Carville Archives - The Automatic Earth

BREAKING: Cathie Wood says SpaceX could eventually become a global telecom provider.

In the short term, SpaceX may partner with mobile carriers worldwide. But in the long term, she expects it to offer connectivity directly to consumers at a much lower cost as Starlink scales… pic.twitter.com/e2pYFasbeQ
— DogeDesigner (@cb_doge) July 22, 2026

Trump has fallen into the Iraqi trap of a war of threats. They’ve been doing it for 47 years.

• Trump “Close” To Ordering “Massive Attack Greater Than Anything Before” (ZH)

After being at the White House just last week, Iraq’s new “Washington approved” prime minister is apparently now the new shuttle diplomacy guy, after Qatari and Pakistani peace efforts on Iran have come to naught. The NY Times is reporting Thursday afternoon that “Iraq’s prime minister, Ali al-Zaidi, is in Tehran carrying a proposal for a cease-fire between Iran and the United States, according to Iranian and Iraqi officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about matters of national security.”

But the messaging apparently went the other way to, from Tehran to Washington, per more from the Times: Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, told local news media that the Iraqi leader had shared with Iranian officials his “insights and impressions” from his recent meeting with Trump. Araghchi added that Tehran and Washington don’t have a problem when it comes to finding mediators, “the problem is America’s attitude.” At the moment, Trump is threatening new, massive attacks on Iran, which could come tonight or at any time, with the whole region on edge and the State Department telling Americans to urgently find flights out of the Middle East.

President Trump has newly been cited in Axios as saying he’s seriously considering restarting major combat operations in Iran. He’s previewing strikes that would be bigger than anything before, including in the opening days of Operation Epic Fury, when dozens of Iranian government and military leaders were killed, including the Ayatollah. There’s also chatter that Israel could rejoin the attacks this time, after Israeli jets have been absent in the past twelve days of renewed bombing raids.
However, Axios stipulated that Trump has yet to make a final decision. Mideast regional Al Hadath and Israel’s Channel 12 are separately reporting that US officials have told regional allies to “be prepared” for such a new major assault on Iran. Axios writes, “In a brief interview, Trump acknowledged that such a decision would have consequences and stressed he hasn’t made a determination yet.” This as Brent Crude has climbed past $100 per barrel on Thursday, and as the prospect of all-out war remains unpopular among American voters, especially with months to go ahead of the midterms.
“I am considering a massive attack. Bigger than ever before. I am close to making a decision. We are all set for it,” the president said. And more via the Axios interview: Trump said Israel “would join in two minutes if I ask them to,” but added that “we don’t need anybody” to launch a new operation against Iran. He also said there would be “consequences” for Israel joining the strikes, hinting at Iranian retaliation against Israel. Trump said the Iranians “want to negotiate” but are not ready to make a deal at the moment. “They haven’t received enough pain yet,” he said.
Two regional sources with knowledge of mediation efforts said Iranian leadership hasn’t accepted the latest proposal put forward. “We are trying, but the Iranians are not being helpful,” one of them said. The Houthis have meanwhile been ratcheting their involvement, apparently having been called upon by Tehran to help it keep leverage over key oil transit chokepoints. All the while, there have been widespread reports of the Pentagon surging large aircraft, especially refueling tankers, from Europe to the CENTCOM area.

More of that..

• Oil Soars As Trump Warns Iran Will Pay For Future Houthi Shipping Attacks (ZH)

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Thursday that Iran is “begging for a deal” and “they need to come to their senses,” adding that Tehran will “pay a very heavy price for the things they are doing.” Speaking on the sidelines of the ASEAN conference in Manila, he claimed that “Iran is begging us, both directly and indirectly, ‘Let’s do a deal. Let’s talk.'” But the reality remains that there’s no public indicators showing this; instead, the Iranians have pretty aggressively sought to enforce their red lines, this week attacking a series of international ships in the Hormuz Strait.

Rubio tried to blame an alleged fracturing of the Iranian government, and a takeover by the ‘hardline’ faction of leadership. “The problem with Iran is every time they make a deal, the people in charge either break it or they want to change it. So it looks like they’re not ready to make a deal, so they’re going to continue to pay a price, and every night the price gets higher and higher,” he asserted. Rubio then characterized Iran and its policies as “run by radical clerics” – calling them “oblivious” to its economic problems. In the background is the fact that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent months ago boasted that US policies and sanctions engineered a currency collapse in hopes that the January economic protests would topple the regime.
This never materialized and now people in the Trump administration seem perplexed. Rubio continued the blame-game while suggesting that if Tehran were to play ball on negotiating a deal for the Hormuz Strait, it could receive major economic benefits. “Iran can be the richest country in the Middle East if they wanted to be. But instead, they take their money, and they use it and they give it to Hezbollah. They give it to Hamas. They give it to the Houthis. They give it to Shia militias. They give it to sponsored terrorism all over the world,” he said.
Iran “will pay a very heavy price for the things they are doing. They are already paying a heavy price,” he said. Rubio also responded to recent statements of the Iranians talking about exacting “an eye for an eye” in terms of military approach. The US top diplomat then asserted that President Trump’s approach was “a head for an eye”. He described that currently Iran’s military-industrial base is being “decimated” – suffering “billions” of dollars” in damage. This as…
The US bombs Iran for the 12th consecutive night, killing at least two people and wounding 11 others in an attack on the Shalamcheh border crossing with Iraq. Jordan, Bahrain and Kuwait have reported retaliatory missile and drone attacks from Iran. But what’s happening in the Red Sea right now does suggest that the Iranians have more cards to play. Their allies, the Houthis of Yemen, have initiated closure of the Bab al-Mandab Strait to all Saudi shipping. At least two vessels were attacked, with unconfirmed but widely circulating video showing one on fire and in distress:

BIG: First Saudi oil tanker reportedly hit by Houthi missile near Yemen, engulfed in flames. pic.twitter.com/R3nG7FSdW1
— Clash Report (@clashreport) July 22, 2026

War is spreading.

• Houthis Threaten Saudi Aramco (ZH)

After the Iranian-aligned Houthis confirmed they struck two Saudi oil tankers as part of a naval blockade on Saudi Arabia, as a second chokepoint on global oil supplies opens alongside the Strait of Hormuz, on Thursday the Shia militant group is now openly threatening Aramco facilities inside the kingdom… or at least some unnamed officials are telling regional media. The Houthis have characterized their campaign as “a blockade for a blockade,” saying it is intended to pressure Saudi Arabia. The Saudis have already been blockading Houthis controlled-ports in Yemen for years, which hearkens back to a Gulf vs. Houthi chiefly aerial war that opened in 2015.

The group is threatening to carry on with attacks even if Saudi vessels seek to avoid the Bab el-Mandeb Strait. US regional allies are currently scrambling to establish alternative energy shipping routes that avoids the Strait of Hormuz chokepoint.Al Jazeera has cited unnamed Houthis sources who say that Saudi Arabia’s Aramco oil facilities could be next:”The ship, confirmed by both the Houthis and British maritime organisations, was struck on its top deck, which caught fire – a less severe outcome than a hull strike, which typically causes a vessel to sink. The Houthis claim both ships were hit, though British monitors say the second tanker made a U-turn and redirected toward the Suez Canal.
At least 10 vessels attempting to cross Bab el-Mandeb strait have been forced to reroute towards the Suez Canal instead, facing a much longer journey around Africa via the Cape of Good Hope. The two targeted vessels had been heading to India and China.The Houthis describe the campaign as “a blockade for a blockade”, warning that Saudi Arabia must lift its blockade on Yemen or face further consequences. Houthi officials say they plan to escalate operations to target Saudi oil tankers and ships even when not crossing Bab el-Mandeb – meaning vessels rerouting via the Suez Canal could still be at risk.
Houthi sources also say Aramco oil facilities could become a future target if the blockade on Yemen is not lifted.” The Houthis have until this week largely remained on the sidelines of the US-Israel war on Iran, but are now clearly ratcheting their involvement, helping Tehran with keeping leverage over global oil shipping. It was in March of 2022 that the last major strike on Saudi Aramco facilities was reported. Prior to that, 2019 saw the major Abqaiq–Khurais attack.

https://t.co/kHxR0KKD2U
— Reuters (@Reuters) July 23, 2026

However, which group was ultimately behind some of those past, historic attacks remained somewhat of a mystery, also amid speculation that it could have been pro-Iranian groups out of Iraq. This as Brent Crude has on Thursday returned to the $100 per barrel mark.

“The only reason they “negotiated” over the past few months was to give themselves breathing space ..”

