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Debt Rattle February 17 2026

Feb 172026
 
 February 17, 2026  Posted by at 10:35 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  47 Responses »


Pablo Picasso Head of a Woman 1946 ..gifted to Greece’s National Gallery by Picasso in 1946 in recognition of Athens’s resistance to Nazi occupation; he inscribed on the back: “For the Greek people, a tribute from Picasso.”


• Trump Derangement Syndrome Has Hit a Sick New Low (Matt Margolis)
• Reid Hoffman Funded Suit Against Trump Alleging Rape (Tim O’Brien)
• The Trump Administration Officially Kills DEI at the FAA (Matt Margolis)
• Big Losses for Banks Coming in 2026 – Charles Nenner (USAW)
• Welp, Here Comes the ‘Death Spiral’ (Stephen Green)
• Marco Rubio Joint Press Conference with Hungarian PM Viktor Orban (CTH)
• Macron’s AI Clown Show: Europe’s Digital Dilemma (ZH)
• Ro Khanna and the Impunity of “Wealthy, Powerful Men” (Turley)
• Hillary Clinton Admits Mass Migration Is “Disruptive & Destabilizing” (ZH)
• Steve Bannon and Jeffrey Epstein (CTH)
• Epstein-itis (James Howard Kunstler)
• Newsom and AOC Go to Europe to Pitch High Tax, High Regulation Policies (Turley)
• No Prospect’ Of EU Governments Preventing CIVIL WAR: British Army Colonel (MN)

 


 

Palantir AI teaching itself $145 M Cybercab

 


 

 


 


“..It doesn’t matter if the target is a child rapist or a murderer. Opposing Trump’s immigration policies matters more than anything else.”:”:

• Trump Derangement Syndrome Has Hit a Sick New Low (Matt Margolis)

A Minnesota woman just put on full display the moral rot at the heart of the anti-ICE movement, and she did it with a camera rolling. Last week, Olivia Jensen stalked ICE agents around Rochester, Minn., harassing them while they tried to track down an illegal immigrant accused of child rape and murder. When an agent finally told her what kind of monster they were after, Jensen’s response cut through every pretense the left hides behind: “No, I don’t care.” This wasn’t some slip of the tongue. Jensen said this, and posted her confrontation to Facebook and TikTok like a trophy, complete with a lengthy explanation of how she followed the agents from Walmart to her old address in Claremont, 30 miles away.


“Today, 2/11/26, I went to a NW area of Rochester after hearing that there was ICE activity in the area. I located the dark Gary Durango […] with 3 agents inside following a woman in her car,” Jensen posted on Facebook. “They followed her to Walmart north where I interacted with them while completely staying within my rights. They took pictures of me and the inside and outside of my car for simply exercising my rights. I will share the video of this interaction below. They very clearly were running my plates and trying to obtain information about me in an effort to intimidate me.”

She accused them of intimidation for running her plates and visiting her former home. But the agents were just making sure she got home safely after she’d been tailing them across southeast Minnesota. The exchange stripped away any illusion about what drives these ICE agitators. After Jensen screamed “race traitor” at a Hispanic agent, he calmly explained they were hunting a child molester. She called him a liar. The other agent stepped in with a reality check: “If you actually cared, you would care about the child who got raped and also by the person who got murdered by the person we are looking for.”

That’s when Jensen said the quiet part out loud. She admitted she didn’t care. Then she pivoted to the standard talking point about how ICE should only go after “illegal, violent immigrants” before insisting “that’s not what you are doing.” Except it was exactly what they were doing. They were literally chasing a suspect wanted for raping a child and murder. “If you actually cared, you probably would care about the child who got raped and the person who got murdered by the person we’re looking for, but you see, you don’t care,” an ICE agent told Jensen. “No, I don’t care,” Jensen admitted.

This is what Trump Derangement Syndrome looks like. The activist class wants Americans to believe their beef is with detaining and deporting otherwise law-abiding illegal immigrants. They frame it as compassion, as standing up for families just trying to build better lives. But when push comes to shove, and ICE is hunting someone accused of the most heinous crimes imaginable, the mask comes off. These agitators don’t want ICE arresting anyone, period. It doesn’t matter if the target is a child rapist or a murderer. Opposing Trump’s immigration policies matters more than anything else.

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“In one email, it says that “Reid will spend the night at 71st,” which is a reference to Epstein’s Upper East Side townhouse. ”

• Reid Hoffman Funded Suit Against Trump Alleging Rape (Tim O’Brien)

The disclosures from the Epstein files have been enlightening to say the least, particularly if you wonder if you are seeing what you think you’re seeing. More to the point, do you remember that 2023 lawsuit against candidate Donald Trump from E. Jean Carroll? That’s the one where Carroll, who is now 82 years old, waited all these years and, after two of Trump’s presidential races and one term as president, decided to sue the billionaire on allegations of defamation, rape, and sexual abuse.


The case was mostly based on unsubstantiated accusations that Trump sexually abused and raped Carroll in 1996, 23 years earlier. In the end, a jury awarded Carroll $5 million in a judgement that rejected the plaintiff’s claim that she was raped, but it found Trump responsible for sexual abuse. The jury verdict also gave Trump’s dishonest critics the opportunity to falsely claim he raped someone. Before, during, and after the trial, Carroll made a number of curious statements that make you wonder just how right in the head she is. Like the time in 2019 that she told CNN’s Anderson Cooper, “Most people think of rape as being sexy.” Now the Epstein files are providing some new context to that case and, more specifically, to the man with the money behind the lawsuit.

Since 2023, we knew that billionaire leftist and founder of LinkedIn Reid Hoffman bankrolled the litigation. He provided most, if not all, of the money needed to pay those blue-chip lawyers who represented Carroll. The Denver Gazette reported in 2023 this fact, along with the fact that he’s donated to “Democratic causes including former 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton,” adding, “He also partnered with megadonor George Soros in 2021 to form an organization to combat disinformation.” Hoffman is a certified never-Trumper with advanced-stage TDS (Trump Derangement Syndrome). Hoffman was all too happy to take credit for the role his funding played in supporting Carroll’s lawsuit.

So, you heard Hoffman, right? He said, “Her (Carroll’s) voice should be heard, that because she was challenging someone who was so much more wealthy and powerful that shouldn’t be squashed.…Providing that voice for, you know, people who otherwise would be ground down by the system, or the powerful, is I think a good thing, obviously especially in the case of women, and especially in the case of sexual, and other, kind of torture, and attack…So, providing that support was something I was very happy to do.” As a leftist billionaire, all of this is very on brand for Hoffman. Hypocrisy and double standards are also on brand for the left. In that spirit, it appears Hoffman has not disappointed.

Hoffman was mentioned quite a bit in the Epstein files, and it would appear not as a mere acquaintance of Epstein. That said, it’s important to know that not everyone mentioned in the files did anything wrong. In a few cases that we already know of, some who are mentioned explicitly rejected Jeffrey Epstein and what he was all about. Others were simply people who had crossed paths with Epstein along the way. Hoffman’s interactions with Epstein suggest he did a lot more than simply cross paths with Epstein. His name is mentioned in the files 2,658 times. The New York Post has reported that some of the recently released Epstein email files “reveal LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman discussing visits to Epstein’s infamous private island, his New Mexico ranch, and his New York apartment.”

In one email, it says that “Reid will spend the night at 71st,” which is a reference to Epstein’s Upper East Side townhouse. The Post also reported, “An apparent 2014 scheduling memo lists a variety of dinners and parties, as well as the line: ‘Jeffrey will have Joi Ito and Reid Hoffman will go to the ranch for the weekend (JE did not give exact dates).’” Ito is a notable Japanese venture capitalist. Here are some of the emails in question. While there is nothing specifically incriminating in the wording of the emails, Hoffman’s obviously close relationship with Epstein raises a number of questions, especially for a man who, when he funded Carroll’s lawsuit against Trump, said that in providing that funding, he was supporting “people who otherwise would be ground down by the system, or the powerful.”

And then he added that he thought this was “a good thing, obviously especially in the case of women, and especially in the case of sexual, and other, kinds of torture, and attack.” Let’s say, for sport, that Hoffman didn’t engage in the perks of spending all that time on Epstein’s island or in his pervert Bed and Breakfast. Do you think he knew what an unsavory character Epstein was? Do you think he ever offered to pay for lawsuits on behalf of Epstein’s victims? Do you think Hoffman had his share of opportunities to get to know any of them? I guess we just need to stay tuned.

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“These disastrous policies began under Obama, were reversed during Trump’s first term, and then roared back under Biden. The result? A staffing crisis filled with underqualified controllers who couldn’t handle the job. ..”

• The Trump Administration Officially Kills DEI at the FAA (Matt Margolis)

Last year’s deadly midair collision at Reagan National Airport, which killed all 67 people aboard an American Airlines plane and a U.S. Army helicopter, was a wake-up call that many on the left refused to hear. President Donald Trump, however, understood the problem and sought to fix it. He pointed directly at the Barack Obama and Joe Biden DEI policies that prioritized checkbox diversity over actual competence in air traffic control. He was absolutely right. Air traffic control whistleblowers confirmed that the FAA’s obsession with Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion initiatives has led to a shortage of qualified personnel. These disastrous policies began under Obama, were reversed during Trump’s first term, and then roared back under Biden. The result? A staffing crisis filled with underqualified controllers who couldn’t handle the job.


The whistleblowers revealed that meeting diversity quotas became more important than actual ability. I’m sorry, but when you’re juggling planes full of passengers through the skies, “good enough for diversity” doesn’t cut it. The problems were so severe that near misses occurred multiple times a week. Reagan National wasn’t a random tragedy; it was an inevitable disaster created by DEI. But those days are over. Last week, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced that the FAA issued a mandatory “Operations Specification” that forces every commercial airline to commit to merit-based hiring for pilots. No more woke hiring practices and no more prioritizing race and sex over skill. If airlines don’t comply, they face federal investigation.

“When families board their aircraft, they should fly with confidence knowing the pilot behind the controls is the best of the best,” Duffy said. “The American people don’t care what their pilot looks like or their gender—they just care that they are most qualified man or woman for the job.” This shouldn’t be controversial. It’s just common sense. But under the Biden-Buttigieg regime, common sense got tossed out the window. The FAA spent years focused on renaming cockpits to “flight decks” and investigating racist roads and bridges while actual safety standards crumbled.The new mandate requires all U.S. carriers to certify they’ve terminated race and sex-based hiring practices. Airlines must prove they’re identifying candidates based on specific experience and technical aptitude that match their operating environment.v

Imagine that: hiring people who can actually do the job. Such a novel concept, right?“At the FAA, the safety of passengers is our number one priority,” said FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford. “It is a bare minimum expectation for airlines to hire the most qualified individual when making someone responsible for hundreds of lives at a time. Someone’s race, sex, or creed, has nothing to do with their ability to fly and land aircraft safely.” This action follows Trump’s Executive Order on Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity and his Presidential Action on Keeping Americans Safe in Aviation. The FAA has already raised performance standards, dismantled DEI offices and contracts, and scrapped the worst of the Biden-era directives. But until now, allegations of airlines hiring based on race and sex persisted.

The safety of our skies should never take a backseat to diversity quotas. Period. Americans deserve to know that the people monitoring their flights and flying their planes earned those positions through competence, not because they checked the right demographic boxes on a form. It’s about time the FAA refocused on hiring the most competent individuals who can ensure the safety of everyone traveling through our airspace. And you can bet this fix wouldn’t have happened under a Democrat administration — it would still be prioritizing DEI initiatives and then scratching its head over what caused preventable crashes.

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“..if you are a banker and you lose a fortune, then you are always bailed out with tax money. This is why they never improve.”

• Big Losses for Banks Coming in 2026 – Charles Nenner (USAW)

Last April, renowned geopolitical and financial cycle expert Charles Nenner predicted a depression cycle starting at the end of 2025 into 2026. The economy is clearly slowing down, and the latest “1 million plus” negative jobs revision that comes out Wednesday (2/11/26) certainly points to a tanking economy. Nenner says, “I have to adjust for all the immigrants let into the country, but we will soon see unemployment numbers go up.” The next big downward surprise for the economy is big losses for the banks. Nenner predicts, “The institutions I work with that are selling real estate in New York are telling me a lot of banks are already negative. If you look in their books in California, they already had these big losses.


“They did not get out of their bonds because they thought interest rates would never go up. There are a lot of things that are already wrong, but it has not come out yet. I don’t know if there are going to be failures, but it will come out, and they will have big losses when they have to show the books.” So, what is Nenner predicting will happen with the troubled banks? Nenner says, “I guess the Fed will step in or the government will step in . . . because if you are a banker and you lose a fortune, then you are always bailed out with tax money. This is why they never improve.”

With gold and silver, there is good news and bad news. First comes the bad news. I asked Nenner if he would be a buyer of silver and gold now? Nenner says, “No, not right now because the cycle is down for the moment. . .. It is the same thing for gold. The cycle is down. If we close below $4,700, we will get some downside price targets. Usually, things that go up fast also go down fast. It’s not over for gold and silver; it’s just a correction.” Nenner put his clients in gold at $1,600 an ounce, and he bought silver at $29 per ounce. Now comes the good news, as Nenner points out, “The bull market for gold and silver will continue to the end of 2027. By then, we can do some fine tuning.”

On the war cycle, good news—for now. In the Middle East, Nenner says, “Right now, the war cycle is not going to heat up.” How about the war cycle for Europe and Russia? Nenner says, “No, they are not going to heat up either. The war cycles are topping right now. It’s not going to heat up for the short term.” Nenner is still worried about China and Taiwan at some point in the future. The really bad news on the war cycle comes in the 2030 to 2032 time frame. Nenner says, “The 2030 to 2032 war cycle is going to be very bad. There are going to be a lot of casualties. They start shooting rockets, and how many people are going to die? I think it will be in the billions of people, and that is what the numbers show.”

Nenner warns of terrorists let into the country by the Biden Administration that could set off bombs in the US “on a big scale.” Nenner contends this will be part of the war cycle that comes at the end of this decade. Nenner also said Trump could help cushion the financial fall of the USA, but he could not stop the down financial cycle. Nenner pointed out, “You cannot stop winter, but you can get a winter coat, and Trump is a winter coat.” Now, Nenner says, “There was so much damage done to America that Trump can’t fix it. . .. The cycle is turning down, and you can’t do anything about it.” Nenner also predicted in January of 2024 that President Trump “would be coming back.”

So, let’s all pray to God the Father and His Son Jesus for divine help.

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“So how about a devastating debt spiral to perk you up on this fine Presidents’ Day? “:

• Welp, Here Comes the ‘Death Spiral’ (Stephen Green)

So how about a devastating debt spiral to perk you up on this fine Presidents’ Day? The latest Congressional Budget Office report — with the thrilling title “The Budget and Economic Outlook: 2026 to 2036” — doesn’t use the phrase “debt spiral,” but Fortune’s Jason Ma did on Saturday, and I’m totally stealing it. Ma wrote of a debt “tipping point” that most people aren’t aware of but that could “arrive soon” with potentially devastating effects. I think I lose readers every time I write about this stuff, and yet I persist.


Before we get to that spiral, let’s set the stage. Ma noted that “publicly held debt is currently at $31 trillion and is about 100% of GDP. By fiscal year 2030, debt is expected to exceed the 106% record set after World War II, then surge to 120% by 2036.” Of course, we won the war in short order, spending returned to normal, and the debt became manageable.&; I think pretty much everybody reading PJ Media is at the very least vaguely aware of these current figures, but the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget warned last week: “Later in the decade, under CBO’s baseline, the average interest rate on all federal debt will exceed nominal economic growth, which could represent the start of a debt spiral.”

“Fearing the political backlash of fiscal austerity, lawmakers often point to the prospect of robust economic growth as an alternative way to keep U.S. debt under control over the long term,” Ma wrote, “But the threat of interest costs growing faster than the economy risks sending debt into escape velocity and forcing more drastic measures to prevent a crisis.” So let’s talk about the reality that few people seem willing to address. And Another Thing: Maybe people would pay more attention to these CBO reports if they gave them titles like, “Louisiana Johnson and the Spiral of Doom.”There are three ways out from under trillions and trillions in debt. Only three.

Washington can inflate away the debt, which is the preferred method of corrupt governments throughout history. The Biden Cabal managed to knock the real value of our debt down by 20% or so in just a couple of years, and all they had to do was set the typical American’s income back by years (not to mention wipe out any cash savings) to do it. The second option is default, although it does come in two flavors. There could be an orderly default, where Washington goes to our creditors at home and abroad and says, “Look, you and I both know we can’t pay back all the interest we owe you. So let’s negotiate how big a haircut you’re going to take while we get our finances in order.” Then there’s a disorderly default, where Washington just stops paying and there’s a global run on the dollar, markets collapse, and savings evaporate. The first flavor is almost too foul for even a small taste. The second melts your face off.

The third option is to grow out way out, and this is Trump’s preference. Mine, too, for that matter. Washington needs to do everything in its power to spur growth — primarily deregulation and tax cuts — while Congress keeps spending growth smaller (even just slightly smaller) than GDP growth. If the bond markets saw Congress rein in spending growth, those long-term interest rates would come down fairly quickly. Until that happens, however, the bond markets must — must — price in the risk of inflation and/or default. What that means in, no matter how low the Fed cuts short-term rates, those long-term rates will remain stubbornly high.

And Another Thing: Come to think of it, there is a fourth option, and that’s send the military into foreign countries to steal what we can’t pay. That’s a bad way, mmkay? That isn’t the Fed’s fault, and we can’t blame Jerome Powell for this one. It’s simple economic reality. Or as Bill Clinton advisor James Carville put it more than 30 years ago, when a nasty bond market reaction put the kibosh on Clinton’s grander spending plans, “I used to think that if there was reincarnation, I wanted to come back as the President or the Pope or as a 400 baseball hitter. But now I would like to come back as the bond market. You can intimidate everybody.” Everybody, it seems, but those reckless fools in Congress who hold the nation’s purse strings — and all our fates — in their hands.

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Vance or Rubio in ’28? Place your bets here.

• Marco Rubio Joint Press Conference with Hungarian PM Viktor Orban (CTH)

Secretary Marco Rubio went out of his way in this joint presser to emphasize the personal relationship between Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and U.S. President Donald Trump. Orban is facing a serious election challenge this April and all of the EU/NATO systems are actively trying to create pressure points to remove him. Secretary Marco Rubio is in Budapest today for meetings with Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and his government to include the signing of a civilian-nuclear cooperation agreement heralded by the Trump administration.


Hungary is one of the few voices within the European Union who is pushing back against Brussels efforts to go to war against Russia. Prime Minister Orban has been very critical of Ukraine, openly stating his opposition to EU membership for the embattled country. In response President Zelenskyy has weaponized Ukraine’s geographical stewardship of oil and gas pipelines to shut down Hungarian energy and drive-up prices.

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“.. politicians stage themselves retroactively as initiators of the new, attempting to position themselves at the forefront of developments they have ignored or actively obstructed for decades..”:

• Macron’s AI Clown Show: Europe’s Digital Dilemma (ZH)

The European Union has lost its place in the global race for artificial intelligence. In a single tweet on platform X, France’s President Emmanuel Macron inadvertently outlined the convoluted situation while simultaneously revealing his personal emotional fragility. The leading representatives of the European Union like to present themselves as emotionless technocrats. Maintaining the greatest possible distance from citizens, they execute their agenda of societal transformation toward what they understand as a net-zero transformation economy. This ostentatious distance from the citizenry acts as a simulacrum of power, which, in politicians like Emmanuel Macron, often veers into the caricatural.


Macron’s striking presence in foreign affairs—whether regarding the Ukraine war or recurring provocations toward the United States—correlates with his aggressive censorship policy toward his own population. A president without a people, steering his minority government through a budgetary crisis that brings France ever closer to the fiscal abyss.In Macron’s persona, the European misstep is condensed: economically failed, deeply unpopular among his own people, geopolitically essentially irrelevant—and yet imbued with lofty, messianic plans. This performative play of power, coupled with hardly disguised impotence and incompetence, inevitably produces an effect that can be described as clownish. It is the expression of a political style that can no longer reconcile claim with reality—and thus delivers less leadership than a tragicomic performance.

Politicians like the French president are indeed aware of the growing public anger over their policies and, behind the technocratic façade, very much experience emotional states—Macron revealed this for a brief moment on February 7 on the platform “X,” which he otherwise fights. This moment of exposure was triggered by a reaction to Israeli AI investor Dr. Eli David. The entrepreneur had ridiculed the French government’s plan to initiate an AI revolution with a mere initial investment of €30 million, publicly calling the president a “clown.”

Macron responded in classic social media fashion: fast, unconsidered, emotional. And this was precisely the real revelation. His message not only displayed personal fragility but simultaneously exposed Europe’s fatal economic strategy in the field of artificial intelligence. Macron directly addressed David’s criticism and slid into a rhetorical trap, writing: Yes, exactly this “clown,” meaning himself, would trigger an investment boom with €30 million, eventually mobilizing over €100 billion in private funds. Macron plans a French Silicon Valley south of Paris and intends to catapult his country to the Olympus of artificial intelligence—with €30 million of state money, initially benefiting those who provide the technological framework for the upcoming rollout of digital IDs.

In this sentence, Europe’s dilemma crystallized: self-assurance and denial, the familiar pathos of EU Europeans combined with an astonishing detachment from reality—and a political style that reveals more about Europe’s position in the global AI race than any sober analysis could. Those familiar with the codes, memes, and recurring keywords of digital platforms understand the significance of this label. When “clown world” or “clown politics” is mentioned, it refers precisely to the comedy we witness daily: the routine evasion of European top politicians from the consequences of their centrally controlled policies—be it economic and industrial policy, migration, or the grotesquely perceived energy policy.

The clown meme condenses the cynically self-ironic perception of the viewer of this comedy—a viewer aware that they are not only the target of these policies but will ultimately bear their consequences.Clown politics takes many forms. These include the countless crisis or innovation summits in which politicians stage themselves retroactively as initiators of the new, attempting to position themselves at the forefront of developments they have ignored or actively obstructed for decades. These summits are a particularly pernicious form of masking incompetence: political self-validation rituals simulating activity while merely covering up structural stagnation.

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” Both seemed to put the onus on the Justice Department to protect them from their own folly..”

• Ro Khanna and the Impunity of “Wealthy, Powerful Men” (Turley)

Last year, I wrote a column expressing concerns over the move to release the Epstein files en masse, including grand jury material. The files include a wide range of tangential figures and unsupported allegations common to criminal investigations. Politicians eager to capitalize on the scandal would likely show little concern for the underlying facts in “outing” names and repeating unproven allegations. That fear was realized this week with the chest-pounding speech of Rep. Ro Khanna (D., Cal.) on the House floor in which he took credit for outing six “wealthy, powerful men” who he suggested were actively shielded by the DOJ from public exposure. After the DOJ unredacted the names at his request, he read them on the floor. It turns out that four have nothing to do with Epstein.


Had Khanna made these comments outside of the House floor, he would be looking at four defamation lawsuits. However, Khanna knew the men could not sue him because of the immunity afforded to him under the Constitution’s Speech and Debate Clause.Khanna has been clearly positioning himself for a 2028 presidential run by pandering to the far left of his party. That includes his support for a wealth tax that has already reportedly led to a trillion dollars leaving the state and could harm his own Silicon Valley constituents. The Epstein files offer an easy platform for another “Spartacus moment” for politicians, who portray themselves as public avengers. That was evident on the House floor as Khanna took credit for exposing these six men.

It would turn out to be another Rep. Jasmine Crockett disaster where a gotcha moment became a spectacular face-planting. Khanna portrayed himself and Rep. Thomas Massie (R., KY) as ferreting out the names of the “wealthy, powerful men” whom the Trump Administration has fought to conceal. The Justice Department had previously agreed to let any members review the unredacted material. I have spoken with members who were part of the conference on the petition to force the release of these documents. They have told me that Massie, Khanna, and Marjorie Taylor Greene opposed repeated efforts to amend the petition to allow for greater resources and protection in the review of the millions of documents to avoid this danger.

In the conference, their colleagues specifically raised the danger of the release of entirely innocent names like the ones released by Khanna on the floor. They dismissed the danger and refused to amend the petition to avoid this type of error. (Indeed, in the hearing with Attorney General Pam Bondi, Rep. Brad Knott, R-N.C., makes reference to that failed effort to give the staff and resources to avoid the release of names with no connection to the underling criminal conduct). The media, again, eagerly spread the false claim of six men “likely incriminated” in the Epstein scandal. Khanna congratulated himself and his colleague for discovering the cover-up: “Why did it take Thomas Massie and me going to the Justice Department to get these six men’s identities to become public? And if we found six men that they were hiding in two hours, imagine how many men they are covering up for in those 3 million files.”

There is another possible explanation. Four of these men have little or nothing to do with Epstein. One of the names was previously connected to Epstein in public files. That is Les Wexner. Another, Sultan Ahmed Bin Sulayem, was the head of a Dubai logistics company called DP World. However, the other four were just photos used in a photo lineup. In other words, they were just random individuals used by the police to fill out a lineup. The Justice Department responded to Khanna’s public demonstration by declaring that “Rep Ro Khanna and Rep Thomas Massie forced the unmasking of completely random people selected years ago for an FBI lineup – men and women. These individuals have NOTHING to do with Epstein or Maxwell,” the spokesperson told the Guardian…”

What is curious is that Khanna blamed the Justice Department for his going to the floor to out the men as suspected wealthy and powerful predators. However, Massie admitted that he previously raised the possibility that the men were just used randomly in a line up. Both seemed to put the onus on the Justice Department to protect them from their own folly. [..]

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“The West-West Divide: What Remains of Common Values..”

• Hillary Clinton Admits Mass Migration Is “Disruptive & Destabilizing” (ZH)

After U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio spoke earlier on Saturday at the Munich Security Conference, where he said the U.S. and Europe “belong together” and argued for a stronger West, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who served under former President Barack Obama, appeared on a panel later that afternoon and made surprising remarks about mass migration. Clinton participated in a panel titled, “The West-West Divide: What Remains of Common Values,” and said that mass migration invasion involving millions of illegal aliens has been “destabilizing” to society.


Clinton continued: “So this debate that’s going on is driven by an effort to control people, to control who we are, how we look, who we love. And I think we need to call it for what it is. There is a legitimate reason to have a debate about things like migration. It went too far. It’s been disruptive and destabilizing, and it needs to be fixed in a humane way, with secure borders that don’t torture and kill people, and with a strong family structure, because it is at the base.”

Clinton’s comments about how mass migration has been an utter failure probably made White House border czar Tom Homan blush. In fact, unhinged Democrats, such as the Democratic Socialists of America, are probably furious with Clinton, given her very blunt public stance on immigration policy. In fact, if we circle back to Rubio’s comments earlier in the day, he slammed “mass migration”. Let’s not forget that Rubio’s State Department last fall recognized that mass migration was an “existential threat” to the West and risks “undermining the stability of key American allies.”

