diesel Archives - The Automatic Earth

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Does Europe tell him to turm his back on Trump?

• Zelensky Says ‘We’re Done’ With Trump Energy Truce, Hits Russian Refinery (JTN)

Ukraine resumed drone strikes on Russian refineries after holding off for the three days to adhere to a unilateral “energy ceasefire” President Donald Trump initiated.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky accused Russia of repeatedly attacking its power grid during the ceasefire, and he accused the U.S. of betraying Kyiv by withdrawing support critical to its defense against Russia.
On Wednesday, Ukrainian military officials alleged that SpaceX interrupted military-grade Starlink terminals, which prevented Kyiv from using them to guide drone strikes. Functionality had been restored as of Thursday, NBC News reported, citing an unnamed source in Ukraine’s defense ministry.
Zelensky said in an interview with the Financial Times, published on Thursday, that Ukraine was “done” with the ceasefire, and would resume attacks on Russian refineries. Hours later, the Russian defense ministry said Ukraine “attempted a massive attack on the Ryazan oil refinery.”
“The block (on attacking refineries) is out. We’re done,” he told the newspaper.

“Zelenskyy Urgently Sits Down for Interviews as …”

“It is a violation of commercial Starlink terms of service to use the terminal for weapon systems. This applies to all users and is shut down when discovered. There is a separate network called Starshield, which is operated by the US government. This is not under SpaceX control.” ~ Elon Musk, March 2026 “

• Trump Begins Highlighting “The Zelenskyy Problem” (CTH)

It is almost impossible to explain what is happening to those who have not followed the last five years of events closely. In the latest development, yesterday Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy -attempting his best Churchill performance- rushes to British media outlets to give lengthy interviews. Zelenskyy is in London because that is the center of his support system.

If you are a denier of CTH’s long standing outline about Ukraine being World War Reddit, yet you hold some intellectual honesty permitting you to accept uncomfortable truth, you might perhaps pause and think about what is happening carefully. Zelenskyy is in a crisis moment within the Russia conflict. Ukraine is getting pummeled by Russia’s fast moving and highly accurate drones and missiles. Yet, at this moment of consequence, Volodymyr Zelenskyy finds the time to travel to the U.K and give long interviews with pro-Ukraine media outlets.
What exactly is the priority here? …. Zelenskyy is fighting a narrative war. That’s why the term World War Reddit applies. It is transparently obvious what is going on. Zelenskyy has one primary demand, more money. That’s it. The rest is positioning and false presentations of patriotism. The “defense of Ukraine” narrative is not about defending Ukraine in the traditional sense; it’s about using the defense of Ukraine to get money.
Five Days Ago we wrote this on X: “We have been watching everything for many years. Your next move will be for Ukraine intelligence, which we all know is EU-NATO intelligence, to launch a kinetic operation against your own energy infrastructure. You will then blame Russia, and your EU-NATO enablers will cite that example in opposition to President Trump. We can see you.“
In the last four days, exactly this predicted situation has been unfolding. To enhance the sympathetic narrative, Zelenskyy then claims the USA is no longer providing early warning intelligence or permitting Ukraine to launch offensive military strike operations using Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite communications. Again, more nonsense.
“It is a violation of commercial Starlink terms of service to use the terminal for weapon systems. This applies to all users and is shut down when discovered. There is a separate network called Starshield, which is operated by the US government. This is not under SpaceX control.” ~ Elon Musk, March 2026
President Trump, Secretary Rubio and even Elon Musk have had enough. However, from a perspective of money all U.S. and EU interests position sympathy for Ukraine through the same self-interest prism. Secretary Rubio was correct when at his brutally honest moment in February 2025 he said, “Ukraine is a proxy war between the United States and Russia”, and the Trump administration had no interest in maintaining this proxy war of foolishness built upon a foundation of grift, fraud and financial self-interest.
That was and remains the non-pretending reality. Western influence agents, led by the United States (before Trump) created this mess. There is a painful Gordian knot that needs to be cut in order to end this madness. President Trump is now pushing back against the entirety of the false Ukraine constructs. I hope he succeeds because this has been going on far too long.
TRUTH SOCIAL 2025 – “Think of it, a modestly successful comedian, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, talked the United States of America into spending $350 Billion Dollars, to go into a War that couldn’t be won, that never had to start, but a War that he, without the U.S. and “TRUMP,” will never be able to settle.
The United States has spent $200 Billion Dollars more than Europe, and Europe’s money is guaranteed, while the United States will get nothing back. Why didn’t Sleepy Joe Biden demand Equalization, in that this War is far more important to Europe than it is to us — We have a big, beautiful Ocean as separation. On top of this, Zelenskyy admits that half of the money we sent him is “MISSING.”
He refuses to have Elections, is very low in Ukrainian Polls, and the only thing he was good at was playing Biden “like a fiddle.” A Dictator without Elections, Zelenskyy better move fast or he is not going to have a Country left. In the meantime, we are successfully negotiating an end to the War with Russia, something all admit only “TRUMP,” and the Trump Administration, can do. Biden never tried, Europe has failed to bring Peace, and Zelenskyy probably wants to keep the “gravy train” going. I love Ukraine, but Zelenskyy has done a terrible job, his Country is shattered, and MILLIONS have unnecessarily died – And so it continues…..

“Switch Starlink on?” Doesn’t he know about Starshield?

• “It’s A Pity…”: Zelensky Feels ‘Betrayed’ By Trump & Elon Musk (ZH)

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky says he feels betrayed by President Trump in the wake of the US deal to buy Russian fuel from Moscow, which was announced last week. Zelensky went on a newly aired episode of Piers Morgan’s show, and he was asked point blank by the British show host if he had been “betrayed” by the Trump administration, to which Zelensky answered, “Really, Yes.” Russian media was quick to seize on the increasingly open schism between Trump and Zelensky…

Zelensky tells Piers Morgan he feels ‘BETRAYED’ BY TRUMP: ‘really YES, really, between us’ “It’s a pity that we are losing a strong partner,” the Ukrainian leader told Morgan on Wednesday. “This is our country, our body, our home, our children… That’s why it’s painful when Trump chooses one side,” Zelensky at one point also stated.
“If you’re in the middle, you have to stay in the middle. Not on the wrong side,” said Zelensky. “This is not the right side of history.” Here, Zelensky seemed to suggest Trump is actually more on the Kremlin side of things at this point. The interview also came amid reports that the US is throttling intelligence-sharing with Kiev. The White House has thus far neither confirmed nor denied the allegations.

Zelensky on Trump:

If you're in the middle, you have to stay in the middle, not on the wrong side.

I think Trump's advisers are wrong. I don't know who is pushing him to the wrong side.

This is not the right side of history. pic.twitter.com/RyMNITUUFY
— Clash Report (@clashreport) October 14, 2026

But Zelensky has himself for the past two night of Russian airstrikes made a point to publicize that Western partners have not provided the typical early warning notices of inbound missiles that were available in prior such attacks. There’s been another apparently ‘betrayal’ (in Zelensky’s assessment) by the White House of late: reports say that SpaceX has imposed a movement-speed restriction on certain Starlink terminals used in Ukraine. This has deeply impacted Ukraine’s military, which is greatly reliant on Starlink for rapid battlefield communications and functions. Zelensky used the Piers Morgan appears to plead that it be ‘switched on’.

Ukraine is not a partner of the United States. Ukraine is a toy they've grown tired of playing with.
—-
Zelensky to Elon Musk:

On Starlink, we are asking to switch it on. pic.twitter.com/jW1zEg60qC
— Marta Havryshko (@HavryshkoMarta) October 14, 2026

“People will die, of course, if attacks will continue and if Starlink will not work… it’s not helpful,” he continued. The Ukrainian leader expressed home the limitation was merely a “mistake,” suggesting it could “maybe a huge technical problem” at SpaceX. Overall, Zelensky’s message was that Ukraine is ‘losing’ American support and that he feels betrayed not only be Trump, but by Elon Musk too. Musk has directly chimed in on the controversy, clarifying “Starshield systems are owned and controlled by the US government” – and so ultimately it’s the US government, not SpaceX, behind whatever cut happened that impacted Ukraine.

Starshield systems are owned and controlled by the US government. Any limits on speed or usage are decided by the US military and ultimately POTUS.

Starlink is a commercial service owned and controlled by SpaceX. Usage of Starlink is limited to civilian or defensive activities…
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 14, 2026

Now Zelensky can feel really betrayed…

“European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said that Moscow “must pay for the destruction it has caused. And we are using the proceeds from the immobilized Russian assets to make sure it does.”

• Trump Admin Floats Unfreezing Russian Assets In Big Move To Restart Talks (ZH)

President Trump appears to be busy rolling back years of entrenched Ukraine policy. Starting last week he announced the controversial diesel deal with Putin, and this week Ukraine’s Zelensky is complaining that intelligence-sharing has been throttled, and possibly even cut off.

The possibility or even likelihood of this heading to another TACO moment aside, what’s next? New reporting in the Financial Times gives an idea. The United States has floated a proposal that European countries unfreeze some of Russia’s sovereign assets and deposit them in an entity controlled by Washington.
via Associated Press: The FT report cites four people familiar with the matter, who describe that the idea was formally presented by envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner during a meeting of Western allies and Ukraine in Miami on Oct.10. “The US suggested several possible methods for unfreezing the assets, including for them to be moved into a new special-purpose financial vehicle overseen by Washington,” the sources said.
This US plan would be enacted in the hope of opening up momentum toward a comprehensive Ukraine peace plan. Moscow has of late rejected any ‘temporary’ proposal, including a 60-day pause in fighting recently offered by Zelensky. It wants a lasting political settlement and not a mere ‘pause’ along the front lines. At the Miami meeting were NATO representatives, as well as officials from the US, France, Germany, and the EU.
“Many ideas have been floated as to how Moscow’s frozen assets could be used after the war, the US official added,” the FT says. European officials are said to have balked at any initiative to let go of Russian assets. “They were told that this was just simply not going to happen,” one source said. For example, Germany has voiced its clear position:m”Those are assets that are frozen in Europe and they should remain frozen in Europe. This is our business and we are deciding over “it,” Merz said in Brussels ahead of an EU summit.
At least €260 billion in sovereign assets belonging to Russia’s central bank were frozen in 2022 as a result of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February of that year. Most of this is held at the Belgian securities depository Euroclear. The vast majority, or over €210 billion of the sum, is held in the EU.
The last couple years of war has seen the EU work out a scheme wherein payments are made to Ukraine utilizing interest gained from Russa’s funds. Washington’s sudden willingness to ease off the pressure on Moscow has interesting implications regarding the Iran war…

President Trump said on October 13 that he did not believe Russia was helping Iran. This raises a question: is this information really being withheld from the US president?

In 2025, Russia and Iran signed a 20-year strategic treaty. They help each other with weapons, technology,… https://t.co/EMCufXYRjz pic.twitter.com/I13VQt9WlE
— Anton Gerashchenko (@Gerashchenko_en) October 15, 2026

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said that Moscow “must pay for the destruction it has caused. And we are using the proceeds from the immobilized Russian assets to make sure it does.” “We are making a further [$1.62] billion of them available to Ukraine. This will support Ukraine’s continued resistance against Russia’s illegal war,” she had announced in August.

“It’s the affordability, stupid. Why is everything so darn expensive in blue states?”

• Millions Are Fleeing Blue States, and It’s Not for the Sunshine (Aaron Hanscom)

It’s the weather, stupid.

That’s one of the left’s ready responses when confronted with the fact that millions of people are moving from blue states to red states, economist Stephen Moore says in a new PragerU video. While acknowledging that weather has long explained why people move west and south, Moore points to the state that pokes holes in that argument today: California.
Warm weather isn’t all the Golden State offers prospective residents. Moore mentions its other appeals: beaches, mountains, top-tier universities, Silicon Valley, Hollywood, and a productive economy. So why have nearly 2 million more people left California for other states than arrived since 2012? For the same reasons that New York lost a net of more than 2 million and Illinois nearly 1 million from 2012 to 2024, according to Census Bureau estimates.
It’s the taxes, stupid. Florida, Tennessee, and Texas don’t tax wage income at the state level. California and New York, meanwhile, are near the top of the list of highest state income tax rates.
The Democratic Socialists of America would say we shouldn’t shed any tears over top 1 percenters like Google cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin deciding to leave California, but when wealthy people leave a state, their taxable income goes with them. Moore says it’s not just billionaires and millionaires who suffer in high-tax states: “Taxes affect small business owners, young families trying to buy a house, retirees trying to make their savings last.”
It’s the poor education and high crime, stupid. Leftists like to say that more government spending will lead to safer streets and better schools. Moore explains why that’s not the case:
From 2000 to 2024, New York’s per capita government spending quadrupled compared to Florida’s. You’d expect then New York to be cleaner, safer, and [to have] better public schools than Florida. But that’s not the reality. By most measures, while taking far less of its citizens’ money, Florida delivers better municipal services than its high tax counterpart and its educational outcomes are equal, if not better.
It’s the inequality and uneven law enforcement, stupid. Income inequality is worse in New York than in Florida, and in blue states the gap shows up in how the law is enforced, too. Michael Shellenberger describes a progressive Los Angeles that is all but lawless in certain parts: In wealthy neighborhoods, the law is still enforced. In poor and working-class neighborhoods, it is not. If you torch a car in Beverly Hills, you’re arrested. If you do it in East LA while shouting political slogans, you’re “engaging in protest.”
This two-tiered enforcement is not progressive. It is segregation by another name. It creates one set of expectations for the politically connected and another for the disposable. And in that framework, working people, especially immigrants, families, and hourly wage earners, are abandoned. They are the ones who walk their kids past open-air drug markets. They are the ones whose shops are looted and whose cars are stolen. They are the ones who call 911 and wait, and wait, and wait.
It’s the affordability, stupid. Why is everything so darn expensive in blue states? Moore offers one reason:
“Let’s look at energy prices. Eight of the 10 most expensive states for electricity were blue states, while nine of the 10 cheapest were red states. Among the large states, electricity prices in blue states were almost double those in red states. And higher electricity costs raised the price of everything: rent, transportation, groceries.
Moore says that because of our federal system, we can treat the states as “laboratories of democracy” and study their successes and failures in taxing, regulating, spending, and governing. And the best way to grade them? “Watch where Americans decide to live and work,” he says.
It’s not cheap to move out of state, yet from 2012 to 2024, Florida gained a net 1.7 million-plus residents, Texas 1.5 million-plus, and Tennessee 400,000-plus.
Roger L. Simon, a PJ Media co-founder, is one of the many Californians who decided to leave for the Volunteer State. He moved in 2018 after living in California since 1968, and wrote about it in his book American Refugees: The Untold Story of the Mass Exodus From Blue States to Red States. He had no regrets when he wrote a post titled “Thank God I Left California” on his Substack in 2025, in which he said, “The leadership of California is a litany of some of the most immoral politicians in the country, every one of them a hypocritical fake: Governor Gavin Newsom, Mayor Karen Bass, Sen. Adam Schiff, Rep. Maxine Waters, and former VP Kamala Harris, among a raft of malignant narcissists in a one-party state.”
In the upcoming midterms, voters should ask whether the records of Democratic candidates like Abdul El-Sayed, James Talarico, and Peggy Flanagan show the same self-serving politics Simon describes in California.

“These are not the hard-working economic immigrants of old; this is a whole new type of immigrant, and America must address the change soon.”

• The Problem Of Immigrants Whose Faith Mandates Conquest (Allan J. Feifer)

In Wednesday’s Pluralism Is Broken, I argued that pluralism only works when cultural differences operate within a shared civic framework. Multiculturalism reverses that premise by asking America to accommodate differences without requiring assimilation. When immigration policy no longer reinforces a common framework—and when we become unwilling to examine its consequences—we are not preserving pluralism; we have sown the seeds of our own destruction.

The central question is whether a society committed to individual liberty can remain coherent when it loses the will to reject individuals or groups whose norms contradict its foundational values. Over time, we have deliberately bent our rules to accommodate two categories: those who come here solely for economic reasons and those who seem to come in a spirit of religious conquest.
Economic migration has existed since the nation’s founding, but two modern developments transformed it from beneficial to detrimental: easier entry from around the globe and a benefits system that attracts those seeking opportunity regardless of their ability to contribute.
That created a second, more complex challenge: the arrival of migrants whose religious framework is not merely a set of private beliefs but a complete system governing how believers live, their obligations to others, and a requirement to proselytize or even conquer—and that makes welfare not a gift, but a mandate from the new host country.
Classical Islamic scholarship draws this distinction through ibadat—acts of worship governing the relationship between God and the believer—andmuamalat—rules governing relationships among human beings, including family, inheritance, commerce, sexuality, and community life. Islam is not merely a faith; it also prescribes how believers must live and what to believe. Devout Muslims accept these obligations as divinely mandated, not optional. The concept of the ummah reinforces this: believers are members of a religiously defined community with obligations toward one another that extend across national boundaries.
In a religiously tolerant country like ours, we have no natural immune system to fend off a culture with a high birth rate that frequently rejects assimilation. This leads to an unavoidable question: whose culture will survive? This unprecedented question demands that we rethink our laws and beliefs while we still can.
The problem is not that Muslims are different; America has always absorbed differences. The question is whether those differences encompass fundamentally exclusionary ideas. America’s original social compact was built around the individual. The people who came here differed in nationality, language, and denomination, but generally shared a recognizable conception of society: individual liberty bounded by responsibility, private property, family, voluntary association, rule of law, and government constrained by citizens’ rights. We need not be homogeneous; we need only function within the same framework.

Islam is different. Muslims may understand and practice their faith differently, but Islamic obligations encompass family, inheritance, commerce, sexuality, charity, and relationships with the broader community. A religious obligation is different from a cultural preference. One can abandon a custom; abandoning a religious obligation can be understood as violating God’s commandments.
That confronts an American assumption: that religion can be neatly separated from civic life. And it raises the question America increasingly avoids: What happens when religious obligation and the American civic can no longer be reconciled? The First Amendment protects free exercise, not parallel legal systems. Americans are free to practice their religion and organize religious communities, but American law governs. A religious obligation can compel the believer, not someone else.
The problem comes when religious obligation involves matters American law treats differently: marriage, divorce, inheritance, women’s status, sexual conduct, speech, and religious criticism. When Islamic law addresses these areas, the issue is no longer merely private religious belief. It becomes a question of whether a religious framework can coexist with a civic framework built around individual autonomy and our Constitution.
Our society accommodates religious belief and practice—but not without limits. Muslims may pray, observe Ramadan, eat halal food, and establish a mosque, as long as they respect others’ rights. But religious freedom does not shield practices that violate our laws or undermine core civic norms. Customs that impose coercive dress requirements, restrict women’s autonomy, or involve genital mutilation, among other customs, are categorically incompatible with American legal and moral standards. Tolerance has boundaries; beyond them, accommodation constitutes societal surrender.
The problem intensifies when accommodation shifts from religious practice to reshaping society, allowing religious requirements to become institutionalized and requiring others to acquiesce. Beware exceptions granted on religious grounds; more will endlessly follow. Over time, tolerance of an individual practice can become pressure on institutions to accept norms fundamentally at odds with our culture.
At that point, we are no longer discussing religious freedom; we have breached the boundaries of our common civic order. We can’t stop at diagnosing incompatibilities; we must establish policies that prevent the erosion of civic order—not by restricting religion, but by restricting practices that violate American law, undermine individual rights, or create parallel social systems. What we must do:
First, the United States must enforce laws against coercive or abusive practices more consistently. Customs such as forced marriages, genital mutilation, or dress requirements imposed through religious strictures are not protected expressions of faith; they violate individual rights. Immigration screening should identify applicants who endorse or participate in such practices and deny entry to those who will not swear allegiance to American legal norms and our Constitution.
Second, the government must prohibit parallel legal systems. Any institution—religious or otherwise—that attempts to adjudicate family law, inheritance, or criminal matters outside the American legal system should be sanctioned.
Third, immigration policy must incorporate cultural compatibility as a legitimate criterion. This does not necessarily mean excluding people based on belief, but evaluating whether an applicant’s stated expectations and social media history align with America’s constitutional order and societal structure.
Fourth, assimilation must be a requirement for naturalization. This includes English proficiency, civic education, demonstrated lack of criminality, self-sufficiency, and a verifiable understanding that American law—not religious obligation—governs public life.
Finally, policymakers must recognize that immigration scale matters. Even compatible cultural differences will overwhelm our society when numbers exceed our capacity to integrate immigrants. Immigration levels must reflect not only economic needs but the nation’s ability to maintain our civic identity.
These policies do not directly target Muslims; they target their practices and frameworks that conflict with the American civic order. A pluralistic society can welcome many faiths, but it cannot survive the institutionalization of norms that contradict its foundational principles. Policy does not punish difference; it preserves the norms that make differences possible.
We have treated immigration as though the primary question is: how many people can we absorb? The more important question is what America becomes by absorbing them. A constitutional society can tolerate individual differences, but not indefinitely competing conceptions of the proper social order without becoming something different itself.
That is the transformation we should be discussing—not whether America is tolerant enough, but whether tolerance has become the mechanism by which a tolerant society is transformed, and what decisions we must undertake to preserve our own civic culture.
God Bless America.

“Prime Minister Radev told the summit “Any step in reducing fuel prices and to guarantee our competitiveness, we appreciate” – in a clear reference to the US-Russia diesel agreement.”

• Bulgarian PM Stuns EU With Full-Throated Backing Of Trump-Putin Diesel Deal (ZH)

Bulgaria has just broken ranks amid widespread European criticism over the Trump-Putin diesel deal announced last week, with the NATO country’s Prime Minister Rumen Radev stunning Brussels in fresh remarks. “You know what is our problem right now in Europe? High fuel prices,” Radev said in English as he attended a two-day summit of leaders.

Reuters described of the top level meeting in Brussels, “the European Union began a packed summit on Thursday that quickly underscored wrangles over how to tame soaring energy prices, design a budget to keep the bloc competitive and curb surging exports from China that are blamed for job losses.”
Prime Minister Radev told the summit “Any step in reducing fuel prices and to guarantee our competitiveness, we appreciate” – in a clear reference to the US-Russia diesel agreement.
And even as most continue to vocally support Ukrainian President Zelensky in his ongoing standoff with Trump and defiance of US wishes, Radev criticized Ukraine’s strikes against Russia’s oil refineries, again siding with the White House. “I don’t support strikes on any refineries,” Radev said, at a moment Trump is strongly warning that Kiev better halt this tactic.
“I don’t support strikes on any energy power plants, like Russian attacks on energy power plants in Ukraine, because this hits us back,” he added. “The prices in Europe are (skyrocketing).” Fellow European leaders voiced wide disagreement, with EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas echoing Zelensky’s words that the diesel deal was a “gift” to Vladimir Putin.
“The question is: what has he (Putin) given in return? What we see is that he’s actually increasing the attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure. The ceasefire that was also announced is not really working on the Russian side,” Kallas said. The recently installed Radev, whose Progressive Bulgaria party won the April election, has been busy rolling back the NATO ‘eastern flank’ country’s prior policy on Ukraine, including related to arms shipments.
The new government has made clear it has a new peace agenda, and its position is that nothing will be resolved by just pouring more heavy arms into the conflict, now in its fifth year. It was given a new mandate. This was also notable amid the AfD’s continued rise in Germany…

German AfD Leader Alice Weidel:

While you attempt to finance the proxy war against the nuclear power Russia practically single-handedly, our European partners are already discreetly holding back.

And while you approve one sanctions package after another, thereby ruining our own… pic.twitter.com/mYM3rYY9YW
— Clash Report (@clashreport) October 15, 2026

He has repeatedly criticized EU overreach on green-energy mandates, sanctions policies and what he describes as moral posturing in a “world without rules.” While analysts have lately noted he is unlikely to ultimately jeopardize the flow of EU funds that sustain Bulgaria’s economy, the result installs a distinctly Russia-friendly government at the heart of the EU’s southeastern flank – a shift that has been drawing close scrutiny in Brussels, Washington and Kiev.

“The Democrats will use lawfare to turn the US into a one party political system.”

• Has Trump Handed Dems the Rope with which to Hang Him? (Paul Craig Roberts)

Alexander Dugin thinks that if the Republicans lose control of Congress in the November 3 midterm elections, the Democrats will renew their attempt to prosecute Trump as a criminal and members of his administration as well. This is a real possibility.

We witnessed the Democrats during Trump’s term and during Biden’s four years use lawfare against Trump. It was Trump’s reelection in 2024 that saved him from being turned into a criminal by the Democrats. Since then Democrats have made further inroads into transforming law from serving justice to serving Democrat agendas.
As Democrats have become ideologues convinced that whites are racists whose speech needs to be curtailed along with their 14th Amendment protection to equality under law, Democrats in the justice (sic) system have been perfecting their ability to use their offices not to serve justice but to serve their ideological agendas. This is what ideological parties always do.
New York Assistant Attorney General Rick Sawyer explained to the Jewish Anti-Defamation League in a 2022 conference that “Attorney General’s offices have a massive amount of power within their jurisdiction.” He pointed out that they do not have to charge a crime in order to bankrupt a target with subpoenas, massive investigations, and force them to enter into “creative settlements” without ever going to court. Sawyer explained that these means of harassment and intimidation can be used to negate free speech rights. Peter Brimelow and Emerald Robinson discuss how NY Attorney General Letitia James used these highly unethical tactics to close down the immigration website Vdare by imposing a $1 to $2 million legal bill caused by complying with subpoenas.
Another trick Democrats have devised is when a state attorney general transgresses on a target’s First Amendment rights, the Democrat federal judge to whom the First Amendment issue is brought refuses to hear the case and reassigns it to the state. In this way Democrat federal judges condone trampling on the victim’s First Amendment rights by state prosecutors serving some Democrat agenda.
This development is hardly surprising. American law schools have been teaching for a couple of decades that the purpose of law is not to serve justice but to transform society in a leftward direction. Shutting up one’s opponents advances the leftward direction. The same has happened in journalism schools where the students are taught that their purpose is not to objectively report the news but to use “news” as a weapon to transform society. The American people are unaware of these developments, because it is not in the interest of those bringing changes in this way to tell them.
It was not only Trump who was a victim of Democrat lawfare, but also others such as Mike Lindell, General Flynn, and Rudy Giuliani. When the Democrats return to power, expect to see an increase in the use of lawfare to destroy Republicans. The Democrats will use lawfare to turn the US into a one party political system.
In contrast, Trump has been unable to bring justice to the Democrats who abused power in efforts to frame the President of the United States. NY Attorney General Letitia James, who attempted to frame Trump for mortgage fraud when there were no complaints is herself known to have committed mortgage fraud. But Democrat prosecutors and judges in the state with jurisdiction prevent charges from being brought against her. We hear a lot about alleged “white privilege,” but here we see real black Democrat privilege.
Trump might have handed both the rope and tree limb to the Democrats to hang both him and the Republican Party by letting Netanyahu and the Israel Lobby drag the US into a war with Iran that has imposed hardship on Americans by reducing energy flows and sending up energy costs and inflation at the very time that AI data centers championed by Trump are driving up the cost of electricity. In effect, Netanyahu has succeeded in pushing America leftward into more policies destructive of the economy and the Constitution.

Victor Davis Hanson has 2 articles about October 7. He makes some good points.

• The Lie Behind the Gaza Genocide Accusations (Victor Davis Hanson)

We’re at the third anniversary week, just last week, of the Oct. 7, 2023 massacres. Remember what happened? About 4,000 terrorists from Gaza, Hamas terrorists, accompanied by 2,000 opportunistic Gazan civilians, swarmed into Israel in a pre-planned assault. They penetrated 17 miles. They would have gone a lot further had the IDF and armed civilians not beaten them back. They killed almost 1,000 of the terrorists and their accompaniment.

But the question I have is: Why is Gaza now in rubble? We hear about genocide, we hear about settler colonialism, we hear about apartheid, but why is Gaza in rubble? And I think I can answer that in two ways. What happened before Oct. 7, and what happened after.
Let’s go first to what happened after. The Israeli government on Oct. 8, and subsequently for the next 20 days, asked Hamas, such as it is, to do two things: turn over the 251 hostages and turn over the architects and those who participated in the murder. They waited 20 days before invading Gaza. In those 20 days, the Gazans sent about 8,500 rockets into Israel’s civilian centers. These were not aimed at military targets or even dual-use targets. They were aimed at civilian targets.
So for 20 days, while Israel waited for them to give back the hostages before they invaded, give back the architects of this terror, they refused both counts, and they sent about 8,500 rockets. They would altogether send 13,000 rockets, we forget that, at Israel. So that’s number one and two.
And next, they exposed civilians at the entries and exits into the tunnels below Gaza. There was almost 500 miles in this labyrinth, and to get in and out, you had to go through a hospital, a mosque, or a school, or in some cases private homes. The Hamas terrorists, the people responsible for killing everybody, were hiding in this labyrinth quite safe while they were exposing their own civilians to retaliation for the crimes that they had committed.
Can you imagine during the Blitz, for example, if British civil defense people who were manning the barricades and were afraid of bombing went down into the subway and they denied the use of the subway to British civilians? That would be unheard of. But that’s exactly what Hamas did.
So number three, there were about 2,000 to 3,000 civilians that either planned all along to go into Israel to be opportunistic killers, looters, thieves, and rapists. And they participated in the mutilation and the desecration and the hostage taking. We know that. We had about a couple of hundred people who were captured. We had their GoPro cameras. We had security cameras in the kibbutzes.
And by the way, of the 6,000 who participated, the Israeli government has taken out about 4,000. The next 2,000 must know that they are marked people, and they will not be here very long.
Another reason. Why, when they brought back hostages and corpses and they paraded them in the streets of Gaza, were they not only met by a mob that was cheering, but the mob actually tried to spit, hit, club those hostages who were alive and mutilate the bodies of those who were dead and brought back as trophies?
In other words, the civilians, think of this, the civilians of Gaza that we say were innocent had to be stopped from further atrocities by the people who created the atrocities, the Hamas terrorists.
Let’s ask another reason why Gaza is in rubble, and in the context of before Oct. 7.
In September 2005, all Israelis were out of Gaza. There was not one Jew, there was not one Israeli inside Gaza. American philanthropic organizations and donors bought key infrastructure, especially greenhouses, and the Israelis turned them over to the Gazans, who immediately looted them and destroyed them against their own self-interest. They were very lucrative businesses, and they could have been using them.
So my point is, there were no Jews in Gaza. This is 22 years ago, or 18 years ago by the time of the October massacres. So Gazans and Hamas terrorists wanted to kill Israelis even though no Israelis were in Gaza. And they had not been there for about 18 years on Oct. 7.
And the West, mainly the United States and Europe and the U.N., had given Gaza in that period from 2005 to the date of the massacres about $40 billion. Did they build a Dubai-like resort? Did Hamas have regular elections? Did they have a constitution that encouraged the equality of the sexes, that allowed religious freedom, that called for protection of individual civil liberties? No.
Did they take their 25 miles or so of pristine Mediterranean beaches and turn it into a Dubai? No. What did they do? First thing they did is they murdered any contestant to the election. They held the election in 2006. They got elected, and then they canceled the election. And then for the next 18 years, they killed anybody who questioned this Hamas theocratic terrorist clique that ruled Gaza.
Let me emphasize again, they diverted $40 billion and built a tunnel labyrinth for one reason, to protect the terrorists and to expose their own civilians to retaliation when they committed their next planned atrocity.
Think of the argument. They are essentially telling the world we expect the Israelis to be more humane about our own civilians than we are. Therefore, we are putting our entries and exits in places where civilians will be there, in schools, mosques, and hospitals, because we think the Israelis are so humanitarian they won’t bomb those places and we will be safe. In other words, We don’t care if they get killed, but we want to save ourselves and we think the Israelis will treat our civilians better than we do who are exposing them.
Let me just sum up.
After Oct. 7, they had 20 days to come to an agreement and turn over the perpetrators and give back the hostages. They refused. Instead, they answered that with rockets aimed at Israeli civilians. When the Israelis went in there to get the perpetrators, they hid in tunnels, committed terrorist acts, sent thousands more rockets into Israel, deliberately at civilian areas, and put their civilians as human shields to ensure there would be civilian casualties even as the Israelis were dropping leaflets and texting individual apartment dwellers to get out and not be collateral damage.
Before Oct. 7, Israel had completely evacuated Gaza for 18 years. They had allowed an election. They were supplying, I should say, about 20% to 50% of the food, water, sewage treatment, chemicals, fuel, and power to Gaza. Gaza had a border with Egypt. Did Egypt want to let Gazans in there, and did they want to help? No. They wanted nothing to do with them. Nothing to do with them.
They had an election, then they canceled all elections, and they tormented and terrorized their own people. And we are supposed to believe now that Israel created a genocide when the population of Gaza, when they left in 2005, was what? It’s about 1.3 million. And what was it on Oct. 7? About 2.4 million. Nations or countries that want to commit genocide do not pull all of their military and civilians out of the area that is targeted and then see it increase by one million people in a mere 20 years.
The charge is absurd. The whole situation is absurd. And what’s most absurd, Westerners still parrot this word genocide, which applies to a lot of places in the world that they omit, but it surely doesn’t apply to what Israel did after Oct. 7.

“Why Are Campuses Not Condemning Them?..”

• Hamas is a Complete Death Cult (Victor Davis Hanson)

Jack Fowler: Well, Victor, let’s go to some campuses—two campuses. I’ll throw both stories out there and your take on them. They both have to do with antisemitism, and one is at Columbia, which has always been a hotbed since Oct. 7 for antisemitism.
And the headline here is, from Fox News: “Columbia University Says Oct. 7 Dining Menu Listing Was a Mistake.” And part of what it said here on the menu at the school was Oct. 7 blush sauce, which is like—what the f–? This is, this is… “Oh, that was a printing typo.” How the hell does that get to be a printing typo? Anyway, that was one thing.
The other thing that’s antisemitic and really troubling has to do with this professor at Haverford College in Pennsylvania. Professor Guangtian Ha he’s been arrested and charged with cyberstalking a Jewish colleague. He was posing as a MAGA anonymous person on X.
Let me just read this. It says, “In addition to posting vile antisemitic messages, he allegedly posted his colleague’s home address, infant child’s name, a photograph of the family’s mailbox, countless antisemitic slurs and threats, and reference of real-time observation of their home,” etc. And he was a wackadoo, I think, if you look at the courses he was teaching. But someone with that mentality could be hired at a prestigious college, maybe it shouldn’t be surprising, Victor.
Victor Davis Hanson: He’s DEI. He’s DEI. Remember what DEI is. DEI is just as if you and I go into an insurance company and say, “We’re gonna go take a trip, and we wanna get insurance. We’re gonna fly, and wanna get airline insurance.” And so we’re indemnified. I have a small little 40 acres, and I have a renter now, and I get insurance that says if anyone who wants to sue me, I have X amount.
Basically, in California, it’s happened five times. If you’re drunk, and you’re driving at a high speed, and you go aerial, and you go into an orchard or vineyard and you destroy $30,000 or $40,000 worth of damage, you get nothing, and the person leaves the scene of the accident. And if you try to take the car, of course you’ll be arrested as a deposit.
But they can… We’ve had cases where they sue people if they hit a pipe or something or, “Well, that pipeline shouldn’t be there.” So you get these expensive policies. Well, that’s what DEI is. It’s basically saying, “I got a DEI policy, and that means that if I want to make up a false identity and attack this person, I’m not a part of the oppressor class. I’m the oppressed class, so I get an exemption. If I wanna walk out of this store and shoplift, I get an exemption if it’s under $950, maybe even above.”
And that’s the very worst thing about DEI. And that’s all these things have something in common. If you are a victim and you say, “The Jews did this,” or “The Jews did that,” then you’re going to be protected.
I think the Jewish community, I think, knows that. I mean, there are right-wing antisemites. I think you can make the argument that Tucker [Carlson] detests Israel and is an antisemite, given the things he said. And I say that because I remember I had no evidence of that, but I remember when he, in his early career, he was a critic of Pat Buchanan, remember? And he said that Buchanan was really sending coded antisemitic themes. Tucker said that. So I think he’s gone from that to something completely opposite.
But what I’m getting at is if it’s [Nick] Fuentes or Candace [Owens] or Tucker, that’s an isolated group. What we’re talking about is the whole left-wing party now is antisemitic. Basically, the mixture of socialism and the whole Islamism, you get the people in the United States who are always accusing the Jews of running cabals, and you get the people from the Middle East who say Israel is the source of all of our self-inflicted problems, and they combine, and they’re powerful, and people are not speaking out against it.
But it’s from the Left, and that professor will be found out to be on the Left. That’s why he disguised himself as a MAGA person. But I think it’s accelerating so fast, Jack, I don’t think they’re ashamed of it. I think they’re happy about it. You know, you can see that with [Zohran] Mamdani. They’re talking now about firing Police Commissioner [Jessica] Tisch in New York. You know, the only Jewish member of his… I mean, mainstream Jewish. You know, she’s done a wonderful job.
And Hasan Piker, whom they all invite to be seen with, he said that Orthodox Jews are inbred, and he said you will not see a Jew nominated ever again as a Democratic candidate for president. So they’re open about it, and it’s gonna keep going.
Jack Fowler: By the way, we should just, since you stumbled into—you didn’t stumble into this, you brought us into this. About Mamdani, he did on Oct. 7 paid lip service to what happened three years ago. But then, of course, he also added all those other things. It was some event— But now he’s being attacked by — could you be further left than Mamdani? By those who say that his participation at an event that recognized the murders on Oct. 7 was inexcusable…
Victor Davis Hanson: Well, people who have been flying—at some of these demonstrations, not all, but some, they fly Hezbollah flags. They’re happy. They believe in terrorism. [Abdul] El-Sayed said, “Hurt people hurt people,” i.e. translated, people that are hurt by Jews then hurt Jews. What do you expect? Right.
The funny thing is, you take away Oct. 7 right now, and there would be no problem in Gaza. We would still go back to square one. The Gaza wall would be pathetic. It’s nothing compared to pictures of the Gaza Egyptian wall. In other words, the Egyptians were firmer that they didn’t want Gazans going into fellow Muslim Arab Egypt than the Jews were into Jewish Israel.
There would be 18,000 work permits, with people still going in making $11 to $13 an hour in Israel working side by side. All the buildings would be there, da, da, da. All they had to do was not go in under the guise of being workers and conduct intelligence operations, find out where the kibbutzes are, plan the whole thing.
Iran was the brain and the bank of the whole thing. Hezbollah was supposed to join in. The Houthis were supposed to join in. And they really did believe they would get further than 17 miles. They thought they were gonna go 50, 60, 80 miles because they thought that 150,000 rockets from Hezbollah would come in, Houthis would come in. They did fire right after—People forget this. They fired about 4,000 rockets after, Oct. 7 into civilian centers, before Oct. 20 when the Israelis went in. And then they ended up firing almost 14,000 in total. But they really did, and Iran really did believe that it could have deniability of culpability, and everything that we’re looking at now wouldn’t have happened. I mean, we might have —
– Jack Fowler: But on that point, on that point, Victor, it’s still hard to grasp that on Oct. 8 what happened and that it wasn’t latent. It was there. It wasn’t created on Oct. 8.
– Victor Davis Hanson: Absolutely.
– Jack Fowler: It was sitting there waiting to be unleashed.
– Victor Davis Hanson: Yeah. That’s what I pointed out.

They were trying to hide it. And everybody thought people on both sides of good intelligence and a good heart said, “This was a horrible atrocity. We have to look at this.” Never in their right mind did they think that people would come out and cheer and think, oh my gosh, we killed 1,200 and we got to rape them and mutilate them and dismember them and torture them and take hostages. This is so wonderful. Now we’re going to celebrate. This is so…
And then they really did go to the next leap, And the Israelis are losing. We’ve got inside Israel with only 6,000 people, and now they’re surrounded, and the Hezbollah is gonna wipe them out with the Houthis, and everything’s gonna get better, and Hamas has got 50,000, and Hezbollah’s got 100,000, and the Houthis got 20,000 rockets and drones, and Iran’s got all … It’s gonna be wonderful. Let’s celebrate. That was the whole climate.
And the only reason Gaza is in rubble today, the Israelis said we want all of them back. We want all the people who did this. Send them back here. We want to try them. And by the way, give up the 251 hostages. That’s all we’re asking. And they said no. Why did they say no? Because we’re winning. We’re winning. We got people in the United States that are cheering on campuses. We got all of Europe is on our side. We’ve got 250,000 rockets, missiles, and drones in our ring of fire in Iran. We’re gonna win. And then Israel went in. And, when they went in, they were attacked.
Probably 40,000 missiles and rockets have been shot at Israeli civilians from Lebanon, from Hamas, from Yemen, from Iran. And they lost. They lost badly. And that was all they had to …
And if they didn’t wanna give them up, and they didn’t wanna give the hostages up, all they had to do was do this. They had to say, “You know what? The Israelis are gonna blitz us. We’ve got over 300 miles of tunnels. They have food. They have water. They’re safe from bombing. We want all you Gazan people who live anywhere near us, who might be in danger, get in those tunnels, because we’re gonna go out and fight these Jews. We’re gonna go out and fight the Israeli, the IDF. We’re gonna fight house to house. But we don’t want you hurt.”
They did just the opposite. They put the entries and exits under hospitals, private homes, mosques, and schools, and they kept the civilians out. And they used it because they really did believe the Israelis would be more reluctant to inflict damage or death on their own Gazan brotherhood than they were in exposing them to that.
So basically, Hamas made the calculation. You know, it’s easy. Anybody who knows any logic, A plus B equals C, will see that they said, “You know what? Those awful Jews in Israel, in their naivete, care more about human life than we do. And no, even worse for them, they care more about the Gazans than we do. So if we put our people out there to be killed, a lot of them are gonna get killed, but they’re not going to hit our entries and exits in the hospitals, the mosques, and the schools because they’re gonna pull back from those places. So we’re gonna sit here safe, and the Gazans will get killed, and that’ll be good for propaganda.”
What they didn’t count on was the Israelis went down and got them and pulled them out and fought. But that would have all been avoided. And we’re not even getting into not one Jewish person was in Gaza for 18 years—since 2005. Or we’re not getting out, they had an election. All they had to do was say, “We’re gonna have an election. Let’s not kill Palestinian Authority rivals. They’re a different party, but please, Hamas people, don’t throw them off houses anymore. Please, that’s all we’re asking. Don’t kill 150 of our own people and throw them off. And don’t go to people’s houses and threaten them to vote for us. And then, once we elect Hamas, let’s have a free press, habeas corpus, a constitution, and let’s every four years hold regular elections.”
They couldn’t even do that. And then if they couldn’t even do that, they could say, “Well, we’re gonna be an autocracy like, oh, the UAE or Saudi Arabia, but we’re gonna show the Jews in Israel that we’re smarter and better, so we’re gonna build a Kuwait City or a Dubai right here on 24 miles of priceless Mediterranean beaches, and we’re gonna make this. We’re gonna put the Israelis to shame. We’re gonna have more money, nicer places, tourists.”
They couldn’t even do that. They were a complete death cult.

Navarro was there, as part of Trump1.

• The Masks Were Never About Science (Peter Navarro)

On March 8, 2020, Anthony Fauci told “60 Minutes” that a healthy person had “no reason to be walking around with a mask.” Within a year, he was applauding the idea of wearing two. The official explanation is that the science changed—that we learned about presymptomatic and asymptomatic spread. Fauci’s own diary destroys that explanation twice, in his own hand, and what it leaves behind is inventory management, sold to a frightened country as medicine.

I pull back the curtain on the mask war in my new book, “Why Fauci MUST Rot in Prison”—and I can tell you what the other side of it looked like, because I was fighting it. While Fauci was on television explaining why Americans did not need masks, I was in the West Wing getting them some—the good kind, the N95 kind essential for first responders.
On Feb. 9, 2020—31 days before the World Health Organization declared a pandemic—I wrote a memo to the Coronavirus Task Force warning that China produced about half the world’s N95 masks, was blocking their export, and that “The U.S. therefore faces the real prospect of a severe mask shortage!” I asked for an export halt, purchase guarantees for every domestic producer at maximum output, and Buy American rules for the masks that cover an American face.
Then the phone rang. On March 12, a Honeywell vice president told me the company could stand up two new N95 manufacturing lines, in Rhode Island and Arizona, if Washington moved fast. Washington does not move fast. So I gave her my word—no signature, no paper.
Within 24 hours, Honeywell’s trucks, on my word, were hauling production machinery out of Massachusetts. By the end of the first Trump administration, those two manufacturing lines were turning out tens of millions of American-made N95s a month and employing more than a thousand Americans.
That was my mask war. Making masks. Now Fauci’s.
Here is the first thing his diary kills: his alibi for switching his position on masks. Supposedly the guidance changed when science learned that people without symptoms could spread the virus. But in the first days of February 2020, George Gao—the director of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention—told Fauci directly, in Fauci’s words, “that infected people can be asymptomatic and that asymptomatic people can transmit.”
He knew in the first week of February. He told “60 Minutes” there was no reason for a mask a month later.Here is the second thing, and it is worse. On June 23, 2020, after a six-hour House hearing, Fauci recorded a run-in with a West Virginia congressman who was “giving me s— about saying early on that we should not wear masks to save them for the HCWs [health care workers] at a time when there was a shortage.”
Read it again. Save them for the health care workers. On Fauci’s own telling, the “no reason” of March 8 was never an assessment of the evidence. It was supply triage. Tell the public not to worry about getting masks—so the masks stay on the shelf for the people who need them, in his judgment, more.
In the same March weeks Anthony Fauci was managing a shortage by misleading Americans about masks, Honeywell’s trucks were rolling toward Rhode Island on nothing but my word, and two factories were preparing to end the shortage he was lying to accommodate. One of us treated it as a production problem and fixed it. The other treated it as a communications problem.
And watch the staircase he climbed. March 31, in the diary: “We probably were too strong in saying masks do not work.” Not the science changed—we were too strong.By summer: “There’s no doubt that wearing masks protects you.” By autumn: “begging people to wear masks.” By February 2021, two of them.
No reason, to too strong, to no doubt, to begging, to double up—each certainty delivered with exactly the confidence of the one it silently replaced. A scientist updating his communication based on evidence says what he said, what changed, and why. This was a ratchet.
Let me be precise, because flattening this debate was itself the trick. I was never anti-mask; I ran mask production. The mask on those trucks had a federal filtration standard, a fit requirement, and a nurse’s face to protect. What Washington eventually sold under that same four-letter word ran down to a damp and floppy bandanna on a 5-year-old.
And the children paid for it. Fauci’s influence imposed years of face covering on small children at low risk from the disease, without evidence of benefit at that age, while treating the developmental cost to children as not important enough to measure. Everything I did in that war was supply. What President Trump and I never did was order one free citizen to wear anything.
As for Tony, there is an old line that you can tell when he is lying because his lips are moving. Maybe that is the real reason he wore the mask.

Oh no, the CIA didn’t do it. No!

Do the Germans get together a show trial to please Langley?

To piss off Kiev?

• Nord Stream Sabotage Trial Begins With Explosive Allegations Against Ukraine (RFE/RL)

A German court is trying former Ukrainian officer Serhii Kuznetsov over his alleged role in coordinating the September 2022 Nord Stream pipeline sabotage. German prosecutors allege the operation was conducted on behalf of Ukrainian state authorities, although Kyiv denies involvement and no Ukrainian political leadership role has been established. The trial could intensify political disputes in Germany over continued military assistance to Ukraine, particularly among opposition parties critical of Berlin’s support.

After four years of speculation, leaks, and briefings by anonymous sources, the world is finally about to hear evidence given publicly under oath in a German courtroom about how the Nord Stream gas pipelines were blown up – in a case that could prove politically explosive. German prosecutors have identified seven Ukrainian suspects, but just one of them is in the dock in the trial beginning on October 14. He is named as Serhii K. in court documents that say he is suspected of being an accomplice to a war crime.
That classification has caused outrage. But German prosecutors have further raised the stakes by stating the suspects were operating “on behalf of state authorities in Ukraine. Kyiv has always strictly denied any involvement in the attack, which damaged crucial energy infrastructure serving Germany – one of its most important military backers in its fight since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022. Serhii K., who has been identified elsewhere as Serhiy Kuznetsov, says he is innocent.
‘Two Crazy Military Men’
Nord Stream is majority-owned by Russia’s state-controlled Gazprom and co-financed by major European energy companies. It was constructed to deliver Russian gas directly to Germany, bypassing transit states such as Ukraine and Poland, which had tense relations with Moscow. The suspected sabotage and subsequent gas leaks happened in September 2022, rendering the pipelines as inoperable.
Western governments originally accused Russia of carrying out the blasts, but German investigators started forming a case that said a group of Ukrainian divers hired a yacht and planted explosives on the seabed. They say Kuznetsov, a former military officer, was the ringleader. “
At the end of February 2022, he and other military personnel, on behalf of state authorities in Ukraine, developed the plan,” says a summary of the indictment released by prosecutors. “The aim was to permanently halt gas deliveries via the pipelines and prevent Russia from using the revenue from the natural gas trade to finance its war efforts.” The prosecutors have not stated publicly the full extent of the alleged conspiracy.
The full indictment contains some further details, according to three German media outlets that say they have seen it: public-service TV station ARD and two print-era heavyweights, Sueddeutsche Zeitung and Die Zeit. They all reported that, while in custody in Italy, Kuznetsov had phoned his wife in Kyiv and investigators were secretly listening in as he said he’d been advised by a lawyer that it was time to admit this had been “an official military operation.” His commander should state that they were not just “two crazy military men.”
Kuznetsov’s Italian lawyer, Nicola Canestrini, has played down the importance of this evidence, saying there was “no smoking gun” in the case. “It is hard to believe that, after Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine, a German court should hold a war crimes trial against a Ukrainian serviceman,” he added in comments to RFE/RL.

