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Debt Rattle January 21 2025

Jan 212025
 
 January 21, 2025  Posted by at 10:30 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , ,  57 Responses »


Salvador Dali The ghost of Vermeer of Delft which can be used as a table 1934

 

• Donald Trump Sworn In As 47th US President (RT)
• Trump Pardons 1,500 January 6 “Rioters” (RT)
• Host of Senior Diplomats Get Marching Orders as Trump Purges State Dept (Sp.)
• Trump Rolls Back Transgender Rights and DEI (RT)
• Trump Signs Executive Order Against ‘Censorship’ (RT)
• The ‘Madman Strategy’: The Secret Behind Trump’s Foreign Policy (Ryumshin)
• Joe Biden Issues Last Minute Family Pardon (RT)
• Despite Biden Pardon, Fauci Still Faces Legal Perils (Thacker)
• Russia Congratulates Trump – Putin (RT)
• Lavrov Weighs In On Trump’s Return To White House (RT)
• Another Door Opens (Kunstler)
• Most Democrats Think Their Party Sucks, Feel “Burned Out”: CNN Poll (ZH)
• Ukraine Could Become ‘Trump’s Vietnam’ – Bannon (RT)
• Exodus From Netanyahu’s Cabinet (Sp.)
• Putting an End to Trump Derangement Syndrome (J. Peder Zane)
• Orban Declares 2nd Phase Of Offensive On Brussels As Trump Takes Office (RT)
• Secretary of Forever Wars: Antony Blinken’s Blood-Soaked Legacy (Sp.)
• The Lousiest President of All Time (Egerer)

 

 

 

 

Signing

MSNBC

Gutfeld

Lutnick

Warren and Maddow lost bigly

Pardons

 

 

 

 

“Trump vowed to measure US strength by “the wars we end and, more importantly, wars we never get into.”

• Donald Trump Sworn In As 47th US President (RT)

Donald J. Trump has taken the oath of office as the 47th president of the United States, administered by Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court John Roberts. Trump was sworn in inside the US Capitol Rotunda, to the sounds of the presidential fanfare ‘Hail to the Chief’. Moments earlier, Vice President J.D. Vance took the oath of office as well, administered by Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. In his inauguration speech, Trump said his election is a mandate to “completely and totally reverse” the “many betrayals that have taken place,” over the last four years. “From this moment on, America’s decline is over,” he said. “The journey to reclaim our Republic has not been an easy one. Those who wish to stop our cause, have tried to take my freedom and indeed my life,” he added, referring to the attempt on his life during a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania last July.

“I was saved by God to make America great again,” Trump declared. As was expected, Trump said he will sign a slew of executive orders on his first day in office, promising a “revolution of common sense.” He also promised to declare a “national emergency on our southern border” and send troops to “repel the disastrous invasion of our country.” “All illegal entry will immediately be halted” and “millions and millions of criminal aliens” will be sent “back to where they came from.” On foreign policy, Trump vowed to measure US strength by “the wars we end and, more importantly, wars we never get into.”

“My proudest legacy will be of a peacemaker and a unifier.” Trump also said he will declare a national energy emergency, promising to “drill, baby drill.” He also directed all cabinet members to use their powers to defeat record inflation and bring down costs and prices. On gender politics, Trump declared: “There are only two genders: male and female.” This will become “official policy of the United States government,” he said. The 47th president also assured Americans that he will end all government censorship, “bring back free speech to America” and “forge a society that is color-blind and merit-based.”

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“..a step towards “national reconciliation.”

• Trump Pardons 1,500 January 6 “Rioters” (RT)

US President Donald Trump has pardoned around 1,500 people involved in the storming of the Capitol building in 2021. Trump signed an executive order granting pardons in the Oval Office on Monday, hours after he was sworn in for his second term. The president granted “a full, complete and unconditional pardon to all other individuals convicted of offenses related to events that occurred at or near the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021,” the order said. Additionally, 14 people got their sentences commuted. “We hope that they come out tonight, frankly,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office.

Trump instructed the attorney general to dismiss “all pending indictments” related to the riot. He described the pardons as a measure to rectify “a grave national injustice” and a step towards “national reconciliation.” On January 6, 2021, a group of Trump supporters broke through security barriers and briefly overran the Capitol building, hoping to disrupt the certification of Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election. While some intruders were non-violent, others fought with police officers and destroyed property. One rioter, Ashli Babbitt, was fatally shot by police when she attempted to enter the Speaker’s Lobby.

Trump has never recognized that he lost the 2020 election to Biden, claiming that the vote was rigged. He described the January 6 defendants as patriots and hostages, insisting that their prosecution was politically motivated. The Democrats accused Trump of inciting the riot and impeached him in 2021, citing his role in the incident. Trump has denied any wrongdoing, dismissing the accusations as a “witch hunt.” According to The Hill, the pardon applies to Enrique Tarrio, the former leader of the right-wing Proud Boys group who is currently serving a 22-year prison term. His lawyer told the publication that Tarrio was being “processed out” of prison.

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“We have a lot of failures to fix and that requires a committed team focused on the same goals..”

• Host of Senior Diplomats Get Marching Orders as Trump Purges State Dept (Sp.)

During his campaigning and after his election win, Donald Trump has repeatedly vowed to “demolish the deep state,” overhaul federal departments and agencies, and “clean out the corrupt actors.” A host of senior career diplomats are quitting the State Department as Donald Trump makes a clean break with the Joe Biden administration, The Washington Post reported. The resignations, effective at noon on Monday, just before the inauguration, were on instructions from Trump’s aides, claimed unnamed US officials. Trump has authorized over 20 “senior bureau officials” to take over vacated posts, with some of the newcomers having formerly served in key roles during his first term, insiders added.

Among those departing are John Bass, the under secretary for management and acting undersecretary for political affairs, Geoff Pyatt, the assistant secretary for energy resources, and top diplomat for East Asia, Dan Kritenbrink.
The Trump team made clear the marching orders were not personal, said one resigning diplomat. “It is entirely appropriate for the transition to seek officials who share President Trump’s vision for putting our nation and America’s working men and women first. We have a lot of failures to fix and that requires a committed team focused on the same goals,” a spokesperson for the transition team said.

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The election proved that Americans don’t want tampons in men’s bathrooms, or guys in girls’ dorms.

• Trump Rolls Back Transgender Rights and DEI (RT)

President Donald Trump has signed two executive orders reversing protections for transgender rights and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs, established during former President Joe Biden’s administration. The move, announced on Trump’s first day back in office, drew an immediate backlash from civil rights groups. One of the orders, titled “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government,” directs federal agencies to remove policies supporting gender identity protections. The order asserts that “there are only two genders, male and female” and mandates agencies to update official documents such as passports and visas accordingly. It also prohibits taxpayer funding for gender transition services in prisons. Trump highlighted the order during his inaugural address.

The executive order states: “Efforts to eradicate the biological reality of sex fundamentally attack women by depriving them of their dignity, safety, and well-being. The erasure of sex in language and policy has a corrosive impact not just on women but on the validity of the entire American system.” The second order overturns Biden’s 2021 executive action, which required federal agencies to review policies that could negatively affect transgender individuals. Instead, Trump’s directive calls for a review of diversity and equity initiatives, which he described as discriminatory. The review could result in the termination of environmental justice grants, diversity training, and other similar programs.

Civil rights groups swiftly condemned the measures. “We refuse to back down or be intimidated… We will fight back against these harmful provisions with everything we’ve got,” Kelley Robinson, president of the Human Rights Campaign, said in a statement. Asian Americans Advancing Justice, a prominent advocacy organization, also criticized the rollback, vowing to protect vulnerable communities and continue fighting discrimination.

These changes reflect a broader national trend. While some corporations have scaled back DEI programs, companies such as Costco and Apple remain committed to diversity policies. At the same time, others, including Meta, McDonald’s, and Walmart, have significantly reduced their DEI initiatives. Meta recently dismantled its DEI department, citing a shifting legal and policy landscape. McDonald’s has scaled back diversity targets for senior leadership, and Walmart has announced plans to retire certain diversity terms and initiatives. The Trump administration framed the policy changes as an effort to remove perceived bias in government initiatives. Rights organizations have threatened to challenge the orders through court action and public advocacy.

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Free speech returns.

• Trump Signs Executive Order Against ‘Censorship’ (RT)

US President Donald Trump has signed an executive order banning government officials from violating freedom of speech under the guise of fighting misinformation. Trump signed a flurry of orders hours after he was sworn in as the 47th president on Monday. In the document, Trump accused his predecessor, Joe Biden, of “censoring Americans’ speech on online platforms” and pressuring social media companies to “moderate, deplatform, or otherwise suppress speech that the federal government did not approve.”

“Under the guise of combatting ‘misinformation,’ ‘disinformation,’ and ‘malinformation,’ the federal government infringed on the constitutionally protected speech rights of American citizens across the United States in a manner that advanced the government’s preferred narrative about significant matters of public debate. Government censorship of speech is intolerable in a free society,” the document says. Trump tasked the authorities to “ensure that no federal government officer, employee, or agent engages in or facilitates any conduct that would unconstitutionally abridge the free speech of any American citizen.”

Trump’s allies have long accused the government of wielding its power to silence dissenting views online, especially during the Covid-19 pandemic and the 2020 presidential election. In 2020, Twitter and Facebook briefly cracked down on the sharing of a New York Post story about Hunter Biden’s laptop. Republicans described the incident as an act of censorship. Internal communication published by tech billionaire Elon Musk, who bought Twitter in 2022 and renamed it to X, revealed that the FBI had asked Twitter to take down accounts it said were spreading election misinformation. Facebook owner Mark Zuckerberg said earlier this month that the authorities had pressured his platform to delete materials that were deemed Covid misinformation, including memes about vaccination.