“America First” politicians are coming to their senses about the illegal alien invasion, as it was a move by globalists, NGOs, and their Democratic Party allies to install a new voting bloc and transform America into a one-party rule of left-wing kings and queens (think California). That’s why “America First” politicians and Elon Musk are pushing hard for the Safeguarding American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act to secure the integrity of elections.
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“Bannon and Epstein were very close and talked to each other about seemingly everything.”

• Steve Bannon and Jeffrey Epstein (CTH)

Through the years I didn’t really have much of an opinion of Steve Bannon, I approached any story of interest that surrounded him by simply looking at the factual details of the current event in question. CTH well understood that Bannon, and subsequently his expressed opinion and objective, was simply an outcome of his position – downstream from the billionaire of the moment who paid him. In essence, Steve Bannon always seemed to be, much like Kellyanne Conway, an advocate for whoever was financing him. From Robert/Rebekah Mercer at Breitbart forward to any endeavor thereafter, it always just appeared the same.That said, with the release of the Epstein files, the relationship between Steve Bannon and Jeffrey Epstein is something CTH did not expect. {HERE} Bannon and Epstein were very close and talked to each other about seemingly everything.


I can never unsee what I have read. Nor will CTH ever entertain the possibility that Bannon was ever a good element within the MAGA effort. There is a solid argument to be made that the Bannon War Room was funded, or organized in the funding mechanisms, by Jeffrey Epstein. {HERE} The files of messages between them contain some shocking stuff happening in the background while Steve Bannon was in very close proximity to candidate and President Trump. The level of disdain Bannon had for Donald Trump’s family and for Donald Trump himself is really something CTH did not expect to see. {examples: HERE and HERE} I am left to wonder now how much of the vitriol against Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, ie. “Javanka hatred”, actually originated from the Braintrust behind Bannon and the assembly of people in his immediate orbit.

Initially, I saw some Twitter accounts attempt to defend Steve Bannon by saying Epstein did all the talking in their text exchanges and Bannon was less communicative. However, that only applied to the first batches of files reviewed. As a few days went along and people started citing files, reading them gives a much more fulsome picture of the relationship. Steve Bannon may have been focused on the financial gains and perhaps networks of people in his association with Epstein; but he certainly got deep into it and expressed extreme praise for Epstein, even going so far as to call him a god. {LINK} These were two men in a very close friendship. There is no political or ideological distance between Bannon and Epstein.

The level of expressed skullduggery that has been going on for years in the background is very unsettling to accept, and I say that as a person who doesn’t customarily get shocked by duplicity. This is not about division; this is about something more akin to betrayal. While putting on a MAGA face for the War Room broadcasts, in the background Bannon was actually plotting and advising of ways to eliminate Donald Trump from republican politics. This is Brutus level disloyalty, even accepting the guy has no moral compass other than his bank account. I can never unsee what has been seen.

There’s also some weird stuff in the exchanges about contextual things from years past. As an example, in one set of text messages Bannon and Epstein were discussing Patrick Byrne who is now part of the Emerald Robinson/Mike Flynn network. Bannon notes in 2018 that Byrne told him he was working for the CIA, and apparently Bannon did not believe him. This is the same November, 2018, message exchange where Epstein is advising Steve Bannon on how to set up a media network to maximize privacy, structure the financing and eliminate the problems with transparency. This is the origin of what would less than a year later become Bannon’s War Room on Real Voice America. Did Jeffrey Epstein provide the seed capital to assist the start-up of Bannon’s War Room? That question isn’t clear, but sheesh, the creepy irony of the possibility is really over-the-top.

I guess in the big scheme of things, considering all of the potential creepy stuff that is far more consequential to the Epstein file release, the relationship with Steve Bannon is not at the top of the issues of concern. However, the reality of seeing this relationship and reading how much they both hated MAGA is just so darn deflating. Trust lost can never be reestablished.Ugh. All of it. Just, ugh. Now we reevaluate everyone who openly, frequently and willingly associated themselves with Steve Bannon on that “War Room” platform. Including: Julie Kelly, Mike Davis, Jack Posobiec, Lara Logan, John Solomon, Laura Loomer, Harmeet Dhillon and so many more. Did they know about this Bannon-Epstein network?

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“If you tolerate the intolerable, you’re communicating that it’s okay to mistreat you.” —Aimee Terese on X

• Epstein-itis (James Howard Kunstler)

Did you think the American zeitgeist — our collective spirit plus our thinking — could not get crazier? Gird your loins. It’s getting worse by the hour. The Jeffrey Epstein files suggest that people will do anything and that people will believe anything. Pizza, hot dogs, white sharks. . . boys, girls, babies, teens, Russian whores. . . celebrities by the score. . . billionaires. . . cannibal orgies. . . vivisection parlors. . . adrenochrome. . . blood. . . dead bodies. . . demon worship. . . a depraved and insane global leadership. . . lemme outa here!

I don’t know what’s real in Epstein and what’s not — but neither do you. What you ought to know is that the colossal inventory of Epstein files is perhaps the greatest instrument of mass mind-fuckery ever seen in the history of Western Civ. How interesting, too, that the deluge of material coincides exactly with the critical capability emergence of Artificial Intelligence as a tool for the manipulation of documentary evidence. And also consider all the years since 2019 that interested parties have had to mess with, destroy, possibly fabricate, and catalog all this stuff.

Apparently, the Woke-Jacobin-Marxist eruption was not enough to destabilize the consensus about reality. The absurdities you were asked to swallow about all-women-are-women-including-men. . . the police killed George Floyd. . . mostly peaceful riots. . . the vaccine is safe and effective. . . the free-est, fairest elections ever. . . “Joe Biden” is president. . . the border is secure. . . speaking English is white supremacy — did not push America deeply enough into Crazyland. More was required to completely demolish your sense of an ordered world.

Donald Trump was correct, at least, that releasing the Epstein files would bring on more chaos than clarity and impede the effort to get our country back on the rails with an economic engine based on the production of goods instead of financialized hyper-casino voodoo. Well, now we’re in a maelstrom of innuendo, code-talk, gossip, and redaction, and you can hardly begin to sort it out. The Attorney General of the USA, bless her heart, has already botched the management of this monster.

Epstein’s relations with Israel and its Mossad intel blob, along with his connections to global banking interests, have aroused the zestiest breakout of antipathy to Jews since the SS busied itself loading the crematoriums of Europe. Hatred of Jews is a recurring symptom of civilization distress. But it is also possible that Israel has behaved badly — and it is certain that many political intellectuals are reevaluating the way that nation was established after World War Two. To some degree, Israel has become a paranoid state (though even paranoiacs have real enemies).

Where does that go from here? Thoughtful people are pessimistic. For sure, they resent the money and influence seeded by Israel in the US Congress. They might be concerned as well about all the other interests pounding money into American politics. Grift is everywhere, and everyone can see it now. The looming end of the grift orgy is probably behind the Democratic Party’s current psychotic disposition. Having lost its 20th century base of factory workers, the party has had to work the extreme margins of American life to build a coalition of the feckless, the reckless, the brainles

s, and the shameless. They have become the party’s wards in a reimagined patronage system even more pernicious than the old one under characters like Boss Tweed and Mayor Richard Daley-the-First of Chicago. The Democratic Party can’t win elections without rigging them and it’s astonishing that they’ve gotten away with building such sturdy armature of ballot fraud in plain sight with next to zero objection from the supposed guardians in officialdom. The features of it are so arrant that a political class with any sense or dignity would have laughed it straight into the criminal courts — and its perps straight into the penitentiary. The fraud became especially acute with the 2020 and 2022 elections. It is about to be revealed in the troves of evidence extracted lately from Fulton County, GA, and presently from Maricopa County, AZ. These birds are cooked. Not a few people will eventually go to jail over these shenanigans. And meanwhile, the SAVE Act pulsates in the Senate like a lump of kryptonite.

Now, you may realize that a political party based entirely on socially marginal persons — many of them mentally ill — will adopt a roster of ideas and policies that are patently marginal, which is to say, crazy. The party elders are now straining to eliminate some of that. Last week, Barack Obama unloaded on California Governor Gavin Newsom’s botched handling of the state’s epic homeless crisis. “We should recognize that the average person doesn’t want to have to navigate around a tent city in the middle of downtown,” the ex-president said in an interview with progressive YouTuber Brian Tyler Cohen.

Hillary Clinton, dropping in on the Munich Security Conference, said, amazingly, “There is a legitimate reason to have a debate about things like migration. It went too far, it’s been disruptive and destabilizing. . .” before tossing in some Woke word-salad: “. . . and it needs to be fixed in a humane way with secure borders that don’t torture and kill people and how we’re going to have a strong family structure because it is at the base of civilization.” Say, what. . . ?

But then, poor Hillary, who can’t help being a Cluster-B psycho, turned up moderating a panel at the same Munich meet-up to take up the issue: “Girls Just Want to Have Fundamental Rights: Fighting the Global Pushback.“ To nail down her point, Hillary brought onstage as the featured speaker, Rep. Sarah McBride (D-DE), known previously as Tim McBride, a man. The insanity is, of course, self-evident. The take-away from all this. They’re not trying hard enough to get their minds right.

And in the meantime, America and the other nations of Western Civ, must contend with the gigantic trip laid on them that is the Epstein files. We know the newspapers and cable news channels are hopeless. Is there anyone or any sense-making institution that can usher us through this nightmare back into the daylight?

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“..58 percent of voters believe their party is “too liberal.” But Newsom and Ocasio-Cortez found a welcoming audience in Europe.”

• Newsom and AOC Go to Europe to Pitch High Tax, High Regulation Policies (Turley)

This week, California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) joined the many Californians now seeking their fortune elsewhere. The difference is that Newsom is planning to come back to California, even as billionaires, investors, and companies flee his state for greener pastures. Newsom and Democrats such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) were selling a brave new world that looked a lot like the broken old world. It was an ironic moment. They were addressing countries at the Munich Security Conference that had previously destroyed their economies through socialist and far-left policies. The rush of liberal Democratic officeholders to Europe was telling. A new poll shows that a record 58 percent of voters believe their party is “too liberal.” But Newsom and Ocasio-Cortez found a welcoming audience in Europe.


The global elite gushed over Ocasio-Cortez and sat enraptured as she rattled off socialist platitudes. That included New York Times correspondent Katrin Bennhold, who thrilled the audience by treating it as a given that Ocasio-Cortez will run for president.Both Newsom and Ocasio-Cortez spoke of returning the U.S. to the good graces of the global elite. Newsom assured the Europeans that Trump’s reign is temporary, and that the U.S. will soon enough dismantle the “wrecking ball” that the administration has taken to the EU.

Newsom offered his leadership and his state as the model, proclaiming that “California is a stable and reliable partner” for Europe. The model includes high taxes, massive spending programs and greater bureaucratic regulations — precisely the policies that have driven the European economy into its current stagnation. In other words, Democrats were in Europe to offer precisely what Newsom outwardly condemned: “doubling down on stupid.” When not fumbling with security questions about issues such as Taiwan, Ocasio-Cortez was demanding that wealth taxes be implemented in the U.S. “expeditiously.” Such a tax on billionaires’ wealth, including unrealized gains, is currently being pushed in California. The predictable result is that billionaires and other wealthy citizens are rushing to leave the state and taking their investments and companies with them.

Ocasio-Cortez had the audience at hello. Rather than having Vice President J.D. Vance shaming them for their attacks on free speech, the Europeans positively gushed over Democratic leaders pushing far-left agendas. It did not matter that such policies devastated European economies in the 20th century. In my book “Rage and the Republic,” I discuss the rise of support for socialism in both the U.S. and Europe. Many of those supporting it are young voters with no memory of the collapse of socialist economies in the 20th Century. In 1977, Labour Prime Minister James Callaghan pursued many of the same socialist policies, leading to what was called the “winter of discontent” as inflation hit 25 percent.

With the collapse of the British pound, the United Kingdom had to take the demoralizing step of securing a loan from the International Monetary Fund, as if it were a developing country. In France, François Mitterrand was also elected to pursue his “rupture with capitalism.” The French economy collapsed; Mitterrand quickly had to reverse himself and restore capitalist policies. That history is rarely discussed or taught today. The “warmth of collectivism,” as New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani put it, is back in vogue. It does not matter that, in Argentina, President Javier Milei is achieving one of the most impressive economic turnarounds in history — dramatically curtailing runaway inflation, government deficits and poverty — by reinstating free-market policies and reducing government spending.

What is chilling about Europe is that the EU has strangled growth with its increasingly centralized controls and massive bureaucracy. My book describes the instability of the EU and its global governance model. Europe is facing populist movements and, like many Democrats, the response has been calls for further consolidation of power. This included the creation of a new, uniform European corporate law, known as the “28th Regime.” With an economy crushed by a massive EU bureaucracy and regulations, the solution of many is all too familiar: borrow more money. French President Emmanuel Macron and others want to issue “Euro bonds” to spend their way into an economic recovery — another policy ideal shared with many on the American left.

This week was only the latest effort of the American left to strengthen an alliance with the EU. Previously, American leaders such as Hillary Clinton pushed the EU to censor Americans online after free speech protections were restored by companies like Twitter. Likewise, the American left is enamored with the EU’s global bureaucracy and regulations. Newsom and Ocasio-Cortez certainly found their element in Munich, and the EU certainly found the “reliable partners” it has longed for in creating “a new World Order with European Values.”

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“..already in a “pre civil war” state, with “dire social instability,” “economic decline,” and “elite pusillanimity” as key precursors..”

• No Prospect’ Of EU Governments Preventing CIVIL WAR: British Army Colonel (MN)

Major unrest looms as political leaders kick the can down the road on immigration and integration failures, according to a seasoned military expert. Retired Colonel Richard Kemp, a former commander of British forces in Afghanistan, has issued a stark warning about the trajectory of social cohesion in Europe and Britain. Speaking to Israeli broadcaster i24News, Kemp highlighted how integration breakdowns have worsened over the past two decades, paving the way for inevitable conflict.“Things have been getting worse, getting bad, for many years, and they are only going to get worse,” Kemp stated, pointing to the reluctance of governments to confront the issues head-on.


Kemp, who also served in counter-insurgency operations in Northern Ireland and held intelligence roles in Westminster and the Cabinet Office, emphasized the lack of political will to address what he termed the “Islamification” of the UK. “No government, the government now or any prospective government of the UK, has the guts to stop it,” he said. “If they want to take strong action to prevent the Islamification of the UK, it’s going to mean big trouble for them. They don’t want trouble, they look four years ahead, they will kick the can down the road to someone else. ”This political shortsightedness, according to Kemp, is fueling the risk of “civil war in Europe.” He described a potential scenario resembling Northern Ireland but on a far more intense scale, where “you have the indigenous British and some of the immigrant population and the British government all on three different sides fighting against each other.”

The officer attributed the slim chances of maintaining social order to democratic dysfunction and a lack of real choice for voters. “The big problem that British people have is they don’t have political choice. We don’t really live in a democracy,” Kemp asserted. “Whatever party you vote for, you get the same policies. That applies also to immigration and to the way in which the Islamic population is allowed to grow in numbers and dominance.” Kemp also noted the rise of Islamist politics in the UK, with Gaza-focused candidates winning seats in high-migration areas. “We’re going to see much more of that in the next election,” he predicted, referencing concerns within the Labour Party, including Health Minister Wes Streeting’s private message:

“I fear we’re in big trouble here – and I am toast at the next election. We just lost our safest ward in Redbridge (51% Muslim, Ilford S) to a Gaza independent. At this rate, I don’t think we’ll hold either of the two Ilford seats.”This isn’t the first time Kemp has raised the alarm. As we highlighted last year, he previously warned of growing unrest over mass migration and allegations of child sexual abuse by new arrivals, stating: “There’s only so much that I think people can take of that, and they’ve been very quiet up until now, the people in the UK have not really raised their voices against this, or in a very limited way only. But the more it develops, and it is going to develop more and more, the more unrest we are going to see.”

In that earlier commentary, Kemp went further: “And they have no option. I’m not encouraging or supporting this, but I think the people will feel they have no option than to take action into their own hand rather than rely on political leaders who are doing nothing, in their eyes. I think there is every likelihood, I don’t know what the timeframe is, but I would go so far as to not just predict civil unrest, but civil war in the UK in the coming years if this situation continues which I believe it will.” Kemp’s views align with broader expert analyses on Europe’s fracturing societies. King’s College London Professor David Betz has warned that countries like the UK, France, and Sweden are already in a “pre civil war” state, with “dire social instability,” “economic decline,” and “elite pusillanimity” as key precursors.

Betz stated: “We’re already past the tipping point, is my estimation… we are past the point at which there is a political offramp. We are past the point at which normal politics is able to solve the problem… almost every plausible way forward from here involves some kind of violence in my view.” Betz further urged: “I would probably avoid big cities. I would suggest you reduce your exposure to big cities if you are able,” and concluded: “Things are bad now, but they are going to get very much worse. Hopefully after they will get better, but you will have to go through the period of very much worse before you get there.”Echoing these concerns, academic Michael Rainsborough described Britain’s path as intentional rather than accidental, rooted in elite strategies of division.

He referenced historical policies under Tony Blair aimed “to rub the Right’s nose in diversity,” and warned of a “descent into what we termed dirty war,” involving internal repression and low-intensity strife. Rainsborough highlighted the erosion of national sentiment, noting public spaces filled with “Pride flags, Palestinian flags, Ukrainian flags — anything, it seems, but the Cross of St George.” He cautioned that such dynamics could lead to “Balkanisation — or, in the local idiom, Ulsterisation,” drawing parallels to Northern Ireland’s troubles. These repeated warnings from military and academic figures underscore a pattern: unchecked mass migration, elite detachment from public will, and a refusal to enforce borders are eroding the fabric of Western societies. As globalist policies prioritize appeasement over security, the pushback from ordinary citizens grows—demanding leaders who put their own people first, before the powder keg ignites.

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Tucker

 

 

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Debt Rattle September 9 2025

Sep 092025
 
 September 9, 2025  Posted by at 10:16 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  68 Responses »


Utagawa Yoshitoshi Ariko weeps as her boat drifts in the moonlight 1886

 

• Britain’s Spirit of Freedom Is Dying (Chris Queen)
• French Government Collapses (RT)
• French Debt A Danger To Eurozone – DW (RT)
• EU Top Diplomat Kallas ‘Critically Uneducated’ – Moscow (RT)
• Zelensky Claims ‘Victory’ Is Avoiding Total Loss Of Ukraine (RT)
• Zelensky Has Insulted Trump. Is He Suicidal? (Romanenko)
• Russia Has No Desire For Revenge – Lavrov (RT)
• Orban Outlines EU Security ‘Guarantee’ Plan (RT)
• Democrats ‘Hate’ Trump More Than They ‘Love’ Their Communities – Homan (DS)
• ‘The Politics Will Figure Itself Out’: JD Vance (Pero)
• Days of Thunder (James Howard Kunstler)
• Appeals Court Upholds E. Jean Carroll’s $83.3 Million Judgment Against Trump (ZH)
• Trump Admin Asks Supreme Court to Allow Withholding of Foreign Aid Funds (ET)
• Another Tremendous Supreme Court Victory for Trump! (Margolis)
• Is the Western World Degenerating Into Communism? (Paul Craig Roberts)
• Chuck Schumer Tested FAFO and the GOP Will Make Him Pay the Price (Margolis)
• Did Johnson Really Say Trump Was an Informant Against Epstein? (Margolis)
• Elite UK Divers Likely Behind Nord Stream Sabotage – Patrushev (RT)

 

 


https://twitter.com/nicksortor/status/1965073853576831472

https://twitter.com/TRUMP_ARMY_/status/1965058356647002444

100s of arrests for Palestine Action protesters. Banksy is quick. Just as quickly, a fence was erected in front of the artwork.
https://twitter.com/GBPolitcs/status/1965030113332056143

 

 

Nap Ritter

 

 

 

 

Britain itself is dying along with that spirit.

• Britain’s Spirit of Freedom Is Dying (Chris Queen)

I’m writing this on the third anniversary of the death of Queen Elizabeth II. I still remember that day so distinctly since I was on breaking news watch for her certain passing. The death of such a long-reigning monarch was heartbreaking to the nation she led, but it was also a sad day for Anglophiles like me.I’ve been an Anglophile as long as I can remember. It’s literally in my DNA; the vast majority of my heritage comes from the British Isles. But British culture, entertainment, and politics have fascinated me for decades (although I have to admit that I’m not as enamored with the royal family after Elizabeth’s passing as some people are). British politics has gotten frustrating in recent years for true conservatives, and watching Britain slide into authoritarianism on free speech is something even a dyed-in-the-wool Anglophile like me can’t support. And I’m not alone.

Last week, Lee Cohen wrote a column in The Spectator that resonated deeply with me: “Today, for the first time, I find Britain indefensible. The affection and historical respect remains. The confidence is gone. Britain now prosecutes her own citizens, not for violence or treason, but for words. Lucy Connolly was sentenced to 31 months in prison for a tweet in the wake of the Southport murders last year. Her crime was expression, harsh perhaps, but still speech. This week, Graham Linehan, the award winning creator of Father Ted, was arrested at Heathrow Airport by armed officers for online comments defending women’s spaces. Arrested, by police carrying weapons, for his opinions. This is the country that gave the world John Stuart Mill.

“Such cases expose what Britain has become: a two tier system of justice. Those branded far right, nationalist, or Islamophobic are persecuted with zeal, Cohen added. Those spreading incendiary rhetoric from Islamist or minority factions are, all too often, met with indulgence. ” Cohen cited not just the crackdown on social media users who express conservative views, but also local governments cracking down on patriotic Britons who fly the Union Jack or St. George s Cross. The same nation that survived the Great Fire of London, the Blitz, and the Falklands War can t handle patriotism in the face of unchecked Muslim immigration. “Meanwhile, foreign flags fly freely across London without question, he wrote. The message is unmistakable: pride in your own country is suspect. Allegiance to any other is acceptable.”

He continued: “From abroad, the shift is impossible to ignore. Elon Musk has called Britain’s censorship Soviet style. JD Vance has condemned its crackdown on speech. The US State Department now lists Britain as a country presenting significant risks to free expression. I never imagined America would place Britain alongside nations that treat liberty as a nuisance. That day has come. For those of us who have long defended Britain, it is heartbreaking. This is the country whose strong institutions enabled America’s own rise and whose commitment to liberty inspired ours. Yet under its current leadership, Britain has stumbled into repression, constraint, and fear, where ordinary citizens look over their shoulders before speaking.”

Cohen appeared on The Spectator’s “Americano” podcast over the weekend, and he told host Freddy Gray that he’s never seen Americans as interested in British politics as they are right now. He mused whether Donald Trump’s Anglophilia and JD Vance’s earnest engagement with British politics might drive the two American leaders to urge the British government to stem the anti-free speech tide. It’s tempting to hope so, but it’s equally tempting to despair that Britain is too far gone. For someone who loves the British and their history and culture, I hope Britons can reverse course and return to shining as a beacon of freedom and hope to the world.

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Another PM gone. They go through them like candy.

Still, Macron stays. But: “..the latest Le Figaro poll showing nearly 80% of French no longer trust the president.”

The only person they trust is Marine Le Pen. Who is prohibited from running.

• French Government Collapses (RT)

The French government has fallen after Prime Minister Francois Bayrou lost a crucial confidence vote in parliament on Monday. Bayrou is the second consecutive prime minister under President Emmanuel Macron to be ousted, throwing the nation into political and economic turmoil. A no-confidence motion in the National Assembly requires at least 288 votes to pass. Monday’s motion received 364 votes, with the left-wing New Popular Front and the right-wing National Rally uniting in opposition to end a months-long standoff over Bayrou’s austerity budget. Having previously survived eight no-confidence motions, Bayrou called this vote himself, in a bid to secure backing for proposals that forecast almost €44 billion ($52 billion) of savings to ease France’s debt burden before the budget is presented in October.

The prime minister, who has repeatedly warned that France’s national debt poses a “mortal danger” to the country, appeared to acknowledge his fate. In a bitter remark on Sunday, Bayrou lashed out at rival parties that he said “hate each other” yet joined forces “to bring down the government.” Bayrou is the second French prime minister in succession to be brought down following Michel Barnier’s ejection last December after just three months in office – and the sixth to serve under Macron since he was first elected in 2017. Bayrou’s ouster reportedly leaves the French president to choose between appointing a Socialist prime minister to steer a budget through parliament, effectively ceding control of domestic policy, or call snap elections that polls suggest favour Marine Le Pen’s National Rally.

With Macron’s approval ratings already hitting historic lows, either choice risks further weakening his presidency. Analysts warn that if markets lose confidence in France’s ability to rein in its deficit and mounting debt, the country could face turmoil reminiscent of the UK during the brief Liz Truss premiership. Public discontent with Macron’s leadership has deepened, with the latest Le Figaro poll showing nearly 80% of French no longer trust the president. Thousands marched through Paris at the weekend demanding Macron’s resignation and carrying placards reading ‘Let’s stop Macron’ and ‘Frexit.’

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Why Macron needs a war with Russia.

But be careful: he’s a Rothschild banker. He knows people.

• French Debt A Danger To Eurozone – DW (RT)

France’s ballooning sovereign debt coupled with political infighting could threaten the fiscal stability of the Eurozone, Deutsche Welle has reported, citing an expert. France has one of the highest national debts in the EU, currently standing at €3.35 trillion ($3.9 trillion) — about 113% of GDP. The ratio is expected to climb to 125% by 2030. Its budget deficit is projected at 5.4–5.8% this year, well above the bloc’s 3% limit. Friedrich Heinemann of the ZEW Leibniz Center for European Economic Research in Mannheim, Germany, told the outlet in an article published on Saturday “we should be worried. The eurozone is not stable at this point.”

A drastic austerity plan proposed by French minority government Prime Minister Francois Bayrou triggered a no confidence vote that he lost on Monday evening. The plan involved slashing public sector jobs, curbing welfare spending, as well as axing two public holidays. The right-wing National Rally, the Socialists, and the leftist France Unbowed vehemently opposed the proposal. An Elabe poll ahead of the vote also showed most respondents were against the measures. Heinemann told DW he doubts France will find a way out soon, given the bitter political infighting.

In July, Bloomberg, citing ING Groep NV experts, similarly claimed that France’s rising debt could be a “ticking bomb” for EU financial stability. Despite the considerable budget deficit, France plans to hike military spending to €64 billion in 2027, double what the country spent in 2017. President Emmanuel Macron has repeatedly cited a supposed Russian threat. The Kremlin has consistently dismissed the claims as “nonsense,” accusing the EU of rapidly militarizing. In May, member states approved a €150 billion ($169 billion) debt program for arms procurement.

