rage. On the far left, postings and comments declared MAGA supporters were lighting themselves and “MAGA Terrorist just set himself on fire.” For many, it seemed a fact too good to check. Even after the police and fire officials explained that the material distributed by the man did not seem to relate to the trial, journalists pushed for a connection to the pro-Trump protesters. Officials reported that the flyers concerned wacky conspiracy theories related to schools and other matters.

Max Azzarello, 37, of Florida worked briefly for Rep. Tom Suozzi (D., N.Y.), but has a criminal record of property offenses that included throwing a glass of wine on a photo of Bill Clinton. We know little of his political views beyond his conspiracy obsessions. However, does it really matter? What should be clear is that he was a deeply disturbed individual. Yet even self-immolation may no longer be treated as per se evidence of mental illness. In today’s politics, even setting yourself on fire can be rationalized. An event was held recently at UCLA in which two psychiatrists appeared to rationalize self-immolation in the cause of people in Gaza. Ragda Izar and Afaf Moustafa were reportedly discussing the self-immolation in front of Israel’s embassy of airman Aaron Bushnell in February to protest Israeli policies. It was referred to as a “revolutionary suicide” on the panel on “Depathologizing Resistance.”

UCLA’s Izar stated that Bushnell “carried a lot of distress…but does that mean that the actions he engaged in are any less valid?” She suggested that it is “normal to be distressed when you’re seeing this level of carnage [in Gaza].
Moustafa is quoted as saying that “Psychiatry pathologizes non-pathological…reactions to a pathological environment or pathological society. It’s considered illness to choose to die in protest of the violence of war but perfectly sane to choose to die in service of the violence of war.” There have been a few prominent historical self-immolations in protest, including the famous case of Thich Quang Duc, who burned himself alive to protest the Vietnam War in 1963. However, as lay persons, most of us would hazard to say that it is not “normal” or “valid” to set oneself on fire in a protest.

The dividing line between rage and reason has always been contextual. In my forthcoming book, “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage,” I discuss how we have faced regular periods of rage in our history. How one views rage depends largely on the underlying viewpoint. This country was born in rage with the Boston Tea Party, where a riot with massive property damage is celebrated as a moment of liberation. Yet even self-immolation may now be viewed as somehow valid when used to oppose Israeli policies or other “distressful” realities. If Azzarello was motivated by his view of a conspiracy among educators or Trump’s trial, would his self-immolation also be viewed as valid?

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Trump SNL

 

 

RFK Autism
https://twitter.com/i/status/1782611008713806295

 

 

David Martin

 

 

Wind

 

 

Kate
https://twitter.com/i/status/1782425377094455494

 

 

Dog is not impressed
https://twitter.com/i/status/1782645630227173683

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Jan 272024
 
 January 27, 2024  Posted by at 9:53 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , ,  45 Responses »


Amedeo Modigliani Jeanne Hebuterne 1919

 

Gov. Abbott Tells Tucker He’s Not Backing Down (ZH)
US Border Patrol Has ‘No Plans’ To Remove Razor Wire Installed By Texas (RT)
Texas Is A Distraction: US Elites Will Keep The Border Wide Open (Cox)
The Death of Nationality (Paul Craig Roberts)
Trump Rages At $83M Damages In -Second- Carroll Defamation Case (ZH)
Trump Derailing Ukraine Aid Package – WaPo (RT)
Hunter and The Hunted (RT)
Kremlin Denies Claims Russia Ready to Agree to Ukraine Non-Neutral Status (Sp.)
How Yemen’s ‘Asabiyya’ Is Reshaping Geopolitics (Pepe Escobar)
Russian Foreign Ministry Ties Red Sea Blockade To Gaza Blockade (Helmer)
It May be Genocide, But it Won’t Be Stopped (Chris Hedges)
EU Commission Chief Hopes For ‘Consensus’ With Protesting Farmers (RT)
UK Needs Bigger Military – US Navy Chief (RT)
Michelle, Ma Belle (Kunstler)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Flashback

 

 

Obama 2005

 

 

Got to keep the money rolling…

 

 

Nap Murray

 

 

Watters Lake

 

 

 

 

Abbott may be starting something real. There’s a large truck convoy on its way to Texas.

Gov. Abbott Tells Tucker He’s Not Backing Down (ZH)

Texas Governor Greg Abbott spoke with Tucker Carlson on Friday, telling him that he’s going to “do as much as possible to put up more border barriers and deny illegal entry,” and that “our head is down we are working regardless of what the Biden Administration is doing.” Abbott told Carlson that he’s “prepared” in the event that Biden tries to take over the Texas National Guard. “That would be a boneheaded move on his part, a total disaster,” he said. “We are prepared, in the event that that unlikely event does occur.” “We do have other armed state employees on the border as we speak right this minute, and that’s the Texas Department of Public Safety, as well as other law enforcement officers, as well as national Guard from other states. And you can be assured there will be more national Guard from other states and more law enforcement officers within the state of Texas and other states.”

Ten retired FBI officials and experts in counterintelligence sent a letter to Congressional leaders warning that the Biden administration’s policies have facilitated a “soft invasion” of military-age men into the United States from terror-linked areas of the world. The letter, written on Jan. 17, before Texas Gov. Greg Abbott invoked the invasion clause of the US Constitution, suggests that a terrorist attack is likely imminent. “The threat we call out today is new and unfamiliar. In its modern history the U.S. has never suffered an invasion of the homeland, and, yet, one is unfolding now,” the letter reads. “Military age men from across the globe, many from countries or regions not friendly to the United States, are landing in waves on our soil by the thousands – not by splashing ashore from a ship or parachuting from a plane bur rather by foot across a border that has been accurately advertised around the world as largely unprotected with ready access granted.”

“It would be difficult to overstate the danger represented by the presence inside our borders of what is comparatively a multi division army of young single adult males from hostile nations and regions whose background, intent, or allegiance is completely unknown. They include individuals encountered by border officials and then possibly released into the country, along with the shockingly high estimate of ‘gotaways,’ meaning those who have entered and evaded apprehension,” the letter continues. Of the more than 10 million illegal border crossers who have entered the US since Biden took office, more than 1.7 million are “gotaways” – those who have illegally entered and evaded capture since Biden has been in office. The majority of these are reportedly military age men.

“In light of such a daunting, unprecedented penetration by uninvited foreign actors, it is reasonable to assert that the country possesses dramatically diminished national security at this time. The nation’s military and laws and other natural protective barriers that have provided traditional security in the past have been thoroughly circumvented over the past three years,” the former FBI officials wrote. The letter calls on Congress to secure the border “against these young men and those already here illegally must be identified and removed without delay.” Earlier this week, Abbott invoked Texas’ right to self-defense, deeming the migrant crisis an ‘invasion.’ In response, a coalition of 25 Republican governors have signed a letter in support of the Texas resistance.

Open borders

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Doesn’t make Biden look strong.

US Border Patrol Has ‘No Plans’ To Remove Razor Wire Installed By Texas (RT)

Federal agents are not planning to dismantle the razor wire installed by Texas on a portion of the US-Mexico border, Fox News has reported, citing a senior Customs and Border Protection (CBP) official. The news comes as the deadline set by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for Texas to “remove any and all obstructions” to access into Shelby Park in Eagle Pass expires on Friday. “Bottom line: Border Patrol has no plans to remove infrastructure (c-wire) placed by Texas along the border,” the official said. “Our posture remains the same. If we need to access an area for emergency response, we will do so. When that happens, we will coordinate with Texas DPS [Department of Public Safety] & TMD [Texas Military Department].”

The tensions between the White House and Texas over immigration intensified on Monday when the Supreme Court ruled that the federal government can take down the concertina wire erected by Texas Governor Gregg Abbott to stop illegal border crossings. Abbott is accusing President Joe Biden of refusing to enforce immigration law and has described the surge of migrants attempting to cross the border as an “invasion.” “Texas will continue to exercise its constitutional right to protect and defend our southern border,” Abbott wrote on X (formerly Twitter) on Friday. “In President Biden’s absence, we will hold the line to keep Texans – and Americans – safe.”

In an open letter published on Thursday, 25 Republican governors backed Abbott saying that the federal government had “attacked and sued Texas for stepping up to protect American citizens from historic levels of illegal immigrants, deadly drugs like fentanyl, and terrorists entering our country.” White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre described Abbott’s actions as a “political stunt,” and accused him of creating “a dangerous situation” at the border. The governor is preventing Border Patrol from doing what “they need to save lives,” she told reporters this week.

Truckers border
https://twitter.com/i/status/1751055241762468185

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“..nearly two-thirds of US voters – including 55% of Democrats – agree that the country is under invasion.”

Texas Is A Distraction: US Elites Will Keep The Border Wide Open (Cox)

Many of the beleaguered Americans who have watched their country be overrun for decades by never-ending streams of illegal aliens were cheered up by the latest salvo in Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s border-security feud with US President Joe Biden. It’s easy to see why. Watching the Biden administration wave in record flows of lawless migrants – with total disregard for the harms caused to American citizens – is painful, so seeing Abbott defy the federal government is soothing. Two days after the US Supreme Court upheld the federal government’s right to dismantle border barriers installed by Texas National Guard soldiers, the governor declared on Wednesday that the state’s right to self-defense “supersedes” all federal laws, so he will continue fighting the “invasion.”

The Republican governor insisted that because the Biden administration shirked its constitutional duty to defend US states against foreign invaders, Texas is filling the void to protect its own citizens. Therefore, the state troops will keep working to block the immigrant influx, regardless of what the Supreme Court says. Republican politicians – such as US Representatives Clay Higgins and Chip Roy, Senator Ted Cruz, and Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders – cheered on Abbott’s move. Former President Donald Trump, the leading Republican candidate to face Biden in this year’s presidential election, said Texas “must be given full support to repel the invasion.” He encouraged other governors to deploy their National Guard troops to help secure the border.