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“Donald Trump’s “madman” strategy continues to defy conventional wisdom, forcing even his fiercest critics to play along.”

• The ‘Madman Strategy’: The Secret Behind Trump’s Foreign Policy (Ryumshin)

Donald Trump certainly knows how to grab attention. The new US president has entered the 2025 political season like a bull in a china shop. In less than a month, Trump and his team have managed to rattle Canada, Mexico, and Panama. But while these moves could be dismissed as political trolling, it’s Denmark that’s really on edge. Overnight, Greenland, previously regarded as a remote, unremarkable landmass, has become the crown jewel of Trump’s imperial ambitions. Reports from US media insiders suggest Trump is “100% serious” about his intention to grab the island. The president-elect has even hinted at taking the island by force if Denmark refuses to sell. This has sparked a flurry of debates in the American press, with even Trump’s detractors weighing the military capabilities of America and Denmark and calculating the potential benefits of controlling Greenland.

Naturally, theories abound as to why Trump is so fixated on this land. Broadly, these explanations fall into three categories. First, Greenland might be part of Trump’s larger, yet unclear, plan for a geopolitical reordering of the world. Second, Greenland’s rare earth metals and its strategic Northwest Passage – a North American counterpart to Russia’s Northern Sea Route – could give the US a critical edge over China. Finally, skeptics argue that Trump’s obsession with Greenland is nothing more than a personal whim, fueled by his desire to secure a place in history. Trump’s penchant for “bigger,” “greater,” and “brighter” projects certainly fits the narrative. What could be more monumental than securing the largest territorial acquisition in modern history?

Colonizing Mars is Elon Musk’s business, but annexing Greenland – now that’s a legacy-defining move. However, this theory falters when considering the practical implications of such a move. What’s the point of annexing Greenland? The US already maintains a military presence in the Arctic. Greenland’s resources could be accessed through negotiations with Denmark, likely at a much lower cost than outright control. And the geopolitical fallout would be immense. Whether or not the EU retaliates, NATO – already strained – would be effectively dismantled. A rift between the US and Western Europe could push the EU closer to Russia or even China, severing access to critical overseas markets and military infrastructure. For a president promoting the philosophy of Make America Great Again, such risks seem counterproductive.

A more plausible explanation is that Trump doesn’t actually intend to annex Greenland but rather aims to increase American control over its resources and strategic location without formal acquisition. To achieve this, Trump is deploying his signature “madman” strategy. Consider the famous scene from the Russian TV series Streets of Broken Lights, where Anatoly Dukalis, pointing a machine gun at criminals, shouts, “I’m a fool, I served in Afghanistan! Drop your weapons!” The criminals comply, not because Dukalis is actually insane, but because he convincingly pretends to be. Trump’s approach is remarkably similar. Over the years, the American media has cultivated his image as an erratic, dangerous madman. To many, the phrase “crazy idiot” is now synonymous with Donald Trump.

Remarkably, this “madman” strategy works. By playing into expectations that he’s unpredictable and willing to do the unthinkable, Trump forces his adversaries to make concessions. During the campaign, Trump threatened to crack down on social media and jail journalists he deemed unfair. After his victory, he appointed Brendan Carr to head the Federal Communications Commission. Carr promptly vowed to dismantle companies censoring their platforms. On January 11, Mark Zuckerberg gave a tearful interview to Joe Rogan, detailing how the Biden administration suppressed free speech and pleading for Trump’s protection against European censors. In the case of Greenland, Trump has done little more than make provocative statements. Yet Danish officials are already reaching out to his team, proposing to expand US bases on the island and expressing a readiness for dialogue to avoid losing their territory. It wouldn’t be surprising if Denmark now offers Washington significant concessions. If this is where it ends, Greenland could go down as one of the most audacious political scams in modern history.

The geopolitical implications of Trump’s gambit are significant. The island’s rare earth metals are crucial for high-tech industries, and control of the Northwest Passage could alter global trade routes. However, the most important outcome might be the impact on NATO. A serious rift would mark the end of the alliance as we know it. The irony of Trump’s strategy is that it relies on the very media narratives that portray him as a threat to the Western world order. By leveraging his reputation as an unpredictable “psychopath,” Trump is reshaping the global chessboard in ways that his predecessors never could. The story of Greenland’s annexation may remain unfinished, but one thing is clear: Donald Trump’s “madman” strategy continues to defy conventional wisdom, forcing even his fiercest critics to play along.

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Crime family.

• Joe Biden Issues Last Minute Family Pardon (RT)

Outgoing US President Joe Biden used his last moments in office to roll out a blanket pardon for members of his family, effectively shielding them from potential repercussions they could face under Donald Trump. Biden claimed on Monday that his family has long been targeted in a concerted effort to harm him politically. “My family has been subjected to unrelenting attacks and threats, motivated solely by a desire to hurt me – the worst kind of partisan politics. Unfortunately, I have no reason to believe these attacks will end,” Biden said in a statement. The pardon concerns “any nonviolent offences against the United States” five of Biden’s family members might have committed starting from January 1, 2014 to the end of his term as president.

“I am exercising my power under the Constitution to pardon James B. Biden, [his wife] Sara Jones Biden, [first sister] Valerie Biden Owens, [her husband] John T. Owens, and [first brother] Francis W. Biden,” the outgoing president said, adding that the “pardons should not be mistaken as an acknowledgment that they engaged in any wrongdoing.” The pardon effectively buries the years-long James Biden influence peddling affair, being probed by Congressional Republicans and journalists. While he did not face any criminal charges, Biden’s brother James, a former nightclub owner, broker and political consultant, has been accused by Republicans of lying to Congress, as well as acting as an unregistered foreign agent.

James and the president’s son, Hunter, were subpoenaed over the alleged involvement of President Biden in their business dealings in the US and abroad, namely in China and Ukraine. Hunter Biden was pardoned by his father late last year, months after his conviction on gun and tax charges and as he faced sentencing in a separate case. The controversial pardon came despite Joe Biden’s repeated promises not to intervene in his son’s criminal cases.

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What Paul Thacker appears to miss (or is it me?): His pardon is federal. At state level he can still be charged.

• Despite Biden Pardon, Fauci Still Faces Legal Perils (Thacker)

President Biden’s pardon of Dr. Anthony Fauci may protect the former National Institutes of Health official from immediate criminal prosecution, but some critics say he is not completely out of legal jeopardy and that public sentiment might still condemn the man who became known during the COVID-19 pandemic as “Mr. Science.” In the days before Biden offered the pardon to Fauci, along with other critics of Donald Trump, some experts who have followed Fauci’s career and handling of the pandemic, as well as members of the Trump transition team, reiterated their assertion that Fauci perjured himself on several occasions during the pandemic – especially regarding his agency’s links to the lab in Wuhan, China, that might have created the virus that causes COVID-19. The pardon addresses any COVID-related offenses, and is backdated to 2014—the year a U.S. ban on so-called “gain of function” virus research took effect — research Fauci is accused of outsourcing to China.

Despite reporting that Trump is bent on revenge, the appetite among MAGA appointees for holding Fauci accountable hasn’t been particularly vocal. But former Senate investigator Jason Foster, who now runs the whistleblower nonprofit Empower Oversight, says that Biden’s pardon creates new legal jeopardy for Fauci. Sen. Rand Paul has vowed to continue investigating the COVID origins question, and sources tell RealClearInvestigations that Sen. Ron Johnson and House Republican investigators plan to do so as well. When testifying in those inquiries or answering written depositions, Fauci will be unable to dodge questions by invoking his Fifth Amendment protections against self-incrimination. “They can ask him if he lied before, replough old ground,” Foster said. “And if he lies about any prior lie, he can be prosecuted for that or held in contempt.”

Andrew Noymer, associate professor of population health and disease prevention at the University of California, Irvine, said such hearings are necessary for scientific and historical reasons. “I’m hopeful that he will now come clean about everything he knows about the origins of the virus,” Noymer said. “For the sake of public trust in science – explaining what killed 20 million people – that a complete account is much more important than speculation about what criminal penalties he may have avoided.” “These pardons will not stop Department of Justice investigations,” said one adviser to the Trump transition team, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “We expected this and look at it as a predicate to get truth from people who can no longer use the Fifth Amendment. Now we can bring every one of them in front of a grand jury.”

There is no consensus on Fauci’s handling of the pandemic. Legacy media outlets have promoted Fauci throughout the pandemic as “America’s doctor” who “sticks to the facts” and applauded him as “the nation’s top infectious disease expert.” When he retired from the NIH after five decades in 2022, the New York Times granted him space on its opinion page to advise the next generation of scientists, citing his own accomplishments.

Numerous social media outlets have provided a polar opposite perspective. Several X accounts have uploaded videos that show Fauci’s inconsistencies. For example, Fauci claimed in early 2022 interviews that he never recommended lockdowns, but later said he recommended shutting the country down. Independent journalist Matt Orfalea circulated another set of clips that show Fauci claiming he kept an “open mind” about how the pandemic started while alleging in others that the evidence points against a lab accident and “strongly” in favor of a natural spillover. As Fauci’s flip-flops generated attention in Republican circles and on social media, he charged that such criticism was “totally preposterous,” adding, “Attacks on me, quite frankly, are attacks on science.”

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“I would have done it sooner, but … you have to get into the office.”