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One job requirenent: hatred of Putin. Not even Russia, just Putin. Can we blame her for not knowing much else?

• EU Top Diplomat Kallas ‘Critically Uneducated’ – Moscow (RT)

Remarks by EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas stereotyping Russians and Chinese expose her as “critically uneducated,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Sunday. Speaking at an event organized by the EU Institute for Security Studies last week, Kallas argued that the two nations complement one another in their opposition to the West, describing Russians as strong in social sciences but weak in tech, and the Chinese as the reverse. “Chinese are very good at technology but they are not that good in social sciences,” Kallas said. “The Russians… are not good at technology at all, but super good in social sciences.” Zakharova mocked the remarks in a Telegram post, asking who built the Crimean Bridge or launched rockets from Russia’s Vostochny Cosmodrome if it’s true that Russians lack technological expertise.

“On the same note, China would not be able to govern a billion citizens without being strong in social sciences,” Zakharova wrote. “Kallas is critically uneducated.” The top EU diplomat made the comments while lamenting Western disunity, in contrast to what she described as Russia and China’s unified front. She also claimed that when the two nations highlight their roles in defeating the Axis powers during World War II, it “raises a lot of question marks” for a person who knows history. Moscow has frequently accused officials in the EU of scapegoating Russia for the bloc’s internal problems, arguing that this rhetoric is used to divert public attention from their own failures.

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Russia never laid claim to all of Ukraine. So yeah, some victory. But it’s great media fodder, they eat it up, as do their readers and viewers. Who have no clue what really goes on. The same media made sure of that.

• Zelensky Claims ‘Victory’ Is Avoiding Total Loss Of Ukraine (RT)

Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky has claimed Russian President Vladimir Putin wants to occupy the whole of the country, and that Kiev can claim “victory” in the conflict as long as this does not happen. Russia has long stressed that it has no intention of occupying Ukraine in full. Putin reiterated this when the conflict escalated in February 2022, and again later that year when Russian troops reached Kiev but then withdrew. Since then, Moscow has consistently said any peace settlement requires Ukrainian neutrality, demilitarization, and recognition of Crimea, Donetsk, Lugansk, Kherson, and Zaporozhye as Russian territory. Zelensky, however, insisted in an interview with ABC News’ Martha Raddatz which aired on Sunday that Moscow’s ambitions go further.

“Putin’s goal is to occupy Ukraine, it is to destroy us… For him that’s victory,” he claimed. “And until he can do it, the victory is on our side… For us to survive is a victory.” He also accused Putin of “playing games” by holding a summit with US President Donald Trump in Alaska while allegedly refusing to meet with him, and claimed the Russian leader is not truly interested in peace. Putin and Trump met in Anchorage on August 15. Although the summit produced no breakthroughs, both sides described it as a positive step. Trump’s remarks afterward fueled speculation of a potential Putin-Zelensky meeting. Kremlin aide Yury Ushakov later said no agreement had been reached, although Putin has not ruled out a meeting, despite questioning Zelensky’s legitimacy after his presidential term expired.

Putin has stressed, however, that talks can only occur after tangible progress in negotiations. Last week, Putin struck a cautiously optimistic note about the prospects for peace, saying “there is light at the end of the tunnel” given the US shift to peace mediation. Kirill Dmitriev, Putin’s aide on international economic affairs, echoed the sentiment on Sunday, saying that “peace is close precisely because of Trump-Putin dialogue.” On Sunday, Trump told reporters he planned further talks with Putin “over the next couple of days,” vowing “to get it done – the Russia-Ukraine situation” soon.

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“Ukraine is exhausting its people, its infrastructure, and its economy. If survival truly is the goal, then ending the war must be the only priority.”

• Zelensky Has Insulted Trump. Is He Suicidal? (Romanenko)

In a weekend interview with ABC News, Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky accused US President Donald Trump of giving Russian President Vladimir Putin “what he wanted” at the Alaska summit in August. Whether a passing complaint or a calculated jab, it may come at a steep cost for Zelensky. To suggest that Trump bent to Putin’s will is to imply weakness, and weakness is something Trump never tolerates being accused of. This rhetorical swipe was directed at a man who holds significant sway over the trajectory of the Russia-Ukraine war. For Zelensky, the insult may prove more damaging than cathartic.

Zelensky appears to believe that he has become indispensable in Trump’s calculations, that Washington’s policy revolves around Kiev’s demands. But this overstates his importance. Trump has been consistent about one priority: he wants the war to end, and more than that, he wants the US disentangled from it. His approach reflects the sentiment of much of the American public – weary of sending weapons and aid overseas while domestic problems fester. By framing Trump’s summit with Putin as a giveaway, Zelensky risks alienating the one Western leader positioned to actually shift the direction of the war. Trump is sensitive to personal slights. For years, allies and adversaries alike have learned that once he feels personally insulted, he hardens, not softens. To tell Trump, in effect, that he’s Putin’s stooge is to court precisely that reaction.

Trump’s efforts at the Alaska summit were grounded in a political reality that Zelensky refuses to acknowledge. The battlefield is not tilting in Kiev’s favor. Russia’s position, bolstered by sheer resources and strategic depth, is proving resilient. Ukraine’s European backers continue to speak in lofty terms of standing “as long as it takes,” but they lack the power to deliver a Ukrainian victory. Trump, by contrast, pursued a path that might actually move events forward: direct talks with Russia, engagement on security concerns, and the search for a negotiated framework. It is not an approach designed to satisfy Zelensky and the Europeans’ maximalist goals but rather one rooted in ending an exhausting conflict. To dismiss this effort as capitulation is to ignore that it may be the most realistic option still on the table.

In the same ABC interview, Zelensky says his vision for a Ukrainian victory is Ukraine’s survival. Yet his strategy as evident from his actions appears geared less toward survival and more toward dragging the war on for as long as possible. Each new demand for weapons, each new appeal for escalated sanctions, pushes the conflict forward without changing the battlefield reality of Russia grinding forward toward its objectives – and whatever Zelensky claims, total occupation of Ukraine is not one of those objectives. In the name of “survival,” Ukraine is exhausting its people, its infrastructure, and its economy. If survival truly is the goal, then ending the war must be the only priority. Right now, Trump has the best shot at it, because he is realistically engages with the interests of Russia – the side that has the clear upper hand on the battlefield. And Zelensky is pushing that opportunity away.

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“We have never turned away or pushed anyone out. Those who want back in are welcome..”

• Russia Has No Desire For Revenge – Lavrov (RT)

Russia has no plans to exact vengeance on Western countries that cut ties and pressured Moscow over the Ukraine conflict, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said. Speaking at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations on Monday, Lavrov stressed that Russia did not intend to “take revenge or vent anger” on companies that decided to support Western governments in their push to support Kiev and impose economic sanctions on Moscow, adding that hostility is generally “a poor adviser.” “When our former Western partners come to their senses… we will not push them away. But we… will take into account that, having fled at the order of their political leaders, they have shown themselves to be unreliable,” the minister said.

According to Lavrov, any future market access would also depend on whether the companies would pose risks to sectors vital to Russia’s economy and security. The minister stressed that Russia is open to cooperation and has no intention to isolate itself. “We live on one small planet. It was Western-style to build Berlin Walls… We do not want to build any walls,” he said, referring to the symbol of the Cold War that split the German capital from 1961 to 1989. ”We want to work honestly, and if our partners are ready to do the same on the basis of equality and mutual respect, we are open to dialogue with everyone,” he said, pointing to the Alaska Summit between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his US counterpart, Donald Trump, as an example of constructive engagement.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, on Saturday, that Western businesses would be welcomed back if they had not supported the Ukrainian army and had met obligations to the state and their Russian staff, including paying due salaries. Putin this month also rejected isolationism, stressing that Russia would like to avoid closing itself off in a “national shell” as it would harm competitiveness. “We have never turned away or pushed anyone out. Those who want back in are welcome,” he added.

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“.. the outcome would only slightly differ from the pre-conflict balance, when Ukraine itself acted as a buffer between Russia and NATO with “50% influence” each..”

• Orban Outlines EU Security ‘Guarantee’ Plan (RT)

Partitioning Ukraine into Russian and Western zones of influence is the likely outcome of the conflict and the only reliable guarantee of the EU’s security, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has said. Kiev has pressed its Western backers for security guarantees as a precondition for a settlement with Russia, first pushing for NATO membership and later floating ideas such as ‘peacekeepers’ and a buffer zone with Western military patrols. Moscow has rejected Ukrainian membership in NATO or Western troops on its territory, stressing that any settlement must include Kiev’s neutrality, demilitarization, and recognition of Crimea, Donetsk, Lugansk, Kherson, and Zaporozhye as Russian territory.

Orban, however, has suggested it is time for the West to acknowledge Russia’s “inevitable” military victory and to begin deciding how Ukraine should be partitioned. ”Europeans all so elegantly talk around security guarantees, but the security guarantee actually means the division of Ukraine,” Orban told guests at the annual Civic Picnic in Kotcse on Sunday. “The first step has already been taken – the Westerners have accepted that a Russian zone exists.” He referred to earlier remarks by US President Donald Trump that Ukraine regaining Crimea was “impossible.”“The result would be a Russian zone, a demilitarized zone and, eventually, a Western zone…The only question is how many kilometers away from the border of the Russian zone a demilitarized zone should be established,” he stated.

Orban noted the outcome would only slightly differ from the pre-conflict balance, when Ukraine itself acted as a buffer between Russia and NATO with “50% influence” each in the country. He said this division would help end the conflict and benefit all sides, particularly the EU, which he warned is on the verge of “collapse” and lacks the means to fund the conflict further. The Hungarian leader has long criticized Brussels over its “warmongering” stance on Russia and support for Ukraine. In his speech, he repeated his warning that Ukraine’s EU accession would trap the bloc in a permanent conflict with Moscow, calling instead for an EU-Russia security pact.

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“.. they’re sanctuary cities and they’re releasing criminals every hour, so that’s where we’re going,” Homan said. “That’s where we’re going to flood the zone.”

• Democrats ‘Hate’ Trump More Than They ‘Love’ Their Communities – Homan (DS)

Trump administration border czar Tom Homan says Democrat leaders in sanctuary states and cities hate President Donald Trump more than they care for their communities. Homan spoke to the State Freedom Caucus Network Summit in Dallas, Texas, Friday night and reiterated the plan to deport illegal aliens in Chicago. While Democrats say Trump is targeting Democrat run cities for political reasons, Homan said that’s not the case. “It’s not because they’re blue, it’s because they’re sanctuary cities and they’re releasing criminals every hour, so that’s where we’re going,” Homan said. “That’s where we’re going to flood the zone.”

Weeks ago, Homan had said they will “flood the zone” with immigration enforcement in Chicago. Last month, Trump said he would send in the National Guard to address public safety, but later hedged that and insisted Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker call for help. Pritzker said he would not call Trump to ask for help, saying there is not an emergency. Saturday, Trump posted a graphic to Truth Social, depicting him as a character in the film Apocalypse Now, but it said “Chipocalypse Now,” “I love the smell of deportations in the morning” and “Chicago about to find out why it’s called the Department of WAR.” Pritzker posted on social media in response that “this is not a joke” and “this is not normal.”

Pritzker and other Democratic leaders also posted on social media over the weekend “know your rights” campaign messaging, with tips like remaining calm, denying entry without a warrant, remaining silent, and declining to sign anything. Homan tried to make sense of the Democrats’ resistance to cooperating with ICE. “They hate President Trump more than they love their communities, there’s no other reason,” Homan said. “I can’t think of why you would not join forces with us.” Illinois law prohibits state and local law enforcement from cooperating with federal immigration officials. State law also prohibits police from inquiring about an individual’s immigration status. Pritzker said if Trump deploys the National Guard in Chicago, they will immediately take the administration to court.

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Peter Thiel and four different names. That’s JD Vance.

• ‘The Politics Will Figure Itself Out’: JD Vance (Pero)

Vice President JD Vance joined “My View with Lara Trump” Saturday where he discussed everything from his best-selling book “Hillbilly Elegy” to whether he will run for president in 2028. Since it’s been 10 years since Vance wrote “Hillbilly Elegy,” he reminisced on his life before he became vice president of the United States. “I was raised by a grandmother who—we didn’t go to church a whole lot—but she prayed everyday. She read the Bible everyday, and she gave me this sense that there was some purpose to this. We might not understand it. God works in mysterious ways, but there was some deeper meaning to what we were experiencing, and that gave me the perseverance to go through it.” Vance said a major motivation for him growing up was knowing his grandmother was very sick and that someone was going to have to step up and hold the family together when she was gone.

“I kind of wanted that person to be me. I wanted to be the person in my family that other people could rely on.” Vance said his wife Usha Vance is starting to “hit her stride” as second lady, getting involved in projects like John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and children’s literacy. Usha is the anchor of their family, Vance said, and she’s making sure their children are having as normal a life as possible as their family’s life has drastically changed with Secret Service protection and living in the vice president’s residence. “This is really weird for the kids. This is really weird for the whole family unit. [Usha’s] main job more than anything else is just to make the kids have as normal a life as possible.

She makes us do normal family stuff as much as possible.” When it comes to working with President Donald Trump, Vance said there are so many surprising things. One surprise has been that Trump “doesn’t have an off switch.” “Sometimes the president will call you at 12:30 or 2:00 in the morning, and then he’ll call you at 6:00 in the morning about a totally different topic.” Trump is also very good about delegating work, empowering his people to do it, and also trusting them to do the work, Vance said. “What’s made this so much fun is that the president all the time is just saying, ‘JD, you go and do this,’ or ‘JD, you go and talk to these leaders about this particular issue … You don’t have to have me looking over you all the time.’”

When it comes to the 2028 presidential election, many people are viewing Vance as a top Republican candidate. Vance said there are a lot of great people and that if he does decide to run, the job won’t be handed to him “either on the Republican side or on the national side.” “I don’t like thinking about it because I like thinking about the job that I have right now,” Vance said. He added that he thinks ”the American people are so fed up with folks who are already running for the next job seven months into the current one.” “If we do a good job in 2025 and 2026, then we can talk about the politics in 2027,” Vance said. “I’m going to try to do my best job, and I think if I do that, the politics will figure itself out.”

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“If we hadn’t won this election we would have all been vaxxed to death and censored so no one could hear our dying screams” — Mike Benz on “X”

• Days of Thunder (James Howard Kunstler)

That reckoning you’ve heard about lo these many years? It’s here now. We’re in it. You just can’t see all the moving parts, and if you did, you might not understand how or where they are moving, and what they are fixing to do next. Aside from certain US senators playing their pre-scripted mad scenes for the cameras, a disquieting quiet blankets the swamp like a miasma. It feels like a long, still moment before some shaking of the earth. Everyone senses it and the guilty must feel it most keenly.

That’s why they are laying low and keeping their traps shut. Every criminal defense lawyer inside the beltway is burning the midnight oil (and racking up the billable hours, ka-ching). Meanwhile, where are their clients? No longer peddling alibis on MSNBC (MSNOW), at least. I doubt that John Brennan is even in the country. My guess would be he’s cooling his heels in Abu Dhabi, where the extradition protocols with the USA remain comfortably squishy to his advantage. (He reportedly became a Muslim while running the CIA station in Riyadh between 1996-99, just in time for 9-11. . . hmmmm. . . .)

Hillary Clinton has been keeping her pie-hole closed for weeks now while rattling around that big house in Chappaqua, NY, like a BB in a packing crate. Is anyone counting the wine-boxes coming and going from the place? It must be maddening to be HRC — but that new extra edge of prosecution terror would just be larding the lily, considering what Vlad Putin learned about her mental state way back in 2016: deeply unstable. . .diabetic. . . on tranqs. . . often plastered. . . bursts of rage. . . . Comey and Clapper? No more cute pranks on the beach for Big Jim, 86 on the menacing messages in seashells and putting out Taylor Swift fan-boy Tik-toks. Was that some attempt to not be taken seriously? Like you’re some kind of overgrown, harmless child?

James Clapper, of course, would be voted most likely to flip on his compadres, if such a canvass were taken on Coup island. He was the first to publicly announce his lawyering-up in the Russia collusion affair. He never expected it would come to this, this ordeal of interrogation. . . his “good soldier” self plopped ignominiously in the witness chair. . . the odor of his own fear. . . the proffer (just tell us what really happened). . . the US attorneys appearing to leer at him, his house mortgaged to pay the attorney’s fees. . . what’s a poor boy to do. . . ?

Adam Schiff has gone radio silent. A miracle! Alas, the autopen pardon granted for his J-6 Committee doings apparently does not apply to matters such as mortgage fraud and wire fraud. He realizes with chills and sighs of despair that this ain’t no foolin’ around. People go to jail for these things. . . gulp! His attorney absolutely forbids any televised appeals to his fan-base, as if the glamorati of Rodeo Drive could do anything to stop what’s coming. Too bad Ed Buck and his magic checkbook are no longer around.

Even the seeming untouchables, Blinken, Jake Sullivan, Lisa Monaco, Norm Eisen, Mary McCord, Anrew Weissmann, Marc Elias must be listening hard for shoes to drop. They thought they had it made in the shade after 2020. They had the USA on a string, they thought. Home free. The trouble with the smarty-pants way of life is sometimes you out-smart yourself and your pants fall down. But all they can do in this late hour is induce a bunch of federal judges — recently imported from countries where justice means casting goat neckbones across the dusty floor of a mud hut — to gum up every executive action coming out of the White House with a poorly-argued TRO. They might as well be on a U-haul box truck throwing furniture off the back at a fleet of pursuing cop cars.

Mr. Trump is having sport with them now. Their crimes spanning the decade past are being bundled into one big coup case against the country, a color revolution on their own citizens and against “the democracy” that they never stop pretending to tout. If I am perceiving all this correctly, the days and weeks ahead will be as consequential a train of events as ever rolled down the tracks into Union Station, DC.

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“.. even though a jury ruled that she lied about her rape allegations..”

“.. has reportedly accused at least six prior men of raping her..”

• Appeals Court Upholds E. Jean Carroll’s $83.3 Million Judgment Against Trump (ZH)

A federal appeals court has upheld a civil jury’s finding that President Donald Trump must pay $83.3 million to E. Jean Carroll for his repeated social media attacks against the longtime advice columnist after she accused him of sexual assault – even though a jury ruled that she lied about her rape allegations. Carroll, whose advice column ran in the women’s magazine Elle from 1993 to 2019, has reportedly accused at least six prior men of raping her, including former CBS President Les Moonves. Her bizarre social-media history also included posts making light of sexual trauma and even asking her followers if they found Trump sexually attractive. Trump was prevented from submitting that evidence in his trial.

Despite her dubious track record, on Monday the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected Trump’s appeal of the defamation award, finding that the “jury’s damages awards are fair and reasonable.” Trump had argued that he should not have to pay the sum as a result of a Supreme Court decision expanding presidential immunity. His lawyers had asked for a new trial. A civil jury in Manhattan issued the $88.3 million award last year following a trial that centered on Trump’s repeated social media attacks against Carroll over her claims that he sexually assaulted her in a Manhattan department store in 1996. That award followed a separate trial, in which Trump was found liable for sexually abusing Carroll and ordered to pay $5 million.

That award was upheld by an appeals court last December. In a memoir, and again at a 2023 trial, Carroll described how a chance encounter with Trump at Bergdorf Goodman’s Fifth Avenue in 1996 started with the two flirting as they shopped, then ended with a violent struggle inside a dressing room. Carroll said Trump slammed her against a dressing room wall, pulled down her tights and forced himself on her. A jury found Trump liable for sexual assault, but concluded he hadn’t committed rape, as defined under New York law. Trump repeatedly denied that the encounter took place and accused Carroll of making it up to help sell her book. He also said that Carroll was “not my type.”

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Lawfare at its finest.

“Solicitor General D. John Sauer said in the new application that this is the third time in this case that Ali “has issued an unlawful injunction that precipitates an unnecessary emergency and needless interbranch conflict.”

• Trump Admin Asks Supreme Court to Allow Withholding of Foreign Aid Funds (ET)

The Trump administration asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Sept. 8 to permit it to withhold billions of dollars in foreign aid previously authorized by Congress. The Department of Justice (DOJ) asked the justices to pause a ruling by U.S. District Judge Amir Ali, who ordered the federal government to spend about $4 billion in previously appropriated funds. The money is earmarked for foreign aid and United Nations peacekeeping projects. The emergency application was filed in two cases, Trump v. Global Health Council, and U.S. Department of State v. AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalitions. Solicitor General D. John Sauer said in the new application that this is the third time in this case that Ali “has issued an unlawful injunction that precipitates an unnecessary emergency and needless interbranch conflict.”

In February, Ali gave the federal government 36 hours to pay roughly $2 billion in invoices for past foreign-aid work, which Sauer called “an impossible task,” and one that the judge lacked authority to order. The Supreme Court ended the dispute by granting an administrative stay, a court order that gives the justices more time to consider a matter. After the deadline was lifted, the government paid “virtually all of the contested amounts,” Sauer said. Next, Ali issued a “novel injunction requiring the government to obligate tens of billions of dollars in foreign-aid appropriations on the theory that failing to do so constituted an unlawful impoundment in violation of the Constitution and the Impoundment Control Act of 1974,” Sauer said. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit lifted that injunction and that court allowed its ruling to come into effect on Aug. 28, Sauer said.

Now that its original theory has been “decisively rejected,” the district court precipitated a new emergency “by issuing a version of the same injunction near midnight on September 3,” Sauer stated. Again, the district court is forcing the government to obligate about $10.5 billion in foreign-aid funding that was due to expire on Sept. 30, according to Sauer. But now the government has been left “with even less time for further review or compliance, with even more deficient legal theories,” Sauer said. Sauer said the government already intended to obligate $6.5 billion of that funding by Sept. 30, but Ali’s order regarding the remaining $4 billion “raises a grave and urgent threat to the separation of powers,” a constitutional doctrine that divides the government into three branches to prevent any single branch from accumulating too much power.

After the D.C. Circuit canceled Ali’s injunction, the president proposed rescinding that $4 billion in funding under the Impoundment Control Act. Under fast-track procedures, Congress has 45 days to consider the rescission request and during that period the president cannot be required to spend the money, Sauer said. Ali’s new injunction would compel the Executive Branch to begin “obligating those funds at breakneck speed to meet the September 30 deadline, even as Congress is considering the rescission proposal” and before Congress’s 45 days to do so elapse, Sauer said. A panel of the D.C. Circuit denied by a vote of 2–1 a stay of the judge’s order late on Sept. 5, Sauer added.

Also on Sept. 8, Global Health Council and other litigants that want the $4 billion to be released filed a brief opposing the government’s application for an administrative stay of Ali’s order. “The government’s theory that the agencies need not comply with enacted legislation mandating that they spend funds, because the President has unilaterally proposed legislation to rescind those statutory mandates, would fundamentally upend our constitutional structure,” the brief reads. It is unclear when the Supreme Court will act on the government’s application.

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“The order, crafted to appease immigration activists, accused officers of running “roving patrols” and floated the idea that their actions violated the Fourth Amendment. But on Monday, the Supreme Court wasn’t buying it.”

• Another Tremendous Supreme Court Victory for Trump! (Margolis)

The Supreme Court handed President Donald Trump a major victory on Monday, greenlighting his push for tougher immigration enforcement in Los Angeles. In a 6-3 ruling, the Court lifted a lower-court injunction that had barred federal agents from conducting raids without what the judge had called “reasonable suspicion.” With that order gone, Trump’s record-setting deportation efforts are back on track. The liberal justices predictably fumed in their dissent, warning of supposed risks to “constitutional freedoms,” blah, blah blah. But the conservative majority was having none of that garbage. For now, immigration agents can resume their sweeping operations while the case winds through the courts—a clear sign that Trump’s agenda won’t be derailed by activist judges.

Conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote in Monday’s decision that the lower court’s restraining order went too far in restricting how Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents could carry out stops or questioning of suspected unlawful migrants. “To be clear, apparent ethnicity alone cannot furnish reasonable suspicion,” he wrote. “However, it can be a ‘relevant factor’ when considered along with other salient factors.” The Supreme Court’s three liberal justices issued a strong dissent penned by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who wrote that “countless people in the Los Angeles area have been grabbed, thrown to the ground, and handcuffed simply because of their looks, their accents, and the fact they make a living by doing manual labour.” “Today, the Court needlessly subjects countless more to these exact same indignities,” she wrote.

The decision undoes a ruling by US District Judge Maame E Frimpong in Los Angeles, who had said that there is a “mountain of evidence” showing the raids were violating the US Constitution. Back in July, Judge Frimpong tried to hamstring immigration enforcement by ordering Trump’s raids halted. His ruling claimed the administration couldn’t rely on “apparent race or ethnicity” or “speaking Spanish” as grounds for questioning someone. He even barred agents from acting based on whether individuals were found at bus stops, farms, or car washes—places long known as hubs for illegal labor. The order, crafted to appease immigration activists, accused officers of running “roving patrols” and floated the idea that their actions violated the Fourth Amendment. But on Monday, the Supreme Court wasn’t buying it.

The justices ruled 6-3, that Trump’s policies stand a strong chance of being upheld as constitutional, clearing the way for raids to continue. Trump’s crackdown began in June with large-scale raids in Los Angeles at places like Home Depot and other worksites. Predictably, activists launched protests that quickly spiraled into unrest. Trump responded by deploying nearly 2,000 National Guard troops and 700 Marines after California’s Democrat leadership refused to act. This ruling is more than just a win for Trump—it’s a crushing humiliation for Gavin Newsom. The California governor spent weeks smugly touting the lower court injunction as proof that Trump had been reined in by the courts. He mocked the president, framing the lower-court order as a permanent roadblock to ICE enforcement, like this post on X that didn’t age well at all:

Now, with the Supreme Court’s decisive smackdown, Newsom is left looking foolish and powerless. His big talking point has evaporated overnight, replaced by the hard reality that Trump’s immigration agenda is moving forward stronger than ever.

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“Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) is communism.”

• Is the Western World Degenerating Into Communism? (Paul Craig Roberts)

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) is communism. During the past year I have read on various websites articles that the West has become the Communist State that it once opposed. Various legitimate examples are offered: the use of law as a weapon as in Stalin’s show trials of the Bolsheviks who made the Russian Revolution; suppression of free speech and protest as all over the Western world; fake election results as in the 2020 US presidential election and in Europe by banning opposition candidates from running for office; focus on “foreign enemies” instead of the domestic institutionalization of tyranny; designation of Trump’s supporters as domestic enemies and insurrectionists. As of yet, no one has put all of these concerns into one formula. Allow me to try.