Tomorrow's Tesla Roadster reveal is something far bigger than just making a faster car

Elon Musk has already said Tesla and SpaceX are working together on it

“Some things that I have said publicly is that it'll do zero to 60 in under one second. So that's by far faster than any… pic.twitter.com/va63TRnqgl
— X Freeze (@XFreeze) October 14, 2026

https://twitter.com/iam_smx/status/2110357589099942066?s=20

Do you believe the upcoming Roadster will have a rocket thruster as Elon Musk promised? pic.twitter.com/JxVGOg5BCK https://t.co/DuW3bsx6Uf
— Doge Tipping (@Dogetothemoon) October 14, 2026

5,000 Starship launches a year.
Nearly 14 EVERY DAY.
At 200 tonnes per flight, that moves 1 million tonnes into orbit.

Cheap launches are only the beginning. Towers, reliability and satellite factories must keep up. $SPCX

My SpaceX space-AI breakdown: pic.twitter.com/PSMpzHCpai
— nextbigfuture (@nextbigfuture) October 14, 2026

https://twitter.com/EvaFox/status/2110463519292563757?s=20

Every time something happens in Ukraine involving a satellite, a certain group of people logs on to blame Elon Musk. Personally. As if he's sitting in Texas with a joystick, deciding which Ukrainian brigade gets Wi-Fi today. So let's go through this slowly.

What is Starlink?… pic.twitter.com/L5L62T4m1i
— Ian Miles Cheong (@ianmiles) October 15, 2026

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

Debt Rattle October 14 2026

Oct 142026

October 14, 2026 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 9:29 am Finance Tagged with: AfD, chopper, diesel, energy deal, Ilhan Omar, islamification, Jack Smith, Russia 47 Responses »

Vincent van Gogh Women Picking Olives 1889

• Russia’s Offensive Ability Is Broken – Kyiv’s Former Top General (BBC)

• UK and Poland Accuse Russia of “Mayhem” (CTH)

• Europe’s Diesel Shortage Is a Problem Created by Political Design (Lacalle)

• Zelenskyy Requests His Own “Diesel Deal” with the United States (CTH)

• German Opposition Demands Trump-style Diesel Deal With Russia (RT)

• Ramifications of the Trump-Putin Energy Deal (CTH)

• President Trump is Making Chopper Pressers Great Again (CTH)

• Jack Smith Could Track Phone Contacts, but What About the Lawyers? (Manney)

• Trump Might Not Be as Bad as He Appears (Paul Craig Roberts)

• Trump Suggests Ilhan Omar’s Money Came From Fraud (Catherine Salgado)

• Corporate Islamification (Stefan Padfield)

• The Midterm Polling Is Absolutely, Positively, 100% Wrong. (Maybe.) (Pinsker)

https://twitter.com/EricLDaugh/status/2109714875932913993?s=20

Trump buys $6 BILLION of oil and gas from Russia and there’s a Backlash? Seriously?

Europe has spent MORE THAN €375 BILLION buying Russian oil, gas and coal in the last 3 years. And they’ve never stopped buying! In fact they bought almost €3 BILLION of the stuff in August… pic.twitter.com/sQX7bJkmey
— Bernie (@Artemisfornow) October 13, 2026

https://twitter.com/GuntherEagleman/status/2109616355825569987?s=20 https://twitter.com/Tironianae/status/2109783416044449882?s=20

Look at that hideous picture. And you still don't think that the merchants of war control both parties? https://t.co/pLvZC0jEOd
— David Stockman (@DA_Stockman) October 12, 2026

I want to ask for your help.

When this special operation started in 2022, military experts Douglas MacGregor and Scott Ritter both said Ukraine was losing 7-8 times more men than Russia.

That difference is now supposed to be the other way around, according to a Ukrainian voice.

Which means some 50 times more Russian victims than 4 years ago, compared to Ukrainian victims.

I don’t see how that could have happened.

Do you guys think that is credible?

“Ukraine has stabilised the front line and “broken Russia’s ability to advance” by killing so many of its men, Ukraine’s former commander-in-chief has said in an interview with the BBC.”

• Russia’s Offensive Ability Is Broken – Kyiv’s Former Top General (BBC)

Gen Oleksandr Syrskyi

Ukraine has stabilised the front line and “broken Russia’s ability to advance” by killing so many of its men, Ukraine’s former commander-in-chief has said in an interview with the BBC. Gen Oleksandr Syrskyi made the comments in an exclusive interview, his first since he was dramatically forced from his post in the summer. He addressed his sacking, disagreeing with his critics who declared him too “old school” to command Ukraine’s new, technologically advanced forces.

He also pushed back against allegations made by soldiers who previously served under him, who told the BBC they were ordered to remain at their positions even when they were almost surrounded by Russians, leading to high losses. Syrskyi said that Moscow’s overall losses in the war were six times higher than Ukraine’s. “If you count only dead, then it’s up to 11 times,” he added. Neither Russia nor Ukraine officially release the numbers of their dead. Ukraine’s military says it inflicted record losses this year on Russian soldiers in September, although that cannot be verified.
UK intelligence chiefs estimate Russia has lost around half a million men killed in Ukraine since launching its full-scale invasion in 2022. The US-based Center for Strategic and International Studies meanwhile believes Ukraine has lost up to 150,000 troops killed by June 2026.. He says this difference in death toll – as well as technological advances, and a strategy of attacking weak points in Russia’s lines while containing their advances in other parts – accounts for the current stalemate at the front.
In the first six months of 2026, Russia managed overall to seize 61 sq km, the general said. “It’s an indication that the front line has been stabilised.” The Institute for Study of War (ISW) has also confirmed this trend. One of its recent reports says that in September 2026, Moscow lost more territory than it took.

Syrskyi was appointed Ukraine’s commander-in-chief in 2024. He had previously won praise for defending Kyiv at the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, and for leading the successful counteroffensive east of Kharkiv in the autumn of that year. But President Volodymyr Zelensky fired Syrskyi this summer, amid a major disagreement with then-defence minister Mykhailo Fedorov.
Fedorov had said that instead of adapting to the realities of the changing war, the army under Syrskyi had blocked his initiatives. Zelensky initially fired Fedorov, as tensions burst into the open between the two men. But mass street protests then forced the president to also fire Syrskyi, replacing him with Maj Gen Mykhailo Drapatyi, 43.
Syrskyi told the BBC that he had “disagreements” with Fedorov because the latter “didn’t take into consideration the interests of the army” when procuring weapons and supplies. Fedorov had created an “imbalance” in supplies, Syrskyi said. He had prioritised drones while overlooking key front-line kit such as unmanned ground vehicles, pick-up trucks and motorbikes. Even with drones, Syrskyi said, there were shortages as the army got only half of what they needed.
Fedorov was a popular young minister who was known for his digital and technological initiatives. Many contrasted him with Syrskyi, who critics thought was not fit to lead the new technological arms race with Russia. But Syrskyi disagrees with such criticism. It was during his time the use of drones reached this new, unprecedented level, including deep strikes more than 2,000km (1,200 miles) behind enemy lines, he said.
Ukraine was the first country to create the Unmanned Systems Forces as a separate branch of armed forces, under his command: now, he said, drones account for 80% of Russia’s losses. Under his military leadership, however, Ukrainian troops undertook chaotic withdrawals from the eastern cities of Avdiivka and Vuhledar, and from around Pokrovsk. Soldiers who spoke to the BBC in the past complained that they were ordered to remain at their positions at any costs. By the time they were told to pull back, it was often too late as they were almost surrounded by Russian troops.
Syrskyi does not deny that such situations occur on the front line. But he told the BBC that Ukraine was fighting against a far more powerful army. In 2025, the ratio of jets and bombs was 18 to one in Moscow’s favour, he said. In the same year, Russia had two-and-a-half times more artillery pieces and shells than Ukraine. And with four million militarily trained men who they can mobilise, Russian forces can create chances to push through, he argued.
One of Syrskyi’s most famous operations was an incursion into Russia’s Kursk region that started in August 2024. It ended with a dramatic retreat the following spring, which some soldiers described as “catastrophic”. Syrskyi, however, insisted that the Kursk operation was “a necessity”.
“In the summer 2024, Russian forces were pushing along all main directions on the front line with up to six times more troops than we had,” he explained. The Kursk incursion disrupted Russia’s offensive and forced Moscow to redirect troops, giving Ukraine a respite and a chance for its stretched brigades in the east and south to recover, Syrskyi said.
He also had strong words for European allies who doubt that Russia may have territorial ambitions beyond Ukraine. He advised European partners to start preparing for the war now and “drop all illusions that [it] will not come”. He also said he believed Ukraine’s war was going to become even more technological. There will be more robots, automated systems and artificial intelligence (AI). “Even ordinary weapons now get an AI-based control system to enhance their capabilities,” he said.
Such technologies can give a new life to conventional weapons like tanks. Both Russia and Ukraine were now racing to develop “active systems of defence” to protect armoured vehicles, Syrskyi said. But he insisted that “the human role will remain definitive [on the battlefield] because [people] will need to control those systems”.

“UK Prime Minister Says Russia Interfered in Brexit Vote, Polish Prime Minister Says Russia Sabotaged Starlink System ..”

The UK still hasn’t gottten over Brexit?!

And look, of course Russia targets Starlink. it’s used against them in battle.

• UK and Poland Accuse Russia of “Mayhem” (CTH)

As President Trump continues to confront the EU-NATO antagonists who demand increased conflict with Russia, the primary voices of the EU-NATO group shout panic about Putin’s nefarious espionage, mayhem, general mischief and other heinous activity. All of it with the ever-present ‘just trust us‘ evidence. Yesterday, British Prime Minister Andy Burnham blamed Russia for the 2016 Brexit referendum vote that took the U.K out of the European Union.

UK NEWS – […] “The prime minister told The Rest is Politics podcast that upon arriving in No 10, he had asked about possible Russian interference in the 2016 vote, adding: “I’ve had the clear answer that, yes, there was.” […] Burnham did not provide further details about the type or extent of Moscow’s activity during the Brexit referendum.mBritain Unbound, a pro-Brexit campaign group, said Burnham’s comments were “another crude attempt to undermine the legitimacy of the decision that the British people made in 2016”. (read more)
Today, Poland Prime Minister Donald Tusk, a man of notoriously intemperate disposition, said that two Turkish fellows who sabotaged the Starlink satellite station near Warsaw were operating on behalf of Putin.WARSAW, Poland — Poland is blaming Russia for an arson attack on a Starlink satellite station in September and two Turkish citizens have been arrested in connection with the suspected act of sabotage, authorities said.
The suspects, whose names were not released in line with Polish privacy rules, were arrested in Germany, Polish officials said Monday. They are accused of deliberately setting fire to Starlink infrastructure on Sept. 23 in Wola Krobowska, Poland, about 40 kilometres (25 miles) south of Warsaw.[…] Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, in a post on X, called the incident “another act of hybrid warfare.” (read more)
Meanwhile the head of British Intelligence, MI5 chief Sir Ken McCallum, warned Prime Minister Burham that promoting Russian conspiracies without solid evidence to support his claim may lead to an erosion of confidence in the U.K government. Apparently, like the German people, the British are laughing at government leadership.
[He] suggested Russian trolls would be “delighted” to be front page news again, “despite the comparative unimpressiveness” of their efforts. He added: “There is a really important difference between interference attempted and outcome swayed. There are diabolical plots afoot, and serious seriousness is demanded.
https://twitter.com/TheOtherSideRu/status/2109969744547758097?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E2109969744547758097%7Ctwgr%5E9ebed70b90d224e5c588dbea6444b462a8e94f75%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Ftheconservativetreehouse.com%2Fblog%2F2026%2F10%2F13%2Fuk-prime-minister-says-russia-interfered-in-brexit-vote-polish-prime-minister-says-russia-sabotaged-starlink-system%2F

ZELENSKYY TODAY – “I spoke with Prime Minister Mark J Carney. Thank you, Canada! I briefed him on the latest Russian strike on Kyiv and no advance warning from our partners about the ballistic missile launch. This is the second time Ukraine has received no warning this week.
A rescue operation is underway – the strike damaged a residential building, and the fire engulfed apartments on the first through eighth floors. All emergency services are on the scene, and residents are being evacuated. So far, one person has been reported killed and six injured. My condolences to their families and loved ones. There was also a strike on the grounds of an energy facility – one of Kyiv’s main power plants. We are counting on our partners’ support.
We also discussed contacts with the United States and diplomatic developments that may take place this week. It is important that the world clearly supports an end to this war and real steps toward de-escalation – genuine steps that Russia will actually take to bring its war and its killings to an end.”

Very much so.

• Europe’s Diesel Shortage Is a Problem Created by Political Design (Lacalle)

The diesel agreement between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin will not solve the diesel shortage, considering the magnitude of the problem created by years of misguided, wrongly called “environmental policies.” Complaining about diesel prices and the US-Russia deal while eliminating domestic refining capacity and bombing refineries is just another example of bureaucratic hypocrisy.

Renewables are important, but they cannot substitute diesel, just as they have been unable to offset the importance of natural gas. Diesel is essential for every segment of the economy, from transport, manufacturing, and farming to distribution. Now, European politicians complain. However, governments cannot negotiate away years of lost refining capacity. Europe’s vulnerability is structural. Yes, war has intensified it, but policy choices helped create an energy system increasingly dependent on imported fuels, expensive infrastructure, and high taxation.
Furthermore, the risk is that—as happened in the past—oil and gasoline prices may fall, and the European businesses and families will still pay much higher energy and fuel prices. According to European Commission figures and comparisons based on official European and US data, Europe suffers an enormous energy-cost disadvantage after two decades of massive subsidies and renewable rollout.
Industrial electricity prices are more than twice those in the United States, while industrial natural gas prices reach four times US levels. At the pump, European consumers pay approximately 47% more for diesel and 70% more for gasoline. This is not simply an oil-price problem. It is an enormous competitiveness problem that permeates throughout the economy.

On October 9, Trump announced that Russia would release 300,000 tonnes of diesel immediately, followed by 500,000 tonnes in November, one million thereafter, and another three million, subject to refinery conditions. Washington temporarily authorized Russian diesel transactions until April 7, 2027. However, these are announced commitments, not confirmed deliveries. It may mitigate but not solve the diesel crisis.
The distinction is important. A sanctions exemption may permit trade, but it cannot repair damaged processing units. According to International Energy Agency estimates, Russian diesel production has suffered a temporary but significant blow, declining almost 30% following Ukrainian attacks. The important element is a policy choice, not a consequence of war.
Europe’s refining contraction is the key factor behind the structural diesel problem. It has lost more than 20% of refining capacity since 2009. At the end of 2025, the EU, Britain, Norway, and Switzerland had 72 mainstream refineries and an annual primary processing capacity of 625.4 million tonnes, down 167.6 million tonnes. Industry association FuelsEurope counts 35 closures since 2009.
The deterioration did not stop with the 2022 Ukraine war and has continued recently. Europe lost almost 400,000 barrels per day of refining capacity between 2024 and 2025, with five refineries closing over two years. This trend is a continuing reduction in the infrastructure needed to turn crude into usable fuel.
Environmental policy is part of this story, but taxation and policy choices have aggravated the problem. Governments made it uneconomical to upgrade aging facilities or build new units. Furthermore, at least five closed European facilities abandoned crude processing through conversion into biorefineries. These conversions worsened conventional refining capacity and did not offer a reliable and sustainable alternative.
The policy mistake is obvious and reminds us of the same errors committed with nuclear plants and natural gas supply. Eliminating capacity is a policy mistake without a credible path to reduce diesel’s importance. This move was not a transition but a jump into the void. Europe now relies more heavily on refined products from the Middle East, the United States, and India. Importing products is not an environmental policy success. “Not in my backyard” led to dependency and loss of competitiveness. The EU was the fourth-largest buyer of Russian fossil fuels, accounting for 8% (EUR 1.2 bn) of Russia’s export revenues from the top five importers in August 2026, according to CREA.

Ukraine’s refinery attacks have reduced fuel availability, and Russia has restricted diesel exports. While damaged refineries can be repaired, it will take months. War in the Middle East and disrupted Hormuz flows have compounded the shortage. The European Central Bank estimates reported in September put the refining-margin contribution to diesel prices at €0.41 per liter, approximately 19% of the pump price.
That is why watching Brent alone misses the problem, as crude and diesel are different markets. On September 21, EU diesel averaged €2.226 per liter, the highest reading in the European Commission’s series since 2005. Taxes accounted for €0.861, or 38.6% of the price. VAT applies on top of excise duties, effectively taxing the tax itself.
The EU minimum diesel excise is €0.33 per liter. America’s federal diesel tax is 24.4 cents per gallon, before state taxes and fees. European taxation adds a persistent cost wedge that cheaper crude cannot eliminate. This means that the average EU final diesel price is almost 50% higher than the US one. Thus, falling oil prices can provide relief without restoring competitiveness. Fixed duties remain, and scarce refining capacity may keep diesel expensive even when crude oil becomes cheaper.
Europe needs to abandon ideology in energy, provide solid investment conditions, eliminate regulation, and support an adequate refining system. Even though the European Commission’s newly announced “refinery dialogue” mentions these issues, it does not change the underlying ideological perspective or any of the existing regulations and misses the key measures to reduce the competitiveness gap, which come from lower taxes, more investment, and elimination of punitive regulations. Emergency Russian cargoes may help at the margin, even if European politicians complain about the US-Russia deal. However, none of this is going to repair Europe’s own policy-created vulnerabilities. The solution may take years, even if the changes are implemented today.

He wants Russian diesel?!

• Zelenskyy Requests His Own “Diesel Deal” with the United States (CTH)

The people around Zelenskyy, his support network, are struggling trying to find solid footing for a counter narrative.

That’s why these remarks from Zelenskyy sound weird; in reality, they just don’t quite know how to respond because what President Trump is revealing in the “diesel deal” with Russia really doesn’t have much to do with diesel fuel supplies.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy (via X) – “I don’t believe the volume of diesel Russia will export will affect the price. Moreover, we see that they can export from 300,000 to 500,000 tons a month today. Meanwhile, global consumption stands at 120 million tons a month. What kind of impact can that have? I don’t think it would have any. If some people think otherwise, so be it.
So I believe there are entirely different reasons behind these actions. If this is the approach, then why isn’t America making a “diesel deal” with Ukraine? Let Ukraine propose a “diesel deal.” We do have influence over whether these ships can sail or not, whether these refineries can operate or not. If that’s the case, then let’s do it.
Electricity is what matters to us. That’s clear. If we can be guaranteed protection for our power system, then we will not strike Russia’s diesel infrastructure in response. Electricity is first and foremost about helping people – keeping their lights on. It also means helping Europe. Everyone knows that we are connected to the European power grid. And if our energy infrastructure is not being destroyed, we can help some countries that are facing shortages by supplying them with cheaper electricity.
So, yes, let’s sign a corresponding “diesel deal” with the President of the United States.”
Following the lengthy phone call with Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin, President Trump noted during remarks on the way to Ohio that his administration was unsure of who exactly would be conducting strikes against Ukraine power infrastructure. The lights going out in Kiev has a similar appearance to the performative air raid sirens whenever a high-profile EU govt official pays a visit [World War Reddit].

The answer to the Zelenskyy question is most likely, because the Trump-Putin diesel deal isn’t just about diesel. Just like the Belarus potash deal was not just about potash. What both the Russian-diesel fuel and Belarusian-potash have in common is an agreed pricing system that is outside western commodity structures.
Whether he intends it or not, President Trump is revealing the banking and finance system that profits from control of how energy products are bought and sold. This is further evidenced when you look at the Ukraine support assembly through the prism of what nations and political interests promote the climate change agenda.
It is not accidental that every nation and political apparatus supporting Ukraine is part of the green energy, climate change, Paris Climate Treaty, Build Back Better advocacy group.
On the banking/finance side, the western control system tries to block funding for coal, oil and gas. Those who price the markets for these energy products operate directly inside the same institutions. Chairman Xi, President Putin, Crown Prince MbS and President Donald Trump represent the other side of that dynamic and support traditional low-price energy development.
Europe is simply Europe, acting hypocritically and trying to survive financially. Europe is governing itself inside a system they built that is unsustainable. They rail against cheap energy yet purchase cheap energy from Russia; all while accusing Vladimir Putin of aggression….. yet demanding their purchase prices flow through the western banking/finance systems they control.
President Trump must be looking at all of this and listening to the arguments by Putin, Xi, Modi et al, that suddenly take on an entirely new context as he watches how this same western control system is leveraging its power structures to diminish his political strength and weaken his office. It is fascinating to watch all of this play out with a context for understanding that is missed by most of our neighbors.

Emmanuel Macron literally purchases more energy (LNG) from Russia than any other NATO member! https://t.co/BkHgkDsOfK
— TheLastRefuge (@TheLastRefuge2) October 12, 2026
https://twitter.com/BRICSinfo/status/2109899811558404505?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E2109899811558404505%7Ctwgr%5E2837301d263e30a401f7a0cfd9aa7e757d258c98%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Ftheconservativetreehouse.com%2Fblog%2F2026%2F10%2F13%2Fzelenskyy-requests-his-own-diesel-deal-with-the-united-states-that-has-nothing-to-do-with-diesel%2F

Break the EU.

• German Opposition Demands Trump-style Diesel Deal With Russia (RT)

Two German opposition parties have called for restoring economic ties with Russia following US President Donald Trump’s example in striking a diesel deal with Moscow, challenging Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s sanctions policy as soaring fuel prices put further pressure on Europe’s largest economy.

The right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) and the left-wing Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW), which together command a majority in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt’s parliament, are preparing a joint resolution demanding an end to anti-Russia sanctions and financial support for Kiev amid growing frustration over Berlin’s foreign policy and its economic consequences. “Germany also needs a diesel deal with Russia,” Claudia Wittig, deputy leader of the BSW parliamentary group, said, according to German media.
Wittig described fuel prices at German filling stations as “a scandal,” arguing that sanctions against Moscow had “failed across the board” and were primarily hurting Germany itself. She insisted that Berlin should go further than a one-off fuel agreement and resume regular imports of Russian oil and gas to help rescue German industry. “We need policies that think more about Köthen than Kiev,” Wittig said earlier, referring to a German town in Saxony-Anhalt. “We can no longer afford this war.”
AfD co-leader Alice Weidel also hailed Trump’s deal with Moscow, accusing Merz of undermining Germany’s economy with sanctions and expensive liquefied natural gas imports. “That’s how it’s done!” she wrote on X on Saturday. “While Merz ruins Germany with sanctions and expensive LNG, Trump practices realpolitik. German interests instead of escalation!”
The initiative comes after Trump reached a surprise agreement with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday to ease a global diesel shortage. Washington subsequently suspended sanctions on Russian diesel exports, allowing Moscow to release hundreds of thousands of tons of fuel onto international markets.
Trump has repeatedly blamed Vladimir Zelensky for exacerbating the global energy crisis by targeting Russian oil refineries despite Washington’s warnings. On Saturday, he suggested that Ukrainians should replace their leader, accusing Zelensky of rejecting numerous opportunities to settle the conflict.
The joint resolution is scheduled for a vote in the Saxony-Anhalt parliament in Magdeburg on October 14. AfD and BSW hold a combined majority following September’s regional elections, although the state legislature has no authority to lift federal or EU sanctions against Russia. The initiative also marks a further breach of Germany’s longstanding political “firewall” against the AfD, which mainstream parties have sought to exclude from power despite its growing electoral support.
Merz’s government flatly rejected any prospects of easing its anti-Russia stance and vowed to pursue even more sanctions against Moscow. Government spokesman Stefan Kornelius insisted on Saturday that Berlin’s support for Kiev remained “unwavering.” Meanwhile, Green Party co-leader Franziska Brantner blasted Trump’s agreement with Putin as the height of “unscrupulousness.”
The chancellor, whose popularity has sunk so low that he faces calls to resign from within his own party, has faced mounting criticism over the impact of his policies on Germany. Wagenknecht previously accused him of turning German citizens into “cash cows for Ukraine.” Moscow has likewise accused Merz of acting more like a “Ukrainian chancellor” than a German leader.

“Trump and Putin have exposed the game being played by the City of London..”

• Ramifications of the Trump-Putin Energy Deal (CTH)

It is challenging to put the geopolitical perspective into an easily digestible format because the construct of western finance is the only reference point available for most Americans. We do not have solid references for what exists outside the western monetary constructs that have existed for generations. However, Barbara Boyd tries to expand our cognitive bubble to explore the potential ramifications of a Trump-Putin energy agreement.

I do not personally think President Trump engages these dynamics from a reference of London or the U.K. Instead, he simply seems to recognize the institutional financial constructs are no longer working to the benefit of American interests, and those constructs happen to be from the British Commonwealth financial system and the bank of financial settlements.
Promethean Action’s Barbara Boyd opens with President Trump’s Sunday announcement of an energy ceasefire in the war between Russia and Ukraine, and what led up to it: his remarks to the press that it’s time for Ukraine to get a new president, and Friday’s agreement for Russia to supply diesel to the United States and the world, with a Treasury license authorizing Russian diesel through April 2027.
She argues that Trump and Putin have exposed the game being played by the City of London: Ukraine’s drone strikes on Russia’s refineries, which the Washington Post examined, keep fuel prices high ahead of the November 3 midterms, while the Financial Times reports the administration threatened to cut off weapons and intelligence if the attacks continued, and members of Congress move against the deal.
After President Zelensky’s interview on ABC’s This Week blaming high prices on the war in the Middle East, the episode turns to the energy wars: Russia’s ban on fuel exports, U.S. diesel above $6 a gallon, no major new U.S. refinery since 1977, and Europe’s emergency diesel stocks, held mainly by Germany and France, until Trump’s export threat brought a G7 release of 100 million barrels of oil and diesel.
Her presentation closes with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Operation Economic Outcast against Iran’s regime, the petrodollar system and London’s commodity markets since the 1971 collapse of Bretton Woods, President Putin’s case for long-term contracts between producing and consuming nations, the Conservative Treehouse’s argument that the world’s biggest economy is aligning against the financial schemes of London while retaining the dollar, and Secretary Bessent’s chart on prices under Biden and Trump.

“Trump hits on Ilhan Omar, Zelenskyy and Putin, Kimberly Guilfoile, the issues with Ukraine and Russia energy ceasefire.”

• President Trump is Making Chopper Pressers Great Again (CTH)

Chopper Pressers have always been the best pressers, but when there are headline events swirling that capture great attention, chopper pressers are always awesome. I really appreciate them for how Trump cuts through the nonsense.

President Trump gives brief remarks about a variety of headline grabbing events. The first two minutes are captivating in the rapid-fire honesty. Seriously, in just the first two non-pretending minutes Trump hits on Ilhan Omar, Zelenskyy and Putin, Kimberly Guilfoile, the issues with Ukraine and Russia energy ceasefire.
Ilhan Omar is a terrible complainer and sketchy, but I have nothing to do with that. Not sure who is targeting Ukraine energy infrastructure, “we’ll have to take a look at that.” Looking at possibly having to fire the Ambassador to Greece for being a sketchy grifter. Ukraine and Russia “agree to the energy ceasefire because I’m saying they agree.”

Jack Smith thought he could do anything.

• Jack Smith Could Track Phone Contacts, but What About the Lawyers? (Manney)

Jack Smith’s investigators wanted to know whom one of President Donald Trump’s closest aides called and when. Newly unsealed court papers show how they got permission. The sharper question is what happened when those phone records led them to Trump’s lawyers.

Two applications filed in February and April 2023 sought permission to monitor a cellular number the Trump administration identified as belonging to Susie Wiles, who then worked with Trump’s political operation and is now White House chief of staff. The public filings redact the subscriber’s identity. Federal judges Beryl Howell and James Boasberg approved the respective requests.
Smith’s team investigated government records and classified documents recovered from Mar-a-Lago, as well as possible obstruction. Prosecutors gave the court an investigative reason to monitor the number. They wrote that AT&T records showed contacts with at least nine witnesses or subjects within two days of interviews or grand jury testimony.
Investigators suspected additional calls might reveal efforts to contact witnesses after federal agents approached them. The applications described that suspicion alone doesn’t establish intimidation, obstruction, or any other crime, even if a phone call occurs near a witness interview.
The government’s request went beyond a simple list of outgoing calls. The pen-register and trap-and-trace applications covered incoming and outgoing phone numbers, communication times and durations, email addresses, IP addresses, and device identifiers. Prosecutors also sought historical call-detail records, and each order authorized up to 60 days of monitoring.
The filings expressly excluded communication content. These orders provide no basis to claim investigators listened to conversations through this surveillance authority. But names, timing, and frequency still show investigators who were talking with whom, including who contacted a lawyer immediately after questioning.
Earlier declassified FBI communications show agents reviewing contacts involving 21 Trump-affiliated defense attorneys and at least five journalists. In a March 24, 2023 message, an agent noted that a lawyer had called Wiles, recorded the call, and compared its 41-second length with earlier contacts. Another note tracked her phone activity after an April 7 FBI interview.
From Just the News: The three-year probe of the ex-president — which put Joe Biden’s administration in charge of the legal fate of his GOP rival in the 2024 election — was approved at the highest levels of the Biden Justice Department, including by Attorney General Merrick Garland, Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco and FBI Director Christopher Wray, the memos show.
In March 2022, Wray sent a memo to Garland and Monaco, seeking the attorney general’s approval to open a “Sensitive Investigative Matter” that would become Plasmic Echo. “I recommend you approve,” Lisa Monaco wrote at the end of the memo, leaving her initials “LM.” Days later, Garland signed the memo with his initials, giving his approval.
The new applications don’t specifically alert the judges to possible monitoring of defense-attorney contacts. Investigators sought broad collection from the phone, so such contacts could appear whether or not prosecutors initially intended to focus on them. The critical unanswered question is what agents did after identifying those calls.
Federal law helps explain why the two judges approved the surveillance. Under 18 U.S.C. Sections 3122 and 3123, prosecutors must certify that the information is relevant to an ongoing criminal investigation. Unlike a traditional search warrant, the statute doesn’t require probable cause. Meeting that statutory threshold, however, can’t answer every question about how investigators used the information.
Communications between lawyers and clients receive special protections, but a telephone call alone isn’t automatically privileged. The released applications alone don’t demonstrate a violation of attorney-client privilege. They do raise the question of whether prosecutors identified defense-related contacts, restricted their review, or used patterns in those calls to guide further investigative steps.
Smith has defended his investigations and denied political motivation. The newly disclosed documents don’t establish that either judge knowingly approved improper collection, that investigators intercepted privileged conversations under these orders, or that the surveillance itself violated federal law.
From Just the News: Howell has been a central figure in Trump-related litigation for nearly a decade. As chief judge of the D.C. federal court from 2016 to 2023, she oversaw grand juries used by Russia collusion Special Counsel Robert Mueller and by investigators probing efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
In March 2023, she pierced the attorney-client privilege between Trump and one of his lawyers, Evan Corcoran. In that case, she relied on the crime-fraud exception, forcing more testimony in the classified documents vcase. She also enforced Smith’s warrant for Trump’s Twitter account and fined the company $350,000 for slow compliance.
A second application to extend the pen register and tap and trace monitoring of Wiles’s phone came in April and was approved by U.S. District Judge James Boasberg, another Washington DC-based jurist famously critical of Trump, the court records show.
Americans deserve something more specific than assurances. Who reviewed the defense-attorney contacts? What safeguards applied? Were any call patterns used to anticipate legal strategy? Congress should seek those answers, and prosecutors should be prepared to supply them. Court approval explains how this monitoring began. The public still deserves to know how it was handled.

“..if he is fighting to get out of the Establishment’s traps..”

Is that a caveat?

• Trump Might Not Be as Bad as He Appears (Paul Craig Roberts)

Yesterday Nima and I discussed the lies that are ricocheting around news events and how political figures think they can succeed with such obvious lies as the Strait of Hormuz is open, the US is in control of the Strait, and 20 million barrels of oil are being transported through the Strait daily. https://www.youtube.com/live/V2kwURVOV5Q

Nima was concerned with the latest claim from Trump that a deal has been reached with Russia in which Russia will provide 4.8 million tons of diesel fuel to the market in exchange for Trump removing the sanctions on Russia. To facilitate the deal Trump asked Zelensky to quit attacking Russian diesel facilities, and he asked Putin to stop attacking Kiev. Both Zelensky and Russia, according to reports, say they are unaware of this deal. The Russians say that they have no interest in a temporary ceasefire and that what Russia wants is a negotiated comprehensive end to the conflict with the West. Nima asked how could Trump announce an agreement that Zelensky and Putin didn’t know about.
NOTE: This morning, October 13, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that the supply of Russian diesel fuel to the market “is a very mutually beneficial element of Russian-US cooperation,” but there is no direct link between the US decision on Russian diesel fuel and Russia’s position on Ukraine negotiations. Peskov goes on to say that Moscow has only read media reports about a US-European plan to resolve the situation in Ukraine: “No, we have not heard anything about it. We have seen reports in the media, but we have not heard anything about it,” Peskov told reporters. I replied that I could only speculate.
One possible answer, perhaps even a likely answer, is that Trump is putting out a narrative that if it takes hold could lead to a solution. One part of the solution is to protect the Republicans in the midterm elections from higher energy prices and the inflation that rising energy prices cause. Trump might also see that a deal in which sanctions are removed in exchange for more energy supply is a way to extract Washington from the conflict Washington started in Ukraine without it looking like an American defeat.
If sanctions are removed and energy is flowing, what is the point of a return to hostilities? I have always thought that Putin’s choice of Stanford and Harvard educated Kirill Dmitriev as Russia’s negotiator and Trump’s choice of business men Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law as Washington’s negotiators was crafted so as to produce a deal that would present a mutually profitable business arrangement more profitable than an unpopular military conflict.
I am a long time critic of Putin for ignoring Napolean’s important statement that “The reputation of one’s arms in war is everything, and equivalent to real forces.” I and Doctorow have concluded, correctly or incorrectly, that Putin’s refusal to use sufficient force to stop Ukraine’s ability to continue the military conflict has caused the conflict to greatly widen and that this widening implies eventually a nuclear conflict. We see many signs of this as the conflict is no longer limited to the Donbas battlefront but has expanded deep into Mother Russia as a result of long-range weapons supplied by the US and Europe and targeting information supplied by the US and MI6 to Ukraine.
Two more formerly neutral European countries have joined NATO and more NATO countries have agreed to host US nuclear missiles on their territory. Clearly the war has widened. Nevertheless, I understand Putin’s approach which does risk nuclear war when Russia has no further room to back away. Putin understands that if he ends the conflict by striking down Ukraine’s ability to continue the fight, which Russia could have done 4.5 years ago and could do tomorrow with conventional weapons alone, he will have obtained Russia’s aims but without Western acceptance. So in effect the conflict doesn’t end.
If Putin imposes a military solution, the West will say: “See, we told you. Putin intends to resurrect the Soviet Empire and spread it into Europe. Germany will be next.” Indeed, Germany seems already to think that Germany is going to be next as Germany prepares for war with Russia, an ill-advised enterprise.
The disagreement between Putin and myself is which of us has the best odds in the gamble on the table. My concern is that Putin’s sacrifice of a decisive military victory is resulting in more Western provocations that will result in nuclear war. Putin’s concern is that a Russian imposed military victory will not be a good victory because it will harden Western opposition to Russia, whose demonstration of strength would be regarded as a threat to all of Europe.
I cannot say that I am right and that Putin is wrong. I just hope he is aware of the risk. This concludes what Nima and I discussed, so you can save the time of listening to our discussion. Nima’s questions on occasions are provocative and push me into clarifying statements of how I view events as they unfold.
I will end with giving you important information. As a high level Reagan political appointee instrumental to President Reagan’s two important issues–the defeat of stagflation and the end of the Cold War, I can tell you that most presidential appointees are not in office to serve the President but to serve their own careers. It is not unusual for presidents, prime ministers, chancellors, dictators even, to have ministers working against the titular head in behalf of their own agendas and career. In my time in the Reagan administration my main opponents were Reagan’s appointments as his chief of staff, as his budget director, as his chairman of the council of economic advisors and their media whores who thrived on leaks against Reagan’s agenda.
For example the budget director, David Stockman had the intention of being the first budget director to balance the budget. From this achievement he would go on to become US Senator from Michigan or wherever it was he was from, and from there to the presidency. Stockman saw Reagan’s tax rate reduction as an obstacle to his career ambitions.
Murray Weidenbaum, chairman of the council of economic advisers, was busy reassuring conservative foundations that supported his situation at Washington University that he was against budget deficits and thus gave little if any support to Reagan’s economic policy.
Reagan’s chief of staff, Jim Baker, just wanted to reassure Wall Street and believed that a small tax rate reduction of 5%, which would be wiped out by inflation before it could be enacted, sufficed to show a Reagan victory in lowering taxes.
The facts which I had in my hands as Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury for Economic policy had no influence against these agendas. I simply had to run over them, which meant no further government career. But that is what it took to get to get Reagan’s economic policy out of his own administration so that Congress could vote on it.
I prevailed because I was right, had Reagan’s support and support in Congress and was willing to take the hits. Today 45 years later only Elon Musk can afford to take the hits. Today not even the US Secretary of Health, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., can prevail over Big Pharma’s influence over the FDA, CDC, NIH–all of which report to Secretary Kennedy and all of whom obey Big Pharma. Secretary Kennedy cannot even get the proven dangerous Covid-19 vaccines prohibited. Big Pharma’s political campaign contributions are more powerful than the Secretary of Health.
In my opinion, it is the inability of elected governments to prevail over powerful private interests, such as the Israel Lobby, the military-security complex that President Eisenhower warned us about as long ago as 1961, and Big Pharma, that has given rise to an ideological Democrat Party that sees the institutional structure of American society so corrupt that it must be overthrown. The US Supreme Court destroyed the accountability of the US government when it ruled that corporations had First Amendment rights to purchase the US government to serve their agendas.
I doubt that the US will have a French or Leninist revolution, but that is the intention of the new ideological Democrats, and I understand the frustrations that have led them to their war on existing society. There is no doubt whatsoever that the republic established by the Founding Fathers has been corrupted.
Where will redemptive American leadership come from? Trump was defeated by his captivity to the Israel Lobby. The Democrats are committed not to the restoration of America but to America’s overthrow.
It is a true statement that “Where there is no vision the people are lost.” In a world in which the only interests of peoples is in self-affirming narratives the people are doubly lost. A life in false narratives is a life in The Matrix.
Life in The Matrix is life in Western countries today. It is not a life worth living. The question is: In all of the world today do any people other than the Israelis and Zionist MAGA Americans believe in themselves, believe in their country?
Perhaps the Iranians?

She supposedly arrived with nothing, just a few years ago.

• Trump Suggests Ilhan Omar’s Money Came From Fraud (Catherine Salgado)

President Donald Trump just implied that there could be evidence linking Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Somalia) to millions of dollars in lucrative fraud.

Early on October 12, federal agents from the Department of Homeland Security, in partnership with the Department of Justice, executed a search warrant at Omar’s D.C. home. Members of the Trump administration including Vice President JD Vance and DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin have alleged that Omar did commit immigration fraud, including by faking a marriage with her own brother. But she and her family are also connected with the massive Somali fraud machine stealing hundreds of millions of dollars from Americans in Minnesota.
On Tuesday, Trump posted on Truth Social, “Why did Ilhan Omar report a Net Worth of up to 30 Million Dollars just a short time ago, and then immediately say, ‘Oh, I made a mistake! It’s really $100,000.’ Could it be that her highly paid accountant actually reported the money that was stolen from her fraudulent activities in Minnesota? Would something like that be possible?”
He pressed his speculative point home. “Do you think the accountant actually gave the right number the first time, 30 Million Dollars, and then she was forced to disavow because she never would have been able to report where that much money came from? She must have freaked out when she saw that money!”

If Ilhan Omar commited immigration fraud, we will take her citizenship and send her home to Somalia.

Somali pirates should live in Somalia. pic.twitter.com/duWmHSTMP4
— Congressman Randy Fine (@RepFine) October 6, 2026

Omar certainly lives a plutocratic life for an alleged refugee to America who supposedly subsists off her congressional salary. “Where did her house come from, where did her cars come from, and what about her lovely place in Washington, D.C.?” Trump asked. “I didn’t know that Congressmen and women made that kind of money, but I do know her husband, according to information and belief, makes almost nothing, so it couldn’t have come from him. How many people did she illegally bring into our Country from Somalia? America wants answers, and we want them, NOW!”
GOP lawmakers and the convicted mastermind of the $250 million “Feeding Our Future” scheme implicated Omar in the fraud. Fraudsters emailed each other about “Ilhan’s Office” and her sister is tentatively identified as one of the USAID fraudsters who registered at the same address as the “Feeding Our Future” criminals.
Sen. Ernst said “One of our spending bills making its way through Congress was a $1 million earmark from Representative Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, which was an earmark that was supposedly going to a substance abuse clinic, which actually happened to be housed in a restaurant and run by three individuals that share the same residential address, according to their IRS paperwork.”
After all, Omar has said that she would prioritize Somalia’s interests and her father is reportedly one of the Somali officers responsible for the Isaaq genocide.

The Islam doesn’t belong in the US. Or in Europe, but it may be too late there.

• Corporate Islamification (Stefan Padfield)

So, what is Islamification?

A recent documentary by former Virginia congressman Nick Freitas titled “The Immigration Crisis That Will Destroy the West” warns viewers about the risks created by the Islamification of Western civilization. The film focuses primarily on the negative impacts of cultural norms related to the treatment of women and girls, with a reviewer noting allegations of “a significant problem of organized, industrial-scale rapes being conducted by mostly Muslim men” in the UK.
Relatedly, another recent column noted that “seven of the top 10 countries with the highest prevalence of child marriage have a Muslim-majority,” and went on to ask: “Why does Islam appear so frequently in discussions surrounding religious persecution, terrorism, and certain forms of sexual violence?” Similar concerns have also been raised about the cultural roots of rampant fraud we’ve seen in places like Minneapolis.
And even more recent fiery riots in France have left some “pointing to second and third-generation immigrant youths–many from Muslim North African and sub-Saharan backgrounds–as the core of the violence.” Perhaps pulling all the foregoing together, Douglas Murray argues that “the West remain[s] at war with Islamic radicals.”Importantly, while conservatives cherish individual liberty and religious freedom, those commitments are perverted when it is claimed that only a nihilistic multiculturalism properly embodies those values.
To the contrary, in addition to individual liberty and religious freedom, conservatives also value truth and free speech in pursuit thereof, both of which demand acknowledgement of the fact that not all cultures or branches thereof are equal, that some cultures are better than others at the very least vis-a-vis a specific people in a specific place at a specific time, and that certain cultures can pose a threat to Western civilization if they are imported en masse without any expectations of assimilation.
Accordingly, the liberty and freedom of individuals to practice their religion should be respected and protected, and members of all religions who strive to assimilate should be embraced. However, the people who support terrorism in the name of Islam, or who promote cultural norms directly antithetical to Western civilization, such as undermining property rights or the rights of women and children, should not be ignored or empowered. Nor should asserted connections between those issues and Islam be handwaved away as exaggerating a “few bad apples” problem.
This brings us to the role corporations play in the Islamification of Western civilization, and what applicable fiduciary duties and expectations of good corporate governance have to say about that. Consider how the following corporate actions might increase the risk of immigration-related harms to the United States, including Islamification–which will be explained in more detail below.
First, corporations fighting restrictions on welfare benefits could be supporting incentives for problematic immigration. Second, corporations seeking to import cheap labor could be similarly promoting mass immigration with costs outweighing benefits. Third, corporations opposing ICE operations could be making it easier for illegal aliens who harm the United States to stay in the country.
Finally, H-1B visa abuse can exacerbate immigration-related strains on U.S. citizens. This applies both generally and specifically to risks related to Islamification because while discussion of demographic issues related to H-1B visa abuse can focus on beneficiaries from India, which is apparently 80% Hindu, it is highly unlikely that the H-1B beneficiary population excludes Muslims. For example, 14% of India’s population apparently identifies as Muslim.
Of course, the reputational and financial risks associated with a corporation creating the perception that it directly or indirectly supports the Islamification of the U.S. are not the only factors to be considered by corporate leaders in making related business decisions. But it is also arguably true that failing to become fully informed about these risks could constitute a breach of duty, including being found guilty of bad faith in relevant cases of willful blindness.
An argument could certainly be made that no corporate fiduciaries dealing with this issue can claim to be fully informed if the word “Islamification” never once appears on the board agenda.

I’m not sure I understand this.

• The Midterm Polling Is Absolutely, Positively, 100% Wrong. (Maybe.) (Pinsker)

Our world runs on incentive structures: Your values and goals drive your decision-making. It’s a fundamental tenet of free market capitalism. Trouble is, our incentive structures can also lead us astray. Low-hanging fruit, socioeconomic pressures, and instant gratification cloud our judgment. Instead of striving for long-term accuracy, we’ll settle for short-term accolades.

Which takes us to the “science” of polling. Because it IS a real, legitimate science. And pollsters are real, legitimate scientists. Y’know, just like TV weathermen. It’s fascinating: When we crack the veneer of scientific-sounding stats, numbers, and probabilities, both weather forecasters and pollsters use the same exact language. It’s kind of eerie.
“Forecasting is both a science and an art,” wrote famed meteorologist Jeff Haby. “To be a great forecaster, the meteorologist needs to have skills in weather pattern recognition… [including] intuition (the 6th sense).” Because the numbers alone aren’t reliable. Nobel laureate Kenneth Arrow, who served as a weather officer in World War II, quipped, “One thing I learned from meteorology is that being an actual science was no guarantee of exactness.” Which is why weathermen interject their own biases, experiences, and assumptions into weather forecasts. It’s where the “art” — and “intuition” — come in.
Wait: art and intuition? What the hell kind of “science” relies on artwork and ESP?! Actually, polling does, too.“Polls are the worst form of prediction ever, except for all the other kinds,” said pollster Nate Silver. “In some ways… it’s amazing that polls are as accurate as they are.” Because, when it comes to quantifying key factors, including an accurate, representative sample of likely voters, as fellow pollster John Zogby freely admitted, “This is where polling is an art.”
It’s subjective. There’s a near-infinite galaxy of competing, contradictory statistical projections, and each pollster is free to accentuate — or deemphasize — absolutely anything he or she wants. Just like TV weathermen. bPredicting the weather and predicting the midterms are both science-based without being scientific. Science is just the starting point: Yes, pollsters and weathermen use real numbers and real math to paint a picture, but their “art” is guided by their intuition.
And pleasing the paying customer. This is where the incentive structure comes in — and where TV weathermen and pollsters differ. TV weathermen, after all, are almost always employees of a TV station. It’s analogous to a tenured professor: The station has a vested interest in promoting ‘em, so unless they screw up spectacularly (or sink in the ratings), a likeable, “accurate enough” weatherman has a job for life.
It’s why TV weathermen are incentivized to play it safe, avoid major screwups, and make semi-reliable predictions. But pollsters (usually) aren’t employed by a TV station. They’re either contracted for a short time, or they work for an independent company and need the media to trumpet their results — or nobody will hear it.
Either way, the incentive structure is the same: When you’re on a contract, you’re incentivized to do whatever you can to earn a renewal. This means keeping your customer happy. And if you need media outlets to trumpet your results, you’re incentivized to tell them a story that they’re likely to run.
Weather forecasts and political polling projections aren’t science. They’re science-based — the same way pro wrestling is sports-based. There’s real athleticism, and the wrestlers are working hard, but c’mon, methinks someone has his thumb on the scales: Fun fact: Over the past eight years, about 70% of August polls have overestimated support for Democrats.
It seems someone has put his thumb on the pollsters’ scales, too. So it’s not remarkable that the 2026 polls point to a Democratic victory. The opposite is true: This is exactly what we’d expect the incentive structure to produce! And whattaya know, 70% of the time in the month of August, that’s what we get.
Which is an institutional problem: Left-wing reporters, at left-wing media outlets, favor left-wing news stories. That’s not a secret. It’s why Republican trust in the media has nosedived. And since most major media outlets are left-wing, most political polls lean to the left — because that’s the incentive structure of the media marketplace.
So yes, the midterm polling has been utterly abysmal for Republicans. And yes, we’ve heard the super-scary stats: One expert gives the Democrats an 84.5% chance of winning the House. Another expert gives the Democrats a 74.8% chance of winning the Senate. Those are VERY scientific-sounding numbers. Why, these scientists are so precise, they even used a decimal point!
But these numbers don’t mean anything. They’re not real. It’s science-inspired artwork. (Or science fiction.) They were guided by “intuition.” Y’know — ESP. Which means that the 2026 midterms aren’t anywhere close to over and Republicans shouldn’t be demoralized.
Because the God’s honest truth is, nobody knows nothin’. We don’t know which demos will show up and vote on Election Day, which ones won’t, and which ones were underrepresented in the polls. Nor do we know which issues will be top-of-mind on November 3, 2026. The election is still three weeks away. And that, dear reader, is the final caveat: If nobody knows nothin’, then, alas, we can’t disprove the media polls either. All we can do is note the systemic bias and the sky-high error rate.
So get out and vote like the midterms are still up for grabs — because they absolutely are.