Sadly, the importation of millions of illegal aliens will continue to be forced on Americans, regardless of political stunts and regardless of whether the red team or the blue team is in charge. The trend has certainly gotten far worse under Biden, but Republicans have campaigned on the immigration issue for decades without taking the obvious steps needed to secure the border. Case in point: Republicans controlled both houses of Congress when Trump took office in 2017, but the border wall that he promised was never built. There were no mass deportations of illegal aliens. Nor were there mass arrests of the traitorous employers who enable the influx by hiring people who can’t legally work in the US. Taxpayers were forced to continue footing the bill, as always.

That’s the ruling-class expectation for law-abiding citizens: Work hard and shut up while paying for us to undercut your wages and make your communities more crowded and less safe. Those who whimper too loudly are branded with the scarlet R-word (racist).That same ruling class will make sure that Abbott’s border maneuverings have no significant effect. The Biden administration has fought much harder to block the state’s security measures than to police the border. Despite claiming that it doesn’t have enough border agents to secure the border, the administration had plenty of manpower to rip out the concertina wire that Texas troops were using to seal off high-traffic crossing points. When Texas put floating barriers in the Rio Grande River, the administration sued the state, claiming that Abbott was endangering migrants.

The Texas National Guard has seized control of a park at a key crossing point, but Biden can simply federalize those troops to get his way, as some Democrat politicians have already suggested. He wants to ensure that Border Patrol agents can do their important work of removing the state barriers to avoid inconveniencing the immigrants who flout US law. Biden has greased the invasion skids like no president before him. Nearly 2.48 million illegal aliens were encountered by Border Patrol agents in the government’s latest fiscal year, which ended on September 30, and there was an all-time high of more than 300,000 last month alone.

Those who are ‘encountered’ aren’t turned back. The administration has released millions of illegal immigrants and bogus ‘asylum seekers’ into the country, ostensibly to await court hearings. Those hearings won’t happen for years, or even decades, and many immigrants will simply skip them when their court date finally arrives. Millions more have come through the border as ‘gotaways’, without being ‘processed’ by the Border Patrol.

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“..citizenship cannot exist in a country without borders. Such a country belongs to whoever walks in.”

The Death of Nationality (Paul Craig Roberts)

Ethnicity is the basis of countries. Germany consisted of Germanic people, the German language, and German culture. The same for France. The same for England. The same for the Dutch. The same for Spain. The same for Italy. The US was the exception. The original English population became multi-European. But a process was in place to assimilate them, and they became American. This tried and true process was abandoned in 1965 when the gates were opened to large scale non-European immigration. Shortly thereafter, the flood of illegal immigration joined the infusions of alien populations into the US. With the ethnic basis of America in decline, multiculturalism became the new value and took the place of assimilation.

Today the America of the past and the former ethnic-based European countries would be called apartheid states. Israel is allowed to have one, but no one else. The death of Western nationalities is everywhere to be seen. A new sign is the death of national armies. The Biden regime, having driven white heterosexual males from military service by discriminating against them, now speaks of inducting immigrant-invaders in exchange for citizenship. So is Germany. France, Denmark, and Slovakia already permit foreigners who are not citizens to serve in their armies. In effect, this is reliance on mercenaries and raises questions of security, motivation, and loyalty. It also raises the question of identity. What meaning does a flag have in a Tower of Babel?

A nation is more than a geographical location. `A nation exists where there is an ethnic or racial basis for unity despite class differences. This idea is so far gone in California that the state has passed a law that permits non-citizen immigrant-invaders to serve as police officers, leaving us with the anomaly of non-citizens arresting citizens. As it is the practice of the Biden regime to issue work permits to illegals, immigrant-invaders are qualified to be police officers in California. Compare this with the Biden Justice (sic) Department’s challenge to the Texas law that permits Texas police officers who are citizens to arrest and deport illegal aliens. What the comparison reveals is that citizenship no longer has any meaning. Indeed, citizenship cannot exist in a country without borders. Such a country belongs to whoever walks in. What does it mean to have a flag and a national anthem when there is no nation? What is the meaning of “national defense” when anyone can walk in?

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“Ms. Habba, you are on the verge of spending some time in the lockout,” replied the judge, cutting her off. “Now sit down.” “Fuck it,” Habba muttered upon sitting down..”

Trump Rages At $83M Damages In -Second- Carroll Defamation Case (ZH)

Trump-@ejeancarroll verdict says Carroll proved more than nominal defamation by Trump. So Trump has to pay:
$7.3 million for compensatory damages.
$11 million for reputation repair.
$65 million in punitive damages.
Total: $83.3 million.

Carroll accused Trump of having sexually assaulted her in the mid-1990s at a Bergdorf Goodman department store dressing room in Manhattan. While the alleged attack happened decades ago, Carroll sued under New York’s Adult Survivors Act, which allows victims to sue for civil damages beyond the statute of limitations. “I am filing this on behalf of every woman who has ever been harassed, assaulted, silenced, or spoken up only to be shamed, fired, ridiculed and belittled,” Carrol said last year. Notably, the judge in the case (Kaplan), forbade Trump or his attorneys from arguing that he didn’t sexually assault Carroll. The judge reminded the jury to accept the earlier trial’s verdict. When he noted the trial established Trump “inserted his finger into her vagina,” the former president reportedly jolted from his seat and wore an expression of disgust.

Trump said on the witness stand that he denied Carroll’s claims because he “wanted to defend myself,” which the judge told the jury to ignore. In closing arguments for Carroll Friday morning, her attorney argued that Trump acted as if he was above the law by lying, saying that the former president “ignored the other jury verdict as if it never happened,” and even repeated the claims at a press conference during the second trial. “Donald Trump engaged in the very same defamation after the trial,” attorney Roberta Kaplan (no relation) said. Trump then stood up, buttoned his suit jacket, and stormed out of the courtroom. After Trump stormed out, Judge Kaplan briefly interrupted the closing argument and said: “The record will reflect that Mr. Trump just rose and walked out of the courtroom.”

Prior to Friday’s closing arguments, Trump attorney Alina Habba became frustrated after the judge forbade her from including examples of tweets not entered into evidence during the trial. “No. No. Your honor, I have been—” Habba began to say. “Ms. Habba, you are on the verge of spending some time in the lockout,” replied the judge, cutting her off. “Now sit down.” “Fuck it,” Habba muttered upon sitting down. The jury reached its decision after slightly less than three hours of deliberations. “My advice to you is that you never disclose that you were on this jury,” the judge said, per Politico. Carroll’s attorney also Friday asked the jury to order Trump to pay at least $24 million in damages, according to multiple outlets; so $83 million is a huge victory for virtue. Add that to the $5 million Carroll was awarded in her 2023 case against Trump. Trump raged against the result on his social media site TruthSocial, calling it “absolutely ridiculous.” “I fully disagree with both verdicts, and will be appealing this whole Biden Directed Witch Hunt focused on me and the Republican Party,” he said.

Habba
https://twitter.com/i/status/1751015739568570666

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“McConnell is said to have described the ex-president as the Republican “nominee” in the 2024 presidential election, explaining that Trump wanted to run on the issue of the border crisis..”

Trump Derailing Ukraine Aid Package – WaPo (RT)

Former US President and GOP frontrunner Donald Trump is undermining Republican efforts to strike a border deal with Democrats that will pave the way for more funding from Washington to Ukraine, The Washington Post reported on Thursday. The administration of US President Joe Biden has for weeks been asking Congress to approve a supplemental budget request which includes another $60 billion for Kiev. The Republicans have been blocking the package, demanding the White House to do more to address security on the US-Mexico border. The GOP and Democrats have been trying to resolve the impasse, with the potential border deal reportedly revolving around measures to make it harder for migrants to seek asylum and a mechanism to essentially close the frontier when the number of arrivals is extremely high.

However, according to WaPo sources, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell acknowledged in a closed-door meeting on Wednesday that Trump’s opposition to the deal complicates its future. McConnell is said to have described the ex-president as the Republican “nominee” in the 2024 presidential election, explaining that Trump wanted to run on the issue of the border crisis. Trump has publicly been critical of Washington’s efforts to fund Ukraine and has slammed the border deal, warning fellow party members that it “would be another gift to the radical left Democrats.” The agreement, he noted, “will be meaningless in terms of border security,” adding that Americans could change the situation only by voting for him.

Commenting on new concerns, Democrat Senator Chris Murphy suggested that Republicans will “make a decision in the next 24 hours as to whether they actually want to get something done or whether they want to leave the border a mess for political reasons.” He went on to warn if the GOP rejects the deal, Moscow will prevail in the Ukraine conflict, putting Europe at risk. Delays in Western aid to Ukraine have stoked fears among its backers that Kiev will now have a much harder time fighting Russia. Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky has warned that Kiev’s military “will move backward” without Western support while the country’s Defense Minister Rustem Umerov has described ammo shortages as “a very real and pressing problem.” Russia has repeatedly condemned Western arms deliveries to Ukraine, warning that they would only prolong the conflict without changing its outcome. It has also argued that the West’s support for the Kiev regime makes it a direct participant in the hostilities.

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“..it seems Derkach is right to say that anyone who talks about Biden’s corruption in Ukraine is in danger of being physically removed..”

Hunter and The Hunted (RT)

”On January 19, 2022, US Secretary of State Mr Blinken arrived in Ukraine to meet with Zelensky. Quite a lot of people attended this meeting – at least 14 people. At the meeting, Mr Blinken told Zelensky the following: ‘You urgently need to resolve the issue with Derkach’. Zelensky began talking about some people from the opposition. But Blinken said, ‘If you don’t resolve this issue with Derkach, then we will resolve the Derkach issue with our partners.’ Those who were at the meeting were taken aback, because the position of the US secretary of state was quite harsh. Just think of it, the task for the president of Ukraine is to resolve the issue with Derkach,” the former deputy said. It is noteworthy that in 2021, the Ukrainian police discovered plans to assassinate Derkach and the head of the group of prosecutors in the Burisma energy company case, Konstantin Kulik, but did not initiate a criminal case.