For 60 years liberals have transitioned the United States from merit to race and gender based entitlements. The United States, whose foundational basis is English common law and the accountability of government achieved by the English Glorious Revolution of 1680, has been beset by progressives and liberals for many decades for being a society based on merit and equality under law. Equality under law requires just that and thus prohibits DEI-based preferences. A merit-based society allows and encourages those best able and qualified to take the leading positions. But this excludes those less capable and, thereby, violates “diversity, equity, and inclusion,” which the liberal-left has raised as the new standard. The “solution” is to put the less capable in charge.

This requires demonizing merit as “racist” which has resulted in merit no longer being the requirement for admissions to Ivy League universities and formerly merit-based high schools. Instead, admission is based on racial privilege. Progressives and liberals since the regime of Franklin D. Roosevelt have succeeded in elevating DEI above merit, today dismissed as “white racism.” The entire purpose of the Democrat Party is to destroy a merit-based society. Trump is hated by the liberal-left for trying to restore a merit-based society. For the liberal-left merit is discriminatory and thereby racist. To escape racism, DEI must supplant merit as the basis of American society. DEI is the Democrat Party’s weapon to overthrow a merit-based society. Communism precludes incomes, influence, and status based on merit in theory but not in practice.

In practice, Communist Party membership was the ladder to upward mobility. But for ideologues it is theory that counts. Under communism equality regardless of merit is the standard. Capitalistic, bourgeois society is based on merit with income, influence, and status based on success. Therefore a merit-based society precludes equal results. A merit-based society is “unfair” in the modern parlance. A fair society is one in which merit receives no reward and is handicapped by preferences for those who are without merit. Kurt Vonnegut describes the liberal-left ideal in his short story, “Harrison Bergeron.” Vonnegut thought it would be 2081 before the American liberal-left would be able to establish the Cabinet Department of Handicapper General. But the transition began in 1965 when the EEOC stood the 1964 Civil Rights Act on its head and imposed racial preferences for blacks known as “affirmative action.”

These preferences were explicitly prohibited by the 1964 Civil Right Act. But the American liberal-left elevated its ideological agenda above the law. Such a society will, of course, be mediocre and a laggard in intellectual and cultural advancement. But as such advancements are merit-based, they don’t count. DEI is achieved when individual achievement becomes a criminal offense against society. In Vonnegut’s story, Harrison Bergeron is shot by the Handicapper General. I once read a science fiction story in which at a certain age children were tested for intelligence. If their intelligence was above the norm, they were terminated. Already today September 8th, 2025, we have laws or regulations that penalize merit-based admission, hiring, and promotion decisions and criminalize disagreement with some official narratives, such as the Holocaust.

Various Democrat cities have passed laws that give legal immunities to non-whites. Yet the West continues to claim free speech–obviously a false claim–and to redefine equality under law as equality of result. As free speech guaranteed by the American Constitution is now impermissible, how does truth survive? As truth is impermissible, how can good decisions be made? As recent decades have made completely clear, good decisions cannot be made in the Western world. Enemies are created instead of peace. Law breakers are protected while their victims are punished. Borders are undefended at the expense of the ethnic citizens of the country. As the immigrant invasions continue, the more entitlement takes over from merit and the less Western governments represent their ethnic base. Thus we have arrived at The Camp of the Saints.

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“The solution they’ve crafted draws inspiration from an unlikely source—a 2023 proposal by Democrat Amy Klobuchar that would allow up to 10 nominees from the same committee to be confirmed together.”

• Chuck Schumer Tested FAFO and the GOP Will Make Him Pay the Price (Margolis)

Chuck Schumer is about to learn the hard way what happens when you block and stall for too long. After seven months of throwing a tantrum and holding up more than 100 of President Trump’s nominees, the Senate Minority Leader’s obstruction has finally pushed Republicans to the breaking point. Senate Majority Leader John Thune has had enough, and he’s preparing to unleash the nuclear option to break Schumer’s blockade, ram through confirmations, and get Trump’s team in place before the September 19 recess. In Washington, this is FAFO politics at its finest—Schumer tested his luck, and now he’s about to pay the price.

As PJ Media previously reported back in August, Thune has warned that Republicans would change the rules if Democrats refused to cooperate on speeding up confirmations. Schumer chose to ignore those warnings, apparently believing he could continue his obstruction indefinitely without consequences. That calculation is about to prove spectacularly wrong. After negotiations with Democrats predictably went nowhere, Thune assembled a working group in August featuring Republican Senators Katie Britt, James Lankford, Ron Johnson, Eric Schmitt, and Ted Budd. Their mission was simple: find a way around the Democratic roadblock. The solution they’ve crafted draws inspiration from an unlikely source—a 2023 proposal by Democrat Amy Klobuchar that would allow up to 10 nominees from the same committee to be confirmed together.

The Republican version promises to be far more comprehensive, removing artificial caps on how many nominees the Senate can confirm simultaneously. While judges and Cabinet nominees would remain exempt from this streamlined process, the change represents a fundamental shift in how the Senate handles executive branch confirmations. Schumer’s obstruction strategy has been as petty as it is unprecedented. He openly told The Wall Street Journal that he would instruct his entire caucus to vote against every single Trump nominee, effectively grinding the confirmation process to a halt. In August, he actually bragged about his caucus’s commitment to delaying Trump’s confirmations as long as humanly possible.

The numbers show just how far Democrats have taken their obstruction campaign. Trump is now the first president since Herbert Hoover—almost 100 years ago—to have zero civilian nominees confirmed by voice vote or unanimous consent in the early months of his term. That’s not politics as usual; that’s pure spite. Of course, Chuck Schumer is out there defending this nonsense, claiming Trump’s picks are somehow “flawed” or “unqualified.” That’s rich coming from the party that shoved through Xavier Becerra, Pete Buttigieg, and Ketanji Brown Jackson—not to mention a slew of judicial nominees who couldn’t answer basic questions about the law. Republicans have seen this game before, and it looks like they’re finally ready to call Schumer’s bluff. For context, during Trump’s first term, 65 percent of his civilian nominees were approved by voice vote or unanimous consent. Biden managed 57 percent.

Today, only Secretary of State Marco Rubio has slipped past the Democrats’ blockade. That tells you everything you need to know about how shamelessly the left is weaponizing the confirmation process. Republicans aren’t thrilled about using the nuclear option, fully aware that this rule change will eventually benefit Democrats when they next control both the Senate and White House. But make no mistake: this is the inevitable result of the Democrats’ years-long weaponization of the confirmation process, dating back to George W. Bush’s presidency. If the nuclear option is invoked, it’s on them. Chuck Schumer built this trap with nothing but raw partisan spite, and now he’s about to feel the consequences. The nuclear option is coming, and it’s entirely his doing.

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“The Speaker is reiterating what the victims’ attorney said, which is that Donald Trump — who kicked Epstein out of Mar-a-Lago — was the only one, more than a decade ago, willing to help prosecutors expose Epstein for being a disgusting child predator..”

• Did Johnson Really Say Trump Was an Informant Against Epstein? (Margolis)

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) dropped a bombshell last week, only to take a cautious step back just days later. When CNN’s Manu Raju pressed him on President Donald Trump’s use of the word “hoax” regarding the controversy over the Epstein files, Johnson said that the president had once acted as an FBI informant against Jeffrey Epstein — a fresh detail in the saga. “What Trump is referring to is the hoax that the Democrats are using to try to attack him,” Johnson explained. “He has never said or suggested or implied; I’ve talked to him about this many times, many times. He is horrified. It’s been misrepresented. He’s not saying that what Epstein did is a hoax. It’s a terrible, unspeakable evil. He believes that himself.”

Johnson also recalled Trump’s decision years ago to ban Epstein from Mar-a-Lago, and that’s when he made the claim. “When he first heard the rumor, he kicked him out of Mar-a-Lago. He was an FBI informant to try to take this stuff down,” Johnson said, effectively revealing for the first time that Trump had cooperated with federal authorities in efforts to stop Epstein. On Sunday, Johnson’s office tried to clarify the remarks with a carefully worded statement. “The Speaker is reiterating what the victims’ attorney said, which is that Donald Trump — who kicked Epstein out of Mar-a-Lago — was the only one, more than a decade ago, willing to help prosecutors expose Epstein for being a disgusting child predator,” Johnson’s office said, according to a report from the Washington Post.

We already knew that Trump was one of the few people willing to stand against Epstein’s depravity, but the revelation that Trump was an informant was a game-changing new detail. It’s not lost on me that the statement the Washington Post printed doesn’t actually retract the claim, but it doesn’t double down on it either. For years, Democrats have tried to turn the Epstein saga into a Trump scandal because they know many of their own allies have deep ties to Epstein. When they controlled the White House and Congress, they did squat about releasing Epstein files or pursuing real transparency. The Epstein scandal suddenly became the Left’s favored weapon only after Biden’s administration ignored it for so long. Now, they want to drag it out as a smear against Trump in the hopes of creating a distraction to derail his second term. Classic political maneuvering.

Johnson’s “informant” comment touched a nerve because it challenged the left’s carefully constructed lie. Did Trump formally inform on Epstein, or did he simply cooperate with authorities? The difference might matter to the media vultures and political spin doctors, but the real takeaway is Trump’s stance against Epstein, which includes kicking him out of Mar-a-Lago for inappropriate behavior and assisting authorities in exposing Epstein. Whether or not he was an actual FBI informant is unclear, but the Democrats still look foolish trying to make Epstein a Trump scandal.

Read more …

Just yesterday, another German report claimed it was Ukrainians. The particular novelty this time (every report needs one) is that it claims Zaluzhny was in charge.

Why do they do this? To cast doubt on Seymour Hersh’s report. They never say he’s wrong, or even mention him, it’s just an endless stream of “different” stories.

• Elite UK Divers Likely Behind Nord Stream Sabotage – Patrushev (RT)

The sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines could not have been carried out without Western commandos, a top aide to Russian President Vladimir Putin has claimed, singling out Britain as the likely culprit. German prosecutors have attributed the explosions in international waters in September 2022, which disabled the twin pipelines supplying Russian gas to Germany via the Baltic Sea, to a group of Ukrainian nationals. In an article published Sunday in Kommersant, the former head of Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB), Nikolay Patrushev, argued that Ukrainians lack the expertise to carry out this complex operation independently.

The sabotage was likely “planned, overseen, and executed with the involvement of highly trained NATO special forces,” Patrushev wrote, adding that the perpetrators were experienced in deep-sea operations and familiar with working in the Baltic.“Few armies or intelligence services have divers capable of executing such an operation correctly and, above all, covertly. One unit with the necessary skills is the British Special Boat Service,” he said. Founded during World War II, the SBS is the Royal Navy’s elite squad specializing in amphibious warfare. Russia has criticized the German investigation for a lack of transparency and for not including the Russian authorities. In 2024, Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service claimed it had “credible information” that the US and UK were directly involved in the sabotage, a claim denied by both London and Washington.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

https://twitter.com/EricLDaugh/status/1964729425863282789

fauci

https://twitter.com/buitengebieden/status/1964927875116925373
https://twitter.com/Rainmaker1973/status/1965081470231511305

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle September 5 2025

Sep 052025
 
 September 5, 2025  Posted by at 9:16 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  61 Responses »


Cy Twombly Untitled 1964

 

• Zelensky’s Dream Is NATO-Russia War – Ex-Polish President (RT)
• Europeans Ready To Offer Security Guarantees To Ukraine – Macron (RT)
• Kremlin Blasts ‘Unacceptable’ Western Plan For Ukraine Security Guarantees (ZH)
• Ukrainian Attacks On EU Oil Supplies Are ‘Sanctions’ – Zelensky (RT)
• Merz Driven By Desire For ‘Maniacal Revenge’ Against Russia – Moscow (RT)
• Merz Instructs To Hide German Involvement In Taurus Deliveries To Ukraine (Sp.)
• Russia-China Gas Deal To ‘Turn The LNG Market On Its Head’ (RT)
• Bulgaria Debunks von der Leyen Jet Claims (RT)
• Did Russia Really Jam Von der Leyen’s Plane? The Data Says Otherwise (RT)
• DOJ Opens Grand Jury Criminal Investigation Fed Governor Lisa Cook (ZH)
• Lisa Cook May Be in Real Trouble Now (Margolis)
• Trump Tells Supreme Court He Will Appeal in E. Jean Carroll Case (ET)
• RFK Jr Spars With Senators During Wild Testimony (ZH)
• Musk Snubbed From Trump’s Tech CEO Party At Rose Garden (ZH)
• The Power Resides in the Enemies of Truth (Paul Craig Roberts)
• New Greek Law Promises Prison For Rejected Asylum-Seekers (ZH)

 

 

“.. any illegal seizure of arrested Russian funds or income from them must be converted into additional territories and other property of country 404. Or by confiscating the valuables of the British Crown. There are still enough of them in various places, including those located in Russia.”
https://twitter.com/DD_Geopolitics/status/1963515368141467821

NATO

Sachs

Kaja
https://twitter.com/peacemaket71/status/1963457298078089567

Putin
https://twitter.com/nxt888/status/1963309350921060686

AfD

 

 

 

 

And most of Europe shares that dream. Provided the US fights their fight.

• Zelensky’s Dream Is NATO-Russia War – Ex-Polish President (RT)

Vladimir Zelensky’s “dream” is to draw NATO directly into the conflict with Russia on Ukraine’s behalf, former Polish President Andrzej Duda said Tuesday. Speaking in an interview with journalist Bogdan Rymanowski, Duda recalled an incident in November 2022, when a Ukrainian air defense missile struck near a Polish border village, killing one person. Zelensky immediately blamed Russia and urged Warsaw to invoke NATO’s collective defense clause. Duda said the Ukrainian leader pressured him to publicly declare the weapon Russian in origin, which he refused to do.

“From the very beginning, they’ve been trying to drag everyone into the war. That’s obvious,” Duda said. “Any leader of a nation in a situation like Ukraine’s would want the entirety of NATO to fight on its side.” “Having NATO support for the army, NATO tanks and soldiers fighting side by side against Russia – that’s a dream [in such circumstances],” he added, stressing that “Poland, being a NATO state, could never have agreed to that.” Poland has been one of Kiev’s staunchest backers, providing both arms and diplomatic support. Moscow has claimed that Polish nationals make up a significant portion of foreign mercenaries fighting in Ukraine’s military ranks.

The relationship between Warsaw and Kiev has also seen disputes. In 2023, several eastern European states, including Poland, banned EU-facilitated Ukrainian grain imports, citing market disruptions. Tensions have also repeatedly flared over Kiev’s veneration of nationalist figures responsible for the mass killing of Poles during the Second World War. Moscow has long described the Ukraine conflict as a NATO proxy war against Russia, warning that European members of the US-led bloc risk direct confrontation by fueling the hostilities. Prior to the escalation in 2022, Russia sought a legally-binding pledge that NATO would freeze its expansion eastward, a proposal that was rejected.

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No, Russia will not allow troops inside Ukraine. Every word about it is a waste of everybody’s time.

• Europeans Ready To Offer Security Guarantees To Ukraine – Macron (RT)

A number of European countries are prepared to offer security guarantees to Ukraine once a peace deal between Kiev and Moscow is signed, French President Emmanuel Macron has said. He made the comments after months of debate within NATO about possible models for post-conflict Ukraine, which have coincided with US President Donald Trump’s renewed efforts to mediate a deal with Russia. “We Europeans are ready to offer security guarantees to Ukraine and its people on the day a peace deal is signed,” Macron said following a meeting with Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky in Paris on Wednesday.

“The contributions prepared, documented, and confirmed this afternoon at the level of defense ministers, in an extremely confidential manner, allow me to state that the preparatory work is complete,” he added, without specifying the details. “We are ready for a robust peace and a lasting peace for Ukraine and for Europeans,” Macron said.Zelensky expressed confidence that “firm security guarantees” would be agreed upon during the meeting of Ukraine’s backers, known as the Coalition of the Willing, on Thursday. Kiev has been pressing the West to provide guarantees that could serve as a substitute for NATO’s collective defense after the US effectively blocked Ukraine’s bid to join the bloc.

Several European nations, including France and the UK, have voiced their readiness to deploy peacekeepers, while Germany recently said it has no such plans. Trump has ruled out sending US troops to Ukraine. Russia has repeatedly warned that it would not tolerate NATO countries’ soldiers on Ukrainian soil, even under the guise of a peacekeeping force. President Vladimir Putin has listed an end to Western military aid to Kiev as one of the conditions for a ceasefire.

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As long as the West refuses to admit that Russia won, they can demand peace talks on an equal basis. Or so they think.

• Kremlin Blasts ‘Unacceptable’ Western Plan For Ukraine Security Guarantees (ZH)

After earlier this week European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen boasted to The Financial Times that the European Union had “pretty precise plans” for deploying a multinational force to Ukraine, and which is backstopped by the Untied States, the Kremlin has made clear it has flatly rejected such a prospect. Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Wednesday that Moscow would not even discuss or entertain in any way deployment of foreign troops in Ukraine as part of a future peace deal. There will be no international post-conflict security force “in any format” – she made clear. “Russia is not going to discuss the fundamentally unacceptable and security-undermining foreign intervention in Ukraine in any form, in any format,” Zakharova told reporters on the sidelines of the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok.

Suggesting that it’s entirely a waste of time for the West to be talking about such a topic, she said “next time they aim to discuss this topic, they should have a pointer in the form of Russia’s position.” “Judging by Ukraine’s losses, the European Commission has simply outdone itself,” Zakharova added, at a moment Russia’s ground forces continue to make gains in the east, and even into the more central Dnipropetrovsk region. And yet Europe is still forging ahead, with French President Emmanuel Macron hosting a summit of European leaders on Thursday. He declared, “We are ready, we the Europeans, to offer the security guarantees to Ukraine and Ukrainians the day that a peace (accord) is signed.”

He called details of guarantees “extremely confidential” but indicated that the preparations had been complete. Various allied defense ministers will take up the issue in the Paris meeting on Thursday. But confidential or not, Russia has clearly already rejected whatever multinational force plan that the Western allies have on the table. Moscow has consistently made clear its position, stretching back months or even over the last year, but this doesn’t seem to have gotten through to Western capitals. President Putin while speaking from Beijing Wednesday, after observing Xi’s big military parade along with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, didn’t sound like he’s in a hurry to make compromises at the negotiating table.

He painted a picture of his troops having the clear battlefield momentum and upper-hand, describing that “Ukrainian combat-ready units are staffed at no more than 47-48%,” in a speech. “Ukrainian military is constantly forced to redeploy units from one part of the front, to another,” he said. That’s when he underscored that if the Ukraine conflict “cannot be resolved peacefully, Russia will be forced to achieve its objectives by military means.”

He did say that “If Zelensky is interested in meeting, let him come to Moscow” – but that such a meeting can only happen once clear understandings are reached, and if something substantial can be agreed up, and not just for the sake of optics or having a meeting just to have it.

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They’re attacking (the sovereignty of) NATO members.

• Ukrainian Attacks On EU Oil Supplies Are ‘Sanctions’ – Zelensky (RT)

Kiev’s attacks on Hungarian and Slovakian energy supplies from Russia are a form of “sanctions,” Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky has claimed. In August, Ukraine repeatedly struck the Druzhba pipeline, a key conduit transporting Russian and Kazakh crude to Slovakia and Hungary. Both EU nations have since accused Kiev of threatening their energy security. US President Donald Trump is “very unhappy” that nations in Western Europe are still buying oil from Russia, Zelensky said at a joint press conference alongside French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris on Thursday. “Among others, there are two countries, we know that these are Hungary and Slovakia,” he said.

Ukrainian attacks on the Russian energy pipelines “reduce the possibilities of [Hungary and Slovakia] obtaining the corresponding oil,” he added. Therefore, you see, Ukraine has found these types of sanctions. However, according to Budapest, Trump has voiced displeasure at Kiev’s attacks on the Druzhba pipeline. “I am very angry about it. Tell Slovakia,” he said in a letter to Prime Minister Viktor Orban shared by Hungarian officials last month. Both Budapest and Bratislava have demanded that the European Commission act against Ukrainian attacks on a pipeline “indispensable” to their energy security, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said last month.

The EC has since said that it contacted Kiev and asked all sides to “ensure the security of critical infrastructure.” Szijjarto announced on Monday that Hungary would accelerate the development of a joint oil pipeline with neighboring Serbia. He added that gas supplies to the country via Serbia and the TurkStream route have grown to 21 million cubic meters a day. Slovakia will “retaliate very harshly” against Ukrainian attacks on the Druzhba pipeline, Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico told Putin in China on Tuesday, adding that he will raise the issue in talks with Zelensky later this week.

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His grandfather was a card-carrying member of the nazi party. Which lost to Russia in1945.

• Merz Driven By Desire For ‘Maniacal Revenge’ Against Russia – Moscow (RT)

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz harbors a “maniacal drive for revenge” against Russia based on Nazi-era grievances, according to the Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) in Moscow. The chancellor’s stance – including his push for Ukraine to use German missiles against Russia – has reportedly caused concern in Berlin. Merz has pledged to supply long-range Taurus missiles to Kiev but has not commented publicly on the details. According to a press release from the SVR on Thursday, the chancellor’s anti-Russian stance is partly fueled by a personal family grievance tied to Nazi Germany’s defeat in World War II. “Desire for revenge grew in him from childhood and morphed into an overwhelming passion after the launch of his political career,” the statement said, adding that Merz’s attitude is well known to his inner circle.

The agency accused Berlin of preparing a batch of Taurus missiles with identifying markings removed to conceal their origin. It further alleged that any potential launches from Ukraine would be carried out by German troops, as training local forces to operate the systems would take too long. “Merz’s maniacal drive for revenge is causing growing concern among the political elites [in Germany],” the SVR said, adding that politicians in Berlin fear Russian retaliation if the missiles are used. Earlier this week, Merz urged Western allies to pursue “economic exhaustion” of Russia through sanctions on its trade partners, saying military aid for Ukraine alone was inefficient. He also labeled Russian President Vladimir Putin “perhaps the most serious war criminal of our time,” insisting there could be no “leniency” toward Moscow.

Putin dismissed the accusations, suggesting Merz was attempting to absolve the West “of responsibility for the tragedy currently unfolding in Ukraine.” Moscow characterizes the conflict as a NATO-driven proxy war waged “to the last Ukrainian.” Merz’s family history has also drawn scrutiny. Local media have cited archives showing that his maternal grandfather, Josef Paul Sauvigny, who served as mayor of Brilon under the Nazis, was granted NSDAP membership at least in May 1937, after applying sometime between 1933 and 1936. Merz had previously denied the connection, but acknowledged Sauvigny’s Nazi ties during his campaign for the chancellorship. He stressed that his grandfather had died in 1967, when Merz was 13 years old.

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“..Merz’s maniac desire for revenge is causing increasing concern among the German political elite, the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service concluded.”

• Merz Instructs To Hide German Involvement In Taurus Deliveries To Ukraine (Sp.)

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz gave instructions to hide Germany’s involvement in the Taurus missile deliveries to Ukraine as much as possible, the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) said on Thursday.
Last week, the German cabinet passed a draft bill to introduce voluntary military service, which may pave the way for mandatory conscription if extra troops are required. Merz said Germany needed to enhance its military capabilities in light of an alleged threat posed by Russia. “The Chancellor, admittedly, takes into account the risks of Germany’s direct involvement in military operations against Russia. In this regard, he instructed to hide Berlin’s involvement in the supply of such weapons to Kiev as much as possible,” the statement said.

German politicians fear that the use of Taurus missiles on Russia can trigger a retaliatory strike, under which all the territory of Germany would be at risk, the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service said. The factory markings are being removed from the missile components and individual parts are being replaced from the Taurus systems, the statement said. “However, Merz cannot escape the fact that the Taurus will be operated by German military personnel sent to Ukraine,” the statement added. Many European experts are puzzled by Merz’s harsh anti-Russian rhetoric in the context of advancing the Russia-US dialogue on Ukraine, and Merz’s maniac desire for revenge is causing increasing concern among the German political elite, the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service concluded.

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“..Russia could displace up to half of the more than 40 million tons of LNG China currently imports each year, including from the US..”

• Russia-China Gas Deal To ‘Turn The LNG Market On Its Head’ (RT)

Russia’s announcement this week of expanded pipeline gas exports to China could shake the global liquefied natural gas (LNG) market and squeeze out US suppliers, Bloomberg reported on Wednesday. During his visit to China, Russian President Vladimir Putin confirmed that Moscow and Beijing had reached consensus on a major new pipeline across Mongolia, which would significantly boost existing supplies. Although Chinese officials did not immediately comment, Bloomberg noted that “the ties binding Russia to its most important consumer have undoubtedly tightened.” The proposed Power of Siberia 2 pipeline could be operational by 2030.

Combined with other supply increases, Russia could displace up to half of the more than 40 million tons of LNG China currently imports each year, including from the US, Bloomberg estimated. ”Given that China is the largest importer of LNG, this would turn the LNG market on its head,” analysts at AB Bernstein, a Wall Street research and brokerage firm, wrote in a note cited by the outlet. “For LNG projects that are still being contemplated, this would be a big negative.” The report framed the development as a signal from Beijing to Washington that it does not need US LNG for long-term growth, a message sent as relations between the two countries sour.

Bloomberg added that China appears comfortable with deeper reliance on Russian supplies, which Bernstein predicted could cover 20% of its gas demand by the early 2030s, up from around 10% today. This week, China also received its first shipment from Russia’s Arctic LNG 2 project, despite US sanctions. Moscow has accused Western governments of prioritizing geopolitics over fair competition, pointing to the freezing of Russian sovereign assets and attempts to curtail its energy exports through economic restrictions. Russian officials argue such actions are pushing Moscow to seek more dependable customers, particularly for pipeline gas, which requires heavy infrastructure investment and long-term cooperation.

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Bulgaria should sue the European Commission.

“..the Commission cited Bulgarian authorities as suggesting the incident was “due to blatant interference from Russia.”

“In an interview with Bulgarian channel bTV, Deputy Prime Minister and Transport Minister Grozdan Karadjov denied that the government had submitted any information on the matter to the European Commission, contradicting the Commission’s assertion that Bulgarian authorities suspected the disruption was the result of the Kremlin’s hybrid warfare.”

• Bulgaria Debunks von der Leyen Jet Claims (RT)

There is no evidence Russia interfered with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s airplane during her recent flight to Bulgaria, the country’s authorities have said. The European Commission earlier claimed Bulgarian authorities had confirmed the incident. On Sunday von der Leyen’s pilots allegedly reported issues with their navigation systems while landing in Plovdiv on a PR exercise to visit “Europe’s frontline states.” The Financial Times Brussels bureau chief Henry Foy, who was on board the press junket, reported that the flight was “forced to circle for an hour.” EU officials later told Sky of suspected “blatant Russian interference.”