• Russia Congratulates Trump – Putin (RT)

Russia congratulates Donald Trump on taking office as US president and welcomes his proclaimed intent to resume contacts between the two countries, Vladimir Putin has said, during a meeting of the country’s National Security Council on Monday. “We’re hearing the statements of the newly elected US president and members of his team about the desire to restore direct contacts with Russia, which were halted by the outgoing administration. We also hear his statement about the need to do everything to prevent world war three,” Putin said. “Of course, we welcome such an attitude and congratulate the elected US president on taking office,” he added. Moscow has never “refused dialogue” with Washington and has always expressed readiness to deal with any US administration, the president noted. Russia remains committed to its principles and believes the dialogue must be built upon “equal and mutually respectful basis,” Putin emphasized.

Trump has repeatedly signaled his intent to engage in talks with Putin, particularly with the aim of bringing the conflict between Russia and Ukraine to an end. Last week, the incoming US president announced he planned to meet with Putin “very quickly” after getting sworn in. “I know he [Putin] wants to meet, and I’m going to meet very quickly,” Trump said last Monday. “I would have done it sooner, but … you have to get into the office.” Any potential in-person meeting between the two leaders is expected to be preceded by a phone talk. Moscow has repeatedly signaled its readiness to communicate with the incoming administration. According to the Kremlin, however, no exact details on when or where a potential meeting would take place have been ironed out.

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“..Lavrov said that the outgoing administration was trying to “spoil the whole thing for the next administration before the end of their mandate.”

• Lavrov Weighs In On Trump’s Return To White House (RT)

The new US administration’s policies will largely determine the world order, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Monday. Moscow is open to contact with Washington, according to the top diplomat. Lavrov made the remarks during a meeting of the Russian National Security Council hosted by President Vladimir Putin. The Russian FM stated that in light of Donald Trump’s return to the White House as the 47th US president, speculation is growing about his influence on the Middle East and Ukraine conflicts, among other issues. “Therefore, much depends on the US, first of all, because the Europeans and Asian allies of the US – Australia, Japan, South Korea, New Zealand – are fully oriented to the position of the White House, and in this sense, they are waiting to see what this position will be in its final form,” Lavrov explained.

The minister also said that it remains unclear whether Trump’s promises will coincide with his actions. Trump has repeatedly vowed to bring an end to ongoing conflicts and has criticized the Biden administration for policies that he claimed led to the escalation of global tensions and pushed the world closer to the brink of World War III. Last week, while discussing the transition in Washington, Lavrov said that the outgoing administration was trying to “spoil the whole thing for the next administration before the end of their mandate.” He denounced the perceived sabotage as inappropriate “from the moral point of view.” Trump has also signaled his intent to engage in talks with Putin, particularly with the aim of bringing the Ukraine conflict to an end.

He has described the hostilities between Moscow and Kiev as a product of President Biden’s diplomatic blunders, which he said had had serious repercussions for all parties, including the US. Last week, Trump announced that he planned to meet with Putin “very quickly” after getting sworn in. On Monday, the Russian leader expressed good wishes for Trump ahead of the inauguration and said that Moscow “welcomes” his statements about wanting to restore relations with Russia and prevent the proxy conflict over Ukraine from developing into a world war. Putin and Trump have met several times in the past, the last occasion being at the 2019 G20 summit in Japan.

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Jim was overtaken by developments.

• Another Door Opens (Kunstler)

Thus spake one Shawn McCreesh of The New York Times, America’s all-wise, all-knowing font of everlasting rectitude. But to answer his question, why blah blah: Donald Trump is glaring because he means bidness. His bidness is to shift the paradigm on the mendaciously sanctimonious managerial class of the USA, of which The New York Times is the principal mouthpiece. DJT looks stern, does he? All that really tells you is how nervous the Old Gray Lady is. A million or more brains, from sea to shining sea are about to get vacuumed out and redecorated. Readers of The New York Times — in their various C-suites, ivory towers, ateliers, yoga parlors, tasting rooms, bioweapon labs, and other haunts — remain utterly baffled about what is to begin today. No amount of ‘splainin’ seems to suffice.

They behold the Golden Golem of Greatness (DJT) doing his dance onstage behind the cop, the Indian chief, and the cowpoke and all they can really see are their own careers going up in smoke (along with vested pensions, reputations, possibly even chattels, marriages, and health). As I write, long before dawn, “Joe Biden” remains President of the US. You must wonder, as the hours dwindle to noon, what pardon power magic he’s saving for the final minutes of his term, while the whole nation is distracted by the spectacle in the Capitol Rotunda, the moiling dignitaries and celebrities, the solemn arrival of the elect, the snarky palaver of the cable news jockeys, the electric charge of history in the large room. . . .

It is a fact, perhaps missed by some of you, that Rep. James Comer’s House Oversight Committee just last week issued criminal referrals on James Biden (“Joe’s” brother) and First Son Hunter. Wait-a-minute, was not Hunter already pardoned for Gawd-knows how many misdeeds dating back to 2014, and (supposedly) preemptively for any alleged crimes to come ever hereafter? Part B of that may yet have to be adjudicated. A pardon is not intended to be a get-out-of-jail-free card. Anyway, would it be difficult for a federal attorney of average ability to draw a connection between the newly referred crimes of those two and the departing President? Hence, will “Joe Biden” pardon “Joe Biden” at 11:30 this morning?

Not to mention about 1000 other current and former public officials quaking in their Beltway McMansions this frosty morning. This is part and parcel, you understand, of the massive Cleanup in Aisle Four that must happen if the agencies of our federal government can ever be trusted again. For instance, the Department of Justice. At the end of the workday, Friday, AG Merrick Garland made a triumphal final exit from the building past a throng of cheering and clapping employees, including dozens of federal attorneys who zealously persecuted their fellow citizens under color-of-law for no good reason, or real legal predicate, and ruined many lives and households in the process. Do you suppose they get a free pass on that?

And what of the three bears of Lawfare: Norm Eisen, Marc Elias, and Mary McCord, all of them present at the creation of serial affronts against the Constitution (and decency) lo this past decade. Do they just skate? I doubt it, though it might take a while to shine a light on their turpitudes. Will “Joe Biden” wave his pardon wand over Tony Fauci, Francis Collins, Scott Gottlieb, Deborah Birx, Rochelle Walensky, and dozens of other public health officials who sprung the Covid-19 operation and the deadly vaccinations on the country? Or Ralph Baric, hunkered out of sight in his Carolina lab? You realize, of course, that the orgy of illness and death from that is hardly over. For four years under “JB” the truth has been obfuscated and buried, because none of those characters has really had to answer for anything.

So, today another door opens. The To-Do list for Mr. Trump and his aides-de-camp is dauntingly long, the corrections needed are monumental. You might have even noticed that such corrections are badly needed all over the other countries of Western Civ, and strangely many are already following suit. The WEF-inflected governments of France, Germany, and the UK are already a’wobble, and Justin Trudeau threw in the towel two weeks ago. An Arctic blast could not be more fitting for what will move through the DC Swamp at high noon today. That is, if Mr. Trump manages to survive the hours until his swearing-in. Godspeed Number 47! And everybody else: put your tray tables up! A patch of turbulence ahead!

Update: I posted the above blog ten minutes before “Joe Biden” issued his raft of pardons for Fauci, the J6 Committee members, and others. We will have to stand by to see whether a “preemptive” pardon is a legitimate legal instrument. My guess is that it is not.

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They got totally lost in DEI etc. They need their own Trump.

• Most Democrats Think Their Party Sucks, Feel “Burned Out”: CNN Poll (ZH)

A new CNN poll reveals that most Democrats think their party needs major change, and that they feel “burned out” by politics. The poll comes as the party faces its lowest ratings in over three decades. “A 58% majority of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents say that the Democratic Party needs major changes, or to be completely reformed, up from just 34% who said the same after the 2022 midterm elections, when the party retained control of the Senate but lost the House. Over that time, the share of Republicans and Republican leaners who feel the same way about the GOP has ticked downward, from 38% to 28%. -CNN”. Just 49% of Democratic-aligned adults say they expect their representatives in congress to be even somewhat effective at fighting the GOP, while 90% of Republican-aligned adults expect their reps to be at least somewhat effective at passing new laws that will carry out President-elect Donald Trump’s agenda.

Meanwhile, most adults polled (70%) describe themselves as disappointed and (64%) frustrated with the nation’s political landscape, with nearly half describing themselves as ‘burned out.’ 40% say they’re angry – rising to 52% among Democratic-aligned women. Fewer than 20% described themselves as optimistic, fired up, inspired or proud. Just 23% of registered voters say they’re satisfied with the influence voters have on the political process, down from 38% last autumn, while half of all adults (48%) say they’re confident that elections reflect the will of the people. According to the report, “Confidence has undergone a partisan reversal in the wake of Trump’s electoral victory, soaring from 29% in July 2023 to 67% now among Republican-aligned adults, and dipping from 59% to 39% among Democratic-aligned adults over the same period of time.”

Overall, just 33% of all Americans express a favorable view of the Democratic Party, an all-time low in CNN’s polling dating back to 1992. The GOP clocks in a tick higher, with a 36% favorability rating. Four years ago, in the immediate aftermath of the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, the Democrats’ rating stood at 49%, and the Republicans’ at 32%. -CNN 43% of GOP-aligned adults now say they feel more a part of the Republican party vs. less like a part of it, while 32% of Democrats say the same about their party. 79% of Republican-aligned voters polled say they see their party as more united than divided, while 64% of Democrats say the same – however internal divisions are a top complaint for both Democrats and Republicans.