The investigation tracked down the criminal gang from Eastern Europe hired to carry out the hit, as well as their base in Transcarpathia. The assassin himself was supposed to be an Albanian, but the information was leaked, and the gang escaped. There was also an attempt to assassinate former Ukrainian Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin. According to former US Associate Attorney General and ex-New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, Shokin (whose dismissal Joe Biden has openly bragged about) was poisoned with mercury while on a trip to Greece. Nikolay Korpan – a doctor at the Austrian Rudolfinerhaus private clinic who treated presidential candidate Viktor Yushchenko in 2004 – reportedly confirmed this to Giuliani. According to Korpan’s findings, while the permissible amount of mercury in the blood is no more than two units, Shokin was found to have 9.2 units and was starting to experience liver failure. It was clearly a murder attempt.

The number of witnesses in the Burisma case – a company though which Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden earned profits via alleged corruption schemes – is also steadily decreasing. Shortly before she was due to testify as a witness in the case, the wife of Nikolai Lisin – a former partner of Nikolai Zlochevsky – was found dead in her apartment. She had been responsible for accounting at Burisma and had been aware of transactions carried out in the interests of the Bidens. Lisin himself died in a car accident back in 2011. In light of this, it seems Derkach is right to say that anyone who talks about Biden’s corruption in Ukraine is in danger of being physically removed. The same can be said about his opinion that there is “a single organized crime group: Biden, Blinken, [Victoria] Nuland, the ‘deep state’ represented by the Department of State.

And then there is their ‘extension’ – either in the form of Poroshenko, or of Zelensky and Yermak.” As Derkach says, Zelensky and Yermak “attacked” the “organized crime group” headed by former President Poroshenko and took their place. “They have brought their own particular innovations into these matters. They have become even more cynical and cruel.” What are the Bidens and their partners in the Democratic Party trying to hide by waging war against whistleblowers in Ukraine? The fact that Hunter Biden abused his father’s official position, receiving a profit of several million dollars through corrupt schemes and violating US legislation on foreign agents, isn’t the only problem. There’s much more to it than that. In order to understand the scale of the potential profits for the Biden family, we need to go back to 2012.

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Of course that’s false.

Kremlin Denies Claims Russia Ready to Agree to Ukraine Non-Neutral Status (Sp.)

Media reports that Russia is allegedly ready to agree to Kiev’s non-neutral status and change its position on Ukraine joining NATO are not true, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Friday. “It is completely not true,” Peskov told reporters. On Thursday, Bloomberg reported that Russia was allegedly signaling to the United States via indirect channels that it was open to talks on the future settlement of the Ukraine conflict, including possible security arrangements for Kiev, and was testing the waters to see if Washington was interested in engaging. Russian President Vladimir Putin was reportedly willing to back down from his condition of neutral status for Ukraine and even eventually abandon opposition to its future NATO membership if Kiev agreed to recognize Crimea as well as the four breakaway republics as Russian territory.

There is no decisive condemnation of the downing of the Russian Il-76 military plane transporting Ukrainian prisoners of war for an exchange from Western countries, but the situation requires a proper assessment from the world community, Peskov said. “There is still no decisive condemnation from Western countries of this horrific terrorist act, the horrific destruction of the plane that was transporting our people, first of all, after all, there were our pilots and our accompanying people, that is, the Russians died, but also a lot of people died. A large number of Ukrainian prisoners of war died. We have not heard a word of condemnation … Therefore, of course, what happened requires a proper assessment by the world community,” Peskov told reporters.

When asked if Russia plans to provide evidence of Kiev’s guilt in the incident, the official said that decisions will be made as all information is received. Moscow will carefully examine Germany’s intentions to develop a defense plan to contain Russia, Kremlin spokesman said. “We need to see what kind of plan it will be. It is no secret that Germany has embarked on a path of decisive confrontation with Russia. In this regard, there is no novelty here. But, of course, taking into account this well-known attitude of Berlin, we will need to carefully familiarize ourselves with such plans,” Peskov told reporters. Earlier this week, media reported that Germany is developing a new comprehensive defense plan implying the “containment” of Russia.

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“..Global insurers have only refused to cover US, UK, and Israeli ships — exactly as the Yemenis intended..”

How Yemen’s ‘Asabiyya’ Is Reshaping Geopolitics (Pepe Escobar)

Yemen’s Ansarallah resistance forces have made it very clear, right from the start, that they set up a blockade in the Bab el-Mandeb and the southern Red Sea only against Israeli-owned or destined shipping vessels. Their single objective was and remains to stop the Gaza genocide perpetrated by the Israeli biblical psychopathy. As a response to a morally-based call to end a human genocide, the United States, masters of the Global War Of Terror (italics mine), predictably re-designated Yemen’s Houthis as a “terrorist organization,” launched a serial bombardment of underground Ansarallah military installations (assuming US intel know where they are), and cobbled together a mini-coalition of the willing that includes its UK, Canadian, Australian, Dutch, and Bahraini vassals. Without missing a beat, Yemen’s Parliament declared the US and UK governments “Global Terrorist Networks.” Now let’s talk strategy.

With a single move, the Yemeni resistance seized the strategic advantage by de facto controlling a key geoeconomic bottleneck: the Bab el-Mandeb. Hence, they can inflict serious trouble on sectors of global supply chains, trade, and finance. And Ansarallah has the potential to double down — if need be. Persian Gulf traders, off the record, have confirmed insistent chatter that Yemen may consider imposing a so-called Al-Aqsa Triangle — aptly named after the 7 October Palestinian resistance operation aimed at destroying the Israeli military’s Gaza Division and taking captives as leverage in a sweeping prisoner swap deal. Such a move would mean selectively blocking not only the Bab el-Mandeb and the Red Sea route to the Suez Canal, but also the Strait of Hormuz, cutting off oil and gas deliveries to Israel from Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE – although the top oil suppliers to Israel are in fact Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan.

These Yemenis are afraid of nothing. Were they able to impose the triangle – in this case only with direct Iranian involvement — that would represent the US-assassinated Quds Force General Qassem Soleimani’s Grand Design on cosmic steroids. This plan holds the realistic potential of finally bringing down the pyramid of hundreds of trillions of dollars in derivatives — and consequently, the whole western financial system. And yet, even as Yemen controls the Red Sea and Iran controls the Strait of Hormuz, Al-Aqsa Triangle remains just a working hypothesis. With a simple, clear strategy, the Houthis perfectly understood that the deeper they draw the strategy-deprived Americans into the West Asian geopolitical swamp, in a sort of “undeclared war” mode, the more they’re able to inflict serious pain on the global economy, which the Global South will blame on the Hegemon.

Today, Red Sea shipping traffic has plunged in half, compared to the summer of 2023; supply chains are wobbly; ships carrying food are forced to circumnavigate Africa (and risk delivering cargo after its expiry date); predictably, inflation across the vast EU agricultural sphere (worth €70 billion) is rising fast. Yet, never underestimate a cornered Empire. Western-based insurance giants perfectly understood the rules of Ansarallah’s limited blockade: Russian and Chinese ships, for instance, have free passage in the Red Sea. Global insurers have only refused to cover US, UK, and Israeli ships — exactly as the Yemenis intended. So the US, predictably, changed the narrative into a big, fat lie: ‘Ansarallah is attacking the whole global economy.’

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”America’s grandeur has shattered, and today, it cannot even rally its traditional allies. A country that considers itself a superpower is engaged in war against resistance groups and the people of the region.”

Russian Foreign Ministry Ties Red Sea Blockade To Gaza Blockade (Helmer)

For the time being, there are no official photographs of the meeting in Moscow on Thursday evening at the Russian Foreign Ministry between Mikhail Bogdanov, the deputy foreign minister and chief Russian negotiator in the Middle East and Africa, and Mohammed (Mukhameddov) Abdelsalam leading a delegation of the Ansarallah government of Yemen, known as the Houthi movement. The absence of photographs does not mean a blackout. Bogdanov’s communiqué said “special attention was paid to the development of tragic events in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict zone, as well as the aggravation of the situation in the Red Sea in this regard. In this context, the missile and bomb attacks on Yemen undertaken by the United States and Great Britain, which are capable of destabilizing the situation on a regional scale, were strongly condemned.”

This is the plainest signal to date of Russian backing for the southern front of the Arab war against Israel, and the link which the Houthis have made between the Israeli blockade of Gaza, the genocide of the Palestinians, and the Red Sea blockade which the Houthis have imposed on vessels owned or directed by Israeli shipowners, US naval fleet, and American-flagged and other vessels carrying military and civil cargoes to Israel or reload ammunition for future attacks on Yemen. At the same time across Moscow, unusually large delegations of officials of the Russian Security Council, led by Nikolai Patrushev, and Ali-Akbar Ahmadian, special presidential representative and Secretary of Iran’s National Security Council, have been meeting to discuss a detailed agenda which Patrushev’s communiqué calls a “wide range of Russian-Iranian security cooperation” and “the practical implementation of the agreements reached at the highest level.”

In an open statement for reporters, Ahmadian told Patrushev: “”America’s grandeur has shattered, and today, it cannot even rally its traditional allies. A country that considers itself a superpower is engaged in war against resistance groups and the people of the region.” The display of Russian support for the Axis of Resistance against Israel and the US is unprecedented. The Foreign Ministry and Security Council meetings confirm there is now a new definition of “terrorism” in Russian warfighting strategy, in which there is both public and secret support for Hamas, the Houthis, and other groups in Lebanon and Iraq fighting for national liberation against Israel and the US.

Bogdanov’s meeting with Abdelsalam was not the first high-level Russian contact with the Houthis, nor their first negotiation. The two officials had met in Moscow on July 24, 2019, when they discussed terms for ending the civil war in Yemen; Bogdanov was also meeting at the time with other Yemeni political factions. Abdelsalam said then: “The meeting discussed the most important issues related to the Yemeni policy and the steps of the national delegation [the Houthi delegation] in the Stockholm Agreement in addition to the regional crisis, in addition to the importance of the Russian role at the regional level, and its reflection on the situation in Yemen to calm the escalation and prevent further tension as Yemen represents a key point towards regional calm that will be positively reflected in the tense regional situation.”

