Nov 062024
 

At 1.43AM:

 

Will America Survive the Election? (Paul Craig Roberts)
With JD Vance and Elon Musk, Suddenly Ideas Are Back in this Campaign (Ron Paul)
77 Days of Transition (ET)
WikiLeaks: 5 Questions For Donald Trump If He Wins (ZH)
Celebrities Being Pressured To Publicly Back Harris – Musk (RT)
Trump Calls Nancy Pelosi “An Evil, Sick, Crazy B…” (MN)
Donald Trump ‘More Popular’ Than ‘Least Qualified’ Kamala Harris (Sp.)
In the Midst of a Roid Rage Election, a Reason to Have Hope (Turley)
Russian History As Therapy For Western Historians Who Just Want To Be Loved (JH)
The General Staff’s Map And President Putin’s Map Are Different (Helmer)
Novichok Was Not Detected – But There Was Cocaine (Helmer)
Schiff w/ Mitchell: Fed Policy is Backfiring (SchiffGold)
Ukraine Not Drafting Enough Troops – MP (RT)
Ukrainian MP Calls For Mobilization Of Women (RT)
Netanyahu Fires Israeli Defense Minister (RT)

 

 

 

 

https://twitter.com/i/status/1853701886282526996

Rogan Elon


https://twitter.com/i/status/1853567754093416932s

Shanahan

 

 

 

 

“November 5 is the last chance of redeeming America..”

Will America Survive the Election? (Paul Craig Roberts)

On November 3, I wrote about Meredith Furbish, a truth-suppressor for the Atlantic Council. She misrepresented my documentation of rulings by federal judges, state judges, Justice (sic) Department and Homeland Security (sic) officials, and state and local Democrat election officials, which legalized the vote theft mechanisms used illegally in the 2020 presidential election, as Russian-associated disinformation. The ubiquitous evidence that the Democrats were heavily into vote fraud was dismissed as a conspiracy theory. I assumed Meredith is a she, but perhaps “she” is an AI bot in an algorithm that connects information unfriendly with approved official narratives with Russian interference in US elections. It makes more sense that Meredith is an algorithm, because an algorithm, not being sentient. would not be aware of my completely documented case. The Democrats are determined that today’s election not be fair, and I am far from the only one who is aware of this.

Since I wrote, the US Supreme Court has had to intervene to prevent the Biden-Harris regime from preventing the state of Virginia from removing noncitizens, who do not have the right to vote, from the voter rolls. Of course, showing the totally partisan nature of all Democrats, the three female Democrat appointees to the Supreme Court dissented. It is perfectly OK with them that non-citizens have the same right to vote as citizens. This is the trouble with every Democrat appointee, whether to the courts or to the executive branch. They do not know the difference between a US citizen and someone who just illegally walked across the border. Despite court rulings against them, the Biden-Harris regime continues to hamper efforts to keep non-US citizens from illegally voting in the presidential election. The Daily Caller reports that “Several states say that the Biden-Harris administration has not cooperated with their efforts to prevent non-citizens from voting.”

The states have filed lawsuits against the corrupt Biden-Harris regime, the most corrupt regime in American history. “The Department of Justice (DOJ) sued Virginia in October and Alabama in September over their efforts to remove non-citizens.The excuse was it was too close to the election. Texas, Ohio and Florida filed their own lawsuits against the Biden-Harris regime this month for allegedly hampering their efforts to restore electoral integrity, while other states told the Daily Caller News Foundation the federal government has not supported attempts to identify non-citizen voters.” Note that for the Democrat totally corrupt Justice (sic) Department “closeness to an election” is more important than having a president elected with votes of illegal aliens. Will any person of integrity ever again consent to serve in a totally discredited US Department of Justice (sic)?

The Biden-Harris Justice (sic) Department and Homeland Security (sic) Department have steadfastly refused to cooperate with efforts to have voter rolls in which only American citizens are present. The Montana Secretary of State has complained of Homeland Security’s blockage of its efforts to ensure that American citizens determine our government, not immigrant-invaders. The Montana Secretary of State said: “Montanans deserve to know that our state’s voter rolls are accurate, and it’s imperative for election officials across the state and nation not to be stonewalled by our federal government to assist in our duties to ensure accurate voter rolls.” The Department of Homeland Security, a criminal agency in the hands of Democrats, has a Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements program . It prevents states from identifying illegals on their voter rolls, because it uses a unique immigration identifier unavailable to the states.

The Biden-Harris regime refuses to provide the information necessary for states to remove illegals from their voter rolls. On October 24, Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose said: “While the administration is blocking access to these records, the Department of Justice is suing or threatening to sue multiple states, including Ohio, who are trying to enforce their citizenship voting requirements.” “The Department of Justice (DOJ) sued Virginia in October and Alabama in September over their efforts to remove non-citizens. Texas, Ohio and Florida filed their own lawsuits against the administration this month for allegedly hampering their efforts, while other states told the Daily Caller News Foundation the federal government has not supported attempts to identify noncitizen voters.” Dear Readers, the Biden-Harris regime and the US Department of Justice (sic) are involved in an attempted coup to turn America into a one-party dictatorship. Americans who sit out this election or who vote Democrat are voting for tyranny. They are too stupid to know it, but they are so indoctrinated by the media and education that they have no realization of reality.

They think they are being compassionate toward suffering peoples from abroad. They are thinking that they need the household help that immigrant-invaders provide. They think that Trump sexualizes women, but endless women portray themselves online in porn videos for all the world to see. The United States of America and the entirety of the remains of the Western World are on the verge of total collapse. Only 13% of Americans believe the media. Even the editor-in-chief of the Wall Street Journal and the owner of the Washington Post have publicly stated that no one any longer believes what the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post report. Those Americans who give the Democrats enough votes to steal the election will have elected Tyranny in America. According to numerous reports, those with sufficient resources are already fleeing America. Astute Americans having watched the stupidity and incompetence of the American people for years have lost all confidence in the country, and they are departing. November 5 is the last chance of redeeming America.

Read more …

“While the last thing I am looking for is another job, I am encouraged by the outpouring of support and happy to help any effort to correct the wrong path we have been going down – a path toward total bankruptcy..”

With JD Vance and Elon Musk, Suddenly Ideas Are Back in this Campaign (Ron Paul)

This presidential campaign season may be one of those turning points in history for reasons good and bad. Anyone watching the one debate between the Republican and Democratic Party candidates would not have come away with the view that this was a great battle of competing principles and visions for the future. It was a campaign of name-calling and bullets, where one candidate avoided discussing ideas at all costs – and even avoided the media at all costs. Where the other candidate dodged two attempted assassinations while throwing red meat rhetoric to an understandably angry population. It was a campaign where, more than ever, the mainstream media completely abandoned any idea of being a neutral source of information and instead jumped into the ring on the side of one candidate. In the one debate between presidential candidates, the mainstream media went so far as to “fact check” one candidate while giving the other a “pass.”

The “fact check” turned out to be misinformation – something the mainstream media excels in – but they have long figured out that by the time the actual facts are in, people have already absorbed the falsehood. According to the conservative Media Research Center, mainstream media coverage of the Trump campaign was 85 percent negative while its coverage of the Harris campaign was 78 percent positive. If accurate, it explains why the public holds the media in such contempt. What felt missing in the campaign was a discussion of the real issues we are facing. The destruction caused by interventionism in our economy, in our lives, and in the rest of the world. There was no talk about the Federal Reserve and how it hurts the middle class, helps the wealthy, and greases the war machine.

Then, at the tail end, things got interesting. Republican candidate for Vice President, JD Vance, mentioned last week that he had come to the view that the Federal Reserve was not the benevolent force for good that its supporters claim. He didn’t say it in those exact words, but that was his point. Then Trump surrogate campaigner Elon Musk made an announcement that no-doubt terrified the DC swamp: were he to get the government efficiency job Trump suggested, he’d start with a bang, cutting two trillion dollars from the Federal budget!

We even had a little fun with it. After I posted some encouragement on Musk’s Twitter/X, he responded that he would be happy to have me join him looking for places to cut! While the last thing I am looking for is another job, I am encouraged by the outpouring of support and happy to help any effort to correct the wrong path we have been going down – a path toward total bankruptcy. Perhaps the most encouraging development this election cycle is the well-earned decline in the influence of the corrupt mainstream media. When Elon posted a funny meme of the two of us cutting government on his Twitter/X platform, it garnered some 50 million views! Compare that to the steady decline of mainstream media viewership. An alternative way of reporting and analyzing the events of our time is emerging on the ruins of the legacy media and it’s driving them insane. Good.

Read more …

“..the Constitution, Article Two says, ‘Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors.’ This bill is Congress trying to intrude on the authority of the state legislatures to do that.”

77 Days of Transition (ET)

The 2024 presidential election will see the first application of a 2022 amendment to the laws governing the transfer of power between administrations. There are 77 days between the Nov. 5 election and the Jan. 20, 2025, inauguration of the next president, during which time the president-elect will ready his or her administration to take over from President Joe Biden. The handoffs between an outgoing administration and a government-in-waiting have been largely drama-free for decades, and they have been governed by the rules enumerated in the Presidential Transition Act of 1963. The Electoral Count Reform Act will take effect this year, ensuring that five days after the election, the team of the winning candidate (or both candidates if the winner is not yet identified), will begin readying for the White House.

Unless another authority is designated by state law, the act appoints governors as the principal officials responsible for filing certificates of state presidential electors. By providing expedited court review of matters pertaining to electors, it guarantees that Congress can establish a final slate of electors. The vice president’s involvement in the electoral vote count is defined by the new act as purely ceremonial, and he or she is not given any power to affect the count in any way. It also reduces the possibility of challenges by raising the threshold for congressional objections to one-fifth of each house. Previously, a single member of both chambers was needed to enter an objection to an elector or slate of electors. Additionally, the General Services Administration (GSA) is now required to provide money to both candidates in the event that a candidate does not withdraw their candidacy within five days following the election. This change affects the presidential transition process. The GSA will cut off financing to the unsuccessful campaign once the results are finalized.

The initial responsibility of the successful candidate is to acquire knowledge of the current agency missions, policies, and ongoing projects, as well as to commence the process of filling political positions in the executive branch, ranging from Cabinet secretaries to press assistants. The new team is provided guidance by career leaders and appointees from the outgoing administration to assist in the launch of its government. They also provide briefings on significant issues and facilitate inquiries. An orderly transition has long been dependent on the flow of resources. Delays occurred following the 2020 presidential election as President Donald Trump questioned the validity of the election results as they were being reported. Because Trump was contesting the results in court, there was a delay in the start of the transition from Election Day on Nov. 3, 2020, to Nov. 23.