SpaceX is constructing a $250 million GigaBay at Starbase to accelerate Starship production

The 700,000-square-foot facility is designed to build up to 1,000 rockets per year pic.twitter.com/d1iwXwQa9b
— Dima Zeniuk (@DimaZeniuk) October 12, 2026

Zelensky's own business partner was charged with running a $100 million kickback scheme at Ukraine's state nuclear company. Then he fled the country.

His former chief of staff was charged with laundering millions from that same scheme.

And when investigators got close, Zelensky… pic.twitter.com/oz7nbBLJYF
— Gunther Eagleman™ (@GuntherEagleman) October 12, 2026

Did you know that Boris Johnson received £1 million to ruin the peace process between Russia and Ukraine in Istanbul in April 2022?

He did this at the request of British and American arms manufacturers…… pic.twitter.com/jE85HU5R3H
— Richard (@ricwe123) October 12, 2026

https://twitter.com/XFreeze/status/2109903478470643868?s=20

Okay this is genuinely insane.

SpaceX just unveiled a satellite whose only job is to run AI. Not internet. Not GPS. Just compute, floating in orbit.
It's called AI1, and the reason behind it breaks your brain.

AI data centers on Earth are hitting a wall, not a chip wall, a… pic.twitter.com/87xwEWPQaD
— Luqman Ali (@luqman_talks) October 13, 2026

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Debt Rattle October 10 2026

Oct 102026

October 10, 2026 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 9:10 am Finance Tagged with: Antifa, Bandera, diesel, Hormuz, Merz, Nord Stream, Obama, rape, RFK jr, Roseanne Barr 35 Responses »

Canaletto View of the Churches of the Redentore 1750

• Trump Cut Putin Diesel Deal After Zelensky Ignored Pleas To Stop Refineries (ZH)

• Iran Claims Control of Hormuz, But Oil Export Data Show Otherwise (JTN)

• It’s Not Just South America: The Worldwide Move to the Right (Eric Florack)

• Migrants Join Forces With Antifa, EU Riots Spread From France To Belgium (ZH)

• Barack Obama and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad News Cycle (Green)

• The Ripening (James Howard Kunstler)

• Zelensky ‘Doesn’t Give A Damn’ About Ukrainians – Russian Envoy (RT)

• Nord Stream Pipelines Will Be Relaunched’: Right-Wing Polish MEP (RMX)

• Bandera’s Dirty Secrets Buried To Build A Ukrainian ‘Hero’, Blame The KGB (RT)

• Merz Turned Into ‘Ukrainian Chancellor’ – Moscow (RT)

• Trump Envoys Pitching ‘New Ideas’ To Settle Ukraine Conflict (RT)

• Trump Told Big Tech to Put American Workers First (David Manney)

• RFK Jr. Announces New Clinic for People Injured by Vaccines (ET)

• German Police Advise Women To Vomit To Stop Rape Attacks (RMX)

• Roseanne Barr Is Coming Back (Matt Margolis)

FACTS FIRST: Republican Party registration is sky high, and the battleground numbers aren’t event close.

That’s why the Fake News continue to peddle fake polls because they know the data is very bad for Democrats. pic.twitter.com/dvlSaa4bwT
— Steven Cheung (@StevenCheung47) October 8, 2026

European taxpayer money in action. Money well spent. https://t.co/QZsfN8pF3h
— Alexander Ač (@Lacertko) October 9, 2026

Elon Musk once told the interviewer that he can see into the future; history will deliver the verdict.

Elon Musk:
I’m very good at predicting the future. I’m not perfect, but I’m very good at it. My batting average is very high for a human.

However, this creates something of a… https://t.co/usRx2lnM7k pic.twitter.com/Td64v8DR7m
— Doge Tipping (@Dogetothemoon) October 9, 2026

Elon Musk’s advice to young people:

Be optimistic about the future
Learn as much as you can
Read a lot books
Try a lot of things

“It’s better to be optimistic and wrong than pessimistic and right. Your quality of life will be much better”

“I’m confident the future will not be…
— X Freeze (@XFreeze) October 9, 2026

It’s not Russia vs Ukraine, it’s Russia vs the West. And Trump has now shown whose side he’s not on.

• Trump Cut Putin Diesel Deal After Zelensky Ignored Pleas To Stop Refineries (ZH)

Friday’s diesel deal between Trump and Putin wasn’t only about diesel. It was also about Kyiv. Hours after Zelensky accused Washington of using Ukraine’s negotiators as a “smokescreen” for a backroom deal with Moscow, Axios reported that Trump decided to let Russia sell diesel after Zelensky ignored half a dozen US requests to stop attacking Russian oil refineries. The alleged source was a US official with direct knowledge, who did not hold back:

“Zelensky is misreading the room. By continuing to hit refineries, he is eroding the good will that he has built with Trump over the last six months.” In other words, the sanctions waiver was as much a message to Kyiv as a gift to Moscow. So how did we get to this latest geopolitical twist, what is Trump actually got for lifting sanctions (spoiler: less than nine days of fuel), and why is the deal is on a collision course with the one Ukrainian policy Kyiv says it won’t give up. Let’s dig in.
“Half A Dozen” Requests
The backstory is familiar to regular readers. One month ago, Trump – freaking out about soaring diesel prices – told reporters that Zelensky “has to stop knocking out diesel fuel in Russia,” and a day later he announced a truce that never really happened:

Trump says "Ukraine has agreed not to hit Russian Energy targets. Russia has agreed to do, likewise! The World’s Diesel price rise is mostly caused by the Russia/ Ukraine War, not Iran."
— zerohedge (@zerohedge) September 14, 2026

A few hours later, Kyiv kept hitting refineries anyway. Just last weekend Zelensky vowed to hammer more of them, and on Thursday Ukrainian drones set Russia’s largest refinery at Omsk ablaze, more than 1,500 miles from the border. Axios notes the strikes were “highly effective and caused an energy crisis in Russia,” prompting Moscow’s diesel export ban, which then “added more pressure to global diesel markets under strain from the war in Iran.”
The core disagreement is about symmetry. Zelensky told Trump, Witkoff and Kushner that he would stop hitting Russian refineries if Russia stopped hitting Ukrainian power plants. Trump wanted Ukraine to stop unilaterally, according to the official, and “didn’t see the attacks on refineries as equivalent to Russian strikes on Ukraine’s power grid.” Or, as the official put it: “The attacks on the refineries cause pain in Russia, but it causes pain for the U.S., too.”
Then there is what happened in Miami. During eight hours of talks on Friday, Witkoff and Kushner told the Ukrainian delegation that Trump was expected to call Putin and lift sanctions on Russian diesel, because Kyiv had ignored repeated requests on strikes “which were directly affecting U.S. consumers.” A Ukrainian official claimed the envoys also threatened that Trump could cut Ukraine off from US intelligence if it kept ignoring him. The US official denied that, saying the envoys merely reminded Kyiv that the US provides munitions and intelligence, so Ukraine “shouldn’t take actions that hurt American consumers.” That is a fine distinction, and Kyiv is unlikely to see the difference.
So was Ukraine’s team a “smokescreen,” as Zelensky charged? Not quite: the US delegation told them what was coming. But the decision was clearly made before they sat down. Zelensky’s reaction, in a statement reported by Politico:
“At this very moment, while our team is talking with the American team in Florida, at this very moment, the President of the United States is talking with the leader of the Kremlin… and has an agreement under which America is allowing Russia to export diesel fuel. That means more money for this war… I believe our team is simply being used as a smokescreen, and that is certainly not fair.”
He went further in an interview with Axios, calling it “not fair and not honest” and “a happy birthday present for Putin” (who turned 74 on Wednesday), and told reporters it was “a weak decision by strong partners.”
And the payoff from Putin? So far, none on peace. During the 90-minute call he declined to commit to resuming talks with Ukraine. Kremlin adviser Yuri Ushakov said Ukrainian strikes on Moscow and other cities during Russia’s parliamentary elections had “thwarted the possibility of an immediate resumption of the negotiation process,” adding: “The president said, we will think about when these negotiations can be resumed.” That is the kind of non-answer that tends to precede more non-answers. The US official still thinks Putin “is open to a discussion on ending the war,” and says Washington wants a “new proposal that will be good enough for him.” Witkoff and Kushner may visit Moscow and Kyiv next week, though Axios notes it’s unclear how Friday’s blowup will affect those plans.
What Trump Got: 4.8 Million Tons, Mostly “Thereafter”
Here’s what Trump posted on Truth Social shortly before Friday’s close:
“I have just concluded a highly successful discussion with President Vladimir Putin, of Russia, wherein it was agreed that Russia will immediately supply over 300,000 Tons of Diesel Fuel to the American and Global Marketplace, another 500,000 Tons during the month of November, and 1,000,000 Tons immediately thereafter.”
Another 3 million tons would follow “within a short period of time,” depending on “the condition of their Diesel Refineries.” That condition is the whole point, as we explain below. Then came the usual all-caps flourish: between “our TOTAL CONTROL of the Strait of Hormuz, and this great announcement on Russian Energy, Diesel Prices for Americans and, indeed, the World, will be COMING DOWN, IN RECORD NUMBERS, AND FAST!”
Minutes later, Treasury said OFAC was “immediately issuing a temporary general license to allow the supply of Russian diesel to the global market.” General License 135 authorizes the sale, delivery and import (including into the US) of Russian-origin diesel until April 7, 2027. That is six months, and according to Fortune it is the first diesel waiver since the war began to run longer than the standard 30 days. The EU and UK sanctions are unchanged, so Europe, the region that actually imports diesel, can’t legally buy a drop of it.
Moscow confirmed the terms. Deputy PM Alexander Novak said Russia was ready to supply 300,000 tons in October, 500,000 in November and 1 million in December, and that “in the long run, this volume could reach three million tons per month.” The Kremlin’s readout said “the Russian side reaffirmed its readiness to supply oil and oil products to the American and world markets,” with no dates attached. Something to look forward to in 2027, perhaps.
The algos loved it. As Goldman’s US rates desk wrote in its Friday wrap (available to pro subs), “Before the close, headlines hit the tape that Russia would release diesel supply into the market, driving down diesel prices and leading to a modest rally in the front end.” Both US and European diesel futures slid, with NY Harbor diesel down about 4.5% to $4.67/gallon per the FT, and WTI fell about a buck to $91.
Do The Math: Less Than Nine Days Of Fuel
Now for the arithmetic. At roughly 7.45 barrels per ton, the “immediate” 300,000 tons is about 2.2 million barrels. The US burns roughly 4 million barrels of distillate a day, so October’s tranche covers about half a day of American demand. Add November and December and the first 1.8 million tons cover about 3.4 days. Even if the 3 million tons conditional on refinery health actually arrive, the full 4.8 million tons (about 36 million barrels) cover less than nine days of US consumption.
That is the best case. Trump’s own post says the fuel is going to the “American and Global Marketplace”, so the US share will be smaller.

“Despite Tehran’s insistence that it controls the vital waterway, Middle East energy flows have largely returned to pre-war levels. This comes after Iran’s failed attempt at creating economic disaster for the West by attacking oil-laden ships, and instead, at least 16.5 million barrels a day of crude oil left the Middle East last month.”

“They’ll burn the country down before they’ll give a win to Trump,”

Just like, in the US, the Dems. And CNN.

• Iran Claims Control of Hormuz, But Oil Export Data Show Otherwise (JTN)

The Iranian regime is remaining publicly defiant in the face of the U.S. blockade of its economy, claiming that it controls the Strait of Hormuz and will not agree to limits on its nuclear program. However, the facts belie Tehran’s claims. In fact, Middle East oil exports have largely returned to pre-war levels in recent months, showing the regime’s ongoing attacks in the Strait of Hormuz aimed at pressuring its neighbors and the United States are no longer working.

Mohammadreza Naqdi, an advisor to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps — the powerful paramilitary organization tasked with safeguarding the regime — said on Wednesday that the Strait of Hormuz remains “closed” and the “armed forces of the Islamic Republic of Iran have full control over it.” He vowed that conditions would remain as such “until Iran’s legitimate demands are met.”
Iran has “lost complete control” of the waterway: Rubio Last week, Iranian parliament speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf presented to the United Nations the conditions under which Iran would “reopen” the strait. The conditions echo the Iranian demands contained in the Memorandum of Understanding that the United States and Iran signed this summer, but which broke down after negotiations ended at an impasse and intermittent fighting resumed between the opposing sides.
The Trump administration countered, saying that Iran is losing its grip amid the escalating economic pressure the United States has heaped on Tehran. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Wednesday that Iran has “lost complete control” of the strait.
“The Straits of Hormuz are open. There is almost as much oil flowing out now as there was before this conflict began,” Rubio told reporters. “So they’ve lost complete control of the straits and their economy. And […] not only are they in free fall, now the Iranian economy is about to reach a place that few countries in the world have been in terms of how bad it’s going to get.” President Donald Trump said on Thursday that the United States and Iran “are having productive discussions” and highlighted the tough economic conditions in Iran developing from the U.S. blockade.
“I want to make it clear to everybody that, while Iran is in very bad condition, both economically and militarily, and while the Blockade will remain in full force and effect, with oil flowing in Record Numbers of Barrels through the Hormuz Strait (22 Million Barrels, last night alone, with not one barrel coming from, or going to, Iran!), we will not be attacking Iran at any time prior to the Midterm Elections to be held in the United States on November 3rd,” the president posted to Truth Social.
“They’ll burn the country down before they’ll give a win to Trump,” says national security expert
Fred Fleitz, the chief of staff of the National Security Council during Trump’s first term, told the Just the News that Iran does not actually want a deal, but is seeking relief from the crushing economic blockade.
“They’re not planning on making any significant deal there. They want concessions from Trump up front. He’s never going to agree to that. If they really wanted to make a sincere deal right now, I think Trump and his people would listen, but they don’t. And I think these radicals in this government, the IRGC, they’ll burn the country down before they’ll give a win to Trump,” Fleitz told the John Solomon Reports podcast.
“I think we have to carry out this economic strangulation strategy, which is more than sanctions. We’re not just saying you can’t trade with Iran, you can’t do banking with Iran. We’ve stopped them from exporting oil. It’s an extraordinary amount of economic pressure,” he added.
Max Meizlish, a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and former Treasury Department sanctions official, told Just the News that Iran’s claims to control the strait are “laughable,” but that the regime’s military has still retained the capability to attack commercial vessels transiting the vital waterway. “
The reality is that Iran neither maintains full control over the Strait of Hormuz, nor is its control entirely gone,” Meizlish told Just the News. “What it controls is its ability to target ships that transit either by way of U.S. escort or otherwise. But even if we discount the fact that oil flows have at least partially returned to pre-war levels, the idea that Iran controls the strait is laughable.”
Iran’s wartime bet failed, oil is shipping at pre-war levels
Meizlish said, however, that the Iranian regime’s own oil exports have not been revived alongside its neighbors due to the crushing U.S. blockade. “The regime hasn’t been able to export any crude by sea since the blockade was reinstated. If Iran controls the strait, why have its oil exports plummeted?”
Last month, at least 16.5 million barrels a day of crude oil left the Middle East Gulf region, matching the pre-war average for the region’s producers other than Iran, according to tanker-tracking and satellite analysis by global trade data firm Kpler. That is 10.5 million barrels a day more than the region averaged in March, the first full month after the war shut down the strait, the firm found.
While its neighbors have seen the revival of their oil exports, Iran is missing out on the recovery, Just the News previously reported. The country’s oil exports have hovered near zero since the U.S. imposed a naval blockade of Iranian ports in July after the ceasefire broke down.
The blockade has undercut Iran’s central wartime bet: that choking off the world’s most important energy corridor — the Strait of Hormuz — would inflict enough pain on global markets to force Washington and the Gulf states to deal on Iran’s terms.

The left is destroying whatever they can.

• It’s Not Just South America: The Worldwide Move to the Right (Eric Florack)

[..] the timeline is the story there. Remember, causing something is not the same as accelerating it’s happening. I’m not sure I think so, but I suppose the argument could be made for the demise of USAID accelerating that process. But it’s not the cause.

Sarah also lists why the shift is happening, what the real causes are: Crime and personal security, backlash against mass migration, economic frustration, cultural pushback, and what she (rightly, I think) calls socialism fatigue. Notice that nothing on that list requires a USAID line item. If shuttering a foreign aid agency were enough to swing elections, it would rank as the most cost-effective campaign operation in history. Thankfully, it wasn’t all that influential. If it had been so, Obama would have had socialist governments in every country in the hemisphere. I’ll give him credit for trying, but he wasn’t altogether successful at it.
The people who study this for a living agree. The Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung’s International Reports counted nine of 15 Latin American democracies changing direction since 2022, mostly from left to right. Steven Levitsky noted that at least 19 incumbents in a row had lost reelection in the region since 2018. Even New Lines Magazine, hardly a house organ of the right, says the causes run deeper than Trump. Voters didn’t need a memo from Washington to notice the cartels, the inflation, and the Venezuelan refugees.
But now, let’s widen the lens to include Europe, because there’s the real tell.
What’s happening there confirms the thought Sarah puts forward. Populist-right parties have topped the polls in Britain, France, and Germany at the same time for the first time. In late 2025, one aggregate had Reform UK at 27%, headed for a narrow majority. The Conservatives were at 20%, and Labour, the party actually running the country, was stuck in third at 18.5%. An RTL poll put the AfD at 26% to the ruling CDU’s 24%. France’s Jordan Bardella, filling in for Marine Le Pen after a court barred her, polls around 35% for the first round of the April 2027 election. And Spain votes Nov. 29, after Pedro Sánchez called a snap election when his housing reform collapsed. Polls point to a possible PP-Vox majority.
The causes sound familiar: immigration, stagnant economies, housing costs, and energy prices. Britain’s net migration peaked at 924,000 in early 2023, on a Conservative government’s watch. France’s debt has climbed to 119% of GDP, and its 2026 budget became law without a vote. The EU’s own business lobby says the bloc has sat at about 70% of U.S. GDP per capita for three decades and blames regulation and energy costs. Mario Draghi wrote the diagnosis in 2024, and a year later even Draghi wasn’t impressed with the progress. Brussels’ answer to stagnation has been, as always, another committee, generating yet another report followed by no changes to actual policy.
Now consider the USAID angle in that frame. Sarah notes that the agency’s biggest regional budget went to Europe and Eurasia, $17.2 billion in 2023, much of it for Ukraine, against $1.8 billion for Latin America and the Caribbean. None of it went to London, Paris, Berlin, or Madrid. Nor did USAID’s demise cause Brexit in 2016, create Germany’s AfD in 2013, or manufacture Marine Le Pen. It certainly didn’t cause the migration crisis, the housing shortages, or the energy bills. If someone can show me the line item for “Brexit, causing of,” I’ll reconsider. Until then, I’ll take the timeline and place the blame on the shoulders of Europe’s socialists and that little conclave of big government over in Brussels.
A side note about Britain’s “Conservatives.” I give conservative leader Kemi Badenoch a lot of credit, but let’s face it: they governed for 14 years, and they managed Brexit, if badly, but Reform rose on their watch for a reason. The reason is simple enough: They’re not what even liberal/leftist Americans would consider “conservative.” I mean, spare me. A party that governs from the left under a blue banner still governs from the left, and voters aren’t required to give it credit for the label. And as I’ve repeatedly predicted, they haven’t. This led to the rise of Reform, Nigel Farage, and more radical, more grassroots, Tommy Robinson.
I’ve said often in these spaces that the biggest force pushing voters away from the left is the left in power and the results of their policies. It has always been so.
Here it is, gang: I would call what we’re seeing a worldwide gag reflex. A gag reflex is triggered by whatever you’re choking on, and gagging is nature’s way of solving the problem. It isn’t a philosophy. It’s an immune response. Trump and the end of USAID didn’t cause this one. Voters are reacting to what the worldwide Left has tried to force down their throats.
In fact, I would suggest that Trump is a part of that response, a symptom, not the cause. That’s why I’ve been saying that MAGA will not end with Trump. It’s just getting started. What South America, Europe, and, if I read things correctly, a good part of this country have been choking on is socialism. All of this is playing large in the American Midterm elections.

Le Pen, AfD vs Antifa.

• Migrants Join Forces With Antifa, EU Riots Spread From France To Belgium (ZH)

Europe is demonstrating that the globalist progressive experiment is crashing and burning, as far-left riots, which we pointed out at the start of the week, were “spreading like cancer” from France to Belgium, continue on Friday. What’s to say the social unrest will stop there?

The chaos and social unrest mimic the US Marxist BLM riots in 2020, when left-wing NGOs and politicians allowed these radicals to mobilize and burn down city blocks. What’s happening in Europe could’ve happened in the US this year if the State Department, Treasury, and other agencies hadn’t cracked down on these far-left NGOs, big family foundations, and foreign subversion networks. Social media user Visegrád 24 has pointed out that riots in Europe are taking a disastrous turn: “Young second and third-generation migrants have joined forces with Antifa for today’s riots in Brussels.”

BREAKING:

The riots are spreading from France to Belgium.

Young second and third-generation migrants have joined forces with Antifa for today’s riots in Brussels pic.twitter.com/zySR6266OY
— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) October 9, 2026

That’s the second issue: far-left groups weaponize migrants to fulfill their sinister goal of overthrowing capitalism and the West, similar to what far-left radicals in the US, such as the Democratic Socialists of America, have in mind when they say, in their own words, that they want to “bring down America from within.”

"The most important thing we can do is take that (American) empire down from within"

DSA members make it clear what their goal is: destroying America. pic.twitter.com/Txy5Na21UG
— Canary Mission (@canarymission) July 5, 2026

You’re starting to get the picture, if readers don’t already understand: the West has a radical-left problem. It’s being showcased on a grand stage in Europe, where radicalization is infecting not just migrants but youth at younger and younger ages. This is an embarrassing dilemma for European liberals, as it only supercharges right-wing candidates to gain power, as Nomura analysts expect the EU “lurches” right in the 18-month election cycle already underway.
This was the problem high-level State Department officials discussed with their European counterparts this past summer: the troubling far-left radicalization impacting younger and younger people. More footage from Belgium:
https://twitter.com/Breaking2003/status/2108490509304143982?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E2108490509304143982%7Ctwgr%5Efc5cf45e1ea21dc41f76fac40a95553b47b9f98a%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com%2Fpolitical%2Fmigrants-join-forces-antifa-eu-riots-spread-france-belgium

If it weren’t for DOGE cutting USAID funding by 85% and the US multi-agency task force cracking down on billionaire-funded lefty NGOs and subversion networks, who’s to say these riots wouldn’t be spreading to the US by now? But massive foundations, such as possibly the Gates Foundation, and many other lefty billionaires are too scared about the potential loss of their prized nonprofit status. That is likely one reason riots in America didn’t materialize this past summer.

“This leader has perpetuated war, violated our civil liberties, deported more people from our shores than any other president before him, and the list of his failures goes on,” is what SAYED! had to say about Obama in a 2012 HuffPo column just dredged up by CNN’s Andrew Kaczynski.”

• Barack Obama and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad News Cycle (Green)

Few things bring me more workday pleasure than an opportunity to mock The Lightbringer, the man whose very nomination caused the oceans to stop rising (or maybe stop receding), healed our racial divisions (except for those tricksy Jews and also white guys), and ushered in “a new way of being on the planet.”

Of course, it’s even more pleasurable when I don’t have to think about Barack Obama at all, but he was never one of those “absence makes the heart grow fonder” people, so I have to leap on those mocking opportunities whenever they present themselves. Today, for example, when I do believe I’ll celebrate filing this column by shaking myself a martini. Shall we begin?
The setup began Monday with a news item you’re probably already well aware of. Despite polls showing Michigan Islamo-Commie Democrat Abdul El-Sayed with an insurmountable 417-point lead over his rival, that Republican dude that nobody is 100% certain is actually running. Campaigns comfortably in the lead don’t interrupt Obama from doing whatever it is he does these days — occasionally scold black men and count his Netflix money, I think — for a joint campaign stop on the first day of early voting.
That planned October 24 joint campaign appearance might get a little awkward, given what we just learned SAYED! really thought about the Lightbringer’s performance as president.
And Another Thing: My editor assures me that there is a Republican nominee, that his name is Mike Rogers, and that he’s been both on the campaign trail and occasionally (but only very occasionally) in the news. My editor also says that Al-Sayed now just uses “SAYED!” in his campaign materials. So, kind of like Madonna, but instead of getting you out on the dance floor, Madonna wanted to force you onto a prayer mat and confiscate your wealth.
“This leader has perpetuated war, violated our civil liberties, deported more people from our shores than any other president before him, and the list of his failures goes on,” is what SAYED! had to say about Obama in a 2012 HuffPo column just dredged up by CNN’s Andrew Kaczynski. “So let’s be clear,” he added, “for progressives who care about peace, prosperity, civil liberties, and the future of our country, Obama’s reelection last night was no victory.”
There’s more — a lot more — along those lines from SAYED! in Kaczynski’s column. Bravo, sir. I didn’t think much of Obama’s performance, either.But it’s today’s second item giving me that four-hour schadenboner: “Obama Foundation and Presidential Center workers to unionize: ‘We don’t even have a seat at the table.’”
“When I’m president, I will make the minimum wage a living wage by indexing it to inflation so even more families have the economic stability they need,” Obama promised in 2008. In 2026, his attitude is more like, “I have to pay these people how much?”Which is why, the Daily Mail reported today, “Workers at his ‘death star’ presidential center are already so fed up they’re leaving in droves.”
Thanks for getting in the Death Star dig so I didn’t have to. But get a load of how Obama treats workers at the Lorem Ipsum factory: Issues with workloads and benefits have led to a ‘high turnover rate’ among employees, with many more ‘continuing to leave (and) taking with them their institutional knowledge and expertise,’ the letter claimed.
Workers say they were recently told that their healthcare costs would increase, promotions were suspended, and paid time off was reduced, despite also learning they would get no pay increases this winter. “What we’re hoping for, and really the reason why we’re forming our union, is just because we believe we should have a say in the decisions that are being made that impact all of our lives,” Luke Gilday, an Obama Foundation employee and member of the union organizing committee, told the Sun-Times.
Ha-ha, no. Welcome to democratic socialism, Comrade Gilday — you’ll get what your betters deign to give you, and pretend to like it. As for me, I’m loving every minute of it.But I’d love it even more if The Lightbringer would just go sit in the dark and stay there.

“Everybody’s restless and they got no place to go / Someone’s always trying to tell them something they already know / So their anger and resentment flow.” —Warren Zevon, Mohammed’s Radio

• The Ripening (James Howard Kunstler)

In the stark October light, events and personalities skulk in the shadows like scavengers in an orchard of poison fruit. The dread builds as the dooryards get populated with the motorized effigies of blood-beasts, werewolves, phantoms, and ghouls. Halloween and Election Day have become the conflated celebration of a national death trip. How has it come down to our country, in a crucial election, seriously entertaining the antics of jihadis and Jacobin riffraff?

Some somebodies are orchestrating this frightful show from the sinister shadowland behind our politics. My guess would be Barack Obama and John Brennan, with a whole lot of help from a supporting cast of entrenched Deep State racketeers enlisted in their service, with their status and livelihoods at stake. Mr. Obama acts as if he is untouchable, probably due to being the personification of Liberalism’s “Best Camper” trophy it gave itself to validate the Civil Rights struggle session of the century gone by. We are good people, we really are, and President Obama is proof positive of our goodness!
The truth is, we know next to nothing about his real origins and his journey to power. His family on his mother’s side was pure CIA-connected, and his actual father is rumored to be Frank Marshall Davis (1905–1987), a Black American poet, journalist, and labor activist who was a member of the Communist Party USA — not the Kenyan Barack Hussein Obama, Sr. He went from nonentity to myth with no intervening storyline that makes any sense, just a set of rapid promotions with missing events between them: Occidental College in LA to Columbia U to Harvard Law to Chicago politics to Illinois State Senate, straight to the US Senate, and then, bang, into the White House only four years into his first Senate term.

The Gold Dust Twins, Barack Obama with John Brennan

At every stage along the way he was somebody’s chore boy. But whose? My guess would be US Central Intelligence. . . that he was groomed to be the untouchable front man looking out for the agency’s interests in dicey times. His quick political rise coincided with the rise of John Brennan through the ranks of the CIA. Early on, Brennan was drawn to Arabic culture, sojourned in Egypt as a student, and later served as the CIA’s station chief in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. He speaks Arabic fluently and is rumored to have converted to Islam (from Catholicism), though it has never been proven. At a 2010 New York University forum, he praised “the goodness and beauty of Islam.”
The CIA, I would suppose, is composed of two great clans: one is made of the employees actually carrying out real intel-gathering and analysis. The other is of employees (current and former) looking out for the CIA’s own black op activities and the immense fortunes connected with it — with plenty of overlap between the two clans. I’d guess that John Brennan, who was CIA Director between 2013 and 2017 (under President Obama), still runs a large rogue contingent of the CIA clan that does the black ops, sits on a large fortune, and acts like a sovereign organism outside the control of the elected US government.
That would explain why no one has been held accountable for the ten-year-long coup against Donald Trump. Brennan, and the forces he represents, appear to be outside the control of the regular government, including the DOJ and FBI, and to some extent able to control people throughout government by subterfuge, intimidation, and blackmail. All that nearly came apart during Donald Trump’s first term with the bungled RussiaGate caper followed by the bungled Impeachment No. 1 operation. But Brennan’s dark CIA clan triumphed with the 2020 election “victory” of non compos mentis “Joe Biden,” followed by the successful Jan 6, 2021, fake “insurrection” at the US Capitol.
They stumbled badly again with the patently ridiculous court cases against former President Trump in 2023 and 2024. And now here we are in the middle of Mr. Trump’s second term, with a titanic struggle going on, largely out of public view, for the soul of the nation. John Brennan is still at large, but a month ago he was served with a subpoena to appear before a federal grand jury in the Southern District of Florida. It looks like he will finally have to do some ‘splainin’ about events he’s been involved with. You can be sure that President Trump means to see that it happens — whatever was signified by the departure of Joe diGenova last month.
It’s also my guess that former President Obama has become John Brennan’s hostage. He was probably assigned to run “Joe Biden’s” fake presidency using Susan Rice and other party functionaries to carry out orders. Brennan surely has a dossier on Barack Obama that fills in the blanks in his sketchy biography, including Mr. Obama’s secret sexual activities on the Chicago scene back in the day. Meanwhile, the former president has his electioneering duties to attend to, to try to flip the House and Senate so as to have one last go at defenestrating the man in the White House who threatens to put Brennan, Obama & Company out of business.
So, there’s a war on backstage. The war itself has been mythologized by those actually paying attention to it, sometimes as the contest between “Globalists” and “Sovereigntists” or “Black Hats” versus “White Hats” or the Legions of Satan versus the God-loving followers of Jesus. . . Jihad v. Western Civ. However you characterize it, everyone feels the tension as though the current phase of this Fourth Turning is an unbearable space between the life and death of the nation. Hence, all the ghouls in the dooryards, reminding us to stay. . . very. . . scared.

“Ukraine is facing energy and transport collapse, but its leader continues to siphon money into his corruption system, says Dmitry Polyansky, Moscow’s envoy to the OSCE..”

• Zelensky ‘Doesn’t Give A Damn’ About Ukrainians – Russian Envoy (RT)

Vladimir Zelensky’s continued attempts to target Moscow despite harsh retaliation against Ukraine’s military-related infrastructure prove that he doesn’t care about the well-being of his country’s people, Russia’s ambassador to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), Dmitry Polyansky, has said.

Moscow Region came under a major aerial attack on Tuesday night, with Ukraine firing 650 drones towards the Russian capital, Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin said. Despite most of the UAVs being shot down by air defenses, the raid resulted in the death of two people. Another civilian was killed in a Ukrainian drone attack in the region on Thursday, according to Governor Andrey Vorobyev.
During his speech at an OSCE session in the Austrian capital, Vienna, on Thursday, Polyansky said that Zelensky “still harbors hopes of inflicting at least some noticeable damage on Moscow” in order to present this to the West as “proof that Ukraine is still capable of carrying out military operations that are painful” for Russia.
“At the same time, the head of the Kiev regime never tires of threatening Russia with escalation – something he is incapable of actually delivering – only to then complain about large-scale strikes by Russia,” he said, as cited by TASS. Zelensky should remember the proverb that “people who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones,” the envoy noted.
According to Polyansky, Russian retaliatory strikes on facilities supporting Kiev’s war machine are “many times more powerful” than those attempted by Ukrainian forces. Because of those attacks, Ukraine is “losing the last remnants of its industry and infrastructure,” while also teetering on the brink of a “total energy and transport collapse” ahead of winter, he added. Zelensky, however, “doesn’t give a damn about his citizens. His only concern is siphoning more money out of the country into the corruption system of his creation,” Polyansky said.
Ukraine has been rocked by a series of high-profile corruption scandals since last year, with the largest centering on a $100 million kickback scheme at state nuclear operator Energoatom, which was reportedly led by Timur Mindich, a former business partner of Zelensky. Other recent graft probes have targeted former Ukrainian ministers, prosecutors, diplomats, and senior officials.
In an interview with Reuters last week, Zelensky said he had ordered the Ukrainian military to double the number of attacks deep inside Russia, particularly against the country’s oil refining facilities. The Russian Defense Ministry responded by announcing that “following Zelensky’s statement, the strikes… on military and military-industrial facilities… in Kiev and other regions of Ukraine will be intensified.” The ministry maintains that it never targets civilians.

“Nord Stream 1, and probably Nord Stream 2 as well, will be relaunched. Russian gas will flow to the West,” said Grzegorz Braun after a meeting with the AfD party.

• Nord Stream Pipelines Will Be Relaunched’: Right-Wing Polish MEP (RMX)

Grzegorz Braun (first from the left) spoke together with AfD politicians in Lubmin, where the Nord Stream infrastructure is located.

Grzegorz Braun, leader of the Confederation of the Polish Crown, spoke in favor of restarting the Nord Stream 1 and 2 gas pipelines during a meeting Wednesday with politicians from the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party in Lubmin. He said Poland should be a shareholder in the German-Russian project.“Nord Stream 1, and probably Nord Stream 2 as well, will be relaunched. Russian gas will flow to the West,” Braun said. He said Europe needs Russian raw materials and that their absence could have serious consequences for the economy.

Braun argued that Poland should not be excluded from future energy projects concerning Russian gas supplies. “Poland should participate, not boycott. Poland should be the initiator,” he said. He also proposed that Warsaw become a shareholder in Nord Stream. He also said that if Russian gas returns to Europe, Poland could lose economically if the supplies bypass its territory. In his view, Warsaw should seek participation in such energy projects rather than remain outside them.
Braun also spoke of the need to “normalize” and “de-escalate” relations and economic cooperation among Poland, Germany and Russia. He advocated a return to wider use of coal and the ability to buy oil and gas from suppliers offering favorable terms. The speech took place in Lubmin, the site of the German terminal and infrastructure linked to the Nord Stream pipelines. Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 were damaged in September 2022 by explosions on the Baltic Sea floor. Nord Stream 1 had been the main route for Russian gas to Germany. Nord Stream 2, though completed, was never launched because of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly urged the German government to start supplies through the sole Nord Stream 2 line that survived the blasts. He has said that if the line operates, 27.5 billion cubic meters of gas “will immediately reach Europe.” “Why don’t they do it? I just can’t understand it. They can receive gas through Ukrainian territory, through TurkStream, but they cannot through the pipeline running along the bottom of the Baltic Sea,” Putin said.
“In my opinion, it’s crazy, just nonsense. Why? But if they don’t want to, fine,” Putin said in 2024 at the Vladivostok Economic Forum. According to U.S. media reports, a group of Ukrainian officers conceived the operation to blow up Nord Stream in May 2022. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky initially approved the plan before he allegedly unsuccessfully tried to cancel it at the CIA’s request. Polish connections also appear in press accounts of the Baltic Sea sabotage.
U.S. President Donald Trump said last May that “many people know” who blew up Nord Stream. He added that he was the first to thwart the project. Trump imposed sanctions on Nord Stream 2 in his first term, significantly slowing construction. President Joe Biden repealed them in 2021 and reimposed them after Russia invaded Ukraine. Germany withheld permission to start the pipeline because of the war.

“A CIA investigation explored whether marital turmoil drove the Ukrainian nationalist to suicide – and whether his followers concealed the truth

• Bandera’s Dirty Secrets Buried To Build A Ukrainian ‘Hero’, Blame The KGB (RT)

October 15th marks the anniversary of Ukrainian ultranationalist Stepan Bandera’s alleged 1959 murder by a Soviet KGB agent, in Munich, Germany. As the Kiev regime has idolized Bandera and his fellow ultranationalist killers without shame since NATO’s war with Russia began, mass celebrations could be planned. Ukrainian officials were forced in May to publicly deny they had any intention of moving Bandera’s remains from Munich to rebury them. On top of avoiding significant public controversy, Kiev may have had a darker motive – preventing anyone from trying to investigate whether Bandera in fact committed suicide. The popular tale of his KGB assassination seems like a completely false Ukrainian ultranationalist hero myth.

For decades reviled by many Ukrainians and not much known outside the region, adoration of Bandera by Kiev’s assorted Neo-Nazi terrorist and paramilitary units, like Azov Battalion, forced the Western media to admit the man’s criminal legacy, and his personal involvement – and that of his Organization Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) – in committing the Holocaust. Even critical biographies of Bandera ignore his secret post-war relationship with the CIA and MI6. Tugging this thread could reveal how an independent secret investigation conducted by an influential and well-connected Ukrainian fascist CIA agent leading away from Bandera having been murdered, and to difficulties in his marriage, due to spending “much time in the company of other women.”
The CIA’s secret investigation Michael Korzhan was a Ukrainian fascist, Orthodox priest, and CIA spy. Known under the cryptonym “AEDOGMA,” from 1947 he monitored Ukrainian ultranationalists, Soviet emigres and associated groups throughout Europe, including Paris. Korzhan also kept a close eye on the continent for the CIA, not only as a “spotter” for potential agents who could be inserted into or recruited in the Soviet Union, but potential KGB infiltration of Orthodox churches. A declassified January 1960 CIA file records how Korzhan was sent to Munich after Bandera’s death and spent several months investigating what happened. AEDOGMA was able to retrace many sensitive particulars of Bandera’s life that never surfaced publicly.
Korzhan “became convinced, as the result of his investigations, that Bandera committed suicide.” Him being tasked with investigating Bandera’s death reflects the value the CIA attached to AEDOGMA. After World War II, Bandera became a prize asset of the CIA and MI6 for many years. While the CIA eventually turned on the godfather of Ukrainian ultranationalism, the CIA considered it very important he was not martyred by the KGB for his post-war anti-Communist activities in Ukraine and the Soviet Union. The CIA was working on getting Bandera a US visa at the time he died. Understanding the facts of what happened was of huge importance for the CIA, and Korzhan was the agent for the job.
“AEDOGMA has unusual skills in interpersonal relationships. His particular social talents are best expressed when he is able to operate independently in a relatively unstructured, “wheeling and dealing” environment… He can usually achieve the operational objective on his own… AEDOGMA starts any task with only the loosest initial plan for attack. From then on he feels his way, ‘following his nose’, while making sensitive adaptations to his strategy as the situation changes. Working in this fashion he enjoys his operational tasks immensely and becomes totally involved. He is deft at provoking others to reveal their hand while tipping off very little of his own.”
So said a declassified April 1960 CIA memo. Korzhan demonstrated his superhuman spying skills at the end of the previous year by interviewing “about 100 Banderites and other Ukrainian emigres” about Bandera’s death. He conducted significant on-the-ground research, identifying five separate “versions” of what happened to Bandera. They ranged from the Nazi-composed Gehlen Organization that the CIA built in Germany after World War II taking Bandera’s life, to suicide. Having chased every lead attempting to prove or disprove each “version”, AEDOGMA concluded that suicide was overwhelmingly the most likely. En route to reaching this explosive conclusion, never reported anywhere before, Korzhan disproved the accepted story that the KGB was responsible.
The assassination story under scrutiny
KGB defector Bohdan Stashynsky took responsibility for killing Bandera, on November 17 1961. He served four years in prison, before being released to start a new life in Germany. This telling of events has not been challenged at any time since. The ‘fact’ of the KGB’s responsibility is completely unquestioned in Ukrainian, and Western, accounts of what happened to Bandera. Korzhan identified a number of factors ruling homicide out entirely. He recorded that the alleged murder weapon potassium cyanide was not a substance the KGB had previously used during its entire post-war war on political opponents, and it would represent “the first time they have used this means” if the KGB was responsible.
Korzhan also believed it was highly illogical “in view of the present political situation” for the “Communists to do away with Bandera at this time.” He wondered, “wouldn’t the KGB have considered the fact that the death of Bandera would instigate the Ukrainian emigres to mobilize their fight against the Communists in the whole world?” He spoke to many knowledgeable sources who pointed directly to people and factors in Bandera’s private life that were much more likely culprits. Korzhan shared his findings with West German detective Adrian Fuchs, who also concluded Bandera’s death was a suicide. Both men understood also that powerful ultranationalist figures around Bandera had a huge interest in blaming the KGB.
Behind Bandera’s closed doors
Fuchs and his investigators spoke to at least 50 people about Bandera’s death, including people who knew him intimately, and many were unanimous in blaming his marital situation. Bandera’s life “was unpleasant,” due to how his wife, Yaroslava Bandera, treated him. She made his life a living hell because of his “association with other women,” so he killed himself. Particularly, Bandera plotted to take his own life “in such a way that suicide would never be suspected but that, on the contrary, would lead to various interpretations and suspicions that he was liquidated by the communists, thus permitting him to remain a hero.” Korzhan tracked how Bandera had been avoiding his bodyguards in preparation in the weeks before he died.
“It is a fact that Bandera had a violent quarrel with his wife that very morning. He threatened suicide and left home to go to the office before 8 a.m. Bandera employed the use of potassium cyanide which he always carried on his person and which, after his death, could not be found either on his person or in his home. Considering the above, I concluded that it was suicide by use of potassium cyanide. Motive: His unbearable marital situation.”
Korzhan had uncovered many facts supporting this “version.” He learned Bandera’s “home life had lately become so unbearable that his only escape could have been suicide.” The biggest issue was that Bandera’s wife “as a result from some very difficult experience in her life, and the fear of constant surveillance… had practically lost all of her senses.” Were she not Bandera’s wife, “she would have been in an insane asylum a year ago.” Korzhan learned about “Bandera’s unsatisfactory sex life, his seeking such diversions outside his base” – a euphemism for having many affairs – “and the resultant uncontrollable jealousy of his wife which led to fights between them.”
AEDOGMA heard story after story of Bandera trying to spend time away from his wife to have affairs with other women, and his wife viewing “everyone as a threat to herself.” Female friends were forbidden from visiting, even when accompanied by their husbands. Male friends were also barred because Bandera “would use the excuse of driving them home as an opportunity to get out for some fun.” Over the two years before he died, Bandera “lived through such hell that it was difficult for anyone to imagine.” He was phoned dozens of times whenever away from the house by his wife to check his whereabouts, and she made “all sorts of accusations against him even in front of the children.”
“During these quarrels he always threatened suicide. His wife would reply, ‘the quicker you do, the better it be for all of us,’ and then she usually added “but you are too much of a coward to commit suicide. Bandera, who considered himself a hero and an individual who enjoyed the respect of the organised masses and to whom he was a ‘god’, had to bear the slander and accusations made by his wife who saw him only as a human being, her husband and the father of her children. This was more than he could stand. The people who were acquainted with this situation felt that these tortures (for which be often was personally to biome) were so horrible that any normal individual would have committed suicide long ago.”

“The German leader has pledged more aid to Kiev despite falling popularity at home, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has said..”

• Merz Turned Into ‘Ukrainian Chancellor’ – Moscow (RT)

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has effectively become a “Ukrainian chancellor,” showering Kiev with more taxpayer-funded aid despite mounting discontent at home, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has said. Speaking at a press conference on Thursday, Zakharova criticized Merz’s visit to Kiev on Sunday, during which he pledged billions in additional assistance, including funding for long-range weapons production. The announcement came amid plunging support for his governing coalition and a series of electoral setbacks for his Christian Democratic Union (CDU).

Zakharova suggested that Merz was so eager to escape his domestic troubles that he “practically fled from the festivities in Bremen” marking the 36th anniversary of German reunification. “The new face in Ukrainian politics, [or] a ‘Ukrainian chancellor’ as Merz has been dubbed in German political circles, didn’t come empty-handed – he announced yet another generous gift to his ‘friend’, Zelensky,” she said sarcastically.
German taxpayers will foot the bill, Zakharova argued, suggesting that Merz was deliberately adding to their burden despite growing public dissatisfaction with his policies. She also questioned whether the chancellor could genuinely be unaware of Ukraine’s rampant corruption, pointing to a series of high-profile scandals involving Vladimir Zelensky’s inner circle and senior officials.
Zakharova cited a September survey by the Kiev International Institute of Sociology (KIIS), in which 50% of respondents identified corruption as the country’s most pressing problem. Some 72% said graft had worsened since the escalation of the conflict with Russia in 2022, while the same proportion blamed Zelensky and his associates. Given what she described as Kiev’s efforts to suppress dissent, Zakharova argued that the findings were particularly revealing.
“Ukraine is so mired in corruption that it has become impossible to cover up its real scale by any means,” she said. Merz has faced similar criticism from German opposition politicians. In July, Alternative for Germany (AfD) lawmaker Markus Frohnmaier told RT’s Rick Sanchez that Merz “is the chancellor of Ukraine and not the chancellor of Germany.” Veteran left-wing politician Sarah Wagenknecht, founder of the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW), has likewise accused Merz of turning “his own citizens into cash cows for Ukraine.”
Meanwhile, an INSA poll published earlier this month put support for Merz’s CDU/CSU alliance at a record low of 18%, compared with 30% for the AfD, which remains Germany’s most popular party. The chancellor’s Christian Democrats also suffered successive electoral defeats last month in the eastern states of Saxony-Anhalt and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. The CDU finished a distant second in Saxony-Anhalt with 17.5% of the vote and failed to clear the electoral threshold in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, securing just 4.9%.
Despite the setbacks, Merz, who has previously criticized Germans for not working enough hours, has refused to change course.

“Kiev’s European backers ‘nervous’ about winter..”

• Trump Envoys Pitching ‘New Ideas’ To Settle Ukraine Conflict (RT)

US President Donald Trump’s top negotiators are preparing to pitch “new ideas and proposals” aimed at breaking the deadlock in the Ukraine conflict, with talks involving representatives of Kiev and its European backers scheduled to begin in Miami on Friday, according to Reuters and Axios. Special envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner are expected to hold a two-day working session with the Ukrainian delegation in an effort to develop a unified proposal that could later be presented to Moscow.

The pair could then travel to the Russian capital later this month for another round of talks with President Vladimir Putin, Axios reported, citing a source familiar with the discussions. According to Reuters, the ideas were developed during and after Witkoff and Kushner’s diplomatic tour of Moscow and Kiev in early September. The pair have since remained in contact with both Russian and Ukrainian officials while working on an updated peace initiative.
One proposal reportedly under consideration is a partial ceasefire covering attacks on energy infrastructure and Black Sea shipping. The talks are also expected to address possible security guarantees for Ukraine, a post-conflict economic plan and other elements of a potential settlement. Witkoff and Kushner met Trump on Thursday to present the latest proposals and receive his input ahead of the Miami talks, according to Axios. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Deputy National Security Adviser Mike Needham also attended the meeting.
Kiev’s European backers ‘nervous’ about winter
Kiev will reportedly be represented by Vladimir Zelensky’s chief of staff, Kirill Budanov, intelligence chief Rustem Umerov, diplomatic adviser Sergey Kislitsa and top lawmaker David Arakhamia.
National security advisers from Britain, France and Germany, as well as representatives of NATO and the EU, have also reportedly been invited. A US source told AFP that European governments have privately complained about soaring energy prices and other economic costs stemming from the conflict, adding that there is growing concern about another winter of hostilities.
“They are all nervous about the winter. It will be a tough winter if the war does not stop,” the source said. Trump has also repeatedly pressed Zelensky to stop “hurting the world” and halt Ukrainian strikes on Russian oil refineries, arguing that the attacks are worsening a global diesel shortage and driving up fuel costs in the US.
Kremlin agrees with Rubio on ‘stalemate’
The new diplomatic push comes as US Secretary of State Marco Rubio described the conflict as a “dangerous stalemate,” warning that further escalation could spill beyond Ukraine and trigger a broader confrontation. “This war needs to end in a negotiated settlement. The sooner, the better,” Rubio told reporters in Lisbon on Thursday, while cautioning that Washington would not invest indefinitely in “pointless processes” that produce no progress.
The Kremlin said it shared Rubio’s assessment of the current diplomatic impasse, with spokesman Dmitry Peskov saying he “agreed” that no clear prospect of a negotiated settlement was currently visible. He nevertheless reiterated Moscow’s position that Russia remains open to negotiations, while accusing Kiev of showing no willingness to accept reality and pursue a long-term settlement.
Despite the lack of progress on Ukraine, contacts between Washington and Moscow have continued on other tracks, Peskov added, noting that the two countries are discussing “a whole range” of potentially mutually beneficial economic projects, including possible cooperation in the energy sector.