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“Without a ceasefire, the order doesn’t actually work..”

It May be Genocide, But it Won’t Be Stopped (Chris Hedges)

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) refused to implement the most crucial demand made by South African jurists: “the State of Israel shall immediately suspend its military operations in and against Gaza.” But at the same time, it delivered a devastating blow to the foundational myth of Israel. Israel, which paints itself as eternally persecuted, has been credibly accused of committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. Palestinians are the victims, not the perpetrators, of the “crime of crimes.” A people, once in need of protection from genocide, are now potentially committing it. The court’s ruling questions the very raison d’être of the “Jewish State” and challenges the impunity Israel has enjoyed since its founding 75 years ago.

The ICJ ordered Israel to take six provisional measures to prevent acts of genocide, measures that will be very difficult if not impossible to fulfill if Israel continues its saturation bombing of Gaza and wholesale targeting of vital infrastructure. The court called on Israel “to prevent and punish the direct and public incitement to commit genocide.” It demanded Israel “take immediate and effective measures to enable the provision of urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance.” It ordered Israel to protect Palestinian civilians. It called on Israel to protect the some 50,000 women giving birth in Gaza. It ordered Israel to take “effective measures to prevent the destruction and ensure the preservation of evidence related to allegations of acts within the scope of Article II and Article III of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide against members of the Palestinian group in the Gaza Strip.”


Red Ink by Mr. Fish

The court ordered Israel to “take all measures within its power” to prevent the crimes which amount to genocide such as “killing, causing serious bodily and mental harm, inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part, and imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group.” Israel was ordered to report back in one month to explain what it had done to implement the provisional measures. Gaza was pounded with bombs, missiles and artillery shells as the ruling was read in The Hague — at least 183 Palestinians have been killed in the last 24 hours. Since Oct. 7, more than 26,000 Palestinians have been killed. Almost 65,000 have been wounded, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health. Thousands more are missing. The carnage continues. This is the cold reality.

Translated into the vernacular, the court is saying Israel must feed and provide medical care for the victims, cease public statements advocating genocide, preserve evidence of genocide and stop killing Palestinian civilians. Come back and report in a month. It is hard to see how these provisional measures can be achieved if the carnage in Gaza continues. “Without a ceasefire, the order doesn’t actually work,” Naledi Pandor, South Africa’s minister of international relations, stated bluntly after the ruling. Time is not on the side of the Palestinians. Thousands of Palestinians will die within a month. Palestinians in Gaza make up 80 percent of all the people facing famine or catastrophic hunger worldwide, according to the United Nations. The entire population of Gaza by early February is projected to lack sufficient food, with half a million people suffering from starvation, according to the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, drawing on data from U.N. agencies and NGOs. The famine is engineered by Israel.

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Too late, Ursula.

EU Commission Chief Hopes For ‘Consensus’ With Protesting Farmers (RT)

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has expressed hope that new “strategic dialogue” will defuse the ongoing farmers’ protests over environmental regulations. “We all have the same sense of urgency that things have to improve,” von der Leyen said on Thursday during a meeting with a group of community and business leaders in Brussels. She lamented what she described as “an increasing division and polarization when it comes to topics related to agriculture.” “We must overcome this polarization with dialogue,” she said, stressing the need to find “a new way forward and common and lasting solutions” for European agriculture. “I hope that you will build the trust to appreciate each other’s perspectives and to find common solutions for the future of agriculture in Europe. This dialogue aims to find a new consensus on issues with which we all struggle,” von der Leyen told the attendees.

Farmers in Germany have been blocking city streets with their tractors since last month, demanding that Chancellor Olaf Scholz reverse the proposed scrapping of a diesel fuel subsidy worth as much as €3,000 ($3,260) annually. The German government has defended the move on environmental grounds. The farmers, however, insist that the plan would put them out of business and threaten their livelihoods. Similar protests are underway in France, Poland, Romania, and Bulgaria, as farmers’ issues are expected to loom large over European Parliament elections later this year. The French government scrapped plans to reduce subsidies on diesel for farmers on Friday after protesters used tractors and other agricultural machines to block a major highway out of Paris and a road linking France to Spain.

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“Budget cuts have resulted in the British Army’s numbers falling to levels not seen since the 1700s..”

UK Needs Bigger Military – US Navy Chief (RT)

The UK should reassess the size of its armed forces, US Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro has said. During a visit to the Royal United Services Institute in London on Thursday, the official pointed to situations the US and its allies see as threats, including the escalation in the Middle East, as well as the policies of Russia and China. Asked if the US is concerned whether Britain’s army has become too small, Del Toro replied: “I think it’s important for the United Kingdom to reassess where they are today, given the threats that exist today.” In his speech on Thursday, he argued that amid “near-term threats to the UK and the US,” investments in the Royal Navy are “significantly important,” noting that the US has “continued to make significant investments in national security,” even amid economic challenges. Del Toro claimed that the threats include the escalating crisis in the Middle East, Yemen, Iran, China, and Russia.

Asked whether US and UK operations in the Middle East – currently a naval and bombing operation against Yemen’s Houthis – could widen to include Iran, Del Toro said, “nothing is off the table.” A shortage of sailors forced the Royal Navy to decommission two of their frigates, the HMS Westminster and HMS Argyll, earlier this month, and the overall army numbers are reaching levels not seen since the 18th century.This comes one day after the head of the British Army, General Sir Patrick Sanders, made a speech warning the public to be prepared for conscription in case of war with Russia. Speaking at a military conference in London, the general pointed to Sweden’s reintroduction of national service as an example and warned that “as the prewar generation we must similarly prepare – and that is a whole-of-nation undertaking.”

Currently, the UK’s regular army numbers are just above 74,000, of which 20,000 will take part in NATO’s largest military exercises in decades – Steadfast Defender 2024; 90,000 troops from the bloc’s 31 member states, as well as Sweden, will participate in the war games across Europe. Moscow has expressed concerns about NATO’s expansion towards its borders, stating that it perceives the military bloc as a threat. Russian President Vladimir Putin has cited Kiev’s declared intention to join NATO as one of the key reasons for the Ukraine conflict.

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“..The Michelle gambit would only be the party’s final hoax. After that, the deluge..”

Michelle, Ma Belle (Kunstler)

Well, all right, considering the party has really got no one else. Gavin Newsom is a California train wreck, despite the fabulous teeth and hair, Oprah can’t seem to make up her mind, and Taylor Swift will not be old enough to qualify for the office until December. The leading plan for the Dems goes like this: “JB” is offered a deal. . .step aside for Michelle to run in August. . . “JB” can make whatever face-saving excuses necessary, health, low energy, whatever. . . but he can serve out his term to the bitter end, and then sometime before noon January 20, 2025, he can pardon himself, son Hunter, brothers Jim and Frank, and a few other family members implicated in money-laundering all the bribes they scared-up over the years.

That is, assuming “Joe Biden” does not get impeached before August, in which case he might not be convicted in a Dem majority Senate trial, BUT, the mainstream media could not ignore the proceeding, and the public — including the wokest Woke partisans — would finally see the voluminous bank records authenticating the Biden Family bribery operations — the “proof” they have been forever and snidely calling for. Bad “optics” for the party. A late August kick off for Michelle Obama would minimize her public exposure until, really, the last two months of the race. (She reportedly hates being on display.) In theory, the vast electorate of suburban Democratic women across the land would bury the MAGA vote and enjoy months of orgasm awaiting the installation of a black, (first) female president, their final blow against the odious patriarchy of white supremacist rapists.

And best of all, under President Michelle, the blob could continue all its clandestine blobulations without fear of payback, assuring that our democracy will be defended by any means necessary, including the suppression and persecution of anyone who complains about it. Now that’s a plan! Except for one thing: none of the people chattering about this (James Rickards, Dan Bongino. . .) have mentioned that the Michelle plan actually represents a fourth term for Barack Obama. I mean. . . really . . . do you suppose that Barack will spend the next four years upstairs in the White House “residence” with an apron on, baking red velvet cakes and sweet potato pies while Michelle presides in the Situation Room, directing drone strikes against various people of the Koran? In the immortal words of Homey D. Clown: “I don’t think so!”

And what if the opposition — say, Mr. Trump, or Vivek, or Tulsi, or Tom Massie, or Rand Paul, or a dozen others in that camp — make the case that the “Joe Biden” regime was actually Mr. Obama’s third term, and look what mess he managed to make of the USA while running the puppet-show from his Kalorama redoubt: nine million illegal aliens ushered into the country with lavish benefits, phones, loaded debit cards, free four-star hotel rooms. . . the years-long assault of the drag queens and oral sex instruction for third-graders. . . the preposterous war in Ukraine engineered by neocon catspaws for the benefit of Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, and the rest of the arms-makers. . . big cities full of homeless encampments and their noxious excretions. . . fentanyl killing 1,500 Americans a week. . . an extravaganza of flash-mob looting, shop-lifting, and car-jacking. . . the trillion-plus dollars in annual interest payments on the national debt. . . not a pretty picture. So, it comes down to: do you want another four years of that? And how did America end up under the thumb of an Obama dynasty, anyway?

I’ll tell you how: because the Democratic Party has become a criminal operation now solely dedicated to keeping its dignitaries, office-holders, and their factotums in the executive agencies out of prison for a range of crimes so vast that all the Lawfare specialists ever spawned in the hatcheries of Yale and Harvard would not run out of billable hours defending them in court before the sun turned into a red dwarf. The mighty effort consumes all the party’s energies these days, when they are not attending to the destruction of Western Civilization. The Michelle gambit would only be the party’s final hoax. After that, the deluge.