Emily Murphy, then head of the GSA, reviewed the transition law from 1963 and concluded that she lacked the legal authority to determine a winner and commence funding and collaboration with the transition to a Biden administration. Weeks after the election, Murphy sent a Letter of Ascertainment to Biden and commenced the transition process after Trump’s efforts to contest the results had collapsed across key states. According to the GSA’s guidelines on the new rules, the amendment eliminates lengthy delays and states “an affirmative ‘ascertainment’ by GSA is no longer a prerequisite for obtaining transition support services.” However, the new law also effectively mandates federal support and cooperation for both candidates to initiate a transition. It is stated that such support should persist until “significant legal challenges” that could affect electoral outcomes have been “substantially resolved” or until electors from each state convene in December to formally select an Electoral College winner.

Under this mandate, Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris may find themselves forming rival administrations for weeks. The Electoral Count Reform and Presidential Transition Improvement amendment to the Presidential Transition Act was passed in December 2022. During a committee hearing on the Electoral Count Act on Aug. 3 that year, Sen. Joe Manchin (I-W.Va.) said, “We were all there on Jan. 6 … We have a duty [and] responsibility to make sure it never happens again.” Manchin was referring to the events on Jan. 6, 2021, when protesters breached the U.S. Capitol while Congress was counting electoral votes.

Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) said in her testimony: “In four out of the past six presidential elections, the Electoral Count Act’s process for counting electoral votes has been abused with frivolous objections being raised by members of both parties. But it took the violent breach of the Capitol on Jan. 6 to really shine a spotlight on how urgent the need for reform was.” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) opposed the bill, stating in a press release: “This bill is a bad bill. … It’s bad policy and it’s bad for democracy. There are serious constitutional questions in the bill. The text of the Constitution, Article Two says, ‘Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors.’ This bill is Congress trying to intrude on the authority of the state legislatures to do that.”

Read more …

“Will “swamp” insiders flatter their way into influential roles and take control of your administration, reducing MAGA to mere rhetoric?”

WikiLeaks: 5 Questions For Donald Trump If He Wins (ZH)

On Tuesday, as Americans head to the polls in a tight race to determine who will be the next president, WikiLeaks has issued five big questions for a potential future Trump administration. When in 2016 Trump defeated former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, many among Trump’s base and fiercest supporters had high hopes that he would truly “drain the swamp” while completely realigning US foreign policy in opposition to the neocons, including ending the ‘forever wars’ in the Middle East. After all, he was the first GOP nominee in history to trash Republican George Bush’s decision to invade Iraq in 2003. And later as president he called the Iraq war “the single worst decision ever made.” But these high hopes turned to disappointment when Trump willingly brought into his administration some of the very neocons who have long been part of the problem, or arguably who are at the very heart of the swap, or the Washington blob. He put into powerful positions people like John Bolton, Mike Pompeo, William Barr, and Elliott Abrams.

Of course, as Trump himself now fully knows, these officials did much to sabotage any sincere efforts of the administration on things like getting US troops out of Syria, and ultimately turned on him. Trump’s supporters also back in 2016 had high hopes that he would pardon Julian Assange and Edward Snowden, and also declassify all records related to the sham ‘Russiagate’ drive concocted by the Clinton campaign alongside Hillary’s deep state allies. Sadly, none of that happened, as to a large degree ‘the swamp’ quickly became well-ensconced in the Trump White House. Many became the ‘enemy within’ the administration, and after leaving wrote books and went on speaking tours where the main topic became maligning Trump’s leadership and attacking him as a person. With all of this in mind, WikiLeaks has publicly issued the following questions for Trump, anticipating his possible return to the White House…

1. How will you handle the so-called deep state “wolves in MAGA hats” circling your transition team, posing as MAGA to obtain powerful positions in a prospective Trump administration? After all, personnel is policy.

2. In your previous administration, you appointed figures like Mike Pompeo, John Bolton, William Barr (former CIA), Robert O’Brien, Nikki Haley, and Elliott Abrams, who often opposed your “America First” rhetoric, especially on foreign policy and freedom of speech. If elected again, can you assure that these individuals, or others like Tom Cotton and Marco Rubio—both funded by arms companies—will not hold positions in your administration?

3. Many of these individuals have not only opposed your policies but have actively worked against you, even putting their weight behind your prosecution. For instance, Mike Pompeo accused you of keeping classified documents, suggesting that doing so endangered U.S. soldiers. He also directed the CIA to draw up plans to assassinate Julian Assange, suppressed the release of JFK files at the CIA’s request, and claimed, “There is no deep state at the CIA.” What is your stance toward those who merely feign support for MAGA?

4. Many of these former officials have now cashed in and make substantial profits from lobbying for arms companies, banks, and foreign corporations. For example, Pompeo founded American Global Strategies, which advises arms companies, joined the Israeli disinformation and censorship company Cyabra, and took positions with Japanese steel firm Nippon Steel (lobbying to increase foreign steel imports to the U.S.) and arms company DYNE Maritime (seeking AUKUS-related contracts). He even launched his own military-industrial investment bank, Impact Investments, and, like Hunter Biden, joined the board of a Ukrainian company, Kievstar, despite lacking relevant experience. While Pompeo’s case may be extreme, others have similarly lucrative roles. Will you ban appointments for those who have financial incentives to start wars, or increase mass surveillance and censorship?

5. A growing faction within the Republican Party and among independents advocates for a foreign policy less driven by CIA influence and arms industry profits. Figures like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard have called for increased oversight of the CIA and reduced foreign interventions.

However, personnel is policy. Will “swamp” insiders flatter their way into influential roles and take control of your administration, reducing MAGA to mere rhetoric?

Read more …

And now they look stupid.

Celebrities Being Pressured To Publicly Back Harris – Musk (RT)

American celebrities are publicly endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris in the US presidential election race partly because their job security is on the line, tech billionaire Elon Musk claimed on Joe Rogan’s podcast on Monday. Multiple heavyweights in the US entertainment industry, including some who were previously apolitical, have backed the Democratic candidate for president. Hosting Musk on his show, Rogan called the rallying behind Harris “strange,” suggesting that celebrities “think it’s going to get them more movies or something.” Musk claimed that the opposite is true, and that “these celebrities, they get a call from someone powerful in Hollywood. That person says: ‘You know it would be really great if you endorsed Kamla.’”

There is an implicit threat that failure to do so would result in not receiving further opportunities in the industry, Musk said. They don’t make the threat. They don’t need to. But everyone knows what would happen if you don’t [back Harris]. The entrepreneur is a key supporter of former President Donald Trump, the Republican nominee, and intends to take a cabinet-level job in his potential administration. After his interview with Musk, Rogan publicly endorsed Trump, saying that the tech billionaire’s arguments had convinced him.

Hollywood, which has historically leaned left politically, has become highly intolerant to descent, Rogan said. As recently as during President Barack Obama’s term in office, a star of the magnitude of Clint Eastwood could be openly Republican without apparent repercussions, Rogan noted. A few decades ago, Ronald Reagan went from being a Hollywood actor into politics, ultimately being elected to the White House with the Republicans. “Once Trump got into office, he became this focal point, where all logic was thrown out the window,” Rogan suggested. “It’s just ‘Trump is bad, you have to attack Trump.’” Superstar singers Taylor Swift, Lady Gaga, Rihanna, and Jennifer Lopez, as well as actor Harrison Ford, are some of the big names to have endorsed Harris.

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“I don’t use much [profanity], you know, every once in a while, and it’s never a real bad word, it’s never bad … but it is a little better when you use foul language..”

Trump Calls Nancy Pelosi “An Evil, Sick, Crazy B…” (MN)

During his final rally in Michigan, president Trump gave a succinct description of exactly who his supporters are pitted against. During the two hour speech that started just after midnight, Trump referred to former speaker and Democrat kingpin Nancy Pelosi, noting “She’s a crooked person, she’s a bad person. Evil.” “She’s an evil, sick, crazy b—-” he said, stopping short of saying the word “bitch.” “It starts with a B, but I won’t say it. I wanna say it,” Trump boomed. “I don’t use much [profanity], you know, every once in a while, and it’s never a real bad word, it’s never bad … but it is a little better when you use foul language,” he continued, adding “These are bad people.”

Trump reiterated that his real opponent is not Kamala Harris but an “evil Democrat system”. “We will defeat the corrupt system in Washington. Because I’m not running against Kamala, I’m running against an evil Democrat system. These are evil people,” he asserted. “I wasn’t running against Biden either,” Trump further noted, adding “He was stuck in a basement. I didn’t even run against him. Now running against a very evil system, and we have to defeat that system, and America’s future will be an absolutely incredible one.”

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No-one will remember Kamala. Except her handler Obama.

Donald Trump ‘More Popular’ Than ‘Least Qualified’ Kamala Harris (Sp.)

Though the presidential race in the US appears to be pretty close, Republican candidage Donald Trump is a “more popular candidate,” says retired US Air Force Lt.Col. Karen Kwiatkowski, who is also a former analyst for the US Department of Defense. “He’s certainly the more energetic candidate. He’s the more dynamic candidate. And he gets a lot of news coverage, both good and bad,” Kwiatkowski remarks. Comparing Trump and his Democratic rival Kamala Harris, Kwiatkowski observes that the former appears more media-savvy. “He’s very out there in the media… You know, he makes news. So people are aware of him,” she explains. “And we have a lot of social media craziness around. And I see it more around the Trump side where they’re either promoting Trump, laughing with Trump, laughing at Trump.”

Meanwhile, Harris is “the least qualified presidential candidate that has ever made it this far in the race,” says Kwiatkowski, who also branded the Democrat as “the least qualified vice president” of the United States. “So having a very qualified guy running against a very unqualified person, that’s unusual,” she muses. The fact that Harris made it this far is “very concerning,” Kwiatkowski warns, arguing that “something has changed” in the United States. Kamala Harris winning the upcoming US presidential election would be a “miraculous” thing, says Kwiatkowski. She also described Trump surviving an attempt on his life by accidentally moving his head in the same fashion. While Trump’s rivals in the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections, Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden, respectively, were both career politicians who enjoyed strong support within the Democratic Party, Harris got zero primary votes from her fellow Democrats and performed “badly” both in her campaign and as vice president of the US, Kwiatkowski notes.

“I don’t know how Biden is to work for, but as vice president, she’s not done anything that she can really crow about,” Kwiatkowski observes. “And she has refused to separate her policies from the current administration, which is what people tend always.” Thus, Kwiatkowski points out, people who will vote against Harris are going to be voting “against the current administration and all of its policies and whatever is blamed on that administration.” “Certainly the economy in the United States, crime, immigration, war – the Ukraine war is not as popular as it once was. It’s very unpopular, in fact,” Kwiatkowski says, adding that the war Israel wages in Gaza and Lebanon “is not popular either” and that Trump supposedly already advised Netanyahu to end it.

Americans have come a long way since the 2020 election, becoming both “angrier” and “wiser” than before, Kwiatkowski says. “My prediction is that we will not have this giant breakdown in society no matter who wins. We will not have this new civil war if Trump wins or if Kamala Harris is named the winner,” she postulates. If Harris wins, Kwiatkowski suggests, the Republicans will be “enraged” and there may be “marches on Washington,” but these actions will be taken “in the context of understanding how the state, how DC, how the federal government will respond to them.”

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“He could not shut up, so he decided to become an American instead..”

