Joan Miro Dancer 1925
The reveal has been postponed until the end of the month.
ABC had all the information about Jeffrey Epstein and his accomplices with photos. Chose to hide it all instead of reporting on their friends. pic.twitter.com/0HXHwUdG53
— Big Fish (@BigFish3000) January 1, 2024
Will the “House of Cards” fall in 2024? pic.twitter.com/hHx4CGaODr
— Chief Nerd (@TheChiefNerd) January 1, 2024
RFK
.@PatrickBetDavid asks me if my candidacy is tipping the scales for Joe Biden. I explain that in this three-way race, I'm not tipping the scales, I'm breaking them. #Kennedy24 pic.twitter.com/M9vW7isj85
— Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@RobertKennedyJr) January 2, 2024
TCN
🚨Tucker’s new company, ‘Tucker Carlson Network’, is running MASSIVE ads showing his Red Pill logo DESTROYING The Washington Post, CNN, MSNBC and ABC saying ‘Your Great Replacement’ 🤣🔥 pic.twitter.com/Q9lk6F2Yv3
— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) January 3, 2024
J6 Full
The True Timeline of January 6th is Here!
J6: A True Timeline – 01/01/2024https://t.co/JGWNtaBYNO #J6TrueTimeline pic.twitter.com/dIjK9Hy98W
— J6: A True Timeline (@J6TrueTimeline) January 1, 2024
“..as They Have in News Reporting, Scholarship, and Science..”
• In Court Cases Facts Are Losing Their Relevancy (Paul Craig Roberts)
Informed people understand that the indictments, civil charges, and judicial rulings against Trump all involve what is politely called “a stretch of the law.” But they do not seem to grasp that Trump’s defense against the charges is not based on the falseness of the charges but on whether he has presidential immunity. In other words, the phony charges stand, and the question is whether Trump has presidential immunity. Whether the charges are factual is not considered relevant. The advantage in Trump’s attorneys taking this approach is that if Trump has immunity, all the indictments are dismissed and trials over the disputed charges do not take place, a good thing as the biases of the Democrat prosecutors, judges, and jurors make fair trials for Trump impossible.
The disadvantage is that Trump’s enemies can claim that the charges are true but could not be brought to trial because of immunity. More seriously, it means that the lack of evidentiary basis for the charges will not be established. In other words, the Democrat prosecutors who weaponized law in order to intentionally concoct false indictments are protected from having their crimes revealed. Of course the Democrat juries and judges would validate the Democrat prosecutors cases despite the lack of evidence. In the US judicial system where truth is irrelevant, accusation alone serves as the basis for indictment and conviction. As no defendant or defendant’s lawyer trusts the American judicial system, 97% of all alleged felonies are resolved with plea bargains in which even innocent defendants agree to a lessor charge in order to avoid the risk of a longer sentence imposed by a trial.
Only the idealistically few expect a fair trial. By declining the Justice (sic) Department’s plea to fast-track an immunity decision, the Supreme Court has probably delayed any Trump trial until after the election. If the federal appeals court upholds Democrat district court judge Tanya Chutkan’s biased ruling against Trump, then the appeal goes to the Supreme Court. It lengthens the ordeal that Trump has to endure, but it likely frees him from campaigning with a false conviction hanging around his neck.
“..pundits who warn that Democrats can no longer rely on the election process, given Trump’s soaring popularity.”
• Maine Shows the Danger of Zealots in our Legal System (Turrley)
“You had me at hello.” That line from the movie “Jerry Maguire” came to mind this week after yet another Democratic secretary of state moved to prevent citizens from voting for former president Donald Trump. Maine’s Shenna Bellows issued a “decision” that declared Trump an “insurrectionist” and ineligible to be president. She joined an ignoble list of Democratic officials in states such as Colorado who claim to safeguard democracy by denying its exercise to millions of Americans. Yet the most striking aspect of this poorly crafted decision was not its litany of conclusory findings, but rather Bellow’s implausible suggestion that she struggled over the decision. Bellows was a natural choice for challengers, who have been searching for any officials or courts willing to embrace this dangerous theory under the Fourteenth Amendment that they can unilaterally bar candidates deemed rebellious or insurrectionalist.