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Jelly
https://twitter.com/i/status/1750764275872723326

 

 

Rhino beetle

 

 

Blue morpho
https://twitter.com/i/status/1750945493817971060

 

 

Elegance

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Nov 072023
 
 November 7, 2023  Posted by at 9:52 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , ,  70 Responses »


Hieronymus Bosch St. John on Patmos 1489

 

Hamas Political Wing Offered ‘Clemency’ for Hostage Release – Sy Hersh (Sp.)
US to Transfer $320 Million in Precision Bomb Kits to Israel (Antiwar)
US Diplomats Condemn Israel Policy – Politico (RT)
Israel To Take Over ‘Security’ In Gaza – Netanyahu (RT)
The ICC Must Investigate The Crime Of Genocide In Gaza (Jeremy Corbyn)
Arab States Condemn Israeli Minister’s ‘Nuke Gaza’ Threat (RT)
The Four Wars (Jim Kunstler)
Trump: “I’m The Only One That Will Prevent World War Three” (SN)
Judge Tells Trump’s Lawyers To ‘Control Him’ (RT)
Jack Smith Could Be on Shaky Ground in Trump Charge (ET)
Legacy Media Readies American Public for Ukraine’s Defeat (Sp.)
‘Rational Actors’ Ready To Take Power In Ukraine – Moscow (RT)
Ukrainian Army Has ‘Run Out of Cannon Fodder’ – Former US Envoy (Sp.)
Demographics Is Destiny (Denninger)

 

 

 

 

Habba

Alina Habba response to the Judge saying I’m not here to hear what he has to say: “Then why exactly am I being paid as an attorney and why exactly are taxpayers dollars being used in this court room. The answer is very clear. Because Ms. James… ‘wants to’ make a name for herself. She said this morning that the numbers don’t lie and it won’t lie in this case. Ms. James I have a message for you. The number didn’t lie when you ran for Governor and that’s why you dropped out. And the numbers don’t lie when President Trump runs for office in 2024 and those numbers are loud and clear. This country is falling apart and if we don’t stop corruption in court rooms, where attorneys are gagged. Where attorneys are not allowed to say what they need to say to protect their clients interest. It doesn’t matter what your politics are. Everyone has a right in this country to get up and put a defense. “

 

 

 

 

Right to defend
https://twitter.com/i/status/1721516768659714477

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“We’re holding out clemency for the Hamas political leadership – giving them a chance to surrender the hostages and cling to life by moving them to the hospital..”

Hamas Political Wing Offered ‘Clemency’ for Hostage Release – Sy Hersh (Sp.)

Israel, whose military claimed it has encircled Gaza City, and was poised to press on with its attack on Hamas despite widespread calls for a ceasefire or temporary pauses, has estimated that over 240 hostages are being held by the militant group. In secret talks with Israel, the political leadership of Hamas has been offered “clemency” in return for a release of the Gaza-held hostages, US investigative journalist Seymour Hersh wrote in an article on Substack. The offer was extended to the group’s political wing, who claim to have not been directly involved in the planning for the October 7 Hamas attack, sources told the journalist. “The thought was that if they agree to try their own people and order them executed, they will be given their lives while also exonerating Israel for the war,” an American official was quoted as saying.

As the Israeli military and political leadership hunt down members of the Hamas military “in the tunnels and rubble of Gaza City,” they have “orders are to shoot to kill on sight,” wrote the journalist. At the same time, the fate of the remaining hostages in Gaza has prompted Israel to come up with incentive for the Hamas political leaders to “save their own lives by arranging for Israeli hostages to be transferred to a basement in the besieged al-Shifa hospital.” Israeli military has insisted that the largest medical complex in the Gaza Strip is a stronghold of Hamas. It earlier released 3D-rendered footage showing the alleged extent of a Hamas headquarters it says is burrowed deep underneath the Al-Shifa Hospital. Some Israeli officials “fear that time is running out” amid lack of understanding as to “how long the air in the tunnels will be breathable,” wrote the journalist, adding that there were hopes Israeli hostages could be moved to “safer, drier, and healthier quarters below ground in Gaza’s Al-Shifa hospital.” “I was told that water and food would be available,” added Hersh.

“We’re holding out clemency for the Hamas political leadership – giving them a chance to surrender the hostages and cling to life by moving them to the hospital,” a source told the Pulitzer Prize-winner. In a “significant stage” in Israel’s war against Hamas, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have claimed it has encircled Gaza City, and divided the besieged enclave into two. It touted its looming operation to destroy the tunnels and Hamas’ military and civilian institutions. At the same time, it is estimated that militants are holding hostage over 248 soldiers and civilians, including foreign nationals. “Thirty-one of the hostages are seventy years and older—one is said to be a Holocaust survivor, and two are infants, aged four months and eight months, with no mother or father, and twenty-three under eighteen years of age,” an Israeli was cited as telling Hersh. The source added that the International Committee of the Red Cross “has not been pressuring Hamas to grant them access to the hostages, although it did seek almost immediate access to the two hundred Hamas prisoners in Israeli custody.”

Sy Hersh recalled that “a possible breakthrough” concerning the hostages “emerged in secret talks between Israel and Yahya Sinwar, a onetime prisoner of Israel who now directs the political wing of Hamas.” Sinwar issued a statement on October 28, that said: “We are ready to conduct an immediate prisoner exchange deal that includes the release of all Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails in exchange for all prisoners held by the Palestinian resistance.” Since then, the Hamas leader and his colleagues have been informed by Israel that if they want to survive, they must “release the Israeli hostages and agree to begin holding immediate war-crime tribunals.” Sy Hersh underscored that the Israelis were seeking the death penalty “for those Hamas combat leaders who encouraged and then did nothing to stop the war crimes of their fighters.”

There has been growing global condemnation of Israel’s retaliatory bombing of Gaza, with the Palestinian Health Ministry saying 10,022 people have been killed since October 7, including 4,104 children and 2,641 women. Hundreds of thousands of protesters have flooded the streets of Washington, London, Berlin, Rome, Santiago, other cities, demanding an immediate ceasefire, with many perceiving Israel’s actions as a “war crime.” While the “concept of an Israeli-instigated war-crimes tribunal amid a bombing campaign that has flattened much of Gaza may seem out of a bad novel,” wrote Seymour Hersh, he cited an Israeli expert with insider knowledge of the hostage talks as insisting that Yahya Sinwar “could be open to a deal.” “He is a fanatic and an ascetic… Dedicated to the cause. No family, very religious but got very friendly with Shin Bet [Israeli internal security] guys while in prison and was seen as not irrational. He will want a chance to give service to the cause. He will be open to a door,” the expert said. It was added that Sinwar and some Hamas officials “now in Qatar,” would hold out for a deal “to include a commitment that Israel would not come after them if a deal is made.”

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“..the Pentagon has refused to say how much weaponry, equipment, and other types of aid it has provided Israel since October 7..”

US to Transfer $320 Million in Precision Bomb Kits to Israel (Antiwar)

The Wall Street Journal reported on Monday that the Biden administration is planning a $320 million transfer of precision-guided bomb kits to Israel, a show of support for the Israeli onslaught despite the growing civilian death toll. The report said the administration notified congressional leaders on October 31 that it intended to transfer Spice Family Gliding Bomb Assemblies, which turn unguided bombs into precision-guided munitions that can be fired by Israeli warplanes. The bombs will be transferred from weapons manufacturer Rafael USA to its Israeli parent company, Rafael Advanced Defense Systems. It’s unclear what funds will be used for the transfer or if Israel is purchasing the equipment.

Israel receives $3.8 billion in annual military aid from the US, and the Biden administration is looking to provide another $14 billion to support the Gaza campaign. In the wake of the October 7 Hamas attack on southern Israel, the US began immediately shipping new military equipment to Israel. According to the Journal, the Pentagon has refused to say how much weaponry, equipment, and other types of aid it has provided Israel since October 7. Besides the material support, the US is flying drones over Gaza, has special operations forces in Israel, and has deployed an enormous amount of firepower to the region. The news of the $320 million bomb transfer came as the death toll in Gaza surpassed 10,000, including over 4,000 children. US officials claim they are pressing Israel about the civilian casualties, but the administration refuses to condition military aid or use other leverage it has.

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“When Israel supports settler violence and illegal land seizures or employs excessive use of force against Palestinians, we must communicate publicly that this goes against our American values..”

US Diplomats Condemn Israel Policy – Politico (RT)

Lower- and mid-level diplomats at the US State Department have called on the administration of President Joe Biden to condemn Israel’s bombing of civilians and demand a ceasefire in Gaza, according to a leaked memo seen by Politico. The memo is the latest sign of division within the department over Israel. The memo calls on Secretary of State Antony Blinken and other senior diplomats to publicly demand that Israel agree to a ceasefire, and to align their public and private statements on the conflict, Politico reported on Monday. Criticizing Israel in private but not in public “contributes to regional public perceptions that the United States is a biased and dishonest actor, which at best does not advance, and at worst harms, US interests worldwide,” the memo reportedly states.

“We must publicly criticize Israel’s violations of international norms such as failure to limit offensive operations to legitimate military targets,” the message continues. “When Israel supports settler violence and illegal land seizures or employs excessive use of force against Palestinians, we must communicate publicly that this goes against our American values so that Israel does not act with impunity.” The memo was marked “sensitive but unclassified,” Politico noted, adding that it is unclear how many people signed it, and whether it was submitted to the department’s ‘Dissent Channel,’ which functions as a soapbox for employees to question policy decisions.

Several similar memos have been circulated since the Israel-Hamas war began on October 7, and Blinken met with a group of dissenting staffers late last month, the Huffington Post reported. A week before the alleged meeting, the State Department’s arms-transfer chief quit his job in protest, writing in his resignation letter that Washington’s rush to arm Israel was “shortsighted, destructive, unjust, and contradictory to the very values that we publicly espouse.” While Blinken has criticized incidents of violence against Palestinians by Jewish settlers, he has spoken more vaguely about the mounting civilian death toll in Gaza. “We’ve engaged the Israelis on steps that they can take to minimize civilian casualties,” he said on Monday, after the Gaza Health Ministry reported that more than 10,000 people had died in the enclave since Israel’s bombing campaign began a month ago.