NATO chief Mark Rutte claimed “we are all on the eastern flank now, whether you live in London or Tallinn. ”However, Bulgarian Prime Minister Rosen Zhelyazkov has outright contradicted Brussels’ claim and the reporting, telling parliament on Thursday that no evidence of a Russian attack had been found and that von der Leyen’s plane did not suffer any serious issues, only short-term signal degradation, which is common in densely populated areas.

“After checking the onboard records, we saw that the pilot did not express any concerns. The plane was in the holding area for about five minutes, and the signal quality remained good the entire time,” Zhelyazkov was quoted as saying by Bild. Bulgarian Deputy Prime Minister and Transport Minister Grozdan Karadjov has also confirmed that there is “not a single fact that confirms the claim that the plane’s GPS signal was jammed,” citing empirical data, radio intercepts, recordings of our civil and military departments. In an interview with bTV, Karadjov also denied sharing any information about the incident with the European Commission.

Moscow on Thursday dismissed the “preposterous” accusations pushed by Brussels, pointing to publicly available flight tracking data which indicates that von der Leyen’s jet had reported good GPS signal quality throughout the flight. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova suggested that the EU’s accusations were “not just paranoia, but a cynical plot to distract their own population from the EU’s worsening economic situation and from considering the real culprits behind the European crisis – the irresponsible, kleptocratic political elites of the European Union.” Since 2024, the Nordic and Baltic countries have accused Russia of disrupting communications on planes and ships as a form of “hybrid warfare,” allegations Russia has denied.

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Made up from A to Z.

• Did Russia Really Jam Von der Leyen’s Plane? The Data Says Otherwise (RT)

A flurry of reports from EU officials and Western media claimed this week that Russia jammed the plane carrying European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen into Bulgaria. The tale of “hybrid warfare” in the skies made front-page news across an unquestioning mainstream press. But flight-tracking data shows something very different to what has been widely reported, and Bulgaria has backed it up.

1) What Brussels claimed happened. On Sunday, von der Leyen traveled to Plovdiv as part of an Eastern Europe tour of “frontline states” in a chartered jet with the elite of Brussels media. The junket was intended to harden Western backing for Kiev. Together with Bulgarian Prime Minister Rosen Zhelyazkov, she visited the VMZ arms plant in Sopot and praised Sofia as a critical supplier of weapons to Ukraine. Yet the headlines were less about the factory floor and more about the flight path. Upon landing the Financial Times bureau chief Henry Foy claimed that Russia had “blatantly interfered” with the Commission President’s aircraft, knocking out its GPS navigation system on approach. According to those accounts, the plane was forced to circle for an hour and the pilots had to fall back on paper charts before landing in Plovdiv.

2) How the scare took off. Once seeded, the story raced through the Western press: The Financial Times carried the initial claims of “blatant Russian interference,” Politico described a “GPS scare gripping Europe,” The Guardian tied the episode into a string of alleged Russian plots. NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte declared the alliance was working “day and night” to counter jamming and spoofing. Italy floated the idea of hiding the routes of official flights altogether. The narrative slotted neatly into von der Leyen’s larger mission: selling a new round of defense spending as protection from a threatening Russia.

3) Does data back the drama? No. FlightRadar24, the go-to service Western journalists themselves usually rely on for in-flight information on Monday quietly brought the claims flying out of Brussels back down to Earth.
• Its data showed “good GPS signal quality from take-off to landing.”
• The aircraft touched down nine minutes late, not an hour.
When activists online tried to poke holes, FR24 doubled down with a second statement: the telemetry is clear, no signal loss, no blackout. Furthermore, the flight path published by FR24 shows a standard figure of either approach and landing, no circling. In other words: no evidence of Russian jamming, no missing hour, no emergency fallback to paper maps.

4) Official walk-backs, muted corrections. Zhelyazkov on Thursday told the Bulgarian parliament that there had been no attempts to jam the GPS signal and that any break was consistent with flying over heavily populated areas. “After checking the plane’s records, we saw that there was no indication of concern from the pilot. Five minutes the aircraft hovered in the waiting area, with the quality of the signal being good all the time,” he told lawmakers. The European Commission itself quietly denied there had been any “targeted actions” against von der Leyen’s plane. Despite that, the original “Russian plot” framing still stands, uncorrected, in most coverage.

5) Moscow cries foul. Moscow was quick to seize on the contradiction. Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova called the reports “preposterous” and part of a Western “web of lies.” The point, she argued, was not aviation safety but distraction – keeping Europeans focused on an external enemy while their economies strain under sanctions and defense bills.

6) Bottom line.The EU got its headline about Russian interference. But von der Leyen’s jet didn’t circle for an hour, didn’t lose GPS, and didn’t need paper maps. FlightRadar24’s data doesn’t match the drama.

Read more …

“In a Tuesday court filing, Cook’s lawyers said she “did not ever commit mortgage fraud.”

• DOJ Opens Grand Jury Criminal Investigation Fed Governor Lisa Cook (ZH)

The Department of Justice has opened a criminal investigation into Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook – and has issued multiple subpoenas as part of the inquiry into whether she committed mortgage fraud, according to the Wall Street Journal, citing ‘officials familiar with the matter.’ The probe – for which a grand jury has been assembled, will begin by looking at Cook’s properties in Ann Arbor, Michigan and Atlanta. It comes on the heels of two criminal investigations from Federal Housing Finance Agency director Bill Pulte, who has been dropping receipts for weeks with evidence that Cook committed fraud – including claiming two properties as her “primary residence” – as well as claiming that a rented out third property was her ‘second home’ – all things that would qualify her for better rates and tax treatment.

“Pulte accused Cook of misleading banks on multiple mortgage applications to receive favorable lending terms, such as lower interest rates, typically given to a buyer who intends to occupy the home they purchase. A judge is considering Cook’s request for an emergency order stopping her from being removed from the Fed board while the case proceeds. The Fed’s next meeting is set to begin Sept. 16.” -WSJ. Last Thursday, Cook filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration after President Donald Trump fired her that Monday ‘for cause.’ Among the excuses contained in the lawsuit for alleged mortgage fraud was a possible clerical error.

Except, Cook described herself in her 2023 nomination hearing as having “significant experience in banking and finance, as is evidenced by my service on the board of directors of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago and of a Community Development Financial Institution in Michigan, in addition to my employment at an investment bank and a large commercial bank.” What’s more, the Federal Reserve Act allows the president to fire Fed governors ‘for cause’ – which the Trump administration claims applies. In a Tuesday court filing, Cook’s lawyers said she “did not ever commit mortgage fraud.”

Pulte shot down any notion that the fed wasn’t political in a Thursday appearance on CNBC, saying “I don’t believe for the last 4 years that the Fed has been independent.” According to the report, the DOJ investigation involves Ed Martin, a top DOJ official who AG Pam Bondi designated to investigate mortgage fraud among public officials.

Read more …

More Lisa Cook. She thought that nobody would dare touch her.

“In 2024, there were 38 federal mortgage fraud offenders who received an average prison sentence of 14 months..”

• Lisa Cook May Be in Real Trouble Now (Margolis)

Last month, President Donald Trump fired Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook amid allegations of mortgage fraud, and the left promptly freaked out, with Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) calling for Trump’s ouster via the 25th Amendment. Now, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal, Cook’s legal problems have just become very real. “The Justice Department has opened a criminal investigation into Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook, issuing subpoenas as part of an inquiry into whether she submitted fraudulent information on mortgage applications, according to U.S. officials familiar with the matter,” the paper reported Thursday. The initial scrutiny has centered on Cook’s properties in Ann Arbor, Mich., and Atlanta, with investigators using grand juries as part of the probe, the officials said.

The investigation comes on the heels of two criminal referrals from Bill Pulte, the Trump-appointed director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, who has publicly alleged that Cook engaged in mortgage fraud. President Trump has cited those allegations in his bid to fire Cook and wrest control of a central bank that has historically remained independent. [..] Cook filed a lawsuit last month alleging Trump’s move to fire her was unlawful. She argued Trump “concocted” a basis for her firing to vacate a seat on the board that he can fill to “forward his agenda to undermine the independence of the Federal Reserve.” Cook has argued in court that her firing was illegal. She points out that the Federal Reserve Act allows a president to fire a governor only “for cause,” not because of political disputes or unsubstantiated claims.

Cook says she never received a fair hearing or proper notice, adding that she “has been deprived of her Fifth Amendment right to due process, and of her right to process under the Federal Reserve Act.” Despite her claims, recent reports have shown that Cook has indeed listed multiple residences she owns as her primary residence, a move that property owners commonly make to obtain better mortgage terms. Both Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and New York Attorney General Letitia James are facing similar accusations.

“Felony convictions of mortgage fraud are relatively rare. In 2024, there were 38 federal mortgage fraud offenders who received an average prison sentence of 14 months, according to the U.S. Sentencing Commission,” the Wall Street Journal notes. “A 2023 report from the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia found that one-third of single-family home investors misrepresent their occupancy status on their mortgage applications.” But that’s not really the point here, is it? Cook wants due process, and she’s getting it. Whether the DOJ decides to prosecute her or not, as a former Federal Reserve governor, she should have known better than to claim multiple homes as her primary residence. Her willingness to do so raises serious questions about her judgment, which makes her unfit for a position that demands integrity and accountability.

Read more …

Gotta do it. This is the ultimate lawfare. $83.3 million for the script of a detective series episode, it makes no sense. It turns the entire US justice system into a laughing stock.

• Trump Tells Supreme Court He Will Appeal in E. Jean Carroll Case (ET)

President Donald Trump plans to ask the Supreme Court this fall to overturn a civil jury verdict that found he sexually abused writer E. Jean Carroll and defamed her, his attorneys said in a new court filing. Trump’s intentions were revealed in an application docketed by the nation’s highest court on Sept. 2. In the application, his lawyers asked the court to extend an upcoming Sept. 10 deadline for filing a petition to challenge the $5 million verdict to Nov. 10. The application was directed to Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who handles urgent appeals from New York. Trump “intends to seek review” of “significant issues” arising out of the trial and what he termed the “erroneous” ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit that affirmed the verdict, according to the application.

On June 13, a divided Second Circuit denied a rehearing in the case. Circuit Judges Steven Menashi and Michael Park dissented from the ruling. “These holdings conflict with controlling precedents and produced a judgment that cannot be justified under the rules of evidence that apply as a matter of course in all other cases,” Menashi said in a dissent joined by Park. Trump’s attorney in the case, Justin D. Smith of James Otis Law Group LLC in St. Louis, Missouri, said more time was needed to file the petition. “Undersigned counsel faces a significant press of business due to many upcoming deadlines,” Smith said. Carroll gave evidence during a 2023 trial that Trump attacked her in 1996 in a dressing room in a Manhattan department store near the Trump Tower.

In its May 2023 verdict, the federal jury held Trump liable for sexually abusing Carroll and defaming her when he made statements in October 2022 denying her allegations. The jury awarded Carroll $5 million in damages. In another lawsuit filed by Carroll, a federal jury ordered Trump to pay $83.3 million in damages over statements he made in 2019 denying the sexual assault allegations. A three-judge panel of the Second Circuit affirmed the verdict in December 2024, rejecting Trump’s argument that the trial judge’s ruling invalidated the trial by allowing others who accused Trump of sexual abuse to testify. Three women said Trump carried out similar acts against them in 2005 and the 1970s. Trump denied the allegations.

“President Trump has consistently and unequivocally denied Carroll’s allegations in both cases,” the new application said. Carroll obtained the $5 million award based on “incorrect findings,” after which the federal district court “wrongly” interpreted the law and “improperly [prevented] President Trump from contesting the merits in that action,” the filing said. After that, Carroll secured the “unjust judgment of $83.3 million,” the application said. “We do not believe that President Trump will be able to present any legal issues in the Carroll cases that merit review by the United States Supreme Court,” Roberta Kaplan, Carroll’s attorney, said on Sept. 3.

Read more …

Bernie and Pocahontas. Time did stand still.

There are 1,000 different people coming after RFK. Big pharma wants its profits.

• RFK Jr Spars With Senators During Wild Testimony (ZH)

Update (1520ET): Well that was actually pretty interesting. As Democrat Senators read prepared zingers to try and corner RFK Jr. over vaccines and other malarkey, Kennedy hit back with several very specific haymakers during the three-hour session – calling the Democratic lawmakers ‘liars’ – and even pointing out the Elizabeth Warren has taken nearly a million dollars from pharmaceutical companies. At the center of Thursday’s hearing was Kennedy’s surprise decision last week to fire CDC Director Susan Monarez, just a month after she took the job. The move plunged the agency into turmoil, prompting several senior officials to resign. Kennedy accused Monarez of lying in a Wall Street Journal op-ed published the same morning, in which she claimed she was removed for refusing to “rubber stamp” vaccine recommendations from Kennedy’s advisory committee.

“We are the sickest country in the world, that’s why we have to fire people at CDC,” Kennedy said. Kennedy also defended his June purge of 17 members of the CDC’s vaccine advisory panel, known as ACIP, framing the move as an effort to “depoliticize” the committee. “I didn’t politicize ACIP, I depoliticized it,” he insisted. Kennedy also said that that leading medical organizations, including the American Academy of Pediatrics, were compromised because they accept pharmaceutical industry funding. That prompted an exasperated retort from Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT): “In your eyes, everybody but you is corrupt.” During one fiery exchange with Senator Elizabeth Warren, Kennedy said “I know you’ve taken $855K from PHARMA COMPANIES, SENATOR!”

https://twitter.com/townhallcom/status/1963635271578038376?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1963635271578038376%7Ctwgr%5E0f72b4e1d2c1fc8daa8fcbd861acce5571871756%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com%2Fpolitical%2Fwatch-live-rfk-jr-testifies-senate-amid-cdc-turmoil

https://twitter.com/thecjpearson/status/1963614024421031956?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1963614024421031956%7Ctwgr%5E0f72b4e1d2c1fc8daa8fcbd861acce5571871756%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com%2Fpolitical%2Fwatch-live-rfk-jr-testifies-senate-amid-cdc-turmoil

Read more …

Sounds like the power structure of the whole AI industry is sort of settled. It isn’t. Far too early for that.

• Musk Snubbed From Trump’s Tech CEO Party At Rose Garden (ZH)

The Hill has obtained the invitation list for an exclusive White House gathering later today in the newly renovated Rose Garden. This event will follow a White House event on artificial intelligence hosted by First Lady Melania Trump. Among those set to attend are Apple CEO Tim Cook, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, OpenAI’s Sam Altman, and Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg. “The Rose Garden Club at the White House is the hottest place to be in Washington, or perhaps the world. The president looks forward to welcoming top business, political, and tech leaders for this dinner and the many dinners to come on the new, beautiful Rose Garden patio,” White House spokesperson Davis Ingle told the media outlet.

Noticeably absent, according to The Hill, was Elon Musk, whose strained relationship with President Trump earlier this year likely kept him off the guest list. Trump last night, commenting about Musk: “He’s got 80% super genius and then 20% he’s got some problems.”

https://twitter.com/ScottJenningsKY/status/1963347028198781416?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1963347028198781416%7Ctwgr%5E262f9ef54462efe829319af83a888e94f771ba1a%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com%2Ftechnology%2Fmusk-snubbed-trumps-tech-ceo-party-rose-garden

The snub is reminiscent of the Biden-Harris administration’s decision not to invite Musk to a 2021 White House EV summit. Other attendees include many top tech leaders and CEOs, such as Sergey Brin and Sundar Pichai, founder and CEO of Google, respectively; Safra Catz, CEO of Oracle; David Limp, CEO of Blue Origin; Sanjay Mehrotra, CEO of Micron Technology; and Greg Brockman, President of OpenAI. White House AI czar David Sacks will be in attendance, along with Jared Isaacman, CEO of Shift4, who recently withdrew his nomination to lead NASA.]

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“The only question remaining is whether those responsible will be held accountable or whether the ruling elite are just too powerful to ever be held accountable.”

• The Power Resides in the Enemies of Truth (Paul Craig Roberts)

RootsAction is an activist site founded by two progressives to defend the public interest from “an increasingly extremist Republican Party.” RootsAction believes that both parties are compromised by corporate money and power, is against the wars, and was endorsed by Barbara Ehrenreich, Cornel West, Daniel Ellsberg, and Naomi Klein, all principled persons whether or not you agree with them. Some of the organization’s positions are reasonable–put limits on Super PACs to limit the amount of bought government; consider the risks of nuclear power plants–others are half-baked by ignoring the adverse consequences. Therefore, I was surprised to receive from RootsAction an email addressed specifically to me, not a mass mailing, calling for Robert F. Kennedy’s removal as Health Secretary.

Their case against Kennedy is that the limits he has put on the Covid vax, now proven to have caused more deaths and health injuries than Covid, and on other vaccines associated with the plethora of new childhood illnesses that did not previously exist, together with regulations to improve food safety, “is causing future deaths and suffering on a large scale.” As there is no evidence for this charge, the question arose in my mind whether RootsAction was being paid by Big Pharma as a part of Big Pharma’s policy of putting its profits ahead of Americans’ health and safety. Just as President John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy Jr’s uncle, was considered a risk to the power and profit of the US military/security complex, Robert F. Kennedy Jr is considered a risk to the power and profit of Big Pharma.

This suspicion increased when I saw that RootsAction was predicting future deaths from constraints Kennedy placed on the corrupt revolving door between Big Pharma and the CED, NIH, and FDA and cessation of federal funding for Big Pharma-serving propaganda. How is it possible that RootsAction has learned nothing from the proliferation of scientific peer-reviewed studies documenting the disastrous effects of the Covid Vax, lockdowns, and masks? As the whore media continues to hide these established results from the public in exchange for Big Pharma advertising revenues, it is possible that RootsAction simply doesn’t know the facts. The CDC directors and bureaucrats who were fired were fired for putting Big Pharma’s profits ahead of the public’s health. Many of them came from Big Pharma and many returned to Big Pharma.

The Covid Pandemic was an orchestration. Just as RootsAction disapproves, I assume, of the current orchestrations to promote wars, such as Iran’s alleged “nuclear weapons” and Venezuelan President Maduro’s alleged “narcotics cartel,” like Saddam Hussein’s “weapons of mass destruction” and Assad’s “use of chemical weapons,” RootsAction should disapprove of Big Pharma’s orchestration to remove Robert Kennedy. For many years my columns have emphasized the decline in the ability of truth to get a hearing. There are many reasons for this: The rise of ideological agendas for which truth is an obstacle, the concentration of the print and TV media in six mega-companies thereby making it possible to establish official narratives regardless of their truthfulness, and an insouciant and largely ignorant population without the interest and ability to examine the official narratives.

Indeed, today in the US education consists of indoctrinating students with official narratives and cancelling those who challenge the narratives. The simple fact is that truth is disappearing, because it does not serve the agendas of the ruling elites. This explains why it is so difficult for Robert Kennedy, Donald Trump with his mandate, and anyone else to set things right. The power resides in the enemies of truth. Consequently, important issues, often crucial ones, are settled by canceling the narrative challenger, smearing him, arresting him on false charges, passing a law to protect the narrative, or simply by ignoring the challenge which is the whore media’s response to the Covid scandal.

Impossible you say? Think about the recent Russiagate hoax. The entirety of the Biden regime, Democrat Party, TV, print, and NPR media, liberal-left intellectuals and professors, RINO Republicans like Republican Senate Leader Mitch McConnell, the Entire UK and EU press and public figures supported the Russiagate hoax. Yet, as we now know for certain, never was a greater lie perpetuated on the world. The only question remaining is whether those responsible will be held accountable or whether the ruling elite are just too powerful to ever be held accountable.

Read more …

10 years too late.

• New Greek Law Promises Prison For Rejected Asylum-Seekers (ZH)

In the latest example of a European government taking stronger measures to curb illegal immigration, the Greek Parliament on Wednesday passed a law that promises lengthy prison sentences for migrants who stay in the country after their asylum requests have been rejected. “The Greek state does not accept you. You only have one choice: to go back. You’re not welcome,” said Migration Minister Thanos Plevris after the bill passed. The new law is the second major tightening of Greek immigration in the last two months. On July 9, conservative Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis completely suspended asylum applications for three months, saying he was effectively notifying human smugglers that “the passage to Greece is closed.”

The two moves came after the pace of illegal-immigrant arrivals on Crete reached crisis levels this summer, with the number of illegals landing on the island in the first six months of 2025 tripling over the same period last year. The last straw that prompted Mitsotakis’ three-month asylum ban was the arrival of more than 2,600 illegals on Crete just during the first week of July. The move quickly paid off, slashing arrivals to just 500 over the first 27 days of August. Under the new law, which was championed by Mitsotakis, migrants who fail to leave the country after their asylum request is rejected face up to five years in prison and fines of up to 30,000 euros. The penalty for illegal entry is tripled to 10,000 euros.

The deadline for leaving after being rejected was slashed from 25 days to 14, and authorities are now authorized to outfit rejected applicants with ankle monitors so they can be tracked until they leave, the New York Times reports. The law also abolished illegal immigrants’ previous privilege of applying for residence after they’d been in Greece for seven years. During parliamentary debate on Tuesday, Plevris said asylum-seekers fell into two categories: “There are those who are downtrodden, and then there are some who are spoiled, who think that Europe owes them. We need to put emphasis on the voluntary returns, but there will be consequences for those who do not choose to return to their countries.” Crete became a preferred dumping ground for migrant-smugglers after other European countries imposed tougher asylum processes or increased their offshore patrols and other security measures.

When asylum requests were barred, Plevris told a reporter: “All European countries now understand that it is not possible to have open borders, it’s not possible to welcome illegal migrants with flowers. There should be a clear message that countries have borders, (that) Europe has exceeded its capabilities and will not accept any more illegal migrants.” In one of the continuing consequences of Barak Obama and Hillary Clinton’s utterly catastrophic regime-change operation, most of the diversity landing on the shores of Crete this year has come from Libya. Cursed by geography, Greece has long suffered from the effects of US-led destabilization campaigns, particularly in 2015-16, when hundreds of thousands of people fleeing the Middle East, Afghanistan and Africa flowed through the country.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

Ladapo
https://twitter.com/EricLDaugh/status/1963254999204442607

Siberia2

Wealth

Pirro

https://twitter.com/KathleenWinche3/status/1963192428246040749

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle January 1 2025

Jan 012025
 
 January 1, 2025  Posted by at 11:22 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  59 Responses »


Paolo Uccello Story of Noah 1447

 

• Ukraine ‘Has Ceased To Exist’ – Ex-Commander (RT)
• Trump Eager To Settle Ukraine Conflict – Zelensky (RT)
• Fuel Prices in Europe Surge Amid Looming End to Russian Gas Transit (Sp.)
• Russia Halts Gas Supplies To EU Via Ukraine (RT)
• Musk Living In Trump’s House – NYT (RT)
• Musk Predicts Election Loss For ‘Chancellor Oaf Schitz’ (RT)
• Scholz Hits Back At Musk In New Year’s Address (RT)
• Encode Joins Musk in Fight Against OpenAI’s For-Profit Transition (ET)
• Appeals Court Upholds Trump’s Liability in E. Jean Carroll Case (Spencer)
• Jack Smith Drops Appeal Of Classified Docs Case (JTN)
• Even With Trump’s Endorsement, Johnson’s Speakership Is Far From Secure (JTN)
• Let’s Get the United States Out of the Censorship Business (Turley)
• 2025: A Second Renaissance, Or Chaos? (Pepe Escobar)
• COVID Catechists Come For Incoming NIH Chief Bhattacharya (JTN)
• Jimmy Carter’s Legacy Still Hampers A World Trump Must Fix (JTN)
• Paramount Series ‘Landman’ Surprises With Anti-Climate Agenda Message (ZH)

 

 

Happy New Year everyone!

 

 

 

 

451

Eva

 

 

 

 

“..ceased to exist” as a functional state due to widespread graft and mismanagement..”

“Ukrainian leaders have transformed the nation into a “concentration camp..”

• Ukraine ‘Has Ceased To Exist’ – Ex-Commander (RT)

The Ukrainian state has essentially ceased to exist, is plagued by endemic institutional failure and corruption, with Kiev’s troops continuing to hold on by sheer will alone, a former commander has argued. He also warned that Ukraine’s defenses could collapse, allowing Russia to march all the way to the Dnieper River. In an interview with Novyni Live on Monday, Vladimir Shylov, former commander of the 3rd Company in the 134th Separate Territorial Defense Battalion, lashed out at Ukraine’s political leadership, stating that the country has “ceased to exist” as a functional state due to widespread graft and mismanagement. Shylov expressed concern that these woes could allow Russian forces to increase their gains, warning that they may be able to overrun frontline positions in Donbass and reach as far as the Dnieper River. The advances could be facilitated by internal chaos, he added, stating “In our country, everything is a mess…the front is holding only thanks to the Ukrainian people.”

Ukrainian leaders have transformed the nation into a “concentration camp,” Shylov claimed, highlighting systemic failures across all branches of government, including the legislative, executive, and judicial sectors. Shylov also specifically criticized the country’s leader, Vladimir Zelensky, for what he described as a blatant neglect of his defense responsibilities, alleging that his government had ignored Western warnings of a Russian offensive prior to the special military operation, resulting in the inadequate preparation of Kiev’s forces. The ex-commander went on to comment on Ukraine’s ongoing incursion into Russia’s Kursk Region, portraying it as a political ploy without any real strategic military value. He argued that the Ukrainian offensive had turned out to be a symbolic gesture which does not compensate for the substantial territorial losses Ukraine has suffered, particularly in Donbass.

Over the past several months, Russia has made significant gains in Donbass and elsewhere, with President Vladimir Putin noting that regular advances now amount to kilometers rather than hundreds of meters. Russian Defense Minister Andrey Belousov said earlier this month that Ukraine had lost one million service members since February 2022, with more than half of that number in 2024 alone, adding that Moscow’s forces are in full control of the strategic initiative. Meanwhile, Ukrainian battlefield commanders continue to complain of a critical shortage of manpower, despite Kiev implementing stricter mobilization rules and lowering the draft age from 27 to 25 this spring.

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“..the full-scale aggression of a mad state against a civilized one.”

• Trump Eager To Settle Ukraine Conflict – Zelensky (RT)

US President-elect Donald Trump is fully capable of achieving peace in Ukraine, Vladimir Zelensky has said, suggesting that Trump understands the necessity of containing Russia. Zelensky made the remarks in his New Year’s address on Tuesday, stressing that “Ukraine is not alone” in its conflict with Russia, while praising Kiev’s Western allies, particularly the US, for their consistent support. He recalled conversations he had with both US President Joe Biden and Trump, noting that he has “no doubt that the new American president is willing and capable of achieving peace and ending [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s aggression.” According to Zelensky, Trump “understands that the first is impossible without the second. Because this is not a street fight where you have to calm down both sides,” calling the conflict “the full-scale aggression of a mad state against a civilized one.”