In the Midst of a Roid Rage Election, a Reason to Have Hope (Turley)

When President Joe Biden took the podium in his hometown of Scranton, Pa., to campaign for Vice President Kamala Harris, many expected a return to the “self-professed unifier” Biden from the 2020 election, particularly after his recent comments calling tens of millions of Trump supporters “garbage.” If so, they were disappointed when it turned out to be the “take him behind the Gym” Biden. Speaking through clenched teeth, Biden seethed that he wanted to “smack [Trump] in the ass.” Even with the Harris campaign alarmed over his costly gaffes, Biden clearly could not resist the rage. He is not alone. This entire election seems to be a type of political roid rage. In my book, “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage,” I discuss how rage rhetoric and rage politics have long been part of our history. Politicians will often intentionally trigger rage to rally voters not in support of their policies but in opposition to their opponents.

However, Biden’s seeming inability to keep his rage in check is a common feature of this rage politics. As I wrote in the book, “rage is liberating, even addictive. It allows us to say and do things that we would ordinarily avoid, even denounce in others.” It is also contagious. Across the country, people are yelling at neighbors, tearing down signs, and even assaulting each other. What they are unwilling to admit is that they enjoy the rage. They like it. As someone who has written about rage rhetoric and covered presidential elections for over two decades for different networks, I should be accustomed to these scenes. I am not. From the scenes outside of the Trump trial in Manhattan to the scenes outside of political rallies in Virginia, I find the rage depressing and deflating.

However, in flying to New York this weekend to join the Fox election coverage, I had a moment of real hope. I was driven to the airport by a man who told me that he was just months from his citizenship and how he and his wife were so thankful to soon be U.S. citizens. He came from a Middle Eastern nation where he long admired the United States for its freedoms, particularly the freedom of speech. Indeed, in his home country, he constantly ran into trouble with his government and was warned by his imam that he had to stop acting “like an American” by speaking his mind. He could not shut up, so he decided to become an American instead. He then told me how confused he and his wife are by this election. They love the United States and cannot understand why people are so hateful and angry. “It is like they do not understand what they have here,” he noted.

Listening to him over the course of our ride, I started to feel something that I had not felt in a while: real hope. Sometimes, our truest citizens are found among our newest converts. As I discuss in my book, the problem with our democracy is that most citizens grew up in a nation where basic rights like the freedom of speech are guaranteed. They have never known the absence of such rights. This man and his wife have. They were not born here. They had to escape their country at great peril and cost to become U.S. citizens. They chose us and what we stand for. They follow other great Americans drawn to these shores by something unique about this country. One was Tom Paine. The man who was credited with rallying a nation behind a revolution only landed upon these shores two years before the Declaration of Independence. His rocketing to fame with the publication of Common Sense enraged some, like John Adams, who viewed him as an unkempt, unknown rabble-rouser.

Yet, it was precisely Paine’s immigration that gave his words such clarity and power. He saw this emerging nation as unique for all of humanity, a nation where citizens could live free without the calcified social, economic, and political limits of the Old World. His voice resonated with this nation because it was so genuine and authentic. I heard that same voice on my way to the airport. Sometimes, it takes the newest among us to remind us who we are to not only the rest of the world but also to each other. I do not know what is coming out of that gate on election night. I have been there before. However, half of this country is going to be very, very upset either way this goes. What we need to struggle to remember is that this election does not define us. The rage does not define us. We defined ourselves almost 250 years ago and do so every day that new citizens like my new friend come to these shores. There is hope in who we are . . . even if we forget sometimes.

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Helmer. Great title.

Russian History As Therapy For Western Historians Who Just Want To Be Loved (JH)

It’s a pity when a 760-page history of the Russian leadership’s thinking during the Cold War period, 1945 to 2022, earns consignment to the waste bin within the first nineteen pages, and in just three sentences. This ratio of toxicity to prolixity – 1 to 40 — is exceptional, although the price asked for it by the publisher, Cambridge University Press — £30, $34.95 — isn’t so exorbitant as to exclude using the book as a doorstopper. This is Sergey Radchenko’s To Run the World: The Kremlin’s Cold War Bid for Global Power. Just weeks following the book’s launch date, Amazon is already trying to clear its stock by offering a discount of 25% to $26. That’s as competitive as the price of an elite brand of door sausage (aka draft stopper). According to Michael McFaul, once the Obama Administration’s Russia-hater in chief in Moscow and Washington, the “brilliant writing” is the “go-to source for understanding Soviet behaviour during the Cold War. Fiona Hill, McFaul’s Russia-hating successor during the Trump Administration, claims the book is “magisterial [and] help[s] explain why Vladimir Putin decided to invade Ukraine and confront the West”.

If you want to slam your door on those two, and block the winter winds starting again in the Ukraine, place Radchenko’s blockbuster between your bottom door rail and the sill. In that position, it will also do double-duty as warning from that piece of ancient Russian wisdom – it’s bad luck to shake hands over a threshold. As Anglo-American histories of Russian thinking go, Radchenko’s is the new one on the edge of an old, familiar black hole. He begins by announcing that “this book offers a radical new interpretation of the underlying motivations of Soviet foreign policy “. He follows with his three radical novelties:“what the Soviets saw as their ‘legitimate’ interests were often not seen as particularly ‘legitimate’ by anybody else., leading to a kind of ontological insecurity on the Soviet part that was compensated for by hubris and aggression”. “At the end of the Second World War Soviet policy makers surveyed the world… No one expected the Americans to stay in Europe”. “The infamous Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact carved up Eastern Europe and led directly to the outbreak of the Second World War.”

Radchenko’s new facts to substantiate these three claims aren’t new at all so there’s no point in rehashing them – in the maxim familiar in the Baltimore and Washington think tanks, Hak mir nisht keyn tshaynik – that’s Yiddish for don’t keep banging your teapot at me. Radchenko brings this to conclusion at page 30: “The Cold War was inevitable because Stalin made it so…[his] responsibility [is] best summarized by Jeffrey Lewis: ‘there were three causes of the Cold War: Stalin, Stalin, and Stalin.” Lewis is an ex-Pentagon employee and currently a junior academic at a think tank employing American and British retirees from the Pentagon and Ministry of Defense. It keeps its funding sources secret, but at Lewis’s previous think tank the funders included Bill Gates, George Soros, the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations.

Because Stalin is to blame at the beginning of this history, Radchenko comes to his second teapot-banging conclusion at the end of his history, page 603, when — without the benefit of historical archives or interviews with sources — Radchenko says Putin is a repeat of Stalin’s psychopathological craving to be loved by the West, especially by Americans. In his February 2022 speeches launching the Special Military Operation in the Ukraine, Putin “raved”, according to Radchenko; The war, Radchenko adds now, “was mainly Russia’s failure: it proved unwilling or unable to overcome its toxic resentments and imperialist impulses. But there was another factor in play. Stalin’s belligerent foreign policy, whatever his motivations, helped forge the West on an anti-Soviet basis. Throughout the Cold War, the Soviets tried hard to undermine Western unity even as they craved Western recognition. They never managed.”

In this history, Radchenko diagnoses Stalin with a personal case of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), who then inflicts his pathology on all the Russians, turning Soviet policy and now Putin’s, into Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (CPTSD). For the outcome, if not the cure, Radchenko goes back to Yiddish: “Perhaps, with the right combination of chutzpah and good luck, Russia could one day recover its illusive greatness and its insatiable, self-destructive ambition to run the world.”

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“..the demilitarized zone (DMZ) stretching westward to a depth calculated as the range of US and NATO-supplied artillery, drones and missiles..”

The General Staff’s Map And President Putin’s Map Are Different (Helmer)

For more than two months now, President Vladimir Putin’s orders to the General Staff have been to shorten the range of the electric war campaign to the area east of Kiev and the Dnieper River, and west of the advancing line of Russian forces. The General Staff have responded by limiting their strikes to electricity and other energy supplies for military repair and drone production plants, troop marshalling points, and logistic hubs supplying the Ukrainian forces in Kursk and along the front. This is the Putin Pause. The General Staff have understood it to allow strikes against energy infrastructure in Kharkov, Odessa, and the Sumy region. In recent days Boris Rozhin’s Colonel Cassad blog and the daily bulletins from the Ministry of Defense have also identified electric war raids at Kharkov and Odessa. How much of a territorial concession on the military map which Putin has directed Vladimir Medinsky to discuss in secret with the Ukrainians and Americans isn’t known.

What is known is the map of the General Staff’s targets since August 26. That was the date of the last Russian drone and missile attack on electricity production and distribution in the west of the country. Putin’s map, which he announced in his speech to the Foreign Ministry of June 14, lacked coordinates. On the one hand, Putin reiterated the objectives of the Special Military Operation he had announced on February 24, 2022, as “the protection of people in Donbass, the restoration of peace, and the demilitarisation and denazification of Ukraine. We did that to avert the threat to our state and to restore balance in the sphere of security in Europe.” On the other hand, the president said, “these conditions are simple. The Ukrainian troops must be completely withdrawn from the Donetsk and Lugansk people’s republics and Kherson and Zaporozhye regions. Let me note that they must be withdrawn from the entire territory of these regions within their administrative borders at the time of their being part of Ukraine.”

On the General Staff map, the difference between Putin’s second statement of terms and his first statement is the width of the demilitarized zone (DMZ) stretching westward to a depth calculated as the range of US and NATO-supplied artillery, drones and missiles for striking the new Russian regions and the Russian hinterland. Because the range of drones in current use against Russia has been extended to 800 kilometres, and applying this to the direct flight distance westward from Donetsk, the DMZ to assure Russian military security should stretch to a north-south line running through Rivne and Khmelnitsky (lead image). From Donetsk to Kiev, however, is a flight distance of 600 kms; from Donetsk to Odessa, 560 kms; to Kharkov, just 250 kms. This range of drone and missile lethality threatening Russian territory puts the future of Kiev, Odessa, and Kharkov squarely in the General Staff’s sights.

How the General Staff is drawing the DMZ map to achieve demilitarization of the Ukraine in military terms is one thing. How the objective of demilitarization is being mapped in the Kremlin is quite another. According to a well-informed military source, “the General Staff’s priority is defensibility. This is based on terrain, control of highways, bridges and railways, establishment of a land corridor to Transdnistria, and control of the South Ukraine Nuclear Power Plant (NPP), known as the Pivdennoukrainsk NPP in the Nikoalev region near Pervomaisk. The DMZ line then runs roughly northeast/southwest along the Kodyma River and highway connecting Balta on the Moldovan border with Pervomaisk. This would give Russian force deployment a defensible position with control over the major highways leading to the bridges across the Dnieper at Dniepropetrovsk and Kremenchuk. There will be no more reliance on the vulnerable bridges at Kherson and Kakhovka to ensure sound Russian logistics. Communication with Transdnistria will be ensured by control of the E58/581 highway which runs between Kherson and Tiraspol.”

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Speaks for itself.