Challengers knew that they had Bellows at hello. She was one of the first officials to declare the Jan. 6 riot to be an “insurrection” prompted by Trump’s speech. Bellows previously declared that “the Jan. 6 insurrection was an unlawful attempt to overthrow the results of a free and fair election…The insurrectionists failed, and democracy prevailed.” A year after the riot, Bellows was still denouncing the “violent insurrection.” Of course, in the 1996 movie, Jerry Maguire reminded Dorothy that ” we live in a cynical world — a cynical, cynical world — and we work in a business of tough competitors.” However, he added “you complete me.” In our cynical politics, Bellows and Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold, among others, have become wildly popular for seeking to complete the effort to defeat Trump by removing him from the ballot. This cynicism is captured in statements from pundits who warn that Democrats can no longer rely on the election process, given Trump’s soaring popularity.
One columnist wrote that “Democrats may have to act radically to deny Donald Trump the 2024 Republican nomination. We cannot rely on Republicans to do it…Trump must be defeated. No matter what it takes.” Many Democratic jurists and officials have refused to participate in this cynical effort to win the election through the courts. Maine’s Democratic U.S. Rep. Jared Golden denounced Bellows decision. California Governor Gavin Newsom (D) warned Democrats against embracing this legal theory. His state’s secretary of state Shirley Weber (D) had refused to do what Bellows just did. Yet Democrats know that they need only to remove Trump from the ballots of a couple of key states to make him constitutionally incapable of becoming president, due to the electoral college. Thus, Trump could be the overwhelming choice of the voters but still be effectively barred from assuming office.
To achieve this end, advocates are willing to adopt the type of ballot-cleansing powers long associated with authoritarian countries such as Iran. That is why this theory of disqualification remains one of the most dangerous to arise in our nation’s history. The U.S. stands as the most successful and stable democratic system in history. In the blind quest to block Trump “at any cost,” these officials have introduced a destabilizing element to our system that could be replicated in tit-for-tat politics for years to come. It has already begun, with Republicans calling to bar President Joe Biden from ballots. The ballot-cleansing effort is only the latest example of what Justice Louis Brandeis identified as the true threat to our democracy — not the threat from other countries, but from within. “The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding,” he said.
Time for the Supreme Court to step in. Or Trump will have 20 of these cases.
• Trump Fights 2024 Maine Election Ban (RT)
Former US President Donald Trump has begun a court fight to get himself back on this year’s election ballot in Maine, arguing in a legal filing that a state official had no authority to disqualify him from the race. Trump’s lawyers filed the appeal on Tuesday in Maine Superior Court, challenging last week’s decision by Secretary of State Shenna Bellows to bar the ex-president from the ballot because of his alleged role in the January 2021 US Capitol riot. The case is likely to ultimately be decided by the US Supreme Court, along with Trump’s disqualification from the ballot in Colorado, but Maine has required him to begin his challenge in the state court system.
The ruling making Trump ineligible in Maine “was the product of a process infected by bias and pervasive lack of due process,” Trump’s lawyers said in Tuesday’s filing. They added that Bellows has a documented history of being biased against Trump and gave him no opportunity to defend himself against her allegations. The Maine and Colorado disqualifications were based on interpretations of a constitutional amendment that banned people who engage in an “insurrection or rebellion” from holding public office in the US. The amendment was passed by lawmakers in 1866 to ensure citizenship and constitutional rights for former slaves and to block politicians who had taken part in the Confederate rebellion from returning to power.
Bellows and other Democrats have accused Trump of inciting the Capitol “insurrection,” where demonstrators sought to block the transfer of power after he lost to Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election. She has made public statements on social media calling Trump an “insurrectionist” and suggesting that he should have been removed from office after being impeached for his alleged role in the riot. Trump has repeatedly claimed that the election was rigged, but has denied any role in triggering the riot. Trump is polling as, far and away, the leading candidate for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. However, his candidacy has been jeopardized by state efforts to disqualify him, as well as felony indictments in four separate criminal cases. He has called the legal actions a politically motivated “witch hunt” to block voters from being able to elect him again.
There we go…
• New York City Council Members Reportedly Weighing Trump Ballot Ban (Sp.)
New York City council members are urging the state’s Board of Elections to disqualify former President Donald Trump from the 2024 primary and general election ballots due to his alleged involvement in the events following the 2020 election, the National Review reported on Tuesday. “The Board of Elections must give effect to the Fourteenth Amendment and its safeguards to protect the integrity of New York’s electoral process, maintain the public’s faith in our democratic system, and respect the rule of law,” councilman Shekar Krishnan is quoted in the report as having written in an email this week to other council members.