• There Are Only Two Possible Endgames for Iran (A.j. Christopher)

“The strikes are designed to further degrade…” This is the copy-and-paste headline I’ve read for the past week about Iran. We’re degrading their radar, we’re degrading their naval capabilities, we’re degrading their ability to disrupt shipping. That’s all fine and dandy, but we need to “further degrade” a lot more. And we need to “further degrade” from the top down, not the bottom up. The Iran War ends one of three ways:

Option A: The Iranian regime is toppled, its leaders killed or forced to flee, and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) is completely dismantled. Whatever government arises from the ashes is friendly to the West, or at least not openly hostile.
Option B: We eventually tire of the cat-and-mouse game, pack up our military, and go home. The status quo reasserts itself, albeit with an Iranian regime that can claim it defeated the Great Satan. We accept another 47 years of the same, though Iran will have acquired a nuclear weapon well within that timeframe.
Option C: We pound the current regime into compliance. They finally agree to give up their pursuit of nukes, reopen the Strait of Hormuz, and cease funding regional terrorism. And I have bad news for those banking on Option C. That option doesn’t exist. For anybody not whistling past the graveyard, it should be abundantly obvious at this point that the IRGC thugs and their cardboard cutout mullahs have absolutely no intention of ending the jihad so long as their bodies draw breath. The only reason they “negotiated” over the past few months was to give themselves breathing space from which to resume their headlong rush.
President Donald Trump is keeping the “negotiations” door open while bombing them nightly, in a Hail Mary attempt to get them to come to the table in good faith. But we all know where that route leads, i.e., another few months of fruitless talks that will lead us to the same dead end, all the while Iran continues to lob missiles at our allies and attack shipping. I know it. You know it. President Trump knows it.
In 1941, our government did what needed to be done. And the American people supported our government and the troops to the best of their abilities. They cut back on meat and bread. They planted victory gardens. They bought Victory Bonds to help fund the campaign. The men answered the draft. The women headed off to the factories to replace the men. And nobody whined. And this was on the tail end of the Great Depression.
Nowadays? GAS PRICES ARE TOO HIGH!!! MY LIFE IS INCONVENIENCED BECAUSE GAS PRICES ARE TOO HIGH!!! I DEMAND THE GOVERNMENT DO SOMETHING ABOUT GAS PRICES SO I CAN GET BACK TO STARING AT MY iPhone 24/7!!! Imagine what the “resolve” of the American public will be 47 years from now.
At this point, President Trump has little choice but to follow through with Option A. He is a master negotiator and has been able to maneuver his way around roadblocks that would have paralyzed other presidents. But sometimes the forces of history box you in and narrow your path. His best path forward is to topple the regime and deal with whatever replaces it. And he needs to explain this to the American people, some of whom openly root against us, and others who still fail to grasp both the severity of the situation and the rare opportunities it presents. The 2026 midterms will not define Trump’s legacy. His handling of Iran will.
The biggest mistake we can make at this point is if the Iranian leaders stop firing missiles for a couple of days and express interest in restarting talks, and our government takes the bait, immediately stops the current bombardment, and winds up in exactly the same place we are today, but a week before the midterms.Option B means the can is kicked down the road. Option B means our kids get to deal with nuclear-armed ayatollahs who never let something so trivial as a sense of self-preservation deter them.
Option B means that, when that happens, we run the risk of it happening during a Democrat administration which, at best, will do nothing but make laughably empty threats (think Biden) or, at worst, openly side with the ayatollahs (think Obama). But hey, at least we’ll be able to tell our kids that the price of gas came down in the fall of 2026, right?

Lawfare casts long shadows.

• Jim Jordan Refers Jack Smith to DOJ for Prosecution (Bryan S. Jung)

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, has formally referred former Special Counsel Jack Smith to the Department of Justice for possible criminal prosecution, alleging that Smith made false statements under oath to Congress about the scope of his investigation into President Donald Trump. According to Fox News, in a July 22 letter to Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, Jordan alleges that Smith intentionally misled the House Judiciary Committee during a December 2025 deposition by testifying that his office obtained only telephone toll records and did not seek or review the contents of lawmakers’ text messages.

Jordan contends newly released records contradict that testimony and amount to obstruction of Congress. “All individuals have an obligation to comply with a duly authorized congressional inquiry. Mr. Smith is no different,” Jordan writes, accusing the former special counsel of making “intentionally false statements” designed to impede congressional oversight. The referral follows the release of documents by Republican Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, who says Smith’s investigative team accessed and reviewed text messages involving 44 members of Congress from both political parties, along with current and former Trump administration officials, during an investigation known as “Operation Arctic Frost.”
Grassley also alleges investigators viewed some communications before a Justice Department “filter team” completed its privilege review, raising concerns about compliance with procedures intended to protect privileged information. During his December deposition, Smith testified that his office sought telephone toll records containing historical routing information — including call numbers, dates, times and durations — but not the contents of calls or text messages. Republicans argue the newly released records show Smith’s team obtained and reviewed message content, directly contradicting his sworn testimony.
The Justice Department confirms receipt of Jordan’s criminal referral and says it will investigate any evidence of criminal conduct. No criminal charges have been filed, and the referral itself does not constitute a criminal prosecution. Smith denies wrongdoing.
Last week, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) told Fox News’ Sean Hannity that Smith should be “prosecuted.” “What did he do with the text messages? We don’t know that yet. What we do know is he absolutely read them. He absolutely shared them with members of his team and all of that illegally,” Hawley alleged. “The Justice Department requires that there be screening for any members of Congress [regarding] their text messages. Jack Smith said under oath that he didn’t seek the text messages of members of Congress, but in fact, we know that he did. So he lied, he violated the law, he violated the Constitution. This guy ought to be prosecuted.”
Democratic House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Jamie Raskin condemns the referral as “baseless and vindictive,” arguing Republicans misrepresent Smith’s testimony. Raskin says committee investigators never specifically questioned Smith about presidential records or members’ text messages during more than 13 hours of testimony and maintains Smith truthfully answered the questions that were asked regarding telephone toll records rather than message content.
The referral marks the latest escalation in congressional Republicans’ scrutiny of Smith. In November 2025, Jordan separately referred Smith’s former deputy, Thomas Windom, to the Justice Department for alleged obstruction of Congress. Jordan told then-Attorney General Pam Bondi that “Congress cannot perform its oversight function if witnesses who appear before its committees corruptly refuse to provide information that the law requires them to furnish. The obstruction of a committee investigation undermines Congress’s core constitutional oversight obligations.”
Jordan’s latest referral asks the Justice Department to determine whether Smith’s testimony warrants prosecution for perjury or making false statements before Congress.

After 10 years of anti-Trump, it becomes normal.

• Judge Boasberg Under Renewed Scrutiny Over Unilateral Actions (Turley)

Chief Judge James Boasberg is frustrated … and he is not alone. Recently, the D.C. federal judge reportedly “groused” that the D.C. appellate court had ordered him to reconsider a case about whether the D.C. government engaged in biased enforcement against political graffiti. Conversely, the litigants are equally irked over what they see as Boasberg’s bias after he responded by, again, dismissing their claims without a trial.