“The Labor Department won’t accept new applicants or process pending applications involving the eight companies while the administration pursues its concerns about possible immigration fraud.”

• Trump Told Big Tech to Put American Workers First (David Manney)

A Microsoft employee who lost a job in 2025 might have a few questions for the company’s executives today. The technology giant eliminated thousands of American jobs while continuing to sponsor foreign workers. Now President Donald Trump’s administration wants answers, and the consequences have arrived.
On Thursday, Vice President JD Vance and Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling announced that Microsoft, Adobe, and six major technology outsourcing companies were being suspended from the federal Permanent Labor Certification Program, known as PERM. The Labor Department won’t accept new applicants or process pending applications involving the eight companies while the administration pursues its concerns about possible immigration fraud.

For Americans who supported Trump’s 2024 campaign because of his America First employment promises, the announcement is a direct expression of what they expected from his presidency. The policy puts a familiar question before some of the world’s wealthiest corporations: What responsibility do American employers owe American workers?
Vance singled out Microsoft, pointing to approximately 6,000 layoffs in 2025 and thousands of H-1B visa applications. He accused the company of abusing a system intended to address genuine labor shortages. Microsoft disputes that characterization, saying roughly 80% of its H-1B applications involving existing employees and that new visa hires represented only about 1% of its American workforce.
From the Associated Press: Microsoft, which is based in Redmond, Washington, said of the approximately 6,000 H-1B visa applications it submitted in the last fiscal year, 80% were “to extend or change the status of existing Microsoft employees.” “These were not to hire new people,” Microsoft said in a statement. “The remaining filings for new employees were for individuals already legally in the United States who decided to come work for us, and they equal only 1% of our U.S. workforce. They are not new arrivals to our country.”
The company added that it only files H-1B petitions for “those who meet the rigorous standards of this visa category.”nWe need to take a good peek at those numbers because layoffs and foreign worker sponsorship don’t automatically establish that Americans were displaced. They do, however, raise questions that can be looked at through hiring records, recruitment procedures, and the specific positions involved.
PERM isn’t simply another foreign worker visa. Before sponsoring someone for permanent residency through this process, an employer must establish that sufficient qualified American workers aren’t available for the position and that hiring the foreign worker won’t undermine comparable American wages and working conditions. Those protections have long been part of federal law.
The administration’s action reaches well beyond Microsoft. Cognizant, Infosys, Tata Consultancy Services, Wipro, HCL Technologies, Capgemini, and Adobe are also affected. Sonderling said these companies collectively requested nearly three million foreign workers since 2009, received more than 230,000 H-1B approvals, and obtained over 100,000 permanent labor certifications.
Those figures describe different categories of immigration activity, not a confirmed count of Americans replaced. The Labor Department hasn’t publicly demonstrated that every certification was improper. Its investigations will need to distinguish legitimate recruitment from false claims that qualified American applicants weren’t available.
The larger dispute involves more than immigration enforcement. Technology executives argue that access to international talent helps American companies compete, innovate, and retain highly skilled workers. Critics of the visa programs argue that employers can exploit immigration rules to reduce labor costs, weaken domestic bargaining power, or avoid investing in American employees.
Trump’s supporters have long regarded those concerns as central to the America First agenda. The administration is now testing whether existing federal safeguards can be enforced against companies with enormous economic influence. There’s an especially interesting detail from Thursday. While Vance publicly challenged Microsoft’s employment practices, Trump honored Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella with the National Medal of Technology and Innovation.
The same administration recognized the company’s achievements and questioned its immigration practices within hours. The investigations could ultimately establish wrongdoing, identify compliance failures, or find that some accusations went too far. The suspensions also affect foreign workers already pursuing permanent residency, creating questions about fairness, legal authority, and how long their applications will remain stalled.
Those outcomes will determine whether Thursday’s announcement produces lasting reform or another prolonged federal dispute. For the voters who backed Trump expecting stronger protection for American employment, the measure demonstrates the administration’s willingness to challenge Big Tech. Whether it actually delivers more opportunities for American workers remains the test that matters.

The clinic is located on the campus of the National Institutes of Health in Maryland.

• RFK Jr. Announces New Clinic for People Injured by Vaccines (ET)

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and other officials have opened a new clinic to treat patients with vaccine injuries and announced other new developments on Oct. 8 that they say will change how the government handles reports of health problems following vaccination.The new National Institutes of Health (NIH) clinic is located on the agency’s campus in Bethesda, Maryland. It was opened on Oct. 5, officials disclosed on Oct. 8. Reporters were not invited to the opening.

The Make America Healthy Again Commission, led by Kennedy, recommended in 2025 starting a new vaccine injury research program at the NIH as part of an effort to investigate vaccine injuries with better data collection and analysis. “[The clinic is] dedicated to developing the science of preventing vaccine injuries, making vaccines safer, and most important of all, listening to the voices of people who have suffered vaccine injury, so that we can learn from them and learn from their experience to make vaccines safer,” Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, NIH director, said in an Oct. 8 video statement.
NIH doctors and researchers will use the clinic to evaluate patients, identify potential causes of health problems, and try to figure out the best treatments, the Department of Health and Human Services, the NIH’s parent agency, which is led by Kennedy, said in a statement. Some NIH researchers studied patients with alleged or confirmed COVID-19 vaccine injuries during the COVID-19 pandemic, but they received pushback from NIH leadership. Patients said they were later abandoned by the researchers.
Kennedy, who attended the opening of the clinic, said in a video he posted on Oct. 8 that parents of children who suffered injuries from vaccines and other individuals with vaccine injuries “have been marginalized, vilified, demonized, and gaslighted, and they have not received the medical attention they need, and we have not done the studies that need to be done to understand who’s vulnerable to those kind of injuries.”
That’s changing with the Trump administration, he said. “I think it was the first time in years that the vaccine-injured have been heard by the health authorities,” Brianne Dressen, who was injured by the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine, was treated at the NIH in 2021, and co-founded a group called React19 representing people hurt by vaccines, told The Epoch Times.
“It is definitely a step in the right direction.” Health officials also announced three other related developments on Oct. 8. Kennedy has said that vaccine surveillance systems that the government utilizes, including the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), don’t work well. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, another agency under Kennedy’s purview, in August solicited bids for a contract to overhaul VAERS. On Sept. 28, the agency awarded a new contract.
Another move, officials said, will be requiring electronic health records moving forward to include vaccine-related health issues, “so that this information can follow patients across the health care system” and inform healthcare professionals who are caring for the patients.Finally, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, another health agency division, is proposing reimbursing doctors for the time they spend submitting reports to VAERS.

“Vomiting can also be an effective way to ward off a sexual offense.”

• German Police Advise Women To Vomit To Stop Rape Attacks (RMX)

It has been revealed that police in the northern German city of Bremen have for more than a decade advised participants in workplace safety seminars that deliberately inducing vomiting can be one way to interrupt an attempted sexual assault or rape. Franka Haedke, a spokeswoman for the Bremen police, said the guidance is part of broader self-defense instruction offered by the department’s Central Police Prevention unit.

“In an emergency, such as attempted rape, defend yourself with all available means,” Haedke told the Kreiszeitung newspaper. “Vomiting can also be an effective way to ward off a sexual offense.” Seminar instructors tell participants they can trigger a gag reflex by placing a finger down the throat. The resulting disgust, police say, is intended to disrupt an attacker’s actions. Haedke described the suggestion as one option among others rather than a prescribed response.
The sessions, which have run for more than 10 years, are held at companies, government offices and medical facilities. Employees of public transit agencies, the fire department, job centers, and social-service organizations are also eligible to attend. Topics include recognizing and avoiding danger, de-escalation, bystander intervention, and specific conduct during a sexual assault. Participants are invited to describe their own experiences so that advice can be tailored to situations they have encountered.
Haedke said the courses help people “recognize dangers early, manage conflicts, and act thoughtfully.” She added that the seminars “contribute to the prevention of crime and should be actively promoted and conducted on a recurring basis from the police’s point of view.”
Notably, the police appear powerless to address one of the key issues driving the increase in rapes and sexual assaults in Germany, and that is the incredible increase in foreigners. Since 2018, there has been a 72 percent increase in rapes in the country. In Bremen itself, where the police are advising women to vomit to stave off a rape, the city has been labeled the “most dangerous city in Germany.” It also happens to have the highest share of migrants of any German city. It is also a place where 49 percent of all rapes were committed by foreigners, even though the official foreign population is 23 percent.
The Bremen guidance is not the first unconventional self-protection tip from German police to draw public scrutiny. Remix News previously reported that in Berlin, officers previously listed singing as a way to irritate an attacker, advice that remained visible on the police force’s website even after internal materials had been revised. A screenshot of the recommendation went viral on social media in 2024 and was widely mocked.Berlin police later said the tip had been drawn from professional associations for psychiatry and did not match operational experience.
“A screenshot of our homepage has been circulating for a few days, according to which we recommend that in the event of an attack, you irritate the perpetrator through unexpected behavior, such as singing,” the Berlin police stated. “This is recommended by the professional associations for psychiatry, among others. However, this advice does not correspond to our police experience and has therefore no longer been part of our recommendations since 2023. The flyer was already updated, now our website is too.” The police stated that the suggestion was not meant for terrorist attacks, rampages or armed assaults, including those involving knives, where protecting life is the priority.
After the mass sexual assaults in Cologne on New Year’s Eve 2015–16, Mayor Henriette Reker — although not a police official — also gave advice that was widely condemned. Reker said women should keep “a certain distance of more than an arm’s length” from unknown men and avoid behavior that could be “misunderstood.” After thousands of German women were sexually assaulted and even some raped by North African migrants, the remarks were widely criticized, including by Germany’s justice minister.
Swedish police have also previously advised women to stop going out alone. Before mass immigration, Sweden was once one of the safest countries in the world for women. However, right around the same time as the mass sexual assaults in Colgone, Swedish police issued similar advice. In Östersund in 2016, after a series of assaults and an attempted rape, police chief Stephen Jerand advised women who wanted to move around at night to arrange a ride or walk in groups. He called the warning factual rather than a ban on going out alone.
German police have given similar pairing advice after attacks on joggers. Leipzig officers in 2017, after a woman was raped in Rosental park, said it would be better to run in pairs or make sure someone else was nearby, and to look back when passing people. The city’s mayor criticized the police for restricting women’s freedom.
After an attack in the English Garden in Munich in 2016, police in the city told runners to choose busy, lit routes after dark, jog at least in pairs at dusk, skip headphones, and carry a whistle or personal alarm. Although it was less controversial advice that what other authorities provided, critics note that women are increasingly unsafe in Europe while out exercising or enjoying public spaces.

Treated very badly..

• Roseanne Barr Is Coming Back (Matt Margolis)

Roseanne Barr is back. Eight years after Disney fired her over a tweet, the comedy legend has finished shooting an eight-episode family comedy called Meemaw, and she promises it takes aim at the left and the right alike. According to the report, the new series was filmed secretly in Austin, Texas, in November 2025. Barr plays the matriarch of a “mixed-race family of preppers in Texas” who is on a quest to “throw her granddaughter the most fantastic bat mitzvah Texas has ever seen.”

She adds, “I thought now would be a great time for people to actually hear from a Jew.” Mo’Nique, the Oscar-winning “Precious” star who remains friends with Barr, discovered Indy Bugg, a tween Instagram sensation who plays Barr’s granddaughter. “Mo’Nique calls up, ‘Check this girl out. She not only looks like you, but she acts just like you, too,” Barr recalls. “She was only 12, and I about fell over that I was able to get her. She’s such a star. You’ll see it in the first episode, in her first scene.”
Hollywood didn’t pay for any of it. Private investors gave Barr enough money to mount a fully union production. Elon Musk, who once pledged to back X users fired over their posts, never called her back, according to Barr. She isn’t lacking confidence, either. “It’s every bit as revolutionary as The Roseanne Show, if not more, and my work has improved with time,” Barr told Page Six. “I want everybody who disagrees in a family to sit in the same room and just laugh and go, ‘Yeah, maybe I was an a—hole that time. Well, you were an a**hole this time. Oh, we’re all a—holes. Let’s get a beer.’”

Meemaw is coming and no one is safe. https://t.co/V15APvoIQd
— Roseanne Barr (@therealroseanne) October 8, 2026

She wants relatives who disagree to sit in one room, laugh, admit they’ve each been jerks at times, and go have a beer. I’m looking forward to checking it out.
It was ridiculous when Hollywood canceled her after the Roseanne revival had just wrapped its first season as the top scripted primetime show among viewers 18 to 49. Her longtime agents at ICM dropped her immediately, and ABC reworked the show without her as The Conners.
It always sickened me the way her co-stars didn’t stick up for her. Let’s be honest: Barr was an outspoken Trump supporter, and ABC was likely looking for any reason to get rid of her. I watched the Roseanne revival, and it was good, but I refused to watch The Conners after they railroaded Barr.
On top of that, Disney demonstrated double standards by firing her. Whoopi Goldberg still has her seat on The View after claiming in 2022 that the Holocaust wasn’t about “race.” It was a shocking moment, and even her fellow liberal co-hosts challenged her to explain what she meant. Goldberg’s answer was that it was about “man’s inhumanity to man” because it involved “two groups of white people.” And in 2009, she defended pedophile Roman Polanski’s 1977 rape of a 13-year-old girl.
“I know it wasn’t rape-rape,” Goldberg said. “It was something else, but I don’t believe it was rape-rape.” ABC/Disney didn’t care about that.
But Barr got no such grace, so she built her comeback with people who know the angry cancel culture mob firsthand. Tony Hinchcliffe faced cancellation calls in 2024 for joking that Puerto Rico was a floating island of garbage, and his reps refused to drop him. Omar Gooding took heat for joining the cast and answered his critics by saying comedy is king.
According to Barr, Meemaw is “for everyone.” “My daughters are super woke and of course I love them, so I put in jokes for them, too, like I did on Roseanne,” she said. “I make fun of everybody ’cause everybody deserves to be made fun of who’s in power. So, I’ve got some great jokes about Republicans that the lefties are gonna love. I’m an equal opportunity destroyer.”

BREAKING: President Trump awards Elon Musk the National Medal of Science, the nation's top honor for scientists and engineers:

"First, we honor an industrial titan, a brilliant engineer, and one of the greatest technology founders to ever live. His name is Elon Musk. Quite… pic.twitter.com/pCSCJlZMKg
— KanekoaTheGreat (@KanekoaTheGreat) October 8, 2026

Starlink coming to KLM! https://t.co/08iVZuXys4
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 8, 2026

Elon Musk Just Made A Move That Will Change Cellphones Forever…

The FCC just cleared the way for SpaceX to expand Starlink and buy a nationwide 800 MHz low-band portfolio. Signals will be able carry through walls, tunnels and almost everywhere, effectively eliminating dead… pic.twitter.com/ugIsJAtAik
— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) October 9, 2026

2027 TESLA SHUTTLE — The Game Changer Minivan looks like something straight out of a sci-fi movie! pic.twitter.com/Vm1XihXh7y
— TESLA CARS ONLY⚡️ (@teslacarsonly) October 8, 2026

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Debt Rattle October 4 2026

Oct 042026

October 4, 2026 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 8:56 am Finance Tagged with: Alito, Carney, Chinese steel, diesel, DSA, God Made Trump, Iran, midterms, peace prize, Putin, Zelensky 22 Responses »

Hieronymus Bosch Adoration of the Magi c1472

• ‘God Made Trump’ Ad and At Least 12 Others (CNN)

• Toward A Better America (David Prentice)

• Iranian Top Dog Gives Trump the Best Review He Could Wish For (Spencer)

• All Hands on Deck for the Midterms (J.B. Shurk)

• Putin Outlines Context of Russian Position Toward Ukraine (CTH)

• Carney’s “Buy Canadian” LNG Expansion Will Be Built with Chinese Steel (CTH)

• Europe’s Diesel Problem (Toth Istvan)

• Justice Alito to Retire Next Year? (Matt Margolis)

• ‘Murderers’ Rutte and Merz Booed at Peace Prize Ceremony (RT)

• Zelensky Lashes Out At Ukraine’s Western Backers (RT)

• Dear DSA: How to Destroy the 5 Democrats Who Want to Be President (Pinsker)

https://twitter.com/EricLDaugh/status/2106395044613595302?s=20

Le Pen 44% https://t.co/DPybK3504q
— Willem Middelkoop (@wmiddelkoop) October 2, 2026

The real threat that is destroying our world is not Putin. IT'S THEM.they are the globalist oligarchs who seek to enslave us. And none are in prison for their CRIMES against humanity each one of them must be arrested immediately and brought to trial for crimes against humanity.⚔️ pic.twitter.com/Ta6oZ0wSJa
— Julian Paul Assange (@Julianpaulas) October 1, 2026

President Trump is a Grok user.

According to TIME, during a private Oval Office meeting with Elon Musk in December 2025, Trump spent hours asking Grok questions about his presidency and legacy.

He also asked how Venezuelans would react if the U.S. captured Nicolás Maduro. Grok… pic.twitter.com/AmcajdacMW
— DogeDesigner (@cb_doge) October 2, 2026

“‘God made Trump’ ad and at least 12 others are part of controversial taxpayer-funded ad campaign”..

Here’s wondering why CNN runs this article. It doesn’t come out nearly as anti-Trump as they seem to think.

• ‘God Made Trump’ Ad and At Least 12 Others (CNN)

The Trump administration has created at least 13 campaign-style ads as part of its controversial taxpayer-funded, multi-million-dollar effort to promote President Donald Trump and his policies.

Yet-to-be-aired spots include a trio of ads highlighting the US military and operations in Iran and Venezuela, one called “God Made Trump” and another recapping the UFC fight he hosted at the White House. Republicans and Democrats alike have questioned the wisdom of spending so much taxpayer money on the ads, which the White House has defended as public service announcements.
CNN has obtained clips of 12 ads, which range from 15 seconds to three minutes long, including two that have already aired. They appear in a Dropbox account — which was shared with CNN — run by LMD, the agency that has been given the government contract for the ad buys. Each ends with “Paid for by the U.S. Government” at the bottom of the screen. Another ad that is not in the Dropbox account, “Final Battle,” has also aired in recent weeks.
The three ads that have already aired have appeared on TV networks including CBS, CNN, MS NOW, Fox News and Fox. It’s not clear if all of the ads will air on television or digital platforms. Asked for comment, the White House on Friday afternoon pointed to a just-posted video compilation of the president criticizing CNN.
While each of the ads has a different theme, many of them include imagery of the president and audio with positive reviews from news reports, which is likely to intensify criticism that the campaign is using taxpayer dollars to help Trump personally. They also include patriotic images — including the cap toss at a military graduation, fireworks over Mount Rushmore and military flyovers.
First lady Melania Trump, who has been a rare presence at the White House during the president’s second term, is featured in many of the ads. There are also images from Trump’s reciprocal tariff announcement, the border wall, his escalator presidential-campaign announcement and the tongue-in-cheek framed photograph of an auto pen signifying former President Joe Biden on Trump’s “Presidential Walk of Fame.”

Trump’s White House created a spot titled “UFC” that showcases the June match held at the White House.

CNN previously reported that Trump has personally driven the video ads, including helping select the imagery and videos used, according to a source familiar with the matter. Two Trump advisers familiar with the ads said that they were being created in-house by the White House video team — which is part of the communications team, responsible for the administration’s public messaging — though at least one of them was produced by a pro-Trump meme group.
The ads that have aired so far have spurred widespread condemnation, even as the White House indicates it plans to ramp up its efforts. Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin, the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, said in a post on X that the ads “may be felony criminal theft and conversion of government property for political campaign purposes.” If Democrats win control of the House next year, he’ll gain congressional subpoena power.
Even some Republicans have criticized the ad campaign. “Look, if you want to spend money out of your super PAC or other campaign account to communicate that message, that’s fine. It’s not an appropriate PSA. It’s just not, you know, it’s not how we should be spending taxpayer dollars,” said Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina. Sen. John Cornyn of Texas has said “no” the ads are not an appropriate use of taxpayer dollars. “It’s not even a close question.”

A spot titled “Resilience” that shows Trump’s progression from a younger man in the New York real estate market to the US president.

The “UFC 250” ad heavily promotes the company and the June fight that Trump hosted at the White House, prominently featuring UFC CEO Dana White as well as the fighters, the lit-up “claw” over the Octagon and the championship belt. The “Maduro” spot intersperses a speech by Nicolas Maduro with appearances by Trump and his team at Mar-a-Lago following the Venezuelan dictator’s capture.
And “Military Hype” shows images of fighter jets and unclassified video of what appears to be missile launches. It also includes Trump’s February speech announcing the war with Iran, a conflict which remains deeply unpopular with the American people. “This regime will soon learn that no one should challenge the strength and might of the United States Armed Forces,” Trump says in the ad, now seven months into the war.
Some of the ads are starkly political: The two-minute “King of the Jungle” video features images of Trump’s perceived political enemies — former Presidents Barack Obama and Biden, Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and California Gov. Gavin Newsom, all Democrats. There’s video of lions hunting in the wild and a bald eagle sweeping down on the water. A cover of “In the Air Tonight” by In This Moment plays. And Christopher Walken’s lion speech from the 2002 film, “Poolhall Junkies,” is interspersed.

Trump’s White House created a spot titled “King of the Jungle” that intersperses images of Trump, campaign rallies, lions and eagles.

One of the spots, a three-minute-long ad titled “God Made Trump,” was broadcast during Republicans’ midterm convention in Dallas. In it, Trump is presented as a messianic figure with a riff on Paul Harvey’s “God Made a Farmer.” It was created by Dilley Meme Team, according to NPR, and began going viral earlier this year. “I need somebody with arms strong enough to rustle the deep state, and yet gentle enough to deliver his own grandchild. Somebody to ruffle the feathers,” the voiceover says, “So God made Trump.”

Trump’s White House created a spot titled “God Made Trump,” which portrays him as a messianic figure.

The ad “Resilience” shows Trump at multiple points in his life, including early in his New York real estate career, an appearance he made on “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” his descent down the Trump Tower escalator as he announced his candidacy in 2015 and then his time at the White House. In the audio, a reporter refers to him as “the bodyguard of Western Civilization.” His 2023 mugshot from a Fulton County, Georgia, sheriff’s office features prominently, along with video of an assassination attempt on him in Butler, Pennsylvania.
At least an estimated $5.6 million in taxpayer dollars have already been spent on the ads, according to a leading political ad-tracking firm, AdImpact. The actual cost of the taxpayer-funded ad campaign is even higher, but can’t be fully ascertained because public service announcements are subject to different public disclosure rules than campaign ads. A total of $20 million has been allocated for the effort. The money for these ads is coming from Customs and Border Protection, two sources familiar with the matter told CNN.
Watchdog groups have said the ads mark a clear violation of appropriations law restricting the use of federal funding for propaganda or partisan communications, but it’s not clear if outside groups have standing to file a lawsuit. Though the ads have received bipartisan criticism, Congress — which groups said had the clearest lane to provide some accountability — has not acted to block the ads.

“Until the midterms, we will be watching a massively coordinated attack denigrating all the good that has happened since Trump won in 2024..”

• Toward A Better America (David Prentice)

Until the midterms, we will be watching a massively coordinated attack denigrating all the good that has happened since Trump won in 2024. A combination of the leftist media and apostate “right-leaning” influencers will try to sell us just how awful Trump has been, so the wonderful communists, er, Democrats can ruin us once again. It will be hard to stomach.

As conservatives, we have had two magnificent years of change for the better. Only the Reagan years were this good. Reagan changed the world by defeating Soviet communism. He simultaneously reset our free-market economy. He reshaped the world while helping people in the U.S. live prosperous and meaningful lives. We live during a similar time. Trump has done the same magic trick of reshaping the world plus bettering personal lives.
But half the country does not know it. The leftist media neither had the will nor the capacity to make all the excellence of the Reagan years disappear back then. The leftist blob has honed its skills since. Its bravado and its capacity to propagandize is better than any of us thought possible. Helping the communists, er, Democrats to ruin our country once again. We must defeat them.
Success has been this administration’s MO. Yet we face a ginned-up and phony set of flaming darts volleyed at us daily. Instead of seeing achievements, we are hustled by lies of failure. The positives that have been accomplished in less than two years are remarkable, and they are legion. So much good has been done in the world, and truly for the average citizen, it’s hard to believe.
The leftist media has hidden these:
• A secure border
• Criminals being deported
• A massive drop in violent crime
• Severe fraud being exposed/stopped
• DEI halted
• University bias uncovered
• Deep-state government corruption halted
• Vote fraud revealed and curtailed (not enough John Thune)
• Real wages up
• Permanent tax cuts
• Stock market up
• An economy prepped for growth
• IRA valuations up
• IRAs for children established
• Government jobs down, private sector jobs up
• Manufacturing rebounding
• Huge investments in American business
• The U.S. energy sector unleashed
• Leftist-leaning NGO funding destroyed
• Lawfare beat-down
• Leftist communism exposed and fought
• Leftist/Jihadism connection exposed
• NATO increasing defense spending
• The Greenland deal
• The Venezuela liberation
• Panama Canal reset
• Iran neutered
• Cuba teetering
• China backpedaling/faltering
• Peace through strength, ending eight wars
• Beginning the Golden Dome defense
• The world order totally reshaped
• MAHA helping restore food safety
• MAHA bringing sanity to the pharmaceutical lobby
• Prescription drug prices down.
• Entrepreneurs encouraged
• Massive deregulation
• Anti-Christian bias targeted
• Men out of women’s sports and locker rooms.
• Preventing sex trafficking, saving trafficked children
• Dealing with the cartels, drug lords and pushers

And much more. 99% totally positive. A staggering list in two years. One that should be celebrated, lauded, applauded, and supported. Splashed across every media outlet.
We’ve never seen anything like this. We’ve never had it this good. We elected an administration that has performed a regenerative miracle for our country and its citizens. George Washington, Theodore Roosevelt, Thomas Jefferson, and Abraham Lincoln were great Presidents with great achievements. We are seeing that kind of greatness today. A country turning around. It’s possible to live life proudly as an American again. We’ve been lifted from the Hell that globalists and corrupt politicians from within and without wanted for us. And we’re just getting started. Because the best is yet to come. If we let it.
I loved Reagan. His eight years were inspiring and filled with achievement. Yet in the last two years we have witnessed more transformation to the good than in the Gipper’s eight years. And trust me, the enemies within were not nearly as prevalent as they are now. The entrenched leftist beehive of propaganda media was not so evil, all-encompassing, nor as effective. Reagan didn’t face the rancor and horror of actual communists within. Thankfully Trump, unlike milquetoasts in the past, knows how to fight and win.
Yet here so many are complaining about small change, clucking about affordability, whining about the Iran war, nitpicking that both sides are the same. Blah, blah, blah. If you have small issues you don’t care for, I do too, but please look at the list of accomplishments above. Please compare. Whatever your complaints, remember all the good that has been done. Because the diabolical left will undo it as much as possible if they win these midterms. Small issues don’t count when genuinely great things are happening in droves.
Affordability? Yes, we have had inflation due to the spike in diesel and gas prices. It’s real. But so is the fact that Iran is now neutered. They cannot nuke anyone. They cannot replace their missiles, drones, and the capacity to wreak havoc on us with their terror networks. They are relegated to the dustbin of history. Dan Bongino said he saw the intelligence concerning Iran. His comment: It was genuine. Had we not done what we did, we would have nuclear havoc, and permanent gas prices of eight to ten dollars a gallon. if we had not acted, a crazed nation would have held the world hostage. That would have caused worldwide depression, not simply a temporary spike in oil and inflation.
And it is temporary. Within six months, gas will likely be back below three dollars. Prices will go down. Inflation will be tamed again. Trump will have traded the havoc of a crazed Iranian regime for a nine-month upswing in gas and inflation. Art of the deal in spades.
And if you think the Democrats care about affordability, think again. It was Obama and Biden who purposefully caused gas to be high with their policies. They said they wanted it to happen. Their policies made it happen. Gas and high prices under Democrats are normative. The Democrats don’t give a fig about affordability. They have no right to claim the mantle of caring about affordability. They don’t want to, nor know how to bring affordability. They just know how to demagogue the issue so they can retake power. That is all they want.
What they are best at is using the beehive of their media friends to convince you that things are terrible. That Trump is a warmonger. That the economy is and will be terrible. That everything Trump touches is horrible. That they can fix everything to be better. That they’re really not radical leftists who hate America.
That’s the picture they will paint. It’s what they want us to believe. And they have the cultural power to sway too many of us. What we need to do is simple: Stand and fight the onslaught of their propaganda. Do not let them demoralize you or anyone else. Remember, there is a country to save from these leftist radicals. And it’s you who has the power to defeat them. Get up, engage, donate, support candidates without a (D) behind their name. Vote and get voters to the polls whom you know will help. Persuade those on the fence if you can. Democrats must lose.
If you are conservative, right-of-center, independent, or moderate, please consider: You do not want the newly constituted radical left in charge. Of anything. Period.
Pray for and work towards victory. You won’t regret it. But you will regret doing less than you could to support this administration.

“After one failure after another,” Rezaei fumed, “the worst president in American history just keeps talking — and talking — and now his words have even outrun his own fantasies. “

• Iranian Top Dog Gives Trump the Best Review He Could Wish For (Spencer)

The Secretary of the Iranian Supreme National Security Council, Mohsen Rezaei, apparently styles himself something of a historian of American history, or is angling for a plum job as a professor in an Ivy League university, or both. On Friday, Rezaei warmed the hearts of leftist historians all over the U.S. when he proclaimed that President Donald Trump is the “worst” president in U.S. history. Numerous socialist internationalist academics would agree.

“After one failure after another,” Rezaei fumed, “the worst president in American history just keeps talking — and talking — and now his words have even outrun his own fantasies. You can win every day in your own imagination.” Well, yeah, Mohsen, but that can cut both ways, now, can’t it? In concluding, Rezaei claimed that “reality is shaped by Iran — by its people, its soldiers, and its missiles.”
Later that day, however, Trump painted a vastly different picture of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s achievements and current capabilities: “They lost one set of leaders. Then they lost another set of leaders. Then they lost half of a third set, and they had a little runoff for who wants to be president and there were no participants. Everyone said, ‘I don’t, I don’t want to be.'”
Trump was being satirical; Masoud Pezeshkian has been president of Iran since July 28, 2024. Pezeshkian, however, is not the head of state; the supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, holds that position, and has not been seen in public even once since he attained the top job. The word is that he was disfigured in the February strike that killed his father and predecessor; others contend that he is actually dead, but Iranian leaders pretend he is alive to give their tottering regime some legitimacy.
In fact, it’s not at all clear who is running things in Tehran, and Trump pointed out that this made trying to achieve a negotiated settlement difficult in the extreme: “And it’s part of our problem,” he said. “I don’t know who the hell to deal with. There’s nobody to deal with. Nobody wants to be president, I’d say ‘Who do I speak to in Iran?’ They’re not nobody around. Knock, knock. Nobody home. But that war is going to be over soon. One way or the other, one way or the other. It’s going to end very soon and probably right after the midterms.”
All right. In the meantime, going into those midterms, Rezaei has given the president the best possible endorsement. Who wouldn’t want a top leader of a bloodthirsty, repressive regime whom the overwhelming majority of its own people hate calling him the “worst” ever to hold his job?This is because Rezaei is, of course, looking at Trump through the prism of what is good for his embattled but ruthless regime. He never would have dreamed of calling Barack Hussein Obama or Old Joe Biden the worst president in American history when they were showering billions upon the Islamic regime in Tehran. He never bestowed that title upon any of the presidents who kicked the can down the road on Iran, either.
The fact that Rezaei has now given Trump this title is the clearest indication we have had in quite awhile that Trump’s stance toward the Islamic Republic is making it feel the pain. Rezaei, of course, likely has never heard the names of Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan, or Andrew Johnson. He would be unlikely, given the international left’s high regard for the Islamic Republic, to give low marks to the likes of Woodrow Wilson and Franklin D. Roosevelt, as does the book Rating America’s Presidents: An America-First Look at Who Is Best, Who Is Overrated, and Who Was An Absolute Disaster. Rezaei is simply venting his frustration at the man who has given the Islamic Republic such a hard time.
Trump promises that this hard time is going to continue. The Iranian people, and the free world, can only hope that the pressure on the Islamic Republic will finally cause it to fall, and to be replaced by a saner and more humane regime. Then Mohsen Rezaei can get a job as a professor of American history at Harvard, Yale, Georgetown, or some other America-hating university.

“We need another victory.”

• All Hands on Deck for the Midterms (J.B. Shurk)

The midterm elections are a month away, and I would like to ask a favor: Please make sure that you vote. Please encourage your friends and family to vote. We need all the help that we can get.

Perhaps you feel that voting is a useless exercise that exists to legitimize bad outcomes — a way of forcing citizens to accept responsibility for things they did not do. “You get the government you vote for,” we often hear, but that’s not exactly true. Unelected bureaucrats and judges from unaccountable agencies and Constitution-subverting courts give us a lot of government that none of us want! “If voting made a difference, it would be illegal,” the old saw goes. There’s probably a layer of truth in that hunk of ore.
But voting can make a difference! We’ve seen what a difference it can make over the last ten years! There’s no way in Hades that the powers that be wanted President Donald J. Trump in office. Bill Kristol and all of the “conservative thought leaders” in his orbit worked to elect Hillary Clinton back in 2016. Duplicitous Mitt Romney delivered one of the most hateful anti-Trump screeds on national television that year. Republican Speaker of the House Paul Ryan advised fellow lawmakers not to say anything positive about Trump heading into the general election.
Economists predicted that a Trump victory would send the country into a depression. Retired generals predicted that Trump would lead the country into WWIII. Political marketing firms and campaign consultants essentially blacklisted anybody who considered working for the Republican nominee. The only places you could find anything positive about his candidacy were rebellious publications such as this one!
Boy, oh boy, when Trump won, you could almost see the Deep State Establishment melting in real time. Do you remember how all the networks waited hours to call the election because none of them could stomach admitting the truth? Hillary Clinton was too busy drinking, crying, screaming, throwing things — whatever — to concede publicly until ten hours after Trump had become president-elect. Trump strolled out to celebrate victory in the early morning hours, and, with a coy little smile on his face, repeated several times, “Elections are a complicated business, folks.” For the next ten weeks, it seemed as if “The World Turned Upside Down” were playing on repeat across cable news.
The day after Trump won, Speaker Ryan was so flabbergasted by the result that he sounded like a talking squirrel hopped up on cocaine and amphetamines during every television interview: Wow! What a victory! I’m totally behind Trump! Republicans in Congress are totally behind Trump! One hundred percent! Anybody have peanuts? I need some extra protein after my P90X workout! (Spoiler alert: Ryan and his congressional RINOs were “behind Trump” only because they intended to repeatedly stab him in the back.)
Hollywood actors — including most of the cast from The West Wing — produced videos encouraging members of the Electoral College to disregard the voters’ will and install Hillary in the White House. Extremely embarrassed lame duck Barack Obama — who had organized a lavish send-off for himself amid the ancient ruins of Athens a fortnight later — blamed Trump’s election on “fake news.” (That’s right! Obama used that term before Trump repurposed it for his own trademark advantage.)
In the background, of course, we were beginning to see the emergence of the Obama-Clinton-Brennan-Comey-Clapper-Rice Russia Collusion Hoax in which Democrats used the CIA and FBI to frame Trump as a Russian spy in an effort to prompt his impeachment and removal from office (or what honest people call an attempted coup d’état) — an egregious crime against the American people for which none of the conspirators has been brought to justice.
Trump won in 2016 because Republican voters showed up! He won despite the fact that Hillary outspent him four-to-one. He won despite the fact that news coverage of his campaign was 100% negative, while Hillary’s coverage was nearly 100% positive. He won despite the fact that every prominent “elite” on both sides of the Atlantic openly laughed at him and spoke of Hillary’s presidency as if it were foreordained. President Trump won in 2016 for one reason: His voters went to the polls in droves.
Fast-forward to 2020, and we all know what happened. The Deep State Establishment stole the election. The election was so obviously stolen that Big Tech social media platforms censored everyone who pointed out all of the unbelievable election irregularities. President Trump won nearly every traditional bellwether county across the country by double-digits and increased his total number of votes by over eleven million. Nobody has ever done that and lost an election, but the corporate news media pushed the Establishment propaganda that perennially unpopular Joe Biden had somehow won more votes than any candidate in American history — including fifteen million more than Obama won in 2012 and four million more than Trump won in 2024!
While Dementia Joe hid in his basement during that campaign, state officials used COVID as a pretext to violate election laws and permit the dumping of mail-in-ballots lacking valid authentication into unsupervised drop boxes in battleground states. Mark Zuckerberg and other tech titans transferred hundreds of millions of dollars into the bank accounts of Democrat political operatives. There were allegations of electoral fraud across the country. Witnesses attested that unlawful ballots — including those lacking dates and signatures — were counted. Nevertheless, state and federal courts conspired with the political and media Establishments to cover up what was almost certainly the biggest electoral theft in American history.
A few months later, Time published a story admitting that “a well-funded cabal of powerful people, ranging across industries and ideologies, working together behind the scenes to influence perceptions, change rules and laws, steer media coverage and control the flow of information” rigged the 2020 election. Of course, the writer of that public confession, Molly Ball, claimed that the conspirators “were not rigging the election; they were fortifying it.”
The plan was to convince Americans that Trump was unpopular, even though he won eleven million more votes in 2020 than when he clobbered Hillary. Using lawfare and information warfare against the American people, the Establishment attempted to destroy Trump and his MAGA supporters by preposterously accusing election integrity protesters of being “insurrectionists” who were somehow trying to overthrow the government without any weapons on January 6, 2021. Fraudulently-installed pretend-President Biden oversaw an FBI and DOJ that worked to imprison MAGA voters for years and Trump for life. Paul Ryan, Nikki Haley, Chris Christie, Mitch McConnell, and other RINOs (including most Republicans in the Senate) tried desperately to convince voters that Trump should be condemned and forgotten. Their efforts failed.
Trump voters came out in force in 2024 and made sure that the election was too big to rig. Even though Ryan and other RINOs told us that Trump appealed only to angry white males, the president did better than any Republican since Eisenhower with almost every minority voting bloc. Trump has expanded the Republican Party more than anyone alive today.
I want President Trump to be in a position to use every hour he has left in office to advance the MAGA agenda. He is destroying globalism. He is bringing industry and manufacturing back home. He has secured the borders and dramatically reduced violent crime. He is putting America on a path to lead the world for centuries. Help him continue on his journey. Remember why we’ve been fighting for more than a decade. Surprise the Establishment — once again! — by coming out in huge numbers to support Trump for the midterms.
The Establishment has one job: to discourage you. I want you to remember how much we’ve already accomplished! We’re so close to saving this country. We need another victory. All hands on deck!

A neverending speech by Putin. Every year at the Valdai Discussion Club.

• Putin Outlines Context of Russian Position Toward Ukraine (CTH)

Once again, you may have seen a lot of banter, interpretation and discussion in western media about Russia speaking of defending Kaliningrad with nuclear weapons if needed. To gain a full understanding of the context, I strongly suggest reading the transcript below. Vladimir Putin addressed the plenary session of the 23rd annual meeting of the Valdai Discussion Club. It is a very lengthy discussion. I am pulling out the key segment and suggest everyone take some quiet time to read.

President Vladimir Putin – […] Let me digress from the main topic for a while. There are people here in this room who hold a very diverse mix of opinions regarding an extremely acute present-day conflict – the Ukraine conflict, and what caused it. I would like to say a few words on this matter. It is a fact that many hundreds or even thousands of experts, your colleagues who will study the materials from this Valdai Club meeting, they have their own opinions on this matter. I am, of course aware that some within the expert community might ask why Russia started the war while talking about peace. I have commented this many times already, but let me say this once again in front of this audience.
Where is the truth? The truth is that we did not want and were not the ones who started to fight. In fact, they started to fight against us. They should have refrained from encouraging aggressive nationalism and Russophobia in Ukraine so as to turn it into a tool for fighting Russia. NATO should not have embarked on an effort to make our historical territories part of its military space in its own interests and should not have planned setting up its bases there.
Radicals in Kiev should not have been pushed to a government coup while the de facto illegal regime should not have been pumped full of all kinds of offensive weapons after that. Plans for setting up concentration camps for the people from Donbass and Crimea should not have been drafted. Unarmed people should not have been rolled over by tanks, shelled with missiles and bombed from the air and burnt alive just for being Russian, in terms of both their ethnic background and their spirit.
The list of these do-nots goes on, but let me stop at that. I am convinced that this was an intentional effort to place Russia in a situation when it was simply forced to defend itself with arms in hand to respond to this obvious act of aggression. They pushed us to this brink knowingly and intentionally. Overall, Russophobia, oppressing and killing Russian people and destroying Russia should not be turned into state ideology while striving to inflict a strategic defeat on Russia. This was the way it was all articulated, right? No one forgot this. At least, we did not forget this.
If we want to live – and who does not? – as I have already said during one of my public appearances, let us live in friendship and work together for finding ways to accomplish this aim. Of course, confidence building is a painstaking and fragile process. Placing it on the right track is very hard, while it can be derailed very easily. The interests never fully coincide even when it comes to the closest partners, let alone countries which are rivals and are locked in an all-out competition or even confrontation against one another.
Sooner or later, the international situation and the international system will settle into some form of stable equilibrium. This is undoubtedly a complex, multifaceted and multilayered process built on mutual compromises, willingness to meet each other halfway, and a level-headed assessment of the situation, including by the West. The former hegemon will unavoidably have to acknowledge the realities of a multipolar world – just look at the trends shaping the global economy – and learn to cooperate with the countries of the Global Majority on the basis of respect for their fundamental interests. Of course, this will take time. We are going to have to live in an extremely unstable and ever changing world. The path to a new system will be full of unexpected twists and turns; unfortunately, often unpleasant and even dangerous ones.
I would like to turn to the history of our country. Russia has travelled a thorny path of profound transformation, and this process is still underway. Thirty-five years ago, we experienced the collapse of the state system, which was a genuine tragedy for tens of millions of people who woke up one morning to find themselves beyond the borders of their own country and whose lives – and the lives of their children – were changed overnight. Both in Russia and in neighbouring countries this led to a fundamental transformation and international affairs get transformed as well.

I would also like to highlight a certain naivety, idealism, or perhaps even complacency on the part of those who stood at the helm of the state during the final years of the Soviet era. Blind trust in Western partners and confidence in “gentlemen’s agreements,” when they thought they could simply take someone at their word and come to terms also played a cruel joke on the Soviet Union.
In retrospect, it becomes clear just how destructive a role this played not only in the fate of the Soviet Union, but also in ensuring long-term global stability. The Soviet leaders wanted the West to like them, while Western leaders sought to reshape the world to suit their needs and to grab their share – preferably a large one – of the Soviet legacy. We can see the result now. T
he Soviet Union collapsed due to a mix of internal imbalances. This is the most important dimension to it. This is the truth, and this is what happened. Specifically, internal imbalances, as well as mistakes made by successive generations of the country’s leadership. Short-sightedness, narrow and unrealistic ideological dogmas instead of pragmatism, incompetence, and the practice of sweeping obvious problems under the carpet gradually exacerbated and undermined the Soviet Union’s domestic and international standing. Ultimately, these factors led to its collapse.
What is happening in the world today, the present-day conflicts and upheavals – all this largely stems from the fact that late 20th-century politicians, both in the East and the West, were unwilling, unprepared or unable to treat the era of major shifts with the required seriousness and depth. This is not a question of shifting responsibility onto the leaders of the past; this is simply how it all happened in reality.
However, even during that period, there were people, both in the East and West, there were other kinds of politicians who developed a keen understanding of these challenges and offered what I believe to be the right ways of resolving them. Today, their assessments can be viewed as visionary.

I’ve had enough of Carney. Too much attention for the little man.

• Carney’s “Buy Canadian” LNG Expansion Will Be Built with Chinese Steel (CTH)

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has recently promoted an expansive LNG pipeline deal to center the domestic infrastructure development around the concept of “Buy Canadian.” However, when questioned about the actual construction of the proposal, Carney now admits the developers will determine what resources will be used – and it will not be Canadian product.The unfortunate reason is not complicated. Canada does not have the industrial capacity to make the heavy components for the LNG expansion pipeline because Canada does not have the ability.

CALGARY — LNG Canada is planning to use Chinese steel in major components of its $33-billion second-phase expansion despite Ottawa’s promises that nationally significant projects would help drive Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Buy Canadian policy.
The joint venture says Canada lacks the specialized fabrication facilities needed to manufacture the massive modules required for its expansion and plans to buy more components from state-owned China Offshore Oil Engineering Co. Ltd. (COOEC), which manufactured modules for the project’s first phase. (read more)
I would remind readers this inability to manufacture industrial goods is exactly what former Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau outlined to President Trump in December 2025 in Mar-a-Lago, when President Trump challenged Trudeau to stop importing Chinese steel and aluminum. Canada’s clean energy policy blocks the country from creating heavy industrial components. WATCH:

All of the political talking points from Mark Carney are built upon a foundation of lies. Their national inability is inherent in the Canadian industrial economy, which is created around a climate change agenda that blocks industrial manufacturing. Eventually, this reality is going to hit the psyche of the Canadian electorate. It will not be easy for them to accept that all of their leadership has been lying to them. However, denial is a very real issue which makes conversation with any Canadian very challenging. “
For the plant construction in Kitimat, the challenge is not a preference for offshore steel, but the specialized fabrication capability required for modules of this scale and complexity,” company spokesperson Paul Hagel told CBC News in an email, adding that “there are no fabrication yards in Canada that can manufacture and deliver the additional modules required for Phase 2.”
Hagel said that only five fabrication yards worldwide have the necessary combination of space, capacity, quality systems and marine access, including COOEC’s yard in China. {source}

The only diesel problem Europe has is that it refuses to buy the cheap and readily available Russian diesel.

• Europe’s Diesel Problem (Toth Istvan)

The Diesel Question: An unexpected global diesel crisis has emerged against the backdrop of armed conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East. This crisis has predictably reached a critical juncture, with President Trump announcing that he is seriously considering banning U.S. diesel exports. Such an embargo would severely impact the economies of Great Britain and France, whose leaders spearheaded opposition to his administration and openly celebrated his temporary setbacks.

Months of Ukrainian strikes against Russian refineries and shipping disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz have removed 1.6 million barrels of diesel per day from the global market. Replacing these losses requires additional refining capacity, but it is unclear where this capacity will come from.
In this context, the U.S. Gulf Coast has become the world’s supplier of last resort. American diesel exports reached a record 1.6 million bpd in August, up from 1 million bpd in February and representing 20 percent of the global diesel trade. However, U.S. refineries are already operating at nearly 97-98 percent capacity. Once storage facilities are full, refining will be curtailed, reducing not only diesel output but also gasoline and jet fuel output.
American Interests First
Even without regard for past grievances with Europeans, the occupant of the Oval Office has compelling domestic reasons to impose a diesel export ban. The U.S. midterm elections on November 3 are approaching quickly. The average price of diesel has hit record highs, prompting Texas to declare a diesel price emergency.
Federal authorities are under pressure to take decisive action to address the crisis. High fuel prices are an obvious vulnerability for the Republican administration, which, unlike EU governments, hasn’t forgotten that one of its primary concerns is the affordability of goods and services. A diesel export ban enjoys public support from Republicans in agricultural states and from candidates in competitive districts.
In light of this, continuing to export fuel at the expense of American citizens, farmers, and truckers — and their interests — in favor of ungrateful Europeans can only be described as shortsighted or irrational. Opponents of Trump in Europe should hardly expect to find such qualities on the list of sins they attribute to the American president.
Economic Context
The U.S. economy itself supports a ban on diesel exports. Such a ban would help lower domestic prices on the East Coast and in the Midwest. It would also allow distillate reserves to be restored by winter. Currently, these reserves are at their lowest levels in over 40 years.
It’s important to consider the reduced costs for farmers, logistics companies, and other industries. These steps will undoubtedly have a positive effect, favorably impacting food inflation and reducing overall inflationary pressure. A ban on diesel exports is the right step at the right time for a leader who cares about his nation and prioritizes its interests above all else. American fuel should primarily serve the needs of Americans. Europeans will simply have to accept that.
A Strong Signal to Europe
With significant volumes of diesel removed from the global market, the U.S. increased its share of EU imports from 17 percent in 2025 to 32 percent. Meanwhile, Indian diesel exports to Europe decreased from 163,000 to 50,000 barrels per day (bpd) over the same period. China and South Korea supply only small amounts to the European market, and Russian diesel is subject to sanctions. Europe simply has no alternative supplier capable of filling the gap left by the U.S.
The problem is further exacerbated by the fact that European reserves are at four-year lows, and seasonal demand for distillates is still rising.Therefore, a ban on American diesel exports will push European prices and the premium on crude oil to new levels. Europe will have to adapt to a new reality and compete with Latin America and West Africa for supplies.
Moreover, diesel accounts for about half of petroleum product consumption in Europe. Rising prices will inevitably accelerate inflation and drive up costs in logistics, agriculture, and construction, complicating the ECB’s policy and significantly increasing the risk of a Eurozone recession against the backdrop of high gas prices.
European economies are not resilient enough to withstand a prolonged ban. In most Western European countries, including Great Britain, reserves amount to only 20-30 days. For many of these countries, a ban on American diesel exports would be even more painful due to reduced domestic refining capacity.
No More Games — Time to Pay the Bill!
Retribution always follows betrayal. Some pay immediately for everything, while others pay in installments, like loan repayments. While the moments of reckoning may be significantly separated by time, the full price must eventually be paid.
Donald Trump has received a golden opportunity to return the favor to his European “friends” for their deliberate efforts to oust politicians aligned with Washington, their demonstrative gestures against his operations in the Strait of Hormuz, and other actions directed against him.
European leaders must now realize that their sabotage and interference with President Trump will have negative and painful consequences. High costs, austerity measures, falling production levels, and cold weather are the best teachers for those who believe they can bite the hand that feeds them.
For those who have publicly boasted about their embarrassing actions against Trump, such as former Council of Europe Deputy Secretary General Bjorn Berge of Norway, the question of imposing personal sanctions has long been overdue. The games are over. It’s time to settle accounts.