Though the report cites several council members as having endorsed Krishnan’s letter, Democratic councilor Robert Holden is quoted in the report as saying that he found the idea of removing a candidate from the ballot without legal cause “troubling.” “This trend across the nation, including here in New York, is dangerous. If you are against a candidate, you work hard to beat them at the polls, not prevent them from participating in an election,” Holden is quoted as saying. Other council members are quoted in the report as agreeing with Holden, with some calling the letter a “waste” of the council’s time.
“My colleagues should instead be devoting their energy and efforts towards resolving the ongoing migrant crisis and bringing the budget back under control. New York City is facing some very real problems right now, and Donald Trump being on the ballot here is not one of them,” Council member Jane Ariola is quoted as saying in the report. Last month, both Maine and Colorado disqualified Trump from the 2024 primary ballot, citing the insurrectionist clause in 14th Amendment. Both bans are expected to be swiftly appealed in both the state courts and the US Supreme Court.
Sergei Karaganov is Russia’s HSE University Dean of the Faculty of World Economy and International Affairs. Very much worth a read.
“..without European inoculation, without European culture, we would not have become such a great power. We would not have had Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Pushkin or Blok.”
• Karaganov: Russians Are The Real Europeans, The West Has Lost Its Way (RT)
The elites of Western Europe – and especially in Germany – are in a state of historical failure. The main basis of their 500-year domination [of the world] was military superiority, on which the economic, political and cultural dominance of the West was built. But this has been knocked out from under them. With the help of this advantage, they manipulated the world’s resources in their favor. First they plundered their colonies, and later they did the same, but with more sophisticated methods. Today’s Western elites are failing to address a range of growing problems in their societies. These include a shrinking middle class and rising inequality. Almost all their initiatives are failing. The European Union, as everyone knows, is slowly but surely sprawling out. That is why its ruling class has been hostile to Russia for about 15 years now.
They need an external enemy; Josep Borrell [the EU’s top foreign affairs official] called the world around the bloc a jungle last year. Indeed, in the past, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said that the sanctions adopted by the EU [against Russia] were necessary first and foremost to unite the European Union and prevent it from collapsing. The German and Western European elites have an inferiority complex in, what is for them, a now-monstrous situation, where their part of the world is being overtaken by everyone. Not only by the Chinese and the Americans, but also by many other countries. Thanks to Russia’s liberation of the world from the ‘Western yoke’, Western Europe is no longer lording it over the states of the Global South, or as I call them, the countries of the world majority.
The threat Western Europe now presents is that the Old World has lost its fear of armed conflict. And that is very dangerous. At the same time, the West of Europe, let me remind you, has been the source of the worst disasters in human history. Now in Ukraine there is a struggle not only for Russia’s interests, for the interests of its security, but also to prevent a new global confrontation. The threat is growing. This is also due to the West’s desperate attempts at counter-attacks to maintain its dominance. Today’s Western European elites are failing and losing influence in the world to a much greater extent than their American counterparts. Russia is fighting its own battle and fighting it successfully. We are acting confidently enough to sober up these Western elites, lest they unleash another world conflict in despair at their failures. We must not forget that these same people’s predecessors unleashed two world wars within one generation in the last century. Now, the quality of these elites is even lower than it was then.
[..] The West is now closing the Iron Curtain, first of all because we in Russia are the real Europeans. We remain healthy. And they want to exclude these healthy forces. Secondly, the West is closing this curtain, even more tightly than during the Cold War, in order to mobilize its population for hostilities. But we do not need a military confrontation with the West, so we will rely on a policy of containment to prevent the worst. Of course, we will not cancel anything, including our European story. Yes, we have completed our European journey [in terms of integration]. I think it has dragged on a bit, maybe for a century. But without European inoculation, without European culture, we would not have become such a great power. We would not have had Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Pushkin or Blok.
So we will keep European culture, which the West of our continent seems to be trying to abandon. But I hope that it will not destroy itself completely, in this regard. Because Western Europe is not only abandoning Russian culture, it is abandoning its own culture. It is cancelling a culture that is largely based on love and Christian values. It is cancelling its history, destroying its monuments. However, we will not reject our European roots. I have always been against looking at the West with mere squeamishness. You should not do that. Then we would be like them. And they are now sliding towards an inevitable march towards fascism. We do not need all the contagions that have been and are growing out of the west of Europe. Including, once again, the growing contagion of fascism.
“..Europe is currently being prepared to hand its territory over to a new mixed, Islamised Europe..”