For a second time, Boasberg has barred pro-life groups from access to a jury after members were arrested for writing in chalk “Black Pre-Born Lives Matter” on a sidewalk while Black Lives Matter writings were left untouched. I wrote earlier about the emerging body of “Boasberg’s Law,” cases in which the judge has increasingly shown an untethered and expansive view of his own authority. Recently, Boasberg was found to have committed an “abuse of discretion” in twice finding that the Trump Administration was in contempt of court for failing to turn around deportation flights.
My disagreements with Boasberg are not over the underlying issues, but rather the court’s rejection of basic limits on its own authority. While chastising President Trump for exceeding his authority, Boasberg has been reversed for exceeding his own. In the earlier case, Boasberg dismissed grand jury subpoenas in the probe of Fed Chair Jerome Powell. I have been critical of that probe, but Boasberg’s refusal to allow the subpoenas to be executed was based on an opinion that was rife with open hostility for President Trump, dubious sources, and biased observations.
I have similar reservations in this latest case. During the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020, streets in Washington were covered with BLM graffiti and the police watched as protesters wrote slogans and slurs on stores, streets, and sidewalks. The government itself even commissioned a massive painting of the message on a street near the White House.However, when Frederick Douglass Foundation and Students for Life of America wrote their pro-life version of the slogan, they were immediately arrested and the chalk protest removed.
The D.C. Circuit’s reversal of Boasberg in the case was a major victory for free speech. Boasberg had applied the wrong standard to kill the case, holding that the group could not challenge the selective enforcement of the laws. In reaching that conclusion, Boasberg applied the wrong standard, imposing the heavy burden of proving that the city was engaged in “invidious enforcement.” While that standard was used correctly to dismiss an equal protection claim, it is not the standard for a free speech challenge. The Court did not hide its dissatisfaction with the thrust of Boasberg’s opinion in dismissing the First Amendment claim:
“The First Amendment prohibits government discrimination on the basis of viewpoint. ‘To permit one side … to have a monopoly in expressing its views … is the antithesis of constitutional guarantees.’ The protection for freedom of speech applies not only to legislation, but also to enforcement of the laws.”The appellate court sent the case back to Boasberg with the opportunity to apply the correct standard and to create a substantive record before issuing a ruling on the free speech claim.
Boasberg took the case and ruled again that the groups would not be allowed a trial. The new dismissal was issued despite the standard that, in seeking such a dismissal before a trial, the court must accept all material facts in favor of the nonmoving party or, in this case, the pro-life and pro-free speech litigants. Boasberg rejected the factual claim that they were “similarly situated” to the BLM protesters. The litigants presented the results of discovery on the point, but Boasberg dismissed the claim on his own subjective view of the evidence. They have now filed again with the appellate court to appeal his order.
Some of Boasberg’s factual findings are baffling. For example, he maintains that the groups did not show that MPD officers “even witnessed any specific defacement during [Black Lives Matter] protests.” However, the groups presented such evidence as bodycam video of officers watching as a protester spray-painted ‘I can’t breathe’ on the street near the White House two weeks after the arrests of the pro-life protesters. They submitted other video evidence of officers watching protesters spray-painting BLM messages outside of the Department of Justice.
Moreover, they presented what they claimed is guidance from Assistant Chief of Police Jeffery Carroll, in charge of the Metropolitan Police Department’s Special Operations Division, in the application of different treatment for graffiti. Carroll reportedly admitted to being “present” at BLM protests featuring “defacement” of property, public and private and Lt. Jason Bagshaw admitted that he also saw defacement “related to” BLM protests. This does not mean that a jury would rule for these litigants but rather that court cannot substitute its judgment for a jury when a credible and supported claim has been made by litigants.
Boasberg declares that no such credible evidence was presented. The fact is that a reasonable jury could conclude that there was a different treatment shown in the enforcement of these laws based on the content of the speech. The biased enforcement of laws is a common reality in other countries where courts enable such selective enforcement. In countries such as Iran and China, no level of evidence is sufficient to overcome the bias of courts in showing a preference for one side.
Judge Boasberg has had a distinguished career that is now being undone by a lack of restraint in these decisions. Again, I believe that the judge has been on solid ground in some of these conflicts, including criticizing the use of “intemperate and disrespectful” language in filings and demanding compliance with his orders. However, while Chief Judge Boasberg has described the President’s claim of expansive powers as “awfully frightening,” the same can be said about a judge who substitutes his own judgment for juries and disregards legal standards for disfavored groups.

DSA = Democratic Socialists of America = rich kids.

• DSA Think America Is Worse Than Mao Zedong (Victor Davis Hanson)

We’re hearing more and more from the Democratic Socialists of America about all of the sins of America and very little of the good things we’ve done to ourselves and to the world at large on our 250th birthday. What is it, the nature of this DSA, Democratic Socialists of America, and the diversity, equity, inclusion criticism that we were racist, sexist, nativist, cruel, ruthless, etc., etc. But my question is, compared to what? Mao Zedong? He killed 70 million people. He was the greatest mass murderer in history, and that government is still communist in an unbroken chain from [Chinese leader] Xi [Jinping] all the way back to Mao. Do we ever talk about that or the million people who are in concentration camps in China?

Compared to historically to the Aztecs? We’re told the Aztecs were great people. They had an empire, but they crushed over a million people to create their empire. Some years, they sacrificed up to 10,000, maybe 15,000 a year of conquered tribes of fellow Indigenous people. Do we remember Shaka Zulu, the 19th-century creator of the Zulu nation? He was responsible for a genocide in crushing his enemies that probably cost over a million lives. Do we really think that the Native Americans were living in paradise until Europeans came? The story of Native Americans was conquest, enslavement, butchery of rival tribes. So, what is going on?
We have a tradition in the West of self-criticism. That’s what makes us different. Rationalism, self-criticism, improvement. But when that goes to an extreme, it ventures from self-criticism and self-reflection to nihilism, and it’s quite destructive. So, let’s just take a look at where the United States is compared to the rest. Look at immigration. Why do a million people, or 2 million people, 10,000 a day under Joe Biden, from very poor countries, most of them from what we would call the former Third World that were victims of socialism, why do they risk their lives coming here every year?
Why do all these critics of the United States … [Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez], why did her parents want to come here? Why did [Rep.] Ilhan Omar’s father want to come here? Why did [Rep.] Rashida Tlaib’s father want to come here? Why did [New York City Mayor] Zohran Mamdani’s parents want to come? Was it so bad? Can’t they ever acknowledge that they came here because they had greater security, they had greater freedom, they had greater economic opportunity? And if they had criticisms, it was never enough that they wanted to go back to the places that they praised, but only from a distance and in the abstract.
The truth is that the poor in the United States are better off than most of the middle classes in every other country. We saw that in the World Cup when middle- and upper-middle-class Europeans came over, and unlike … to watch the games, and unlike most tourists, they didn’t just stick on the coasts. They went to places in Arkansas, Oklahoma, Texas, the South, and the Midwest. And they found two things. One, Americans were amazingly friendly and open, upbeat, not downers and drab, and everything’s terrible, which they expected from their experiences in Europe.
And more importantly, they were affluent. They had big homes. They had air conditioning. the poor had appurtenances. Everybody has a cell phone. Nobody worries about the cost, apparently. There’s also then the hypocrisy of a lot of our critics. And let me just give you an example of a few of them.
Hasan Piker is a child of very, very wealthy Turkish immigrants that became U.S. citizens. He grew up for much of his life in Turkey. He gave a talk the other day in a Mao suit to Democratic Socialists of America. Think about that. He put on the uniform, so to speak, of the greatest mass murderer in history, and then he denounced capitalism. But he didn’t denounce capitalism in his own life because his parents are multimillionaires. He is a multimillionaire, and he drives a, what? $120,000 Porsche. Isn’t that a luxury of the bourgeoisie?
And then there’s Zohran Mamdani, of course. His family, as I pointed out numerous times, was the elite of the elite of the elite in Uganda, a community of expatriates, Indians, from India that control 60% of the wealth, and they’re only 1% of the population. And he grew up in privilege here. He had a very nice home. He has a family estate on Lake Victoria, of all places. Ro Khanna, the congressman from California, he always is pointing out the evils of Republicans, and as he looks at the drift of the Democratic Party, he puts his finger in the wind, and he says socialism is the answer. Ro Khanna does.
But he’s a multimillionaire. His father-in-law is one of the wealthiest members of the Indian American community, probably worth $500 or $600 million. His own children have been deeded golf courses. His wife drives a $190,000 Range Rover, and he’s lecturing us about our shortfalls? And then, of course, we come to [California Gov.] Gavin Newsom. He wants to get in on the socialist craze, so he said the other day, as is his wont, moving his arms around and being very slick and glib, that capitalism fails. It didn’t work. It worked for you, Gavin. You have a $9 million home. You are the, basically, the quote-unquote, “protégé” of the Gordon Getty oil for- fortune, who backed all of your business opportunities.

How do you close down the most lucrative trade in the world? Even if it’s already killed a million people?

• Wiring Kiev for war: Palantir’s Greatest Salesman (RT)

Palantir’s reported job offer to former Ukrainian Defense Minister Mikhail Fedorov demonstrates how Kiev’s defense establishment has become a recruiting pool for the Western military-industrial complex, where vibes, not results, are rewarded. Fedorov was fired by Vladimir Zelensky on July 16, ostensibly over a long-running conflict between him and the commander-in-chief of Ukraine’s armed forces, Aleksandr Syrsky. A self-styled ‘digital innovator’ and architect of Ukraine’s transition to a primarily drone-based war footing, Fedorov has since blamed his dismissal on Syrsky, an unpopular Soviet-trained general who was fired several days after Zelensky sacked Fedorov.

Immediately after his dismissal, Fedorov claimed that he had already been offered a new job. “Even tech giants have called with job offers,” he said. “Alex Karp, the head of Palantir, suggested we do something together, but I told him, ‘let’s talk about it later’.” Fedorov’s reluctance to accept Karp’s offer may have something to do with his political ambitions – it’s widely acknowledged that Zelensky sees Fedorov as a political rival who could relieve Brussels of its Kiev-corruption problem – but Karp’s offer was likely made for one reason: Mikhail Fedorov has been Palantir’s greatest salesman in Ukraine.
Fedorov first met with Karp in June of 2022, when he was still serving as Ukraine’s Minister of Digital Transformation. Palantir opened an office in Kiev shortly after the escalation of the Ukraine conflict and signed memoranda of cooperation with the country’s Defense, Digital Transformation, Economy, and Education ministries the following year.