Despite an overwhelming vote in favor of a ceasefire at the UN General Assembly late last month, Blinken has repeatedly rejected calls for a halt to the Israeli operation. Any pause in the fighting, he argued last week, would give Hamas time to “regroup and repeat what it did on October 7,” referring to the group’s assault on Israel that left around 1,400 people dead. Blinken’s aversion to a ceasefire was echoed in a memo sent to US diplomats at the outset of the conflict. The State Department email urged diplomats and communications staffers to steer clear of phrases such as “restoring calm,” “end to violence/bloodshed,” or “de-escalation/ceasefire,” and instead to emphasize the Jewish state’s right to “self-defense.”

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“President Joe Biden said the move would be a “big mistake.” “It would be a mistake… for Israel to occupy… Gaza again..”

Israel To Take Over ‘Security’ In Gaza – Netanyahu (RT)

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said his country will have to manage “overall security” in Gaza for an “indefinite” period of time after the current war with Hamas ends. Speaking to ABC News for an interview published on Monday, Netanyahu was asked about Israel’s long-term plans for the territory should it succeed in dismantling Hamas, suggesting the need for a lengthy deployment. “I think Israel will, for an indefinite period, have the overall security responsibility [in Gaza] because we’ve seen what happens when we don’t have it,” he said. “When we don’t have that security responsibility, what we have is the eruption of Hamas terror on a scale that we couldn’t imagine.” The comments appear to contradict past statements from senior Israeli officials.

In announcing a major ground assault on the Palestinian enclave last month, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant emphasized that Israeli troops must not be responsible for “day-to-day life in the Gaza Strip.” While the official said Israel would establish a new “security reality” in the area after the current war, he suggested it would seek to hand off post-conflict governance to a third party. Even while vocally supporting Israel’s military operation against Hamas, Washington has warned of the perils of another Gaza occupation. During a recent interview with CBS, President Joe Biden said the move would be a “big mistake.” “It would be a mistake… for Israel to occupy… Gaza again,” he said. “But going in… but taking out the extremists, the Hezbollah is up north but Hamas down south, is a necessary requirement.”

Israel first occupied Gaza during the 1967 Six-Day War with Egypt, Jordan, and Syria, and only withdrew its troops and settlers nearly 40 years later. It has maintained a tight blockade over the enclave in the years since, and has launched periodic bombing campaigns against Hamas since the group took control of Gaza in 2006. The latest round of fighting erupted last month on the heels of a Hamas terrorist attack which killed around 1,400 Israelis. The IDF has launched weeks of retaliatory airstrikes and gradually escalated a ground attack on Gaza, leaving more than 10,000 Palestinians dead, according to local officials.

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No Jeremy. The ICC lost all credit when it charged Putin for kidnapping children.

The ICC Must Investigate The Crime Of Genocide In Gaza (Jeremy Corbyn)

My last visit to Al-Shati refugee camp was early 2013. Located on the Mediterranean coast in the north of Gaza, Al-Shati was otherwise known as “Beach Camp”. Vendors sold fruit under multi-coloured parasols. Cats slept in the middle of narrow alleys. Children jostled over skipping rope in the shade. Beach Camp was established in 1948 after 750,000 Palestinians were forcibly displaced in the Nakba. Initially, the camp accommodated around 23,000 refugees. In the following seven decades, that number grew to 90,000, cramped inside 0.5 square kilometres (0.2 square miles) of land – 70 times more populated than London’s city centre. People in Gaza have been living under a blockade for the past 16 years and the Israeli occupation controls most of what goes in and out of Gaza.

Beach Camp was no different – and people there largely relied on aid and services from the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) to survive, including a health centre, a food distribution centre and several school buildings. Beach Camp Primary School was beautifully maintained. I was allowed up onto the roof, where I could see the fence with Israel on one side. Out to sea were several Israeli patrol boats keeping Palestinian fishermen from sailing more than six nautical miles out. The school was run by inspiring and hard-working teachers, whose philosophy was to create a calm atmosphere for discovery, music, theatre and art. Some of the students showed me their work. Many were drawings of planes, fences and bombs. But there were other drawings too: of their parents, their brothers, their sisters and their friends.

All of the children, obviously, had underlying trauma, but they also had a desire to learn, share and play. On October 9, two days after the deplorable attack by Hamas in southern Israel, there were reports of an Israeli air strike on Beach Camp. This wasn’t the first strike on the camp. In May 2021, at least 10 Palestinians, eight of whom were children, were killed in an air strike. Nor was it the last. Beach Camp has been repeatedly targeted in the past three weeks. When I hear news of bombardment in Gaza, I think about that school at Beach Camp. I don’t know if it is still there. I don’t know if those children and teachers are still alive. I don’t know.

The Israeli army has dropped 25,000 tonnes of bombs onto a tiny strip of land, populated by 2.3 million people. There is no meaningful sense whatsoever that they are trying to avoid civilian deaths. More than 9,900 people in Gaza have been killed, including more than 4,800 children. Survivors still under siege are running out of the basic means of survival: water, fuel, food and medical supplies. Doctors are performing surgery without anaesthesia. Mothers are watching their babies fight for survival in incubators running out of electricity. People are being forced to drink seawater. More than 1 million people have been displaced from their homes.

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“The Israeli military has dropped more than 25,000 tons of explosives on Gaza since October 7, equivalent in power to two of the nuclear bombs used on Hiroshima..“

Arab States Condemn Israeli Minister’s ‘Nuke Gaza’ Threat (RT)

Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and other Arab states have all denounced Israeli Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu for suggesting that his country drop a nuclear bomb on Gaza. Eliyahu was suspended, but not fired, for his remarks. Speaking to Radio Kol Berama on Sunday, Eliyahu said that using nuclear weapons against the Palestinian enclave “is one of the possibilities,” after his interviewer said that this would “flatten” the area and “eliminate everybody there.” Eliyahu, a member of the far-right Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Power) party, was indefinitely suspended by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu later on Sunday. The minister’s comments “show to what extent extremism and brutality have penetrated the Israeli government,” the Saudi Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

The fact that Eliyahu was not outright fired, the ministry continued, “reflects the Israeli government’s disregard for all values of humanity, morality, religion and law.” “These statements constitute a violation of international law, as well as incitement to commit grave violations of International Humanitarian Law, such as war crimes, and raise grave concerns of an intent to commit genocide,” the UAE said. Jordan released a similar statement describing Eliyahu’s comments as a “call for genocide and a hate crime that cannot be ignored,” while the Qatari Foreign Ministry said that it “strongly condemns the threat made by an Israeli minister to strike Gaza with a nuclear bomb and considers it a serious incitement to a war crime.” Eliyahu’s remarks revealed that “Israel possesses nuclear weapons, which is an open secret,” Arab League Secretary General Ahmed Aboul Gheit declared.

The comments also “confirm the truth of the racist view Israelis hold against Palestinians,” he added. “This is the true face of the occupation government.” Despite Eliyahu defending his comments as “metaphorical,” he faced heavy criticism within Israel. Defense Minister Yoav Gallant condemned his “baseless and irresponsible words,” while opposition leader Yair Lapid called on Netanyahu to fire the minister for causing “harm to the families of the hostages, Israeli society, and our international standing.” The Israeli military has dropped more than 25,000 tons of explosives on Gaza since October 7, equivalent in power to two of the nuclear bombs used on Hiroshima, the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor NGO said in a press release on Thursday. More than 10,000 people have been killed and 25,000 injured in the strip as a result of the Israeli bombardment and ground offensive, according to the latest figures from the Gaza Health Ministry.

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“..We emerge from this catastrophe a nearly medievalized society with a steeply-reduced population, unable to resist China’s attempt to colonize us. Pretty scary, huh? Just let’s keep doing what we’re doing.”

The Four Wars (Jim Kunstler)

Bringing us to War No. 3: The US Government’s war against its own citizens. This has been going on since Mr. Trump stepped onto the scene, and has included a semi-successful war against Mr. Trump personally — except that not only has it failed to put him out of business as a politician, it has substantiated many of the claims he made about corrupt and perfidious government that resulted in his election in 2016. All of that has only enhanced his polling numbers. And the lawless, bad faith court cases lodged against him have demonstrated the US government’s grievous fall into willful malfeasance that has the DOJ arresting and unfairly persecuting hundreds of innocent Americans that support Mr. Trump.

A big part of the government’s war against US citizens has been the bizarre Covid-19 episode and the long-running effort by public officials to deceive the population about it, including lockdowns and destruction of small businesses, the dishonest suppression of viable treatments, gross censorship about the harms of the mRNA vaccines, and trickery around the origins of the vaccines in the back rooms of our Department of Defense. Another front of this war is the wide-open Mexican border, a lawless state of affairs created as deliberate policy by our cabinet secretaries, and done at a time when there is tremendous animus against the US from many other nations who send thousands of sketchy young men into our country with no attempt by our border officials to determine who they are.

It looks like “Joe Biden’s” hash will be settled shortly when the House, reorganized under a young and vital new speaker, reveals the Biden family’s bank records and begins the process of impeaching the president for bribery. “Joe Biden’s” party pretends that this is not happening and appears to have no plan to deal with consequences. For the moment, they still stupidly tout him as their candidate for the 2024 election, another arrant falsehood you can add to the thousand-and one affronts against the public that this party has tried to put over. Many Americans suspect there will not be a 2024 election, specifically that whoever is president in the coming year will invoke yet another national emergency order to postpone it on spurious grounds. Many are also far from persuaded that the 2020 election that installed “Joe Biden” was honest and legitimate.

Which brings us to War No. 4: The American peoples’ war against a government gone rogue. Obviously, it is not underway yet, but it’s easy to see how it might develop. I think it could commence in the aftermath of a financial calamity that is visibly brewing in the debt markets. The net result will be a collapsed standard-of-living for everyone in the USA, the breakdown of supply lines and daily business, and a very sharp loss of legitimacy for the people who have been in charge of anything in this country. We emerge from this catastrophe a nearly medievalized society with a steeply-reduced population, unable to resist China’s attempt to colonize us. Pretty scary, huh? Just let’s keep doing what we’re doing.

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“..we have unbelievable technology. It can shoot a needle out of the air, it is incredible.”