Democrats polled who say they want to see big changes say their party is out of touch or unresponsive, and that the party has not been aggressive enough in pushing back against the GOP. “They are too nice,” wrote one Democrat respondant from Maryland. “Republicans will do anything to implement their goals (while) Democrats cling to ‘norms.’ They need to become more aggressive in their approach, but not lie like the Republicans.” “Democrats are horrible at messaging,” said one Democrat woman from Arizona.

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Bannon was nowhere to be found yesterday?!

• Ukraine Could Become ‘Trump’s Vietnam’ – Bannon (RT)

Former White House strategist Steve Bannon has warned that US President-elect Donald Trump could become entangled in the Ukraine conflict if he doesn’t take immediate steps to limit Washington’s involvement. In an interview with Politico published on Monday, Bannon compared the situation to former US President Richard Nixon’s handling of the Vietnam War, in which he inherited a conflict from the previous administration and was ultimately defined by it. “If we aren’t careful, it will turn into Trump’s Vietnam. That’s what happened to Richard Nixon. He ended up owning the war and it went down as his war, not Lyndon Johnson’s,” Bannon, who is no longer a key figure in the Trump team, said. He argued that unless Trump clearly commits to stopping military aid to Ukraine, the conflict could overshadow his presidency.

Nixon campaigned in 1968 on a promise to end the war, yet once in office, he escalated US involvement through widespread bombing campaigns and incursions into Cambodia and Laos before ultimately negotiating a withdrawal from Vietnam. The war became a defining and controversial issue of his presidency. Trump repeatedly stated during his 2024 campaign that he would end the Ukraine conflict “in 24 hours” if reelected, but never provided specifics on how he would do so. While he has criticized US military aid to Ukraine, he has not explicitly declared that he would cut off assistance. Bannon has urged Trump to make his position clear in his inauguration speech.

Russia reacted with skepticism to Trump’s promise to swiftly resolve the conflict. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has questioned the feasibility of a rapid resolution. Moscow has insisted that any peace deal must include recognition of the new territorial realities and address the root causes of the conflict. Meanwhile, Trump’s team is reportedly preparing a phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin, which could be held shortly after the president-elect’s inauguration, CNN reported on Sunday. The primary goal of the call is said to be to discuss holding a face-to-face meeting to explore ways of resolving the Ukraine conflict. Peskov has said that Putin is open to negotiations with the US president without any preconditions, while noting that there have so far been no substantial preparations for talks.

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“..at least two thirds of Israelis, judging by the polls, will be satisfied at this stage” with the return of the hostages, and will consider it “a victory in this war..”

• Exodus From Netanyahu’s Cabinet (Sp.)

The Gaza truce has sparked a political mutiny among far-right elements of Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition government, with ministers quitting outright or temporarily resigning in protest of the ceasefire deal. Should Bibi be worried, or does he now have the upper hand? Sputnik asked an Israeli politics expert. The Israeli PM’s coalition is facing turbulence over the signing and implementation of the Gaza ceasefire amid attacks led by far-right ministerial heavyweights National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich. Ben-Gvir quit the cabinet on Sunday, vowing to return if the Gaza war resumes “with full force.” Smotrich temporarily resigned and threatened to overthrow the government, but announced Monday that he would return.

Netanyahu’s coalition maintains a narrow majority in Israel’s 120-seat parliament, led by his party – Likud, and including the religious and/or Zionist right parties Shas, Smotrich’s Religious Zionism, United Torah Judaism, the Orthodox Noam and New Hope – United Right. Some observers fear that if new elections were held, Israeli politics could return a cycle of instability like the one experienced between 2018 and 2022, when five snap votes were called over a four-year period amid endless wrangling between pro and anti-Netanyahu factions in the Knesset. The long saga of Netanyahu’s criminal trial, constantly delayed by the war and his prostate surgery, also threatens to come back to haunt him now that the Gaza crisis has been at least temporarily put on hold.

Ben-Gvir’s exit is linked “to the possibility of Hamas staying power in Gaza for some period of time,” Bar-Ilan University politics Prof. Zeev Hanin told Sputnik, commenting on the dust-up in the coalition government. The right wing is furious because the second part of Netanyahu’s stated goal of freeing the hostages and destroying Hamas hasn’t happened, the academic explained. At the same time, “at least two thirds of Israelis, judging by the polls, will be satisfied at this stage” with the return of the hostages, and will consider it “a victory in this war,” the observer says. The attitude is, “return them, and deal with Hamas in the future,” Hanin said.

By Hanin’s count, Netanyahu’s coalition has 63 mandates, enough to prevent his far-right ministers’ tantrums from toppling him. Elections are likely this year, but “no earlier than the spring,” Hanin believes. “They will take place when Netanyahu decides it’s convenient for him to dissolve the Knesset and stage the vote, if the deal brings him political dividends, shall we say. Most importantly, if there are some agreements with Trump behind the deal, any concessions in Gaza will seem reasonable and moderate,” the observer summed up.

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“Donald Trump possesses a quality that has been in short supply in American politics and culture: courage. This great strength is one source of the enmity against him.”

• Putting an End to Trump Derangement Syndrome (J. Peder Zane)

My case is not full-blown – I don’t contend that the incoming president is a fascist bent on suspending elections, jailing his enemies, and otherwise erasing our constitutional republic. I find claims that he is a sexual predator as risible as the argument that he launched a coup on Jan. 6, 2021. I gleefully whack-a-mole all the whack-doodle fantasies that pass as conventional wisdom among progressives and conservative Never Trumpers. And yet, because it is more mild and subtle, my TDS may be more dangerous. Even though I generally support Donald Trump’s policies, I accepted the idea that he is beyond the pale. I agreed that his aggressive tweets, coarse language, and addiction to hyperbole were windows into a damaged soul. He just can’t help himself. I wished that the Republicans had somebody, anybody else to stand up against the Democrats because Trump seemed to lack the temperament and, yes, the character, to be president.

These critiques are not pulled from thin air. Trump is Trump. My mistake was transforming these complaints into condemnation, defining the man by his off-putting traits instead of his manifest gifts. More disturbingly, I probably took this line to prove to his unhinged haters that I had not drunk the orange Kool-Aid. Not my finest hour. I offer this confession both to clear my conscience and to offer this message to other Trump supporters who might have a whiff of TDS: Stop! Our embrace of false narratives about Trump’s character gives them credence. It is a major reason why he didn’t defeat the ineffable unqualified Kamala Harris by an even larger margin and why his job approval ratings aren’t higher. They serve as springboard for more extreme attacks against him. Look, even his supporters think he’s off.

Going forward, such wobbly support may undercut his ability to govern. We must continue to criticize him robustly when it is warranted, and those occasions will surely arise. And if there are people out there who think Trump’s perfect, I haven’t met them. But we must stop casting his all-too-human foibles as signs of something sinister. Instead of trying to brush off the character argument, we should transform it. Donald Trump possesses a quality that has been in short supply in American politics and culture: courage. This great strength is one source of the enmity against him.

Recall that Trump was an accepted member of elite circles for much of his life – Bill and Hillary Clinton attended his wedding to Melania in 2005. Then, suddenly, he became a pariah in 2015 when he threw his hat into the ring and dared to challenge the assumptions of the ruling class. Trump called out business leaders and politicians from both parties for policies and practices that seemed to line their pockets at the expense of average Americans: dubious trade deals with the repressive Chinese government; a lax approach to immigration that undercut working class jobs and wages; security arrangements that allowed NATO allies to free-ride on American taxpayers for their military defense.

He was an outlier, eager to challenge decades of beltline wisdom. He was a disruptor, determined to shake up a system in which consensus had smothered accountability. He was a powerful voice of dissent against a government where people got ahead by ignoring the hard questions. In a final insult, he became a symbol of our still vibrant democracy by winning not one, but two elections despite the visceral, intense, and highly organized opposition of the powers that be.

These were the real sins his enemies could not and will not forgive. In the face of relentless and unfair attacks, most people would have buckled. It would have been so much easier to play ball. Trump, instead, stuck by his guns. The courage he displayed after an assassin came within in a whisker of taking his life last summer was a true reflection of his abiding character. The opposition to Trump will not fade during the next four years. Those who cheered the Biden administration as it opened the borders, defied the courts, and censored critics will continue to claim that Trump poses a singular threat to our Republic. Their fraudulence may be clear for all to see, but their case of Trump Derangement Syndrome seems too far gone to repair. As we turn a new page in our nation’s history, I am filled with hope because I see that we once again have a president with the character to provide the leadership we need.

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”The sick man of Europe today is the European Union..”

• Orban Declares 2nd Phase Of Offensive On Brussels As Trump Takes Office (RT)

The inauguration of US President Donald Trump has created new opportunities to replace the pseudo-capitalist, power-hungry bureaucrats in Brussels, according to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban. He has argued that the EU needs sensible people in charge to acknowledge the ongoing transition to a new world order. Speaking in Budapest on Monday hours before Trump was sworn in in Washington, DC, the conservative politician said that soon “the sun will shine differently over Brussels,” before reiterating his criticisms of EU policies. While a patriotic government is assuming power in the US, Brussels remains “under occupation by a left-wing, transatlantic oligarchy,” the prime minister lamented.

He dismissed allegations that his government has been backtracking on democracy and the rule of law as attacks orchestrated “by the liberal united front financed by George Soros.” Orban has previously accused the Hungarian-born billionaire of interfering with politics in the EU. The balance of economic power is tilting towards Asia, and nations in Europe need to adapt, Orban said. But Brussels and liberal-minded politicians have ignored the changes and undermined EU members with “woke capitalism” that fixates on ideological goals at the cost of competitiveness, Orban claimed. ”The sick man of Europe today is the European Union,” he asserted.