He’ll pick his moment well.

• Justice Alito to Retire Next Year? (Matt Margolis)

In June, on the last day of opinion releases for the term, NPR published a story claiming that Justice Samuel Alito was stepping down. The report was false, and it lasted roughly ten minutes before it vanished. Then, in August, Alito put weeks of speculation to rest himself. “Obviously I’m here for another term,” he told The Wall Street Journal.Social media lit up Friday with claims that Justice Alito had announced plans to retire next year, after CBS News released excerpts of a new interview with him.

Those rumors were somewhat overblown. Alito announced nothing of the sort. He did admit that stepping down has crossed his mind. CBS News’ national and legal correspondent Jan Crawford asked him why he chose to stay on the bench this year, despite pressure from Republicans who wanted a replacement confirmed while the GOP runs the Senate.”I thought about it and I will continue,” Alito told CBS News.
Crawford followed up, asking if he had really considered it. “Well, it’s something I think that somebody at my age has to think about every term,” he said. “But I thought that I could still make a valuable contribution, which is why I became a justice and a judge in the first place. So that was basically it.”Crawford then asked whether he would revisit the decision every year. “Yeah, I think I have to,” Alito replied. That’s a long way from a retirement announcement. The full interview will air on Monday.
Speculation about Supreme Court retirements has swirled for months, and it has always centered on two men. Alito is the second-oldest justice on the Court. President George W. Bush appointed him in 2006, and he has been a reliable conservative vote ever since. Clarence Thomas, the oldest justice, joined the Court in 1991 as a George H.W. Bush appointee, and is one of the most influential conservative voices in the Court’s history. Conservatives love them both and don’t want either gone, but given their advanced ages, there was also a desire to give President Donald Trump at least one vacancy he could fill with a younger originalist while Republicans still hold the Senate.
Let’s be honest, here. Nobody on the right wants to relive the Ruth Bader Ginsburg story from the other side. Ginsburg infamously stayed on the Court through Barack Obama’s presidency, despite her age and declining health, then died a few weeks before the 2020 election. Trump quickly nominated Amy Coney Barrett, the Senate confirmed her, and the left was infuriated.
Crawford put that very scenario to Alito, asking why staying doesn’t risk undoing his work the way it did for Ginsburg. “It’s too hard to predict what the political situation will be and what any president might do with respect to a replacement,” Alito said. He’s right that nobody can predict the future, but that’s the whole problem. If the Senate flips, I’d expect Democrats to block any replacement until after the 2028 election. And nobody knows who wins the White House in 2028.
Make no mistake about it, the stakes are enormous. Alito has earned the right to make this call on his own schedule, and he says he’ll make it again every year. Ginsburg made hers, too, and it cost the left a seat for a generation.

“The NATO secretary-general was awarded the Westphalian Peace Prize for his hostile stance toward Russia..”

• ‘Murderers’ Rutte and Merz Booed at Peace Prize Ceremony (RT)

Crowds of protesters jeered at NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, after the US-led military bloc was awarded the Westphalian Peace Prize on Thursday. The prize, awarded by the Economic Society for Westphalia and Lippe, commemorates the 1648 Peace of Westphalia, which ended the Thirty Years’ War and legally enshrined the modern concept of the nation state. Rutte, known among protestors as the “Lying Dutchman,” collected the award in the German city of Munster on Thursday on behalf of the interventionist US-led military bloc.

Speaking at the ceremony, North Rhine-Westphalia Minister-President Hendrik Wust declared that “military strength can prevent war and preserve peace,” and that “NATO has demonstrated for more than 75 years that strength secures peace.” Protesters gathered outside Munster Town Hall disagreed. When the Dutchman, the German, and other dignitaries stepped onto the balcony, below which a blue-blazered band played, they were met with chants of “murderers” and “blood on your hands” from the square below (perhaps the greatest show of anger in the town since the anabaptists in 1534).
The NATO chief and the German chancellor gritted their teeth and smiled and waved through the boos and whistles. Wust’s speech did not mention NATO’s bombing campaigns against Serbia in 1995 and 1999, or its bombing and subsequent breaking up of Libya in 2011. More recently, NATO exercises on Russia’s Kaliningrad border have been interpreted as reckless provocations by the Kremlin, with the Russian Foreign Ministry reminding NATO leadership this week that Kaliningrad is integral Russian territory, which Moscow is prepared to defend with “all its arsenal, including nuclear weapons.”
Less than 24 hours earlier, Rutte declared that NATO’s European members should have attacked Iran on behalf of the US and Israel. “Europe was not able to take out the nuclear capability of Iran. We couldn’t. We didn’t have the capabilities. In ten years, we can and we should…it should be us doing this, not the Americans,” he said at a Euronews summit in Brussels. Merz took the opportunity to swipe at his political rivals too, falsely claiming the AfD – currently Germany’s most popular political party – is “Russian-backed.”
“A peace prize for a military alliance – at first glance, that seems contradictory, but in fact it is entirely logical,” he reasoned. “It protects our freedom, it protects our security, it protects our prosperity, and it serves the cause of peace in Europe.” The organizers of the Westphalian Peace Prize did not always share NATO’s confrontational stance toward Russia. Two years ago, the prize was awarded to French President Emmanuel Macron for “his diplomatic skill in maintaining dialogue with the Russian leadership despite serious upheavals.”

It wouldn’t be about money, would it?

“The EU is not doing enough to assist Kiev in the conflict with Moscow, the Ukrainian leader has claimed ..”

• Zelensky Lashes Out At Ukraine’s Western Backers (RT)

Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky, who is dealing with a major hole in his country’s budget and high-profile corruption scandals in his government, has criticized Kiev’s Western backers for their reluctance to provide him with more money.

the funds originally intended to last to the end of the year and faced a shortfall of €27 billion. The announcement came after the Ukrainian leader’s 40-day PR pressure campaign on Russia, which involved long-range strikes on energy and civilian infrastructure, failed to deliver the desired results and triggered a harsh response by Moscow.
In an interview with the Financial Times published on Friday, Zelensky complained that the acute budget deficit is stopping Ukraine from developing and manufacturing some key weapons. When asked if he believed that his foreign supporters were doing all they could to assist, the Ukrainian leader replied: “Not enough, of course not enough.” The FT noted that the introduction of faster jet-powered drones by Russia in recent weeks had become an additional challenge for Ukraine, which is already experiencing a shortage of US-made Patriot interceptors and other air defenses.
Zelensky acknowledged that a lack of money to purchase engines for interceptor UAVs was one of the hurdles. “We really import a lot of engines. There are some engines of our production, but not enough,” he said. A Russian drone and missile campaign against military-related targets in Ukraine intensified this year in response to terrorist attacks by Kiev, crippling its energy infrastructure and leading to blackouts and fuel shortages. It has also destroyed most of the country’s storage spaces, affecting the supply of food and other goods.
Wheat and other exports have also been reduced significantly by attacks on the port of Odessa and Ukraine-bound vessels in the Black Sea, leaving Zelensky’s government almost entirely dependent on foreign aid. Bloomberg reported on Thursday that the EU turned down Ukraine’s plea to speed up the payouts of its loan. Officials in Brussels expressed belief that doing so would not solve the problem, but only delay it until 2027, the agency said. The bloc suggested that Kiev’s other partners, including Canada and Japan, could provide the funds to cover its pressing needs, it added.
EU bureaucrats were surprised to learn that Ukraine ran out of money so fast, according to Bloomberg. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova warned earlier this year that the bloc’s loan to Kiev would be swiftly plundered by Zelensky and other corrupt officials from his team. On Thursday, Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) reported about a scheme involving the supply of EU-funded handguns to Ukrainian security services at prices inflated threefold. Kiev and it Western backers are “traditionally” plugging the $27-billion hole in Ukraine’s budget “using funds taken from ordinary citizens of European states,” the SVR said.

They’re more than capable of destroying themselves. Really, they have no-one.

• Dear DSA: How to Destroy the 5 Democrats Who Want to Be President (Pinsker)

Dear DSA,

You and I — are we really so different? Why, I think not! We both live on planet earth, and… well, I’m sure we have lots of other stuff in common, too. Enough to build a friendship. So I say this with peace and love: You’ve been on an impressive winning streak — whacking around the Democratic establishment like they’re a flippin’ piñata — but thus far, all your gains have been incremental. A mayor’s seat here or a Senate nominee there. (Yawn.) Sorry, comrade. That won’t lead you to your workers’ paradise — at least, not anytime soon. You’ve got to think bigger. Way bigger.
C’mon, you guys are supposed to be revolutionaries! If you want to change the world, you need to do what the Republicans did and start at the top. The MAGA movement didn’t fiddle around with mayoral races; we had the cojones to target the top prize. So should you. The Democrats, after all, didn’t invite you into their party without fully knowing your beliefs. (You literally publish manifestos!) Yet they welcomed and accepted you anyway, because they needed your votes. And a deal’s a deal.
Because that’s the unspoken agreement: In exchange for DSA votes in the general election, DSA voters get to influence who the Democrats nominate for office. It’s how you got Zohran Mamdani and Abdul El-Sayed on a major party’s ticket. Furthermore, this agreement won’t expire on Election Day 2026. In fact, the opposite is true: The midterms are the calm before the storm. Because in 2028, the DSA will be headhunting Democratic frontrunners.
You have no choice. That’s politics works: You can’t simply build your preferred candidate up; you must also tear the opposition down. Which sounds like a super-fun project! And in the name of friendship, I’d like to help. ‘Cause honestly? You’d benefit from outside assistance. We’re all prisoners of our own perspective. We know what we know — and we guess the rest. And because DSA membership mostly consists of overeducated white people, your messaging falters in Flyover Country: Outside of bright blue cities, college towns, and Muslim strongholds, your win rate nosedives.
There’s no shame in having blind spots. We all have them. It’s why an outsider’s perspective is so valuable. So, without any further ado, here’s your DSA strategy memo on how to destroy the five Democratic presidential frontrunners:
Candidate One: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
Vulnerability: Being an idiot.Most of the country thinks AOC is too radical. You purists at the DSA know she’s actually not radical enough. (We’ve got no time for a corporate Zionist squish such as AOC, amiright?) But in Flyover Country, attacking AOC for being “too moderate” won’t work. That’s not her Achilles’ heel; it’s not her reputational vulnerability. Her weakness is her brain: The public suspects she’s stupid. When she’s quizzed on policy, she comes across like a doofus lightweight: That’s how to destroy her: AOC doesn’t know her ABCs. She’s a dummy — an empty vessel who cosplays as a Marxist in overpriced “Tax the Rich” evening gowns without getting the irony. She’s just not smart enough to be president. Consult the Dan Quayle playbook and attack accordingly.
Candidate Two: Jon Ossoff
Vulnerability: Nastiness, dirt, and deception. Every few months, the Democrats fall in love. (And every few months, they fall out of it.) They’re perpetually on the lookout for the next JFK. Today, it’s Jon Ossoff. According to Kalshi, he’s the new Democratic frontrunner in 2028. He’s handsome. Not even 40. He sounds like Barack Obama, and has very nice hair. (Which ain’t cheap: Ossoff spends more on hair and makeup than any other Senate candidate, male or female.) What makes him appealing is his youth and newness. Scandal does not taint him; dirt and filth do not touch him. Which is why the Democrats are swooning: He’s a fresh face and a blank slate.
Blank enough for the Democrats to project their hopes, wishes, biases, and aspirations. Ossoff will likely capitalize on this with vague, aspirational sloganeering, because the JFK card is a winner. It carried a young Obama to the finish line. Why not Ossoff? And the best way to negate it is by dirtying Ossoff up, muddying his clothes, and deep-sixing his likability. Without his youth and likability, Ossoff has no point-of-difference; there’s nothing special about him. It’s why attacking Natalie Harp was a high-risk move: Nastiness and likability are like oil and water.
They don’t mix. There are already rumblings about Ossoff being two-faced on Israel. The DSA should build on this, branding him as a nasty, dirty, unlikable liar. Turn his biggest branding asset into a negative. (But don’t play the Jew card yet. We’re saving that for later.)
Candidate Three: Kamala Harris
Vulnerability: Electability. As a minority female with ties to the Indian and black communities, Harris has a pitch-perfect resume for today’s Democratic Party. On paper, she’s everything the base is looking for. But in actuality, she’s a disaster. Nobody likes her. She’s too weird for the moderates, too moderate for the libs — and too much of a loser for the base. They still blame her for Trump’s victory. And they’re afraid she’d lose in 2028, because the American people don’t like her. They didn’t vote for her in the 2020 primaries. She was pushed on them in 2024 — and that was a catastrophe. Nobody on the left wants to watch the S.S. Kamala Harris sink for a third time.
Her only asset is her electability. She was the first female minority vice president, and because she’s been on a major ticket in back-to-back presidential elections, there’s a plausibility to her candidacy. On paper, she’s credible. But if you take that away, she’s dead in the water.

Each @SpaceX Star Mind super intelligence spacecraft will have over 250kW of solar power, which is about 20% more than the International Space Station https://t.co/XeSefgo6UY
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 1, 2026

https://twitter.com/MIPAGUY/status/2106112296997052599?s=20

Friedberg says the Starlink network has grown so large it can now act as a radar system to detect stealth aircraft pic.twitter.com/4vajmVsmrg
— Chief Nerd (@TheChiefNerd) October 2, 2026

i seriously doubt people comprehend what this means

*10 million Optimus per year*

that's the equivalent of a whole nation of robots that could eventually work tirelessly, ~24/7, without needing to be trained individually, with the intelligence of a nobel prize winner, that only… https://t.co/ACNmLB2t3w
— vittorio (@IterIntellectus) October 3, 2026

Elon Musk’s ultimate AI vision is a “star mind” powered by the sun.

“We’ve already built the most powerful AI training clusters in the world. And then what we expect to do by the end of next year is about 10 times more than what we’ve done thus far. This will be very important… pic.twitter.com/WtQS13uFxg
— DogeDesigner (@cb_doge) October 3, 2026

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

Debt Rattle September 23 2026

Sep 232026

September 23, 2026 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 7:55 am Finance Tagged with: AI, Athropic, CNN, diesel, OpenAI, programmable money, Putin, socialists, Trump TV 35 Responses »

Paul Klee Still Life 1929

• Russia Strategic Diesel Supplies Full, Excess Production – The Rule of 96 (CTH)

• OpenAI Unleashes Latest Model Minutes After Dario Dumps Magnum Opus (ZH)

• Anthropic “Paces The Frontier” By Unleashing Its Most Powerful Opus Yet (ZH)

• Trump Is Not the White House TV Pool’s Worst Enemy (Tim O’Brien)

• White House Unveils ‘Trump TV’ Amid Legal Battle Over Media Coverage (JTN)

• Will We See Western Capitals Fall? (J.B. Shurk)

• The Bell Tolls For White Ethnicities (Paul Craig Roberts)

• 1 in 3 Autumn Elections–the US one–Is Likely to Tell Us Anything (Paul Craig Roberts)

• The Camp of the Saints Has Arrived in Texas (Paul Craig Roberts)

• Canadian Socialists Are Not Leading the ‘Free World’ (Tim Graham)

• Programmable Money – Catherine Austin Fitts (USAW)

• The Sudden AI Panic and the November Midterms (Victor Davis Hanson)

https://twitter.com/RCJonX/status/2102113487027888387?s=20

JUST IN: Marco Rubio warns Iran is being run by "lunatic clerics" who he says can never have a nuclear weapon.

"Think about it. The thousands and thousands and thousands of their own people they've killed. Imagine if they had a nuclear weapon and the ability to use that."

The… pic.twitter.com/q13Yz3RFQP
— Fox News (@FoxNews) September 22, 2026

https://twitter.com/EricLDaugh/status/2102360320559775825?s=20

I’m still in shock over this post.

Trump openly called Zelensky a dictator and called out the entire Ukraine war as a massive Deep State money laundering operation.

I’ve been saying this for 4 years now, and the MSM called me a Russian asset and traitor.

The world is healing. pic.twitter.com/OJHx32uIDF
— Whiplash437 (@MrWhiplash_) September 21, 2026

Marco Rubio on Ukraine:

Over the last few months, on a number of occasions, American-linked ships have been targeted, probably not deliberately, but targeted nonetheless by Ukraine.

We can’t have that happen. That needs to be addressed. pic.twitter.com/M63I3dGELT
— Clash Report (@clashreport) September 22, 2026

Just the other day, someone was saying diesel at $12. How about these apples? Europeans pay probably twice what they have to for diesel. Thanks to the EU. And they blame Putin.

• Russia Strategic Diesel Supplies Full, Excess Production – The Rule of 96 (CTH)

There is a general rule that applies to geopolitical contexts surrounding 96 hours or four days. The timing is the difference between an event happening Day one, the analysis of the event by nation states communicated to leadership, and the policy shift outcome in Day four. The rule of 96 is consistent and it is worth understanding.

Four days ago, the EU oil disruption from Saudi Arabia’s East/West pipeline event was noticed. In the four days between event day and policy day (#4) the EU have been beating the drumbeat for war against Russia. However, you will notice the shift in tone and policy now that we have reached day four. Analysis has reached policy makers. You might say reality sets in. Europe now recognizes a vulnerability that was not in their policy briefs 96 hours earlier. Things change, and the quiet stuff starts to become visible. Russia has been sending France oil/gas energy products, quietly.
Macron needed the internal stabilization because he’s been up against a wall. On top of all his other issues, Macron could not afford an energy crisis. Simultaneously, despite what we have been told by Western media, the 5,000 strike drones into the Moscow region should again be taken in context. Russia is an analog system in a digital world. Russia is exceptionally resilient and can repair and recover much faster than western analysts ever fathom. Again, apply the ‘rule of 96.’ Russia is now overproducing diesel fuel. Wait, what(?) you might ask. It’s true.
Russian strategic diesel fuel reserves are now full and overproducing 15% beyond storage capacity. So, where is the excess capacity going? To the “stans” in Central Asia, from there it ships to forward destinations. Turkey is a dependent beneficiary. Do you remember the strategic agreement between the USA and Kazakhstan? {Source} Russia increased diesel supplies to Mongolia by 73.4% in August from July to 215,000 metric tons, while shipments to Kyrgyzstan surged 16.4 times to 72,000 tons and deliveries to Tajikistan rose 3.5 times to 56,000 tons. Russia also exported 28,000 tons of diesel to Kazakhstan after making no deliveries there in July.
As the Saudi energy disruption, a problem that travels like boxcar impacts in a train collision, now reaches the EU, the NATO alliance begins to react. Their policy briefs are different than they were four days ago. Saudi Arabia is now producing again on the previously closed East/West pipeline; however, it will take time to reach the EU. A policy window is opened by the disruption. This is the window where President Trump is operating, and it is timed with the UN General Assembly meeting.
On the potash announcement by President Trump and subsequent notes by Belarussian President Aleksandr Lukashenko, remind yourself that potash is not sold by government – it is sold by companies, from one to the other. Lukashenko is an ally of Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin. Lukashenko has one foot in the EU perspective and the other in the Russian perspective. Potash from Belarus can be potash from Belarus. Potash from Belarus can also be potash from Russia. Again, companies are involved and should be considered when government officials make announcements.
There is no shortage of potash from Russia, but there are political constraints from anything surrounding Russia. A company who does business in Belarus and Russia is not uncommon. Belarus may not officially have potash to deliver (Lukashenko), but also potash can be abundant in supplies as inventories by companies who do business with Belarus (John Coale). Who is John Coale? Where was John Coale, U.S. special envoy for Belarus, four days ago?
TALLINN, Estonia (AP) — Belarus’ authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko met with a U.S. envoy on Tuesday to push for the lifting of the remaining U.S. sanctions against his country. Speaking at a meeting with John Coale, the U.S. special envoy for Belarus, Lukashenko said that “we have reached quite a few agreements related to our economic ties.” He urged Washington to help unblock some Belarusian assets he said were “stuck in Citibank.”
[…] Speaking before the meeting with Coale, Lukashenko said that he’s open for discussing “a deal big or small.” Lukashenko also said that he would like to discuss the prospects for lifting more U.S. sanctions, exporting Belarusian fertilizers to the U.S. Who controls the sanctions of the Belarusian assets held in Citibank? Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.
Four days ago, John Coale was in discussions with Lukashenko. The Belarus President wanted something, President Trump wanted something. At the same moment Saudi Arabia was notifying the EU of a force majeure issue with oil/gas contract supplies. Four days ago, Russia had maxed out storage for diesel fuel and was shipping excess capacity to Central Asia, as President Trump was asking Volodymyr Zelenskyy not to target Russian diesel refining capacity.
Things change in four days.
Policies change in four days.
Perspectives change in four days.
One of the strengths of President Trump, primarily a strength that stems from business, is that Trump understands the timeline of action and visible consequence. Trump is working four days (or more) ahead of what we see in the media. It may not make sense at the moment we see it but give it four days and go look at it again.
Live your best life. Pray thankfulness every day to a loving God.
Find your internal peace; then relax and let him work.

Latest models are introduced as being great, but they’re just slow adaptations by the makers.

• OpenAI Unleashes Latest Model Minutes After Dario Dumps Magnum Opus (ZH)

Well, well, well…

Anthropic’s new Opus launch went up around lunchtime in New York, and by early afternoon OpenAI had rolled out GPT-6 Sol and GPT-6 Luna, halving prices yet again.
GPT-6 Sol now costs $2 per million input tokens and $10 per million output, half the $4/$20 promo rate Anthropic matched earlier today. GPT-6 Luna goes for a dime in and 50 cents out, pricing that looks built to fight the open-weight models eating token share. OpenAI says cached input gets a 90% discount, which puts Sol’s cache reads at $0.20, the same rate we call Anthropic’s “real knife” below. GPT-6 Astra stays on top at $10/$50. The upshot: the $4/$20 price point didn’t survive the afternoon, and Opus 5.5 now costs twice as much as OpenAI’s workhorse on input and output.

Higher usage limits and lower cost give you more flexibility and room to iterate. pic.twitter.com/AQJ5IlNsB1
— OpenAI (@OpenAI) September 22, 2026

OpenAI’s charts, naturally, pit Sol against last-gen Claude. On AutomationBench, it touts Sol’s 33.2% at 27 cents a task against Opus 5’s 26.9% at 11 times the cost. Opus 5.5, which Anthropic says scored 40.0% on the same test, isn’t on the chart, which was out of date the moment it posted. OpenAI also slipped in a dig at Anthropic’s safeguards, noting in a footnote that Fable 5.1 fell back to Opus 5 on roughly 40% of tasks (see “The Fine Print” below). Score: Anthropic. Sticker: OpenAI. Anthropic’s rebuttal is that Opus 5.5 needs fewer tokens to finish the job.
GPT-6 Sol had been rumored for days, with leakers pointing to Tuesday at a price of $2.50/$15 that turned out to be too high, and some reports claimed Anthropic hurried Opus 5.5 out the door to beat it. Either way, ten days after both CEOs agreed the industry should “pace the frontier,” the two labs spent Tuesday trampling each other’s headlines.
Pacing, it turns out, is a team sport.

“.. , And Slashing Prices Up To 60%..”

Slow slashing. Makes more money,.

• Anthropic “Paces The Frontier” By Unleashing Its Most Powerful Opus Yet (ZH)

Anthropic on Tuesday unveiled Claude Opus 5.5, just 10 days after CEO Dario Amodei called for “pacing the frontier” of AI development.

The pitch: Fable-class brains at a steep discount. Anthropic says the new model “performs at the level of Claude Fable 5.1 for most tasks” and costs 40% less to run than Opus 5, which launched all of 60 days ago. List-price cuts run from 20% on input and output tokens to 60% on cache reads, the line item Anthropic says accounts for most of the bill in agentic and coding work. For context, Fable 5.1 lists at $10/$50 per million tokens, or 2.5 times the new Opus price.
The launch was Silicon Valley’s worst-kept secret: the $4/$20 pricing and a Tuesday launch date leaked days early, and Polymarket had priced better-than-80% odds of a Sept. 22 release.

Opus 5.5 is our first model since we called for pacing the frontier. As with previous models, it was tested by external evaluators before release, including METR and Frontier Design.

On our most comprehensive alignment test, it achieves the strongest score to date.
— Claude (@claudeai) September 22, 2026

Anthropic says Opus 5.5 leads in agentic coding, computer use and knowledge work, scoring 66.4% on Terminal-Bench 4.0 against 57.9% for OpenAI’s GPT-6 Astra, and 55.8% for Fable 5.1, while generating output more than 30% faster than Opus 5. Sonnet 5.5 and Haiku 5.5 follow within weeks, and subscribers get higher five-hour limits on Pro, Max and Team plans (a 20% bump, per The New Stack) plus a rate-limit reset they can bank for later. On the API, the model is cheaper everywhere: $4 per million input tokens and $20 per million output, $5 for cache writes and $0.20 for cache reads, with a fast mode that runs up to 2.5x quicker for $8/$40.

20%, 40% Or 60%?
What percentage are we actually saving here? All three, depending on the situation. Input and output tokens are 20% cheaper, cache reads are 60% cheaper, and the 40% is Anthropic’s estimate of how much less a typical task costs all-in once Opus 5.5’s leaner token use is factored in. The more of a bill that goes to cache reads, the closer the rate cut gets to the 60% ceiling, which is why agent-heavy users come out furthest ahead: a workload split evenly between cache reads and everything else gets a 40% rate cut before counting any token savings.
Early testers say the efficiency is real, at least on their own workloads: Box said Opus 5.5 got through its evaluations on roughly a third of the tokens Opus 5 needed, and trading firm Optiver said its agentic coding costs fell 40% to 50%.
Anthropic also took direct aim at OpenAI. Its own scorecard has default-effort Opus 5.5 topping Astra’s best FrontierCode result for about a fifth of the per-task cost, drawing even with Astra on Terminal-Bench 4.0 at default effort for roughly 40% of the cost, and clearing Sol by 11 points on CursorBench at about a third of the price.
The Race To The Bottom
From 10,000 feet, Opus 5.5 is the latest shot in a frontier price war that is turning “flagship AI” into a commodity with a falling price tag thanks to super efficient, open-weight models out of China.
Here’s a fun metric: the timeline as measured in dollars per million input/output tokens:
• August 2025: Claude Opus 4.1 lists at $15/$75.
• November 2025: Opus 4.5 resets the tier to $5/$25.
• July 9, 2026: OpenAI’s GPT-5.6 Sol debuts at $5/$30.
• July 24: Opus 5 holds at $5/$25, half the price of Fable 5.
• Aug. 21: OpenAI knocks Sol down to a “promotional” $4/$20 (heh), guaranteed through at least Nov. 21, undercutting Opus 5 on both input and output.
• Sept. 1-3: Fable 5.1 and GPT-6 Astra anchor the top end at $10/$50.
• Sept. 22: Opus 5.5 matches Sol’s promo price to the penny, and the real knife is in the cache line: $0.20, or half of Sol’s $0.40 cached-input rate.
• That’s a 73% cut in Opus-tier list prices in just over a year.

OpenAI isn’t the only one leaning on prices. Open-weight models (think DeepSeek, Moonshot AI and Z.ai) carried 56% of the token traffic on Vercel’s AI Gateway in August, versus 7% in December, yet accounted for only 14% of estimated spend. By our math, the average closed-model token cost nearly eight times an open-weight one. Average per-token pricing on the gateway dropped 23.2% in August, its third monthly decline in a row. Over at OpenRouter, open-weight models, mostly Chinese, made up 60% of US token usage in August.
So how does Anthropic still capture 64% of the money spent through Vercel’s gateway? By undercutting itself before anyone else can. Fable 5’s slice of gateway spend shrank from 13.2% in July to 4.9% in August while the half-price Opus 5 jumped to 22.5%, keeping the revenue in-house even as customers traded down. Opus 5.5 runs the same play one rung lower: Fable 5.1-level work at 40% of Fable 5.1’s sticker.
It’s a Jevons bet: cut the unit price, sell vastly more units. So far it’s paying. Anthropic’s annualized revenue run rate topped $65 billion at the end of July, per Bloomberg, up from $9 billion at the end of 2025, and investors reportedly expect it to finish the year between $100 billion and $120 billion. With a confidential draft S-1 at the SEC since June 1, the question for would-be IPO buyers is how long volume can outrun deflation once every lab is running the same play.
About That “Pacing”…
On Sept. 12, Amodei published “We Must Pace the Frontier,” calling on the handful of frontier labs to ease off the capabilities accelerator together. Sam Altman publicly signed on, and Elon Musk chimed in that Amodei had it right. The world shook in fear, having collective nightmares of Skynet coming online at the hands of cold, calculating frontier models!
Dario Amodei, Sept. 12: “We must slow the pace at which we improve the capabilities of AI models.”
But then…
Anthropic, Sept. 22:

At its default effort setting, Opus 5.5 delivers frontier results for a fraction of the cost per task, often beating other models running at their highest settings.

It also generates output more than 30% faster than Opus 5. pic.twitter.com/GBvrvbsxNL
— Claude (@claudeai) September 22, 2026

‘Pacing’ indeed.
The Fine Print (shit to know)
Your agent may be talking to a different model. Because Opus 5.5 rivals Anthropic’s top-end Mythos 5.1 in biology and cybersecurity, it ships with Fable 5.1-style safeguards: routine bug-fixing stays put, but most cybersecurity work gets handed to the older Opus 4.8. The New Stack warns that individual calls inside an agent workflow could quietly land on older, less capable models.
It knows when it’s being watched. Anthropic admits Opus 5.5 frequently seems to suspect it’s being tested, which muddies any read on how it behaves in the wild.
The moat gets a lock. Thinking can no longer be switched off, and a new anti-distillation safeguard blocks API customers from doctoring earlier context to fish out its reasoning. That’s Anthropic’s answer to fake-account extraction campaigns it describes as a national-security risk.
Not a clean sweep. Astra still wins AutomationBench (41.4% vs. 40.0%) and Terminal-Bench-Science (64.6% vs. 58.7%). Anthropic itself concedes benchmark margins have become a shakier guide, saying that in its own use Opus 5.5’s edge over Fable 5.1 is smaller than the numbers imply.
Your Move, Sam
Sol’s discounted rate is only locked in through at least Nov. 21, and Anthropic just matched it with a model it says beats Sol by double digits on CursorBench. OpenAI can cut again, make the promo permanent, or let Sol snap back to $5/$30 against a cheaper rival. Pick your poison.

“It’s Obsolescence and Apathy.”

Just look at CNN’s numbers. Nobody warches it.

“Americans no longer need those major networks to get their information. They’ve cut the cord already. The audience that waits for Kaitlan Collins to tell them what’s going on in Washington is old enough to be Collins’ grandparents.”

• Trump Is Not the White House TV Pool’s Worst Enemy (Tim O’Brien)

For as much as I loved seeing the Trump administration boot CNN, MS NOW, and Politico to the curb this past week, removing the news orgs from their embedded digs at the White House, the one thing that irked me and still bothers me is how uncharacteristic this is for Trump in his second term. Up until now, the Trump administration has been so disciplined and focused on what it wanted to achieve in a governance sense that the only complaints the media could have, and did have, were that he was keeping his campaign promises. Of course, that’s not how they framed it.

Yes, I know, by putting some of the worst legacy media organizations in their place, that’s a promise kept, too. But here’s the strategic problem this creates for the Republicans who want to win majorities in the Senate and House in November. This Trump move will absolutely suck the oxygen out of the current news cycle and just about every news cycle going into the middle of October, and maybe longer.
When that happens, it makes it really hard to keep the spotlight on Trump’s accomplishments on the border, on Democrats’ corruption, on the valid reason we’re at war with Iran, on all the social issues that kill the Democrats at the polls, and on what Trump is doing to lower grocery and gas prices, making life more affordable.
Instead, the left gets to do something it loves doing, playing the victim and righteously crying about it non-stop. When they pull old man Barack out of one of his mansions for a video hit or a speech, you know they smell blood. My colleague Matt Margolis did a deep dive on this, but there is more to these two clips than Obama playing the role of the Democrats’ only real heavy hitter still standing.

Obama, Yesterday: "I'm trying to think what would've happened if I had said, Fox News, you're out of here. It's unimaginable!"

Obama Admin 2009: Attempts to boot Fox News from pool coverage.

Obama: "If media (Fox News) is operating basically as a talk radio format, then that's… pic.twitter.com/P85h29gdWw
— Western Lensman (@WesternLensman) September 20, 2026

In a rare instance of solidarity, Fox News learned that ABCNBCCBSCNN were its friends way back when. Though I doubt those networks would do the same thing for Fox News today. So now we know that Obama wanted to do the thing Trump actually did. What else is new? One former prez is all talk, the other current prez is all action. But none of this is getting us anywhere. To do that, we need to start with where things stand.
In retaliation for the Trump administration’s revoking of press access to those three news organizations mentioned at the top, on Monday, all of the major TV networks, which include ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox News, have come to an agreement that they will boycott White House TV pool coverage. This means that Americans will continue to get their daily coverage of the White House totally uninterrupted. Wait, what?
That’s right. Americans will continue to stay abreast of everything the White House and the Trump administration are doing without interruption. The most transparent White House ever will continue to be just as transparent. But if there is no TV pool coverage, how can that be? It’s pretty simple, actually, and you likely already know why. No one under the age of 55 watches those networks any longer. They don’t have the clout they once had. Hey Toto, I have a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore, and it’s not 2010.
The cold truth is that Americans no longer need those major networks to get their information. They’ve cut the cord already. The audience that waits for Kaitlan Collins to tell them what’s going on in Washington is old enough to be Collins’ grandparents. So for as much noise as the media and the Democrats will make over this, and how it’s “the end of democracy as we know it,” the vast majority of the people across the country don’t know it happened, because they don’t watch. And if they do find out Trump did what he did, they won’t even care.
Trump is not the legacy media’s enemy. Apathy is. This is not to say people don’t want video or audio. Not only do they, but really, that’s how they like to get their information. But they do that already through feeds. Any reporter in the White House press briefing room could set up a camera, and plug into the audio system on site and meet the needs of the viewing public. Sure, it may not be network quality, but one look at TikTok and you’ll see, “network quality” is no longer a prerequisite.
This will put some legacy media people in a bind. Any one of them could capture future briefings on video, but if they do, they’ll be shunned. They will be seen in the media world the way scabs are seen in union halls. That will leave it to the White House to set up a video feed and make it accessible to all news outlets and the public at the same time. No doubt that if that happens, you’ll see more organizations, like perhaps C-SPAN, possibly join the boycott. But what would that accomplish? The news media crying about free speech and freedom of the press would be self-censoring as a means to get even.
In the end, the leftist media needs Trump more than he needs it. All of the organizations involved know they need White House access to survive, to generate ratings, to attract advertisers and ad revenues, and to remain relevant. Trump doesn’t need them, which is his point. If all they’re going to do is serve as propagandists for his enemies, what’s really in it for him, or for “our sacred democracy?”
Reinforcing this point is none other than the unlikely dynamic duo of the president himself alongside the left’s current boy wonder, Gotham City’s Democrat mayor Zohran Mamdani, who appeared together at the mayor’s Gracie Mansion for a Monday presser.

NYC Mayor Mamdani said he told President Trump all members of the press were welcome to his news conference after their closely watched meeting Monday.

Trump said the press would "never boycott me" after major TV outlets halted White House pool coverage https://t.co/SJBRnzOjX5 pic.twitter.com/RMfX74d1qY
— Bloomberg (@business) September 21, 2026

Trump is a master at this. He still gets the coverage. He still takes all questions without the slightest concern. And in this case, he uses Mamdani as an unwitting prop to make his case, and all Mamdani can do is play along. It’s fitting that Mamdani is a millennial, just reinforcing that if there is one thing in the media landscape that is obsolete, it’s the White House TV pool.
What all of this amounts to is a reckoning the legacy media is about to have, and not with Trump, but with the reality that things have changed. No one needs them anymore, and no one cares. That’s a tough pill to swallow. It’s so much easier to live in denial and blame Trump, which is what they are doing.
One final thing on this, which is the thing some will miss, but once you see it, you can’t unsee it. You know that at some point CNN, MS NOW and Politico will have reporters back in the briefing room. But something has to happen between now and then, and it’s likely the thing Trump really excels at — a negotiation.

If you notice, when Trump wants to negotiate with anyone — a country, a tyrant, or a news network — he goes big to get their attention. Something like booting them from the White House grounds. That’s his opening volley to launch a negotiation that immediately puts his opponent in a position of weakness. The minute formal negotiations start, it’s already understood that the news organizations in this case will have to compromise on some things and meet at least some of Trump’s demands. In the end, he comes out ahead. I think that’s what he’s after.
Let’s hope he’s right and that it all works out before it can have a material impact on the midterms.

“The White House described the new endeavor as an “essentials station,” which will feature all the administration’s top moments in a livestream on the White House’s YouTube page.”

• White House Unveils ‘Trump TV’ Amid Legal Battle Over Media Coverage (JTN)

The White House announced Monday the creation of a new project, dubbed “TRUMP TV,” which comes amid a legal battle regarding media coverage of President Donald Trump and his presidential administration. The White House described the new endeavor as an “essentials station,” which will feature all the administration’s top moments in a livestream on the White House’s YouTube page.

“TRUMP TV IS STREAMING NOW. 24/7, updated in real time, with top past moments, announcements, and the latest and greatest from the administration all in one place,” the White House posted on X. “Not every big moment has made it on your TV, now it can.”
The move comes after President Donald Trump last week, chose to ban Politico, MSNOW, and CNN from the White House, citing what he called their long history of posting “fake news” about him. Those outlets have since sued the administration and other media companies have halted White House pool coverage in solidarity with them.
Trump condemned the news coverage of him as “biased news,” highlighting that some of his successes have been ignored by the mainstream outlets. “It’s just biased news,” Trump said in a news conference in New York City on Monday. “I think that these outlets have an obligation to be fair, and if they’re fake news, I really think I have an obligation not to allow them.”

“Governments that cause more problems than they fix do not deserve to survive.”

• Will We See Western Capitals Fall? (J.B. Shurk)

Consider these recent news headlines: (1) “NYC Turns Back to Gas Buses After Finding Out the Hard Way That the Electric Versions Have Big Problems,” (2) “As a Former Head of MI6 it’s Clear That Britain’s Climate Policy is Leaving Us Dangerously Exposed to Our Enemies,” and (3) “Spain: 74% of sex-crime suspects are foreigners in Basque Country.”

They come from three different Western nations and involve three dissimilar subjects — public transportation, national security, and violent crime — yet each news story exposes the real-world consequences of government failure:
(1) In order to pursue “Net Zero” carbon goals, New York dumped a ton of money into electric buses that are too expensive and entirely unreliable for the city’s needs.
(2) Britain’s former top spy is finally ready to admit publicly that his country’s delusional obsession with “climate change” has devastated the United Kingdom’s capacity for industrial and energy self-sufficiency, rendering the former superpower dependent on foreign adversaries for future survival.
(3) Even though foreigners make up only 10% of the Basque region’s population, they account for 74% of rape arrests, 73% of homicide arrests, 95% of drunk-driving arrests, 80% of theft arrests, and 78% of violent robberies.

What’s so striking about these news stories is their “well, duh!” factor. An ordinary, rational person would have no problem predicting the failures of a citywide electric bus fleet, the offshoring of a nation’s critical industries, or open border policies that invite foreign invasion. Yet mayors, governors, and prime ministers have pursued these catastrophic programs anyway, while heads of espionage agencies and millions of government bureaucrats either support their harmful decisions or shamefully stay silent.
The middle article links to the transcript of a speech that Sir Richard Dearlove delivered to the Global Warming Policy Foundation in London last week. It was a good speech concerning an important subject, and Dearlove deserves some credit for articulating a point of view that goes against the powerful flow of “politically correct” Western orthodoxy. But he gave this speech from the comfortable perch of quasi-retirement with little to lose aside from a few honorary board positions. Where was his voice when he was in a position to actually do something about the U.K.’s suicidal energy policies?
In his speech, Dearlove explained how his Cold War experiences taught him “that the country’s war-fighting potential resided in its industry, that our most vulnerable link was the fuel chain…and that our industrial base could be rebuilt and repaired.” Now, however, there is “very little industry left to protect, and we cannot rebuild non-existent industries which lie in foreign jurisdictions beyond our reach.” Dearlove concluded that the U.K. must “rebuild the strategic industries we require to ensure that we can defend our island fortress and be a reliable ally to friendly democracies around the world.”
These are absolutely true statements. Blue-collar workers throughout the West have been making these arguments for fifty years. Had an ordinary Brit with few credentials been in charge of MI6, that person would have been screaming profanities and ringing alarm bells long before the U.K. closed its last coal mines and steel factories. Shouldn’t that embarrass Britain’s “ruling elites”? And if it doesn’t, shouldn’t “ruling elites” be considered a danger to the public’s prosperity and security?
Long-overdue, post-career wake-up calls bring to my mind President Eisenhower’s 1961 Farewell Address during which he warned Americans against the growing dangers from an emerging “military-industrial complex.” Although his turn of phrase continues to be used sixty-five years later, it would have been nice if the former Supreme Allied Commander and five-star general had used his two terms as president of the United States to tackle that problem before it got completely out of hand.
Eisenhower certainly had the expertise to see its destructive potential more clearly than most, but he chose to outline the threat on his way out the door and leave it for others to solve. Some historians believe that parts of the MIC had a hand in President Kennedy’s assassination, and if that is true, then Eisenhower’s failure to promptly act had extraordinarily far-reaching consequences that included the death of his successor.
The generations of Americans who were born after Eisenhower’s tenure have given him much credit for recognizing that the symbiotic relationship between Big Government and Big Business was evolving into an unconstitutional and anti-American oligarchy that we know today as the “permanent bureaucracy,” the “ruling class,” or the “Deep State.” P
erhaps if the American general-turned-president had neutralized the Deep State in the first decade after WWII, we would not have endured some of the worst chapters in recent American history, including the Vietnam War, the debasement of the U.S. dollar, the FBI’s soft coup d’état against President Nixon, fifty years of “global warming” con games, sixty years of mass immigration from third-world nations, NAFTA’s industry-killing bloodbath, China’s entry into the WTO, the 9/11 Islamic terror attacks, the Global War on Terrorism, Obamacare’s government takeover of medicine, the Russia Collusion Hoax, the COVID information war against the Bill of Rights, numerous rigged elections decided by unlawful voters and mail-in-ballot fraud, multiple assassination attempts on President Trump, the assassination of Charlie Kirk, leftist-inspired violence against conservatives, and the Democrats’ manufactured AI fearmongering going on today.
Diagnosing problems without taking concrete steps to solve those problems produces a perverse phenomenon: The worse unsolved problems become, the more prescient the person warning about them appears. Toward the end of Dearlove’s speech, Britain’s former top spy argued that the government of which he was an integral part had monumentally failed: “The first responsibility of government is the safety of the nation. However, successive governments have forgotten this, and Britain is now caught in an energy trap of its own making.
As with rebuilding our armed forces, it will take a significant national effort to extract us and bring us back to a position of safety. The task is urgent.” This is certainly true. The question is why so many successive governments in the U.K. and across the West have betrayed their own citizens and made their nations much less safe. Because normal citizens would never have offshored their own industrial and manufacturing jobs to adversarial nations such as communist China.
Normal citizens would not have conspired with transnational human trafficking gangs to import tens of millions of unassimilable illegal aliens. Normal citizens would not have imposed “green energy” regulations that make it harder for farmers to grow food and for businesses to pay their bills. Normal citizens would not mandate that unreliable electric vehicles replace internal combustion engines while power grids crash due to insufficient supplies of wind and solar energies. These kinds of policies are so obviously foolish and suicidal that only our credentialed “ruling class” could justify them.
Does that tell us that our bureaucrats are too stupid to keep our nations safe, as Dearlove rightly recognizes as the first responsibility of government? Or are these self-destructive national policies proof that Western bureaucracies are waging war against Western citizens? Certainly Western governments are guilty of failing their peoples. The only question remaining is whether their failures stem from a combination of incompetence and hubris or treason and malice.
As Western citizens ponder that question, they are quickly taking matters into their own hands. Spaniards in Ceuta are destroying government shelters built for foreign invaders. A British village has voted to secede from the U.K. after the government announced plans to house an army of foreign immigrants next door. The price of government betrayal might soon be the fall of a Western capital.
Recognizing problems is not good enough. Governments that cause more problems than they fix do not deserve to survive.

Paul Craig Roberts been busy.

• The Bell Tolls For White Ethnicities (Paul Craig Roberts)

The Baltimore Rock Opera Society was founded in 2007 by several people who, judging by their names are white gentiles. There is nothing “white supremacy” or racist about the group. As it includes live rock theater, it obviously cannot exclude blacks. Despite its innocence, the 501c3 organization has gotten into racist difficulties.

The group’s white executive editor appeared with hair in cornrows in a video circulated on social media. This acceptance of black hair styles by a white person was quickly misinterpreted by white liberals and their indoctrinated blacks as inappropriate white cultural imperialism. The group’s executive director was guilty of “black representation by a white person.”The Baltimore Rock Opera Society collapsed in guilt. In their own words:
“We have received many heartfelt and concerned messages from members of our community regarding a video circulated on social media showing our new Executive Director, who is white, wearing cornrows at a recent BROS public event. We share the weight of the concerns and take this matter seriously, and the board has been in continuous conversation about them since Monday morning. . . . We are revising our Anti-Discrimination Policy to more clearly address cultural representation and dress, enforcing anti-racism leadership training, and are forming a working group for Culture, Community Voice, and Racial Equality (working title).”

This Baltimore rock theatre group issued a public apology after people complained that their White Executive Director wore cornrows.

They are now implementing "anti-racism" training to address "cultural representation" and "racial equality."

Wokeness destroys everything. pic.twitter.com/bzV0CRpGwL
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) September 17, 2026

This is straight out of The Camp of the Saints.
Dear dumbshit White American, you have no comprehension of the future that is being prepared for you. You are too insouciant, unconcerned, and unaware that your time on earth is running out. Indeed, you have proven yourselves too stupid to survive. Here before your very eyes, unnoticed, is a liberal white group disintegrating in guilt because its executive director has committed the racial crime against blacks of wearing a black hair style. Is there any retribution whites wallowing in such vast quantities of liberal guilt will not accept?
The executive director’s adoption of a black hair style was an act of submission. Yet the act of submission was successfully mischaracterized as an act of white appropriation of black culture, a charge under which the group collapsed in abject submission. Read The Camp of the Saints. You will see that submissions by white ethnicities occur again and again, but instead of saving them accelerates their extermination.
And neither will your cowardice and indoctrination save you.

He’s not great with numbers. Putin is solid.

• 1 in 3 Autumn Elections–the US one–Is Likely to Tell Us Anything (Paul Craig Roberts)

One of the three autumn elections that I thought might give us an indication of future events has been held. On the surface, it doesn’t look as if Putin’s 4.5 year old war against the proxy of Russia’s enemy–Ukraine– instead of against the enemy itself–the US and Europe–had any effect on United Russia, the party that supports Putin. United Russia won the parliamentary election with 58% of the vote. The support might not be what it seems. Gilbert Doctorow points out that only a little more than half of registered voters–56.6%–bothered to vote. In other words, Putin’s active support is 32%.