“I believe that we, together with the United States, are capable of exerting that force. Of compelling Russia into a just peace,” he said, adding, however, that “a truly just peace cannot be based on the principle of ‘let’s start with a clean slate,’” due to the numerous casualties and widespread destruction in the conflict. Trump vowed during the 2024 election campaign to swiftly end the Ukraine conflict, with his team’s reported peace plans calling for a 20-year delay in Ukraine’s NATO membership aspirations, a freeze of the conflict, and the establishment of a demilitarized zone patrolled by European peacekeepers to monitor the ceasefire.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has signaled that while Moscow is open to talks with the Trump administration, it will not accept NATO membership for Ukraine in any form. Lavrov stressed that Russia seeks a legally binding peace agreement ensuring its long-term security and opposes any freeze of the conflict that would merely prolong the hostilities. Moscow has said Kiev’s aspirations to join NATO are among the root causes of the conflict and insists that all the goals of its military operation, including Ukrainian neutrality, demilitarization, and denazification, must be achieved. Russia has also signaled that it is ready to declare an immediate ceasefire and begin peace talks as soon as Kiev begins withdrawing from all Russian territory, including the regions of Donetsk, Lugansk, Kherson, and Zaporozhye.

Read more …

Ain’t seen nothing yet.

• Fuel Prices in Europe Surge Amid Looming End to Russian Gas Transit (Sp.)

Gas prices in Europe have shot up to $536 per 1,000 cubic meters during ICE trading, the highest since November 27, 2023, amid expectations of halted Russian gas transit through Ukraine starting January 1. Prices rose by over 4% since the day’s start. February futures at the Dutch TTF hub exceeded $536 per 1,000 cubic meters (€50 per MWh). The current transit agreement, allowing the transport of 40 billion cubic meters annually through Ukraine, expires on January 1. Russian President Vladimir Putin confirmed that no new agreement would be signed before the New Year, and Kiev announced plans to halt Russian gas transit at 8:00 a.m. Moscow time on January 1.

Ukraine stated, however, that it is open to resuming transit upon the European Commission’s request, provided it is non-Russian gas. Putin suggested contracts with third-party suppliers, including Turkish, Hungarian, Slovak, or Azerbaijani companies. Meanwhile, gas transit bids from Russia through Ukraine for January 1 have dropped to zero, according to data from the Ukrainian Gas Transmission System Operator. Supplies will end at 8:00 a.m. Moscow time (05:00 GMT) on January 1, according to a contractual document on gas transit. Ukrainian authorities have repeatedly stated they do not plan to extend the transit agreement.

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“Ukrainian officials confirmed the cessation of transit, calling it a “historic event” in the interests of national security..”

• Russia Halts Gas Supplies To EU Via Ukraine (RT)

Russia has officially ceased gas transit through Ukraine as of 8am Moscow time on January 1, confirming the expected end of contracts that have been in place since 2019. Russian energy giant Gazprom announced the halt after negotiations to extend the transit agreements with Ukrainian companies Naftogaz and the Gas Transmission System Operator of Ukraine fell through. In a press release issued on Wednesday, Gazprom said, “Due to the repeated and clear refusal of the Ukrainian side to extend these agreements, Gazprom was deprived of the technical and legal opportunity to supply gas for transit through Ukraine starting from January 1, 2025.” As a result, gas supplies to Europe via this route are now completely suspended. The gas pipeline that traverses Ukraine leads into Slovakia, which had hoped to continue receiving Russian gas and urged Ukraine to extend the transit agreements.

In response to Kiev’s decision to stop the gas transit, Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico threatened last week to cut electricity supplies to Ukraine. The five-year contract for Russian gas deliveries through Ukraine expired despite ongoing long-term agreements between Gazprom and several European buyers. Ukrainian officials confirmed the cessation of transit, calling it a “historic event” in the interests of national security. Kiev has long denied the possibility of a new transit deal with Moscow. Russian President Vladimir Putin stressed the finality of the situation during his annual press conference on December 19, stating, “This transit contract will not exist anymore, it’s clear. But we will manage; Gazprom will manage.”

Read more …

“The tech mogul’s stay at Mar-a-Lago allegedly began around Election Day..”

• Musk Living In Trump’s House – NYT (RT)

Billionaire Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk has reportedly been living in a cottage on Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida since the US presidential election in November, according to The New York Times. Musk took up residence at the Banyan Cottage, which typically rents for $2,000 per night and is situated just a few hundred feet from Trump’s main house, providing Musk with easy access to the president-elect, the NYT reported on Monday, citing a person familiar with the property. This arrangement underscores Musk’s significant influence on Trump’s transition team and has allowed him frequent visits with the president-elect, including dinners and policy discussions, the newspaper noted. Since publicly endorsing Trump following a failed assassination attempt in July, Musk has gradually become one of his key advisors on both policy and personnel decisions.

He attended meetings at the Mar-a-Lago Teahouse, participated in phone calls with foreign leaders, and involved his employees in vetting candidates for senior administration roles. Recently, Musk joined Trump for dinner with Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, a rival in the tech industry. Musk’s financial contributions to Trump’s campaign have also been substantial: he reportedly spent around $250 million in the final months of the election cycle to support Trump. This level of backing has cemented Musk’s role as one of the most important donors and social media promoters for the president-elect. The tech mogul’s stay at Mar-a-Lago allegedly began around Election Day, during which he watched the returns with Trump.

He left the property briefly around Christmas but is expected to return soon, the newspaper wrote, noting that the exact amount Musk will pay for his stay at Mar-a-Lago remains unclear. Vice President-elect JD Vance has also been frequently seen at Mar-a-Lago during the transition period. Last week, Trump posted what appears to be a private text to Musk on his social media platform, extending an invitation to visit Mar-a-Lago. Screenshots shared by several outlets included Musk’s acknowledgment of the invitation but did not confirm whether he planned to attend. ”Where are you? When are you coming to the ‘Center of the Universe,’ Mar-a-Lago?” Trump wrote in a soon-deleted post, adding, “We miss you and X! New Year’s Eve is going to be AMAZING!!!” before signing off with his initials, “DJT.”

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They have no idea what to do with his comments.

• Musk Predicts Election Loss For ‘Chancellor Oaf Schitz’ (RT)

Elon Musk has forecasted that German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who he mockingly referred to as “Oaf Schitz,” as well as his Social Democratic Party (SPD) will lose the Federal Republic’s upcoming parliamentary elections. Germany will hold snap elections at the end of February; Scholz’s ‘traffic light’ coalition government has collapsed over disagreements regarding Ukraine aid, economic reforms and climate policy. Earlier this month, the SPD leader lost a vote of confidence in parliament, leading to its dissolution. According to Statista, 56% of Germans believe Scholz has done a poor job, while 37% are satisfied with his performance. The rating was influenced by Germany’s economic stagnation, his migration policies, and a general perception of ineffective government.

Musk, who has been a consistent critic of the current German government, took a jab at Scholz on Monday, predicting that “Chancellor Oaf Schitz or whatever his name is will lose.” The tycoon also suggested that the right-wing, anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD) party – which he previously praised as the country’s “last spark of hope” – would “win an epic victory” in the election. Musk’s apparent endorsement, however, has sparked a backlash from German officials, who described his comments as “intrusive and arrogant,” suggesting they constitute unwelcome interference.

Chancellor Scholz noted that the country’s future “will not be decided by the owners of social media channels” but rather by the country’s “vast majority of reasonable and decent people.” The billionaire’s comments follow a terrorist attack on a Christmas market in Magdeburg earlier this month, in which a car rammed into a crowd, killing five people and injuring nearly 200. The incident, linked to a Saudi asylum seeker, has intensified criticism of Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s government, with opposition parties and far-right groups blaming lax migration policies ahead of Germany’s snap elections.

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Yeah, if you’re a head of state, you really want to get into a war of words with a foreign citizen. That shows statesmanship..

• Scholz Hits Back At Musk In New Year’s Address (RT)

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz took a veiled swipe at tech billionaire Elon Musk during his annual New Year’s Eve address, warning that the country’s future will be decided by its citizens, not the owners of social media platforms. In a televised message on Tuesday, Scholz highlighted national unity and called for solidarity amid economic challenges. However, he also addressed a more contentious issue: Alleged “foreign interference” in German politics, particularly by Musk, who has openly supported the right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) party as the country’s “last spark of hope.” “Where Germany goes from here will be decided by you – the citizens. It will not be decided by the owners of social media channels,” Scholz said, without calling the X owner out by name.

“In our debates, one might be forgiven for thinking that the more extreme an opinion is, the more attention it garners. But it won’t be the person who yells the loudest who will decide where Germany goes from here. Rather, that will be up to the vast majority of reasonable and decent people,” he added. Musk’s recent endorsements of the AfD, which is under surveillance by domestic intelligence for its alleged “extremist” views, has drawn widespread criticism from German officials. The billionaire, a key adviser to US President-elect Donald Trump, has been vocal on social media and in opinion pieces, praising the AfD and criticizing mainstream German politicians. Friedrich Merz, the head of the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU), called Musk’s endorsement “overbearing and presumptuous.” Lars Klingbeil, co-chairman of Scholz’s Social Democrats, compared Musk to Russian President Vladimir Putin, claiming that both aim to weaken Germany and plunge it into chaos.

A government spokeswoman, Christiane Hoffmann, said at a news conference on Monday that while everyone has the right to an opinion, Musk is attempting to influence the German election. Scholz’s coalition government collapsed in November over disagreements regarding Ukraine aid and economic policies. The chancellor lost a confidence vote in December, leading to the dissolution of parliament and the scheduling of snap elections on February 23. The chancellor’s New Year’s Eve address also touched on other pressing issues, including Germany’s flagging economy, the recent attack on a Christmas market in Magdeburg, and the upcoming 35th anniversary of German reunification. Scholz urged Germans to resist manipulation and “not let ourselves be played off each other.”

According to Statista, 56% of Germans believe Scholz has done a poor job, while 37% are satisfied with his performance. This rating reflects concerns over Germany’s economic stagnation, his migration policies, and a general perception of ineffective governance. The AfD is currently polling second with around 20%, behind the CDU/CSU bloc at about 31%. However, a strong performance by the AfD could make forming a government more challenging, as all mainstream parties have ruled out a coalition with it.

Read more …

AI is very dangerous. Make no mistake.

• Encode Joins Musk in Fight Against OpenAI’s For-Profit Transition (ET)

Encode, an artificial intelligence (AI) advocacy group, filed a brief in support of Elon Musk’s recent lawsuit against OpenAI, arguing that enabling the conversion toward a for-profit entity could endanger public interest. Musk filed a lawsuit against OpenAI last month, arguing that the entity was formed on promises that it would retain its nonprofit status focused on safe AI use. Musk said he invested in the project based on this premise. Disrupting the status quo “will seriously harm plaintiffs and the public at large,” the complaint said. In the brief, Encode is described as “a youth-led organization advocating for safe and responsible artificial intelligence (AI)” with “a network of over 1,000 volunteers across 40 countries.” On Dec. 27, Encode filed a proposed amicus curiae brief with the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, Oakland Division, supporting Musk’s motion for a preliminary injunction against the transition.

“If the world truly is at the cusp of a new age of artificial general intelligence (AGI), then the public has a profound interest in having that technology controlled by a public charity legally bound to prioritize safety and the public benefit rather than an organization focused on generating financial returns for a few privileged investors,” the brief said. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has admitted that AI poses severe risks to humanity, Encode said. Altman signed a statement along with numerous luminaries, including Nobel Prize winners, saying that “mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority.” People worldwide are already facing challenges from AI technologies including disinformation, algorithmic bias, labor displacement, and democratic erosion, which makes keeping AI safe a “pressing, immediate concern,” the advocacy group said.

OpenAI currently runs a capped-profit subsidiary that is fully controlled by the OpenAI nonprofit parent company, which is expected to ensure the safe use of AGI. In Delaware, where OpenAI is incorporated, the boards of nonprofit charitable corporations owe fiduciary duties toward their beneficiaries, which in this case would be humanity, Encode said. By transferring operations to a Delaware public benefit corporation (PBC), OpenAI’s priorities would shift from ensuring the safety of advanced AI to shareholder interests. Allowing such a transition is harmful to the public interest, the brief said. In a Dec. 27 blog post titled “Why OpenAI’s Structure Must Evolve to Advance Our Mission”, OpenAI said that transitioning to a PBC would be best for the long-term success of the nonprofit’s mission to ensure that AI benefits all of humanity.

“The PBC is a structure used by many others that requires the company to balance shareholder interests, stakeholder interests, and a public benefit interest in its decision making”, the post said. OpenAI began as a research lab in 2015. It had a goal of advancing AI in a way “most likely to benefit humanity as a whole, unconstrained by a need to generate financial return,” the post said. Out of the $137 million in donations it collected initially, less than a third came from Musk. After OpenAI management realized the project would require “far more capital,” they created the current for-profit structure controlled by the nonprofit in a bid to collect funds from investors. According to OpenAI, the new PBC “will run and control OpenAI’s operations and business, while the non-profit will hire a leadership team and staff to pursue charitable initiatives in sectors such as health care, education, and science.”

In a Dec. 13 post, OpenAI had dismissed claims made by Musk in his lawsuit. It said the lawsuit was the fourth legal challenge against OpenAI by the billionaire in less than a year. “In 2017, Elon not only wanted, but actually created, a for-profit as OpenAI’s proposed new structure. When he didn’t get majority equity and full control, he walked away and told us we would fail,” it said. “Now that OpenAI is the leading AI research lab and Elon runs a competing AI company, he’s asking the court to stop us from effectively pursuing our mission.” Besides the ethical concerns, Musk alleged in the complaint that OpenAI and its investor Microsoft roughly control around 70 percent of the generative AI market and engage in “anticompetitive conduct.”

OpenAI and Microsoft ban investors from funding OpenAI’s competitors, specifically Musk’s artificial intelligence company xAI, it said. “OpenAI’s path from a nonprofit to for-profit behemoth is replete with per se anticompetitive practices, flagrant breaches of its charitable mission, and rampant self-dealing,” the complaint said. xAI was formed in July 2023. The company introduced the Grok-1 AI model on the X social media platform a few months later, in November 2023, and has introduced updates to the tool. In May, xAI raised $6 billion in funding. Last week, xAI said it has closed the funding and that the company’s progress is “accelerating rapidly.”

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30-year old hearsay devoid of any evidence. Wonder what the Supreme Court thinks of that..

• Appeals Court Upholds Trump’s Liability in E. Jean Carroll Case (Spencer)

The election is over, Trump has been reelected, but the lawfare continues nonetheless. On Monday, a federal appeals court that must have been under the influence of some psychotropic drug upheld Trump’s liability for supposedly sexually abusing the partisan fantasist E. Jean Carroll in a Bloomingdale’s dressing room sometime in the 1990s. Carroll’s story has more holes than a slice of Swiss cheese that has been used for target practice, but despite lacking any evidence, she keeps winning in court — believe all women, doncha know, even the crazy mendacious ones. Trump’s team is going to keep on appealing, and that’s good. Maybe sanity will prevail at some point. Fox News reported Monday that the appeals court’s is “a blow to the president-elect,” and leaves him “on the hook for the $5 million payout ordered by the jury.”

An unnamed panel of three judges from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, which consists of 27 judges in all, issued an unsigned ruling claiming that Trump’s attorneys had not succeeded in establishing “that the district court erred in any of the challenged rulings.” The Trump team “has not carried his burden to show that any claimed error or combination of claimed errors affected his substantial rights as required to warrant a new trial.” In the immortal words of Peter Lorre in the cinematic classic “All Through the Night,” “But that’s silly!” Back in Sept. 2024, the Post Millennial reported that Trump attorney Will Scharf, “speaking at Trump Tower in New York City after a hearing to ask to overturn the final verdict against Trump in the E Jean Carroll case,” pointed out quite correctly that the alleged victim’s story “at its heart is an utterly implausible, he said she said story.”

Serious allegations of this kind are supposed to be established on the basis of evidence and witnesses, but Scharf noted that in this case, there was “no corroboration for anything” that Carroll claimed about what went on between her and Trump. The fix was in from the beginning: Carroll’s attorneys never produced any “corroborating witnesses” or “confirmatory DNA.” She filed no police report at the time of the supposed incident, and couldn’t even say when exactly her encounter with Trump was supposed to have happened. “No surveillance evidence or witnesses have ever been found or come forward confirming any asked of E Jean Carroll’s story.” Even worse, the case only went to court in the first place because corrupt leftists changed the rules so that they could get Trump.

As PJM’s Ben Bartee noted back in Apr. 2023, Carroll was only able to file her case at all because of “an exception carved out in the New York state legal code that many speculate was crafted especially to enable the prosecution of Trump.” New York Magazine explained at that time that Carroll was able to file her suit “because of the Adult Survivors Act, a new New York state law that went into effect that same month giving adult survivors of sexual misconduct a one-year window to file civil cases that would otherwise be outside the statute of limitations.” So New York changed the law to get Trump, Carroll took immediate advantage and now the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit is playing along with this vicious and partisan charade.

There are more problems besides all that. In 2019, Carroll appeared on the cover of New York Magazine beside a large headline that read: “This is what I was wearing 23 years ago when Donald Trump attacked me in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room.” Yet the Donna Karan dress she was wearing on the magazine cover wasn’t manufactured at the time of the alleged encounter between Trump and Carroll. And while the magazine cover is certain that the “attack” took place in 1996, Carroll has never been that definite.

This sort of thing should have gotten the case thrown out of court on the first day, but that would require those who brought it into court in the first place to be interested in justice when all they really wanted to do was get Trump. And get him they did: Fox notes that the appeals court’s ruling “comes after a New York jury last year found Trump liable for sexually abusing Carroll, a former Elle magazine advice columnist, in the dressing room of a Bergdorf Goodman store in the mid-1990s—and for subsequently defaming her when she came forward with her story during his first term in office.”

This isn’t over. Steven Cheung, a Trump transition spokesman and incoming White House communications director, stated: “The American People have re-elected President Trump with an overwhelming mandate, and they demand an immediate end to the political weaponization of our justice system and a swift dismissal of all of the Witch Hunts, including the Democrat-funded Carroll Hoax, which will continue to be appealed. We look forward to uniting our country in the new administration as President Trump makes America great again.” So do we, Mr. Cheung. We look forward to the day when all the plotters against our free republic are unmasked, and E. Jean Carroll is publicly known as what she really is. Are there still courts that are free enough of corruption and politicization to bring that day closer?

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Jack is licking his wounds.

• Jack Smith Drops Appeal Of Classified Docs Case (JTN)

Special counsel Jack Smith on Monday withdrew his appeals request for his Florida classified documents case against President-elect Donald Trump’s co-defendants. The attorney dropped his appeal against Trump last month after Trump won reelection to the White House, citing a Justice Department policy not to prosecute sitting presidents. Trump will be sworn in next month. Smith previously accused Trump in 2022 of improperly taking classified documents from the White House to his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. But the case was dismissed by U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon in July, who cited the constitutionality of Smith’s appointment as special counsel.

Trump and the co-defendants, longtime Trump aide Walt Nauta and Mar-a-Lago employee Carlos De Oliveira, all pleaded not guilty to the charges. The new order withdraws Smith’s appeal in the prosecution of the two co-defendants, per ABC News. Smith also passed the appeal to federal prosecutors in Florida, including U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida Markenzy Lapointe. It is not clear whether the prosecutors intend to continue the appeal. Smith is expected to step down from his post ahead of Trump’s inauguration next month.

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Time for Trump to apply force. Without a speaker in place, everything he wants will be delayed.

• Even With Trump’s Endorsement, Johnson’s Speakership Is Far From Secure (JTN)

House Speaker Mike Johnson, R., La., faces a difficult path toward retaining the speaker’s gavel in the next Congress, even with President-elect Donald Trump’s endorsement. When the House votes on Friday, lawmakers will hold a formal contest in which the prospective leader must secure a majority of votes to lead the chamber. That process is likely to give irate conservatives an opportunity to keep the Louisiana Republican from returning to the top job. The House elections returned a narrow Republican majority, which will temporarily shrink as Trump has tapped members of the lower chamber to serve in his administration. In early 2023, Kevin McCarthy, then the Republican leader, struggled to claim the gavel as roughly 20 Republicans sought to extract budgetary concessions from him. McCarthy ultimately lost the post when roughly half a dozen Republicans voted with Democrats to boot him from the job.

Republicans won 220 seats in the 2024 House elections, compared to the 215 that went for the Democrats. Former Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., left Congress after Trump named him as his pick for attorney general, though he later withdrew himself from consideration. His seat will not be filled by the time of the leadership contest. At least some journalists, however, have raised questions as to whether Gaetz may yet take the oath of office to vote this week as he was elected to the next Congress. Johnson will face a narrower majority than McCarthy did two years prior, and, arguably, a more frustrated bloc of budget hawks. Johnson only claimed the gavel after several other Republicans failed to win the support of the disparate wings of the conference. But Trump’s endorsement could prove a boon to him as he seeks to unify Republicans.

“Speaker Mike Johnson is a good, hard working, religious man. He will do the right thing, and we will continue to WIN. Mike has my Complete & Total Endorsement. MAGA!!!” Trump posted on Truth Social. That endorsement seems to have one over at least one member of the anti-McCarthy bloc that brought down Johnson’s predecessor. “Trump endorsing Johnson is ‘art of the deal’ level practicality. We could never have held up McCarthy two years ago for concessions if a Trump certification hung in the balance,” Gaetz posted. “Now, it does. We were able to hold up McCarthy because Republican voters weren’t all that eager to see us getting back to being Biden’s bitch (which Kevin ultimately did anyway). The resistance to [Johnson] is now futile. Let’s work to make him the best version of himself (which was more like the 2023 vintage of Mike).”

Unfortunately for Johnson, Gaetz’s ability to vote at all appears unlikely. Other dissidents, however, have suggested they will not support Johnson, with Reps. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., and Victoria Sparz, R-Ind., among the most prominent of his critics. “I respect and support President Trump, but his endorsement of Mike Johnson is going to work out about as well as his endorsement of Speaker Paul Ryan,” Massie posted on X. “We’ve seen Johnson partner with the democrats to send money to Ukraine, authorize spying on Americans, and blow the budget.” “Mike Johnson is the next Paul Ryan. On January 3rd, 2025, I won’t be voting for Mike Johnson. I hope my colleague will join me because history will not give America another ‘do-over,’” he added.

“There are a lot of other people who are interested,” Spartz said Monday on “Fox and Friends.” “He didn’t deliver for President Trump, too, what he promised just recently.” “He needs to be able to convince the American people that he is able to do it,” she added.

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“These groups form a censorship consortium where the suppression of speech attracts millions in federal dollars.”

• Let’s Get the United States Out of the Censorship Business (Turley)

On this New Year’s Eve, billions of people will gather with friends to ring in 2025 with the hope of a better year to come. For the first time in many years, free-speech advocates have a reason to celebrate. With 2024, we will say goodbye to one of the most reviled offices in the Biden Administration: The Global Engagement Center. I discuss the Center in my recent book, The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage as one of the most active components in the massive censorship system funded by the Biden Administration. The demise of the GEC is a good start. However, like weight loss resolutions, it will take much more of a commitment if we are going to restore free speech in the United States. It is time to make the ultimate resolution to rip out the censorship root and stem from our government.

This month, the Biden Administration fought to keep the GEC funded, but Republicans refused to include it in the continuing resolution for the budget. However, even with the closure of this one office, Biden will leave behind the most comprehensive censorship system in the history of the United States. Over the last three years, many of us have detailed a comprehensive system of grants to academic and third party organizations to create blacklists or to pressure advertisers to withdraw support for targeted sites. The subjects for censorship ranged from election fraud to social justice to climate change. I testified at the first hearing by the special committee investigating the censorship system funded or coordinated by the Biden Administration.

It is an unprecedented alliance of corporate, government, and academic groups against free speech in the United States. The Biden Administration established the most anti-free speech record since the Adams Administration. House investigations showed the critical role played by government officials in “switchboarding,” or channeling demands for removal or bans in social media. Officials evaded the limits of the First Amendment by using these groups as surrogates for censorship. Even with the elimination of the GEC, other offices remain in various agencies, including the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) in the Department of Homeland Security, which emerged as one of the critical control centers in this system.

CISA head Jen Easterly declared that her agency’s mandate over critical infrastructure would be extended to include “our cognitive infrastructure.” That includes not just “disinformation” and “misinformation,” but combating “malinformation” – described as information “based on fact, but used out of context to mislead, harm, or manipulate.” These groups form a censorship consortium where the suppression of speech attracts millions in federal dollars. Election Integrity Partnership (EIP) was created in association with Stanford University “at the request of DHS/CISA.” EIP supplied a “centralized reporting system” to process what were known as “Jira tickets” targeting unacceptable views. It would include not only politicians but commentators and pundits as well as the satirical site The Babylon Bee.

Stanford’s Virality Project pushed to censor even true facts since “true stories … could fuel hesitancy” over taking the vaccine or other measures. Emails show government officials stressing that they could not be seen as “openly endors[ing]” censorship while other groups sought to minimize public scrutiny of their work. For example, one article featured the work of Kate Starbird, director and co-founder of the University of Washington Center for an Informed Public. In one communication, Starbird cautioned against giving examples of disinformation to keep them from being used by critics, adding “since everything is politicized and disinformation inherently political, every example is bait.” Likewise, University of Michigan’s James Park is shown pitching that school’s WiseDex First Pitch program, promising that “our misinformation service helps policy makers at platforms who want to . . . push responsibility for difficult judgments to someone outside the company . . . by externalizing the difficult responsibility of censorship.”

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“Trump for his part has less than zero incentive to be dragged into a further quagmire; leave that to the clueless European chihuahuas.”

• 2025: A Second Renaissance, Or Chaos? (Pepe Escobar)

FLORENCE – It’s a dazzling Tuscan winter morning, and I am inside the legendary Dominican church of Santa Maria Novella, founded in the early 13th century and finally consecrated in 1420, in a very special place in History of Art: right in front of one of the monochrome frescos painted in 1447-1448 by master of perspective Paolo Uccello, depicting the Universal Deluge. It’s as if Paolo Uccello was depicting us – in our current times of trouble. So inspired by neoplatonic superstar Marsilio Ficino – immortalized in a chic red robe by Ghirlandaio at the Cappella Tornabuoni – I tried to pull off a back to the future and ideally imagine who and what Paolo Uccello would feature in his depiction of our current deluge.

Let’s start with the positives. 2024 was the Year of the BRICS – with the merit for all the accomplishments going for the tireless work of the Russian presidency. 2024 was also the Year of the Axis of Resistance – until the serial blows suffered during the past few months, a serious challenge which will propel its rejuvenation. And 2024 was the year that defined the lineaments of the endgame in the proxy war in Ukraine: what remains to be seen is how deep the “rules-based international order” will be buried in the black soil of Novorossiya. Now let’s turn to the auspicious prospects ahead. 2025 will be the year of consolidation of China as the paramount geoeconomics force on the planet. It will be the year where the defining battle of the 21st century – Eurasia v. NATOstan – will be sharpened in an array of unpredictable vectors. And it will be the year of advancing, interlocking connectivity corridors – the defining factor in Eurasia integration.