Orban accused Brussels of failing to address pressing issues such as the migration crisis, pressure on EU farmers, and threats to national security. Calling on like-minded people to renew their efforts to change the EU’s leadership, Orban declared: “I hereby launch the second phase of the operation to capture Brussels.” Orban’s Fidesz political party is part of a new Patriots for Europe coalition that challenged the centrists during last year’s European Parliament election. The alliance emerged as the third-largest in the EU legislature, after the EPP Group, led by President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen, and the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats (P&S).

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War Worldwide, Inc.

• Secretary of Forever Wars: Antony Blinken’s Blood-Soaked Legacy (Sp.)

Antony Blinken spent his last two weeks in office giving media interviews defending his record as America’s top ‘diplomat’. But it was under Blinken’s watch that the US sparked the worst security crisis in Europe since WWII, and fueled the most severe fighting between Jews and Palestinians since Israel’s creation in 1948. Let’s review his legacy. The New York Times revealed over the weekend that Blinken rejected a proposal in late 2022 by Joint Chiefs chairman Milley to push for peace talks in Ukraine, and argued with generals in favor of sending more advanced weapons to Kiev. Blinken was one of the main architects of the Ukraine conflict – which could have been stopped in the spring of 2022, or averted entirely if the Biden administration didn’t pigheadedly insist on NATO membership for Ukraine, which Russia warned was its red line.

In late 2021, as Kiev amassed troops near the Donbass, prompting mirror moves from Moscow, Blinken spoke to Ukraine’s foreign minister to assure him of NATO’s “unwavering commitment.” Months later, after fighting began, Blinken’s State Department joined with other Biden administration agencies and the Pentagon in supporting the Ukrainian crisis’s escalation into a full-blown NATO proxy war against Russia, complete with hundreds of billions of dollars in military aid to Kiev, CIA and military advisors and foreign mercenaries engaged in the conflict zone and operating advanced Western NATO weapons systems, and intelligence support. The Kiev regime “threw [the peace deal] into the dustbin of history,” President Putin said in mid-2023, confirming then long-running reports that Moscow and Kiev were on the verge of a deal after talks in Belarus and Istanbul, Turkiye weeks into the conflict before NATO’s intervention to kill it.

In October 2023, in response to a surprise Hamas-led incursion into Gaza, Israel launched its deadliest-ever attack on Palestinians in Gaza. “We will always be there by your side,” Blinken vowed, standing in Tel Aviv alongside Prime Minister Netanyahu just days after the war began. He was true to his word. From late 2023 and mid-2024 alone, the US sent Israel 14,000+ MK-84 2,000-pound bombs, 6,500 500-pound bombs, and an array of other munitions. The same month, a rights monitor calculated that Israel had dropped over 70,000 tons of bombs on the 365 km2 Strip, more than the combined tonnage dropped on Dresden, Hamburg and London in all of WWII. Blinken could have pressured his boss to turn off the taps on arms for Israel, which would have ended fighting in weeks. Instead, the State Department spent fifteen months talking about peace talks (which were actually spearheaded by other countries) as Gaza burned.

War Worldwide, Inc.
Besides Ukraine and Gaza, whose combined death toll is now in the hundreds of thousands, Blinken has led or signed off on an array of other escalatory and aggressive US foreign policy decisions. Wrecking Trump’s face-to-face diplomacy-based efforts to improve ties between the US and North Korea within weeks after Biden’s inauguration in 2021, Blinken’s State Department negotiated a new tripartite security pact with South Korea and Japan aimed squarely against Pyongyang. Fueling tensions in the East and South China Sea against China, Blinken escalated US bilateral alliance-based efforts to hem China into its home shores using the classic ‘island chain strategy’, vowed to ramp up support for Taiwan, and negotiated the anti-Beijing AUKUS security pact between the US, the UK and Australia.

Ramping up the confrontation against Iran and its Axis of Resistance allies, the US provided support to Tel Aviv during the back-to-back Iran-Israel missile and airstrikes, launched an air and naval campaign against Yemen’s Houthis, and facilitated the continuation of the long-running dirty war in Syria, culminating in the toppling of the Assad government in late 2024. Blinken’s State Department was instrumental in US involvement in burning conflicts across Africa, from Ethiopia and Libya to the Sahel, Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It also continued the tradition of low-key US efforts to institute regime change in countries perceived as disloyal to US interests, from Nicaragua and Bangladesh to Serbia and Georgia.

Blinken’s record, while ruthless, isn’t surprising, given his active support as he rose through the ranks in his diplomatic career for the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, the 2011 NATO aerial assault on Libya, which turned that country into a failed state, and the start of the war against Syria in 2011.

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“All the healthy and thoughtful people were pitted against the sanctimonious do-gooders, the goose-steppers, and the hysterical weaklings..”

• The Lousiest President of All Time (Egerer)

Anybody who wants to explain how bad the Biden administration is has to start with COVID. As such, we knew a few things early on in the pandemic, and they were as follows: • The average age of death from the virus was in the 80s. • It had almost zero effect on young people and children. • Most people who died from it had three or more co-morbidities — that is, they were old as hell, fat as a hog, and really liked smoking, or drinking, or cancer. • It was in the same class of virus as the common cold. Once we knew these things, especially the last one, the obvious thing to do was to give up. There was no point crippling the strong for the sake of the weak when the weak depend upon the strong and most of the weak aren’t affected by COVID anyway. We should have put the elderly on welfare and expanded Medicaid a bit and let the rest of us run loose.

No — we should have subsidized tickets to bath houses and any place kids eat that has a ball pit. We like to say “hindsight is 20/20,” but this isn’t hindsight at all. Hell, it was 2020. The stuff I mentioned above was the conclusion every person with regular sight came to the second our government called most workers “non-essential.” Yet this society was immediately cleaved in two. All the healthy and thoughtful people were pitted against the sanctimonious do-gooders, the goose-steppers, and the hysterical weaklings. And they beat us into submission, big time. And Joe Biden was their champion.

Almost overnight, millions were thrown out of work, and a vaccine was made up that nobody had properly tested, which no company was liable for and, in its experimental form, until the pandemic hit, had never been approved by the FDA. Joe Biden tried to force every American in a company of more than 100 people to take it or lose his job — around two thirds of the whole country, it turned out. Heart attacks in teenagers went through the roof. People had to choose between gambling their health and losing their homes. Pfizer was completely unaccountable and made a windfall. Mom-and-Pop stores across the nation went bankrupt, and gyms and churches were forced shut, and Walmart and Amazon made a killing.

To make up for the mass unemployment Democrats caused and encouraged, Joe decided to print more money than anyone ever did in American history — a bill worth $1.9 trillion, which singlehandedly made the dollar implode. This made everybody in the country take a giant pay cut, effectively, and now most Americans can’t afford the groceries they were buying in 2019. Or used cars. Or (many times) the rent. Some people escaped this crushing poverty: the ultra-rich, the people who broke the country, and people who broke into the country. The border was left wide open for nearly Biden’s whole term, and depending on where they went, illegal aliens were given not only free housing and medical care, but also smartphones and thousands of dollars.

Haitians and Chinese and Middle Eastern gate-crashers were seen marching in by the thousands. Venezuela went so far as to unload its prisons on us. Independent journalists began spotting obvious gang members and people on the terrorist watchlist. The Texans put up blockades, and the Border Patrol, under Biden’s orders, tore them right down. In some places, gates were broken open to ensure that nobody was denied access. In total, the BBC estimates (and I would say lowly) that over eight million people invaded. Americans were disturbed by footage of hordes pouring over the border, so Biden closed the airspace so we couldn’t see it. This was in fact his modus operandi whenever we started asking questions. When doctors from places like Harvard and Stanford questioned the vaccine, he sent the FBI to bully Facebook into banning them and anyone who supported them — a clearly illegal move for which nobody, to my knowledge, has been prosecuted.

When Ashley Biden’s diary was going to be published, with all kinds of weird information about his behavior, the FBI raided the homes of journalists. When his son’s laptop was found to contain incriminating information, he had the FBI bully social media again during an election season. When his son was finally going to pay for taking quid-pro-quo bribes from the Ukrainians, or for doing crack and hookers on camera and buying guns illegally, Joe Biden pardoned him for everything he ever did over a ten-year period. This was right after he went on TV to say “nobody is above the law” — an attack on, you guessed it, his own political rivals.

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RFK dogs
https://twitter.com/i/status/1881002576054976567

 

 

Horse

 

 

Best life

 

 

Rebel
https://twitter.com/i/status/1881590110321566067

 

 

Penguin

 

 

sMile

 

 

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Debt Rattle January 19 2025

Jan 192025
 
 January 19, 2025  Posted by at 10:35 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  64 Responses »


Salvador Dali The Feeling of Becoming 1931

 

• Hamas Names Israeli Hostages To Be Released First (RT)
• Netanyahu: Trump “Emphasized” That The Gaza Ceasefire Is “Temporary” (ZH)
• Trump’s 100 Executive Orders On Day One Promises Chaos, Huge Changes (Moran)
• Trump’s First Day Executive Orders To Touch A Wide Range Of Subjects (JTN)
• Top Priorities for Trump’s Presidency (ET)
• Most Americans Share Trump’s Views – Poll (RT)
• TikTok Goes Dark In The US (RT)
• Marco Rubio Says No Clear Reason Why US Bankrolled Ukraine (SCF)
• US Treasury To Take ‘Extraordinary Measures’ After Trump Inauguration (RT)
• Trump Plans Huge Chicago Illegal Immigrant Raid – WSJ (RT)
• Russia Warns Against UK-Ukraine Claims to Azov Sea (Sp.)
• Frozen Future? Europe’s Energy Crisis Worsens Amid Gas War (Sp.)
• New Juicy Details About How Biden Was Forced To Drop Out (Margolis)
• The Man Who Probably Will Not Be Allowed To Lead Romania (Karganovic)
• US Suspends EcoHealth Alliance, Peter Daszak (ZH)

 

 

 

 

https://twitter.com/i/status/1880632659401212320

Noem

250

Maher

Speaker

Strzok
https://twitter.com/i/status/1880476390354755690

 

 

 

 

The ceasefire, which was due to start this morning at 6.30 GMT, was delayed because Hamas did not release the names of 3 female hostages to be freed. They blamed technical difficulties. A few hours later, Hamas released the names and the ceasefire officially started. Anyone’s guess how long it will last.