Implementing AI in warfare alongside @PalantirTech @louismosley is a strategic leap for Ukraine. It was a privilege to host Alex Karp in Kyiv—a leader who personally stood with us since 2022. Today, our partnership is defined by tangible results: from advanced air attack analysis… pic.twitter.com/sryO4gcxTb
— Mykhailo Fedorov (@FedorovMykhailo) May 12, 2026

Appointed defense minister in January of 2026, Fedorov aggressively courted Palantir, pushing its AI-powered command-and-control software at the expense of homegrown alternatives. Fedorov marketed Ukraine as “the best training ground” for contractors like Palantir, and offered the company and its competitors – including Anduril Industries, ShieldAI, and AeroVironment – tax breaks, favorable regulations, and unprecedented access to battlefield data.
By early 2026, Karp claimed that Palantir was “responsible for most of the targeting in Ukraine.” Fedorov hyped up the partnership, claiming in June that Karp “was just shocked by how we use Palantir. He was shocked by our vision, what we do and what we plan to do.” Fedorov oversaw Ukraine’s expansion of medium- and long-range strikes against Russian infrastructure, winning praise from Western media for “turning the tables” in the conflict – in the words of the Financial Times. Palantir’s software has been instrumental in “planning deep strike operations,” Fedorov said in May of 2026.
While his vision of an AI-powered, high-tech military is hugely popular in Silicon Valley boardrooms and among Ukrainian officials tired of the Russian military’s inexorable, grinding advance in Donbass, it has been questioned by Ukrainian troops and commanders. Every new wave of strikes on Russian commercial warehouses seems to invite a retaliatory storm of missiles and drones on Kiev, and frontline troops told Ukrainska Pravda that the ‘deep strike’ campaign has had no measurable impact on the progress of the conflict.
“I don’t know where we seized the initiative; there was simply a wave of PR activity in some areas,” an officer operating near Donetsk told the newspaper. Even mid-range strikes (<150km) on Russian command posts have had “no effect, not a drop” on the front, an officer near Konstantinovka added. Former Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief Valery Zaluzhny has warned that deep strikes are “expensive, technologically demanding, and ultimately reciprocal. Russia retains the ability to strike back with equal or greater force and neither side can rely on this form of warfare to produce a decisive strategic outcome.”
Shortly before he was sacked from the same position, Syrsky published a lengthy article insisting that drones alone do not win wars. “You need artillery, mortars, engineering means, air defense, electronic warfare and dozens of other items,” he wrote. “You need to buy everything, not just what is currently in style.”
At least two of Fedorov’s predecessors in the defense ministry – Aleksey Reznikov and Rustem Umerov – used their positions to enrich themselves through graft and embezzlement. Corruption carries consequences, however, and both Reznikov and Umerov have been investigated for wartime profiteering. Fedorov’s de-facto lobbying for Palantir is a safer and more legal path to riches, and one that has become more popular among Ukrainian defense and military officials. They include:
All of these companies depend on contracts with the Ukrainian government – contracts that Shevchenko, Danilyuk, Honcharuk, and Matveichenko can leverage their connections to secure. For Western investors, this proximity to power amid an ongoing war represents a potential goldmine, particularly in the case of UFORCE and Trypilian. The former counts former British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace among its board members, and the latter is part owned by former British MP and minister Brooks Newmark. With the EU pouring €6 billion into Ukraine’s domestic drone industry this year alone, Honcharuk, Matveichenko, Wallace, and Newmark stand to profit handsomely.

Plus the rest of the world…

• Why Were Americans Funding Jobs for Transgender Workers in Nepal? (David Manney)

Former HIV outreach worker and biological male Rubi Lama lost a job he’d held for nine years when U.S. funding vanished from a health program in Nepal. He tested people, counseled those at risk, and helped sex workers avoid infection. Months later, unable to find other work, he joined them along a highway outside Hetauda. Fox News:

“An Associated Press social media post about transgender aid workers in Nepal turning to sex work after losing their jobs due to U.S. foreign aid cuts sparked a wave of conservative backlash, with critics arguing the video made the case for defunding USAID rather than saving it. The AP post said that in Nepal, where “a conservative culture leaves openly transgender people with few legal job options,” around 100 LGBTQ aid workers left jobless by U.S. funding cuts had turned to sex work to survive. An accompanying video focused on Rubi Lama, a former HIV outreach worker who said USAID-funded programs had provided free condoms, lubricant and HIV-prevention medication before the cuts.

“When USAID funding was there, condoms were free, lubricant was also distributed … for free,” Lama said in the video, adding that HIV treatments, including PrEP, were also available without cost. “But, now it is gone.” The framing quickly drew criticism from conservatives who said the story raised the opposite question: why American taxpayers were funding those programs in the first place.”
His story is painful on a human scale; it also raises a question many Americans are asking: why was the United States expected to keep paying his salary?Lama worked for Friends Hetauda, part of a network connected to the Blue Diamond Society. The society received 85% of its funding from USAID, operated 20 clinics, and employed 350 people. Associated Press (cue the maudlin music):
“For nine years, Lama — who is transgender — had devoted her life to conducting HIV outreach in Nepal’s marginalized communities, including the LGBTQ+ sex workers who wait by this highway each night. But after the United States slashed its foreign aid funding last year, Lama and more than 280,000 aid workers worldwide found themselves out of a job.Much has been written about the devastating impacts the U.S. foreign aid cuts have had on the millions of people the funding once helped. Far less is known about the impacts on the helpers themselves.
In impoverished Nepal, where a conservative culture leaves openly transgender people with few legal job options, the impact on aid workers’ lives was particularly crushing. Starving and scared, Lama and around 100 other LGBTQ+ aid workers left jobless by the funding cuts have turned to sex work to survive, walking the streets alongside the very people they once fought so hard to help.”
When the money stopped, 262 employees lost their jobs, and the organization says 35% to 45% of those former workers later entered sex work.The clinics provided HIV tests, condoms, counseling, antiretroviral drugs, and PrEP. More than 1,200 clients reportedly lost access to PrEP after the shutdown. Those are real health services, and the people affected aren’t punchlines. The political reaction followed a familiar script: President Donald Trump cut foreign aid, vulnerable workers suffered, and American taxpayers were cast as villains for refusing to continue the arrangement.
Trump’s Executive Order:
Section 1. Purpose. The United States foreign aid industry and bureaucracy are not aligned with American interests and in many cases antithetical to American values. They serve to destabilize world peace by promoting ideas in foreign countries that are directly inverse to harmonious and stable relations internal to and among countries.
Sec. 2. Policy. It is the policy of United States that no further United States foreign assistance shall be disbursed in a manner that is not fully aligned with the foreign policy of the President of the United States.
Sec. 3. (a) 90-day pause in United States foreign development assistance for assessment of programmatic efficiencies and consistency with United States foreign policy. All department and agency heads with responsibility for United States foreign development assistance programs shall immediately pause new obligations and disbursements of development assistance funds to foreign countries and implementing non-governmental organizations, international organizations, and contractors pending reviews of such programs for programmatic efficiency and consistency with United States foreign policy, to be conducted within 90 days of this order. The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) shall enforce this pause through its apportionment authority.
Critics spoke as though Washington had fired public employees in Ohio rather than ended overseas grants in Nepal.Foreign aid can serve American interests; HIV prevention can reduce disease, improve stability, and protect people who travel across borders. Compassion also has limits when one country becomes the permanent source of salaries and program funding for organizations half a world away. Nepal has a national government; it has health agencies, wealthy residents, international charities, and neighboring countries with their interest in regional health.
Fox News: “USAID later told partners to pause new funding obligations and issue stop-work orders or suspensions for existing awards, while critics have said the review led to major disruptions, staff reductions and the cancellation of critical foreign-assistance awards. But Federalist editor-in-chief Mollie Hemingway argued the AP post exposed misplaced priorities, particularly among the media, saying the outlet presented U.S. tax dollars flowing to a “trans Nepalese job protection program” as though it was a good use of public money.

Carville on preference for voter ID: ”I guess you could say it exists, anything could exist, it exists on such a minuscule scale, and it’s been proven time and time and time again.“..

• James Carville Calls On Democrats To Cave On Voter ID (ZH)

The SAVE America Act, which would mandate proof of citizenship along with valid ID for federal elections and tighten mail-in voting rules, remains stalled in Congress due to the Democrats’ filibuster in the Senate, even though the underlying idea is among the most popular in American politics.

