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Debt Rattle April 23 2024

Apr 232024
 
 April 23, 2024  Posted by at 8:25 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  66 Responses »


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…”

Read more …

“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?

Read more …

 

 

 

 

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.

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle January 27 2024

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.

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle November 7 2023

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!

Read more …

 

 

 

 


“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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