Novichok Was Not Detected – But There Was Cocaine (Helmer)

The British Government’s narrative that Russian military agents, on orders from President Vladimir Putin, used Novichok in Salisbury in March 2018 continues to collapse. A secret chemical warfare agent revealed last week that two tests for Novichok, using special machines provided by the Porton Down chemical warfare laboratory, failed to confirm an organophosphate poison in either Dawn Sturgess or her boyfriend, Charles Rowley. The agent described himself in his witness statement and in a guarded appearance at the Dawn Sturgess Inquiry last week as a qualified medical doctor and pharmacology expert. “I currently work at Dstl [Defence Science and Technology Laboratory] Porton Down within the Chemical, Biological and Radiological (CBR) Division, and provide medical advice to the Ministry of Defence and other government Departments on CBR related threats… I was Chemical and Biological (CB) Medical Advisor to Dstl and the Operational teams in support of the investigations into the attack on the Skripals (Operation WEDANA) and the investigation into the poisoning of Dawn Sturgess and Charlie Rowley (Operation READ).”

The agent’s name was ordered to be kept secret by the Inquiry chairman and commercial consultant, Anthony Hughes (titled Lord Hughes of Ombersley). This is despite Hughes’s ruling that he would not keep the names secret of “those who were already sufficiently identified publicly in connection with the events of 2018.” FT49 is the cipher used for the Porton Down agent, although sources claim he has advertised his engagement in the Skripal, Sturgess and Rowley cases in several academic publications accessible on the internet. In his witness statement dated September 16, 2024, the Porton Down agent revealed that he had organized with doctors at the Salisbury District Hospital (SDH) to test the blood of Sturgess and Rowley, after their admission to the hospital on June 30, 2018, using special biochemical assay machines provided by Porton Down. One of the machines had been installed at SDH during the hospitalisation of Sergei and Yulia Skripal in March of 2018. A second Porton Down machine was in operation at a Birmingham toxicology laboratory.

Agent FT49 reported these machines had failed to detect evidence of the Novichok organophosphate in blood samples of Sturgess and Rowley. Government officials then ordered Porton Down itself to take over the blood testing to confirm the presence of Novichok. This is the first leak from an official source that Porton Down may have rigged the blood testing in order to fabricate the existence of Novichok and of the Russian attack. According to FT49, after “an unexpected failure to identify the organophosphate compounds by Birmingham’s analytical laboratory I suggested to Dr Jukes [Stephen Jukes, SDH doctor in charge of treating Sergei Skripal] that Dstl [Porton Down] should also receive a blood sample. Late morning of 2nd July 2018 I was made aware via a phone call from the ITU [Intensive Treatment Unit at SDH] that the Birmingham results were back; there was no evidence of a pesticide, despite cholinesterase inhibition, and the two patients [Sturgess and Rowley] did not have the same non-prescribed drugs in their blood other than a trace of cocaine.”

What this reveals is that both Sturgess and Rowley had been taking cocaine before their collapse. FT49 is also revealing – without expressly saying so — that on the day of their hospitalisation, Rowley had taken the heroin substitute methadone on prescription; Sturgess had not.

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“The CPI is a lie. The unemployment rate is a lie. All these government numbers are designed to create a false picture of prosperity that does not exist.”

Schiff w/ Mitchell: Fed Policy is Backfiring (SchiffGold)

Earlier this week, Peter joined Mark Mitchell on his podcast for a conversation on economics and monetary policy. They dive into the economic challenges facing the United States, focusing on structural issues like inflation, debt, and currency devaluation. Peter draws attention to the overlooked surge in gold prices, contrasting it with Bitcoin’s media spotlight, and discusses unrealistic promises by politicians on both sides regarding tariffs, tax cuts, and economic growth. To start, Peter and Mark point out the Fed’s plan to reduce long-term interest rates has backfired, leading said rates to rise even higher: “I thought that the catalyst for the next move up in long-term rates would be the Fed reducing short-term rates.

Part of the reason for this reduction in short-term rates was to try to bring down longer-term rates, particularly mortgage rates, because people are having a hard time paying these inflated home prices with normal mortgage rates. … But it backfired. As we’re talking this morning, the yield on a 10-year treasury is now at 4.3%, which is 60 basis points higher than it was when the Fed cut rates by 50 basis points.” Even 4.3% isn’t high enough to flush out decades of malinvestment. Just like a fever burns out a virus, the economy needs high interest rates to properly allocate investment: “Artificially low interest rates are part of the problem underlying the economy, and they are having very negative effects on the allocation of resources– malinvestments.

This is doing damage. We’re not saving enough; we’re borrowing and spending too much. Part of the solution to fixing what’s broken in the economy is to let interest rates go up. They actually need to be higher than they are right now. But the problem is, we have so much debt that we can’t afford it.” Recent jobs numbers are not optimistic, even though most government statistics probably understate the problems facing the economy. Peter explains that he looks at the year-over-year increase to the national debt, a metric he finds more reliable than headline statistics: “The CPI is a lie. The unemployment rate is a lie. All these government numbers are designed to create a false picture of prosperity that does not exist. They understate inflation, overstate growth, understate unemployment, understate the deficits. You can’t believe the information that comes out of the government.”

The government ignores bad data, and the media ignores gold’s record-setting year, choosing instead to focus on Bitcoin’s mediocre performance: “They completely ignore it [gold]. Maybe because it’s making a record high almost every day, so there’s nothing new about it. But when gold is doing this, it’s very significant. It’s sending a clear signal that the Fed is making a mistake, that the rate cuts are a mistake, that inflation is going to be a lot higher. … I’ll be watching financial news as gold hits a new high, and not only will they not discuss gold’s significant new high, they’ll go on and on about Bitcoin making a one-month high.” Peter hopes Donald Trump wins the rapidly approaching election, but urges realistic expectations about his policies, especially because of the incentives politicians face on the campaign trail:

“That’s what he’s promising. ‘Just elect me, and everything’s going to be great. Immediately, we’re all going to be so rich; it’s going to be crazy. And I’m going to collect trillions from the Chinese, and, you know, it’s all going to be great.’ But it’s not all going to be great—that’s the problem. And that’s going to be a problem for the administration because they set the bar so high, the expectations are so high. You kind of want to under-promise and over-deliver, but it’s hard to do that when you’re running for office.” How would we really make America great again? Start by slashing wasteful spending, then abolish the income tax: “We can’t go back to the system we had before the income tax unless we dismantle all the programs that we now have because of the income tax, which I’m all for. Get rid of Social Security, get rid of Medicare, get rid of Obamacare, shrink the government back down to its pre-1913 size. And that would really make America great again!”

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Two female MPS want more troops.

Ukraine Not Drafting Enough Troops – MP (RT)

Kiev’s military is not meeting its draft quotas amid high casualty numbers in the fight against Russia, Ukrainian MP Solomia Bobrovskaya has said in an interview. ”We have been lagging behind since September,” the lawmaker from the opposition Golos party told Great Lviv, a news outlet. “The mobilization rate has been on the decline since August, while in May we were meeting the target set by the general staff.” If current recruitment rates persist, the draft plan through December will not be fulfilled, Bobrovskaya warned. She blamed the senior Ukrainian leadership, including commander-in-chief Aleksandr Syrsky, for the situation. Their decisions have led to heavy losses at the front and the subsequent drop in enrollment, the MP claimed.

In August, Kiev launched an incursion into Russia’s Kursk region, diverting some of its best-equipped and most trained units for the operation. The force failed to make it very far.Russian troops are currently pushing the Ukrainians in Kursk Region back, having inflicted some 29,600 casualties in the process, according to Moscow. They are also reportedly making significant progress along other parts of the front. Earlier this year, Kiev overhauled its military service system. Ukrainian officials hoped that the simplification of mandatory conscription and heavier punishments for avoidance would help the army replenish its strength after its failed “counteroffensive” last year.

Ukraine needs to draft 500,000 people, as former military chief Valery Zaluzhny proposed, before being removed from office by Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky, MP Roman Kostenko argued last week. Meanwhile, lawmaker Mariana Bezuglaya urged this week for a mandatory draft of women to address the manpower shortage. Moscow has described the ongoing conflict as a US-triggered proxy war against Russia, which Washington intends to wage “to the last Ukrainian.” Multiple US officials and politicians have hailed military aid sent to Kiev as a relatively small cost for harming Russia without costing American lives.

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“..expanding conscription to both sexes in the name of equity..”

Ukrainian MP Calls For Mobilization Of Women (RT)

A Ukrainian lawmaker has called for the conscription of women into the country’s struggling mobilization campaign. MP Mariana Bezuglaya has insisited that it is high time to start targeting women to meet quotas, as Kiev’s military resources dwindle amid ongoing territorial loss on the frontline of the conflict with Russia. Ukraine currently allows for drafting men over the age of 25 and accepts female volunteers. Bezuglaya, however, has repeatedly advocated for expanding conscription to both sexes in the name of equity. “We currently have illegal discrimination against men,” Bezuglaya wrote on her Telegram channel on Monday. “Moreover, if women get mobilized, fewer men will get mobilized – this is one of the reasons for men to support the mobilization of their fellow [female] citizens.”

According to the lawmaker, mobilized women should get assigned to duties in the rear, such as clerks, personnel officers and in the security units, freeing up men to be moved to frontline duties and combat brigades. Others could be sent to military factories to boost the pace of production. “War cannot be an affair of the chosen ones, especially when it is not just about territories or spheres of influence, but about a nation’s existence and the right to life,” Bezuglaya wrote, adding that without the kind of mobilization she advocates, Ukraine is “doomed to lose” the conflict with Russia and its statehood as well. Bezuglaya noted that she has repeatedly submitted this proposal to the defense committee of the Verkhovna Rada, only to have the government and the generals shoot it down. “It’s a paradox,” she wrote.

“The Defense Ministry has failed in the mobilization policy, the generals are literally destroying their soldiers with ill-considered decisions, but this topic is not raised – it is too delicate, you see. Perhaps mobilized women would bring order to this chaos.” Bezuglaya’s comments come after another MP, Roman Kostenko, claimed that Kiev would need to draft another 500,000 men to replenish combat losses and rotate the battle-worn units along the front. Kostenko, himself a veteran, revealed that mobilization has been falling behind over the last two months. A member of Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky’s ‘Servant of the People’ party, Bezuglaya has frequently clashed with the military due to her hardline policies on the conflict against Russia. At one point she was added to Kiev’s Mirotvorets ‘kill list’ and in September, she survived a vote to oust her from the defense committee. Her jurisdiction was previously represented by Andrey Biletsky, founder of the neo-Nazi ‘Azov’ militia.

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“These issues even reached the public in an unacceptable manner, and, worse, became known to our enemies..”

Netanyahu Fires Israeli Defense Minister (RT)

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has fired Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, citing “significant gaps” in their position on the war against Hamas and Hezbollah. Foreign Minister Israel Katz has been offered the defense job, while Gideon Saar has been tapped to take his position if he leaves, according to Israeli media. “Serious differences arose between Gallant and me regarding the campaign’s management, with these disagreements accompanied by statements and actions that contradicted both government and cabinet decisions,” Netanyahu said in a statement on Tuesday, explaining his move. According to Netanyahu, wartime requires “complete trust” between the head of government and the defense minister and that trust “has eroded” between him and Gallant in recent months.