• Hamas Names Israeli Hostages To Be Released First (RT)

Hamas has released the names of the three Israeli captives to be freed on the first day of the implementation of the ceasefire deal in Gaza, a Hamas spokesperson said in a post on Telegram. The move potentially clears the way for the truce to begin after an hours-long delay. Earlier, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu threatened to cancel the ceasefire with Hamas if the Palestinian militant group did not provide a list of the Israeli hostages to be released in the first phase of the truce.

Abu Obeida, the spokesman for Hamas’ armed wing, the Qassam Brigades, said, “As part of the prisoner exchange deal we decided to release today: Romi Gonen, 24, Emily Damari, 28, and Doron Shtanbar Khair, 31.” The three civilian women were taken hostage on October 7, 2023 during the Hamas onslaught in which around 1,200 people were killed and 251 were kidnapped to Gaza. Israeli airstrikes on Gaza continued on Sunday even after the planned start time for the ceasefire had passed. Netanyahu said the truce “will not begin” until Hamas provides a list of hostages to be released as part of the agreement.

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Bibi lost the support of Public Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir today, as well as two others. His majority is now razor thin.

• Netanyahu: Trump “Emphasized” That The Gaza Ceasefire Is “Temporary” (ZH)

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has issued some surprisingly bold assertions in a national televised address given just 12-hours before the much anticipated Gaza ceasefire is set to go into effect Sunday morning. Both Biden and Trump have hailed and celebrated the deal, but it’s the Republican president-elect who is by and large receiving the most credit for seeing it to the finish line. Some Israeli media outlets have represented the whole thing as a ‘defeat’ for Netanyahu, who appeared to want to keep the war going until Hamas is completely eradicated. Among Netanyahu’s most provocative words on Saturday was his claim that he has the support of President-elect Trump in the scenario Israel feels it must abandon the ceasefire and keep fighting. He says he has Trump’s full backing to resume the war, and has claimed further that Trump too agreed that the truce is just “temporary”. Watch below:

“Netanyahu also asserted that he negotiated the best deal possible, even as Israel’s far-right Public Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir said he and most of his party would resign from the government in opposition to it,” Times of Israel notes of the remarks. And there’s some some last-minute details which threaten implementation of the ceasefire… The prime minister had warned earlier that a ceasefire wouldn’t go forward unless Israel received the names of hostages to be released, as had been agreed. His statement came almost three hours after Israel had expected to receive the names from mediator Qatar. There was no immediate response from Qatar or Hamas. But without doubt Netanyahu is feeling the pressure, both within but even more from external allies, especially Washington – which writes the checks for the Israeli war machine.

As for Netanyahu’s talk of the deal being ‘temporary’ it’s unclear whether the Trump team agrees with this assessment. There hasn’t been any initial reaction from Trump as he prepares for the inauguration Monday. But Trump without doubt wants a ceasefire to stick, and is likely to be celebrating its implementation during some of Monday’s inaugural remarks. He has vowed to wind down various conflict hot spots, especially Ukraine, and bring peace. He has also warned that there will be “hell to pay” if Hamas doesn’t uphold its end of the truce deal. This suggests Netanyahu could be telling the truth, or at least an interpretation of it. An initial small group of hostages are expected to be returned to Israel by Sunday evening, with hopeful families awaiting and on edge.

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“It is the duty of the President to propose and it is the privilege of the Congress to dispose,” said FDR. It’s a shame that this president will have to do both.”

• Trump’s 100 Executive Orders On Day One Promises Chaos, Huge Changes (Moran)

Trump aides are calling it “Shock and Awe.” There will be 100 executive orders (EO) and other executive actions starting Monday, Jan. 20. Indeed, most executive actions aren’t going to “shock” a lot of people. Trump has talked about all of them in the campaign and during his years in exile since his defeat in 2020. The scope of some of the EOs is broader than some on the left have been predicting, and narrower than some on the right were hoping for. The audacious nature of the 100 EOs masks the probability that almost all of them will be challenged in federal court. Even if the challenges are eventually unsuccessful, some of the executive orders will be picked apart or canceled altogether. The EOs that have garnered the most interest and that have been the target of a hysterical scare campaign on the left are the orders relating to illegal aliens.

In fact, the first actions taken by Customs and Border Protection (CPB) will be to pick up illegal aliens who have committed felonies. “That’s the low-hanging fruit,” said Oklahoma Sen. James Lankford. “People that recently crossed, people that were legally present and committed other crimes, people that the court has ordered them removed — that’s well over a million people. Start working through that process.” In the meantime, Trump is going to reinstitute the most effective guard against illegal immigration in history: Title 42. The measure was adopted during the pandemic as a public health rule, but Trump is planning to stretch the definition to cover the current border crisis. This will set offer howls of outrage among open borders advocates and will be challenged in court. Trump has several other actions planned to secure the border.

New York Sun: “Trump could also move to allow use of the Immigration and Nationality Act, which would authorize some state and local law enforcement to aid Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials, Axios has reported. On another front, Trump has vowed to issue an executive order to strip away birthright citizenship, which ensures children born to parents who do not have legal status in America are American citizens. That will likely set up a clash over the 14th Amendment that could wind up at the Supreme Court.” Trump has also promised to strip some federal funds from going to sanctuary states and cities. He tried the same thing during his first term, and was slapped down by appeals courts because, according to Eugene Volokh, the policy “ran afoul of constitutional limits on federal power and on executive power over the budget.”

Trump is hoping that the 54 judges he appointed to the appeals courts will take a different view of the constitutionality of denying funds to sanctuary cities. Other EOs that Trump is expected to sign include actions on energy and trade. “We will begin charging those that make money off us with Trade, and they will start paying, FINALLY, their fair share,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. He also announced that on Jan. 20, he would develop an “External Revenue Service.” This new agency will “collect tariffs, duties, and all revenue” from overseas. On foreign policy, China should prepare itself. In addition to slapping China with tariffs, Trump has vowed to rescind its designated status of “permanent normal trade relations,” also known as “most favored nation.” The status was granted more than two decades ago as China prepared to enter the World Trade Organization.

Such a move is popular among congressional Republicans, who think granting China “normal” status and allowing the nation into the WTO was detrimental to the American economy. But the move would likely require congressional action. On Ukraine, although Trump has said he could stop the war in “24 hours,” it will take considerably longer, given the animosity between the two countries. But Ukraine’s President Zelensky finally appears ready to deal. How far he will go for a ceasefire will determine how long the negotiations take. Not all of Trump’s day-one actions will require an EO. Many of the actions will be to rescind Biden administration EOs. Trump is trying to do as much as he can as president, because he knows that once he’s forced to work through Congress, a quagmire will ensue.

This appears to be the fate of all presidents, present and future. Congress has abandoned its constitutional responsibility to govern. “It is the duty of the President to propose and it is the privilege of the Congress to dispose,” said FDR. It’s a shame that this president will have to do both.

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He won’t get much sleep.

• Trump’s First Day Executive Orders To Touch A Wide Range Of Subjects (JTN)

President-elect Donald Trump is set to formally take office on Monday after which he is expected to sign an exploding ball of executive orders that will set the tone for his administration on key issues, namely border security and energy. On the campaign, Trump facetiously quipped that he would not act as a dictator or impose authoritarian rule “except for day one.” “We’re closing the border and we’re drilling, drilling, drilling. Other than that I’m not gonna be a dictator,” he told an amused Sean Hannity during a town hall event last year. Since then, reports have emerged that Trump could sign as many as 100 executive orders on his first day in office. Trump himself made a litany of “day one” promises while on the campaign trail that included moves on nearly every key issue.

Such promises included the convening of a task force to plan America’s 250th birthday, the start of mass deportations, the imposition of tariffs on Mexico, an end to birthright citizenship, the termination of migrant flights, deregulations, orders permitting the expansion of energy production, restrictions on DEI and other programs, and the rooting out of career bureaucrats who work against his agenda. Immigration and border security During a recent meeting with Republican senators, Trump adviser Stephen Miller highlighted planned actions on immigration to begin early in the administration as part of what the Associated Press called “executive punch unseen in modern times.” Among the most highly-anticipated order will be the return of the “Remain-in-Mexico” policy requiring that would-be asylees stay outside the U.S. ahead of their court dates.

Others are likely to address the completion of the southern border wall, Trump’s signature campaign promise from 2016, while others are expected to target groups of illegal aliens that recently entered the United States and those who have already been approved for deportation.Some of the immigration orders may stall, however, with the Senate evidently hesitant to speedily confirm some of his key nominees for posts relevant to those policies. Still, some of his border actions will need only the weight of the president’s signature. One of his key immigration promises was to implement an executive order directing federal agents to interpret the law in a way that would not grant the children of illegal immigrants American citizenship. Trump made that promise in May of 2023, at which time it generated considerable legal speculation about the likely challenges to such a dramatic reinterpretation of the law.