• What Will Be Left Out of the EU? (Barton)
The first decisive attempt to flood Europe with mostly Muslim migrants took place in 2012. In January that year, the unelected, cosmopolitan EU leadership pushed ahead with its scheduled integration within EUROMED. First a Barcelona seminar under the telling slogan: War and Peace in XXI century. The Arab Spring a year later took place. During the seminar the EU Special Envoy, Bernardino Leon urged the EU to offer a ‘a new relationship’ to Arab countries that underwent the Arab Spring. This new relationship was to be based on equal treatment between the European Union and the Arab partners. In the presence of the former, High Representative for Common Foreign and Security Policy in Europe, Javier Solana, Leon assured Tunisia of being granted a relationship similar to other European countries outside the EU like Norway, Iceland and Switzerland.
This push was further reinforced in February 2012 by a Brussels Press Briefing. This took place to give information and significance to the meeting of the Prime Minister of Tunisia, Hamadi Jebali (the same one who announced to his countrymen that they possibly were in the Sixth Caliphate) and the President of the European Commission, Jose Manuel Barroso. The latter within his Press Briefing mentioned a number of priorities to be dealt with. Significantly, one of them involved the resumption of the dialogue on mobility and migration. Further developments related to influx of Muslim migrants to Europe are related to Chancellor Angela Merkel. Despite the fact that yet in 2010 she erupted in reference to multi-culti integration calling it an utter failure her decision to accept over a million refugees mainly from the Middle East marked a profound change in her policy.
Watching closely the 2015 migrant crisis billionaire financer George Soros welcomed her decision. The same cosmopolitan George Soros prepared his plan of bringing up to 1 million Muslims to Europe annually. The plan was among other things reported on 22 July 2017, in Tusnadfurdo, Romania, by the prime minister of Hungary, Victor Orban and vehemently opposed by him. A few words on the plan may give some insight into Soros’s thinking and the European Commission readiness to cooperate. The plan comprises of four points and the Soros Empire published it and began recruitment for implementation of it. The second point envisaged that upon arrival every Muslim migrant should be given an amount in euros equivalent to four and a half million forints which the author of the plan would be glad to finance.
The essence of the proposal is the so-called “pull factor” to maintain a continuous influx. After all, the received sum in euros by each migrant upon arrival would be higher than the Hungarian annual average wage. The third point of the plan stated that the migrants arriving in the EU would have to be distributed among the countries of Europe as part of a mandatory and permanent mechanism. And interestingly, the fourth point is about setting up a European immigration agency which would take all the decision-making powers related to migrant affairs away from the nation states and hand them over to Brussels. The opposition to massive migration and Soros-like proposals on part of Orban is loud and firm. His not very widely publicised statements clearly indicate what is at stake. I shall quote just three of them:
Over the next few decades the main question in Europe will be this: will Europe remain the continent of the Europeans? Will Hungary remain the country of the Hungarians? Will Germany remain the country of the Germans? Will France remain the country of the French? Or will Italy remain the country of the Italians? Who will live in Europe?’ Social democratic parties aren’t what they once used to be. They’ve married themselves to global business interests representing neoliberal economic policy, and now they have a single policy area, they’re concentrating on a single area: preservation of their influence over culture. This is the second important element in Europe today. And the third important thing is that Europe is currently being prepared to hand its territory over to a new mixed, Islamised Europe. If you are raped legally, forced to accept something you don’t like, how would you like to have a compromise and agreement? It’s impossible.
“Spiraling energy costs in the EU have meant that the bloc has had to overpay more than $204 billion on energy over the past 20 months alone..”
• Scholz Claims Putin to Blame for Germany’s Economic Woes (Sp.)
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz took a page out of President Biden’s playbook in his New Year’s Eve address, blaming Putin, rather than his own government’s short-sighted policies, for unleashing a global security crisis and putting the German economy into a tailspin. “With COVID-19 barely receding, Russia began a merciless conflict in the center of Europe. Soon after that, the Russian president turned off the natural gas tap, and in the fall there was a brutal terrorist attack by Hamas against Israel,” Scholz said. “Our world has become a more unsettled and harsher place. It’s changing at an almost breathtaking speed,” the chancellor added. “The result is that we too are having to change. This is a worrying thing for many of us. For some, it is also causing discontent. I do take that to heart. But I also know this: We in Germany will get through it,” Scholz said.