“I made repeated efforts to bridge these gaps, but they only widened. These issues even reached the public in an unacceptable manner, and, worse, became known to our enemies, who took pleasure and found advantage in it,” the prime minister added. Netanyahu praised Gallant’s replacement as a “bulldozer with quiet strength and responsible determination,” noting that Katz had headed the finance and intelligence ministries before taking on his current role. This is the second time Netanyahu has fired Gallant. The first time was in March 2023, when the defense minister openly criticized the government’s judicial reforms, which he said divided Israeli society and threatened the military. Following widespread street protests, Netanyahu reversed his decision in early April.

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Bureaucracy

 

 

Gotcha

 

 

Spin

 

 

Polychaetes

 

 

Sheep dog

 

 

Tucker Stella

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Oct 302024
 


Frans Masereel Montmartre 1925

 

Trump Supporters Are ‘Garbage’ – Biden (RT)
I’m The Opposite of a Nazi – Trump (RT)
Whoopi: Trump Will Break Up Interracial Marriages, Deport The Non-Whites (MN)
‘World’s Most Accurate Economist’ Predicts US Election Outcome (RT)
Musk Denies Allegations He Worked Illegally in America (ET)
Chaos and Crime: Legacy of the Biden-Harris Border Policies (Mark Green)
Steve Bannon Released From Prison After Serving 4 Months (ET)
Secessionism and Polarization on Rise in US (Sp.)
Jay Bhattacharya Receives Prestigious Award for Intellectual Freedom (Turley)
Assange’s Father on Von Der Leyen: EU Falls to Bits Under ‘Frau Genocide’ (Sp.)
When Evil Is Allowed In, Evil Stays (Paul Craig Roberts)
Ex-President Warns of Growing Ukrainian Anger Over Military Draft (RT)
Support For New UK PM collapses (RT)
Delusions Of Adequacy: How British Ambassadors Became A Joke (Jay)
A Heroic Preference For Self-Destruction Takes Hold In Israel (Alastair Crooke)
Mass Industrial Strikes Begin In Germany (RT)

 

 

 

 

Lethal

Bret

Georgia

PA fraud

MEP

RFK

Elon

Tucker Dore

Jocelyn

 

 

 

 

He said it while Kamala was doing her final speech at the Ellipse. That got no attention because of it. Was that the intention?

Trump Supporters Are ‘Garbage’ – Biden (RT)

The supporters of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump are “garbage,” outgoing US President Joe Biden said on Tuesday. He later claimed that he misspoke and meant to condemn a specific speaker at Trump’s recent Madison Square Garden rally. Biden made his comments during a Zoom call organized by the Hispanic advocacy group Voto Latino. He began by bringing up comedian Tony Hinchcliffe who made a joke on Sunday comparing Puerto Rico to “a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean.” “Just the other day, a speaker at [the Trump] rally called Puerto Rico a floating island of garbage,” Biden said, adding that Puerto Ricans are “good, decent honorable people.” “The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters. His demonization of Latinos is unconscionable, and it’s un-American,” Biden stressed. “It’s totally contrary to everything we’ve done, everything we’ve been.”

The president went on to accuse Trump of trying to “divide the country based on race,” and insisted that the Democratic candidate, Vice President Kamala Harris, “will be a president for all of America.” Biden later took to X to clarify that he had “referred to the hateful rhetoric about Puerto Rico spewed by Trump’s supporter at his Madison Square Garden rally as garbage.” “That’s all I meant to say. The comments at that rally don’t reflect who we are as a nation,” Biden wrote. The president’s remarks were quickly condemned by Trump’s allies. “He’s talking about everyday Americans who love their country,” Republican Senator Marco Rubio said, urging the Biden campaign to apologize. “We are not garbage, we are patriots who love America,” Rubio said during a Trump rally in Allentown, Pennsylvania.

Hinchcliffe himself had accused Democrats of overreacting to his set at the Madison Square Garden event. “These people have no sense of humor,” he wrote on X on Sunday, claiming that the Harris team had taken the joke out of context “to make it seem racist.” Both Democrats and Republicans have frequently accused each other of hateful rhetoric and demonization. Some conservatives have drawn a parallel between Biden’s ‘garbage’ comment and that of Hillary Clinton, who described Trump supporters in 2016 as a “basket of deplorables.” Trump himself has been recently criticized for labeling his opponents an “enemy from within.”

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“Trump explained that his father taught him to never use either “Nazi” or “Hitler” as a slur..”

“..the US soldiers who took part in the Normandy landings in June 1944 would have been offended [..] If you think those brave men were fighting for an open border and sex change surgeries for illegal aliens, the proper term for you is ‘dips**t”

I’m The Opposite of a Nazi – Trump (RT)

US Republican candidate Donald Trump has lashed out at Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign for comparing an event he held in New York’s Madison Square Garden last week with a rally of Nazi supporters at the same venue in 1939 at which speakers praised Hitler’s Germany. At the recent Trump event, comedian Tony Hinchcliffe compared Puerto Rico to a “floating island of garbage,” triggering a wave of rebuke from across the political spectrum. A senior advisor for the Republican campaign told the press that “this joke does not reflect the views of President Trump” and his team. Harris’ running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz jumped on the gaffe, telling a rally in Henderson, Nevada of a “direct parallel to a big rally that happened in the mid-1930s at Madison Square Garden.”

Trump responded by telling a crowd of backers in Atlanta, Georgia: “The newest line from Kamala and her campaign is that everyone who isn’t voting for her is a Nazi. We’re Nazis.” “I’m not a Nazi. I’m the opposite of a Nazi,” he stated. Trump explained that his father taught him to never use either “Nazi” or “Hitler” as a slur. Both words, among many other insults, have been hurled his way, he said. “They call me everything from a mad genius looking to take over the world to a very very stupid person,” according to Trump. While proclamations that Trump is a new Hitler who seeks to abolish democracy are nothing new, such language was only recently adopted by the Harris campaign. The vice president publicly called her rival a “fascist” last week, citing the opinion of retired General John Kelly, who served as the chief of staff in the Trump administration.

Trump’s running mate, Ohio Senator J.D. Vance, meanwhile, said at the same rally that “I imagine that nearly every person in this room has a relative who served in the Second World War. Our families actually went and defeated the Nazis. To call us Nazis is a disgrace.” Vance claimed that the US soldiers who took part in the Normandy landings in June 1944 would have been offended by the policies proposed by the Democratic campaign. “If you think those brave men were fighting for an open border and sex change surgeries for illegal aliens, the proper term for you is ‘dips**t’,” he declared.

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Completely gone. As is Mika.

NOTE: JD Vance’s wife is “non-white”.

Whoopi: Trump Will Break Up Interracial Marriages, Deport The Non-Whites (MN)

The media continues to make absurd assertions against Donald Trump in a desperate effort to derail his campaign just a week out from the election. The latest came via Whoopi Goldberg on The View who claimed that Trump plans to break up interracial married couples and deport the person who is not white. Not only that, but Golderberg also claimed that Trump would then “put the white guy with someone else.” It’s completely absurd claim that resides only in her warped reality. “He’s not gonna be – he’s not gonna say, ‘Oh, you’re with a white guy, I’m gonna keep you from being deported,’” Goldberg blurted. “No, he’s gonna deport you and put the white guy with someone else,” she ridiculously asserted.

“The man is out there!” she screamed wide eyed. Who is “out there” exactly? Who are the ones fomenting division? If this is what they’re like now, imagine what’s going to happen when Trump wins. As if that wasn’t enough batshit crazy, The View then wheeled out “Morning Joe” host Mika Brzezinski who literally started crying and saying all Trump supporters are Nazis. “These are the final hours,” she warned, adding “I come with such dire warnings, and I mean them from the bottom of my heart!” asserting that we are witnessing the “descent into fascism.”

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“..the most probable outcomes are: Trump victory; GOP clean sweep.”

‘World’s Most Accurate Economist’ Predicts US Election Outcome (RT)

Republican candidate Donald Trump will “most probably” win the US presidential election next month, economist Christophe Barraud, ranked by Bloomberg as the top forecaster of the American economy, has said. With one week to go until the election, Democratic candidate and current vice president Kamala Harris leads Trump by less than one percentage point, according to the New York Times, which has reported that the gap is narrowing and that battleground states remain “extraordinarily tight.” Making his prediction in a post on X (formerly Twitter) on Monday, Barraud wrote: “Looking at different metrics such as betting markets, polls, election modelers’ forecasts, financial markets, as of now, the most probable outcomes are: Trump victory; GOP clean sweep.”

Barraud is chief economist and strategist at Market Securities, and has been awarded the title of Top Forecaster of the US Economy by Bloomberg every year bar once since 2012. He also presented several possible scenarios of the US election outcome in an interview with Business Insider earlier this week. “A Trump win with a Republican sweep” and a majority in the Senate would enable the new president to implement tax cuts for corporations and households, as well as focus more on domestic rather than foreign policy, Barraud said. It would also have a short-term positive impact on US economic growth, creating a GDP boost between 2.1% and 2.3% in 2025, he added.

Among the other scenarios is a Trump victory with a divided Congress, according to the expert. This would limit his ability to cut taxes, forcing him to focus on foreign policy, likely by implementing trade restrictions and tariffs, Barraud said. The outcome would hurt global growth and slow the US economy in the long term, he added. If Harris wins with a divided Congress, there will be minimal changes to economic policies, according to Barraud. Earlier, Allan Lichtman, known as the “Nostradamus” of US elections for accurately predicting nine of the last ten presidential outcomes since 1984, said Harris will win the November 5 vote.

Trump Political Director

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“I was on a J-1 visa that transitioned to an H1-B. They know this, as they have all my records..”

Musk Denies Allegations He Worked Illegally in America (ET)

Tech billionaire Elon Musk has denied allegations that he worked illegally in the United States in the early days of his career. An Oct. 27 report from The Washington Post alleges that Musk began his career working illegally in the U.S. for a period in 1995 while he was building a Silicon Valley startup, Zip2, which sold for about $300 million four years later. The outlet cited company documents, former business associates, and a past CEO of the company who said investors were worried that Musk could be deported if discovered. In a series of posts on social media, Musk denied the allegations. Responding to a video of President Joe Biden referencing the Post’s claims, Musk said he had authorization to work in the United States.

In another post, he provided more details about his immigration status. Musk says he was initially on a J-1 visa for international students to pursue academic training or research, then transitioned to an H1-B visa allowing temporary employment for specialty occupations. “I was on a J-1 visa that transitioned to an H1-B. They know this, as they have all my records,” Musk said. Musk was born in South Africa. At age 18, he immigrated to Canada after gaining Canadian citizenship through his Canadian-born mother. He attended Queen’s University at Kingston in Canada before transferring to the University of Pennsylvania. Musk moved to California in 1995 to attend Stanford University but dropped out after two days and co-founded Zip2 with his brother Kimbal. He became a U.S. citizen in 2002.