Trump promised to begin mass deportations on day one, but some sources have suggested the deportation numbers will be low at first and gradually build while the administration gets its apparatus in place. “You’re not going to see historic numbers in month one. You start to see a steady increase, and then it’ll keep building and building,” one source familiar with the administration’s plans told Politico. nIndependent of immigration, Trump reportedly plans to target energy production, in part by rolling back Biden-era executive orders and environmental regulations. Specifically, Trump has taken aim at the Biden administration’s natural gas export restrictions and electric vehicle mandates, vowing to end them on day one and to expand fracking in Pennsylvania.

The natural gas export ban was part of the Biden administration’s climate change initiatives and was ostensibly temporary, though it faced legal challenges and the Department of Justice in December asked the courts to halt proceedings, given the incoming Trump administration was likely to end the ban anyway. The electric vehicle mandate, meanwhile, was a regular fixture of Trump’s campaign, especially amid United Auto Workers’ lengthy strike. Trump made the argument that the Green New Deal and the Biden administration’s effort to transfer auto-manufacturing to electric vehicles would bankrupt the industry and result in additional offshoring of their jobs. “I will cancel her insane electric vehicle mandate. It’ll be ended on day one,” he promised.

Jan. 6 pardons? In December, Trump promised to pardon Jan. 6 participants on his first day, saying they were “living in Hell” as the Justice Department pursued charges over their involvement in the incident. More than 1,500 people have faced charges related to Jan. 6 but the scope of Trump’s planned pardons remains unclear, especially whether they will include those convicted of violent offenses. Trump’s actual day one schedule was changed last minute due to inclement weather, with the Inauguration itself being moved inside the Capitol Rotunda, a move not seen since President Ronald Reagan’s second inauguration in 1985. After the swearing-in ceremony, Trump plans to travel to the Capital One arena, which will be open for the crowd to watch the ceremony on a large screen. After that appearance, he is expected to make his way to the White House to begin signing his many planned executive orders.

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He has to undo 4 years of “Biden”.

• Top Priorities for Trump’s Presidency (ET)

Readers of The Epoch Times have identified border security, fiscal responsibility, and national defense as the top priorities for President-elect Donald Trump’s incoming administration. A poll of 26,740 readers, conducted between Jan. 10–13, points to these issues as key areas of focus, reflecting widespread concern over unchecked immigration, economic instability, and global security threats.

Meanwhile, write-in responses by readers of The Epoch Times highlighted strong support for government reform, coupled with opposition to progressive policies such as diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). Border security and deportations topped the list, with 90 percent of respondents considering it “extremely important.” This aligns with Trump’s campaign pledge to launch what he has described as the largest deportation operation in American history, set to begin immediately after his inauguration on Jan. 20. “On my first day back in the Oval Office, I will sign a historic slate of executive orders to close our border to illegal aliens and stop the invasion of our country,” Trump said during a Turning Point USA conference in Phoenix in December 2024. Besides vowing to deport millions of illegal immigrants, Trump also plans to end birthright citizenship, in which anyone born in the United States is currently given automatic citizenship, including to parents of illegal immigrants.

Fiscal Discipline and Economic Stability. Government spending and debt reduction ranked as the second-highest priority, with 82 percent of respondents highlighting the need for fiscal discipline. Concerns over the ballooning national debt—now at $36.22 trillion—is a key concern. The president-elect has said he intends to address these issues through measures such as cutting wasteful spending and reforming federal agencies. To spearhead these efforts, Trump has proposed the creation of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)—with Tesla CEO Elon Musk and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy tapped to lead the initiative. DOGE aims to slash $2 trillion from the federal budget.

“Your money is being wasted,” Musk said at a Trump rally in New York in October 2024, underscoring Trump’s commitment to tackle government inefficiency and cut wasteful spending. The federal government spent $6.75 trillion in fiscal year 2024—which was $1.83 trillion more than it collected in revenue—pushing the national debt up to $36.22 trillion, according to the Treasury Department. So far in fiscal year 2025, which runs until the end of September, the government has already spent $1.79 trillion.

The issue of debt sustainability, long a concern of fiscal conservatives, has clearly been on Trump’s radar. In a statement announcing the nomination of Scott Bessent to serve as his Treasury secretary, Trump said his administration would “reinvigorate the private sector, and help curb the unsustainable path of federal debt.” The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has warned about the unsustainable trajectory of federal debt, projecting it to climb to a hefty 181 percent of GDP by 2053. If left unchecked, this rising debt is expected to slow economic growth, increase interest payments to foreign creditors, and limit lawmakers’ flexibility to address future fiscal and economic challenges, according to the CBO.

Strengthening National Defense and Securing Elections. Military strength and national security emerged as the third most important priority, with 77 percent of respondents citing it as “extremely important.” Concerns over global threats from adversaries such as China and Russia have amplified calls for bolstering America’s defense capabilities. Trump’s proposed “peace through strength” agenda emphasizes modernizing the military, increasing operational readiness, and reinforcing U.S. deterrence on the world stage. On the campaign trail, Trump vowed to reform the U.S. military, criticizing “woke” policies that he says undermine the nation’s warfighting capacity.

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More than his approval rating.

• Most Americans Share Trump’s Views – Poll (RT)

Most Americans support Donald Trump’s policies, despite the president-elect’s approval rating hovering around 50 percent, according to a New York Times and Ipsos poll published on Saturday. The poll, which surveyed 2,128 adults between January 2 and 10, indicated strong backing for several of Trump’s key policy priorities, such as reducing illegal immigration and implementing protectionist measures against Chinese imports. More than two-thirds of respondents opposed offering so-called “gender-affirming care” to children, another major agenda item for Trump. Approximately 71% of Americans believe that no minors should be prescribed puberty-blocking drugs or hormones. Last month, Trump vowed to end “transgender lunacy,” promising to prohibit sex change surgeries for minors and keep trans athletes out of women’s sports.

Nearly four in five respondents agreed that athletes who were assigned male at birth but transitioned should not be allowed to compete against women in sports. A vast majority of respondents – 87% – supported deporting illegal immigrants with criminal records, one of Trump’s central talking points during his reelection campaign. More than half of respondents either strongly or somewhat supported the deportation of all illegal immigrants in the US, according to the poll results. Nearly two-thirds of respondents – including 54% of Hispanics and 44% of Democrats – favored deporting undocumented migrants who entered the US during President Joe Biden’s last four years in office. The Biden administration reversed several immigration restrictions set by Trump during his first presidency, contributing to a spike in illegal immigration.

Support for Trump’s promises to impose heavier tariffs on Chinese and Mexican imports was nearly evenly split, but slightly leaning toward opposition. Approximately 46% supported raising tariffs on goods imported from China and Mexico, while 50% opposed such measures. Trump’s favorability rating remains just below 50%, according to data posted by poll aggregator website FiveThirtyEight on Friday. More than half of Americans view the entire US political system as broken, according to the NYT/Ipsos poll. Some 57% of Democrats and 63% of Republicans believe that the American political system has been broken for decades.

Read more …

TikTok itself pulled the plug. From yesterday: “The platform’s CEO, Shou Zi Chew, is expected to attend Trump’s inauguration and has thanked Trump for his readiness to work on averting the ban. Trump’s incoming national security adviser, Mike Waltz, has signaled that TikTok could remain operational if a “viable deal” is reached. “We will put measures in place to keep TikTok from going dark,” Waltz said, adding that the legislation allows a 90-day extension for ByteDance to finalize divestiture.”

• TikTok Goes Dark In The US (RT)

Some 170 million US users of the viral social media app TikTok faced a blackout of the service on Saturday, days after the Supreme Court passed a decision that could lead to a national ban of the platform. On Friday, the Supreme Court ruled that TikTok needs to divest from its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, by Sunday or face a ban. Late Saturday, users in the US received an update for TikTok, blocking the application’s use and explaining the outage. “We regret that a US law banning TikTok will take effect on January 19 and force us to make our services temporarily unavailable,” the messages said. “We’re working to restore our service in the US as soon as possible.” TikTok warned about the possible suspension of its services in a statement on its newsroom page on Saturday.

“Unless the Biden Administration immediately provides a definitive statement to satisfy the most critical service providers assuring non-enforcement, unfortunately TikTok will be forced to go dark on January 19,” TikTok said in the statement. The Supreme Court’s decision stems from allegations that ByteDance’s ownership of TikTok poses a risk to US national security. According to the court, the app’s ownership could potentially allow the Chinese government access to American users’ data. TikTok has dismissed allegations that its Chinese ownership poses a threat, maintaining that it has “never shared” American users’ data with Beijing. President-elect Donald Trump has signaled that he will probably give the app a temporary reprieve from the ban to allow it to sell to a non-Chinese company. Trump will “most likely” give the app a “90-day extension,” he told NBC news in a phone interview on Saturday.

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Rubio is all about China.

• Marco Rubio Says No Clear Reason Why US Bankrolled Ukraine (SCF)

It doesn’t bode well that the next U.S. Secretary of State begins his top-flight position in government by telling blatant lies and fatuities. Marco Rubio (53) is a sure bet to be confirmed as America’s most senior international envoy representing the new administration of President Donald Trump, who will be inaugurated in the White House on Monday. This week, Florida Senator Rubio appeared before the Senate in confirmation hearings for his post. Rubio has been a senator since 2011 and has served on foreign relations and intelligence committees. Despite bitter personal clashes with Trump in the 2016 presidential campaign, Rubio was picked for the top diplomat post in the incoming administration. The confirmation is a done deal given his deep connections in Congress among Republicans and Democrats.