Assuring that his government has done a good job in tackling inflation, raising wages, fighting unemployment and replenishing the country’s energy supplies since the cutoff of Russian gas, Scholz expressed confidence that Berlin has managed to hold back an “economic downturn” and to save energy collectively as a nation. Stressing that the key to German power lies in the “strength” of the European Union and its 400 million inhabitents, Scholz urged that “it is important for Europe to emerge unified and strengthened from the European elections in the coming year. After all, Russia’s war in the east of our continent is not over. Nor is the armed conflict in the Middle East. The year ahead will also bring presidential elections in the United States, which may have far-reaching consequences – including for us here in Europe.”
The chancellor’s comments blaming Russia for sky-high energy costs in Europe are nothing new, with Scholz, members of his cabinet and Germany’s allies both in Europe and across the Atlantic regularly repeating the mantra that it was Russia which “turned off the taps” of cheap and dependable gas supplies to the continent. Scholz and his colleagues traditionally leave out the fact that it was the United States which (allegedly) destroyed the Nord Stream Baltic Sea gas pipelines, and that Poland and Ukraine, not Russia, cut off gas flows to Europe via their overland pipelines, leaving TurkStream the only fully operational Russian infrastructure pumping gas to Europe. Spiraling energy costs in the EU have meant that the bloc has had to overpay more than $204 billion on energy over the past 20 months alone, with manufacturers flee the region for climes where energy costs are lower and tax breaks more plentiful (first and foremost the United States).
Meanwhile, ordinary Germans have been left facing higher fuel and utility costs and jacked up prices at supermarkets and big box stores. Curiously, Scholz didn’t mention the impact of the Biden administration’s Build Back Better Act on the German economy, even has hundreds of enterprises big and small packed up their bags and left for North America amid the energy crunch to take advantage of the US federal government’s generous subsidies for the production of so-called ‘green’ technologies. As for Vladimir Putin, the Russian president warned the Europeans over a year-and-a-half ago that if they made the short-sighted decision to stop the purchase of Russian energy, the EU’s economic competiveness would be shattered.
[..] Polling conducted last month found that some three quarters of respondents are dissatisfied with Chancellor Scholz’s ‘traffic light coalition’, with Scholz’s Social Democratic Party polling at just 17 percent support, the Greens at 13 percent, and the Free Democrats at 5 percent, for a total of 35 percent. The mainstream conservative Christian Democratic Union/Christian Social Union bloc and the populist right Alternative for Germany hit 24 and 17 percent support, respectively, while Linke and former Linke lawmaker Sahra Wagenknecht’s new populist left BSW party 2 and 14 percent support, respectively.
“Russia has been rather explicit that during its 2024 chairmanship of BRICS, it will push for the creation of a currency to challenge the petrodollar..”
• Ukraine and Palestine: A Double Threat To US Hegemony (Bhadrakumar)
Washington’s neck-deep involvement in the current phase of the West Asian crisis can turn into a quagmire, since it is also tangled up with domestic politics in a way that the Ukraine war never has been. But then, the outcome of the Ukraine war is already a foregone conclusion, and the US and its allies have realized that Russia cannot be defeated militarily; the endgame narrows down to an agreement to end the conflict on Russia’s terms. To be sure, the outcome of the Ukraine war and the denouement of the Israel-Palestine conflict, which is at the root of the West Asian crisis, will have a profound impact on the new world order, and the two processes reinforce each other. Russia realizes this fully. President Vladimir Putin’s stunning ‘year-enders’ in the run-up to the New Year speak for themselves: daylong visits to Abu Dhabi and Riyadh (watched by a shell-shocked US President Joe Biden), followed by talks with Iran’s president and rounded off with a telephone conversation with the Egyptian president.
In the space of 48 hours or so, Putin touched base with his Emirati, Saudi, Iranian, and Egyptian colleagues who officially entered the portals of the BRICS on 1 January. The evolving US intervention in the West Asian crisis can be understood from a geopolitical perspective only by factoring in Biden’s visceral hostility toward Russia. BRICS is in Washington’s crosshairs. The US understands perfectly well that the extra large presence of West Asian and Arab nations in BRICS — four out of ten member states — is central to Putin’s grand project to re-structure the world order and bury US exceptionalism and hegemony. Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Iran are major oil producing countries. Russia has been rather explicit that during its 2024 chairmanship of BRICS, it will push for the creation of a currency to challenge the petrodollar. Without doubt, the BRICS currency will be at the center stage of the grouping’s summit due to be hosted by Putin in Kazan, Russia in October.