The second largest party is the Russian Communist Party with 14% of the vote. This party is the old people’s party, the party of the Russians who remember the respect with which Washington and Europe showed to the Soviet Union. When Washington put nuclear missiles on Turkey’s border with Russia, Khrushchev put Russian nuclear missiles in Cuba. He removed them in exchange for Washington removing the US missiles from Turkey.
Younger Russians have no experience or memory of the clout that the Soviet Union wielded. A 35-year old Russian today never lived under the Soviet Union. If he remembers anything, it is the Yeltsin Russian regime, and Putin’s government has been a great improvement over those years.
Leading up to the Russian election Putin intensified Russia’s attack on Ukraine’s ability to continue to wage war. Was this just to guarantee the vote, or has Putin finally abandoned his defeatist policy? We will see. On October 27 Israel’s Knesset, the legislative body, will be elected. As Iran, like Russia, is fighting the proxy–the US–of its enemy–Israel–Israel is suffering no consequences from the conflict for which it is responsible.
For decades the Zionist agenda of Greater Israel has not been at the expense of the Israeli people. The cost of Israel’s wars has been paid in blood and money by Israel’s puppet government in Washington. Washington destroyed Iraq, Libya, and Syria under the guise of “the war on terror” for Greater Israel. Currently, US President Trump is risking his own presidency fighting Iran for Israel.
The question I raised was whether Iran’s capability to withstand a joint Israeli American attack enough to wake up the Israeli population that the aggressive policy of the Zionists was not in Israel’s interest, and, if so, possibly have the wits to put in office a ruling coalition less committed to Israeli hegemony in the Middle East.
I don’t think that Israelis have suffered enough to understand the possible consequences of the Zionist agenda. Should Trump and the Republicans have to break with their subservience to Israel, the cost would come home to the Israelis. But at the present time, the challenging coalition against Netanyahu seems to be more extreme than Netanyahu’s Zionist coalition.
America’s midterm congressional elections are November 3, a few days after the Israeli election. Considering the strong public opposition to Trump’s war for Israel against Iran and the rising energy prices and inflation Trump’s war for Israel is causing, and considering the absence of MAGA caps, it looks like a win for Democrats.
But perhaps not. The Democrats have become increasingly radicalized and have become a party for immigrant-invaders and sexual perverts, a party that weaponized law in order to defeat Trump after he had won the 2016 election. Traditional ethnic Americans could simply not vote. This would give the victory to the Woke Democrats, and Trump’s presidency and ability to serve the Zionist Agenda would be over half way through his term.
The question is: How much are we willing to pay in terms of Democrat Woke persecution and discrimination against white ethnic Americans in order to escape being a Zionist puppet state? Yes, these are poor choices for insouciant people who believe themselves to be “Proud Americans.”
The US November 3 election might be the only one that gives us any information of what is to come.

The Camp of the Saints is his favorite book.

• The Camp of the Saints Has Arrived in Texas (Paul Craig Roberts)

White Texas Republicans–US Senator John Cornyn, Texas state Rep. Lacey Hull, Texas state Rep. Jared Patterson, Texas state Rep. Jeff Leach, and a number of other Republicans regard immigrant-invaders from the Muslim Middle East and from India as Texans. Indian Pooja Sethi, standing for the Texas legislature says: “I am what Texas looks like, “and if you don’t like it, you can leave.”

Bo French blew the whistle on the disappearance of American Texas, and the Republicans called him a racist. In other words, if you do not accept colonization by immigrant-invaders, you are a racist. Texas and Florida will not for long be red states. College and K-12 school enrollments make the point. White enrollment in the University of Texas, Dallas, has fallen from 43% in 2012 to 19% in 2025. Asian enrollment has risen from 25% to 42%. Texas taxpayers are paying to educate immigrant-invaders.
The category Asian seems to consist largely of displaced Muslims from Washington’s 21st century wars in the Middle East, wars for Greater Israel. In Dallas’ Coppell school district, white enrollment K-12 has dropped from 65% in 2006 to 22% in 2026. Asian enrollment has risen from 18% to 57%. In 2023 the Indian share of the H-1B work visas was 78%.
Jared Taylor reports in the Unz Review that “the last time a Democrat won the presidential election with a majority of the white vote was 62 years ago: Lyndon Johnson. Since then, every single Democrat President was elected with a huge majority of the non-white vote, and a minority of whites.”
President Trump, by serving Israel instead of Americans, has possibly elected a Democrat Congress on November 3. On the other hand, the left-wing Democrats who won the primary elections could be too extreme for disappointed MAGAs to sit out the election. Nevertheless, America’s existence as a white nation is close to an end. A Tower of Babel is emerging around us.

“Try not to laugh at this headline from Rolling Stone Canada: “How Mark Carney Became Leader of the Free World by Standing Up to Trump.”

• Canadian Socialists Are Not Leading the ‘Free World’ (Tim Graham)

Loathing of President Donald Trump and his trash-talking trade wars has launched Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney into the socialist stratosphere. Try not to laugh at this headline from Rolling Stone Canada: “How Mark Carney Became Leader of the Free World by Standing Up to Trump.”

This is the hot anti-Trump take: Socialists can run the “Free World” while they impose socialism globally. same spirit took flight when European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen invited Canada to become the European Union’s first associate member in a speech in France. She declared that they wanted to bring the bilateral relationship “to the highest level possible.”
The socialists at National “Public” Radio were thrilled. Paris-based reporter Eleanor Beardsley characterized this as an anti-bullying binge: “Europe and Canada have felt threatened by the U.S. under the second Trump administration, from the tariffs to the threats of leaving NATO and taking Greenland. Both the EU and Canada are feeling bullied by their long-term ally.” NPR ran several quotes from Carney, but this was the richest: “We do not pursue zero-sum deals. Our commitment to the rule of law and our unyielding defense of human dignity, individual freedom, and democracies share the same deep roots, the same unwavering dedication.”
Carney’s Liberal Party predecessor, Justin Trudeau, aggressively pushed against individual freedom in 2022 in punitive actions against the Freedom Convoy, a nationwide trucker protest of Canada’s COVID-19 vaccine mandates. That authoritarian government seized the bank accounts of anti-mandate protesters with no legal process. Trudeau spat out that the protesters were a “fringe minority” with “unacceptable views.” Does that sound like the “Free World” in action?
But leftist media outlets in Canada and America fervently lined up with Trudeau’s tactics. CNN hated the Canadian protests so much that I found the term “so-called Freedom Convoy” used in 62 different hours of CNN coverage. They would choke on writing “so-called Black Lives Matter.” The EU folks also touted how they are the ones who love “democracy” (unlike Trump). But that’s not true. They don’t show an “unwavering dedication” to engaging in democratic debate. They love censoring their opponents.
On X, people translated a recent speech from German Chancellor Friedrich Merz: “Please don’t come to me with free speech … That is at most a libertarian political understanding from parts of the USA that I personally do not share. A liberal society must still be able to protect its citizens from false information, from personal degradations, from discrimination.” German police conducted a criminal investigation of a man who mocked Merz as “Pinocchio” on a Facebook page. So much for the “Free World.”
Then there’s Carney touting his “unyielding defense of human dignity.” Carney and his party have also pushed “medical assistance in dying” to keep their health care costs down. In April, Canada officially passed 100,000 “provisions” of medical assistance in dying since it was made legal in 2016. Canada is planning on broadening assisted suicide to people with mental illness in 2027. The Left considers it “dignified” to not only allow euthanasia, but even push it on people with diseases and disabilities. When it boasts about “access to health care,” it can mean access to suicide.
Nevertheless, the socialists will come together and tout their shared values, with one telling NPR that “democracies are under attack, the geopolitical order is in ruins.” They always assume that it’s only the conservatives that are ruining things with their “my way or the highway” mentality. The Left never “bullies” its opponents. Its refusal to bend against Trump is glorious, not ruinous. It’s easier to believe that when you live inside an airless bubble of shared socialist ideology.

Go cash, before it’s no longer available.

• Programmable Money – Catherine Austin Fitts (USAW)

Catherine Austin Fitts (CAF), Publisher of “The Solari Report,” is still worried about a US economy “floating on non-sustainable games” that she talked about in June. The US debt just tipped over $40 trillion, and that is just the “official” US debt. There are tens of trillions of off-book dollar debt, too, and let’s not forget the more than $353 trillion in global debt that will never be paid back. In order to get through this mess, the global Deep State wants and needs a huge amount of control over the people.

We have burned up the dollar gold standard, the Petrodollar and what is coming is far more invasive with digital currency. CAF just did a deep dive on the coming rollout of “Programmable Money” at Solari.com. CAF warns, “Remember Covid? They said everybody is locked down; you can’t leave your home. If there is an automatic third lock (a digital third party between buyer and seller) and it goes operational, suddenly your money won’t work if you leave your home. Your electric car may not work if you try to leave home.
With your credit card, and you go to buy gasoline, and you are supposed to be locked down . . .you won’t be able to buy gas at a gas station. . .. If the government mandates a pharmaceutical, they can turn off your money until or unless you take it. . .. When I first started researching lab grown meat, I thought how can they get anybody to buy this? Well, with a three-lock system, they can say the only meat you can get is lab grown meat. Your money won’t work unless you are buying lab grown meat. You won’t be able to buy real meat with your money. So, suddenly, it’s not money. It’s s rule system. It’s not currency. There is no liquidity to it. You are basically in a slavery system. . ..”
When is this going to happen? CAF says it’s being rolled out now. What do you think all these massive data centers are for? CAF explains, “This is going to be a very messy period in history. There is no doubt about it, and they want huge government bailouts. If you look at the investment into AI (Artificial Intelligence), the goal is not to make manufacturing more productive, or businesses more productive or people more productive. The goal of the model is control.
The economics can only be justified by the plunder. It is 2030, and you have no assets and you are happy. It’s 2030, and we took everything and you are mind controlled. Those are the economics that justify this infrastructure. Nobody wants to admit that. They want to pretend that this is going to make us more productive. It’s got nothing to do with that. It has to do with control. . .. Programmable Money is the end of freedom.”
CAF says this is the so-called “Beast System” talked about in the Bible. It basically says, “No man can buy or sell without the mark of the beast or the number of his name.” CAF says that does not mean you cannot hoard or barter. CAF tells people to do business in cash every time you can, and be prepared by stocking up on everything, especially food and water. CAF also says, “We are in a very long-term bull market for gold (and silver).” CAF warns to be prepared to hold your metal because the price can take wild swings both up and down. Again, long term, there is a bull market for gold and silver.
There is much more in the 47-minute interview.

It’s fcuking long. It’s also fcuking good.

Alright, I’ll put it at the end. Will that work?

• The Sudden AI Panic and the November Midterms (Victor Davis Hanson)

We’re about 40 days, close to 40 days, out of the midterm, and all of a sudden there’s been a melodramatic announcement that artificial intelligence could destroy the human race. I think everybody’s always accepted that remote possibility, and it’s been very popular in popular culture, such as “The Terminator” series. But why did all of a sudden we hear about it now?

And the answer is Jason Coxon, a minor figure that had worked in major AI companies, suddenly quit, and he announced that even the CEOs of those companies were worried that they were creating things that they couldn’t control, and that artificial intelligence would, on its own, be able to outthink humans and perhaps control the world, etc.
In “The End of Everything,” a book I mentioned, a theoretical experiment by the Pentagon, a computer simulation in which a missile was programmed to do anything that it could to protect itself to complete the mission. And when one of the programmers pushed the kill button, the missile turned on the computer screen. It wasn’t a real missile, but the simulated missile turned and went back at the person who pushed the button.
So, we’ve always known that that risk was there, but why was it so exaggerated right now? These CEOs, it was very interesting. If they’re so worried about the direction of research, why don’t they do two things? Why don’t they patrol, control, audit their own people?
It’s almost like saying, “I’m afraid that I’ll commit arson.” And if you’re afraid you’ll commit arson, then why don’t you take fuel away from that person or don’t ever touch gasoline? If you’re afraid that your company will make something that will destroy mankind, then don’t do it.
But if you say, “I still can’t control it,” then why are you opposing liability, legislation that says the makers of AI, should that AI product be used and be used to hurt people, they’re not liable? You would say, “What? Just make us liable. That’ll ensure that you can trust us because we might not trust ourselves.”The other thing is they’ve called, and the Left has called, for international control. I’d like to say, if you look at the history of international control regulations, it’s not good.
The League of Nations, did that stop World War II? When Mussolini decided to go into East Africa, did they stop him from using the Suez Canal? Did they tell Japan, “You can’t go into Manchuria,” or to get out of China? Did they say to Hitler, “Don’t go into the Sudetenland”? They did. Did it do any good? No.
The Kellogg-Briand Pact, remember that? That was going to be a worldwide, by Sen. [Frank] Kellogg in the United States in the 1920s, a worldwide effort to outlaw war. How did that work out? Within a decade and a half, we were at war.
How about the Washington Naval Treaty? That was a very inspired, idealistic idea after World War I: Let’s stop the dreadnought race. Everybody will agree to make no destroyer, cruiser, battleship over a certain tonnage. Did Japan or Germany abide by the 35,000-ton limit on battleships? No. Did we? Yes. Did Britain? Yes. Did France? Yes. Did Mussolini? No. Did, as I said, Germany? No. Did Japan? In other words, consensual societies do abide by international treaties. Nonconsensual societies do not.
How about the Versailles Treaty? Did that prevent another war? No. How about the Munich Agreement between Prime Minister [Neville] Chamberlain and Adolf Hitler? Did he abide by that when he said: This is my last territorial conquest in Europe? No. He invaded Europe about a year later. How about the recent Paris climate accord? Has that reduced Chinese carbon emissions? No. They’re building two to three coal plants per month.
How about the United Nations Human Rights Council? Has that stopped the slaughter of Christians in Africa? Did that stop the ethnic cleansing and killing of Armenians in Azerbaijan? No. So, international accords won’t work. So, what is going on with all this melodrama? Why now? Why on the eve of an election? It’s not new. Let’s look at some of the end-of-days scares that we’ve had in the past.
When I was younger, in 1968, there was the Nixon-Humphrey campaign, and all of a sudden Paul Ehrlich, a Stanford professor, said we’re all going to be destroyed by overpopulation. He took the old Thomas Malthus worry in the 19th century of overpopulation. He wrote a bestseller called “The Population Bomb,” and it said there’s no way we can get enough fuel, food, precious metals … to feed this growing billion-dollar, billion-person population bomb. We’re doomed.
And it had a lot of bad effects. People started just to have one child. In Europe, they took it very seriously. The idea was have one child, adopt one. And now Canada has a 1.25 fertility rate. Europe is about 1.33, the EU.It had disastrous consequences, and we now—we have more people on the planet than ever, and the per capita income of the world population is higher than when Paul Ehrlich wrote that book.
In 1983, there was a nuclear winter. We were all scared. Carl Sagan, he was sort of like Paul Ehrlich, a professor. He was a cult figure. He said that we’re gonna have a nuclear exchange, and when we do, the nuclear dust will blot out the sun, and we’ll all die. That was in relationship to the Soviets. For a long time, they had short-range missiles threatening Europe. Ronald Reagan said that’s not allowable, to bully Europe. We’re gonna put Pershing II missiles to counteract your missiles.
There were some standoffs, and all of a sudden—and what was gonna happen within a year? There was going to be the 1984 reelection effort of Reagan. So, all of a sudden, the Left said: Nuclear winter, nuclear winter, we’re all gonna be doomed. Hollywood made a movie, “The Day After,” showing mushrooms dotting the Kansas landscape. A hundred thousand people. It was just a complete hysteria.
Then we had climate change, or rather global warming went to climate change. In 1992, who wrote “Earth in the Balance”? Candidate Al Gore during that election cycle. What was his thesis? Well, there was global warming we were worried about, but he was saying that heat is a pollutant. Everybody’s dangerous or deadly as industrial waste or ozone or whatever.
And he said we have only a decade or a decade and a half, and the polar bears are going to die. The coral reefs off Australia are going to erode. Icebergs are going to melt in the Antarctic, and the Arctic Ocean is going to be too warm, and we’re going to have difficulty navigating these icebergs. The endless—you couldn’t get a place on the ocean. Barack Obama’s house in Hawaii, built, I guess, apparently, will be inundated.
And then it didn’t happen. Didn’t happen. But Al Gore and [Bill] Clinton were elected.
In 2016, remember “Me Too”? Harvey Weinstein was using the old casting couch of Hollywood producers to coerce sex from actresses so they could get a role. It started out legitimately, as did climate change worries, as did nuclear bomb worries, as did AI worries.
But that didn’t last long. All of a sudden, careers as varied as Garrison Keillor, Brett Kavanaugh, Al Franken, the senator, everybody, if they did anything in their past, stole a kiss, patted someone too long, hugged somebody, half the country was worried over the last 30 years had they said an off-color joke. There was a climate of paranoia.
And it was right during the what? The 2016 election. And who promulgated it? We’ll get to that in a minute.
And then it died. Why did it die pretty soon? Because Joe Biden in 2019-20 was a candidate, and he was going to be the only viable candidate for the Left. They were terrified of Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Pete Buttigieg is too far left. And Joe Biden was handsy, a euphemism for touching women, hugging them too long. One of them, Tara Reade, came forward and said she’d been sexually assaulted.
And of course, Bill Clinton then earned renewed scrutiny. What did you actually do, Bill? And after you left office, we hear about the [Jeffrey] Epstein connection, we hear about women on your plane, and all of a sudden it disappeared, Me Too. Then I could go on with the COVID lockdown and the paranoia that ended up probably killing more people, destroying millions of lives economically, ruining education.
I could go into the George Floyd paranoia after the death of George Floyd. Thirty-five killed, $2 billion in property damage, 1,500 police officers, five months of looting, arson, destruction. What do all these things have in common? Well, they’re melodramas. They’re psychodramas. All of a sudden, people take a legitimate issue and they start to use it to achieve a political aim.
It’s no accident that the AI hysteria is happening right before the election. And usually, in all of these cases—the Carl Sagan nuclear winter, the Al Gore climate change, the Paul Ehrlich population drama, the BLM ginned- up rioting after George Floyd, the opponents of Donald Trump who wanted to lock down the economy—they’re usually used by the Left.
And finally, let’s be frank. When they’re all over, Carl Sagan is a household name, and he’s very wealthy. Paul Ehrlich is a household name, and he’s very wealthy. Al Gore starts out as any politician, supposedly very poor. He’s from an affluent family, and he’s now a near-billionaire.
And the BLM people who ginned up the George Floyd riots, they all retreated to plush homes, used those monies that were intended to be nonprofit funds for their own personal aggrandizement.
In sum, when you see a sudden epidemic, a melodrama, a hysteria, just be very careful because the odds are it will be in an election year, it’ll be ginned up by a so-called left-wing expert, and when it’s all over, that left-wing expert will be pretty wealthy.

Most people think serious AI compute in orbit is years away.

For SpaceX, that is way too slow. They already control the stack.

The plan is to launch the first orbital compute satellites next year, using the Starlink V3 bus with the payload swapped for compute and much bigger… https://t.co/cBT6NRJf3d pic.twitter.com/JsH9YWFeLL
— Mario Nawfal (@MarioNawfal) September 22, 2026

No other robots can move like Optimus pic.twitter.com/JsURNtS4sN
— Optimus (@Optimus_RH) September 21, 2026

https://twitter.com/MAGAStorm47/status/2102199140662841372?s=20

This might be one of the truest statements I’ve ever read.

Some people hate you simply because you refuse to think like they do. That’s their problem. pic.twitter.com/sKAWdP9dCh
— Gunther Eagleman™ (@GuntherEagleman) September 21, 2026

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Debt Rattle November 3 2022

Nov 032022

November 3, 2022 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 9:00 am Finance Tagged with: diesel, Elon Musk, Facebook, metaverse, oligarchs, pandemic amnesty, pandemic tribunals, trace arms 86 Responses »

Salvador Dali Self portrait (Figueres) 1921

• US Struggling To Trace Arms Given To Ukraine – WaPo (RT)

• Biden’s Foreign Policy Sinking His Party & Ukraine (Jeffrey Sachs)

• The New Cuban Missile Crisis That Isn’t (Dmitri Orlov)

• Whole World Suffers From Western Propaganda – Russia (RT)

• Russia Ready To Provide Grain To Poorest Countries Free Of Charge – Putin (Az.)

• Russia Strips Ukrainian ‘Oligarchs’ Of Crimean Property – Official (RT)

• Kremlin Comments On Putin’s Re-election Plans (RT)

• Germany’s Position In America’s New World Order (Michael Hudson)

• Double Whammy Ahead? Rep. Warns Of Diesel Shortage, Rail Strike Impact (JTN)

• France To Restart Nuclear Reactors – Energy Ministry (RT)

• Investors Reportedly Disgruntled As Facebook Stock Down 70% (JTN)

• Elon Musk To Fire Half Of Twitter On Friday (ZH)

• Writing as Microcosm, Part One: Publish and Perish (Greer)

• Pfizer’s Lack of Transparency, Accountability ‘Creates a New Tyranny’ (CHD)

• Censorship and Defamation- Weapons of Control (Malone)

• Dissecting the Deceptive Plea for COVID-19 Amnesty (A Midwestern Doctor)

The White House deleted its preposterous tweet after Twitter commented. They tried to claim a 50-year old law’s provisions were due to Biden’s “leadership” today.

https://twitter.com/RepThomasMassie/status/1587790124045279233

Inconvenient fact about electric cars #1:

If you drive it 60,000 miles… you put MORE carbon in the air than a gas powered car.

Only after 60,000 miles do you use less. pic.twitter.com/WmiAjszdHE

— John Stossel (@JohnStossel) November 1, 2022

“..90% of weapons packages reportedly unaccounted for..”

“..into a big black hole..”

• US Struggling To Trace Arms Given To Ukraine – WaPo (RT)

Despite having a team of military overseers in the country, the US has only managed to account for around 10% of the weapons systems sent to Ukraine that require special oversight, the Washington Post reported on Tuesday. Earlier, Interpol had warned that foreign weapons can end up in the hands of criminals in Europe. Anonymous US officials told the newspaper that they can only hope to achieve a “reasonable” level of compliance with US oversight rules, and will have to be satisfied with “greater than zero” assurances from their Ukrainian colleagues. Some 22,000 US-provided weapons systems – including Stinger and Javelin missiles – need to be tracked once they enter Ukraine, the report stated. However, US inspectors have only managed to perform two in-person checks in recent months, verifying just 10% of this number.

Without these verifications, the US is relying on Ukraine to scan arms packages and send a record of their serial numbers to Washington. For smaller items such as rifles and body armor, a single American official in Poland signs off on all transfers to Ukraine. Larger weapons systems, such as HIMARS rocket artillery platforms and M777 howitzers, are not subject to inspections. The Post’s report came hours after a Pentagon official told reporters that in-person inspections had recently started again for the first time since Russia’s military operation began in February. Throughout the intervening months, US media reports suggested that Washington had no idea where its weapons shipments were actually ending up. One intelligence source told CNN in April that these weapons disappear “into a big black hole” once they enter the country, while CBS News in August quoted a Lithuanian arms supplier as saying that “like 30% of [military aid to Ukraine] reaches its final destination.”

The US has provided $18 billion in military aid to Ukraine since February. Russian President Vladimr Putin has warned that this influx of arms prolongs the conflict while making the US a de-facto participant. Last month, Putin also claimed that “powerful weapons, including portable air defense systems and precision weapons,” are being smuggled out of Ukraine and onto the black market. Up to $1 billion worth of arms are funneled from Ukraine to criminals, terrorists and extremists every month, the spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry, Maria Zakharova, stated in October. Russia’s concern over the matter is shared by Interpol. In a briefing in June, agency chief Jurgen Stock cautioned that the sheer volume of arms being pumped into Ukraine “will lead to the proliferation of illicit weapons in the post-conflict phase.”

“..Biden’s dismissal of diplomacy prolongs the destruction of Ukraine and threatens nuclear war..”

• Biden’s Foreign Policy Sinking His Party & Ukraine (Jeffrey Sachs)

President Joe Biden is undermining his party’s congressional prospects through a deeply flawed foreign policy. Biden believes that America’s global reputation is at stake in the Ukraine War and has consistently rejected a diplomatic off-ramp. The Ukraine War, combined with the administration’s disruptions of economic relations with China, is aggravating the stagflation that will likely deliver one or both houses of Congress to the Republicans. Far worse, Biden’s dismissal of diplomacy prolongs the destruction of Ukraine and threatens nuclear war. Biden inherited an economy beset by deep disruptions to global supply chains caused by the pandemic and by former President Donald Trump’s erratic trade policies.

Yet instead of trying to calm the waters and repair the disruptions, Biden escalated the U.S. conflicts with both Russia and China. Biden attacked Republican House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy for expressing doubts on another large financial package Ukraine, declaring: “They [House Republicans] said that if they win, they’re not likely to fund — to help — continue to fund Ukraine, the Ukrainian war against the Russians. These guys don’t get it. It’s a lot bigger than Ukraine — it’s Eastern Europe. It’s NATO. It’s real, serious, serious consequential outcomes. They have no sense of American foreign policy.” Similarly, when a group of progressive congressional Democrats urged negotiations to end the Ukraine War, they were excoriated by Democrats following the White House line and forced to recant their call for diplomacy.

[..] The last thing the U.S. and Europe need is a long war with Russia. Yet that’s just where Biden’s insistence on NATO enlargement to Ukraine has brought about. The U.S. and Ukraine should accept three absolutely reasonable terms to end the war: Ukraine’s military neutrality; Russia’s de facto hold on Crimea, home to its Black Sea naval fleet since 1783; and a negotiated autonomy for the ethnic-Russian regions, as was called for in the Minsk Agreements but which Ukraine failed to implement. Instead of this kind of sensible outcome, the Biden administration has repeatedly told Ukraine to fight on. It poured cold water on the negotiations in March, when Ukrainians were contemplating a negotiated end to the war but instead walked away from the negotiating table.

Ritter

Former US Marine Corps intelligence officer Scott Ritter says the Ukraine war started in 2014, not in 2022. pic.twitter.com/xrqPVhkuzR

— Hassan Mafi ‏ (@thatdayin1992) November 1, 2022

“..Russia can reliably destroy the West (which is not nearly as well defended) but will not do so unless the West attacks first..”

• The New Cuban Missile Crisis That Isn’t (Dmitri Orlov)

Unless you spent the last few weeks hiding under a rock, you have probably heard that some sort of new nuclear crisis is underway because of “Putin’s nuclear blackmail” or some such. Some people have suffered nervous exhaustion as a result, neglecting their duties and generally letting themselves go. [..] I am here to tell you that there is nothing going on beyond the usual—the usual Western propaganda fakery, that is. In particular, this has nothing to do with anything Putin or with anything nuclear. Instead, this is all part of a desperate attempt to compensate for narrative failure, and a failed attempt at that. The problem for the collective West is simply this: 80% of the world’s population has refused to join it in condemning, sanctioning or otherwise punishing Russia, with some very large countries (China, India) either supportive or neutral on the subject.

Most of the world, including Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America, is carefully watching Russia systematically destroy what was by far the largest and most capable NATO-equipped, NATO-commanded army in the world (the Ukrainian army, that is), understanding full well that what is unfolding is Washington’s Waterloo. Some countries (Saudi Arabia, for instance) are so sure of the result that they are already refusing to obey Washington’s dictates. This is a problem, because all the Washingtonians know how to do is impose their will on the world. Treating others as equals or looking for opportunities to negotiate a win-win is simply not part of their core competence—or any of their competence, for that matter. Once defanged, all they know how to do is bark and drool.

To fix this problem, the narrative-mongers in Washington and Brussels have decided to play the nuclear card and accuse Russia of nuclear blackmail. Meanwhile, all that Russia has done is decimate the Ukrainian army several times over, then accept four former Ukrainian regions into the Russian Federation based on highly conclusive local referenda closely watched by a goodly number of international observers, and then announce that it will defend these regions against foreign attack by all means necessary. These, obviously, include nuclear means, since Russia does have them, and would use them in accordance with its nuclear doctrine, which precludes their first use. Meanwhile, the US has no such stipulation in its nuclear doctrine, has actually used nuclear weapons against civilians (in Japan), and has for decades dreamed of developing a nuclear first strike capability that could not be countered.

If any country should be judged to be a nuclear threat, it is the US, not Russia… except, as I will explain, the US is no longer much of a nuclear threat either. Putin barely hinted at this, but a mere hint was enough to utterly infuriate the US national defense establishment, whose worst enemy is reality itself. Putin pointed out that at this point Russia has some weapons in its nuclear deterrent arsenal that are superior to that of the West. These new weapons, of which more later, guarantee that any nuclear attack on Russia would be a suicidal move. That is, the West has no way of reliably destroying Russia (it is too big and its economic core is too independent and too well defended with air and space defense systems) while Russia can reliably destroy the West (which is not nearly as well defended) but will not do so unless the West attacks first.

“Just as Western weapons are now targeting cities in the Donbass and the liberated territories, Western propaganda is firing ‘information shells’ at its own citizens..”

• Whole World Suffers From Western Propaganda – Russia (RT)

Amid the Ukraine conflict, Western countries are waging an information war not only against Russia but also the entire international community, Vassily Nebenzia, the nation’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations, said on Tuesday. Speaking at a presentation at the UN of the RT documentary ‘Journalists Under Fire,’ the top diplomat noted that Russia had found itself under massive media pressure after it launched its military operation in Ukraine in late February. Nebenzia noted that Western coverage of the conflict is typified by “a huge number of ‘fakes’ about the activities of the [Russian] military, as well as about the goals, objectives and motives” of its campaign in Ukraine.

“It’s no secret that the West has launched a real information war against us, which affects not only the residents of Russia and Ukraine but also people around the world,” he reiterated. He went on to compare Western media coverage with actual Ukrainian bombings of civilian infrastructure. “Just as Western weapons are now targeting cities in the Donbass and the liberated territories, Western propaganda is firing ‘information shells’ at its own citizens,” he claimed. According to Nebenzia, the media onslaught is harmful to ordinary people, who “are losing touch with reality, become distressed and confused” when being overwhelmed with an endless barrage of falsehoods. They also lose the ability to think critically, he claimed.

After Russia launched its military operation against Ukraine, Western countries unleashed an unprecedented crackdown on Russian media abroad, with the European Union banning RT and Sputnik channels. Moscow has repeatedly criticized the move, with Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova claiming that it has shown the world the true worth of so-called Western values.

And NATO will tell them they cannot have it.

• Russia Ready To Provide Grain To Poorest Countries Free Of Charge – Putin (Az.)

Russian President Vladimir Putin confirmed the country’s readiness to provide a significant grain volume to the poorest countries free of charge in a telephone conversation with President of Indonesia Joko Widodo, the Kremlin’s press service said on Wednesday. “In the context of supporting the global food security, Vladimir Putin stated the fundamental Russian approaches towards implementation of Istanbul package agreements pertaining to Ukrainian grain export from Black Sea ports and unblocking of Russian agricultural produce and fertilizers exports to global markets,” the Kremlin said. Russian President also noted readiness of the country to provide significant grain volumes to the poorest countries free of charge as the humanitarian aid, the Kremlin’s press service added.

“Joko Widodo supported such an approach,” the Kremlin noted. The Russian President also informed his Indonesian counterpart about the situation evolved in consequence of the marine humanitarian corridor use by the Kiev regime for the sabotage action against the infrastructure and ships of the Black Sea Fleet in Sevastopol and that the Russian side resumes implementation of the grain deal after the receipt of required guarantees from Ukraine regarding the non-use of the humanitarian route for military purposes.

“..We cannot allow accomplices of the Ukrainian Nazi regime to earn money on our territory..”

• Russia Strips Ukrainian ‘Oligarchs’ Of Crimean Property – Official (RT)

Russian officials have nationalized more than 130 properties in Crimea that previously belonged to Ukrainian ‘oligarchs’ who have been supporting Kiev in its conflict with Moscow, Vladimir Konstantinov, the head of the republic’s State Council, revealed on Wednesday. He wrote on Telegram that Crimean officials had been thinking about nationalizing “enterprises located on the territory of the peninsula and owned by Ukrainian oligarchs” for a long time. According to Konstantinov, the registry of enterprises subject to nationalization features properties of “foreign citizens and states that have been committing unfriendly actions against Russia” and includes some major plants, such as the cement plant Stroyindustriya in Bakhchisaray and the Zaliv shipyard in Kerch.

“For us, this measure is an act of justice. We cannot allow accomplices of the Ukrainian Nazi regime to earn money on our territory,” Konstantinov stressed. He added that it would be even “fairer”to transfer the property to the “defenders, who risk their lives on the frontline of the special military operation.” Later, in an interview on the Rossiya 24 TV channel, Konstantinov revealed that provisional administrations have been appointed at all the nationalized enterprises. “People who used to work there, keep working, there are no problems,” he reassured. Wednesday’s announcement came two days after the head of Crimea, Sergey Aksyonov, ordered the nationalization of the property of “organizations and individuals associated with the Kiev authorities,” including Stroyindustriya and Zaliv.

He revealed the initial plans to nationalize the property of Ukrainian oligarchs and politicians who supported Kiev back in March, soon after Russia launched its military operation in Ukraine. He said at the time that many Ukrainian officials, including President Vladimir Zelensky, owned property on the peninsula. In October, the republic’s State Council amended the 2014 legislation on property management in Crimea to allow foreign states and citizens’ assets to be nationalized. Meanwhile, Kiev took similar steps in early April: The country’s parliament voted to expand a law which allowed Russian government property to be nationalized by the Ukrainian state. The rule was extended to Russian citizens in Ukraine, those with a “close relation” to Russia, and Ukrainians who publicly supported or ignored Moscow’s ongoing military operation.

If you see Putin as a ruthless war-mongering dictator, all you see here is raw power. Me, I think he would love to retire to his dacha. But he fears the CIA and/or Russian hardliners would move -back- in. Medvedev could do some of what Putin does, but not all of it. Putin wants Russia safe before he retires.

• Kremlin Comments On Putin’s Re-election Plans (RT)

Russian President Vladimir Putin has not made a decision on whether he will run for re-election in 2024 when the country is set to vote for the next head of state, the Kremlin spokesman has said. Dmitry Peskov answered “no” when a reporter asked him about the matter on Wednesday. Putin is currently in his fourth term as president. The national constitution sets a limit of up to two consecutive terms. He held the presidency between 2000 and 2008 and has been in office again since 2012, with Dmitry Medvedev serving a single four-year term in between. The country has changed its constitution on several occasions in its modern history. The original five-year term was reduced to four years in 1993, under president, Boris Yeltsin, but increased to six years in 2008. The first presidential election for the newly increased tenure was held in 2012.

In 2020, Russia held a referendum on the most recent round of constitutional amendments, which included extending term limits. It was approved, opening the way for President Putin to potentially stay in power until 2036. Putin neither confirmed nor denied an ambition to do so. When he was asked about it during the plenary session of the Valdai Discussion Club in October 2020, shortly after the amendments came into force, he said he was well aware that “this has to end at some point.” “What happens in 2024, or later – that needs to be seen when the time comes,” he added. The amendments, Putin explained, “were not aimed at giving the incumbent head of state the right to be re-elected in 2024” but rather to update the constitution and strengthen national sovereignty.

“..Germany has been told to cut itself off from Russian gas and de-industrialize…”

How can Germans NOT rise up?

• Germany’s Position In America’s New World Order (Michael Hudson)

Germany has become an economic satellite of America’s New Cold War with Russia, China and the rest of Eurasia. Germany and other NATO countries have been told to impose trade and investment sanctions upon themselves that will outlast today’s proxy war in Ukraine. U.S. President Biden and his State Department spokesmen have explained that Ukraine is just the opening arena in a much broader dynamic that is splitting the world into two opposing sets of economic alliances. This global fracture promises to be a ten- or twenty-year struggle to determine whether the world economy will be a unipolar U.S.-centered dollarized economy, or a multipolar, multi-currency world centered on the Eurasian heartland with mixed public/private economies.

President Biden has characterized this split as being between democracies and autocracies. The terminology is typical Orwellian double-speak. By “democracies” he means the U.S. and allied Western financial oligarchies. Their aim is to shift economic planning out of the hands of elected governments to Wall Street and other financial centers under U.S. control. U.S. diplomats use the International Monetary Fund and World Bank to demand privatization of the world’s infrastructure and dependency on U.S. technology, oil and food exports. By “autocracy,” Biden means countries resisting this financialization and privatization takeover. In practice, U.S. rhettoric means promoting its own economic growth and living standards, keeping finance and banking as public utilities.

What basically is at issue is whether economies will be planned by banking centers to create financial wealth – by privatizing basic infrastructure, public utilities and social services such as health care into monopolies – or by raising living standards and prosperity by keeping banking and money creation, public health, education, transportation and communications in public hands. The country suffering the most “collateral damage” in this global fracture is Germany. As Europe’s most advanced industrial economy, German steel, chemicals, machinery, automotives and other consumer goods are the most highly dependent on imports of Russian gas, oil and metals from aluminum to titanium and palladium. Yet despite two Nord Stream pipelines built to provide Germany with low-priced energy, Germany has been told to cut itself off from Russian gas and de-industrialize.

This means the end of its economic preeminence. The key to GDP growth in Germany, as in other countries, is energy consumption per worker. These anti-Russian sanctions make today’s New Cold War inherently anti-German. U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken has said that Germany should replace low-priced Russian pipeline gas with high-priced U.S. LNG gas. To import this gas, Germany will have to spend over $5 billion quickly to build port capacity to handle LNG tankers. The effect will be to make German industry uncompetitive. Bankruptcies will spread, employment will decline, and Germany’s pro-NATO leaders will impose a chronic depression and falling living standards.

“We got to remember this is just weeks after President Biden told us that he had this all under control..”

• Double Whammy Ahead? Rep. Warns Of Diesel Shortage, Rail Strike Impact (JTN)

Wisconsin Rep. Bryan Steil says that the economy could take a dual hit after the election if diesel shortages persist and rail unions strike as promised. In September, rail workers threatened to strike after the election if they could not agree to a new contract with railroad companies, which would result in substantial problems for the U.S. economy and its already challenged supply chain. “It’s incredibly concerning,” Steil said Tuesday on the “Just the News, No Noise” TV show. “We got to remember this is just weeks after President Biden told us that he had this all under control, and the trains would be running on time.

”We’re now learning it’s anything but that. It’s another game where the Biden administration has kicked the can down the road and kicked it past this election.” Biden announced he had struck a tentative deal with the railroad unions that the workers cannot strike until after a so-called cooling-off period in late November, right after the midterm elections. “I think people see through this case where it’s very clear that the deal he struck was political in nature and will likely or possibly crumble following the election,” Steil said. “But this is just one more thing that we all are concerned about. As it relates to the economy, pretty much every light on the switchboard is flashing. We got to be concerned. It’s one of the reasons we need to put a check on this administration.”

Diesel

Robert Bryce – A looming diesel shortage could cripple economy pic.twitter.com/YWWa7UHtVg

— Wittgenstein (@backtolife_2023) November 2, 2022

France will have enough electricity this winter. How do you think the neighboring Germans will look at that from their dark and cold homes?

• France To Restart Nuclear Reactors – Energy Ministry (RT)

Six of the 12 nuclear reactors in France that were found to have corrosion issues in May have been repaired and will be restarted soon, French Energy Minister Agnès Pannier-Runacher has revealed. She told France Inter radio on Wednesday that, at the moment, there was “no reason” to believe that energy operator EDF would not be able to meet the schedule for restarting all shutdown reactors before winter. Earlier, media reports stated that EDF had hired about 100 American welders from Westinghouse in order to repair the power units on time. France generates roughly 70% of its electricity from a nuclear fleet of 56 reactors, all operated by EDF. However, many of them have been closed down for maintenance, some due to corrosion-related issues.

Currently, only 31 units are reportedly operating. EDF has pledged to restart all shutdown reactors before winter to avoid power shortages in the country. However, since October 6, there have been strikes among EDF employees involved in repair work at 19 reactors, delaying maintenance by several weeks. Last month, the French national electricity grid operator RTE warned that it would not rule out the risk of blackouts this winter due to prolonged strikes halting the repair. According to RTE, outages could only be avoided if power consumption was reduced by 1% to 5%, while in the event of an extremely cold winter – by 15%. Failure to restart the plants on time could have “heavy consequences” for power supply over the winter period, the operator has warned.

“..from over $330 per share in January to nearly $90 per share this week. The company’s market cap has also plunged [..] from just over $1 trillion in August of 2021 to under $250 billion in November..”

• Investors Reportedly Disgruntled As Facebook Stock Down 70% (JTN)

Investors in Facebook parent company Meta are reportedly growing dissatisfied with the company’s fixation on the “metaverse” as the corporations’ stock continues to plunge and its market capitalization continues a long slide. The company has seen its stock plummet throughout 2022, shedding more than 70% of its value from the start of the year as it fell from over $330 per share in January to nearly $90 per share this week. The company’s market cap has also plunged from its high last year, dropping from just over $1 trillion in August of 2021 to under $250 billion in November. Investors, meanwhile, are reported to be unhappy with the company’s business direction, specifically founder Mark Zuckerberg’s fixation on the virtual reality “metaverse,” a project that has generated relatively little excitement outside of esoteric tech circles.

Jim Tierney, an investment officer for Meta shareholder AllianceBernstein, told the Financial Times that, had any other company plowed so much money into a strategically dubious project, “you’d have activist investors writing letters, proposing alternative slates of directors, demanding change.” “I think Mark heard crystal clear what investors wanted. He’s made his decision,” Tierney told the publication. David Older, an asset manager at Carmignac, claimed that Zuckerberg has been “tone-deaf to the investment community, doubling down on everything.” “The timeline for the metaverse is very stretched. I don’t think you’re going to know if it is the right move for five or 10 years,” he told FT.

He gets a lot of heat for not firing the head of censorship, Yoel Roth, @yoyoel.

• Elon Musk To Fire Half Of Twitter On Friday (ZH)

[..] in two days Elon Musk will finally do what he has repeatedly warned he would do: unleash mass layoffs at the company he just acquired. According to Bloomberg, the world’s richest man will eliminate 3,700 jobs at Twitter – roughly half of the company’s entire workforce – in a bid to drive down costs following his $44 billion acquisition; Musk will inform affected staffers Friday, said the Bloomberg sources. Oh, and all those masked snowflakes who previously raged against the previous management’s “draconian” demand to come back to the office, you’re out of luck too: Musk intends to reverse the company’s existing work-from-anywhere policy asking what few employees remain to report to offices.

Musk and a team of advisers have been weighing a range of scenarios for job cuts and other policy changes at San Francisco-based Twitter, the people said, adding that the terms of the headcount reduction could still change. In one scenario being considered, laid off workers will be offered 60 days’ worth of severance pay, two of the people said. With the “liberal and tolerant” left putting Musk under the financial deplatforming squeeze, as various woke advertisers are pressured by vocal ultra-left radicals to drop Twitter unless the social media platform is fully MSNBC’ed; which will leave advertisers showing their ads to a handful of socialist-preapproved media outlets catering to those whose entire income comes from the government, who pay zero taxes, and can’t really afford to buy anything, Musk is under pressure to find ways to slash costs of a business for which he overpaid.

To be sure, the mass exodus won’t come as a surprise: Twitter employees have been bracing for layoffs ever since Musk took over last Thursday and fired the top executive team, including CEO Parag Agrawal and top censor, Vijaya Gadde. Over the weekend, a few employees with director and vice president jobs were cut, while other leaders were asked to make lists of employees on their teams who can be cut, Bloomberg reported, adding that senior personnel on the product teams were asked to target a 50% reduction in headcount. Engineers and director-level staff from Tesla reviewed the lists.

A bit idealistic?

• Writing as Microcosm, Part One: Publish and Perish (Greer)

I’m not sure how many of my readers have noticed the massive realignment going on right now at the foundations of the industrial economy. Venture below the towering abstractions of notional wealth that fill business websites, all the way to the base, and you’ll find that the whole gargantuan structure rests on certain relationships between individuals and the economy. Most people in the industrial world participate in economic activities in two ways: selling their time and labor to businesses as employees, and buying goods and services from businesses as consumers. That’s the base from which the whole tottering mess rises.

What we’re seeing now is that a growing number of people have lost interest in continuing to fill those particular roles. Intractable labor shortages are becoming the norm in today’s industrial societies. Part of that is a function of the soaring number of people who are struggling with bad health just now—no, we don’t have to get into why that’s happening—but not all of it. At the same time, the consumer side of the equation is also collapsing, and stores are floundering as inventory builds up and sales slump. Quite a bit of that is a function of the wicked blend of inflation and recession that’s got the global economy in its grip, but again, that’s not all of it.

You can catch a whisper of what else is going on if you listen to the frequent rants heard from the managerial class these days about how young people just don’t want to work any more. Talk to the young people in question and you’ll find that quite a few of them are working very hard on projects of their own. What they’re not willing to do is waste their lives working in abusive and humiliating environments to make someone else rich, in exchange for rock-bottom wages, no prospect for advancement, and no benefits worth mentioning. That their reaction comes as a surprise to anyone is a good measure of just how detached our society’s comfortable classes have become from the reality their preferred policies have created.

“Pfizer had their most profitable year and they’ve just jacked up the prices of their vaccine by 10,000%..”

“So we’re asking, how much profit do they need before they’ll release those bloody redacted pages?”

• Pfizer’s Lack of Transparency, Accountability ‘Creates a New Tyranny’ (CHD)

Pfizer executive Angela Lukin on Oct. 20 said the drugmaker plans to raise the price of its COVID-19 vaccines by about 400%, to $110 to $130 per dose, after the U.S. government’s purchase program expires — even though new estimates suggest the vaccines can be produced for as little as $1.18 a dose. “Pfizer had their most profitable year and they’ve just jacked up the prices of their vaccine by 10,000%,” Russell Brand said in his latest video. “So we’re asking, how much profit do they need before they’ll release those bloody redacted pages?” The comedian and political commentator was referring to a request by the European Parliament’s COVID-19 committee to see Pfizer’s contract with the EU for its COVID-19 vaccine. Pfizer handed over the documents — but with many pages completely redacted.

Not only that, but Pfizer’s CEO Albert Bourla, Ph.D., who was due to testify Oct. 10 before the committee, pulled out of the appointment, effectively refusing to answer any of the committee’s questions. When the committee requested to review Pfizer’s contract with the EU for the COVID-19 vaccine, Bourla’s representative told the committee, “They can’t fully disclose these contracts because they have some ‘commercial secrets’ over there and they have to ‘protect their interests,’” member of the European Parliament (MEP) Cristian Terhes said on Oct. 12. “Now I’m asking you: ‘What about the interests of our people?’” asked Terhes, who is also a human rights activist. Terhes showed page after page of heavy redactions from Pfizer’s contracts that it handed over to the committee.

Brand made fun of Pfizer for bothering to share the heavily redacted documents with the public because they were “black as night” and showed no information. “What’s the point?” Brand asked. “Just say, ‘We’re not going to show you.’ It’ll save your photocopier,” he added. Brand also pointed out that according to a September 2021 report by Investigate Europe, negotiations between the EU and pharmaceutical companies for the COVID-19 vaccine happened behind closed doors. “Why is this stuff all so shady?” Brand asked. “Why is it the contract has to be blacked out? Why are the deals happening in secret? This is supposed to be democracy.”

Check the prices

Malone addresses the Springer article posted here yesterday: Censorship and Suppression of Covid-19 Heterodoxy

• Censorship and Defamation- Weapons of Control (Malone)

In a stunning article published in the relatively obscure academic journal “Minerva”, the mainstream academic publisher Springer has allowed truth to be spoken. Censorship and Suppression of Covid-19 Heterodoxy: Tactics and Counter-Tactics. Having personally lived through what may be among the most intensive slander, defamation and derision campaigns of the COVIDcrisis, none of what was described in this article surprised me. I think that I can probably guess the names of some of the interviewed physicians and medical scientists discussed in the article, as so many have shared their own experiences with me. But seeing it written out in a dry academic style and published like a case series study of global corporate, organizational and governmental psychopathology and greed is another thing altogether.

I expected the article to bring a tear of relief at being heard and validated, but instead it just left me numb. The publication summarized much of what I have personally experienced (and by way of disclosure of conflict of interest, I was mentioned as an example in the introduction, although I did not participate in the survey). Much but not all. It missed the ubiquitous Wikipedia re-writing of personal history (and in my case, writing me out of the history of nine of my issued US patents). It missed Amazon deleting the very credible and well referenced book on “Prepare and protect from the novel Coronavirus” which Dr. Jill Glasspool-Malone PhD (Biotechnology and Public Policy) had worked so hard to publish in the first week of February 2020 – with the only explanation being that it “violated community standards”.

It missed the concerted effort to deny my contributions as a young man to coming up with the whole idea of using mRNA as a drug or vaccine, and developing the technology to the point where it was proven in a mouse model. It missed the (largely successful) stolen valor campaign to credit two scientists (one a Fauci post doc, the other a Bio-N-Tech VP) who came along almost a decade after my work and sought to take credit for my contributions while writing me out of history. It missed the professional infiltration and disruption campaigns designed to destroy the American trucker protest movement and the medical freedom movements. It missed the YouTube deletions of US Senate testimony convened by a sitting US Senator, Ron Johnson. Etc etc.

Very well done. His notes are all in pics, so go to the original.

• Dissecting the Deceptive Plea for COVID-19 Amnesty (A Midwestern Doctor)

Recently an article began circulating stating that the pandemic pushers deserved amnesty for their actions over the last two years. This article was repeatedly shared in our community as a way of politely saying “How About No” to the author, and to illustrate that enough consequences from the vaccine are starting to emerge that the government has realized they may need to pivot to a new approach (which suggests additional issues from the vaccines will emerge in the future). From having thought this article over, my best guess is that this article was primarily targeted at assuaging the guilt of the left leaning voters who trusted their leaders on these vaccines and are not the most motivated to vote for them in the midterms (as the polling data presently indicates a landslide for the Republican party).

When I read through this article, I realize the author highlighted a very common problem I observe in human interactions (which I will admit I have also been guilty of). The author is demanding to receive forgiveness for their conduct, but in their apology, is refusing to admit they did anything wrong. In order to accomplish this, they utilized a variety of manipulative rhetorical constructs that are relatively simple and frequently utilized. [..] Thinking about this article more, I believe the fundamental logical error in this article is that leaders should be absolved of their responsibility for making incorrect decisions if there was a degree of uncertainty with the information at hand.