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Rep. Mark E. Green, chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security, represents Tennessee’s 7th Congressional District.

Chaos and Crime: Legacy of the Biden-Harris Border Policies (Mark Green)

Upon being inaugurated, one of the responsibilities Joe Biden and Kamala Harris assumed was to keep the American homeland secure and safeguard our sovereign borders. Nearly four years later, looking at the catastrophic, unprecedented border crisis that has unfolded on their watch, can anyone say with a straight face they have fulfilled that obligation? The answer, unequivocally, is no – and Americans are the ones paying the price. From the beginning, Biden, Harris, and other key officials in their administration were determined to end President Donald Trump’s effective border security policies – regardless of the consequences. They also refused to enforce long-standing immigration laws that administrations of both parties have enforced.

According to a new report by my committee, the incoming Biden-Harris team was warned by current and former Department of Homeland Security law enforcement during the presidential transition of what would happen if they embarked on this path – and yet, they chose to do so anyway. This dereliction of duty has led to disastrous outcomes in the realm of public safety. Under Biden and Harris’ leadership, our borders are wide open and ripe for exploitation, and interior enforcement has fallen off a cliff. The numbers bear this out. Since Fiscal Year 2021, the Border Patrol has recorded more than 55,000 arrests of illegal aliens with criminal histories, compared to just around 22,000 from FY2017-2020. Border Patrol Chief Jason Owens has said that “[h]ardened criminals often hide in smuggled migrant groups.” According to one Border Patrol deputy chief patrol agent, “any crime that can be committed, we do encounter people who have committed them.”

The problem of criminal aliens is not just limited to the border. Between FY2017-2020, Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested more than 480,000 aliens with criminal convictions or pending charges on their record. By contrast, in the first three years of the Biden-Harris administration, such arrests dropped to just around 165,000, despite the historic numbers of illegal aliens crossing the border. Likewise, the Trump administration removed more than 604,000 criminal aliens from FY2017-2020, while the Biden-Harris administration only removed around 158,000 from FY2021-2023 (ICE data for FY2024 has not yet been publicly released). Additionally, removals of gang members last year were down 40% from their peak during the Trump administration.

These numbers have dropped because the Biden-Harris administration tied the hands of law enforcement. According to guidance issued by DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas in September 2021, ICE personnel cannot “rely on the fact of conviction … alone” in deciding whether to detain a suspected criminal alien, a statement that one federal judge ruled in 2022 “flips the presumption of detention on its head.” It should come as no surprise, then, that ICE’s Non-Detained Docket has exploded to well over 7.4 million individuals – up from just around 3.2 million at the end of FY2020. Among these millions are nearly 650,000 aliens with criminal backgrounds, including more than 13,000 convicted murderers, 15,000 with sexual assault convictions, and more than 62,000 convicted of assault.

The consequences of this policy of non-enforcement have been deadly. One need only ask the families of Laken Riley, Rachel Morin, Jocelyn Nungaray, and many others whose lives have been taken or otherwise irrevocably shattered at the hands of those here illegally.

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No, the US has no political prisoners…

Steve Bannon Released From Prison After Serving 4 Months (ET)

Steve Bannon, who served as a top White House adviser early on in the Trump administration, was released from prison on Oct. 29 after serving four months for contempt of Congress. “The four months in federal prison not only didn’t break me, it empowered me,” he said during his “WarRoom” podcast. “I am more energized and more focused than I’ve ever been in my entire life.” Bannon, 70, was serving time in the Federal Correctional Institution in Danbury, Connecticut. His release comes after a federal judge on Oct. 22 denied his request for early release. Bannon entered prison in July after the Supreme Court refused to take up his request to avoid his four-month sentence. When he began serving his sentence in July, Bannon called himself a “political prisoner.” “I am proud of going to prison,” he said at the time, adding that he was standing up to Attorney General Merrick Garland and what he called a “corrupt” Justice Department.

A jury convicted him in 2022 for two counts of contempt of Congress after he refused to comply with requests from the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol breach. Bannon, 70, claimed that former President Donald Trump had extended executive privilege over his testimony. Bannon’s attorney, David Schoen, told the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit that the district court had wrongly excluded evidence surrounding another attorney advising Bannon that he didn’t have to comply with the subpoenas because Trump had invoked that privilege. “At a bare minimum, it’s required that the defendant know or understand that his or her conduct was unlawful or wrong,” Schoen told the court in November 2023. “Mr. Bannon acted in the only way he believed and understood from his lawyer that the law permitted him … to behave in response to the subpoena.” The appeals court said that under its precedent, Bannon’s advice-of-attorney defense “is no defense at all.”

“As both this court and the Supreme Court have repeatedly explained, a contrary rule would contravene the text of the contempt statute and hamstring Congress’s investigatory authority,” Judge Brad Garcia said, writing for the court. “Because we have no basis to depart from that binding precedent, and because none of Bannon’s other challenges to his convictions have merit, we affirm.” Bannon faces other criminal charges in New York, where a judge has set Dec. 9 as the start date for the trial in his border fundraising case. Prosecutors allege that Bannon helped funnel more than $100,000 to a co-founder of the nonprofit WeBuildTheWall Inc. who was allegedly getting a secret salary after Bannon and others had promised donors that every dollar would be used to help construct a wall along the U.S.–Mexico border. Bannon has pleaded not guilty to money laundering and conspiracy charges, calling them “nonsense.” In 2021, Trump pardoned Bannon in a federal case similar to the one he’s currently facing from New York prosecutors.

That case was brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office, which also prosecuted Trump for alleged election interference involving a payment to adult performer Stephanie Clifford, known as Stormy Daniels. Trump similarly pleaded not guilty. Bannon entered prison the same month that another former Trump White House adviser, Peter Navarro, exited under similar circumstances. Navarro claimed executive privilege in defying a congressional subpoena, but D.C. District Judge Amit Mehta said he hadn’t shown enough evidence the privilege was asserted. Trump is facing potential prison time for his role in the events of Jan. 6, 2021, but has successfully avoided trial in Washington. His appeal on presidential immunity resulted in a landmark Supreme Court case and a lengthy delay of the pre-trial process for special counsel Jack Smith’s prosecution of him.

Bannon

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“..It is “the overreach of the Biden-Harris administration”, starting from anti-Trump lawfare and ending with transgender propaganda, that has fuelled the division dramatically..”

Secessionism and Polarization on Rise in US (Sp.)

The election integrity dispute surrounding the 2020 vote reportedly reinvigorated secessionist sentiment across the US which is continuing to grow ahead of election day. The Texas Nationalist movement, which advocates for Texas to secede from the US, is gaining momentum amid the southern border crisis. The Lone Star state is not the only one where activists are pushing for independence: around 25 US states are “ready” to leave, according to the Daniel Miller, the president of the secessionist Texas Nationalist Movement, in April. It is “the overreach of the Biden-Harris administration”, starting from anti-Trump lawfare and ending with transgender propaganda, that has fuelled the division dramatically, according to Michael Shannon, a Conservative political commentator and Newsmax columnist.

“Things like that and then the federal government mandating that men who think they are women can compete in women’s sport, arresting abortion protesters, people praying quietly in front of abortion mills, the political manhunt against the January 6th rioters that has extended even down to grandmothers, all of this really concerns Republicans, conservatives and I guess the few independents who still respect the rule of law. And so that’s what started this real division,” Shannon told Sputnik. The US political commentator noted that Texas secession is unlikely to happen any time soon. Still, he does not rule out that some red states could strive to leave the nation if Harris wins. “If there becomes a real split, it’ll probably start with Ron DeSantis in Florida, who will begin by refusing to cooperate with any federal agency that tries to, and this is assuming Harris wins, any federal agency that tries to impose these, frankly, totalitarian edicts from Washington,” Shannon noted.

The YouGov February poll indicated that 23% of Americans would support their state seceding from the US, whereas 28% would support a state other than their own leaving. While 51% of American respondents firmly oppose secession, 27% remain unsure. A separate YouGov survey shows that the divide across the nation comes along party lines: Democrats and Republicans think they have little in common, unlike their peers a decade ago. Last February, House Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene called for nothing short of a “national divorce” between Republican and Democratic states. The Trump-Harris race is very close, making the country almost evenly split, Aubrey Jewett, a political science professor at the University of Central Florida, told Sputnik. Bottom line is that one side is going to be very disappointed by the election results no matter who wins, according to the pundit.

“If Trump wins, you’re going to have almost 50% of the country where Democrats are very disappointed,” Jewett said. “And if Kamala Harris wins, you’re going to have all those Republican Trump fans, almost 50% of the country. They’re going to be very upset as well. I think in the short run, it’s definitely going to exacerbate, make it worse.” Therefore, the question is whether the winner would try to pull people together, or whether half of American voters will remain alienated, the academic noted, drawing attention to the fact that presently there is some big difference between Democratic and Republican states.

“We’ll have to see how the leaders on both sides react if they react as normal or the winner is gracious and the loser is gracious, and then maybe those partisan divides won’t be so bad. But if they do not, if they question the election results, or if the winner really rubs it in and says ‘okay, now I’m going to do everything I want and I’m only representing the people that voted for me’ – that’s not going to be great for American society overall.” The professor warns that partisan divisions might get worse potentially in the longer run.

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“It is equally right to condemn all those who sought to silence a scientist who is now being praised for resisting their campaign to silence him and others.”

Jay Bhattacharya Receives Prestigious Award for Intellectual Freedom (Turley)

Few in the media seemed eager to attend a ceremony last week in Washington, D.C., where the prestigious American Academy of Sciences and Letters was awarding its top intellectual freedom award. The problem may have been the recipient: Stanford Professor Dr. Jay Bhattacharya. [Stanford Professor Dr. Jay Bhattacharya] has spent years being vilified by the media over his dissenting views on the pandemic. As one of the signatories of the 2020 Great Barrington Declaration, he was canceled, censored, and even received death threats. That open letter called on government officials and public health authorities to rethink the mandatory lockdowns and other extreme measures in light of past pandemics. All the signatories became targets of an orthodoxy enforced by an alliance of political, corporate, media, and academic groups. Most were blocked on social media despite being accomplished scientists with expertise in this area. It did not matter that positions once denounced as “conspiracy theories” have been recognized or embraced by many.

Some argued that there was no need to shut down schools, which has led to a crisis in mental illness among the young and the loss of critical years of education. Other nations heeded such advice with more limited shutdowns (including keeping schools open) and did not experience our losses. Others argued that the virus’s origin was likely the Chinese research lab in Wuhan. That position was denounced by the Washington Post as a “debunked” coronavirus “conspiracy theory.” The New York Times Science and Health reporter Apoorva Mandavilli called any mention of the lab theory “racist.” Federal agencies now support the lab theory as the most likely based on the scientific evidence. Likewise, many questioned the efficacy of those blue surgical masks and supported natural immunity to the virus — both positions were later recognized by the government. Others questioned the six-foot rule used to shut down many businesses as unsupported by science. In congressional testimony, Dr. Anthony Fauci recently admitted that the 6-foot rule “sort of just appeared” and “wasn’t based on data.”