In a special address on 1 January, marking the start of Russia’s BRICS Chairmanship, Putin stated his commitment to “enhancing the role of BRICS in the international monetary system, expanding both interbank cooperation and the use of national currencies in mutual trade.” If a BRICS currency is used instead of the dollar, there could be significant impact on several financial sectors of the US economy, such as energy and commodity markets, international trade and investment, capital markets, technology and fintech, consumer goods and retail, travel and tourism, and so on. The banking sector could take the first hit that might eventually spill over to the markets. And if Washington fails to fund its mammoth deficit, prices of all commodities could skyrocket or even reach hyperinflation triggering a crash of the US economy.
The moral high ground.
• US Rejects Gaza Ethnic Cleansing Proposal (RT)
The US State Department condemned Israeli proposals to remove the Palestinian inhabitants of Gaza en masse in a post on X (formerly Twitter) on Tuesday. State Department spokesman Matthew Miller explicitly rejected recent comments from Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir supporting the mass deportation of Palestinians as “inflammatory and irresponsible.” Noting that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other members of his cabinet have denied that it was official government policy to resettle Gaza’s Palestinian inhabitants, Miller demanded the ministers back away from such rhetoric “immediately.” “Gaza is Palestinian land and will remain Palestinian land, with Hamas no longer in control of its future and no terror groups able to threaten Israel,” he continued.
On Monday, Ben Gvir described “encouraging the residents of Gaza to emigrate” outside the enclave as “the right, just, moral, and humane solution,” explaining that it would allow Israelis living in border communities to return home. He doubled down on his comments following Miller’s statement, writing in a post on Telegram, “I greatly appreciate the USA, but with all due respect…we will do what is good for the state of Israel.” Smotrich made similar comments in an interview with Army Radio on Sunday. “What needs to be done in the Gaza Strip is to encourage emigration,” he said. “If there are 100,000 or 200,000 Arabs in Gaza and not 2 million Arabs, the entire discussion on the day after [the war] will be totally different.” While an official with Netanyahu’s office subsequently told the Associated Press that “contrary to false allegations, Israel does not seek to displace the population in Gaza,” instead merely looking to “enable those individuals who wish to leave to do so,” a government document leaked in November called for the mass relocation of all 2.3 million of the territory’s residents to Egypt’s Sinai peninsula – a plan that has alarmed Palestinians and Egyptians alike.
The US State Department has repeatedly called for Gaza to be run by the Palestinian Authority, which currently administers the West Bank and ran Gaza prior to Hamas’ 2007 election victory, as a prelude to full Palestinian statehood. Israel has openly opposed a two-state solution. At least 1.8 million of Gaza’s 2.3 million inhabitants have been displaced since Israel began bombing the territory following Hamas’ October 7 cross-border attack, which left 1,200 Israelis dead. Many residential neighborhoods have been completely flattened, with vital civilian infrastructure such as the hospital system virtually destroyed. Over 21,800 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli bombs since the start of the war, according to the enclave’s health ministry, with upwards of 56,000 more seriously injured. Thousands more are reportedly missing beneath the rubble.
“That’s a lesson they learned from Covid — putting a name and a face on globalism only foments collective resistance to it.”
• 2024: The Year Global Government Takes Shape (Kit Knightly)
Global government is the endgame. We know that. Total control of every aspect of life for every single person on the planet, that’s the goal. That’s been apparent to anyone paying attention for years, if not decades, and any tiny portion of remaining doubt was removed when Covid was rolled-out and members of the establishment started outright saying it. Covid marked an acceleration of the globalist agenda, a mad dash to the finish line that seems to have lost momentum short of victory, but the race is still going. The goal has not changed, even if the years since may have seen the agenda retreat slightly back into the shadows. We know what they want conceptually, but what does that mean practically? What does a potential “global government” actually look like?
First off, let’s talk about what we’re NOT going to see. 1 – They are not going to declare themselves. No, there will almost certainly never be an official “world government”, at least not for a long time yet. That’s a lesson they learned from Covid — putting a name and a face on globalism only foments collective resistance to it. 2 – They’re not going to abolish nationhood. You can be sure Klaus Schwab (or whoever) isn’t ever going to appear simulcast on every television in the world announcing that we’re all citizens of ze vurld now and that nation states no longer exist. In part because that is likely to focus resistance (see point 1), but mainly because tribalism and nationalism are just too useful to all would-be manipulators of public opinion. And, of course the continuing existence of nation states in no way precludes the existence of a supra-national control system, any more than the existence of Rhode Island, Florida or Texas precludes the existence of the Federal government.