Gallup found 84 percent of Americans favor requiring photo identification at the polling place, and 83 percent favor proof of citizenship for first-time registrants – including 98 percent of Republicans, 84 percent of independents, and 67 percent of Democrats. Pew Research Center put photo-ID support at 83 percent, with 95 percent of Republicans and 71 percent of Democrats behind it and only 16 percent opposed. Rasmussen found 77 percent of likely voters calling photo ID a reasonable measure to protect election integrity. Thirty-six states already request or require identification for in-person voting.
As CNN’s Harry Enten put it: “The bottom line is this: Voter ID is NOT controversial in this country.” A bill with that kind of consensus isn’t controversial, yet Senate Democrats keep blocking it. Now longtime Democratic strategist James Carville is looking at those numbers and has decided his own party needs an exit ramp. On his podcast, Politics War Room, he told Democrats to stop fighting voter ID and find a way out of a fight he believes is already lost.
The trigger for the conversation was New Jersey. Carville’s co-host Al Hunt opened by noting the right had seized on Gov. Mikie Sherrill’s disclosure that roughly 6,600 noncitizens were registered to vote in the state, fewer than 400 of whom cast ballots. “Voter fraud in the United States is an infinitesimal problem,” Carville said. “I don’t even… to the extent, I guess you could say it exists, anything could exist, it exists on such a minuscule scale, and it’s been proven time and time and time again.”

That is where most Democrats stop – the problem is too small to bother with. Carville kept going. “But I don’t know if we’re not better off saying, okay, we’ll take that alternative ID, bring your gas bill or your light bill or something,” he said. “Because for whatever reason, it polls at 75%.” He pointed to his home state of Louisiana, where voters already have to show a driver’s license at the polls, and asked why the national party keeps treating that standard as an emergency. A rule allowing alternative documents such as a gas or electric bill still polls at 75 percent – a number that should give pause to a party that has spent a decade calling identification requirements a modern poll tax.
“We are not gonna win the war” on some kind of ID, Carville said. “I never had a problem with it. I’m just saying of all the things… if every poll shows 75 or better, saying we should have some kind of ID to vote… just quit fighting it and go along with it and move to the next thing.”Hunt pushed back, arguing that most states already have ID requirements and criticizing the SAVE America Act directly. Carville was quick to draw the same line. “I’m not talking about the SAVE Act, I’m not talking about the SAVE Act at all,” he said. His proposal was narrower: “Whatever the law in Louisiana is, make it the national law.”
It is worth being precise about what the New Jersey episode actually was, because it is not quite the case for the policy Carville is conceding. Those 6,600 people had pressed “no” when a Motor Vehicle Commission keypad asked whether they were U.S. citizens, and a software defect registered them anyway. They held valid state identification – that is why they were at the MVC. An ID check at the polling place catches someone voting under another person’s name. It does not catch a state agency overriding what an applicant told it.
Which is rather the point of Carville’s argument. He is not claiming voter ID would fix anything. He is saying it costs Democrats nothing and they are losing the fight anyway – that a party cannot win by declaring war on a basic expectation shared by nearly every voting bloc, and that the energy would be better spent on arguments it can win. The concession is notable coming from this particular program. Politics War Room has hosted the Brennan Center’s Michael Waldman to argue that widespread voter fraud is a myth and to pick apart the SAVE Act. Carville still believes the first part. He has simply stopped believing it matters.

I get the sentiment, but do realize the Odyssey is Greek mythology, not a history document.

Why do we want Helen of Troy to have pale skin? Did Homer explicitly give her that?

• Elon Vows AI-Made ‘Odyssey’ After Blasting Nolan’s Take on Homer (AmG)

Elon Musk says he’ll beat Hollywood at its own game, pledging that his artificial intelligence venture will produce a full-length film of Homer’s “The Odyssey” by year’s end, one he insists will stay faithful to the ancient text in a way Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster adaptation has not. Musk, believed to be the first trillionaire in modern history, unveiled the project Tuesday evening on X, posting AI-generated footage from Grok Imagine depicting a scene from the epic poem. “Before this year ends, Grok Imagine will make a full-length movie of ‘The Odyssey’ that is historically accurate and true to the art of Homer,” he wrote, offering no further details on production, casting or distribution.

In a follow-up post, Musk said he was “down” with a fan’s pitch to instead hand the project to actor and director Mel Gibson, backed by $100 million, to produce “an Odyssey adaptation with painstakingly historically accurate ships, armour, weapons and casting, with all dialogue taken straight from the original poem and delivered in Homeric Greek.”The announcement is the latest salvo in Musk’s long-running feud with Nolan’s “The Odyssey,” a Matt Damon-led adaptation Musk has criticized repeatedly over its casting choices. In January, Musk wrote that “Chris Nolan lost his integrity,” responding to a post that called the film “an insult to the author” over the casting of Lupita Nyong’o as Helen of Troy.
In May, after conservative commentator Matt Walsh suggested Nolan cast Nyong’o only to avoid being labeled “racist,” Musk replied with a single word: “True.” Musk’s criticism hasn’t dented the film’s commercial performance, however. The R-rated, three-hour epic pulled in a $120 million opening weekend, according to Breitbart News, far exceeding pre-release industry projections of $80 million to $90 million.

Maybe this realization will help keep down costs as well. You don’t need your Lamborghini to do groceries..

• Cheap AI Models are a Game-Changer (MKTCONTEXT)

Last week, Chinese startup Moonshot AI released one of the largest AI models ever built. Within 24 hours, the model “Kimi-K3” climbed to the top of the leaderboard for coding, beating Anthropic and OpenAI:

The announcement reminds us of DeepSeek’s entrance back in Feb 2025. The combination of cutting-edge capabilities, aggressive pricing, and open distribution is threatening the US players. Moonshot doesn’t need to be the best; only close enough, cheap enough, and accessible enough to make customers question why they are paying several times more for American systems.K3 itself is a marvel of AI engineering. It is efficient in routing queries to specific parts of the model, allowing enormous scale without the full computation cost. It supports a context window of 1M tokens for input, enough to analyze a large codebase or document collection. This underscores just how rapidly China’s AI developers are closing the gap with US rivals.
What do we make of this announcement? Investors will be more concerned about this than DeepSeek. Given the industry’s unprecedented spending spree, they need every dollar of revenue to justify the capital spending. Competition and substitutes erode the ROI of that spending. It is only a matter of time before Trump bans the use of Chinese AI models on the basis of national security concerns (feeding inputs to state actors and such). This will further strain an already-frail trade relationship between the US and China, potentially sparking Trade War 3.0.
Cheap Models are a Game Changer It’s worth asking why cheap models like Kimi-K3 are so impactful to the AI discussion. Companies are racking up massive expenses from their employees’ AI usage. Rather than capping usage (which hampers productivity), CEOs are trying to be more efficient with tokens. In practice, this means routing routine tasks to cheaper, open-source models like DeepSeek, Qwen, Kimi, and Llama. Only the genuinely hard queries get escalated to expensive frontier models. This chart shows just how much open-source models have grown:

As a direct result, token usage continues to skyrocket (black line) but the cost of those tokens are collapsing (colored bars):

The vast majority of the world’s AI workloads can be done by cheaper, open-sourced models which don’t rely on expensive compute from Nvidia. The essence of commoditization. This is bad news for the frontier model makers (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Meta) but great news for hyperscalers because even lagging models need to run on someone’s data centers. The cloud providers (Microsoft, Google, Amazon) provide that infrastructure.
Remember, cheap tokens don’t shrink usage. It proliferates it. That means more revenues for the cloud providers that help enterprises deploy AI widely. This realization is why Mag 7 stocks have moved opposite of the broader AI sector.

Elon Musk says Starlink will be integrated into every $TSLA vehicle.

He says each terminal could act as a “connectivity tower” providing WiFi to anyone nearby. pic.twitter.com/OXJNkhRNxp
— Shay Boloor (@StockSavvyShay) July 22, 2026

Elon Musk just told you what Tesla was actually built for.

It was never cars.

Musk: “If successful, Optimus will be the biggest product ever.”

The automobile reshaped civilization. The smartphone rewired human behavior.

He’s saying Optimus dwarfs both.

Then he ranked it… pic.twitter.com/6ouL89ZqE3
— Dustin (@r0ck3t23) July 22, 2026

Before this year ends, Grok Imagine will make a full-length movie of The Odyssey that is historically accurate and true to the art of Homer https://t.co/bVHzUmY9WN
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 22, 2026

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Debt Rattle May 12 2024

May 122024

May 12, 2024 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 9:18 am Finance Tagged with: Bill Maher, Carville, full mobilization, Macron, Marc Elias, Nuland, Stormy Daniels, Xi 53 Responses »

Pablo Picasso Le repos 1932
This painting has a story. It’s very funny.

• 2024 Election Likely The Last To Be Decided By US Citizens – Musk (RT)

• James Carville Rages at Trump’s Success (MN)

• Bill Maher Upends Stormy Daniels’ Testimony With 2018 Footage (ZH)

• Nuland Explains Why US Never Pushed Ukraine Into Talks With Russia (RT)

• Ukrainian Government Warns Citizens Of Possible Full Mobilization (RT)

• Trump Sees Biden Willing To Stop All Aid To Israel Soon (TASS)

• Revisionism Erasing Russia’s Lead Role in WWII Akin to Holocaust Denial (Sp.)