Yet not only did the rule result in heavily enforced rules (and meltdowns) in public areas, the media further ostracized dissenting critics. Again, Fauci and other scientists did little to stand up for these scientists or call for free speech to be protected. As I discuss in my new book, “The Indispensable Right,” the result is that we never really had a national debate on many of these issues and the result of massive social and economic costs. I spoke at the University of Chicago with Bhattacharya and other dissenting scientists in the front row a couple of years ago. After the event, I asked them how many had been welcomed back to their faculties or associations since the recognition of some of their positions. They all said that they were still treated as pariahs for challenging the groupthink culture. Now the scientific community is recognizing the courage shown by Bhattacharya and others with its annual Robert J. Zimmer Medal for Intellectual Freedom.

So what about all of those in government, academia, and the media who spent years hounding these scientists? Biden Administration officials and Democratic members targeted Bhattacharya and demanded his censorship. For example, Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.) attacked Bhattacharya and others who challenged the official narrative during the pandemic. Krishnamoorthi expressed outrage that the scientists were even allowed to testify as “a purveyor of COVID-19 misinformation.” Journalists and columnists also supported the censorship and blacklisting of these scientists. In the Los Angeles Times, columnist Michael Hiltzik decried how “we’re living in an upside-down world” because Stanford allowed these scientists to speak at a scientific forum. He was outraged that, while “Bhattacharya’s name doesn’t appear in the event announcement,” he was an event organizer. Hiltzik also wrote a column titled “The COVID lab leak claim isn’t just an attack on science, but a threat to public health.”

Then there are those lionized censors at Twitter who shadow-banned Bhattacharya. As former CEO Parag Agrawal generally explained, the “focus [was] less on thinking about free speech … [but[ who can be heard.” None of this means that Bhattacharya or others were right in all of their views. Instead, many of the most influential voices in the media, government, and academia worked to prevent this discussion from occurring when it was most needed. There is still a debate over Bhattacharya’s “herd immunity” theories, but there is little debate over the herd mentality used to cancel him. The Academy was right to honor Bhattacharya. It is equally right to condemn all those who sought to silence a scientist who is now being praised for resisting their campaign to silence him and others.

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“If they’re worrying about Julian Assange, well, they ought to get a new job..”

Assange’s Father on Von Der Leyen: EU Falls to Bits Under ‘Frau Genocide’ (Sp.)

The European Union is “falling to bits” under the leadership of the head of the European Commission Ursula Van der Leyen, who is commonly called “Frau Genocide,” John Shipton, an Australian activist and the father of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, said in an interview with Sputnik. “The EU is falling to bits. Everybody within the EU is squabbling. The commissioner of the EU, Van der Leyen, we call her Frau Genocide – it is very popular. I mean, everybody despises her. She’s an authoritarian figure. In Germany the GDP [growth] last year was 0.2%. That’s not even 1%, it’s two-tenths of 1%,” Shipton noted. In December 2023, Clare Daly, a member of the European Parliament (MEP) from Ireland, called von der Leyen “Frau Genocide” and said that she was responsible for the escalation of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

Immediately after the escalation of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, von der Leyen, who took a pro-Israeli position and for some time ignored the deterioration of the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip and the deaths of civilians, was harshly criticized in the media, which accused her of “double standards,” recalling her statements on the conflict in Ukraine, and warned against making statements on behalf of the entire EU. Later, the European Commission press service and the European External Action Service had to correct von der Leyen’s one-sided statements, explaining that the opinion expressed “is her personal and does not reflect the position of the entire EU.” The United States does not like and does not accept the truth about itself, John Shipton, an Australian activist and the father of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, said in an interview with Sputnik.

In July, Assange was released from a British prison after many years of imprisonment and returned to Australia following a plea agreement with the US authorities. According to Shipton, Washington “took very strong measures against Julian for publishing the truth.” “And also they put Chelsea Manning in jail for 35 years. And Edward Snowden had to have asylum in the Russian Federation. So it is clear that they do take very strong exceptions to the truth about themselves being published. They don’t like the truth about themselves,” the activist said about the US actions. However, Shipton said Washington had “too many problems” to continue worrying about the Assange case. “If they’re worrying about Julian Assange, well, they ought to get a new job,” Shipton advised the US authorities.

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“Humankind, said T.S. Eliot, “cannot bear very much reality.”

When Evil Is Allowed In, Evil Stays (Paul Craig Roberts)

On two previous occasions Israel sent its vaunted army into southern Lebanon only to be driven out by the Arab militia, Hezbollah, operating without tanks, without an air force, without air defense. It appears that it has now happened again. Israel has been stopped cold on the ground, causing the Israeli defense minister to announce an end to the ground operations. The Israeli Army is only good at killing women and children from the air, as in Gaza. Israel’s war against Hezbollah has been replaced with Israeli air strikes against civilian residential areas in Beirut, which provides more evidence that the only function of the Israeli military is to murder women and children from the air. The obvious conclusion is that the Israeli military doesn’t fight; it commits war crimes against civilians. The reason civilian neighborhoods in Beirut, the capital of Lebanon and not Hezbollah territory, are being destroyed from the air is that Iran and Russia permit it by not providing air defense systems to Lebanon.

Iran and Russia are “maintaining peace” by permitting Israel to slaughter Lebanese women and children and destroy schools and hospitals from the air. It is a paradox that Washington, Putin, and Iran are equally indifferent to Israel’s slaughter from the air of civilians in Gaza and civilians in Lebanon. Any one of the three countries could stop the murder of civilians, but not one of them will do anything. Putin has placed his bets on BRICS, but that is an economic organization that might or might not succeed. Its success is handicapped by the fact that the Russian and Chinese economists are indoctrinated by the American neoliberals, and, therefore, are not merely worthless to their countries but positively harmful. If Washington wanted the Israelis’ murder of Palestinian and Lebanese civilians to stop, Washington would stop providing Israel with the weapons. Clearly, Israel is doing what Washington wants.

But why do Russia and Iran want Palestinian and Lebanese civilians to be massacred when either country can stop it? It is beginning to look as if it is not merely Washington and Israel that Satan has in his grasp, but Russia and Iran as well. Every time Putin gets off-focused from Russia’s only threat–Washington–he finds himself with a mess on this hands. With Putin focused on the Olympics in China, Washington sent the Georgian army into South Ossetia. With Putin focused on the Sochi Olympics, Washington overthrew the Ukrainian government and brought war to Russia. Now Putin is focused on BRICS and Washington is stirring up a color revolution in Georgia to regain the former Russian province as another beached against Russia. The opposition parties and the President of Georgia do not accept the election results, which are favorable to Russia.

I think that Putin by refusing to use power is losing credibility. I don’t think Putin understands the ideological character of the Democrat Party and the ideological woke liberal-left that controls it. If the Democrats manage to retain control over the government, I don’t think Putin is prepared for the consequences. Humankind, said T.S. Eliot, “cannot bear very much reality.” That is as true of Russians as of Americans. Reality conflicts with hopes, aspirations, and plans, and when ignored upsets all of them. Putin’s Ukraine conflict which has greatly widened, the brewing color revolution in Georgia supported by Washington, and Iran’s demonization and isolation are all self-inflicted disasters caused by ignoring reality.

When powerful countries such as Russia, China, and Iran stand aside from genocide, they destroy their own reputations. The world is crying out for someone with the means to stand up for humanity, for justice, for truth, and there are no takers. In Gaza children undergo amputations without anesthesia. The little water available is polluted. Everyone is sick. Washington keeps sending the weapons used from the air against purely civilian populations. Disease and starvation will finish the job for the Americans and the Israelis. It is America that has enabled this genocide. And Americans, in their insouciant existence, think they are the salt of the earth.

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They’re calling up another 160,000.

Ex-President Warns of Growing Ukrainian Anger Over Military Draft (RT)

Ukrainian society is growing increasingly resentful of Kiev’s mobilization campaign and is now plagued by divisions, former President Leonid Kuchma has said. In an interview with Interfax on Monday, Kuchma, who held office between 1994 and 2005 and led Kiev’s delegation during talks to settle the Donbass crisis between 2014 and 2020, lamented that Ukraine’s internal unity has eroded since the escalation of hostilities with Russia in February 2022. According to Kuchma, the army, society and the leadership initially managed to set their differences aside and became a “monolith.” “Even in politics, the infighting disappeared for a while. Today it is no longer the case,” he said, adding that Ukrainian elites “have renewed the rat race of their petty interests.” In wider society, there is also dissatisfaction “with the army’s demands for increased mobilization,” Kuchma added.

“The government blames society for not being ready to stand up for the state, while society urges the authorities to lead by example and start with themselves. There are many such contradictions,” he said. The former Ukrainian leader said that while the country remains “united by hatred of the enemy,” there is “less mutual understanding” among people and that this “postpones victory” for Kiev. Ukraine’s foreign policy is beset by a similar problem, Kuchma claimed. A kind of pluralism appeared in our global communication,” he stated, contrasting it with the early stages of the conflict, when Kiev signaled it would “fight to the end” and called for help from nations around the world. This comes from a need to hone separate narratives for different international partners depending on how hawkish they are on Russia, Kuchma said.

“Some are defenders of fundamental Western values, others are supporters of ‘business as usual’ with Russia. Some are determined ‘hawks’, others are cautious ‘peacemakers’,” Kuchma said. Kiev announced general mobilization after the escalation of hostilities with Russia, barring most men aged between 18 and 60 from leaving the country. This spring, faced with mounting losses, Kiev lowered the draft age from 27 to 25, and significantly tightened mobilization rules. Videos showing recruitment officers attempting to catch eligible men in various public places, often resulting in violent clashes, have since appeared online. Ukrainian frontline troops interviewed by Western media consistently complain of a lack of manpower, leading to long rotation, extreme exhaustion, and gradual retreat under Russian pressure.

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“..the largest post-election drop in approval rating of any British prime minister in modern history..”

Took him just 4 months. Who’s next?

Not long ago, Elon Musk predicted civil war in the UK. To what extent was he wrong?

Support For New UK PM collapses (RT)

Keir Starmer has suffered the largest post-election drop in approval rating of any British prime minister in modern history, according to a recent poll. Starmer is now more unpopular than his predecessor, Rishi Sunak, was when he resigned in July. Starmer rode to power in July on the back of a landslide general election victory for the Labour Party. Seeking to distance himself from the leftism of the party’s former leader, Jeremy Corbyn, Starmer promised to drag Labour back to the centrism of Tony Blair, and to deliver “good government, national security, secure borders, and economic stability.” Less than four months into his premiership, Starmer’s approval rating has plummeted from a post-election high of +11 to a dismal low of -38, according to a survey of 1,012 adults carried out by More in Common. This 49-point drop in approval is “unprecedented” in modern history, More in Common Director Luke Tryl told the Telegraph on Monday.