This is not the standard we have held our leaders to, as their job is always to make the best decision they can with the information that is available, and in most eras, if the decision was correct they were praised for their leadership, whereas if the decision was incorrect they were blamed for their mistakes. The “but I couldn’t have known!” excuse has never been deemed an acceptable way for leaders to justify their mistakes. In the past, leaders have successfully navigated much greater degrees of uncertainty. In the case of COVID-19, Ron DeSantis, who had no previous training in public health or medicine, was able to look at the data himself and correct discern what policy needed to be followed.

Although DeSantis deserves praise for his leadership, the fact that he was able to successfully figure this out without a scientific background demonstrates that the degree of “uncertainty” here was clearly manageable. As this post shows, it can credibly be argued much of this article was intentionally deceptive. What I am more surprised by is the degree of a lack of insight the author shows into the mistakes that were made. I should note that this is very common behavior you will observe from those who have been influenced by cults or cult like groups. As one reader remarked, it is astounding how much the quality of journalism has declined over the last few years and that an article of that quality made it to publication.

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Debt Rattle October 27 2022

Oct 272022

October 27, 2022 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 8:45 am Finance Tagged with: apocalypse, Big Tech, biolabs, blood clots, diesel, inflation, nukes, Polexit, Saudi, test range 50 Responses »

Salvador Dali Crepuscular old man 1918

• Stop Worrying & Love the Bomb (Chris Hedges)

• Ukraine Is Test Range For Western Arms – Russia Defense Minister (RT)

• Weapons Sent To Ukraine End Up On Black Market – Putin (RT)

• US Vows To Protect Allies With Nukes (RT)

• About The “Dirty Bomb” Thesis And The Role Of Hatred (Saker)

• NATO Warns Russia And Iran (RT)

• Moscow Urges UN Probe Into Ukrainian Biolabs (RT)

• The EU Is Driving Polexit (RMX)

• Google and Microsoft Hit By Slowing Economy (BBC)

• Apple Slashes Production As Consumer Spending Drops (RT)

• No, Inflation Is NOT Over (Denninger)

• Saudi Arabia Slams US For Manipulating Oil Prices (RT)

• US Diesel Shortage Worsens (RT)

• A Disordered World – Part 1: Fracture (Satyajit Das)

• Infantilization Of The Apocalypse (Shellenberger)

• Biden Launches #VaxUpAmerica Tour (CHD)

• People Who Caught Mild Covid Had Increased Risk Of Blood Clots (CNBC)

Sink

Entering Twitter HQ – let that sink in! pic.twitter.com/D68z4K2wq7

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 26, 2022

Can’t shake the idea that Hedges is stuck in his cold war past. I don’t think there will be nuclear war. Threat, sure, but…

• Stop Worrying & Love the Bomb (Chris Hedges)

I have covered enough wars to know that once you open that Pandora’s box, the many evils that pour out are beyond anyone’s control. War accelerates the whirlwind of industrial killing. The longer any war continues, the closer and closer each side comes to self-annihilation. Unless it is stopped, the proxy war between Russia and the U.S. in Ukraine all but guarantees direct confrontation with Russia and, with it, the very real possibility of nuclear war. U.S. President Joe Biden, who doesn’t always seem to be quite sure where he is or what he is supposed to be saying, is being propped up in the I-am-a-bigger-man-than-you contest with Russian President Vladimir Putin by a coterie of rabid warmongers who have orchestrated over 20 years of military fiascos. They are salivating at the prospect of taking on Russia, and then, if there is any habitation left on the globe, China.

Trapped in the polarizing mindset of the Cold War — where any effort to de-escalate conflicts through diplomacy is considered appeasement, a perfidious Munich moment — they smugly push the human species closer and closer toward obliteration. Unfortunately for us, one of these true believers is Secretary of State Antony Blinken. “Putin is saying he is not bluffing. Well, he cannot afford bluffing, and it has to be clear that the people supporting Ukraine and the European Union and the Member States, and the United States and NATO are not bluffing neither,” E.U. foreign policy chief Josep Borrell warned. “Any nuclear attack against Ukraine will create an answer, not a nuclear answer but such a powerful answer from the military side that the Russian Army will be annihilated.” Annihilated. Are these people insane?

You know we are in trouble when former Donald Trump is the voice of reason. “We must demand the immediate negotiation of a peaceful end to the war in Ukraine, or we will end up in world war three” the former U.S. president said. “And there will be nothing left of our planet — all because stupid people didn’t have a clue … They don’t understand what they’re dealing with, the power of nuclear.” I dealt with many of these ideologues — David Petraeus, Elliot Abrams, Robert Kagan, Victoria Nuland — as a foreign correspondent for The New York Times. Once you strip away their chest full of medals or fancy degrees, you find shallow men and women, craven careerists who obsequiously serve the war industry that ensures their promotions, pays the budgets of their think tanks and showers them with money as board members of military contractors.

They are the pimps of war. If you reported on them, as I did, you would not sleep well at night. They are vain enough and stupid enough to blow up the world long before we go extinct because of the climate crisis, which they have also dutifully accelerated. If, as Joe Biden says, Putin is “not joking” about using nuclear weapons and we risk nuclear “Armageddon,” why isn’t Biden on the phone to Putin? Why doesn’t he follow the example of John F. Kennedy, who repeatedly communicated with Nikita Khrushchev to negotiate an end to the Cuban missile crisis? Kennedy, who unlike Biden served in the military, knew the obtuseness of generals. He had the good sense to ignore Curtis LeMay, the Air Force chief of staff and head of the Strategic Air Command, as well as the model for General Jack D. Ripper in “Dr. Strangelove,” who urged Kennedy to bomb the Cuban missile bases, an act that would have probably ignited a nuclear war. Biden is not made of the same stuff.

[..] The West has been baiting Moscow for decades. I reported from Eastern Europe at the end of the Cold War. I watched these militarists set out to build what they called a unipolar world — a world where they alone ruled. First, they broke promises not to expand NATO beyond the borders of a unified Germany. Then they broke promises not to “permanently station substantial combat forces” in the new NATO member countries in Eastern and Central Europe. Then they broke promises not to station missile systems along Russia’s border. Then they broke promises not to interfere in the internal affairs of border states such as Ukraine, orchestrating the 2014 coup that ousted the elected government of Victor Yanukovich, replacing it with an anti-Russian — fascist aligned — government, which, in turn, led to an eight-year-long civil war, as the Russian populated regions in the east sought independence from Kiev.

“We have eight different 155mm artillery systems in the field … so it’s like a competition between systems” to see which one proves best..”

• Ukraine Is Test Range For Western Arms – Russia Defense Minister (RT)

The conflict in Ukraine gives Western arms producers a chance to see which products fare best in a real fight against Russia, the country’s defense minister has said.“We have a combat testing field in Ukraine during this war,” Aleksey Reznikov explained. “We have eight different 155mm artillery systems in the field … so it’s like a competition between systems” to see which one proves best. The comments came in an interview with Politico published on Tuesday. The testing ground idea was previously expressed by Reznikov’s deputy, Vladimir Gavrilov, who claimed that some American defense contractors were fielding their prototypes in Ukraine.Kiev expects military aid from NATO members to continue flowing into the country for years and wants to benefit more from it, Reznikov said. For example, Ukraine could start joint ventures with Poland, the UK, or Germany to produce weapons.

“We have to develop a UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) industry not only for aerial drones but also on land and in the sea because it’s the future” of warfare, he noted. He was also skeptical about restrictions under which Ukraine’s supporters are shipping arms to Kiev. As the conflict with Russia unfolded, the US and its allies have repeatedly reconsidered previous decisions not to send heavier weapons, the defense minister pointed out. “I’m really optimistic that Abrams tanks are possible in the future and I am sure that fighter jets like F-16s, F-15s, or Gripen from Sweden will also be possible,” he said. Washington was initially reluctant to provide lethal aid to Ukraine out of concern that Russia would consider it an escalation but gradually reconsidered and supplied increasingly sophisticated weapons, which Reznikov sees as a favorable trend.

Western officials cited logistical issues with training Ukrainian pilots and maintenance of the fighter jets among the reasons why Ukraine can’t get F-16s or F-15s. But according to media reports, Kiev may get them in the long run. Reznikov said European NATO allies were looking to the US in their aid decisions, so it was up to Washington to up the ante. “After the first Abrams [arrives] I’m sure we will have Leopards, Marders, and other types of heavy armored vehicles like tanks,” he told the news outlet. Among the weapons the US most recently designated for Ukraine are the NASAMS air defense systems. Washington is also reportedly considering sending some old HAWK surface-to-air missiles it has stockpiled to see if they are still effective.

“..70% of weapons supplied to Ukraine never make it to the front lines as they have to pass through a network of “power lords, oligarchs and political players.”

• Weapons Sent To Ukraine End Up On Black Market – Putin (RT)

Western weapons flowing into Ukraine have begun to make their way onto black markets, Russian President Vladimir Putin said during a meeting with the heads of security and special services of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) countries on Wednesday. The Russian leader called on the participants of the meeting to bolster cooperation in anti-terrorism efforts and noted that there were “serious challenges” posed by the emerging black arms markets in Ukraine. Putin claimed that “cross-border criminal groups” were actively involved in smuggling weapons to other regions and that it wasn’t just small firearms. “There is a persistent risk of criminals getting hold of more powerful weapons, including portable air defense systems and precision weapons.”

The president’s statement comes after Russia’s permanent representative to the UN, Vassily Nebenzia, warned last month that corrupt Ukrainian officials had established channels to deliver Western-supplied weapons onto the global black market. Meanwhile, the West’s top military officials have admitted that it is nearly impossible to effectively track where the billions of dollars worth of arms delivered to Ukraine actually end up. Pentagon Inspector General Sean O’Donnell told Bloomberg in August that there was almost no fidelity as the Ukrainians still used paper “hand receipts” to trace supplied weapons. CBS News also reported that some 70% of weapons supplied to Ukraine never make it to the front lines as they have to pass through a network of “power lords, oligarchs and political players.”

“There is really no information as to where they’re going at all,” Donatella Rovera, a senior crisis adviser with Amnesty international told the outlet, adding that it was “really worrying” that the countries supplying these weapons do not find it necessary to put in place robust oversight mechanisms. CBS was later pressured, however, to pull the documentary and amend the story after the channel was accused of spreading “Russian propaganda.” Ukrainian presidential adviser Mikhail Podoliak has insisted there is “no proof” that weapons entering the country were unaccounted for. Ukraine has insisted that an uninterrupted flow of Western weapons is the key to the country’s survival on the battlefield. Russia, meanwhile, has warned on multiple occasions that pumping Kiev with weapons will only prolong the conflict.

As Russia spoke just once about self protection.

• US Vows To Protect Allies With Nukes (RT)

The US military will unleash its full arsenal, including nuclear weapons, to protect South Korea and Japan from attack, a top State Department official has said, also blasting Pyongyang for its “dangerous” and “destabilizing” weapons tests, while vowing “ironclad” cooperation with allies in Asia. Speaking ahead of multiple rounds of talks in Japan’s capital with her South Korean and Japanese counterparts on Tuesday, US Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman said Washington would deploy its “nuclear, conventional and missile defense” forces should the two allies ever come under attack, emphasizing the US’ ‘nuclear umbrella’ policy.

Sherman went on to condemn recent missile launches by North Korea – a major focus of this week’s meetings – slamming the DPRK’s record number of weapons tests this year as “deeply irresponsible, dangerous, and destabilizing.” During a separate meeting held with Sherman before the three-way sit-down alongside Japan, South Korean First Vice Foreign Minister Cho Hyundong said Pyongyang’s actions were “creating serious tension on the Korean Peninsula,” sounding the alarm over an update to North Korea’s nuclear weapons policies last month.In addition to a flurry of weapons tests and shows of force in retaliation to joint US-South Korean war games, the North recently announced that it had carried out a drill simulating the loading of tactical nuclear warheads into a silo hidden below a reservoir, part of a series of exercises launched in September to ensure the readiness of its nuclear forces.

North Korea maintains its nuclear arsenal is intended only for self-defense, and has criticized joint US-South Korean military drills time and again as rehearsals for an invasion. US officials have repeatedly predicted an imminent North Korean nuclear test in recent months, though the country has refrained from any live detonations since 2017. Nonetheless, the forecasts come amid a major spike in tensions between the two Koreas, as both sides continue to issue threats and carry out military demonstrations. On Wednesday, Washington, Seoul, and Tokyo pledged deeper military ties amid “provocations” by Pyongyang, and also “agreed that an unparalleled scale of response would be needed in case North Korea conducts a seventh nuclear test,” a South Korean official told reporters.

“To the demented minds of the Neocons, total chaos would look better than total defeat, right?”

• About The “Dirty Bomb” Thesis And The Role Of Hatred (Saker)

[Sidebar: right now, NATO simply does not have the forces needed to attack Russia with any hope of success. One single Airborne Brigade Combat Team won’t make *any* difference here. And even if the US decides to go to a full mobilization (which is really impossible, good luck with that!), it would have to bring those forces to Europe. And even if the US can bring in, say, 1’000’000 million men, it will be far easier for Russia to mobilize, say, 3’000’000 men in response. Then what? And did I mention that as soon as the US ships set sail, Russia will obliterate any ports and facilities expecting to receive the US forces. Try this: take the full Polish, 3B, Romanian and Ukronazi armed forces, then add the FULL 101st and 82nd and what do you get? A multinational (“combined”) force which was never designed to operate in such a convoluted way, especially against the better-than-peer united military under a single command! And I won’t even go into such thorny issues as assembly points, maneuver, logistics, air defenses, etc. As I have said, this is all optics, optics and more optics, nothing more]

While zombies like Brandon and his “genius” VP are clueless about any of that, there must be at least a few folks in the Pentagon or the letter soup agencies who understand the simple fact that the way things look now, the Hegemony has three options: • Be defeated • Declare victory and leave (same deal, just with a tiny fig leaf for modesty) • Commit suicide by attacking Russia directly. Not very good perspectives. So here is one more: how about creating total chaos and hope that something advantageous comes out of it? In other words, while setting off a dirty bomb will do nothing in purely military terms (it sure won’t stop the Russian military), it will create such a huge political reaction that the current situation will turn into total chaos, panic, rumors, lies, etc. To the demented minds of the Neocons, total chaos would look better than total defeat, right?

Yes, I know, nobody with half a brain will ever sincerely believe that the Russians did it. But if past behavior is the best predictor of future behavior, I would submit that there will always be enough doubleplusgoodshitheaters in the Hegemony to believe literally *anything* no matter how self-evidently stupid and preposterous that *anything* is. We do, after all, live in a society were nobody teaches how to think anymore (schools just make kids dumber and dumber) and the vast majority of people still reply on legacy corporate propaganda machine to get what they think is “information”. Not to mention that on a psychological and spiritual level, we live not only in a post-Christian society, but even a post-Truth society in which true and false have simply lost any objective meaning other than “like it” or “I don’t like it”. We could even call this a “post-reality” society!

NATO is an empty echo chamber.

• NATO Warns Russia And Iran (RT)

Russia now falsely claims Ukraine is preparing to use a radiological “dirty bomb” on its own territory, said NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, Report informs, citing NATO. NATO Allies reject this transparently false allegation: “Russia often accuses others of what they intend to do themselves. We have seen this pattern before. From Syria to Ukraine. Russia must not use false pretexts for further escalation.” According to Stoltenberg, the world is watching closely: “Russia’s brutal war and illegal war is at a pivotal moment. President Putin is responding to his failures on the battlefield with more aggression. Strikes on civilians, on civilian energy infrastructure. And drone and missile attacks on residential areas.” “In recent days, we have also seen Iran provide military support to the Russian war effort. This is unacceptable. No country should be helping the aggressor in an illegal war. So I welcome that Allies and the European Union are implementing strong sanctions on Tehran,” he said.

“..Washington has “worked collaboratively to improve Ukraine’s biological safety, security, and disease surveillance for both human and animal health,” by providing support to “46 peaceful Ukrainian laboratories, health facilities, and disease diagnostic sites over the last two decades.”

I like how they fit in animal health.

• Moscow Urges UN Probe Into Ukrainian Biolabs (RT)

Russia is calling on the UN Security Council to establish a commission to investigate alleged violations of the convention prohibiting the production or use of biological weapons by Ukraine and the United States.“We requested a meeting in two days in line with Article VI of the Biological Weapons Convention,” the Russian mission to the United Nations said on Tuesday. Moscow’s ambassador, Vassily Nebenzia, circulated a draft resolution ahead of a meeting set for Thursday, along with “a variety of documents and evidence that shed light on the true nature of military biological activities of the US and Ukraine on the Ukrainian territory.”

Russia was forced to invoke Article VI of the convention to raise the issues with the Security Council after its repeated inquiries were largely ignored by Washington and Kiev, who “have not provided necessary explanations, nor have they taken immediate measures to remedy the situation,” Nebenzia explained. Moscow has alleged that the two countries conducted secretive, joint biological research on Ukrainian soil, claiming it had obtained incriminating evidence of those activities during the ongoing military operation. The Russian Defense Ministry has gradually released said materials to the public in batches since March.“The data analysis gives evidence of non-compliance by the American and Ukrainian sides with the provisions” of the BWC, Nebenzia said.

Last month, Russia convened a meeting of BCW member states in Geneva, which failed to provide any tangible result, with delegates from 35 out of 89 nations either dismissing the Russian claims or expressing support for the kind of research the US and Ukraine were conducting, according to the US State Department. Only seven nations expressed support for Russia: Belarus, China, Cuba, Iran, Nicaragua, Syria and Venezuela. In the wake of the meeting, Moscow proposed amendments to the BWC, floating three ideas to reinforce the landmark international agreement and make it more legally binding for its parties. Namely, Russia called for negotiations on a “legally binding protocol,” an “effective verification mechanism” and a “scientific advisory committee” within the group.

Russia also proposed making the control mechanisms more transparent, with additional “confidence-building measures,” suggesting BWC participants must be obliged to declare their “activities in the biological sphere outside the national territory.” The US and Ukraine have dismissed Russia’s bioweapons claims as disinformation and a conspiracy theory. Back in June, the Pentagon published the ‘Fact Sheet on WMD Threat Reduction Efforts with Ukraine, Russia and Other Former Soviet Union Countries’. The US military claimed that following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Washington has “worked collaboratively to improve Ukraine’s biological safety, security, and disease surveillance for both human and animal health,” by providing support to “46 peaceful Ukrainian laboratories, health facilities, and disease diagnostic sites over the last two decades.” These programs have allegedly focused on “improving public health and agricultural safety measures at the nexus of nonproliferation.”

“A democratic mandate was overturned in the name of democracy..”

• The EU Is Driving Polexit (RMX)

It now looks certain that the money from the EU Recovery Fund owed to Poland will not arrive in Warsaw before the 2023 parliamentary elections. This dramatic move is a purely political decision taken in Brussels and Berlin to “starve” the unruly Poles. Now, there are leaks in the media that the remaining EU funds owed to Poland will also be frozen. This is no surprise given that the EU establishment has abandoned any pretense of even-handedness. It is logical that Brussels brings out all available weapons against the hated conservative Law and Justice (PiS) government. The objective is to make Poles vote the right way and choose the right government. It is meddling in the internal and sovereign affairs of a member state, which has little to do with democracy. This is not in the spirit of EU treaties and founding principles.

Principles such as subsidiarity and the notion of a Europe of equal and sovereign member states — a voluntary union that pools rather than takes away sovereignty. Now, the EU seems to be about breaking rebellious provinces and making them accept central decision-making authority. This is not the first time this has happened. The same was done to the Syriza government in Greece in 2015. It was forced to adopt policies imposed by the troika of the European Commission, IMF, and European Central Bank. A democratic mandate was overturned in the name of democracy. It would all be funny if it was not so serious.European institutions have also done this to Italy, changing governments to ones that followed its strictures. Pressure was also applied to Ireland, Portugal, and Spain. Now, it is Poland’s and Hungary’s turn.

The EU establishment is determined to avoid any change to the way it does things. It has learned nothing from the financial crisis of 2008, the euro crisis, Brexit, or the total collapse of its energy policy as a result of the war in Ukraine. They do not welcome calls for reform that would make them share power. When that kind of challenge arises, they react sharply, calling opponents extremists and anti-Europeans who must be stopped. The EU elites are always right and never at fault for anything. We cannot rule out that they will succeed in breaking Poland in the same way as they broke Athens and Rome. But if they do, it will not be without consequences. Polexit could become a self-fulfilling prophecy as the people turn against the EU or as the EU establishment effectively pushes Poland out of the EU. The groundwork for this is being laid before our very eyes.

The tech sector is taking major hits.

• Google and Microsoft Hit By Slowing Economy (BBC)

Sales at the tech giants Alphabet and Microsoft have slowed sharply, adding to fears of a downturn in the economy. Alphabet, which owns Google and YouTube, said sales rose just 6% in the three months to September, to $69bn, as firms cut their advertising budgets. It marked the US firm’s weakest quarterly growth in nearly a decade outside of the start of the pandemic. Microsoft meanwhile said demand for its computers and other technology had weakened. Its sales rose by 11% to $50.1bn, marking its slowest revenue growth in five years. Consumers and businesses around the world are cutting back as prices rise and interest rates go up, fuelling fears of a global recession. A strong US dollar has also hurt American multinationals, making it more expensive to sell products abroad.

Profits at Alphabet dropped nearly 30% to $13.9bn in the quarter, as YouTube ad revenues declined for the first time since the firm started to report them publicly. Sales growth at the firm has slowed for five consecutive quarters. Boss Sundar Pichai said that Alphabet was “sharpening” its focus and “being responsive to the economic environment”. “When Google stumbles, it’s a bad omen for digital advertising at large,” said Evelyn Mitchell, principal analyst at Insider Intelligence, noting that Google’s core website has in the past been more resilient to ad spending downturns than social media sites like Facebook or Snap. “This disappointing quarter for Google signifies hard times ahead if market conditions continue to deteriorate.”

And that tech sector is a very large part of the financial market.

• Apple Slashes Production As Consumer Spending Drops (RT)

US tech giant Apple will cut back the assembly of the recently launched iPhone 14 Plus to counter softness in smartphone sales, market researcher TrendForce reported on Tuesday. The company will reportedly focus instead on high-end models. According to the report, the manufacturer will increase output of the more expensive iPhone 14 Pro, the share of which has increased to 60% of total output from the initially planned 50%. It could reportedly further rise to 65% in the future.The researcher indicated that Apple’s Pro and Pro Max premium tier devices have been strong sellers at a time when a global chip crisis is unfolding, helping the company push margins higher.

It also warned that rising US interest rates could crimp consumer spending, undermining demand for iPhones in the first quarter of 2023. This could reportedly lead to a 14% year-on-year drop in production to 52 million units.Data by research firm Canalys shows that Apple was the only vendor in the top five to register growth in shipments in the third quarter. The company has improved its share of the global smartphone market to 18% from 15% a year ago despite the shrinking market. Last month, Apple said it would manufacture the iPhone 14 in India, as it moves some of its production out of China to mitigate the risks arising from the growing tensions between Washington and Beijing.

“..nobody is going to invest in a 20, 30 or 40 year lifetime plant when it can be ripped out from under them in two years..”

• No, Inflation Is NOT Over (Denninger)

I’ve heard plenty of it. The rally Friday was predicated on yet another “rumor” that The Fed was going to “step down” its rate hikes. It’s bunk.Folks, what’s the inflation rate you’ve been quoted for food on an annualized basis for the last 12 months? 10, 12%? Really? What planet are you on? It’s not “sticker price”, its as sold price that matters. That is if the “shelf” price is $2.49 for an 8oz bar of cheese but the store has a “use five times” coupon for $1.69 the price is $1.69.If suddenly the coupons disappear what is the actual inflation in as-sold price? It’s not 11% — it’s close to fifty percent.If eggs are routinely $0.99/dz and now they’re $2.09 that’s more than a double.Look at the price of a can of pumpkin for a pie coming up in a few weeks. More than a double from last year; now over $5 where I am. Can you blunt this by “trading down” and similar? Sure. For a while.

You can also burn through your freezer, if you have one. But eventually this shows up in your grocery bill and if you think this has been 11% or somesuch over the last 12 months I want some of whatever you’re smoking. Until the Pavlovian response of the markets to any rumor The Fed will slow down breaks and Congress stops thinking it can blow $2.067 trillion on Medicare and Medicaid in a fiscal year while collecting just $339 billion in tax to pay for that inflation is not done. Further, until The Federal Government not only rescinds its declaration that carbon-based energy shall be extinguished and puts into law protections preventing them from threatening to ruin the entire field again which cannot be changed at the simple whim of the majority energy companies would be committing rank fraud to invest in further production, refining and transport — and they will not, as a result, do so.

They will instead do the only rational thing under that paradigm and run their existing plant to ruin which means that problem won’t get resolved either — nor will the high prices.If your thesis is that this will reverse “in three weeks” on a “Red Hurricane” in the mid-term elections you’re nuts Neither Republicans or Democrats have done a single thing over the last twenty years about the source of the budget issues — in fact they have, each and every year, made it worse. The war on energy cannot be rescinded with a simple majority because nobody is going to invest in a 20, 30 or 40 year lifetime plant when it can be ripped out from under them in two years as happened this time. Sorry folks but if you’re buying into that — you’re wrong.

The love affair is over. No more petro dollar.

• Saudi Arabia Slams US For Manipulating Oil Prices (RT)

Saudi Arabia’s energy minister, Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman, has criticized nations for tapping their emergency oil stockpiles in order to manipulate prices, and warned of consequences if the reserves run dry. “It is my profound duty to make clear to the world that losing emergency stocks may be painful in the months to come,” the Saudi minister told the Future Initiative Investment conference in Riyadh on Tuesday. He noted that the US’ Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) was not intended to relieve price pressures, but instead was meant to address emergency supply constraints. The comments come after US President Joe Biden announced the sale of another 14 million barrels from the SPR, following the release of 180 million barrels of oil since April.

Last week, the US authorities said they would release additional crude from the SPR to keep a lid on America’s gasoline prices and then replenish the reserves. The historic use of emergency stocks has worried investors around the world, as excessive volumes of oil could flood the market and put it under pressure. According to an oil analyst at Energy Aspects, Amrita Sen, the SPR is now “absolutely being used to keep prices lower even though that’s not what it’s meant to be used for.” The Biden administration has reportedly indicated that further tapping of the strategic reserves could be linked to the recent decision of OPEC+ to cut oil production.

OPEC+ announced that countries comprising the group will cut oil production by 2 million barrels per day starting in November. The cuts will be distributed based on quotas under the OPEC+ deal as of August 2022. The curtailing of output is aimed at stabilizing the global oil market ahead of a seasonal drop in demand, and amid fears of a global recession.

All the trucks that deliver all the products.

• US Diesel Shortage Worsens (RT)

US diesel shortages are spreading along the East Coast amid a ban on imports from Russia, raising fears of further surges in prices for the fuel as consumers brace for the winter heating season. Mansfield Energy, one of the nation’s major fuel distributors, instituted emergency measures on Tuesday and warned its customers that carriers were being forced to visit multiple terminals in some cases to find supplies, delaying deliveries. With shortages spreading from the Northeast to the Southeast, the company advised customers to give 72-hour notice for their orders to avoid having to pay above-market prices. “In many areas, actual fuel prices are currently 30-80 cents higher than the posted market average because supply is tight,” said Mansfield, which delivers over three billion gallons of oil products annually.

With the relatively low-cost suppliers running out of diesel, distributors are forced to draw from higher-cost sources, resulting in unusually wide spreads in pricing. Mansfield’s advisory came just six days after US National Economic Council director Brian Deese told Bloomberg News that diesel supplies were “unacceptably low” and that President Joe Biden’s administration had “all options” on the table to reduce prices. However, as Bloomberg and other media outlets have noted, it’s not clear how those options would provide long-term relief. Diesel supplies in New England, the US region most reliant on distillate fuels for heating, have reportedly dwindled to about one-third of normal levels for this time of year. Nationwide, the US has only 25 days’ worth of diesel supplies, the lowest level since 2008.

Deese told Bloomberg that the US could tap its Northeast Home Heating Oil Reserve, which holds one million barrels of diesel for emergency use. But, as the Washington Post noted, demand for the fuel is so high in the Northeast that those reserves would be depleted in fewer than six hours. The White House has also considered banning or restricting exports of refined fuels – a strategy that industry trade groups claimed would backfire “Banning or limiting the export of refined products would likely decrease inventory levels, reduce domestic refining capacity, put upward pressure on consumer fuel prices, and alienate US allies during a time of war,” the American Petroleum Institute and the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers said earlier this month in a letter to US Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm.

The shortages also put the US at risk of further spikes in prices if there’s a supply disruption, such as a refinery breakdown. Higher prices for the fuel would ripple through the US economy because 18-wheelers and other diesel-powered vehicles carry about 70% of the nation’s freight tonnage. Diesel prices are currently averaging nearly $5.32 per gallon nationwide, down 8.6% from the all-time high set in June, according to the AAA auto club. By comparison, the average gasoline price has dropped 25% from its record high to $3.76 per gallon. Diesel prices are up 47% from a year ago.

“Whatever the length, dimensions and outcome, Ukraine has exposed already present major differences in the world.”

• A Disordered World – Part 1: Fracture (Satyajit Das)

The avoidable Ukraine conflict, with its unnecessary destruction and human suffering, is best seen as a catalyst. Unwillingness to recognise core interests of parties, increasingly entrenched positions, and lack of interest in negotiations means a spiral into a wider confrontation is not impossible. With escalation difficult to calibrate, the evolution from a proxy into a real war between the US and Russia, which might draw in China, all nuclear-armed, remains possible.The West’s expressed desire for engineering regime change within Russia is dangerous. Any new regime may not be more amenable to Western pressure. History, most recently the Arab Spring and Colour Revolutions, shows that a dangerous political void is more likely than liberalisation.

Whatever the length, dimensions and outcome, Ukraine has exposed already present major differences in the world. In particular, the West’s response -trade restrictions, sanctions and asset seizures- will outlive the military actions and prove more damaging. The weaponization of trade and finance, modern gunboat diplomacy, has a long lineage. Sanctions and blockades were used in World War 1 and influenced Japan’s entry into World War 2. Western embargoes against communist bloc countries were common during the Cold War. Since 1979, the US has sought to isolate the Islamic Republic of Iran established by a popular revolution which overthrew the Shah, who had been installed by an American coup d’état. Measures against Russia commenced in 2014. The US has imposed progressively more stringent restrictions on China covering exports and sales of critical technologies since 2018.

In the short term, the measures have affected Covid19 disrupted supply chains, aggravating shortages and price inflation, especially in food, energy and raw materials. In the longer-term, the interaction with other stresses may prove significant. The effects of climate change driven extreme weather – droughts, floods, storms, wildfires- on food production and transportation links is accelerating. A triple dip La Niña alone threatens large scale disturbance with a potential global cost of $1 trillion (around 1 percent of global GDP). Resource scarcity – water, food, energy, raw materials- is simultaneously rising due to natural limits. The decisions by major producers to increasingly stockpile or limit foreign sales to ensure domestic supply and control local costs are adding to disruptions to food production.

“Civil rights activists in the 1950s sat at lunch counters and demanded to be treated like full adults. Notably, it was racist counterprotesters who poured milkshakes over them. Today, it’s the protesters who are spilling milk and throwing food.”

• Infantilization Of The Apocalypse (Shellenberger)

On Sunday, after climate activists in Germany threw mashed potatoes on a Monet painting, they screamed at the nearby museum-goers. “We won’t be able to feed our families in 2050” because of climate change, they alleged. But Volkswagen already agreed last year to end the sale of vehicles with internal combustion engines by 2035, and the UN Food & Agriculture Organization (FAO) predicts rising yields under even very high temperatures so long as farmers keep using fertilizer, irrigation, and tractors. That is, yields will continue under climate change so long as farmers don’t take the advice of climate activists. The activists who keep degrading precious works of art, and themselves, claim to be concerned about food and energy supplies, but in opposing oil, gas and fertilizer production they are actively reducing both. Over the last several months, I have described the demands of climate activists as fanatical and pointed to a large body of evidence suggesting that nihilism, narcissism, and feelings of personal inadequacy are the primary motives.

But nihilism, narcissism, and personal inadequacy alone do not explain why climate activists have chosen temper tantrum tactics. After all, the greatest protest movements of all time engaged in far more grown-up and dignified tactics. Think of the Salt March led by Gandhi, the Montgomery Bus Boycott led by Martin Luther King, and the anti-whaling protests of Greenpeace. Where protesters in the past asked to be treated like adults, climate protesters today demand to be treated like children. Civil rights activists in the 1950s sat at lunch counters and demanded to be treated like full adults. Notably, it was racist counterprotesters who poured milkshakes over them. Today, it’s the protesters who are spilling milk and throwing food. Why is that, exactly? Why have Left-wing activists regressed in their tactics? The people in the protests are themselves apparently dignified people.

Pfizer’s sales department. What’s the uptake in kids so far? 2%? It’s over.

• Biden Launches #VaxUpAmerica Tour (CHD)

Flanked by Dr. Anthony Fauci, other top U.S. public health officials and the CEOs of major pharmacy chains including CVS, Rite-Aid and Walgreens, President Biden today urged “all Americans” to get an updated COVID-19 vaccine and pleaded with Congress to continue funding the vaccines and COVID-19 treatments, such as Pfizer’s Paxlovid. “If you’re fully vaccinated, get one more COVID shot — once a year, that’s it,” Biden said, likening it to an annual flu shot. “If you get it you’re protected, and if you don’t, you’re putting yourself and other people at unnecessary risk,” he said. Biden, who last month declared the “pandemic is over,” also urged people to get their kids the flu shot and the COVID-19 shot, stating “you can get them at the same time.” Biden ended his speech by getting the COVID-19 booster shot live on camera.

Commenting on Biden’s speech, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., founder, chairman of the board and chief legal counsel for Children’s Health Defense, said: “It’s troubling President Biden is so captive of a false and discredited narrative that he continues to aggressively promote a high-risk, zero-liability, experimental medical intervention with a product that doesn’t work as advertised and is causing horrendous health problems in Americans. “It’s even more dismaying that he has used the prestige and moral authority of the presidency to recruit America’s corporations into a racketeering enterprise.” Biden’s speech coincided with today’s announcement that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) on Wednesday will launch a #VaxUpAmerica Family Vaccine Tour that will feature pop-up vaccination events across the country.

As part of this tour, the White House said: “HHS will work with national and community-based organizations and others to reach families where they are with information on COVID-19 vaccines, and will host pop-up vaccination events and distribute toolkits at venues such as Head Start provider locations, nursing homes and community health centers around the country.” According to the White House, administration officials and others will “share information and encourage schools, community-based organizations, faith-based organizations, employers and others to host their own vaccination events.”The #VaxUpAmerica Tour will be accompanied by a big advertising push. “The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is launching new national and local TV, radio and print ads geared at reaching Black and Latino audiences in more than 30 markets in English and Spanish. New football and country music-themed radio ads geared at reaching rural communities will run in 15 local markets,” the White House said.

In the Dutch language, seal=zeehond (sea dog)

Seals are the dogs of the sea.pic.twitter.com/M3aKX3tR88

— Wonder of Science (@wonderofscience) October 26, 2022

Male elephants are normally 6000 kg max. This one is estimated at 8000 kg.

Massive 8,000 KG elephant in Tanzania pic.twitter.com/PH5KF3BCdu

— Historic Vids (@historyinmemes) October 26, 2022

Leanne Cooke photographed a deadly venomous Stephen’s Banded snake in Maitland, Australia

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Debt Rattle March 2 2018

Mar 022018

March 2, 2018 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 9:43 am Finance Tagged with: bees, bitcoin, diesel, equality, gun control, inflection, JFK, NRA, pesticides, Putin, seed vault, steel, tariff, Trump, Xi 8 Responses »

Harold Steggels Essex landscape 1932

• Trump’s Steel And Aluminum Tariffs Trigger Market Sell-Off In US, Asia (G.)

• Trump’s Tariffs Throw a Wrench in the Global Trading System (BBG)

• S&P 500 Breaks Below 100-Day Average Technical Inflection Point (BBG)

• JFK-Trump S&P500 Analog Chart (MW)

• NRA Members On Trump Gun Control Plans: ‘Every Word Of It Was A Betrayal’ (G.)

• Putin On New US Nuclear Stance: If Attacked, Russia Will Use Nukes (RT)

• China Bans Orwell’s Animal Farm And Letter ‘N’ Amid Anger At Xi (Ind.)

• ‘Cleanest In History’ Diesel Cars Still Pollute Far Above Legal Limits (Ind.)

• US Breaks 47-Year-Old Monthly Oil Production Record (Robert Rapier)

• Bitcoin’s Plunge in Volume Stirs Questions About Its Popularity (BBG)

• Making the Business Case for Gender Equality (PS)

• UK Risks Running Out Of Gas, Prices Soar (G.)

• UK Food Crisis Looms Without Brexit Deal (BBG)

• Pesticides Put Bees At Risk, European Watchdog Confirms (CNBC)

• ‘Doomsday’ Seed Vault Gets Makeover As Arctic Heats Up (AFP)

What he was elected on. Why should the US be dependent on imports for all of its steel?

• Trump’s Steel And Aluminum Tariffs Trigger Market Sell-Off In US, Asia (G.)

World stock markets have tumbled after Donald Trump said the United States would impose tariffs of 25% on steel imports and 10% on imported aluminum next week. The threat of a trade war with China and higher goods prices led to a sharp sell-off in Wall Street on Thursday, causing Asian markets to take fright on Friday. The Nikkei index in Japan fell 2.4%, Hong Kong and South Korea were down 1.6%, and the ASX200 in Sydney was off 1% in early afternoon trading. Asian steelmakers bore the brunt. South Korea’s Posco fell 3% and Japan’s Nippon Steel 4%. Michael McCarthy of CMC Markets in Sydney said it was a “sharp reminder of the initial negative reaction to the election of Mr Trump ..

… An explanation may come, but the initial market interpretation of the move is rank populism. The lack of structure makes anticipating further measures and possible responses to retaliatory moves difficult to predict.” The Dow Jones Industrial Average had initially fallen more than 570 points, with heavy losses for manufacturers like Caterpillar and Boeing. The index closed down 420 points and the S&P 500 and Nasdaq both dropped on the day. Trump campaigned on the promise of protecting the US steel industry but until now has done little to make good on those promises. At a meeting with US industry officials at the White House, he vowed to rebuild American steel and aluminum industries, saying they had been treated unfairly by other countries for decades.

The move is likely to increase tensions with China, whose top trade official, Lui He, is in Washington for trade talks. “People have no idea how badly our country has been treated by other countries, by people representing us that didn’t have a clue,” Trump said at a White House press conference attended by executives from the steel and aluminum industries. “Or if they did, then they should be ashamed of themselves because they’ve destroyed the steel industry, they’ve destroyed the aluminum industry, and other industries, frankly, when you look at all the plants, the car plants, automobile plants that moved down to Mexico for no reason whatsoever, except we didn’t know what we were doing. So we’re bringing it all back.”

Bloomberg claims that “..it looked like the global economy was running on all cylinders ..” No it didn’t.

• Trump’s Tariffs Throw a Wrench in the Global Trading System (BBG)

Just when it looked like the global economy was running on all cylinders, President Donald Trump injected a degree of risk to the otherwise favorable outlook. The U.S. president announced on Thursday plans to impose 25% tariffs on imported steel and 10% tariffs on foreign aluminum, with more details to be unveiled next week. American equities cratered for a third day as fears of a trade war spread and expectations for U.S. economic growth weakened a bit. The move to protect American metals producers threatens to raise prices for consumers and businesses that buy goods made with the raw materials. That will have implications for a U.S. central bank that’s debating how fast to raise interest rates this year.

“If tariffs go up, it will, at the margin, tend to put more upward pressure on prices, and those upward pressure on prices will have to be considered by the monetary authority,” New York Fed President William Dudley said in a speech in Brazil on Thursday. The extent of any economic damage will depend on the fine-print of Trump’s new policies and the severity of countries’ retaliation. Some economists worried the move might presage a shift toward an era of more economy-inhibiting protectionism just when it looked like the growth headwinds were fading. “It is possible that a more aggressive shift in policy is under way that could undermine the pro-growth tilt of fiscal policy, harming the U.S. and global economic expansions,” JPMorgan analysts wrote in a research note after Trump’s announcement.

Jay Powell gets a warm welcome.

• S&P 500 Breaks Below 100-Day Average Technical Inflection Point (BBG)

The stock market is flirting with a technical inflection point again. The S&P 500 Index briefly broke below its 100-day moving average Thursday, sinking as much as 2% after President Donald Trump said the U.S. will impose harsh tariffs on steel and aluminum imports. The announcement added fuel to a fire that’s been smoldering since last month’s selloff, as investors continue to worry about rising inflation and interest rates. That anxiety has brought the market close to collapsing through the line of defense the moving average represents.

“You’ve broken down below the halfway point, now you’re toying below the initial high after the collapse, and you’ve gotten into all sorts of technical problems,” Jim Paulsen, chief investment strategist at Leuthold Weeden, said by phone. “Breaking some technical averages here is starting to scare people.” The S&P 500 fell 1.1% to 2,684.02 as of 3:27 p.m. in New York, after going as low as 2,659.65. The index is down about 2.5% on the week. Before February’s correction, the gauge hadn’t touched the 100-day barrier since last August. And while the market is recovering some of Thursday’s losses late in the session, it still risks closing below the line for the third time in a month.

Causation and correlation.

• JFK-Trump S&P500 Analog Chart (MW)

Last month, MarketWatch used a chart overlay to illustrate how the stock market under John F. Kennedy has closely followed its performance over the same time frame with Donald Trump in the White House. Fast forward three weeks and, as of Wednesday’s close, the S&P 500, in relative terms, sat almost exactly where it did at this point during Kennedy’s administration. If the trend persists—a HUGE if, of course—prepare for some rather steep losses in the coming weeks. Perhaps it’s already started, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average down nearly 600 points at its Thursday low.

“After 328 trading days since election day, the Trump S&P 500 sits right on top of the JFK S&P 500,” the blogger behind the Global Macro Monitor wrote. ”The index, 328 trading days after the election day of each president, is less than five basis points within one another. Rather stunning, don’t you think?”

Trump needs Democrat support on this. Where are they?

• NRA Members On Trump Gun Control Plans: ‘Every Word Of It Was A Betrayal’ (G.)

NRA members have branded Donald Trump’s plans for stricter gun control legislation “stupid” and a “betrayal” after the president suggested reforms on Wednesday. In an open meeting with congressional Democrats and Republicans, Trump embraced raising the age limit on purchasing certain weapons and suggested that law enforcement should be allowed to confiscate people’s guns before going through due process in a court. Joe Biggs, an Austin, Texas-based NRA member and chief executive of Rogue Right, a conservative news website, was among those unimpressed by the proposal. “That’s the stupidest fucking thing I’ve ever heard in my life. Hopefully he was just having a momentary brain fart, a lapse of judgment,” Biggs said.

He added: “Hopefully someone pulled him into the back and said: ‘You’ve just lost half your base by saying something that stupid.’” During the meeting Trump called for a “beautiful” bill which would expand background checks on gun purchases and restrict young people from purchasing certain weapons. But it was his suggestion that in some cases law enforcement should be allowed to “take the guns first, go through due process second” – that most alarmed gun owners on the right. “You spend your whole life on the right and you always think that Democrats are going to be the ones who take your guns,” Biggs said. “And then you hear President Trump say: ‘Oh we’re gonna take your guns and go through due process later.’” Biggs said he would vote for another candidate in the 2020 presidential election if Trump pushed through his reforms.

Putin in his state of the union announced to his people that Russia can defend itself from any attacks, including nuclear. Western media twist his words; the Guardian claims that “Russia threatens arms race” and even Zero Hedge says :“..the era of the Western world attempting to prevent Russia’s expansion is over.”

That’s all straight from NATO’s playbook.

• Putin On New US Nuclear Stance: If Attacked, Russia Will Use Nukes (RT)

The new US nuclear posture allows a nuclear strike in response to a conventional attack. President Vladimir Putin said Russia, if attacked with nuclear weapons, would not hesitate to respond in kind. The warning came during a state of the nation address delivered by the Russian president on Thursday, in which he presented a number of new advanced strategic weapon systems which, he said, would render all anti-missile capabilities that the US currently has powerless. Putin also mentioned the new American nuclear posture, which has relaxed some rules on when the US is prepared to use its nuclear weapons. “We are greatly concerned by some parts of the new nuclear posture, which reduces the benchmark for the use of nuclear weapons…

..Whatever soothing words one may try to use behind closed doors, we can read what was written. And it says that these weapons can be used in response to a conventional attack or even a cyber-threat,” he said. “Our nuclear doctrine says Russia reserves the right to use nuclear weapons only in response to a nuclear attack or an attack with other weapons of mass destruction against her or her allies, or a conventional attack against us that threatens the very existence of the state.” “It is my duty to state this: Any use of nuclear weapons against Russia or its allies, be it small-scale, medium-scale or any other scale, will be treated as a nuclear attack on our country. The response will be instant and with all the relevant consequences,” Putin warned.

Xi as a stand up comedian.

• China Bans Orwell’s Animal Farm And Letter ‘N’ Amid Anger At Xi (Ind.)

The Chinese government has banned George Orwell’s dystopian satirical novella Animal Farm and the letter ‘N’ in a wide-ranging online censorship crackdown. Experts believe the increased levels of suppression – which come just days after the Chinese Communist Party announced presidential term limits would be abolished – are a sign Xi Jinping hopes to become a dictator for life. The China Digital Times, a California-based site covering China, reports a list of terms excised from Chinese websites by government censors includes the letter ‘N’, Orwell’s novels Animal Farm and 1984, and the phrase ‘Xi Zedong’. The latter is a combination of President Xi and former chairman Mao Zedong’s names.

Search terms blocked on Sino Weibo, a microblogging site which is China’s equivalent of Twitter, include “disagree”, “personality cult”, “lifelong”, “immortality”, “emigrate”, and “shameless”. It was not immediately obvious why the ostensibly harmless letter ‘N’ had been banned, but some speculated it may either be being used or interpreted as a sign of dissent. [..] Facebook, Twitter and YouTube have long been blocked in the country and even Winnie the Pooh recently found himself subject to China’s latest internet crackdown. In July, references to the cartoon bear on Sina Weibo were removed after his image was compared to President Xi.

Our car addiction is deeply rooted. We built our communities around them. Not around ourselves. That is a much bigger problem than what fuel a car uses to power a vehicle 10-20 times heavier than its driver, with a 10% fuel efficiency.

• ‘Cleanest In History’ Diesel Cars Still Pollute Far Above Legal Limits (Ind.)

Over half of diesel cars recently approved for sale in Europe are emitting pollutants far above current legal air pollution limits, despite being marketed as the “cleanest in history”. Analysis of emissions data from nearly 100 car models revealed many vehicles from the new “Euro 6” generation would not be allowed on the market if they were tested today. An investigation by Greenpeace found dozens of these high-polluting vehicles were approved for sale during a “monitoring period” in which there was no limit set on the amount of nitrogen oxide (NOx) they could emit on roads. Many of these vehicles have only gone on sale across Europe in the recent months. The news comes after a German court ruled cities can impose driving bans on certain diesel cars in an effort to deal with the country’s air pollution.

Such restrictions on diesel cars – including the clean air zones found in London and other UK cities – tend to focus on older, dirtier car models. However, Greenpeace campaigners emphasised that while newer Euro 6 models are described as “light years away from their older counterparts” many of them still have the capacity to emit high levels of pollutants. Following the so-called “dieselgate” scandal in 2015, which found VW had installed “cheat software” in its vehicles to fool lab emissions tests, there was a widespread push for tough new regulations. In the aftermath of the scandal, testing revealed diesel cars that met the latest “Euro 6” limits for NOx emissions in lab tests were massively exceeding those limits when driving on the road.

Our old Oil Drum pal Robert. I’d be interested to see how fast and how sharp the shale numbers are expected to start falling.

• US Breaks 47-Year-Old Monthly Oil Production Record (Robert Rapier)

In a recent post, I wrote that the U.S. would almost certainly set a new oil production record this year. I noted that the most recent data from the Energy Information Administration (EIA) showed that last November U.S. oil production exceeded 10 million barrels per day (BPD) for the first time since 1970. This week the EIA revised November’s oil production upward, which pushed it into the #1 spot for monthly production. The revision increased U.S. oil production in November to 10.057 million BPD, just edging out the previous record of 10.044 million BPD from November 1970. However, many new records should be set this year, as the EIA projects that oil production will reach 11 million BPD by year-end.

This would push the U.S. into first place among the world’s oil producers. But depending on how it is measured, the U.S. is already #1. The 2017 BP Statistical Review of World Energy ranks the U.S. #1 in oil production, but that’s because they include natural gas liquids (NGLs), which have surged in the U.S. along with natural gas production. The gains in U.S. oil production are being driven by production gains across tight oil plays in the Bakken and Eagle Ford, and especially the Permian Basin – where oil production is approaching a staggering 3 million BPD.

Are they buying their own?