3 – There will never be an overt declaration of a change of system. We will not be told we are united under a new model, instead the illusion of regionality & superficial variance will camouflage a lack of real choice across the political landscape. A thin polysystemic skin stretched tight over a monosystemic skeleton. Capitalism, communism, socialism, democracy, tyranny, monarchy…these words will steadily dilute in meaning, even more than they have already, but they will never be abandoned. What globalism will bring us – I suggest – is a collection of nation-states largely in name only, operating superficially different systems of government all built on the same underpinning assumptions and all answering to an unelected and undeclared higher authority. …and if that sounds familiar, it’s because it’s essentially what we have already.
The only major aspects missing are the mechanisms by which this rough model can be transformed into a flowing network, where all corners are eroded and all genuine sovereign powers become entirely vestigial. That’s where the three main pillars of global rule come in:
1/ Digital Money
2/ Digital ID
3/ “Climate Action”
“..the pace of AI development, rising mortality among young people after mass vaccination against Covid-19, record-breaking illegal immigration to the US, and anti-white rhetoric from South African presidential hopeful Julius Malema.”
• 2024 Is Going To Be ‘Even More Crazy’ – Elon Musk (RT)
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has predicted that 2024 will be “even more crazy” than the preceding four years. Musk was responding to a follower wishing for “a normal year.” “Can we just have a normal year in 2024?” an anonymous pundit known as ‘Wall Street Silver’ tweeted on New Year’s Eve. “Don’t we deserve that after four years of crazy?” “2024 is gonna be even more crazy is my prediction,” Musk responded on Monday. Musk did not predict any “crazy” events that may happen, but in a series of follow-up tweets, the billionaire drew attention to the pace of AI development, rising mortality among young people after mass vaccination against Covid-19, record-breaking illegal immigration to the US, and anti-white rhetoric from South African presidential hopeful Julius Malema.
During 2023, Musk repeatedly warned that the conflict between Russia and Ukraine could spiral into a nuclear war between Russia and the US. The billionaire had been providing Ukraine with free access to SpaceX’ Starlink internet service, but has refused to enable the service in the vicinity of Crimea, for fear that Kiev would use Starlink to guide drones to Russian warships. This would have made his company “explicitly complicit in a major act of war and conflict escalation,” he explained in September.
Hundreds of comments under Musk’s post suggested that much of this year’s “craziness” will be centered around the 2024 presidential election in the US. Musk has not backed a candidate in the race, but told an audience in November that he would “not vote for [President Joe] Biden.” Musk, who previously expressed support for Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and described Vivek Ramaswamy as a “promising candidate,” added that his refusal to support Biden would not automatically translate into a vote for presumptive Republican contender Donald Trump.
“..the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.”
• Corruption, Chaos, Conflict – Fourth Turning Erupts In 2024 (Quinn)
“THESE are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.” – Thomas Paine – The American Crisis
Thomas Paine wrote these words 247 years ago, in the most historic year in our history – 1776. That was during the first American Fourth Turning. It’s not a coincidence we are now in the midst of our fourth Crisis period in U.S. history, as they arrive like clockwork every 80 years or so, the length of a long human life. Paine’s American Crisis began in 1773, ignited by the Boston Tea Party and the British reaction to this revolutionary act of defiance. Our current Millennial Crisis was triggered by the Federal Reserve/Wall Street/Government created financial disaster in 2008 and subsequent outrageously desperate, totalitarian, un-Constitutional, extreme acts designed to keep the ruling class in power, while impoverishing and enslaving the masses in a surveillance state techno-gulag.
The polarization and fractures have become too deep to repair. The country, and the western world in general, are hurtling towards a darkening abyss of civil conflict, financial collapse, global war, societal chaos, and loss of life on a scale grander than WW2, the Civil War, and the American Revolution combined. Our technological advancements have outstripped our ability to intelligently, thoughtfully, and humanly, use this power for the benefit of future generations. The destructive deficiencies of human nature, such as: greed, desire for power, hatred, arrogance, resentment, and an unlimited supply of self-delusion, continue to plague our world, as only the most power-hungry psychopaths rise to the highest levels of government, business, religion, and finance.