According to the poll, Starmer is less popular than Rishi Sunak was when he resigned as prime minister and leader of the Conservative Party following July’s election. Sunak had an approval rating of -37 when his party was wiped out by Labour, which has since risen to -31. Blair enjoyed a +60 approval rating following Labour’s landslide 1997 election win, which took three years to fall into negative territory. Tryl told The Telegraph that two key decisions have cratered Starmer’s popularity. “If you ask what people have noticed, by a country mile it is the decision on the winter fuel allowance and the early release of prisoners,” he explained, adding that controversy over Labour donor Waheed Alli’s gifts to senior officials, including Starmer, has also dented the PM’s standing.

Last month, Starmer’s government tightened eligibility rules for winter fuel payments, effectively denying around 10 million pensioners payments of up to £300 ($390) toward heating their homes. Days earlier, it was announced that thousands of prisoners, including convicted killers and kidnappers, would be released after serving just 40% of their sentences, in a bid to ease prison overcrowding. As images of career criminals celebrating their release and publicly thanking Starmer emerged, the PM said that he “shares the public’s anger,” but insisted that “there was no choice.”

Meanwhile, hundreds of people have been jailed for taking part in anti-Islam and anti-immigration riots across the UK in late July and early August. More than two dozen people have been handed prison sentences for online offenses, including a Conservative councillor’s wife who received 31 months behind bars for making X posts calling for migrant accommodation to be burned down. The More in Common poll was published ahead of Starmer’s first budget on Wednesday, which is expected to include tax hikes to fund healthcare and housing spending. Around 68% of respondents said they are worried about the budget, while 70% said that overall, “things are getting worse” in the UK.

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“The shocking part is how the journalists comply with this draconian system which would have made Stalin glow with pride.”

Delusions Of Adequacy: How British Ambassadors Became A Joke (Jay)

The ugly incident at the airport in Moscow with the British deputy ambassador to Russia grabbing at journalists’ cameras and even ripping a press badge off one should be seen as a message to all of us, when talking about British diplomacy. It’s dead. Tom Dodd’s embarrassing few minutes, which will surely haunt him for the rest of his career, could not be a more damning example of what diplomacy was once and what it is now. Like international journalism, diplomacy is barely a shadow of its former self and those who work as diplomats are third grade at best, cardboard cut outs for their predecessors 30 years ago who really had clout and affected how the world operated. The new generation of British diplomats, like Dodd, are not only entirely ineffective and a waste of space and taxpayers’ money but they also come with a number of peculiarities which you wouldn’t normally expect.

Narcissism, arrogance and delusion are the new qualities of this breed and it was all there to see in the video clip of Dodd who was absolutely outraged that journalists could actually approach him with questions. Of course there is quite a great deal of tension between Russia and the UK at the moment as Dodd is now part of a team “inspecting the work of the country’s mission in Moscow in the aftermath of the spy scandal”, reports RT. In mid-September, six British embassy staff were declared persona non grata over their alleged involvement in “subversive activities” and espionage. Dodd is confused though. He broke the unwritten rules of the foreign office. Typically, ambassadors in Africa and Middle East countries manipulate local media for their own needs and generally treat local journalists like their personal servants. Of course, they avoid international journalists like the plague, especially their own.

They basically go native and align themselves with the regime’s own strategy on handling local press. But this ‘rule’ cannot apply in Moscow where, apart from the press there having more freedoms that your average British hack, the UK is considered practically an enemy of the state. And so Dodd was lost by the ambush situation where his requirements as a ‘new generation’ foreign office twerp didn’t extend to dealing with press with tricky questions. His predecessor of 30 years ago would have revelled in the opportunity to deal with the questions with a certain élan and composure. Yet it’s narcissism which is the weakest point which shows. It’s this belief that the individual themselves is the most important subject which shames Britain as a once glorious country, now making it look like a failed state which no longer has any relevance on the world stage.

Todd belongs to a generation of diplomats who consider journalists more or less as stenographers who dutifully write what you tell them to write, on the occasion, and remain silent for the rest of the period. Like rats in a basket which you occasionally shake to amuse yourself. And yet you can hardly blame him. Britain’s own press is such a shambles these days and so embedded in the government’s annals that you can hardly call it the fourth estate any more. Any foreign correspondent who emails a question to the foreign office media team will tell you that. When a reply comes, it is Sir Humphry gobbledygook language which doesn’t even tackle your question. On many occasions, in my own experience, the FCO plainly lies to journalists. That isn’t what is shocking. The shocking part is how the journalists comply with this draconian system which would have made Stalin glow with pride.

The system, which you would normally associate with a regime in West Africa, is supported by the journalists themselves. And Dodd is part of this system. Corrupt, outdated, backward delusional view about Britain and how it should deal with the press. But it’s a pattern which I have noticed is quite typical of British ambassadors. While I was in Lebanon, there was a British ambassador there who agreed to an interview with me. When I didn’t do the ‘local’ thing of writing a shining piece on his achievements but instead wrote objectively about him, the same ambassador turned on me. Tom Fletcher, an effeminate narcissist who posed for a photo shoot as James Bond while ambassador and spent most of his time filling social media with photos of himself and super models with swollen upper lips, defamed me to a group of MEPs who visited Beirut, trying to destroy my credibility – as an act of childish petulance for the interview which touched upon his vanity and lack of knowledge of the region.

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“Netanyahu, Gallant and Halevi are gambling with Israel’s very existence… they never think for a moment about the day after..”

A Heroic Preference For Self-Destruction Takes Hold In Israel (Alastair Crooke)

The war without limits ideology – purely theoretically – could be a thinkable solution: Ron Dermer, a former Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. and confidant of Netanyahu, was asked a few months earlier what he saw as the solution to the Palestinian conflict. He replied that both the West Bank and Gaza must be totally dis-armed – “yes”. Yet more important than disarmament, Dermer said, was the absolute necessity that all Palestinians be “de-radicalised”. (This has now been extended to the whole region that must be ‘de-radicalised’). When asked to expand, Dermer pointed approvingly to the outcome of WW2: The Germans were defeated, but more plainly the Japanese were fully ‘de-radicalised’ at the end of the war. ‘De-radicalisation’ therefore means installing a Leviathan-esque “despotism that reduces the majority to total powerlessness, including spiritual, intellectual and moral powerlessness.

The total Leviathan is a unique, absolute and unlimited power, spiritual and temporal, over other humans”, as Dr Henri Hude has observed. Thus, as postmodern culture sinks into the inhuman and favours the Leviathan – with the total annihilation of other peoples and the suppression of their separate identities – the question arises, could ‘war without limits’ work? Could such terror impose on the Middle East an unconditional surrender “that would allow it to change profoundly, militarily, politically and culturally, and to transform as a satellite within Pax Americana?” Hude goes on to note, “The conditions demanded of Japan by the USA were exorbitant, and it was to be expected that Japan would put up a tremendous resistance. The atrocious use of the bomb broke this resistance”. The clear response that Dr Hude gives in his book Philosophie de la Guerre is that war without limits cannot be the solution, because it cannot deliver long-lasting ‘deterrence’ or de-radicalisation.

“On the contrary, it is the most certain cause of war. Ceasing to be rational, despising opponents who are more rational than it is, arousing opponents who are even less rational than it is. The Leviathan will fall; and even before its fall, no security is assured”. The latter gives two insights as to how Hude’s analysis might apply to today’s wars: One is that whenever postmodern culture capsizes into ‘necessary’ violence (which it hyper-culpabilises, since it prioritises life, rather than suffering), it can only justify the violence through evoking a more than absolute evil – the demonized enemy. Secondly, Hude identifies such extreme ‘will to power’ – without limits – as necessarily containing the psyche of self-destruction within it too. For the Leviathan to function, it must remain rational and powerful. Ceasing to be rational, despising opponents who are more rational, and angering opponents who are less rational than it is itself, the Leviathan then must fall.

One respected military observer – Maj. Gen. (Res.) Itzhak Brik, a former senior IDF commander and a former long-serving IDF ombudsman – has warned again of Israel’s looming fall: Netanyahu, Gallant and Halevi are gambling with Israel’s very existence… they never think for a moment about the day after. They are disconnected from reality and exercise no judgment … When the catastrophe strikes, it will already be too late … These three megalomaniacs imagine that they are capable of destroying both Hamas and Hizbullah and ending the ayatollahs’ regime in Iran … They want to accomplish everything through military pressure, but in the end, they won’t accomplish anything. They have put Israel on the brink of two impossible situations [–] the outbreak of a full-fledged war in the Middle East, [and secondly] continuing the war of attrition. In either situation, Israel won’t be able to survive for long.

Only a diplomatic agreement has the power to extricate us from the quagmire into which these three men have dragged us. Israel teeters at the edge: It doesn’t have the necessary forces; it doesn’t have a culture of tolerating persistent suffering; and it will not be able to impose itself over the plurality of resistance that it faces. Reason already is cast aside, its opponents are ridiculed: a ‘heroic’ preference for self-destruction has taken hold. ‘Masada’ is being spoken of.

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No Russian gas.

Mass Industrial Strikes Begin In Germany (RT)

German trade union IG Metall on Tuesday launched strikes in the nation’s metal and electrical industries in an attempt to win higher wages, German media has reported. The action comes amid growing concern about the health of the EU’s largest manufacturing economy. According to the tabloid Bild, employees began walking off the job during the night shift, including at Volkswagen’s plant in the city of Osnabruck, where workers worry the plant may be closed. Elsewhere, around 200 employees of the battery manufacturer Clarios went on strike in Hanover, Lower Saxony, carrying torches and union flags, the outlet wrote. Meanwhile, in Hildesheim, Lower Saxony, around 400 employees, including those at Jensen GmbH, KSM Castings Group, Robert Bosch, Waggonbau Graaff and ZF CV Systems Hannover, have reportedly halted operations.

Protests are also expected at BMW and Audi plants in Bavaria. Work is to be stopped nationwide during the course of the day, the tabloid wrote. ”The fact that production lines are now at a standstill and offices are empty is the responsibility of the employers,” IG Metall’s negotiator and district manager Thorsten Groger stated, as quoted by Deutsche Welle. IG Metall is demanding a 7% pay raise compared to the 3.6% raise over a period of 27 months offered by employers’ associations, due to soaring inflation. The companies call such demands unrealistic. The mass strikes come as Volkswagen announced on Monday it would close “at least” three of its ten plants in Germany, lay off tens of thousands of staff and downsize remaining plants in the country.

The measures are part of a cost-cutting drive, the conglomerate said earlier. Oliver Blume, chief executive of the VW Group, has cited a “difficult economic environment” and “failing competitiveness of the German economy” as factors behind the decision. The German Association of the Automotive Industry warned last year that the country was “dramatically losing its international competitiveness” due to soaring energy costs. A recent survey by the VDA auto industry association suggested that the reshuffling of the German car industry could lead to 186,000 job losses by 2035, roughly a quarter of which have already occurred.

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YMCA

 

 

Little things
https://twitter.com/i/status/1851182802735108492

 

 

Turbo cancers
https://twitter.com/i/status/1851199741276602449

 

 

Kiseki

 

 

 

 

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