Not by accident Iran is central to this interlocking connectivity – from the Strait of Hormuz (through which transits, daily, at least 23% of the world’s oil) to the port of Chabahar, which links West Asia with South Asia. Connectivity corridors to watch are the return of one of the top Pipelineistan sagas, the 1,800 km-long Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) pipeline; the International North South Transportation Corridor (INSTC), which links three BRICS (Russia-Iran-India) and several aspiring BRICS partners; the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), the flagship Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) project; and last but not least, the fast advancing Northern Sea Route (or Northern Silk Road, as the Chinese call it), which will eventually become the cheapest and fastest alternative to the Suez canal.

A few days before the start of Trump 2.0 in Washington, Russia and Iran will finally, officially sign a comprehensive strategic partnership deal in Moscow, over two years in the making: once again, a key deal between two top BRICS, with immense, cascading repercussions in Eurasia integration terms. A completely sealed channel of negotiation Dmitri Trenin, respected member of Russia’s Foreign and Defense Policy Council, has what is so far the most realist road map for an acceptable end of the proxy war in Ukraine. “Acceptable” does not even begin to describe it – because from the point of view of the collective West political “elites” which bet the farm and the bank on this war, nothing is acceptable except Russia’s strategic defeat, which will never happen.

As it stands, President Putin is in fact containing elite sectors in Moscow who favor not only cutting off the head of the snake but the body as well. Trump for his part has less than zero incentive to be dragged into a further quagmire; leave that to the clueless European chihuahuas.

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Everything linked to healthcare will be fought in bloody battles. RFK, Makary, Bhattacharya et al. Too much money involved. Nothing to do with care quality. A sad picture.

• COVID Catechists Come For Incoming NIH Chief Bhattacharya (JTN)

Proponents of once-dominant COVID-19 views and policy, from the natural origin of SARS-CoV-2 to mandatory lockdowns, remote learning, masking and vaccines, often chose between two strategies to marginalize dissenters. They flooded medical licensing boards with complaints against doctors such as Minnesota’s Scott Jensen, who faced new investigations from Democratic Gov. Tim Walz’s administration after announcing his candidacy for governor, or sought to destroy their reputations in general, scientific and social media, calling them racist, cold-hearted and “fringe.” The Supreme Court will soon vote on hearing a First Amendment case that could put the kibosh on such license investigations, while COVID catechists are making a last-ditch effort to stop Senate confirmation of an epidemiologist targeted by name by his predecessor.

Justice Clarence Thomas scheduled a judicial conference for Jan. 10 on whether to block Washington state’s crusade against doctors based on their COVID views before the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rules in the case by NBA legend John Stockton, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Children’s Health Defense and several doctors. The plaintiffs’ application for injunction, rejected by Justice Elena Kagan on Nov. 20, also invites the high court to accept the whole case “to provide a definitive nationwide ruling on whether physicians’ public speech is fully protected” and requires the strict-scrutiny standard of judicial review, given “an ongoing nationwide campaign to censor dissenting speech.” Scientific American raised eyebrows with a Dec. 19 opinion essay that allegedly retcons the mainstream response to Stanford medical professor Jay Bhattacharya, nominated by President-elect Trump for National Institutes of Health director, who is also a plaintiff in a First Amendment lawsuit rebooted after an early SCOTUS setback.

Its sibling Nature Medicine required the authors of “Proximal Origin,” covertly shaped by then-NIH Director Francis Collins and then-National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci, to completely rule out a COVID lab leak before it would publish their paper, which cemented natural origin as gospel. Bhattacharya made himself persona non grata with the public health establishment in spring 2020 by running a seroprevalence study in Stanford’s backyard that found infection was already widespread before lockdowns, undermining elite narratives of COVID’s universal risk. Months later he cowrote the Great Barrington Declaration against lockdowns and in favor of “focused protection” for populations most vulnerable to COVID, which played a role in Stanford faculty pressuring the university to dump the Hoover Institution, with which Bhattacharya and fellow lockdown critic Scott Atlas are affiliated.

Bhattacharya accused university leadership of cowardice for not speaking against faculty efforts to censor him, Atlas and meta-research pioneer John Ioannidis, whose seroprevalence studies similarly undermined COVID narratives and who first warned of the weak evidence for drastic mitigation efforts he compared to “an elephant being attacked by a house cat.” Collins told Fauci, who is now a non-teaching professor at Georgetown, that he wanted a “quick and devastating public take down” of the “fringe epidemiologists” who wrote the GBD, because they were “getting too much traction” and it was even signed by “a Nobel Prize winner,” Stanford biophysicist Michael Levitt. Bhattacharya told Just the News, No Noise before President Biden’s reelection withdrawal that he was working on a public health reform plan for the next president, which would remove large pharmaceutical influence from the Food and Drug Administration and refocus the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention away from politics and back on science.

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Article’s much longer. Iran etc.

• Jimmy Carter’s Legacy Still Hampers A World Trump Must Fix (JTN)

As the tributes roll in before America bids farewell to Jimmy Carter, current global turbulence provides fresh reminders that the decisions the late 39th president made in office continue to impact the world four decades later and present both challenges and opportunities for the man about to assume the White House for a second term. Many of the issues confronting President-elect Donald Trump – Iran, the Panama Canal, the Education Department and appeasement diplomacy – have their roots in the Carter presidency, a reality that can’t be erased by the significant humanitarian achievements the former president aggregated after he left office or the widely recognized kindness of the God-fearing, Navy-serving peanut farmer who lived to be 100.

“I don’t think there’s anyone that would say a bad thing about him, personally,” said Nicholas Giordano, a political science professor at Suffolk Community College and a popular podcaster. “He was genuinely a good and decent human being. “But it shows you that sometimes being good and decent isn’t necessarily equating to success as president,” he added. Here are a few of the good-guy-bad-policy debates that arose in Carter’s final days on earth as Trump prepares to return to the White House next month.

Panama Canal The Panama Canal was an engineering marvel that the United States built and paid for in 1914 and that Carter gifted away in a 1977 treaty. That treaty gave Panama full control of the canal as of 1999 after decades of U.S. operation, but it also codified it would remain free and neutral to shipping traffic. Carter declared at the time the transaction removed “the last remnant of alleged American colonialism.” Critics like Ronald Reagan, however, warned the treaty gave away America’s hard-earned construction genius and would one day place the western world in a security lurch over one of the most important marine passageways in the world. “The canal is ours, we bought and we paid for it and we should keep it,” the late Republican Sen. Strom Thurmond said at the time.

China and Panama Those security concerns are coming into clearer focus today as communist China’s companies have won bids in the last decade for several major infrastructure projects like power plants, a bridge and canal locks near the site. To show his newfound influence in Panama, President Xi also made a state visit to Panama in 2018 after the Latin American country joined Beijing’s “Belt and Road” initiative. Today, Panamanian exports to China dwarf those to the United States and imports from Beijing have caught up to those from America, a tilt in economic allegiance that is nearly as concerning to members of Congress as the growth of the Chinese presence around the famed canal.

“A visitor to the Panama Canal might think they were in China. Ports at both ends of the Canal are managed by companies from the People’s Republic of China (PRC), while Huawei dominates the country’s telecoms system,” then-Rep. Mike Gallagher, R-Wis., wrote in a Newsweek Op/Ed a year ago as part of his leadership of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party. “Panama illustrates the relentless advance of CCP influence across the Western Hemisphere,” he added. “…. The real prize is control—not only control of strategic points such as the Panama Canal and ports but of natural resources, telecommunications, and ultimately governments.”

Trump began raising such concerns in 2019 and he catapulted the issue to the front of public consciousness over the Christmas holiday with a bold declaration. If Panama doesn’t begin lowering shipping rates for passage through the canal, “we will demand that the Panama Canal be returned to us, in full, quickly and without question,” he wrote on Truth Social. Liberals and Panamanians scoffed at such a notion. But Trump’s declaration seized public fascination, prompting a debate unlike anything since Carter first touched off a firestorm with the treaty. Even left-leaning National Public Radio had to admit “it feels like 1976 all over again.” Wherever Trump’s quest on the canal ends, the debate was just one reminder in Carter’s final days that his decisions five decades ago continue to raise concern today.

[..] The Biden department’s advocacy for far-left ideologies like DEI and allowing transgender men in women’s sports also disillusioned many Americans, adding fresh public support for a smaller, if not eliminated agency. While the statistics show student performance has stagnated, many feel the overall state of education has declined. “All of these things have gotten worse since we created a Federal Department of Education,” Oklahoma Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters told Just the News on Monday. “We’ve allowed the left to win this argument for too long: give more power to bureaucrats, give more power to government, and our kids will magically get smarter. Well, that’s just not true,” he added. “As a matter of fact, the opposite is true. The more that you give power to the government, the less power families have.”

When the nation mourns Carter at his Jan. 9 State Funeral in Washington, D.C., he will accurately be remembered for his kindness, his faith, his service to country and the humanitarian achievements of his years out of office. But his successor as the 47th president will also be face global and national challenges that were also of Carter’s making, and history will ultimately write the final chapter on how those turned out. “Look, he was a statesman,” Walters said of Carter. “His impact, especially after coming out of the White House, was tremendous. You know, a guy that really gave a tremendous amount from him and his family to his fellow man. But listen, I. I think when you study history, we’ve got to be up front with our kids. “It doesn’t matter if you’re Republican, Democrat, what your background is. We’ve got to go in and say, here’s what happened while this person was president. Here were their policies. Here was the impact,” he added.

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Saw the first clip a while back. Looks good.

• Paramount Series ‘Landman’ Surprises With Anti-Climate Agenda Message (ZH)

It’s been a long time since conservatives were treated like the “good guys” by Hollywood, largely because ESG initiatives and the over-representation of social justice cultism on social media convinced production companies that it was more lucrative to go woke. However, this assumption turned out to be a massive error in calculation as “Get Woke, Go Broke” became the mantra that ultimately toppled the media industry and the Democratic Party.Today, the majority of entertainment companies are struggling with failure after failure; most of their projects lose vast sums of money and producers have been unable to squeeze any blood from the classic franchises they used to rely on. When corporations like Disney are actually losing money on Star Wars and Marvel, you know that audience boycotts are becoming effective.

Well, it appear that someone in Tinsel Town is finally listening. Paramount, another company known for a steady stream of woke disasters, saw some streaming series gold with the success of ‘Yellowstone’ – The Kevin Costner led show featured conservative Montana ranchers battling to maintain their legacy. Though, the company could not help itself and started implanting woke messaging in the later seasons.Yellowstone might have given Paramount a taste of that old-school era of big money entertainment, and they have doubled down on what can only be described as an ultra-MAGA series called ‘Landman’ starring Billy Bob Thornton.

Thornton plays Tommy Norris, a “crisis executive” or “fixer” for a small Texas oil company. While the show does involve some extraordinary plot twists to keep the audience invested, each event ties back to very real problems related to the dangerous business of oil drilling, the open US border, Mexican drug cartels, government interference and disinformation from the environmental lobby. You might not find a more fair or factual depiction of the American oil industry in modern media.

Perhaps the most exciting thing about Landman is that someone at Paramount had the stones to green light a show that speaks against the man-made climate change agenda and the fraudulent claims of the “sustainable” energy lobby. It doesn’t glamorize oil, but it acknowledges that there are no practical alternatives. In terms of story, Thornton’s character is great at his job, but terrible at raising his family. This leads to some hilarious discomfort as his histrionic ex-wife, impulsive teenage daughter and strong-headed 20-something son come back into his life and collide. Though highly flawed, Thornton’s sharp Texas wit keeps you laughing at his domestic mistakes and misfortunes. Keep in mind, Landman is definitely not a family show.

Conservatives will probably gravitate to the straightforward depiction of the working man’s world and the dangers involved in resource industries like oil. These are the vital jobs and men that keep the world running, and many of them die while trying to earn a paycheck. Landman makes no attempt to demean or belittle blue collar workers and its simple exploration of their daily lives comes off as shockingly empathetic. Appealing to the working man in media without pandering is a tough balance, but Landman does it well. There’s also no absurd melodrama or unrealistic character changes to artificially drive the plot forward. What you see is what you get, which is incredibly refreshing these days.

Overall, Landman is definitely worth a watch. It’s important to encourage entertainment companies by rewarding them when they abandon woke messaging and make something intelligent. This is not to say that they won’t screw up the show by adding leftist propaganda in later seasons (we all know liberal executives can’t control themselves), but the first season of Landman is a win.

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Debt Rattle January 28 2024

Jan 282024
 
 January 28, 2024  Posted by at 9:40 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  49 Responses »


Balthus Therèse dreaming 1938

 

• RFK Jr. Praises Texas In Battle With Biden Over Border (Hill)
• Biden Vows To Shut Border If Lawmakers Pass Budget Deal (RT)
• How Trump and US Conservatives Deal a Blow to Ukraine Aid Package (Sp.)
• US Promised To Seize Russian Assets – Kiev (RT)
• Seizing Russia’s Money Would Endanger Euro – Italian Central Bank (RT)
• EU and NATO Heading for the Abyss Over Foreign Policy Foibles (Jay)
• ‘No Threat’ Of Russia Attacking NATO – Germany (RT)
• Davos, Dictators, and the Real ‘Threats to Our Democracy’ (Hollis)
• WH’s New Strategy on Ukraine ‘Will De-Emphasize’ Retaking ‘Lost Territory’ (Sp.)
• Putin Vows To Eradicate Nazism For Good (RT)
• ICJ Ruling May Entail Dire Consequences for Israel (Sp.)
• Who is Kevin Morris? Even Hunter’s Lawyer Seems Unsure (Turley)
• Hunter Biden Partner Rob Walker Confirms Payments To Biden Family (JTN)
• Boeing’s Nosedive: How Greed Ruined A Great American Company (Johnston)
• 83 million? (Victor Davis Hanson)

 

 

The alleged rape supposedly took place in 1996. With a script straight out of Law and Order. 16 years later, she’s a big fan of her “rapist”.

Note: the 83 million is not for the “rape”, but for defamation. Which she says cost her her job at ELLE magazine. ELLE has denied this.

 

 

Tucker Texas cartels

 

 

 

 

 

 

“..Biden’s failure to secure the border leaves states no choice but to take matters into their own hands..”

• RFK Jr. Praises Texas In Battle With Biden Over Border (Hill)

Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Thursday backed Texas in its ongoing battle with the federal government over border authority, criticizing the Biden administration for its handling of the U.S. southern border. “Texas is right. Biden’s failure to secure the border leaves states no choice but to take matters into their own hands,” Kennedy wrote in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter. “As President, I will end this humanitarian crisis once and for all. I will secure the border and destroy the business model of the drug cartels. A country without borders is not a country at all.” Kennedy joins a growing list of politicians, most of them Republican, who have thrown their support behind Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s (R) fight against the federal government over the fencing and razor wire installed by Texas at the U.S.-Mexico border. In a major blow to Abbott, the Supreme Court ruled earlier this week that border agents can remove the razor wire erected on the border, siding with the Biden administration.

Abbott has defended the fencing as necessary for his state’s security, claiming he was forced to take matters into his own hands due to what he characterizes as a lack of action on the Biden administration’s part. The federal government, meanwhile, contends the state does not have the power to build the fencing, which it says prevents it from managing the border. Abbott railed against the high court ruling and contended his authority is the “supreme law of the land and supersedes any federal statutes.” Texas appeared to continue installing razor wire after the ruling came down. Kennedy has previously spoken out against what he sees as a “border crisis” that is leading to the smuggling of drugs and humans. He called Biden’s border policies a “disaster” in a Newsweek op-ed last year. Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley also spoke out in support of Abbott on Thursday and called Biden’s position “absolutely ridiculous.”

RFK border

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“Biden already has authority to shut down illegal immigration. And now he’s telling us he’s willing to do that, but only if we pass a new law — one whose authors refuse to share with the public or even their own colleagues. Something’s not right here.”

Scott Adams: “The plan is to close the barn door after too many horses get out.”

• Biden Vows To Shut Border If Lawmakers Pass Budget Deal (RT)

US President Joe Biden has again urged Republican lawmakers to approve a long-stalled budget deal, vowing to shut down his country’s southern border as soon as he’s given the authority to do so. Republicans have been blocking the White House’s attempts to push through a $106 billion ‘national security package’ for Ukraine and Israel since October. They have demanded tougher security measures on the southern frontier be included in the agreement. ”For too long, we all know the border’s been broken. It’s long past time to fix it,” Biden outlined in a written statement on Friday. He described the border deal, now being negotiated in the Senate, as “the toughest and fairest set of reforms to secure the border we’ve ever had in our country.”

“It would give me, as President, a new emergency authority to shut down the border when it becomes overwhelmed. And if given that authority, I would use it the day I sign the bill into law,” Biden vowed. Under the bipartisan agreement, the administration would, among other things, be required to shut the border down if the number of migrants trying to get into the US illegally on any given day reaches 5,000, the New York Times reported. This threshold had been surpassed “routinely” in recent months, the paper stressed. Finding common ground on the immigration deal would be “a win for America,” the president insisted. “If you’re serious about the border crisis, pass a bipartisan bill, and I will sign it,” Biden said, addressing the Republican lawmakers.

The Washington Post described the comments as “a remarkable shift” in the Democratic president’s rhetoric on the immigration issue. The media outlet underscored “the urgency” of the situation on the border for his re-election bid. Biden’s statement came as Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson said on Friday that if the leaks about the deal’s content were accurate, it would be “dead on arrival” in the lower chamber. The likely Republican presidential nominee, Donald Trump, slammed the border deal earlier this week, warning that it “would be another gift to the radical left Democrats.” The agreement “will be meaningless in terms of border security,” Trump argued, reiterating that the only way to solve the immigration issue would be voting for him in November.

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“..the draft bipartisan agreement could allow up to 5,000 migrants to enter the US daily at the border..”

• How Trump and US Conservatives Deal a Blow to Ukraine Aid Package (Sp.)

Former US President Donald Trump and Republican policymakers have subjected a draft bipartisan US border security deal to harsh criticism, casting doubt on the future of military aid packages for Ukraine and Israel. The border security deal is seen by Democratic lawmakers as a necessary evil to ram a new multi-billion Ukraine aid bill through the US Congress. Last December neither chamber managed to reach a compromise on the provision of further funds to Kiev despite pleas and even threats from the White House. Eventually, Republican and Democratic senators come up with a draft border agreement. Even though the formal text of the deal has not been officially released yet, leaks keep coming irritating US conservatives, as per Just the News, an independent US media outlet.

Media reported that the draft bipartisan agreement could allow up to 5,000 migrants to enter the US daily at the border. To that end, the White House is reportedly requesting at least $14 billion to help cities to absorb the flow of migrants released by US border authorities into the country. Former President Donald Trump denounced that as a bad deal in every way: “I do not think we should do a Border Deal, at all, unless we get everything needed to shut down the invasion of millions and millions of people, many from parts unknown, into our once great, but soon to be great again, country!” he wrote on his Truth Social media site on January 25. The US mainstream media warns that the former president’s comment was a “serious blow to the talks”. Trump has emerged as the leading Republican presidential candidate following the party’s first two primaries this month, with the power to influence the outcome of the negotiations.

Punchbowl News reported that Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell told his colleagues on Wednesday that the situation had “changed,” and that Trump was going to build his re-election campaign around the border crisis. “We don’t want to do anything to undermine him,” McConnell allegedly said. However, on Thursday the GOP leader appeared to backpedal on his remarks, asserting to the press that he still backed the bipartisan migration deal. Deputy White House Press Secretary Olivia Dalton also signaled that the Biden administration as supporting the bipartisan immigration agreement. “The president has been clear, we need action on the border,” Dalton told reporters on Thursday. “We’ve been engaging in good faith, bipartisan negotiations with both Senate Democrats and Senate Republicans to that end. And we believe that there’s no reason that shouldn’t continue.”

Still, some US senators warn that the effort is doomed. US Senator Ted Cruz said on Wednesday that the Ukraine aid-border security supplemental bill is a train wreck and has no chance of passing the US House of Representatives. Senator Rick Scott echoed Cruz, saying that the bill will be dead on arrival in the House. Earlier this week the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft suggested that House Republicans may kill the foreign aid bill even if a bipartisan border security and immigration deal is passed. The lower chamber’s Republican majority has no appetite for throwing good money after bad to Ukraine, according to the institute. The DC-based think-tank also noted House Speaker Mike Johnson’s ardent support for a sweeping migration reform and his record of opposing Ukraine funding packages. Some House Republicans, such as Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, even threatened to introduce a “motion to vacate” and oust the speaker if Johnson passes funding to Ukraine.

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“..a US Senate committee approved the “Rebuilding Economic Prosperity and Opportunity (REPO) for Ukrainians Act..”

• US Promised To Seize Russian Assets – Kiev (RT)

The US assured Kiev that the Russian assets that remain frozen in the West are going to be seized and used to rebuild Ukraine after the conflict, Ukrainian Prime Minister Denis Shmygal has said. The US, EU, and their allies blocked some $300 billion of Russian central bank assets as part of sanctions in response to Moscow’s military operation in Ukraine. Around $200 billion of that money is held in the EU. Politico reported on Thursday that it asked Shmygal if he was concerned that US funding for the Kiev government would come to a complete stop if Donald Trump won the presidential election in November and returned to the White House for his second term. ”We have all the assurances from the US about long-term support for Ukraine – for example, the seizure of Russian assets to fund the Ukrainian recovery,” he claimed.

On Wednesday, a US Senate committee approved the “Rebuilding Economic Prosperity and Opportunity (REPO) for Ukrainians Act,” which should help pave the way for such a move by Washington. If it passes both houses and is signed into law by President Joe Biden, Washington could seize the Russian central bank assets, using such a measure against a country that it’s not directly at war with for the first time in history. Reuters reported this week, citing a senior official in Brussels, that the EU will be unlikely to join the US in confiscating the Russian funds as there’s no agreement on such a step between the bloc’s member-states. Earlier in January, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov warned that Moscow would respond to a possible seizure of its assets by the West, inducing tit-for-tat measures.

Previously, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said that the confiscation of Russian funds would amount to “outright theft” by the West. He told reporters that it would undermine the trust in the US and EU financial systems around the globe. Shmygal also stated that Kiev is “working hard with the administration of President Biden and with Congress to have support for 2024.” As for the continuation of the aid in 2025, “we’ll see how conditions develop,” he stressed. ”I believe that any president of the US will support our fight for civilized values, our mutual values,” the Ukrainian PM said. The US has provided Ukraine with around $111 billion in economic and military support amid the conflict with Russia. But the flow of funds subsided dramatically in recent months as Republican lawmakers continue to resist attempts by the White House to push through another $60 billion in assistance for Kiev.

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“..weaponizing a currency inevitably reduces its attractiveness and encourages the emergence of alternatives..”

• Seizing Russia’s Money Would Endanger Euro – Italian Central Bank (RT)

The EU should not use the euro as a tool in sanctions wars and political disputes, as it would harm the currency’s image and standing, Bank of Italy Governor Fabio Panetta warned on Friday. He as commenting on discussions in Brussels regarding frozen Russian assets. The EU, US, Japan and Canada froze some $300 billion of Russian central bank assets in 2022 as part of Ukraine-related sanctions against Moscow. Some $200 billion of that is held in the EU, largely in the Belgian clearing house Euroclear. Brussels is currently working on plans to apply a windfall tax to the profits Euroclear is making on the frozen funds, while opting not to seize the immobilized money outright.

However, Italy is one of several EU member states, including Germany and France, that have been skeptical of moves involving the assets, arguing that using them could prompt investors from other countries to doubt the safety of their own holdings in the EU and quit the bloc’s market, ultimately weakening the euro. “This power must be used wisely,” Panetta said, referring to euro’s standing as a global reserve currency. “International relations are part of a ‘repeated game’: weaponizing a currency inevitably reduces its attractiveness and encourages the emergence of alternatives,” he warned at an event in Riga, marking the 10th anniversary of Latvia adopting the euro. According to the official, the recent surge in the use of the yuan in trade between China and Russia is “instructive in this respect,” because it was Western sanctions that prompted the trend, as they made it difficult for Russia to use US dollars and euros in cross-border trade.

“The Chinese authorities are explicitly promoting [the yuan’s] role on the global stage and encouraging its use in other countries, including those sanctioned by the international community following the invasion of Ukraine,” Panetta said, adding that the share of Chinese trade financed in the domestic currency has doubled in the past three years, allowing the yuan to overtake the euro as the world’s second most-used trade currency. The official warned if the need to “be alert to the possibility that politics will have a greater impact on international currencies in the coming years.” Western currencies have been largely phased out in Russia-China trade, as nearly 95% of all transactions between the countries are now carried out either in rubles or yuan. Russia is not the only major economy to use the Chinese currency for trade settlements, as more and more nations seek alternatives to the dollar and euro. These include Argentina, Saudi Arabia, Brazil and Iran.

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“..this BS is being fed into the echo chamber because a panic is setting in both on a EU level and national one as elections are looming and the smell of defeat is beginning to fill the lungs of the corrupt..”

• EU and NATO Heading for the Abyss Over Foreign Policy Foibles (Jay)

A number of odd statements have been coming from the EU in recent days, coupled with some even odder skulduggery giving rise to thought that the entire project is having its ‘last days of the Roman Empire moment’. Is it possible that the EU that we know is on its last legs and what we are witnessing is the final demise? Ursula von der Leyen, whose grandparents were probably Wafen SS officers has said that if she doesn’t get her way in finding new money for Ukraine she will have to resort to dirty tricks. Well, she didn’t actually say “dirty tricks” but this is what is implied. And what might those underhand moves might be? In fact, there is already a motion in the EU corridors to make Hungary effectively a non-EU member state, a sort of rogue member which is still in the EU but has no voting rights.

Given that the EU is anything but a democracy and that the institutions in Brussels are monolithic and consensus-driven (there is no ‘opposition’ in Brussels like in most democratic countries) it is hardly surprising to see nefarious activities which would make an African dictator proud of his handy work. The EU, or rather the super federalist elite which run it in Brussels like von der Leyen and her mates as Pfizer – yes, multinational corporations really wield the most power in Brussels and more or less own the European Parliament – are getting worried. The project is starting to indulge in in-fighting and creating a lot of mixed message in the media. Gardner-in-chief Josep Borrell wants a new shiny state for the Palestinians but Ursula is perfectly happy with the present genocide program. Perhaps she sees in investment opportunities in offshore gas off the coast of Gaza?