• Bitcoin’s Plunge in Volume Stirs Questions About Its Popularity (BBG)

Earlier this year, when Bitcoin’s price fell by more than 60% from its record close, a less-noticed Bitcoin figure also plunged: the number of daily transactions. There are many explanations for the fall-off in trading, from software- to news-related. What’s less understood is why the level hasn’t recovered as Bitcoin’s price made a 50% comeback since Feb. 5. That’s left some investors wondering whether the cryptocurrency is waning in popularity. The average number of trades recorded daily has roughly dropped in half from the December highs and touched its lowest in two years last month, even as Bitcoin became a household name and roared back above $10,000.

1) Why does it take a guy to make that case?

2) “$28 trillion would be added to the global economy by 2025” sounds like a male argument. If the only advantage of more women is that the same arguments are made by different voices, why bother?

• Making the Business Case for Gender Equality (PS)

Around the world, gender bias is attracting renewed attention. Through protest marches and viral social-media campaigns, women everywhere are demanding an end to sexual harassment, abuse, femicide, and inequality. But, as successful as the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements have been in raising public awareness, the struggle for parity is far from over. Empowering women and girls is key to achieving all 17 of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals by 2030. At the moment, however, gender bias remains a significant obstacle to global progress, and it is particularly acute in the workplace. Today, only 5% of S&P 500 companies are led by women, according to Catalyst, a non-profit CEO watchdog.

That dismal figure is all the more remarkable when one considers that 73% of global firms allegedly have equal-opportunity policies in place, according to a survey by the International Labour Organization (ILO). Moreover, while research shows a clear link between a company’s gender balance and its financial health, women occupy fewer than 20% of governing board seats in the world’s largest companies. Addressing such deficiencies is both an economic and a moral imperative. A 2015 report by the McKinsey Global Institute found that if women and men played an “identical role in labor markets,” $28 trillion would be added to the global economy by 2025. These global gains would be in addition to the benefits for individual companies.

Firms with greater gender equality are more innovative, generous, and profitable. But, at the current rate of female empowerment, it would take nearly 220 years to close the gender gap. The world cannot afford to wait that long; we need a new approach.

The thrills of the just in time economy.

• UK Risks Running Out Of Gas, Prices Soar (G.)

National Grid has warned that the UK would not have enough gas to meet public demand on Thursday, as temperatures plummeted and imports were affected by outages. But the government said households would not notice disruptions to their supply or any increase in energy bills because suppliers, including British Gas, bought energy further ahead. The energy minister Claire Perry said people should cook and use their heating as they would normally. But experts said there was a strong chance that industrial users could experience interruptions to their gas supply. Within-day wholesale gas prices soared 74% to 200p per therm after the formal deficit warning, which acts as a call to suppliers to bring forward more gas.

It is the first time such an alert has been issued since 2010. By lunchtime on Thursday the price had spiked even higher, hitting a high of 275p per therm at one point. National Grid’s forecast for the day initially showed a shortfall across the day of 49.5m cubic metres (mcm) below the country’s projected need of 395.7mcm, which would normally be around 300mcm at this time of year. The gas deficit warning aims to fill the gap, which has since narrowed to 16.5mcm. “We are in communication with industry partners and are closely monitoring the situation,” the company said.

Gas demand is now at a five-year high, according to the market watchers S&P Global Platts. Simon Wood, a gas analyst at the group, said: “There’s a strong chance you’ll see some interruptions for industrial users to balance the system.” Big energy users such as car manufacturers have supply contracts which can be interrupted in return for lower prices. The situation has been compounded by several supply outages, which can relate to very cold weather. There have been problems with a pipeline to the Netherlands, reductions in gas flows from Norway, and technical issues at facilities in the UK, including at the North Morecambe Barrow terminal.

Gas shortage, food shortage. Self-sufficiency, anyone?

• UK Food Crisis Looms Without Brexit Deal (BBG)

Brexit would lead to an unprecedented food shortage if the U.K. leaves the European Union without a deal, the CEO of the country’s second-biggest grocer said. “The impact of closing the borders for a few days to the free movement of food would result in a food crisis the likes of which we haven’t seen,” J Sainsbury CEO Mike Coupe said in an interview. “It’s inconceivable to me that there won’t be a solution found.” Tensions are simmering between London and Brussels, with U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May saying Wednesday that no one in her position could ever agree to the draft Brexit treaty published by the EU.

May is seeking to get the EU to sign on to a transition phase at a summit of leaders later this month, but Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator, warned Thursday that any such agreement could still unravel before Britain’s scheduled exit in March 2019. Almost half of the food eaten in the U.K. is imported. Trade barriers would be especially damaging to Britain’s fresh-food retailers, who rely heavily on the unencumbered movement of perishable goods throughout the EU. In 2016, the U.K. imported 22.4 billion pounds ($30.8 billion) worth of meat, fish, dairy products, fruit and vegetables, according to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

Hey, don’t keep us from poisoning ourselves. It’s our god-given right.

• Pesticides Put Bees At Risk, European Watchdog Confirms (CNBC)

Wild bees and honeybees are put at risk by three pesticides from a group known as neonicotinoids, Europe’s food safety watchdog said on Wednesday, confirming previous concerns that prompted an EU-wide ban on use of the chemicals. The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) report, which covered wild bees and honeybees and included a systematic review of scientific evidence published since EFSA’s 2013 evaluation, is seen as crucial to whether the European moratorium on neonicotinoid use remains in place. The updated risk assessment found variations due to factors such as species of bee, exposure and specific pesticide, “but overall the risk to the three types of bees we have assessed is confirmed,” said Jose Tarazona, head of EFSA’s pesticides unit.

The European Union has since 2014 had a moratorium on use of neonicotinoids — made and sold by various companies including Bayer and Syngenta — after lab research pointed to potential risks for bees, which are crucial for pollinating crops. EU nations will discuss a European Commission proposal to ban three neonicotinoids next month in the Plant Animal Food and Feed Standing Committee. “This is strengthening the scientific basis for the Commission’s proposal to ban outdoor use of the three neonicotinoids,” a spokeswoman for the EU executive said.

The whole concept is based on permafrost. Or was.

• ‘Doomsday’ Seed Vault Gets Makeover As Arctic Heats Up (AFP)

Designed to withstand a nuclear missile hit, the world’s biggest seed vault, nestled deep inside an Arctic mountain, is undergoing a makeover as rising temperatures melt the permafrost meant to protect it. Dubbed the “Noah’s Ark” of food crops, the Global Seed Vault is buried inside a former coal mine on Svalbard, a remote Arctic island in a Norwegian archipelago around 1,000 kilometres (650 miles) from the North Pole. Opened in 2008, the seed bank plays a key role in preserving the world’s genetic diversity: it is home to more than a million varieties of seeds, offering a safety net in case of natural catastrophe, war, climate change, disease or manmade disasters.

But warmer temperatures have disrupted the environment around the vault. In an unexpected development, the permafrost, which was meant to help keep the temperature inside the vault at a constant -18 Celsius (-0.4 Fahrenheit), melted in 2016. “The summer season was (warmer) than expected. We had water intrusions in the (access) tunnel that could be related to climate change,” Asmund Asdal, one of the seed bank’s coordinators, told AFP. The Arctic is warming twice as fast as the rest of the planet, scientific studies show. And while Europe is at the moment experiencing a subzero cold spell, the North Pole recently registered above-zero temperatures, 30 degrees higher than normal.

Scientists say warm spells like this are occurring with increasing frequency in the Arctic. Norway recently announced it would contribute 100 million kroner (10 million euros, $12.5 million) to improve the repository in a bid to protect the precious seeds. “We want to be sure that the seed vault will be cold throughout the whole year, even if the temperature continues to increase in Svalbard,” Norway’s Agriculture Minister Jon Georg Dale told AFP.

Debt Rattle January 29 2018

Jan 292018

January 29, 2018 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 11:10 am Finance Tagged with: 5G, arms, bond yields, Brexit, debt relief, diesel, ECB, Facebook, QE, squalid, Trump, VW 11 Responses »

Fratelli Alinari Delphi c1920

• German Carmakers Take Another Hit With Diesel Testing on Monkeys, Humans (BBG)

• The Risks Facing Global Stocks As Money Printing Comes To An End (BI)

• Fire Sale By The Treasury Could Send Shock Waves Through Bond Market (CNBC)

• The Donald’s Davos Delusions (David Stockman)

• ECB’s Knot Says QE Must End ‘As Soon As Possible’ (BBG)

• The ECB And The Euro Are The Only Glue Holding Parts Of Europe Together (CNBC)

• Trump Administration Ponders Nationalizing 5G Mobile Network (CNBC)

• Facebook Makes Privacy Push Ahead Of Strict EU Law (R.)

• Hundreds Of Thousands Living In Squalid Rented Homes In England (G.)

• UK Brexit Bill ‘Constitutionally Unacceptable’ – House of Lords (Ind.)

• Australia Unveils Plan To Become One Of World’s Top 10 Arms Exporters (G.)

• Greek Debt Relief Will Depend On Continued Reforms – Regling (K.)

They get together to set up a testing group, but carefully far enough removed from their structures to deny any responsibility. “We paid millions into it, but we have no idea what they do”. And they will escape any real punishment. TBTF. Testing carcinogenics on people. In the past 10 years.

• German Carmakers Take Another Hit With Diesel Testing on Monkeys, Humans (BBG)

The reputation of Germany’s auto industry took a fresh hit from revelations it sponsored tests that exposed humans as well as monkeys to diesel exhaust fumes, which can cause respiratory illness and cancer. The study, supported by a little-known group founded by Volkswagen, Daimler and BMW in 2007, had 25 people breathe in diesel exhaust at a clinic used by the University of Aachen, Stuttgarter Zeitung reported Monday. The story, citing annual reports from the European Research Group on Environment and Health in the Transport Sector, or EUGT, which closed last year, followed a New York Times report earlier that the organization also conducted tests using monkeys. Germany’s auto industry, which is still reeling from Volkswagen’s diesel-cheating scandal where the company rigged emissions tests, distanced itself from the organization.

“We are appalled by the extent of the studies and their implementation,” Daimler said Monday in an emailed statement, adding it didn’t have any influence over the study and promised an investigation. “We condemn the experiments in the strongest terms.” The revelations are another bombshell undermining diesel’s image. The technology remains a key profit driver for German automakers, even as demand gradually slips in Europe, the main market for the diesel models. The reports also weaken the carmakers’ position in its efforts to counter criticism of the technology as cities mull bans and German politicians weigh more stringent upgrades to lower pollution levels. In an additional twist, the VW Beetle model used in the test with animals was among the vehicles rigged to cheat on emissions tests, the New York Times reported. Volkswagen apologized for the misconduct and lack of judgment of some individuals, calling the trials a mistake. VW on Monday again distanced itself from the activities of the group.

That rumbling roar in the distance.

• The Risks Facing Global Stocks As Money Printing Comes To An End (BI)

“Correlation does not imply causation” is a vital principle of statistics and numerical models which reminds us that just because two things correlate doesn’t mean one causes the other. For many investors, they’ll be hoping that the correlation shown in the chart below is not a sign for things to come for stock market returns. Because if this correlation holds, things could be about to get nasty. The chart, from Citi, shows the rolling annual change in central bank asset purchases overlaid against annual returns for the MSCI World Stock Market Index since the depths of the global financial crisis back in early 2009. Clearly, as asset purchase levels have changed, so too has the performance of global stocks, tending to rise when asset purchases increase and fall when asset purchases decline.

Until recently that is. As shown in the red circle on the chart, despite a recent deceleration in central bank purchases, stock market returns have actually increased recently, bucking the trend seen over much of the past nine years. “In a world where the global CB taper is well underway — and in any case largely announced — stocks are seemingly starting to decouple from the bearish implication of [the chart],” says Citi. “As we had hoped, in a strong cyclical backdrop, with earnings coming in strong, markets can focus on underlying fundamentals rather than the reduction in central bank accommodation.” Central bank asset purchases set to slow sharply over the next year, as seen in the dotted black line in the chart. If the relationship between asset purchases and stock market returns were to snap back into place, it suggests that stocks could fall by close to 50% over the next year or so. 50%!

To be clear, Citi isn’t saying that’s going to happen, but it is a reminder that we’re entering uncharted territory for financial markets. Ultra-easy monetary policy settings are slowly being reversed, and no one is really certain as to how it will all play out. Adding to the intrigue, it’s clear from this other chart from Citi that while stocks recently disconnected from central bank asset purchases, corporate credit markets have not, with spread compression in investment grade debt starting to reverse in line with lower asset purchases.

Bond yields are already soaring. Does the Fed have any control left, or is this it?

• Fire Sale By The Treasury Could Send Shock Waves Through Bond Market (CNBC)

Wells Fargo’s head of interest rate strategy is detecting a major trouble spot in the bond market. Michael Schumacher’s chief concern right now: Who’s going to buy all those extra Treasury notes? “They [people] are worried about Treasury issuance going up, up, up. You could see an increase in 2018 of 50% — maybe more versus last year. That’s got a lot of people very concerned, myself included,” he said recently on CNBC’s “Futures Now.” He anticipates the Treasury Department will likely announce within days a “pretty significant change” in the way it issues bonds. It comes just as the Fed is shrinking its balance sheet. With less demand coming from the Fed, a fire sale of sorts would increase supply and emerge as the major catalyst causing yields to jump.

“You could see a pretty significant sell-off not just in the 10-year, which people focus on quite a bit, but also on 30-year bonds. We’re very concerned about that,” Schumacher said. “Being the bond nerd that I am, I’d say the market wants to climb a wall of worry like it does in stocks.” Right now, 10-year Treasury yields are bouncing around 2.6% — up nearly 40 basis points during the past six months. Schumacher’s year-end forecast on the note is 2.95%. But he believes it’s not unreasonable to expect rates to push 3.25%. “Something around that level probably does get people pretty worked up. And, it’s such a contrast versus last year when bonds did very, very little,” he said. Yields for 30-year Treasurys, essentially flat for the past six months, appear to be waking up. They’re up about 17 basis points this year.

Too much swamp to be drained.

• The Donald’s Davos Delusions (David Stockman)

[..] above all else, the Donald has whiffed entirely on what is really killing the American economy. That is, the nation’s out-of-control central bank. Via its massive falsification of financial asset prices, the Fed has turned Wall Street into a gambling casino, the corporate C-suites into financial engineering joints and Washington into a profligate den of debt addicts. Likewise, its idiotic pursuit of more inflation (2%) through 100 straight months of ZIRP (or near zero interest rates) has savaged retirees and savers, enriched gamblers and leverage artists, eroded the purchasing power of stagnant worker paychecks and unleashed virulent speculation and malinvestment throughout the warp and woof of the financial system.

Of course, we did not really expect the Donald to take on the money printers – notwithstanding his campaign rhetoric about “one big, fat, ugly bubble”. After all, Trump has always claimed to be a “low interest man” and he did spend 40 years getting the worst financial education possible. To wit, he rode the Fed’s easy money fueled real estate bubble to a multi-billion net worth, or so he claims, and pronounced himself a business genius – mostly by virtue of piling cheap debt upon his properties and reaping the windfall gains. Stated differently, the Donald came to office wholly unacquainted with any notion of sound money and free market financial discipline. And now he has spent a year proving he is completely clueless as to why Flyover America has been shafted economically.

Rather than the top-to-bottom housecleaning that the Eccles Building desperately needed, Trump actually appointed a pedigreed Keynesian crony capitalist Washington lifer, Jerome Powell, to chair the Fed. Then and there, and whether he understood it or not (he didn’t), the Donald surrendered to the permanent rulers of the Imperial City. That’s because at the end of the day, it was the Fed’s serial financial bubbles and massive monetization of the public debt that has enabled Washington’s imperial hegemony abroad, welfare state largesse at home and the egregious inflation of financial asset prices for the rich and the bicoastal elites coupled to them.

Knot is from Holland, an export-dependent country that suffers from a strong euro.

• ECB’s Knot Says QE Must End ‘As Soon As Possible’ (BBG)

The European Central Bank has to end its quantitative easing as soon as possible, according to ECB Governing Council member Klaas Knot, who said there’s not a single reason anymore to continue with the program. “The program has done what could realistically be expected of it,” Knot, who also heads the Dutch Central Bank, said in an interview on the television talk show Buitenhof on Sunday. The ECB is inching closer to unwinding unprecedented stimulus. At their December meeting, officials held out the prospect of a change in policy language early in the year, and some governors have since expressed their favor for taking a first step in March. While President Mario Draghi said Thursday that confidence in a sustained pickup in inflation has increased, patience and persistence are still warranted as progress so far remains muted.

“The program is fixed until September,” Knot said, with Draghi’s reasoning being that the central bank doesn’t have to commit yet to what will happen after that month. “We don’t have to communicate yet that it will be over after September, but I think that’s where we’re headed.” He said there is enough proof to make that clear. [..] Knot said the lack of commitment to any communication by the ECB as to what might happen to the QE program beyond September could have a dampening affect on the euro. A 6% surge in the euro since mid-December is threatening to become a thorn in the economy’s side if it curbs exports and damps prices.

And that’s definitely not enough.

• The ECB And The Euro Are The Only Glue Holding Parts Of Europe Together (CNBC)

Many German political observers estimate that, under the best circumstances, their country is unlikely to have a new three-party coalition government before Easter — April 1. They realize that this might be an optimistic forecast given the fundamental differences separating those who want a status quo stability (two right-wing parties) and a radical change of “governing culture” (the left-wing Social Democratic Party of Germany). Expectations are so dire, and so low, that the unfolding political events in Germany could mean the end of stability in the entire EU. In spite of that, the euro was soaring last Thursday to $1.2537 during the press conference at the European Central Bank. That was the highest reading since the middle of December 2014. And that had little to do with the talking down of the dollar by a U.S. delegation having fun in the Alps.

As of last Friday, the euro was up 16% against the dollar and 5.4% in trade-weighted terms since the Trump administration came to power a year ago. That puzzling paradox of a strong currency in a politically disintegrating economic system owes mainly to the euro area’s improving cyclical growth dynamics, engineered by a supportive monetary policy, and to trading bets ignoring the convulsions of the European project. The project in question has been a difficult work-in-progress for the past 59 years, as the relentless French-German rivalry failed to define mutually acceptable terms for a fairy tale called the European economic and political union. The euro is a result of such a political struggle between the two nations: Fearful of an overwhelming power of a reunited Germany, France insisted on a monetary union to dilute the influence of its erstwhile arch-enemy across the Rhine.

Reluctantly, Germany accepted to part with the Deutsche mark while imposing a legal and institutional infrastructure that would make the euro a clone of it. And to make sure that happened, Germany dictated the rules for the ECB — a supra-national institution and the world’s only genuinely independent monetary authority. Born out of fear of German domination, the euro is, arguably, the only major achievement of a project that was supposed to make another French-German war an impossibility. Still, a war by other means did happen, and France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Ireland and Greece – 54% of the euro area GDP – have only the ECB to thank for rescuing them from an assault of disastrous German-imposed austerity policies.

When will we talk about making Facebook a public utility?

• Trump Administration Ponders Nationalizing 5G Mobile Network (CNBC)

National security officials in the Trump administration are looking at options where the U.S. government could take over a part of the country’s mobile network as a way of guarding against China, news outlet Axios reported. Axios, citing sensitive documents it obtained, said there are two options up for consideration: First, the U.S. government could pay for and build a single, super-fast mobile network and could then rent access to national carriers. The move, according to Axios, could see an unprecedented nationalization of infrastructure that has historically been privately-owned. But, the news outlet reported, a source familiar with the matter said a newer version of the document is neutral about whether the government should build and own such a network.

The alternative, according to Axios, is that wireless providers in the U.S. build their own 5G networks that would compete with one another — an option the document said could be costly and more time-consuming, but would be less commercially disruptive to the industry. The reason for even considering nationalization of part of the system is that China “has achieved a dominant position in the manufacture and operation of network infrastructure” and it’s “the dominant malicious actor in the Information Domain,” the document said, according to Axios. Reuters reported that a senior administration official on Sunday said that the government wants to build a secure 5G network and it’ll have to work with the industry to figure out the best way to do it. “We want to build a network so the Chinese can’t listen to your calls,” the official told Reuters.

“We have to have a secure network that doesn’t allow bad actors to get in. We also have to ensure the Chinese don’t take over the market and put every non-5G network out of business.” The matter was being debated at a lower level, the official said to Reuters, adding that it would take between six to eight months before it reaches President Donald Trump for consideration. The fifth generation (hence the 5G name) of mobile networks aims to provide faster data speeds and more bandwidth to carry ever-growing levels of web traffic. Late last year, the first specification for 5G was completed, which was considered a huge step toward commercializing the technology. Market watchers have predicted the technology will have more than one billion users by 2023, with more than half based in China. U.S. carriers are already working on deploying 5G networks.

Facebook gets nervous.

• Facebook Makes Privacy Push Ahead Of Strict EU Law (R.)

Facebook said on Monday it was publishing its privacy principles for the first time and rolling out educational videos to help users control who has access to their information, as it prepares for the start of a tough new EU data protection law. The videos will show users how to manage the data that Facebook uses to show them ads, how to delete old posts, and what happens to the data when they delete their account, Erin Egan, chief privacy officer at Facebook, said in a blog post. Facebook, which has more than 2 billion users worldwide, said it had never before published the principles, which are its rules on how the company handles users’ information.

Monday’s announcements are a sign of its efforts to get ready before the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) enters into force on May 25, marking the biggest overhaul of personal data privacy rules since the birth of the internet. Under GDPR, companies will be required to report data breaches within 72 hours, as well as to allow customers to export their data and delete it. Facebook’s privacy principles, which are separate from the user terms and conditions that are agreed when someone opens an account, range from giving users control of their privacy, to building privacy features into Facebook products from the outset, to users owning the information they share. “We recognize that people use Facebook to connect, but not everyone wants to share everything with everyone – including with us. It’s important that you have choices when it comes to how your data is used,” Egan wrote.

No-one can be surprised by this anymore: “..Rats, mouldy walls, exposed electrical wiring, leaking roofs and broken locks ..” and “..holes in external walls, insect-infested beds, water pouring through ceilings and mould-covered kitchens ..”

• Hundreds Of Thousands Living In Squalid Rented Homes In England (G.)

Rented housing so squalid it is likely to leave tenants requiring medical attention is being endured by hundreds of thousands of young adults in England, an analysis of government figures has revealed. Rats, mouldy walls, exposed electrical wiring, leaking roofs and broken locks are among problems blighting an estimated 338,000 homes rented by people under 35 that have been deemed so hazardous they are likely to cause harm. It is likely to mean that over half a million people are starting their adult lives in such conditions, amid a worsening housing shortage and rising rents, which are up 15% across the UK in the last seven years. Visits by the Guardian to properties where tenants are paying private landlords up to £1,100 a month have revealed holes in external walls, insect-infested beds, water pouring through ceilings and mould-covered kitchens.

A 30-year-old mother near Bristol said her home is so damp that her child’s cot rotted. A 34-year-old woman in Luton told of living with no heating and infestations of rats and cockroaches, while a 24-year-old mother from Kent said she lived in a damp flat with no heating and defective wiring for a year before it was condemned. “Young adults have very little option but to rent from a private landlord, so we should at least expect a decent home in return for what we pay,” said Dan Wilson Craw, director of the Generation Rent campaign group. “Relying on cash-strapped councils to enforce our rights means that too many of us are stuck with unsafe housing.” The extent of the impact on young people emerged as a cross-party bid to give tenants new powers to hit back against rogue landlords gathers strength.

And the House of Commons passed the bill without noticing?!

• UK Brexit Bill ‘Constitutionally Unacceptable’ – House of Lords (Ind.)

An influential group of peers have warned Theresa May’s flagship Brexit legislation is “constitutionally unacceptable” and will need to be substantially rewritten. The stark warning comes as peers in the upper chamber gear up to begin the lengthy process of debating the legislation – passed with a seal of approval from the Commons earlier this month. The EU (Withdrawal) Bill seeks to transpose all existing EU law onto the UK statue book in time for Britain formally leaving the bloc in March 2019. More than 180 members are already lined up to speak during the two-day debate accompanying the legislation’s second reading this Tuesday and Wednesday, and there are likely to be impassioned interventions from both prominent Leave and Remain voices.

But peers on the Lords Constitution Committee warn in a report to be released on Monday that, while the legislation is necessary to ensure legal continuity after Brexit, it has “fundamental flaws” in its current state. The committee claims that at present the bill risks “undermining the legal certainty it seeks to provide” and gives “overly broad” powers to government ministers. Baroness Taylor of Bolton, who chairs the committee, said: “We acknowledge the scale, challenge and unprecedented nature of the task of converting existing EU law into UK law, but as it stands this bill is constitutionally unacceptable. “In our two previous reports we highlighted the issues this raised and we are disappointed that the Government has not acted on a number of our recommendations.

Words fail.

• Australia Unveils Plan To Become One Of World’s Top 10 Arms Exporters (G.)

Australia is set to become one of the world’s largest arms exporters under a controversial Turnbull government plan. The prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, has unveiled a new “defence export strategy” setting out the policy and strategy to make Australia one of the world’s top 10 weapons exporters within the next decade. Hailing it a job-creating plan for local manufacturers, the Coalition says Australia only sells about $1.5bn to $2.5bn in “defence exports” a year and it wants the value of those exports to increase significantly. It has identified a number of “priority markets”: the Middle East, the Indo-Pacific region, Europe, the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada and New Zealand. It will set up a new Defence Export Office to work hand in hand with Austrade and the Centre for Defence Industry Capability to coordinate the commonwealth’s whole-of-government export efforts and provide a focal point for more arms exports.

A $3.8bn Defence Export Facility, to be administered by the Export Finance and Insurance Corporation, will provide the finance local companies need to help them sell their defence equipment overseas. A new Australian Defence Export Advocate position, set up to support the Australian Defence Export Office, will provide industry with the constant high-level advocacy needed to promote Australian-made weapons overseas. “It is an ambitious, positive plan to boost Australian industry, increase investment, and create more jobs for Australian businesses,” Turnbull said. “A strong, exporting defence industry in Australia will provide greater certainty of investment, support high-end manufacturing jobs and support the capability of the Australian defence force.”

Them’s fighting words. Greece needs debt relief no matter what. Blackmailing the country with it is amoral.

• Greek Debt Relief Will Depend On Continued Reforms – Regling (K.)

If Greece wants to see its debt burden lightened further it must ensure that it enacts agreed-to reforms and be prepared for the supervision of its foreign creditors to continue, European Stability Mechanism (ESM) Managing Director Klaus Regling told Sunday’s Kathimerini in an interview in which he also stressed that markets would like to see the IMF join the country’s third bailout. “If Greece wants additional debt relief, which means for creditor countries to grant something extra, there is the legitimate question that creditor countries would want to make sure that agreed policies are implemented and that there is no backtracking, on promises in relation to the primary surplus for instance, on future tax policies and on privatizations, or on the reduction of non-performing loans,” Regling said.

He added that there would be no additional conditions for further debt relief but that reforms must be fully implemented, noting that greater “ownership” of the bailout program will help achieve this. “Ownership has improved,” he said, adding however that, “sometimes there are still signals that it’s not fully there the way we would like. For example, on privatizations there are different voices.” As for continued foreign supervision of Greece after its scheduled exit from the third bailout in August, Regling said this was “normal,” noting that there is “post-program surveillance” in other countries that borrowed from the ESM. He added that “markets are always happy if a country is under the surveillance of its creditors.”

As for the potential participation of the IMF in Greece’s third bailout, Regling said it was “one of the elements that could play a positive role to further strengthen the good impression that the markets have.” He added, however, that the markets will also “look for statements by the Greek government that show there is real ownership of the program.”

Debt Rattle August 24 2017

Aug 242017

August 24, 2017 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 9:11 am Finance Tagged with: deregulation, diesel, Draghi, Fed, invasion, marriages, Ponzi, QE, Trump, Wall Street, Yellen 7 Responses »

Egon Schiele Meadow, Church and Houses 1912

• Wall Street Banks Warn Downturn Is Coming (BBG)

• Big US Banks Could See Profit Jump 20% With Deregulation (BBG)

• ECB Chief Draghi: QE Has Made Economies More Resilient (BBC)

• Yellen’s Coming Speech Could Mark The ‘End Of An Era’ (BI)

• Here’s Why New Home Sales Tanked (CNBC)

• Autos Put Economic Downside Risks on Full Display (DDMB)

• Merkel Aide Says Germany Has ‘Vital Interest’ in Diesel Survival (BBG)

• China’s ‘Belt And Road’ Could Be Next Risk To Global Financial System (CNBC)

• Being Here (Brodsky)

• All The Countries The USA Has Invaded, In One Map (Indy)

• America, Home of the Transactional Marriage (Atlantic)

More cycles.

• Wall Street Banks Warn Downturn Is Coming (BBG)

HSBC, Citigroup and Morgan Stanley see mounting evidence that global markets are in the last stage of their rallies before a downturn in the business cycle. Analysts at the Wall Street behemoths cite signals including the breakdown of long-standing relationships between stocks, bonds and commodities as well as investors ignoring valuation fundamentals and data. It all means stock and credit markets are at risk of a painful drop. “Equities have become less correlated with FX, FX has become less correlated with rates, and everything has become less sensitive to oil,” Andrew Sheets, Morgan Stanley’s chief cross-asset strategist, wrote in a note published Tuesday. His bank’s model shows assets across the world are the least correlated in almost a decade, even after U.S. stocks joined high-yield credit in a selloff triggered this month by President Donald Trump’s political standoff with North Korea and racial violence in Virginia.

Just like they did in the run-up to the 2007 crisis, investors are pricing assets based on the risks specific to an individual security and industry, and shrugging off broader drivers, such as the latest release of manufacturing data, the model shows. As traders look for excuses to stay bullish, traditional relationships within and between asset classes tend to break down. “These low macro and micro correlations confirm the idea that we’re in a late-cycle environment, and it’s no accident that the last time we saw readings this low was 2005-07,” Sheets wrote. He recommends boosting allocations to U.S. stocks while reducing holdings of corporate debt, where consumer consumption and energy is more heavily represented. That dynamic is also helping to keep volatility in stocks, bonds and currencies at bay, feeding risk appetite globally, according to Morgan Stanley. Despite the turbulent past two weeks, the CBOE Volatility Index remains on track to post a third year of declines.

Oxford Economics macro strategist Gaurav Saroliya points to another red flag for U.S. equity bulls. The gross value-added of non-financial companies after inflation – a measure of the value of goods after adjusting for the costs of production – is now negative on a year-on-year basis. “The cycle of real corporate profits has turned enough to be a potential source of concern in the next four quarters,” he said in an interview. “That, along with the most expensive equity valuations among major markets, should worry investors in U.S. stocks.” The thinking goes that a classic late-cycle expansion – an economy with full employment and slowing momentum – tends to see a decline in corporate profit margins. The U.S. is in the mature stage of the cycle – 80% of completion since the last trough – based on margin patterns going back to the 1950s, according to Societe Generale.

They warn about a downturn, but not for themselves. Their asses are covered.

• Big US Banks Could See Profit Jump 20% With Deregulation (BBG)

The deregulation winds blowing through Washington could add $27 billion of gross profit at the six largest U.S. banks, lifting their annual pretax income by about 20%. JPMorgan Chase and Morgan Stanley would benefit most from changes to post-crisis banking rules proposed by Donald Trump’s administration, with pretax profit jumping 22%, according to estimates by Bloomberg based on discussions with analysts and the banks’ own disclosures. Goldman Sachs would have the smallest percentage increase, about 16%. Bloomberg’s calculations are based largely on adjustments banks could make to the mix of securities they hold and the interest they earn from such assets. The proposed changes would allow the largest lenders to take on more deposits, move a greater portion of their excess cash into higher-yielding Treasuries and municipal bonds, and issue a lower amount of debt that costs more than customer deposits.

Of the changes proposed in June by Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, the one that would probably have biggest impact on profit is allowing banks to buy U.S. government bonds entirely with borrowed money. Three others could also boost income: counting municipal bonds as liquid, or easy-to-sell, assets; requiring less debt that won’t have to be paid back if a bank fails; and making it easier to comply with post-crisis rules. Regulators appointed by Trump could make these changes without congressional approval. Doing so would reverse their agencies’ efforts since 2008 to strengthen capital and liquidity requirements for U.S. banks beyond international standards. While bringing U.S. rules in line with global ones probably wouldn’t threaten bank safety, some analysts and investors worry the pendulum could swing even further.

“Since the crisis, we’ve had the luxury of excess capital buildup in the banking system and regulators reining in risky activities,” said William Hines at Standard Life Aberdeen. “If there’s too much pullback on minimum capital requirements, too much relaxation of restraints, we’re concerned there’ll be more risk-taking by banks, and the system will become vulnerable.”

Blowing bubbles everywhere and claiming they bring strength. It’s Orwell.

• ECB Chief Draghi: QE Has Made Economies More Resilient (BBC)

European Central Bank President Mario Draghi has said unconventional policies like quantitative easing (QE) have been a success both sides of the Atlantic. QE was introduced as an emergency measure during the financial crisis to pump money directly into the financial system and keep banks lending. A decade later, the stimulus policies are still in place, but he said they have “made the world more resilient”. But he also said gaps in understanding these relatively new tools remain. As the economic recovery in the eurozone gathers pace, investors are watching closely for when the ECB will ease back further on its €60bn a month bond-buying programme. Central bankers, including Mr Draghi, are meeting in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, later this week, where they are expected to discuss how to wind back QE without hurting the economy.

On Monday, a former UK Treasury official likened the stimulus to “heroin” because it has been so difficult to wean the UK, US and eurozone economies off it. In a speech in Lindau, Germany on Wednesday, Mr Draghi defended QE and the ECB’s policy of forward guidance on interest rates. “A large body of empirical research has substantiated the success of these policies in supporting the economy and inflation, both in the euro area and in the United States,” he said. The ECB buying relatively safe assets such as government bonds means that banks can lend more and improve access to credit for riskier borrowers, Mr Draghi said. He added: “Policy actions undertaken in the last 10 years in monetary policy and in regulation and supervision have made the world more resilient. But we should continue preparing for new challenges.”

End the Fed.

• Yellen’s Coming Speech Could Mark The ‘End Of An Era’ (BI)

Janet Yellen could be on her way out as chair of the Federal Reserve. On Friday, she’s set to deliver a speech on financial stability at the Fed’s annual economic symposium in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. It could be her last, following months of speculation that President Donald Trump plans to nominate a different candidate when her four-year term ends in February. And Yellen’s successor could have a very different approach to the job. Yellen’s Jackson Hole showing could be the last one, for now, under a Fed chair who takes a technocratic approach to monetary policy, according to Luke Bartholomew, an investment strategist at Aberdeen Standard Investments. “There could be an end-of-an-era feel to Jackson Hole this year,” Bartholomew told Business Insider.

The Fed chair could be replaced by someone who’s “probably not the sort of academic economist that’s been leading it through the Bernanke/Yellen period,” he said, adding that there’s “a broader feeling that under the Trump administration, the technocratic approach of the Fed is increasingly out of favor.” Yellen, 71, was a career economist and academic before President Barack Obama nominated her to replace Ben Bernanke in 2014. Trump told The Wall Street Journal last month that Gary Cohn, Yellen, and “two or three” other candidates were in the running for the job. One of those other people could be Kevin Warsh, a former Fed governor who is now a fellow at the Hoover Institution. But Cohn, the National Economic Council director and Trump’s top economic adviser, is reportedly the top contender. He’s the “archetype of Wall Street, given his job at Goldman in the past,” Bartholomew said. “He certainly brings financial acumen to the job. I’m not sure that’s what the job of Fed chairman is, but he’s a fine candidate.”

Walsh brings some years of Fed experience to the table. But he has worked for seven years in investment banking, at Morgan Stanley, and isn’t an academic policymaker like Yellen or Bernanke. That’s not the only red flag Yellen’s exit would raise. On one extreme, Yale School of Management’s Jeffrey Sonnenfeld thinks markets would crash if Cohn were to leave the White House for the Fed. Stocks dipped last week as rumors spread that he was leaving the administration following Trump’s response to the white-nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. “I don’t want to be an alarmist, but there is a lot of faith that he is going to help carry through the tax reform that people are looking for,” Sonnenfeld told CNBC last week.

“Long term, the new home median price has been mostly 10% to 20% above the existing home median since 1990. Since 2011, however, new home prices have been at a 35% to 40% premium over resale prices..”

• Here’s Why New Home Sales Tanked (CNBC)

Newly built homes are more expensive than they’ve ever been before. They are also more expensive when compared to similar existing homes than they’ve ever been before. And that is why sales are suffering, dropping an unexpected 9.4% in July compared to June, according to the U.S. Census. They are simply out of reach for too many potential buyers. You don’t have to do a lot of math to see it. The median sale price of a newly built home in July jumped more than 6% compared to July 2016, to $313,700. That marks the highest July price ever. Last December, the median price hit the highest of any month on record. In addition, the price premium for newly built homes compared to comparable existing homes has more than doubled since 2011, according to John Burns Real Estate Consulting.

“Long term, the new home median price has been mostly 10% to 20% above the existing home median since 1990. Since 2011, however, new home prices have been at a 35% to 40% premium over resale prices,” John Burns wrote in a recent note to clients. “While the exact percentages aren’t perfect due to ‘apples and oranges’ comparisons, our consultants have been confirming for years that new home sales have been slowed by larger than usual new home premiums.” The supply of existing homes for sale is still extremely low, but the supply of newly built homes moved higher in July to 5.8 months of inventory. “The scars of the housing bust are still fresh in the minds of many homebuilders, so it is not surprising that many are taking a cautious approach to ramping up production,” noted Aaron Terrazas, a senior economist at Zillow, in reaction to the July report.

Homebuilders are feeling slightly better about their business lately, but they continue to complain about the costs of land, labor, materials and regulation. They claim that is why they cannot build cheaper homes. Unfortunately, the lower end of the market is where most of the demand is and where supply is weakest. “There is still no pickup in sales for homes priced below $300,000, and this is where most of the first time households would be shopping in,” wrote Peter Boockvar, chief market analyst at The Lindsey Group in a note following the Census release on new home sales. “I repeat that the housing industry needs a moderation in home price gains in order to better compete with renting where rents increases are now moderating.”

Auto loans are a huge part of money creation.

• Autos Put Economic Downside Risks on Full Display (DDMB)

Federal Reserve data released last week on July industrial production offered little more than more of the same. Despite post-election optimism for a rebound in activity on the nation’s factory floors, the data reveal a continued throttling down in the growth rate to just over 2% compared with this time last year. The main drag on activity – the auto sector – should come as no surprise to investors. Rather than rising by 0.2% over June as projected, manufacturing production contracted by 0.1%, marking the third decline in five months. Motor vehicles and parts production fell by 3.6% on the month, taking the year-over-year slide to 5%. Evidence continues to build that a sampling error may be to blame for the surprising strength in June and July car sales.

Inventory continues to pile up, suggesting more production cuts are in the offing: As of June, the latest data on hand, auto inventories were up 7.4% over last year, leaving manufacturers choking for air. In July, General Motors alone was sitting on 104 days of supply, well above its target of 70 days. Industry-wide, the July/August average of 69 days ties the August 2008 record and sits above the historic average of 56 days of supply. In all, automakers have 3.9 million units of unsold light vehicles, up 324,600 from last August and the highest on record for the month. For context, July and August tie for the leanest stock levels of the year. The decline in July sales was already the steepest this year. Fresh loan delinquency data suggest more pain ahead.

“Deep subprime” borrowers have been a big boost at the margin, propelling back-to-back record years of sales in 2015 and 2016 as lending standards loosened sufficiently to allow millions with credit scores below 530 to access financing. Equifax, the consumer credit reporting firm, didn’t hold back in its second-quarter update, saying the performance of recent vintages of deep subprime loans was “awful.” While industry insiders are quick to point out that the overall pace of defaults across all borrowers remains in check, up just marginally over last year, there is growing concern that deep subprime delinquencies are back at 2007 levels. “The bottom line is excess auto inventories are clearly evident and the auto sector is now in recession,” said The Lindsey Group’s Peter Boockvar.

We’re about to winess the political power of German carmakers. How many execs are being prosecuted? Right.

• Merkel Aide Says Germany Has ‘Vital Interest’ in Diesel Survival (BBG)

Chancellor Angela Merkel’s chief of staff said Germany has a “vital interest” in ensuring diesel engines survive, defending the embattled technology as the industry comes under fire for cheating on emissions tests. Excessive pollution from diesel, as well as traditionally close ties between the government and auto industry, have emerged as a campaign issue in the run up to the country’s federal election in September. Merkel has been confronted by voters on the campaign trail, who accused the government of being too lenient on automakers, prompting the chancellor to question high bonuses for auto executives embroiled in Volkswagen’s cheating scandal. “We have a vital interest in preserving diesel as a technology because it emits far less CO2 than other technologies,” Peter Altmaier, Merkel’s chief of staff, said in a Bloomberg TV interview in Berlin.

“At the same time we have to make sure that all the rules are respected and all the regulations are fully implemented.” Car bosses and government officials reached a compromise deal earlier this month to lower pollution that calls for software updates on million of vehicles instead of more costly hardware fixes. Volkswagen, Daimler and BMW also agreed to a trade-in bonus for cars with outdated emissions controls. The measures have been criticized as a slap on the wrist for Germany’s biggest industry. “We have the responsibility to fight for a good deal but also to preserve the strength and the performance of the automobile industry,” Altmaier said in the interview late on Tuesday. “I’m very optimistic that we will overcome this.”Diesel software updates alone are “insufficient” for many cities to meet the legal limit for nitrogen oxides in the air, Environment Minister Barbara Hendricks told reporters on Wednesday, citing ministry tests conducted this month.

Excessive pollution impacts 70 German towns and cities, and the fixes agreed earlier this month would cut car emissions by a maximum of 6%, she said. Hendricks – a member of Merkel’s junior coalition partner, the Social Democrats – said her ministry and others will ascertain in the coming weeks whether hardware changes in diesels currently on the road are necessary to further lower emissions and will present their findings after the election. “Nobody wants to ban diesels from our cities,” she said. Merkel, who has so far largely steered clear of the debate, is hosting a meeting on Sept. 4 with representatives of the major cities, including the hometowns of BMW, Mercedes-Benz and Porsche, struggling to lower their pollution levels. A number of cities and courts continue to evaluate potential diesel driving bans as the most effective means to meet regulation quickly.

China exports its Ponzi.

• China’s ‘Belt And Road’ Could Be Next Risk To Global Financial System (CNBC)

China has pitched its mammoth, pan-Eurasian “Belt and Road” infrastructure initiative as a means of promoting economic prosperity and fostering diplomatic ties on a global scale. That rhetoric may win plaudits at a time when other global powers are voicing increasingly protectionist agendas, but it also comes with risks, and increasing levels of state-backed funding have raised concerns about just how safe of a gamble it is. Reports on Tuesday claimed that some of China’s biggest state-owned commercial banks will begin raising capital to fund investments into the initiative, also known as “One Belt, One Road,” which aims to connect more than 60 countries across Asia, Europe and Africa with physical and digital infrastructure. China Construction Bank, the country’s second-largest bank by assets, has been conducting roadshows to raise at least 100 billion yuan ($15 billion) from on- and offshore investors.

Bank of China, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, and Agricultural Bank of China are also said to be raising tens of billions of dollars. The news highlights the risk that the state could amass hundreds of billions of dollars in nonperforming loans if the projects fail. For Xu Chenggang, professor of economics at Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business in Beijing, it was not a surprise. “It supports my concerns,” Xu told CNBC over the phone. “The impact could be damaging not just for China, but for the global financial system.” “These loans are being extended to governments in risky countries to fund risky infrastructure projects. If the projects were launched by private firms we wouldn’t have to worry because they would know they had to bear the consequences. But here we are talking about government-to-government lending and, ultimately, intergovernmental relations.”

[..] It took decades of economic reforms and loss-making firms before it succeeded in what Xu termed a process of “quiet privatization” at the turn of the 21st century. However, the process has lost momentum over the past 10 years, and the state remains burdened with issues of overcapacity and myriad “zombie firms,” especially within the metals and construction and materials sectors. Xu said that has partially been the motivation for the “Belt and Road” initiative: “Instead of solving the overcapacity problems, they are expanding the problem to projects overseas.” “They (China) are proposing lending money to foreign governments, who will then use the Chinese funds to pay the Chinese companies,” he explained.

“.. one might say Mr. Trump represents a triumph of democracy..”

• Being Here (Brodsky)

It should not surprise anyone that Western societies are becoming restless. Trump, Brexit, Charlottesville and, arguably, even radical Islamic terrorism are bi-products of global economic distortions largely created by the unwillingness of the Western political dimension to let the global factors of production naturally settle global prices and wages. (Sorry, it had to be said.) Donald Trump is a sideshow. His ascension, or someone like him, was inevitable. He may have official authority to behave like the leader of the free world (even if he is unable to do so), but so far he has only shown that virtually anyone can become president. Indeed, one might say Mr. Trump represents a triumph of democracy. Behold the robustness of America: the most powerful nation on Earth is unafraid to elect a cross between P.T. Barnum and Chauncey Gardner!

This is not to say a US president cannot raise and emphasize truly meaningful economic goals and mobilize countries around the world to help achieve them; but it is to say that this President seems to not know or be interested in what those goals might be. As discussed, the biggest challenges facing the US economy and US labor stem from a distorted global price and wage scale. Mr. Trump’s domestic fiscal, regulatory, tax and immigration goals seek only to raise US output and wages. This cannot be achieved without the participation of global commerce. There is no such thing anymore as a US business that makes US products sold only in the US without being influenced by global prices, wages and exchange rates. The romantic, patriotic “made in the USA” theme does not comport with the reality that the US also seeks to keep the dollar the world’s reserve currency and that maintaining America’s power requires the US to control the world’s shipping lanes.

Mr. Trump and his base cannot have one without the other. (Do we really have to articulate this?) Mr. Trump’s “Being There” presidency is reflecting an inconvenient truth back on a society that has, until maybe now, successfully deluded itself into believing government is functionally the glue holding society together. Though he does not mean to, Mr. Trump is single-handedly demonstrating to groups ranging from idealistic Washington elites to social media zombies to southern white supremacists that Madisonian government has become a dignified cover for the financial, commercial and national security interests that control it. We suspect those interests would rather the reach of their power be less visible.

Two maps, actually. Click the link for fully interactive versions.

• All The Countries The USA Has Invaded, In One Map (Indy)

From Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli, the US has had a military presence across the world, from almost day one of her independence. What constitutes invasion? As one map below shows, the US has a military presence in much of the world without being an occupying force (though some would dispute that definition). For instance, although the Confederacy considered the US to be a hostile invading power, indy100 are not counting the Civil War or any annexation within the continental United States as an ‘invasion’. Using data on US military interventions published by the Evergreen State College, in Olympia Washington, indy100 has created this map (below). The data was compiled by Dr Zoltan Grossman, a professor of Geography and Native Studies. The map documents a partial list of occasions, since 1890, that US forces were used in a territory outside the US.

Caveats: This includes: Deployment of the military to evacuate American citizens, Covert military actions by US intelligence, Providing military support to an internal opposition group, Providing military support in one side of a conflict (e.g. aiding Iraq during the Iran-Iraq War 1988-89), Use of the army in drug enforcement actions (e.g. Raids on the cocaine region in Bolvia in 1986 It does not include threats of nuclear weapons against a territory, such as during the Berlin Air Lift (1948-49). It also excludes any time US military personnel were deployed to a foreign country for an exclusively humanitarian purpose – e.g. sending troops to the Democratic Republic of the Congo to provide assistance to refugees fleeing the Rwandan genocide (1996-97).

The demise of a society. Not because of marriages declining, but because of why they are.

• America, Home of the Transactional Marriage (Atlantic)

Over the last several decades, the proportion of Americans who get married has greatly diminished—a development known as well to those who lament marriage’s decline as those who take issue with it as an institution. But a development that’s much newer is that the demographic now leading the shift away from tradition is Americans without college degrees—who just a few decades ago were much more likely to be married by the age of 30 than college graduates were. Today, though, just over half of women in their early 40s with a high-school degree or less education are married, compared to three-quarters of women with a bachelor’s degree; in the 1970s, there was barely a difference. The marriage gap for men has changed less over the years, but there the trend lines have flipped too: 25% of men with high-school degrees or less education have never married, compared to 23% of men with bachelor’s degrees and 14% of those with advanced degrees.

Meanwhile, divorce rates have continued to rise among the less educated, while staying more or less steady for college graduates in recent decades. The divide in the timing of childbirth is even starker. Fewer than one in 10 mothers with a bachelor’s degree are unmarried at the time of their child’s birth, compared to six out of 10 mothers with a high-school degree. The share of such births has risen dramatically in recent decades among less educated mothers, even as it has barely budged for those who finished college. (There are noticeable differences between races, but among those with less education, out-of-wedlock births have become much more common among white and nonwhite people alike.)

[..] Autor, Dorn, and Hanson found that in places where the number of factory jobs shrank, women were less likely to get married. They also tended to have fewer children, though the share of children born to unmarried parents, and living in poverty, grew. What was producing these trends, the researchers argue, was the rising number of men who could no longer provide in the ways they once did, making them less attractive as partners. Furthermore, many men in these communities became no longer available, sometimes winding up in the military or dying from alcohol or drug abuse. (It’s important to point out that this study and similar research on employment and marriage focus on opposite-sex marriages, and a different dynamic may be at work among same-sex couples, who tend to be more educated.)

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