The immense technological power in the hands of egocentric, megalomaniacal, sadistic, billionaires and their highly paid toadies, lackeys, and apparatchiks, inserted throughout the media, government, academia, banking, and corporations, has pushed the world to the brink of Armageddon. We are entering the sixteenth year of this Fourth Turning. Based on history, we can expect a climax of this Crisis in the 2030-to-2032-timeframe. The path to that climax is guaranteed to be violent and unforgiving.
“The decline of the dollar is a long-term trend and phenomenon and we are only at the early inception phases of this process..”
• Dollar’s Dip in 2023 Just the Start as BRICS Strives for Dedollarization (Sp.)
The dollar suffered a 2.7 percent decline against other major global currencies in 2023, battered by anticipation among speculators of a shift in Fed policy to cut interest rates and weaken global interest in dollar-denominated investments and debt as the US economy slows. The drop in the dollar’s value, the biggest of its kind since 2020, when the greenback declined 5.5 percent as Washington pumped trillions of new dollars into the economy, now comes amid the ongoing tectonic transformations in the contours of the global economy as the US attempts to use its currency as a means of economic pressure against geopolitical rivals.
The West’s economic war against Russia, waged via sanctions and trade restrictions, sparked realization even among many of the US’s traditional allies that their economic relationships and financial well-being were inextricably linked to American goodwill which could disappear at any moment. This realization helped motivate half a dozen countries to join the BRICS bloc last year (Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Argentina), and prompted BRICS+ and other countries to accelerate a search for safe alternatives to the de facto global reserve currency. “The decline of the dollar is a long-term trend and phenomenon and we are only at the early inception phases of this process,” Ashraf Patel, a research associate with the Institute for Global Dialogue, a Pretoria, South Africa-based think tank, told Sputnik.
“The expansion of BRICS and the multi-currency order and move towards a ‘BRICS currency’ is certainly one core factor as the world trade [and] economic investment patterns are diversifying,” Patel said, referring to the currency concept discussed extensively ahead of the BRICS summit in South Africa, and floated again ahead of the upcoming summit in Kazan, Russia later this year. Whether through another nation’s currency or in the form of a new BRICS monetary unit, the prospective benefits of a stable alternative to the dollar as the hegemon of world trade for Global South countries cannot be overstated, the researcher says.
Still, “advocates for dedollarization would need to show value such as cheaper trade costs and less volatility,” Patel stressed. “Dedollarization would of course mean less space for the US to use and abuse currencies of nations for political objectives, as has been their standard policy practice for decades,” he added, characterizing the process, which he estimates been underway since the global financial crisis of 2009, as one of “economic common sense” for other countries. “Lessons from when the Gold Standard was ended in the 1970s is instructive and can provide insights on the pace and velocity of such a process, but the gates of dedollarization have now opened and generally a new global financial-economic and trade diversification is the new norm,” Patel said.
Surreal.
• US Debt Hits A Record $34.001 Trillion (ZH)
The US Treasury has a morbid habit of revealing big, round numbers of debt around major calendar milestones, and the new 2024 year was no different because according to the latest Treasury Daily Statement published after the close today and reflecting the US Treasury’s financial statements as of Dec 29, 2023, total US debt as of the end of the year was – drumroll – just over $34 trillion for the first time ever, or $34,001,493,655,565.48 to be precise. Since this is a topic we have covered more or less daily for our 15 year existence, we don’t need to say much suffice to show a chart of total US debt since zerohedge launched in Jan 2009, when total US debt was only $10.6 trillion. We sure have gone a long way since then.
Some context: US debt increased by…
$1 trillion in the past 3 months
$2 trillion in the past 6 months
$4 trillion in the past 2 years
$11 trillion in the past 4 years
… and so on. You get the exponential picture. At this point everyone knows how this ends – certainly the CBO does… but since there is no way to reverse the catastrophic outcome, there is no point in even talking about it. At best, one may only prepare for the inevitable hyperinflationary outcome, which would be good news to what is now over $1 trillion in interest expense: after all, someone has to devalue the currency all that interest is payable in.
Dog bus
This dog waits for his girls to get on the bus safely, every morning.
— The Best (@ThebestFigen) January 1, 2024
Jelly
A spectacular sight 1225m (4019 ft) beneath the waves off Baja California as EVNautilus encounter the amazing Halitrephes maasi jelly. pic.twitter.com/ggbF8DXF9U
— Nature is Amazing ☘️ (@AMAZlNGNATURE) January 1, 2024
Chirps
https://twitter.com/i/status/1742275062579806658
Eclipse
https://twitter.com/i/status/1742119762405032261
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