• Judge Trashes Election Lawsuit by the Elias Law Firm (Turley)

• Macron ‘Hopes’ France Won’t Go To War With Russia (RT)

• Xi’s Grand Chess Game: How China Outplays US in Europe (Sp.)

• Will Xi Pry Europe From US? (Sp.)

Maher
https://twitter.com/i/status/1789128345478717768

Biden's #DemocraticParty arranged political persecutions of #DonaldTrump, w/the most outrageous being Alvin Bragg & Letitia James, who were both elected on promises to prosecute Trump. A #StormyDaniels HOAX, what was the crime? It's like Stalin's reign of terror w/Lavrentiy Beria pic.twitter.com/OW45vBxO8T

— Planet Ponzi (@PlanetPonzi) May 12, 2024

Benz DARPA

How Did Google get The Tech to create google maps? Get ready to have your mind blown by Mike Benz pic.twitter.com/DYzbobO5bU

— Russell Brand (@rustyrockets) May 10, 2024

Falcon booster

Many have no clue how fuckin massive a SpaceX Falcon booster is, this video shows it pic.twitter.com/rpILsM3W2B

— Teslaconomics (@Teslaconomics) May 11, 2024

Ritter Egypt

"This is your chance…."

From our recent episode on the Rafah genocide, Scott Ritter has strong words for Egypt and Israel's disregard for international law. pic.twitter.com/15AkjFtbNn

— DD Geopolitics (@DD_Geopolitics) May 11, 2024

Eurovision

Maria Zakharova:

“Eurovision 2024 surpassed any orgy, coven or ritual sacrilege. Funerals in Western Europe are taking place as usual. No surprises.” pic.twitter.com/KXwtLixvXj

— Zlatti71 (@Zlatti_71) May 11, 2024

“..disenfranchise US citizens by importing as many illegal immigrants as possible.”

• 2024 Election Likely The Last To Be Decided By US Citizens – Musk (RT)

The continuing influx of illegal immigrants into the US could mean that American citizens could cease to decide the outcome of elections in the country in the not-too-distant future, Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has predicted. The South African-born billionaire claimed that the Democrats are wittingly refusing to address the issue in the hope of skewing the balance in their favor going forward. Musk’s recent comment came in response to Republican lawmakers passing the Equal Representation Act in the House of Representatives on Wednesday, which would require the Census Bureau to ask respondents about their citizenship in its 10-year surveys. GOP representatives want only US citizens to be counted when determining the number of congressional seats in each state. Speaker Mike Johnson argued that “we should not reward states and cities that violate federal immigration laws and maintain sanctuary policies with increased Congressional representation.”

“Common sense dictates that only American citizens should be counted for electoral apportionment,” he insisted. Democratic Representative Grace Meng described the initiative as “reckless, cynical, and frankly, illegal.” President Joe Biden’s office was quick to state that it “strongly opposes” the measure, “which would preclude the Department of Commerce’s Census Bureau from performing its constitutionally mandated responsibility.” In a post on X (formerly Twitter) on Thursday, Musk wrote that “Unanimous Democrat opposition to requiring citizenship for apportionment of House seats and Presidential electoral college votes says it all.” According to the entrepreneur, “the Democratic Party goal is to disenfranchise US citizens by importing as many illegal immigrants as possible.” “Given the massive influx of illegals from every country on Earth, 2024 will probably be the last election actually decided by US citizens,” Musk concluded.

Last month, he warned that a terrorist attack on the scale of September 11, 2001 on US soil was “only a matter of time,” considering the number of people who have entered the country illegally. In February, the billionaire alleged that the Biden administration is seeking to import as many illegal immigrants as possible, legalize them, and “create a permanent majority – a one-party state.” According to some estimates, there could be as many as 16 million illegal migrants in the US at this point, including over 7.2 million who entered during Biden’s tenure. The issue of lax security at the US-Mexican border has dominated domestic politics in America for months, with Republicans advocating tougher controls and Democrats arguing in favor of a more liberal approach to the issue.

“You know this guy’s gonna win by the way, this guy’s gonna win,” said Cuomo.”

• James Carville Rages at Trump’s Success (MN)

Veteran political strategist James Carville says “Trump’s more ahead than he’s ever been” as he urged Democrats to try something different because everything they do is “not working.” Trump’s more ahead than he’s ever been,” said Carville, lamenting how fewer Americans than ever are concerned about what happened on January 6. “It’s going the wrong way. It’s not working. Everything we’re that throwing is spaghetti at a wall, and none of it is sticking, me included,” said Carville. “We gotta try to think of something different. Because what we’re doing is really, really not working,” he emphasized.

The former lead strategist in Bill Clinton’s winning 1992 Presidential campaign expressed frustration at his own inability to effect the outcome, lamenting, “The opinion I’ve come to is that I don’t matter.” “It doesn’t matter. You can prepare and you can be on TV, you can write pieces, you can have a YouTube channel, you can have a podcast and nothing, nothing!” Carville complained. “We’ve got to try to think of something different because what we’re doing in really really not working,” he asserted. MSNBC talking heads expressed similar frustration that Americans are no longer buying their hysterical narratives when they were dumbfounded by a new PBS Newshour/NPR/Marist poll that found more Americans believe Joe Biden is a threat to Democracy than Donald Trump.

The sentiment that Trump is on course to win and there’s little Democrats can do about it now they’ve chosen to run a borderline dementia patient in Joe Biden is widely shared. Back in January, top pollster Frank Lunzt said he thought Trump was “done” after January 6 and impeachment but can now barely bring himself to admit that Trump is likely to win the presidency. Former CNN host Chris Cuomo also recently said Trump will win the election and that he’s never seen as much energy behind a candidate, even more so than Obama in 2008. “You know this guy’s gonna win by the way, this guy’s gonna win,” said Cuomo.

“..So I just think she’s not a good witness.”

• Bill Maher Upends Stormy Daniels’ Testimony With 2018 Footage (ZH)

Comedian Bill Maher just used footage from a 2018 interview with Stormy Daniels to reveal that she completely contradicted her own testimony in the Trump ‘hush-money’ trial last week. After laying out how the Democrats have fumbled the ball on virtually every case against Trump, Maher turned his attention to Daniels, who he called a “bad witness.” “Because, let me show you a little video. This is when I had Stormy on in 2018, and first I asked her why she had sex with Trump… listen to that, and then listen to what she says after that.”

Maher, in 2018, asked her: “Why did you fuck Donald Trump?” saying moments later “but you say it’s not a ‘me-too’ case,” referring to the flood of rape accusations against various men in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein scandal. To which Daniels replies: “It is not a ‘me-too’ case. I mean I wasn’t assaulted, I wasn’t attacked or raped or coerced or blackmailed. They tried to shove me in the ‘me-too’ box as part of their own agenda, and first of all I didn’t want to be part of that because it’s not the truth and I’m not a victim in that regard.” Maher then contrasts that statement with Daniels’ testimony last week, saying “she’s talking about he was ‘bigger and blocking the way,’ – it’s all the me-too buzzwords.

During her testimony last week, Daniels claimed “There was an imbalance of power, for sure. He was bigger and blocking the way, but I was not threatened either verbally or physically,” she said, also claiming that she ‘blacked out.’ “She said there was an imbalance of power, for sure. My hands were shaking so hard. She said she blacked out. Blacked out? She’s a porn star. You really think she blacked out? A porn star is used to having sex with people she does not know. That’s the job. It’s kinda like ‘stormy, Bob, Bob, stormy, fuck!’ So I just think she’s not a good witness.”

Maher

Biden's #DemocraticParty arranged political persecutions of #DonaldTrump, w/the most outrageous being Alvin Bragg & Letitia James, who were both elected on promises to prosecute Trump. A #StormyDaniels HOAX, what was the crime? It's like Stalin's reign of terror w/Lavrentiy Beria pic.twitter.com/OW45vBxO8T

— Planet Ponzi (@PlanetPonzi) May 12, 2024

They weren’t strong enough to talk. So we made them fight instead.

• Nuland Explains Why US Never Pushed Ukraine Into Talks With Russia (RT)

Ukraine has never been in a position to get a favorable settlement to end the enduring conflict with Russia and so Washington has never actually encouraged Kiev to negotiate with Moscow, former US Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs and former acting Deputy Secretary of State Victoria Nuland has claimed. The ex-official and one of the key proponents of supporting Ukraine through military means made the remark in an interview with Politico published on Saturday. A vast part of the interview revolved around the Ukrainian conflict, with Nuland producing a typical mainstream American assessment of it. “Let’s start with the fact that [Russian President Vladimir] Putin has already failed in his objective. He wanted to flatten Ukraine. He wanted to ensure that they had no sovereignty, independence, agency, no democratic future – because a democratic Ukraine, a European Ukraine, is a threat to his model for Russia, among other things, and because it’s the first building block for his larger territorial ambitions,” Nuland asserted, without providing any supporting evidence.