Trump: “I’m The Only One That Will Prevent World War Three” (SN)

During a speech at the Florida Republican Party’s “Freedom Summit” in Kissimmee Saturday, Donald Trump declared that he is the only candidate who can prevent World War Three, warning that “we are closer than anyone understands” to “obliteration.” Trump also told the crowd that “When you think of it, how important elections are, you’d have millions of people alive right now if the 2020 election was not rigged. They would be alive. Ukraine, Israel. The attack would have never been made. All of these people would be alive, the cities would be thriving.” Trump pointed to the global chaos that is now further unfolding, noting “For four straight years, under the Trump administration, I kept America safe, I kept Israel safe, and I kept the entire world safe.”

“I kept my promise and recognized Israel’s eternal capital and opened the American embassy in Jerusalem,” Trump continued, adding “I also recognized Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, and really, probably most importantly, but they did nothing with it, I withdrew from the disastrous Iran nuclear deal, but they were supposed to do something with it. And you could have because Iran did not have any money.” “What is going on. What is going on now is shocking,” Trump urged, adding “All over the planet our enemies knew that if you tried to kill our citizens we will kill you. If you spill a drop of American blood, we will spill a gallon of your blood. That is what it was, and it was not a threat, that was just the way it was going to have to be. And we do it because we want to make sure we are not starting wars. We did not have to start wars.” Trump further noted, “In the debate with beautiful Hillary Clinton, she said, ‘Look at him. Look at the way he talks. He is going to get us into wars. He is going to start World War III.’

And I said, ‘No, no, it is the way I talked that will keep you out of World War III.’” He continued, “To every American is petrified that Joe Biden’s catastrophic weakness will bring our country to ruin, which he has a great chance of doing, he is close to that anyway. He’s close to economic ruin, I make you this promise, as your president, and nobody else can say it, I will restore peace through strength, and, yes, I am the only one that will prevent World War III, because we are very close to World War III.” Trump further warned, “this will not be a First World War or a Second World War. This will be obliteration, because the level of power, of weaponry of power you have never seen anything — you do not want to see it. When they talk about global warming, because in 250 years our ocean will be one inch higher, and they never mention the power of nuclear weapons, where one madman can do damage the likes of which nobody has ever seen before. It is just crazy. It is crazy to see it, it is crazy to talk about it.”

“But I will stop it, and it will happen very quickly. There will not be a World War III, and we are closer than anyone understands. To protect our citizens from foreign threats, I will build a state-of-the-art missile defense shield. We will build that. We will build that,” Trump vowed. He continued, “And it will be jobs for America. It will be built in America. We developed the technology, nobody else, by the way. A lot of people said we developed the technology. The technology was developed by us, and it works. You see it. Ronald Reagan wanted to do it, but at that time they did not have the technology. The concept was good, but we have unbelievable technology. It can shoot a needle out of the air, it is incredible. Would you feel a little safer, a little more comfortable if we can do that? And it is jobs, jobs in America.”

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“When another Trump lawyer stood up to argue that Trump should be allowed to answer the questions in his own way, the judge shouted, “Sit down already. Sit down.”

Judge Tells Trump’s Lawyers To ‘Control Him’ (RT)

Former US President Donald Trump has taken the stand in the New York civil fraud case against him, angering the judge by criticizing the court and arguing that he is being attacked by politically motivated prosecutors around the country. The trial resumed on Monday with Trump testifying for the first time to rebut allegations by New York Attorney General Letitia James that he and other executives in his real estate organization fraudulently inflated the value of key properties to get favorable loan terms. James is seeking $250 million in damages in her lawsuit, which comes at a time when the ex-president also faces felony charges in four separate criminal cases against him. While being questioned by state attorney Kevin Wallace, Trump said, “You and every other Democratic district attorney, AG, US attorney were coming after me from 15 different sides – all Democrats, all Trump haters.”

He accused James of perpetrating a “political witch hunt” and claimed that Judge Arthur Engoron was biased against him. The judge repeatedly interrupted Trump’s testimony to complain that his answers were not directly responsive to the questions and veered off into political speeches. “This is not a political rally,” Engoron told Trump’s lawyers, suggesting that they “need to have a talk with him right now.” As the ex-president continued to offer his opinions on the case, the judge said, “I beseech you to control him if you can. If you can’t, I will. I will excuse him and draw every negative inference that I can.” At stake is the future of Trump’s real estate empire. The judge, who has already found Trump and his co-defendants liable for “persistent and repeated” fraud, will decide on penalties at the end of the trial.

He has said that he will dissolve some of Trump’s companies, which could result in the ex-president losing some of his most prominent New York properties. Trump, who is polling as the leading Republican candidate in the 2024 presidential race, has called Engoron a “deranged, Trump-hating judge.” The loans related to the disputed property valuations have already been repaid. Trump testified on Monday that although he lowered the valuations on two of his properties, his holdings were actually worth more overall than claimed on the financial statements given to lenders. “The most valuable asset was the brand value,” he said. “I became president because of my brand.”

Christopher Kise, one of Trump’s lawyers, told Engoron that it was only fair for the American people to hear the ex-president’s views on the case. “This is a situation where you have on the stand a candidate for president of the United States,”Kise said. “The court needs to hear what he has to say about these statements.” Engoron shot back, “No, I am not here to hear what he has to say.”When another Trump lawyer stood up to argue that Trump should be allowed to answer the questions in his own way, the judge shouted, “Sit down already. Sit down.” Undeterred by the judge’s interjections, Trump said, “This is a very, very unfair trial – very — and I hope the public is watching it.”

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“..everyone in this election is going to be talking about these cases,” the law professor said, “except one person under this gag order and that is Donald Trump.”

Jack Smith Could Be on Shaky Ground in Trump Charge (ET)

Two analysts have noted that special counsel Jack Smith might be on shaky legal ground in his federal election-related case against former President Donald Trump. Neama Rahmani, a former federal prosecutor, said that the Trump charge of corruptly obstructing an official proceeding hasn’t been “extensively litigated” over the past several decades, adding that a ruling could come on whether it is appropriate in the former president’s case. Multiple defendants who were charged in connection to the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol breach have “argued that Congress certifying the electoral votes was not an ‘official proceeding’ and courts have universally rejected that argument,” she told Newsweek last week.

“This bigger question is, what satisfies the ‘corruptly’ requirement? Is it any criminal conduct, such as trespassing in the Capitol building or submitting fake electors? Or does the corrupt conduct have to relate to the other subsections of 1512, which prohibit destroying or concealing evidence?” she asked. She continued: “If the corruption requires consciousness of guilt, then Trump can argue that he genuinely believed the election was stolen. Either way, this issue will likely end up before the United States Supreme Court because it is a novel issue that affects hundreds of criminal defendants, including the former president.” Lawfare’s Roger Parloff wrote in a recent article that the Department of Justice (DOJ) recently won two “fragile” victories in two cases involving Jan. 6 defendants, and Mr. Smith has “relied on [a] statute” that was used by other prosecutors to charge at least 317 individuals in the Jan. 6 case.

“Smith has relied on that statute and its conspiracy equivalent, 18 U.S.C. § 1512(k), for two of the four counts in his indictment against former President Donald Trump for allegedly conspiring to overthrow the 2020 election,” Mr. Parloff wrote. “Those counts, whose legal sufficiency Trump challenged in a motion to dismiss this week, are the most serious leveled against Trump in that case, carrying a maximum 20-year term of imprisonment.” Three appellants in a Jan. 6 case are now petitioning the U.S. Supreme Court to review a recent appeals court ruling that favored the DOJ, he noted, but he said that the D.C. appeals court judges “can’t agree about its holdings, and its holdings determine the viability of a 20-year felony that an ex-president and major presidential candidate now stands charged with violating.”

“Moreover, at the appeals court level, judges’ acceptance of the Justice Department’s interpretations of that law have been 100 percent correlated with the political party of the judge’s appointer,” he wrote. “If that trend continues, and if either case climbs one more rung up the appellate ladder, the department (and Mr. Smith) faces bleak prospects indeed.” The comments come as constitutional law professor Jonathan Turley warned that the gag order targeting President Donald Trump is “unconstitutional” and said that an appeals court ruling to rescind the order last week was a “quite significant” development. Several weeks ago, District of Columbia Judge Tanya Chutkan placed a gag order on the former president in the Jan. 6-related case, saying President Trump cannot speak about potential witnesses, court staff, or prosecutors. An appeals court in the district froze Judge Chutkan’s order late last week, with oral arguments being set for Nov. 20.

“They could have left it to continue, to continue while they reviewed it, but they decided perhaps in an abundance of caution to order this stoppage until they can give it a full review,” Mr. Turley, a professor for George Washington University, said on Fox News on Nov. 3. “The reason I think this could be quite significant is because I think the order is unconstitutional.” He added that it is “very odd” to issue the order because the same court “insisted on having this trial before the election, sort of shoehorned it in before Super Tuesday,” referring to the key GOP presidential nominating date. “And everyone in this election is going to be talking about these cases,” the law professor said, “except one person under this gag order and that is Donald Trump.”

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“Russian victory in Ukraine would be a terrible blow to US interests, but not terrible enough to risk nuclear war.. ”

Legacy Media Readies American Public for Ukraine’s Defeat (Sp.)

A visibly agitated President Volodymyr Zelensky defiantly denied on Sunday that the NATO-Russia proxy war in Ukraine had entered a “stalemate,” assuring in an extensive interview with US media that Moscow has not “checkmated” Kiev, and that Ukraine still has many “different plans” to maintain the initiative. “Our military are coming up with different plans, with different operations in order to move forward faster and to strike the Russian Federation unexpectedly,” Zelensky said, in stark contradiction to Zaluzhnyi’s comments about the counteroffensive’s utter failure to penetrate Russian defenses. “As far as the situation on the front is concerned, of course I cannot provide all the details to you but nevertheless we are holding the initiative in our hands. You can imagine what over two years of a full-scale war is like.