And so with the economy in the doldrums and the EUs most powerful member state Germany looking more and more like the Czech Republic in the late 90s, the uber elites like Ursula and the most vile MEP the European Parliament ever had – Guy Verhofstadt – are worried that the project can be hijacked by far-right MEPs come the next euro election in the summer. Ironically, in such a scenario where the European parliament’s main majority bloc would be a far-right group, the support for Netanyahu would peak and even save him from falling into his own quagmire of corruption charges, as the far-right in Europe support the Zionists, shifting from the once popular idea of wiping them out under Hitler’s ‘final solution’ plan.

But the EU would never be the same again. These MEPs support reversing the centralisation of power back to member states. And so it is hardly any surprise at all that Verhofstadt, a man so bereft of charm that he makes a pile of damp towels look exciting, gives another one of his fiery speeches in the European parliament with always the same theme: all our problems can be resolved if we has more money, more power and an EU army. The fault is with member states, the European parliament’s top wanker-in-chief argues as he throws his head around and animates very much like a power hungry leader in the 1930s who got us in this mess in the first place. Have you noticed lots of media reports pointing to war with Russia? Wonder what this is based on? Of course there is no imminent war with Russia but the pundits can’t help presenting one to us, proclaiming that Putin wants to take the odd European country, like a rich man who collects them like pets.

The reality is that this BS is being fed into the echo chamber because a panic is setting in both on a EU level and national one as elections are looming and the smell of defeat is beginning to fill the lungs of the corrupt who have been feeding from the same trough for too long. Create a panic about a war looming and enough stupid Europeans and Americans will accept spiralling consumer prices, high pump prices, insane utility bills (like in the UK), poor growth and no jobs. Few westerners see through the lies and see the ruse in the making. Even the Germans.

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“..this is just a “snapshot” of the current situation and there’s no way of knowing how things would turn out in the future..”

• ‘No Threat’ Of Russia Attacking NATO – Germany (RT)

There’s currently no threat of Russia attacking NATO or any of the partners of the US-led military bloc, German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius has suggested. Moscow’s military is now fully occupied with the Ukraine conflict, Pistorius explained, in an interview with the tabloid Bild on Friday. ”At the moment, I don’t see any danger of a Russian attack on NATO territory or on any NATO partner-country,” he added. However, the minister stressed that this is just a “snapshot” of the current situation and there’s no way of knowing how things would turn out in the future. Pistorius warned against underestimating the alleged risks related to Russia, saying that NATO needs to rely on “the principle of deterrence, as we know it from the times of the Cold War.” During that time, things between the West and Moscow were “much more predictable than the situation we have today,” he argued.

”We are coming out of 30 years of peace… from which we have all benefited. And now the journey is going the other way,” the minister said. NATO and Germany must “really pick up the pace” in order to be able to face the emerging challenges, he stressed. Germany has given to Ukraine “a lot of systems” that Berlin needed for itself since the outbreak in February 2022 of fighting between Moscow and Kiev, but “we will get them again,” Pistorius vowed. Earlier this week, commenting on the possibility of a direct conflict between NATO and Russia, the bloc’s Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said that “we don’t see any direct or imminent threat against any NATO ally.” He stressed, however, that NATO “closely monitors what Russia does” and has increased its “vigilance and presence in the eastern part of the alliance” in order to be able to counter any moves by Moscow.

Pistorius told ZDF on Monday that Germany should be ready to respond to a possible Russian attack. In order to be able to resist an aggression “that you don’t know if and when it will occur, then that means you have to arm yourself – and that’s what we’re currently doing together with allies in NATO,” he explained. On Tuesday, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov dismissed Pistorius’ speculation about a possible conflict between Russia and NATO, saying that, due to internal problems the EU faces, its politicians “now need to somehow pump up public opinion, artificially agitate it, by inventing an external enemy.” Speaking at UN headquarters in New York the following day, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov stressed that “no one wants a big war,” especially Moscow. “We have lived through ‘big wars’ many times in our history,” he added. President Vladimir Putin last month rejected as “complete nonsense” claims that Russia could attack NATO. Moscow has “no geopolitical, economic… or military interest” in doing so, he pointed out. Russia is, on the contrary, interested in developing ties with the bloc, he said.

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“..American voters see where the threats of authoritarianism truly lie, and it isn’t with Donald Trump…”

• Davos, Dictators, and the Real ‘Threats to Our Democracy’ (Hollis)

The former Soviet Union collapsed politically because its centrally planned economy suffered disaster after disaster. Government takeover of the Venezuelan economy destroyed that once-prosperous country, plunging its residents into abject poverty. When the president of Sri Lanka banned nitrogen-based fertilizer, the country’s agricultural sector collapsed, as did its exports, leaving Sri Lankans without adequate food, fuel, or oil to heat their homes. Here in the United States, we have witnessed the nasty consequences of plenty of government policy failures: the health risks of COVID-19 shots; the spectacular failure of wind power in Texas during the 2021 winter storm; the inability of electric vehicles to start in the bitter temperatures across the northern U.S. two weeks ago; California’s water shortages and the struggling capacity of its electrical grid.

Egotists like WEF founder Klaus Schwab and his God-complex, like-minded cronies across the globe never consider that they could be wrong about anything. But they are always wrong about something. Trump voters do not want a dictator; they do not want an imperial presidency at all. They want a president who understands that free and independent businesses operating in a minimally regulated environment are the lifeblood of American prosperity. They recognize that an executive branch that refuses to enforce federal laws is failing in its primary constitutional obligations to the American public. They understand that a justice system that picks and chooses whom to prosecute based upon their race, ethnicity, or political belief is no justice at all. They are tired of inflation caused by misguided energy, trade, and environmental policies.

They are tired of our veterans suffering and dying with their physical and mental health needs unmet; tired of homeless people living in the streets; tired of open borders, of tens of thousands of Americans dying of fentanyl overdoses, and tired of unpunished crime, all while hundreds of billions of our hard-earned tax dollars get laundered through foreign wars into the pockets of multinational defense contractors, corruptocrat politicians, and warmongering toadies who never saw a foreign conflict they didn’t want to exploit. These Americans reject the globalist overlords pushing their anti-human philosophies down everyone’s throats, and they fear being enslaved by governments infiltrated by mindless drones in thrall to the latest apocalyptic power grab. The press and the Left can hand-wave and hyperventilate all they want about “threats to our democracy.” But American voters see where the threats of authoritarianism truly lie, and it isn’t with Donald Trump.

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Just give up.

• WH’s New Strategy on Ukraine ‘Will De-Emphasize’ Retaking ‘Lost Territory’ (Sp.)

The Biden administration’s new strategy will “de-emphasize” Kiev’s recovery of the so-called “lost territories” this year and instead focus on Washington helping the Zelensky regime survive amid Russia’s ongoing special military operation, the Washington Post quoted unnamed sources as saying. The sources were apparently referring to the territories previously reunited with Russia as a result of popular referendums. They claimed that the Biden administration, “still smarting” from Kiev’s bungled counteroffensive in 2023, is “putting together the new strategy,” which includes helping the Zelensky regime strengthen its armed forces and economy in the face of the Ukraine funding impasse in the U.S. Congress.

The strategy’s other purpose is to help Kiev strengthen its fighting force and economy in the face of Ukraine funding-real impasse in the US Congress, according to the sources. “The emerging plan is a sharp change from last year, when the US and allied militaries rushed training and sophisticated equipment to Kiev in hopes that it could quickly push back Russian forces,” insiders pointed out. One source added that “it’s pretty clear” that it will be difficult for the Ukrainian Armed Forces to try to achieve “the same kind of major push on all fronts that they tried to do last year.” The idea is help Ukraine “hold its position on the battlefield for now, […] and “get them on a more sustainable path,” per the source. Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu declared in late December that the Russian armed forces had achieved last year’s main goal by thwarting Ukraine’s summer counteroffensive.

“The main efforts of the past year were focused on achieving the goals of the special military operation. The main one was to stop the counter-offensive of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, which was loudly proclaimed by Ukraine and its NATO allies. This task was successfully accomplished,” Shoigu emphasized at the time. The statement came after Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces Valery Gerasimov told reporters that Ukraine had lost some 160,000 troops and over 3,000 armored vehicles, including 766 tanks, as well as 121 aircraft and 23 helicopters in all areas during the six-month counteroffensive.

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“..in a number of European countries, Russophobia is being promoted as the state policy.”

• Putin Vows To Eradicate Nazism For Good (RT)

Russian President Vladimir Putin has vowed to crush modern-day forces that promote Nazism, singling out Ukraine and the Baltic states as countries where the authorities have embraced such ideologies. Speaking on Saturday at the opening of a memorial to Soviet civilians killed by Nazi German forces in Leningrad Region, the Russian head of state said: “these days the outcomes of the Nuremberg trials are effectively being revised.” He claimed that some countries have gone from rewriting history and whitewashing the Nazis to “arming themselves with Hitlerites’ ideology and methods.”

President Putin cited the Baltic states, in an apparent reference to their treatment of Russian-speaking minorities, which Moscow deems discriminatory. “The regime in Kiev lionizes Hitlers’ accomplices, SS members, and uses terror against” those who resist it, the Russian leader alleged, accusing the Ukrainian authorities of subjecting the elderly, women and children to “barbaric shelling.” According to President Putin, “in a number of European countries, Russophobia is being promoted as the state policy.” “We will do everything – everything to undercut and eradicate Nazism for good,” the Russian head of state pledged.

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“..South Africa was after the provisional ruling to force Israel to agree to a ceasefire in Gaza.”

• ICJ Ruling May Entail Dire Consequences for Israel (Sp.)

“Provisional measures is what South Africa wanted,” noted Carrillo, “that there is enough evidence to show that Israel has violated the 1948 Genocide Convention. “This is what South Africa wanted when they filed this suit because a final ruling by the courts can take months, it can take years. South Africa was after the provisional ruling to force Israel to agree to a ceasefire in Gaza.” Still, Carrillo noted that Israel often ignores world opinion and discounts measures taken against it in the international arena, such as when the Soviet Union led a 1975 effort in the United Nations to declare that Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination. “Israel has a long history of disregarding the rulings or the opinions of international organizations,” said Carillo. “They do as they will, and they have the complete protection of the United States who at best is going to issue a lukewarm statement about protecting civilians. That’s what I think we should expect.”

However, host Jamarl Thomas noted the significant “moral weight” the decision carries as Carillo insisted Israel “did not refute any of the evidence, they did not disprove any of the South African evidence.” Amidst a rapidly emerging multipolar world order, Carillo suggested Global South countries and their allies may enforce material consequences against Israel for their actions in Gaza, where 70% of the more than 26,000 deaths are said to be of women and children. “We will have to see, because we are seeing a polar shift in the geopolitical sphere,” said the analyst. “Maybe we will see countries like Russia, maybe like China, or maybe like South Africa or other BRICS members, find a way to stop or to punish Israel in a way.”“Economically, Israel is already facing dire consequences,” Carillo claimed. “Its ports are empty, its workforce is completely depleted, and, among other things, their currency is on the downward trend.

So if you add on top of these, as you said, the moral weight of committing genocide and then more than likely not stopping, how are nations not aligned with the US, why would they continue dealing with Israel? Where is the benefit?”Israel also continues to face economic repercussions as a result of the effective blockade in the Red Sea enforced by the Houthi movement in Yemen. Despite Yemen’s status as one of the poorest countries in the Middle East, Yeminis have demonstrated strong support for the Palestinian cause, with hundreds of thousands taking to the streets to protest US and UK-led retaliatory strikes in the country. “There will always be resistance to oppression,” Carillo insisted. “Always. We know this through human history.”

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“The problem is that when you are “everything” to a client, you may end up with nothing when it comes to confidentiality.”

• Who is Kevin Morris? Even Hunter’s Lawyer Seems Unsure (Turley)

Kevin Morris testified last week in the House. The question that lingered then, and now, is who is Kevin Morris. The Hollywood lawyer, producer and Democratic donor has emerged as a major figure in the corruption scandal surrounding Hunter Biden.For years, some of us have complained that we are not sure what Morris was at any given moment.What became clear in the deposition is that Morris does not appear certain himself. He’s Hunter’s confidant, art patron, business partner, and his lawyer. That could prove his undoing … both for himself and his client. Morris seems to move effortlessly between roles in his relationship with Hunter Biden.Hunter met Morris when he attended a political fundraiser as a major donor. Soon thereafter, he warned Biden associates that Hunter’s unpaid taxes raised political problems during Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential run.

He later proceeded to pay off Hunter’s taxes and to subsidize his lavish lifestyle. He also took an apparent lead in planning public campaigns against the critics of the Bidens, reportedly pushing a scorched-earth approach to attack potential witnesses and accusers. Then Morris seemed to take on the role of Hunter’s bank and art patron. He reportedly gave millions to Hunter while insisting that they are loans, not gifts. Most recently, it was revealed that, despite accounts of buyers flocking to buy Hunter’s overpriced art, it was Morris all along who bought most of the pieces. The overpriced art could be used to excuse some of these “debts” — a type of special crafts project for the president’s son to write off millions. The most striking thing about the deposition from his House interview was the speed at which Morris seemed to put on and remove his various hats.

He invoked attorney-client privilege at least 17 times over questions related to his payments and work for Hunter Biden. Yet, while refusing to answer those questions, he admitted to an array of other financial ties and transactions with his “client.” To the extent that Morris was not acting as a lawyer but as a businessman or a friend, these conversations (and related records) may not be protected. In his deposition, Morris also discusses his ownership of 10% of Bohai Harvest RST LLC (BHR), through his acquisition of interest in Skaneateles LLC. Those are business interests associated with Hunter Biden Morris seemed to be working through his own identity crisis with the help of House investigators. While insisting that his legal representation of Hunter Biden was “global and complete,” Morris detailed how his relationship floated from loan giver to friend to patron to film producer.

His counsel insists that all loans and roles were clearly laid out for Hunter in writing and reviewed by outside counsel. House investigator: “How did it come up that you were going to purchase Skaneateles? Or why did you buy Skaneateles of all the companies that Hunter Biden was involved with? Why that one?” Morris: “That’s privileged. I am not going to answer that because of attorney-client privilege.” That prompted a quick intervention by his lawyer. Morris reversed and agreed it was not protected and said that he “evaluated it as a businessman, and I thought it was something that could be a very successful investment.” Morris’ confusion often left his answers in an unintelligible morass. When asked about his decision to do a movie on his client, Morris again seemed to merge his roles, saying these are “just materials being collected for representation that may be used in the future after the representation.”

Later, Morris seemed to invoke an open-ended, running privilege. At one point, Morris claimed he was “like a general counsel” in Hunter Biden’s “virtual corporation.” He explained, “Counsel, in my job, I represent high-profile individuals. … [H]igh-profile individuals have basically virtual corporations. And in those virtual corporations, they have all kinds of staff and assistants. You know, agents and managers … publicists. You know, whatever. And what I do is I oversee … sort of the squad. Sort of like a general counsel.” With that, Morris was viewed as asserting a type of floating privilege because “I am involved in everything. And the same is with Hunter. If you check my retainer agreements, you’ll see that it’s not — it says all matters.” The statement is both factually accurate and ethically dubious. It seeks sweeping privilege claims despite the layers of different relationships, from loaner to donor to lawyer to producer. If Morris is called to testify in court, this may not fly. The problem is that when you are “everything” to a client, you may end up with nothing when it comes to confidentiality.

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“..The relationship between James Biden, Hunter Biden, Ye, and other partners resulted in at least $9 million in payments to Biden-connected companies in 2017 alone after Joe Biden returned to private life..”

• Hunter Biden Partner Rob Walker Confirms Payments To Biden Family (JTN)

Hunter Biden associate Rob Walker appeared for a transcribed interview with the House Oversight Committee Friday as the latest witness in the impeachment inquiry and weeks before Hunter Biden is set to testify. According to a source familiar with Walker’s testimony, he confirmed reports that Hunter Biden’s work for the Chinese energy company CEFC began while Joe Biden was still Vice President, in 2015. In December, Just the News reported that the impeachment inquiry had assembled a growing body of evidence that Hunter’s work with the Chinese energy company started years before its million dollar payments began to flow into the Biden family coffers in 2017, following Joe Biden’s departure from office. “Today we learned that Joe Biden met with the now-missing Chairman of CEFC, Ye Jianming, as Hunter Biden and his associates received $3 million from a Chinese entity CEFC controlled. Evidence continues to reveal the Bidens sold the ‘Biden Brand’ to enrich the Biden family,” Oversight Chairman James Comer said in a statement released by the Oversight Committee.

“Today’s interview confirmed Hunter Biden and his associates’ work with the Chinese government-linked energy company began over a year before Joe Biden left the vice presidency, but the Bidens and their associates held off being paid by the Chinese while Joe Biden was in office,” he continued. “The Chinese company paid Hunter Biden and his associates $3 million shortly after Joe Biden left office as a ‘thank you’ for the work they did while Joe Biden was in office. Members of the Biden family received payments from the Chinese deal even though they did not work on it. This is the type of swampy influence peddling the American people want us to end,” Comer said. The relationship between James Biden, Hunter Biden, Ye, and other partners resulted in at least $9 million in payments to Biden-connected companies in 2017 alone after Joe Biden returned to private life.

The payments included a $3 million “thank you” in March 2017, a $5 million loan in August 2017, and a $1 million legal retainer fee to Hunter Biden from CEFC official Patrick Ho after he was indicted on bribery charges, according to documents gathered by Congress and federal prosecutors. Yet, evidence from Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop and FBI interviews with Biden business partners provided to Congress show that the relationship dates back to at least 2015 and 2016. One email from Rob Walker to another of Hunter Biden’s business partners referenced an apparent letter from Hunter to Zang Jianjun, the executive director of CEFC China Energy, who worked directly for its founder and Chairman Ye Jianming.

In an interview with the FBI, Walker told investigators that he recalls two meetings that Vice President Biden had with CEFC officials, one after leaving office in 2017 and another while he was still in office. The interview was provided by IRS Whistleblowers Gary Shapley and Joe Ziegler to the House Ways and Means Committee in their probe of the IRS and DOJ investigation into Hunter Biden. “Any times when he was in office or did you hear Hunter say that he was setting up a meeting with his dad with them (CEFC) while dad was still in office?” an FBI agent asked Walker. “Yeah,” Walker responded. After this admission, the investigators inexplicably changed course and did not follow up on what Walker had just told them.

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“..hunter killer assassins meeting boy scouts.”

• Boeing’s Nosedive: How Greed Ruined A Great American Company (Johnston)

The singular event cited as marking the beginning of Boeing’s downfall was its 1997 merger with McDonnell Douglas, which put it on a collision course with a culture steeped in cost-cutting and financial performance. Somewhat perversely, although Boeing had acquired McDonnell, it was the latter that took over. McDonnell’s executives ended up running the company and its culture became ascendant. Scores of cut-throat managers battle-hardened in the company’s perform-or-die culture were brought in. A federal mediator once likened the partnership to “hunter killer assassins meeting boy scouts.” The self-effacing and introspective Bill Allen, Boeing’s genteel CEO through the post-war era and the man behind the 707 gamble, described his company’s ethos as “to eat, breathe, and sleep the world of aeronautics.”

But a new generation of leaders was emerging who brought new priorities and a new vocabulary. It was no longer about making great airplanes; it was about “moving up the value chain.” What it was really about was maximizing shareholder value. Now looming like a colossus over Boeing was the figure of Harry Stonecipher, McDonnell’s CEO. The blunt, hard-nosed son of a coal miner, Stonecipher was known for vicious cost-cutting, emails written in all caps – and for jettisoning executives who didn’t hit financial targets. But Stonecipher was a ‘winner’: McDonnell’s stock price had risen fourfold under his tenure. What predictably ensued was nothing short of a complete transformation of Boeing from being a company run by engineers to one that prized financial profit over all, and was willing to cut all manner of corners to reduce costs and boost returns.

The quality of the product was, to put it mildly, severely compromised. Downstream from these changes are the spectacular failures we all know about: the outrageous cost overruns, delays and production issues in making the Boeing 787, which ended up being temporarily grounded for battery fires that regulators attributed to flaws in manufacturing, insufficient testing and a poor understanding of an innovative battery; the abject failure of the jimmy-rigged 737 MAX, which saw two deadly crashes and, most recently, a harrowing incident in which a sealed-off emergency exit blew out mid-air in an Alaska Airlines flight, leaving a gaping hole in the fuselage. m It is possible to see Boeing’s merger with McDonnell as simply an unfortunate mistake, and the rise of the likes of Harry Stonecipher as simply an instance in which the wrong person found his way to the top; and the outsourcing and cost-cutting as simply a misbegotten strategy.

But this would miss the wider trends at work in the American corporate landscape at the time. Boeing was hardly alone on this path. The writer David Foster Wallace once wrote that “America… is a country of many contradictions, and a big contradiction for a long time has been between a very aggressive form of capitalism and consumerism against what might be called a kind of moral or civic impulse.” What is evident is that starting roughly in the 1970s, this “aggressive form of capitalism” became ascendant in the US and for a long time overwhelmed – and is arguably still overwhelming – the “moral and civic impulse.” However, to view this as simply a moral failing is to miss the greater economic pressures at work.

The ‘70s were, in the words of historian Judith Stein, the “pivotal decade” that “sealed a society-wide transition from industry to finance, factory floor to trading floor, [and] production to consumption.” America had emerged from World War II with unquestioned manufacturing supremacy, but within a few short decades, US companies had begun falling behind. Whereas Japan, Germany, and, later on, China invested heavily in their industrial bases in the post-war period, the US came to emphasize innovation at the expense of capital investment. The 1970s were when nascent industrial powerhouse Japan pulled off its so-called ‘revolution of quality,’ which went a long way toward putting American manufacturers on the back foot.

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“..Trump will have to soldier on. He must stay controlled amid the tsunamis, not play into the hands of his accusers, and remember that he may soon be the only eleventh-hour hope to stop this mockery of American law, customs and traditions.”

• 83 million? (Victor Davis Hanson)

Donald Trump in furor stormed out of a New York courtroom for a while, in the defamation suit brought by author and dating/boyfriend/sex-advice columnist E. Jean Carroll. It was just settled against Trump for $83.3 million! The Carroll suit was largely subsidized by Reid Hoffman the billionaire capitalist, and mega-donor to the Democratic Party and leftwing causes. The subtext of Trump’s rage, aside from the outrageous monetary size of the defamation ruling, is that he was facing—and angered—a leftwing claimant, a quite hostile leftwing judge, and a leftwing New York jury. The civil suit serves as a mere preview of four additional leftwing criminal prosecutions, leftwing judges, and leftwing juries to come—all on charges that would never had been filed if Trump either had not run for president or been a liberal progressive. Yet here we are.

The E. Jean Carroll case is the most baffling of all five. She, the alleged victim, did not remember even the year in which the purported sexual assault took place, nearly three decades ago. Observers have pointed out dozens of inconsistencies in her story. It was never clear what were the preliminaries that supposedly (Trump denies meeting her) led both, allegedly, willingly to retreat together to a department store dressing room, where during normal business hours the alleged violence took place. Moreover, the sexual assault complaint came forward decades post facto—and only after Trump was running for and then president. Carroll eventually sued him for battery, but well after the statute of limitations had expired and thus the case seemed defunct.

Her claims of defamation injuries arise from being fired from her advice column job at ELLE magazine. She claimed that Trump’s sharp denials and ad hominem retorts led to her career ruin. But the loss for anyone of a column at 76 does not seem such a rare occurrence, and the absence of a salaried job in one’s late seventies for four years does not seem to equate to a $83 million hit. And note the allegation that her dispute with Trump led to her firing was strongly denied by the very magazine that cut her loose. But then another strange thing happened. In 2022, a new law (“The Adult Survivors Act”) was passed in the New York legislature. It also post facto established a twelve-month window (beginning six months from the signing of bill) that permitted survivors of long ago alleged sexual assaults suddenly to sue the accused long-ago perpetrator—regardless of the previous statute of limitations.

That unexpected opening suddenly gave Carroll’s prior unsuccessful efforts a rebirth. And she quickly refiled with the help of arch-Trump hating billionaire Hoffman. Yet the bill may have been introduced with Trump particularly in mind—given the legislator who introduced it, Brad Hoylman-Siga, was known as another Trump antagonist. More interestingly, he had earlier introduced and had passed another Trump-targeted bill. That “TRUST” act had empowered particular federal Congressional committees to have access to the New York State once sealed tax returns of high-ranking government officials—such as Trump. That bill’s generally agreed subtext was a green light for anti-Trump members of Congress to obtain legal access to Donald J. Trump’s tax returns.

So there is an eerie feeling that the New York legislature may have abruptly passed legislation that was aimed at the past conduct of Donald Trump but only after he entered the political arena. While these are not quite bills of attainder, there is something unsettling if they are post facto laws aimed at targeting the most famous and controversial man in America and the leading candidate for the presidency. In essence they were targeted statutes designed to make Trump’s prior legally unactionable behavior suddenly quite legally actionable. Trump will be subject to such special treatment all summer and fall. Prosecutors Bragg, James, Smith, and Willis will synchronize their court business for maximum effect.

Trump again will face leftwing prosecutors, judges, and juries on charges that are politically driven, involving alleged behavior that is either usually not criminalized or not to the same degree as Trump’s case. (Do we remember the nearly $375,000 federal fine belatedly leveled at an exempt Obama but only five years after his 2008 illegal garnering of, and not reporting, foreign campaign contributions?) The stakes are higher each day as Trump closes in on the nomination and thus becomes the hope of half the country to end the Biden madness. Somehow Trump will have to stay calm, give no opening to his legion of hostile prosecutors, while conducting a nonstop campaign against Biden (and for a while Hayley), and while fighting to keep his name on various state ballots.

So what we are witnessing is not even the extralegal efforts of Steele/Fusion GPS, Perkins Coie/DNC/Hillary Clinton in 2016, or the 2020 “Russian disinformation” ruse/change the voting laws/infuse half a billion dollars to absorb the work of the registrar machinations against Trump. We are way beyond all that. The legal system itself, hand-in-glove with leftwing politicos (compare campaign boasts of James and Willis, or prosecutorial visits to the January 6 committee and the White House) is turning the process of balloting and elections into an embarrassing farce. Still, Trump will have to soldier on. He must stay controlled amid the tsunamis, not play into the hands of his accusers, and remember that he may soon be the only eleventh-hour hope to stop this mockery of American law, customs and traditions.

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Wild dogs
https://twitter.com/i/status/1751228420925562943

 

 

Baby goat
https://twitter.com/i/status/1751252951375712290

 

 


The bearded vulture is the only known animal whose diet is almost exclusively bone

 

 

Fata morgana

 

 

Monarch
https://twitter.com/i/status/1751398451152044152

 

 

Clay
https://twitter.com/i/status/1751471302169227699

 

 

 

 

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