The official insisted that Kiev can still “succeed” in the conflict, though she dodged the question of whether she believes Ukraine could seize its former territories from Russia, including the Crimean Peninsula, which broke away from Kiev in the aftermath of the 2014 Maidan coup and joined Moscow after a referendum. “It can definitely get to a place where it’s strong enough, I believe, and where Putin is stymied enough to go to the negotiating table from a position of strength. It’ll be up to the Ukrainian people what their territorial ambitions should be,” she said, adding that “whatever is decided on Crimea, it can’t be remilitarized such that it’s a dagger at the heart of the center of Ukraine.”The former official revealed Washington has never actually pressed Kiev into negotiations with Moscow, claiming its “negotiating position” was never actually strong enough, including in late 2022.

“They were not in a strong enough position then. They’re not in a strong enough position now. The only deal Putin would have cut then, the only deal that he would cut today, at least before he sees what happens in our election, is a deal in which he says, ‘What’s mine is mine, and what’s yours is negotiable.’ And that’s not sustainable,” she claimed. Victoria Nuland has been widely perceived as one of the key figures behind the whole Ukrainian crisis that started with the Maidan events, which ultimately brought down Ukraine’s democratically-elected president, Viktor Yanukovich, in 2014. The diplomat, who at the time was Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, infamously showed up among Maidan activists, handing out pastries. The affair became widely known as “Nuland’s cookies,” serving as a textbook example of direct US involvement in the coup.

The end of Zelensky.

• Ukrainian Government Warns Citizens Of Possible Full Mobilization (RT)

The entire Ukrainian society would need to make sacrifices and forget about their peaceful lives to defeat such an enemy as Russia, Defense Ministry spokesman Dmitry Lazutkin has argued. Kiev is overhauling its military service system to boost conscription numbers following a series of setbacks in its conflict with Moscow, with harsh reforms set to come into force next week. “Globally speaking, starting on May 18, when the mobilization law comes into force, first of all, the approach to this war will change,” Lazutkin told Espresso TV on Saturday. “Because this situation, when some people are fighting at the front lines, while others are living their quiet lives, is obviously coming to an end.” Life in Kiev is “strikingly different” from the situation in the east of the country, which is “abnormal,” according to the official.

“It would be normal if our enemy was weak. But with such an enemy, the whole country and the whole society need to mobilize,” Lazutkin added. Ukraine has been desperate to replace nearly half a million casualties – by Moscow’s estimates – since the outbreak of hostilities with Russia in February 2022. Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu said last week that Ukraine has lost more than 111,000 soldiers in 2024 alone. Last month, President Vladimir Zelensky enacted amendments to the conscription rules, lowering the draft age to 25, automating summons and greatly expanding the powers of enlistment officers while introducing assorted restrictions for draft dodgers.

The country’s foreign ministry has suspended consular services for military-eligible Ukrainians abroad. Under the legislation, the fines for violations of the military registration rules will also increase up to $520, with Ukrainian authorities threatening to block bank accounts and impose penalties on the property of those trying to avoid military service. In response to the changes, there has been a surge in Ukrainians men seeking to flee the country. Border Service spokesman Andrey Demchenko recently said that around 120-150 people are caught trying to flee Ukraine every day, while some end up dying while trying to cross the border.

Costs too many votes.

• Trump Sees Biden Willing To Stop All Aid To Israel Soon (TASS)

Former US President Donald Trump believes that the incumbent US leader, Joe Biden, will soon stop providing Israel with any aid. “Biden wants to immediately stop all aid to Israel,” Trump wrote on his page on Truth Social on Friday. Earlier, he said that the Democratic Party, of which Biden is a member, actually hates Israel. US President Joe Biden said in an interview with CNN on May 8 that Washington will stop providing some weapons to Israel if its forces enter Rafah. Later on Wednesday, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin explained that the US was reviewing some short-term military aid to Israel over the situation around the Gaza city. On May 5, Axios reported, citing two Israeli officials, that the US administration had put a hold on an ammunition shipment to Israel for the first time since October 7, 2023. On May 7, Politico quoted people familiar with the deliberations as saying that the United States was holding shipments of precision bombs to send a political message to Israel.

Yes.

• Revisionism Erasing Russia’s Lead Role in WWII Akin to Holocaust Denial (Sp.)

The push by the West to minimize and erase the contributions of Soviet Russia in defeating Nazism and fascism in WWII is a deplorable act of historical revisionism that should be condemned, just as Holocaust denial is condemned by most of society In recent years, there has been an attempt to minimize Russia’s contributions to the war effort against the Nazis, despite the long historical consensus that they did more to defeat the German army than any other country and sacrificed more to accomplish that, some 25 to 27 million Russians, than any other country. Worse yet, some have even gone as far as to equate the Soviets with the Nazis or even paint Nazism as an unfortunate response to the true danger: communism.

“There has also been a decades-long push to equate communism in the USSR with Nazism in Germany,” writes Conor Gallagher in Naked Capitalism. “While originally more of a fringe view, it started to go mainstream back in 2008 when the European Parliament adopted a resolution establishing August 23 as the ‘European Day of Remembrance for the victims of Stalinism and Nazism.’ Also called Black Ribbon Day, the US in 2019 also adopted a resolution to observe the date.”

Also in 2019, Gallagher points out, the European Parliament adopted a resolution blaming the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact for the Second World War, implying that the Soviets were as responsible as the Nazis for the war. “What the Soviet Union did was astronomical, and they paid a very tremendous cost. 27 million lives lost. And, the fact that there is an attempt to tamper with that narrative by Western leaders is really outrageous,” analyst and journalist Caleb Maupin told Sputnik’s The Critical Hour.“ All around the world, people understand that what they call Holocaust revisionism is unacceptable… There are European countries that have laws against that, will put people in jail for doing that. Well, if you try to denigrate the heroic efforts of the Soviet people or the great sacrifices they made with 27 million of their people dying in that war, how is that any different?”

In February, former US President Donald Trump reminded Americans that it was the Russians who were primarily responsible for Adolf Hitler’s defeat. “You’re really up against a war machine in Russia. Russia, what [did] they do? They defeated Hitler, they defeated Napoleon. They are a war machine,” Trump said, leading CNN commentator Jim Sciutto to call those historically factual remarks “a favorite Putin talking point.” Considering that Russian President Vladimir Putin is famously known for his ability to quickly recall historical facts, Sciutto might be right, but not in the way he is portraying. Those with the truth on their side often use historical facts as talking points. “World War II was one of the most devastating wars in history, and the fact that America stood with Britain and France and the Soviet people and the Chinese people to defeat the menace of fascism, that is a very, very important moment in world history, and, seeing that narrative denigrated is outrageous,” Maupin argued.

Confusing article.

• Judge Trashes Election Lawsuit by the Elias Law Firm (Turley)

The firm of former Clinton campaign general counsel Marc Elias has lost another election case in a spectacular fashion. The Chief Judge of the Western District of Wisconsin, James Peterson (an Obama appointee), did not just reject but ridiculed the Elias Law Group challenge to a witness requirement for absentee voting. Elias has been previously sanctioned in court and accused of lying in the Steele dossier scandal by journalists and others. U.S. District Judge James Peterson ruled against the lawsuit brought by the Elias Law Group, arguing that the witness requirement violated the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and Civil Rights Act of 1964. The state statute under § 6.87(2) describes what the witness must certify. The statute first sets forth in two sentences what the voter must certify on the ballot envelope. The first requirement concerns the voter certifying that he or she meets the requirements for voting generally and for voting absentee in Wisconsin.

The second requirement is certification that the voter followed the process for preparing the absentee ballot. These are the called the “first voter certification” and the “witness certification.” The witness certification refers to a witness certifying “all of the above,” which is obviously referring to the language on preparing the absentee ballot. Elias argued that it requires certification of everything that preceded it on the details of the voter’s record etc. In the court’s opinion, Judge Peterson expresses disbelief at the lunacy of the Elias argument, writing: “Normally, the court would begin by searching for other textual clues in the statute. But in this case, the most obvious problem with plaintiffs’ interpretation is that it simply does not make any sense.”

The court then notes that: “Under plaintiffs’ interpretation, every witness would have to determine the voter’s age, residence, citizenship, criminal history, whether the voter is unable or unwilling to vote in person, whether the voter has voted at another location or is planning to do so, whether the voter is capable of understanding the objective of the voting process, whether the voter is under a guardianship, and, if so, whether a court has determined that the voter is competent. See Wis. Stat. §§ 6.02 and 6.03. Many witnesses would be unable to independently verify much of the required information. The statute allows any adult U.S. citizen to serve as a witness, suggesting that a wide variety of people should be able to do the job…It makes no sense to interpret § 6.87 in a way that would make compliance virtually impossible.