Everybody gets tired. Even the iron gets tired,” Zelensky said. “I don’t think that this is a stalemate…We have done a lot,” he assured. Zelensky stressed that Ukraine could not proceed with its operations “barehanded,” “without relevant, proper weapons,” calling for more aid and assuring that money sent to Ukraine is “not aid to Ukraine,” but support for the US and the EU themselves, because Kiev is “defending our joint values.” The Ukrainian president rejected any possibility of negotiations with Russia, saying he didn’t “want to make any dialogue with terrorists,” and dismissing former President Donald Trump’s campaign promise to end the conflict in “24 hours.” Instead, the Ukrainian leader suggested, it would take him “24 minutes to explain [to] President Trump that he can’t manage this war.”

Western media have taken note of Zelensky’s shift in rhetoric, with one outlet pointing out that while the Ukrainian leader once assured the West of a speedy victory, now the message seems to be geared toward asking for more support to prevent the conflict from dragging on indefinitely, playing on the West’s fears of a protracted conflict with Moscow that cannot be won. But some observers have come out ahead of Zelensky, kicking off what seems like a carefully crafted campaign to prepare Western publics for defeat, or a least a “rethink” of what “victory” in Ukraine looks like. “Ukraine today finds itself worse off than it was last November. Its troops are exhausted and depleted, its weapons stocks are running low, and Western publics are more polarized over further support,” one pundit writing in a major US newspaper wrote.

“Ukraine’s counteroffensive was supposed to sustain political support for Kiev by proving that it could reconquer lost territory. Now, supporters of Ukraine might need to make the inverse argument: Ukraine is not reconquering substantial territory, and aid is needed indefinitely to forestall a devastating defeat.” Washington “might need to pivot from dreaming of victory to preparing to live with a stalemate,” since “there is virtually no appetite in the United States for direct war with Russia. Russian victory in Ukraine would be a terrible blow to US interests, but not terrible enough to risk nuclear war,” the observer stressed.

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“The government in Kiev treats its own people as something “alien”..

‘Rational Actors’ Ready To Take Power In Ukraine – Moscow (RT)

Not all Ukrainian elites and politicians agree with Kiev’s current belligerent stance against Moscow, Nikolay Patrushev, the secretary of Russia’s Security Council, said on Sunday while speaking at the ‘Russia’ exhibition in Moscow. “Rational actors” do exist in Ukraine but are currently “suppressed” by the Kiev government, he added. These forces are already “standing in the wings” and are ready to take power when the time is right, the former Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) chief said, without elaborating who exactly he may be referring to. Patrushev also said that the Ukrainian governments after the Maidan coup, including the current one led by President Vladimir Zelensky, are “bound to answer” for all the atrocities committed in Ukraine since 2014, including the years-long persecution of the Russian-speaking minority and the people of Donbass, as well as the attacks on Russian civilians, public figures, journalists, and infrastructure.

“They will not be able to hide from a just people’s court like the former SS member Yaroslav Hunka,” Patrushev said, referring to a Ukrainian SS veteran hailed by Canada’s parliament during a visit by Zelensky in September. The incident sparked an angry reaction from Poland, Russia, and several Jewish organizations, and led to the resignation of Canadian House of Commons Speaker Anthony Rota, who claimed that he was unaware of Hunka’s past. Russia has made it clear that it is not waging war against the Ukrainian people. President Vladimir Putin has said that Ukrainians have become the victims of Western political games and their own government’s policies. The government in Kiev treats its own people as something “alien,” Putin said during his annual address to the Russian parliament in February.

Ukrainians have been turned into “cannon fodder,” he argued, adding that the country had been pushed towards war with Russia since 2014, when Kiev sent military forces to confront the Donbass militias in the wake of the Maidan coup. “Responsibility for the incitement of the Ukrainian conflict, for its escalation and an increasing number of its victims rests fully with the Western elites and with the current Kiev regime,” he stated at the time. Earlier this week, Zelensky once again declared that Kiev will not talk to Moscow or make any concessions to Russia. He also denied reports that Western nations are pushing Ukraine towards peace talks with Russia. He did admit, though, that the country’s media and Ukrainians themselves were speculating about the idea of talks with Russia, adding that he was “surprised” by such sentiments.

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“..Putin said that the West no longer has enough Ukrainian cannon fodder and they are thinking about Lithuanians and Poles.”

Ukrainian Army Has ‘Run Out of Cannon Fodder’ – Former US Envoy (Sp.)

The Ukrainian Army has run out of cannon fodder for an offensive, former US Ambassador to Saudi Arabia Chas Freeman said in an interview with the YouTube channel Dialogue works. “Ukraine is out of cannon fodder, and so NATO is out of cannon fodder too. If the whole program was to fight to the last Ukrainian, and you are running out of Ukrainians, you don’t have a policy,” he said. In his view, Ukraine “could lose” even more territory. As Freeman noted, the Ukrainian Armed Forces’ failures on the battlefield have exposed “serious disagreements” within NATO. Earlier, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that the West no longer has enough Ukrainian cannon fodder and they are thinking about Lithuanians and Poles. In early October, Putin said that Kiev’s offensive had failed, that the enemy’s attempts to advance had failed, and that the Ukrainian military had been halted and pushed back to its original positions, with Ukraine suffering an estimated 90,000-plus casualties.

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“Run those fiscal deficits and you’ve told all the thinking adults that child’s standard of living, when they reach adulthood, will be one quarter of yours today assuming your children are as competent and intelligent as you are.”

Demographics Is Destiny (Denninger)

Let’s face facts folks: Nobody who you want to have children will bring said children into a world where they believe said kids will get screwed. That doesn’t mean kids won’t come anyway; they will, for some. Some adults don’t care what happens to their offspring, some actually use them as meal tickets and more. Some people are also always going to be eternally optimistic and therefore none of this will factor into their decisions. And some will have “accidents” and for personal or religious reasons decide to bear and attempt to raise said kids. But none of that changes the basic facts: People who are of decently-competent intellect and of good character, in a world of technology where one can choose when and whether to reproduce, will only do so voluntarily if they believe it makes sense AND their offspring will get a fair shake.

Destroying the fiscal health of the nation by emitting 8% of GDP in unbacked credit via deficit spending is the exact opposite of such. Simple mathematics tells us that this results in you losing half your standard of living in less than ten years and it takes about 20 years to decide to have a kid, have said kid and raise him or her to adulthood. Run those fiscal deficits and you’ve told all the thinking adults that child’s standard of living, when they reach adulthood, will be one quarter of yours today assuming your children are as competent and intelligent as you are. Would anyone who has two IQ points to rub together have children in that situation, when the options facing said kid 20 years hence are privation to this degree or civil war (and the attendant risk of being dead!) to overthrow said government? NO.

Importing millions of unskilled workers who then drop kids who have parents with no skills, and thus no realistic means of learning much from said parents yet are citizens in the gambit to cheapen labor screws the next two generations sequentially. Oh sure, in two generations or so those kids having their own kids will “outgrow” that but then they are able to compute the same odds and they won’t have children either! Think I’m wrong? The data says I’m not; within two generations those who were the children of illegals stop having lots of babies too and its for the same reason, I’ll wager: They’re convinced their children will get screwed and have one quarter of THEIR standard of living — and they remember living eight to a one bedroom apartment!

You think all those glorious “vacation venues” bringing in H2 workers, and all those “tech” places with H1bs, mean parents have a great experience for their kids at lower cost? Maybe, but in addition they have seen the destruction it wreaks on said kids. Please explain how many of Americans you saw of college age working scooping ice cream or similar this summer to make enough money to go to college in the fall. Zero — or nearly so — right? That’s what I saw all over the country. Now if I’m 20, and thinking about making some kids, where are my kids going to be in 20 years? Unable to get a summer job and unable to afford college too. Many see this, keep their pants on and both Trojan and the birth control pill companies keep having decent quarterly reports.

Good jobs with nice pay tend to be concentrated around cities. How’s Chicago doing these days? Yeah, getting mugged while walking around North Michigan Avenue (assuming you don’t get shot, which is of course even worse) is great. Do you want to expose children you might have to that risk? Hmmmm….. probably not. Oh, and speaking of which how are you going to afford a place to live with said kids when the cost of housing and property taxes have skyrocketed by more than double over the last decade or so — and there’s a new round of screwing headed for you in this upcoming year’s bill, all so you can be a “sanctuary” for a bunch of Venezuelan fighting-age men who illegally came to the US! All of this is very conducive to choosing to bear children, right? I mean its not like you’re going to have to pay those property taxes at an ever-escalating rate for the next 20 years if you choose to have kids, right? Oh, wait…. you are!

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“I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.” – Michelangelo

 

 

Cashew

 

 


The Olive tree of Vouveson on the island of Crete, Greece, is one of the oldest olive trees in the world. Scientists from the University of Crete have estimated it to be 4,000 years old, which means that, when it sprouted, the last mammoths were still walking on Earth, someone in China was discovering bronze casting and the seventh Egyptian dinasty was declining.

The Minoan civilization was thriving and its monumental architecture was adorning the island of Crete. The first stones of the Palace of Minos at Knossos which inspired the myth of the Minotaur were laid. This tree saw the humans deeds for thousands of years, from the Bronze Age to the artificial intelligence and, possibly the most amazing thing, it continues to produce olives at every season.

 

 


Rangers discovered a one-year-old hippo, whom they have named Owen, alone and dehydrated near Kenya’s Indian Ocean coast after he became separated from his herd in 2004. They took him to a wildlife sanctuary in Mombasa, where he soon found a male tortoise with the same dark grey coloring as adult hippos. The tortoise initially hissed at Owen, warning him to stay away, but according to park officials the pair have since become inseparable.

The Aldabran tortoise, called Mzee, or “Old Man” in Swahili, now eats and sleeps beside Owen. Rangers say they could not have placed Owen with another herd of hippos as he would have been killed by an adult male. The park’s tourism manager, Pauline Kimoto, told reporters: “Since Owen arrived on 27 December, the tortoise behaves like a mother to him. The hippo follows the tortoise around and licks his face.”

 

 

 

 

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