If plaintiffs’ interpretation were correct, it would mean that countless absentee ballots over decades were invalid because the witness certified that the voter was qualified to vote and met the other requirements in the first voter certification, even though the witness had no basis for such a certification.” However, it gets even wackier. They argued that a simple witness requirement constituted a type of illegal vouching under the Voting Rights Act. This is a reference to the Jim Crow era when a registered voter had to vouch for a new voter, a system meant to prevent African Americans from voting.

The case adds to a long litany of losses and controversies for Elias. That record includes allegations of lying to reporters and subverting voters. Elias featured prominently in the filings of Special Counsel John Durham. It was Elias who made the key funding available to Fusion GPS, which in turn enlisted Steele to produce his now discredited dossier on Trump and his campaign. During the campaign, reporters did ask about the possible connection to the campaign, but Clinton campaign officials denied any involvement. Weeks after the election, journalists discovered that the Clinton campaign hid payments for the Steele dossier as “legal fees” among the $5.6 million paid to Perkins Coie.

“..the French president may be using Russophobia and scaremongering tactics to satisfy his ambition of leading the European Union.”

• Macron ‘Hopes’ France Won’t Go To War With Russia (RT)

French President Emmanuel Macron has said Paris seeks to avoid direct involvement in the Ukraine conflict, but that an intervention may be necessary to deter Russia from advancing too far. The European Union “would lose all credibility and security” if Russia were to prevail, Macron said in a video posted on X (formerly Twitter) on Saturday, responding to a question on whether France is “going to go to war.” “Our own future and our security is at stake in Ukraine,” the French leader argued, stressing that in addition to delivering more military equipment to Kiev, EU nations must be “ready to act” if “the Russians are going too far.”

“So no, I hope with all my might that we won’t have to go to war,” he said, insisting that France is a “peace power.” However, Paris needs to continue to arm itself in order to “protect peace,” Macron continued, stressing that intervention must remain an option if the country’s interests are threatened. “We have to be dissuasive and credible towards our adversaries sometimes by telling them: ‘If you go too far and if you threaten our interests, my own security, then I do not rule out intervening’,” he said. Macron’s comments echoed his previous non-committal statements on a potential deployment of troops in Ukraine. In February, the French President refused to rule out the prospect of NATO boots on the ground, claiming that the EU’s credibility “will be reduced to zero” if Ukraine is defeated.

A few months later he urged EU nations to boost their military spending and arms production to reduce dependence on Washington. The French president doubled down in an interview with the Economist earlier this month, calling the Kremlin the main threat to EU security and saying that keeping the option of deploying troops in Ukraine is necessary as a “wake-up call,” while defending his “strategic ambiguity” approach. Moscow has criticized Macron’s “dangerous talk,” with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov claiming that the French president may be using Russophobia and scaremongering tactics to satisfy his ambition of leading the European Union.

“.. Ursula von der Leyen was also present at the meeting “to wag her finger in Xi’s face..”

• Xi’s Grand Chess Game: How China Outplays US in Europe (Sp.)

Xi Jinping’s recent European tour was largely perceived as a PR success by China, highlighting the EU’s interest in Chinese investments and market access despite its tough rhetoric, according to Jeff J. Brown. Brown is the author of The China Trilogy, presents blogs and podcasts at China Rising Radio Sinoland, is the producer of China Tech News Flash!, is co-founder and curator of the Bioweapon Truth Commission Global Online Library, and is the founder of Seek Truth From Facts Foundation. “[French President Emmanuel] Macron and Xi signed 18 agreements on technology, agriculture, aviation, green development, SME [small and medium enterprise] cooperation, and people-to-people exchanges, which is good PR for both countries,” Brown told Sputnik, commenting on the first leg of Xi’s trip.

“Xi and Macron will play to their citizens’ hope for deeper Sino-European cooperation and the Old Continent’s industrial sector will continue to quietly invest billions in China, behind the back of Uncle Sam.” France has a much better reputation among the Chinese than the Five Eyes, continued Brown, referring to the Anglophone intelligence alliance encompassing the US, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. However, EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen was also present at the meeting “to wag her finger in Xi’s face to remind him of how awful China is towards Europe and if it wasn’t for Beijing’s endless support for Russia, NATO would not be losing the war in Ukraine,” remarked the expert.

The EU’s relationship with China is going downhill, mostly due to US pressure, even though the trend contradicts the bloc’s economic interests, according to Brown. His views were shared by veteran Asia-Pacific affairs expert Thomas Pauken II. “We’re going to see probably improved relations between China and France,” Pauken told Sputnik, explaining that the talks likely included some “key factors in how France and China, their trade and investment ties, [evolve]. But, this will not lead to an improvement between China and the EU Commission.”

There is no grand scheme. There are small steps.

• Will Xi Pry Europe From US? (Sp.)

Chinese President Xi Jinping concluded his five-day tour of Europe on Friday, having visited three countries: France, Hungary and Serbia. During the visit, Xi promoted China’s vision of a multipolar world and discussed economics and its relationship with Russia. The visit to Europe by Xi, his first in five years, was designed to increase its global reach and give Europe an alternative to a US-led foreign policy that has dominated the continent for decades. One could even say he is trying to pry Europe away from the United States, as the rising power of China and the waning power of the United States seem destined to remain on a collision course. “[Xi] doesn’t really want to face a united front of the Us and the EU in the way Russia has faced on Ukraine. So he’s trying his best to [pry] the Europeans away,” Dr. George Szamuely, a senior research fellow at the Global Policy Institute told Sputnik’s Fault Lines.

The selection of the three countries Xi picked was intentional, partially because each of them has significant historic anniversaries with China, but more importantly, Xi likely sees a chance to make more inroads in each of them. Serbia was the easiest case for Xi to make inroads, Serbia and China have been growing their economic ties recently and when Xi arrived at the Presidential palace, he was greeted by crowds waving Chinese flags and chanting “China, China, China.” Xi’s trip coincided with the 25th anniversary of the NATO bombing of the Chinese embassy in Serbia, and the Chinese president visited the site of the bombing, which killed three Chinese journalists. “Serbia is still very resentful about NATO’s bombing in 1999, and that’s formed the bond with China because, of course, the Chinese embassy was destroyed during the NATO bombing,” Szamuely explained. “So that kind of creates this bond between China and Serbia as victims of NATO.”

Hungary, likewise, has a strong relationship with China and is quickly becoming China’s entry point for the EU market. It was the 75th anniversary of Hungary and China opening relations, and both countries seemed eager to continue developing their economic ties. “[Xi] went to Serbia and Hungary, two fairly small countries that don’t really carry that much weight, but will nonetheless represent a certain independent way of thinking in Europe. The kind of thinking that Xi Jinping would like to encourage,” Szamuely said. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has distanced his country from other EU members on several issues in recent years, including Ukraine. Last year, Orban held up an EU aid package to Ukraine for months, angering others in the bloc. Hungary’s relationship with China may also allow Xi to circumvent EU tariffs on Chinese EVs, another issue sure to anger Brussels.

During his visits, Xi and his counterparts pledged to continue growing their economic ties and said that a $2.1 billion high-speed rail project that will connect the capitals of Hungary and Serbia will move forward, largely financed with Chinese loans. Both Hungary and Serbia are participants in China’s Belt and Road initiative. But it was Xi’s trip to France that could really change the geopolitical landscape if the two countries start to move closer. The two countries also shared an anniversary during Xi’s visit, it being 60 years since the two countries opened diplomatic relations. More importantly, France is still one of the most powerful countries in the EU and, along with Germany, tends to direct the union’s policies. While in practice, France has been virtually tied to the United States’ foreign policy, French President Emmanuel Macron has expressed a desire to step out from Washington’s shadow.

“Last year, when Macron visited China, on his way back, he talked a lot about Europe needing to carve out strategic autonomy, Europe needing to pursue an independent foreign policy, and, above all, he said we should not blindly follow the United States. Now, Macron didn’t really pursue that,” Szamuely stated. “But probably, Xi Jinping thought, well, that’s a good sign, you know, maybe there’s still some hope in Europe.”

Saudi parasols

We have pot holes and crumbling bridges…they have this pic.twitter.com/bAiLcA5TbS

— eve (@eveforamerica) May 11, 2024

Slam dunk

Project Slam Dunk pic.twitter.com/aioS09iSt5

— illuminatibot (@iluminatibot) May 11, 2024

Shepherd
https://twitter.com/i/status/1789291891558916343

Baby cheetah

Adopting and raising a baby cheetah that lost its family.pic.twitter.com/W892t3KEhs

— Figen (@TheFigen_) May 11, 2024

Belgian
https://twitter.com/i/status/1789382149663027519

Bat

The effort of a person who healed a bat he found injured and raised it by taking care of it like a baby …

pic.twitter.com/tQFzfGafdX

— Figen (@TheFigen_) May 11, 2024

Sheer power
https://twitter.com/i/status/1789319688100454745

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