The ambitious son of Cuban immigrants is known for his hawkish views. He previously called Russian President Vladimir Putin a “thug” and described Russia as a “gangster state with nuclear weapons.” Any future trips to Moscow will be awkward to say the least, especially when the “tough guy” Floridian meets a real diplomat like Russia’s Sergei Lavrov. Strangely, though, this week, Rubio projected himself as the voice of reason and diplomacy. It was quite a U-turn. He told the Senate committee that the top priority of the Trump administration will be to bring the war in Ukraine to an end. That view aligns with Trump’s oft-expressed desire for a settlement to the three-year conflict. There’s a lot to parse in Rubio’s weasel words. He informed senators: ”It should be the official policy of the United States that we want to see it [the war] end… This is not going to be an easy endeavor… My hope is that it could begin with some ceasefire.”

Rubio was one of the biggest cheerleaders for the Ukrainian regime, believing that it would inflict a strategic defeat on Russia. Now, he has suddenly been overcome with seeming prudence and concern for peace by declaring that Ukraine cannot possibly win against Russia. Rubio went on: “In order to achieve objectives like the one that needs to occur in Ukraine, it is important for everyone to be realistic. There will have to be concessions made by the Russian Federation, but also by the Ukrainians, and the United States lends itself there. It’s also important that there be some balance on both sides.” So, you see what’s happening here. Rubio is uncharacteristically sounding like a peace envoy – after years of spouting belligerence towards Russia – and sneakily setting up the United States to be a kind of broker between two warring parties.

Note how he advocates concessions by both sides – Ukraine and Russia – without mentioning that the U.S. is a principal party to the conflict (albeit by using proxy Ukraine). He appeals to people to be “realistic” because Ukraine can’t win and it is “running out of Ukrainians.” This is after Rubio and countless other hawkish politicians in Washington pushed this war to the destruction of Ukraine, with over one million casualties from far superior Russian firepower. Rubio and his imperialist warmongering ilk have pushed this proxy war at the risk of inciting a nuclear conflagration with Russia. But it was the bit when Rubio tried to sound like the innocent diplomat deploring violence that peaked contempt for this pathetic Yes Man.

After acknowledging that the United States has supplied Ukraine with $175 billion in total aid, including at least $65 billion in military, since the eruption of conflict in February 2022, Rubio complained that it was “never clearly delineated what the end goal of the conflict was.” He added: “What exactly were we funding? What exactly were we putting money towards? On many occasions, it sounded like ‘however much it takes for however long it takes’. That is not a realistic or prudent position.” Marco Rubio is a liar. He knows full well from his deep involvement in U.S. imperialist machinations that the plan was to sponsor a NeoNazi regime in Kiev since the CIA-backed in 2014 to wage war on Russia for its calculated strategic defeat and conquest. Washington bankrolled Ukrainian fascists to do its dirty work. That’s exactly what it was funding. Now Rubio is pretending that it was all some kind of misadventure that needs to be brought to a settlement.

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Tuesday. Is that under Yellen or Bessent?

• US Treasury To Take ‘Extraordinary Measures’ After Trump Inauguration (RT)

US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has said her department will take “extraordinary measures” to prevent the US from hitting the national debt limit on Tuesday, one day after President-elect Donald Trump takes office. In a letter to Congress on Friday, Yellen explained that the US will hit its roughly $36 trillion debt limit between January 14 and January 23, potentially leading to a default. To avoid this possibility, Yellen said the Treasury Department will use a number of accounting tricks, including pausing payments into civil service retirement accounts until Congress and the president agree to raise the debt ceiling again. Yellen did not say for how long her measures will forestall a default. sThe US debt ceiling was raised three times during President Joe Biden’s term in the White House.

Last month, Trump pressed House Republicans to include another raise in a stopgap spending bill, but the proposal was ultimately defeated by dozens of fiscal conservatives in the GOP. Trump has repeatedly said that the debt ceiling should be abolished altogether to avoid such near-yearly showdowns, arguing that the limit – which is intended to restrict government borrowing – is pointless when it is repeatedly raised. ”It doesn’t mean anything, except psychologically,” he told NBC News last month. “The Democrats have said they want to get rid of it. If they want to get rid of it, I would lead the charge.” Scott Bessent, Trump’s pick to replace Yellen, has said he would work with Congress to repeal the debt ceiling if instructed by Trump.

Read more …

“The raid will begin on Tuesday morning and last all week..”

• Trump Plans Huge Chicago Illegal Immigrant Raid – WSJ (RT)

US President-elect Donald Trump will kick off his deportation drive with a large-scale raid in Chicago one day after his inauguration, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday. Hundreds of immigration officers are expected to take part in the raid. The raid will begin on Tuesday morning and last all week, with between 100 and 200 Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers deployed to the city, the newspaper reported, citing four anonymous sources. Officers will target illegal immigrants with criminal backgrounds, although anyone present during arrests who entered the country illegally will also be detained, the sources said. Trump promised on the campaign trail that if elected, he would lead “the largest deportation operation in American history.”

In an interview with MSNBC last month, he said he would start by deporting illegal immigrants who have committed crimes inside the US, before moving on to “people outside of criminals.” There are thought to be anywhere between 11 million an 35 million illegal immigrants living in the US. The president-elect has appointed former ICE Director Tom Homan as his ‘border czar’, and tasked him with carrying out the deportations. “We’re going to start right here in Chicago, Illinois,” Homan said at a Republican dinner in the city last month. “And if the Chicago mayor doesn’t want to help, he can step aside. But if he impedes us, if he knowingly harbors or conceals an illegal alien, I will prosecute him.” Chicago was chosen as the location of the first raid because of its high numbers of illegal immigrants and Trump’s animosity with the city’s Democratic mayor, Brandon Johnson, the Wall Street Journal’s sources said.

Chicago is a so-called ‘sanctuary city’, meaning the city authorities do not ask about immigration status, and are forbidden from cooperating with federal immigration agencies such as ICE. Johnson has vowed to keep these policies in place, and on Wednesday, the Chicago City Council sided with him, voting 39-11 against a measure that would have allowed city police officers to work with ICE on immigration cases. In a statement to the Wall Street Journal, the Chicago Police Department said that while its officers would not take part in the upcoming raid, they “will not intervene or interfere with any other government agencies performing their duties.” More raids are expected to follow, the newspaper reported, adding that large immigrant centers such as New York, Los Angeles, Denver, and Miami are considered top targets for the Trump administration.

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“..the Azov Sea became Russia’s internal sea. Any claims to its waters are gross interference in the internal affairs of our country..”

• Russia Warns Against UK-Ukraine Claims to Azov Sea (Sp.)

Russia will firmly suppress any attempts to lay claims to the Sea of Azov after it became its internal sea, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Saturday. “Neither Ukraine nor the UK has any room for cooperation in the Azov Sea. After the Donetsk People’s Republic and the Kherson and Zaporozhye regions joined Russia in September 2022, the Azov Sea became Russia’s internal sea. Any claims to its waters are gross interference in the internal affairs of our country and will be severely suppressed,” Zakharova said.

Moscow considers this agreement to be nothing more than a PR stunt, she added. “Behind this, we see London’s long-standing desire to gain a foothold in these waters, especially in the Azov-Black Sea basin. Kiev, despite all its geopolitical claims, has been assigned only a supporting role in this,” Zakharova said. On Thursday, Ukraine and the United Kingdom signed a “One Hundred Year Partnership Agreement,” pledging to enhance maritime cooperation in the Baltic, Black and Azov seas.

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“..disrupted supplies to Austria, Italy and Central Europe, raising energy prices and prompting regional efforts to minimize the impact.”

• Frozen Future? Europe’s Energy Crisis Worsens Amid Gas War (Sp.)

Ukraine’s halt to the transit of Russian gas, combined with sanctions imposed by the US on Russian oil and gas companies, pose a significant risk of plunging Europe into a new energy crisis. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban raised these concerns during his visit to Belgrade, where he held talks focused on energy challenges with Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic. “Recent developments in Europe’s energy supply are alarming,” Orban said in a video message aired on Hungarian television. “Ukraine has blocked a pipeline that supplied gas to Hungary, and the US administration has introduced sanctions that have driven up energy prices across Europe. The continent is hurtling toward another energy crisis,” Orban said.

The outgoing US government imposed sanctions on Russia’s oil and gas sector on January 10, targeting companies like Gazprom, Neft and Novatek, 183 tanker vessels and top executives. Serbia’s NIS, partly owned by Gazprom, was also affected, with the US demanding the cancellation of Russian investments by February 25. Combined with Ukraine’s block on Russian gas transit on January 1, the actions have disrupted supplies to Austria, Italy and Central Europe, raising energy prices and prompting regional efforts to minimize the impact.

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“..he did not argue, and he did not shout. “I need a week,” was all he said.”

• New Juicy Details About How Biden Was Forced To Drop Out (Margolis)

“If you run and you lose to Trump, and we lose the Senate, and we don’t get back the House, that 50 years of amazing, beautiful work goes out the window,” Schumer told him. “But worse — you go down in American history as one of the darkest figures.” Schumer added, “If I were you, I wouldn’t run, and I’m urging you not to run.” Democrats spent years dismissing concerns over Mr. Biden’s age and mental fitness for the presidency, and ultimately spearheaded the effort to pressure him into stepping aside. Amusingly, the story makes clear that Schumer’s concern wasn’t over Biden’s ability to do the job.

For months, Mr. Schumer had been concerned that Mr. Biden was going to lose to Mr. Trump and cost Democrats Congress. It wasn’t that he thought Mr. Biden was not capable of the job. During their weekly conversations, the president often rambled, but he had always rambled. Once in a while, Mr. Biden would forget why he had called, but Mr. Schumer thought little of it. He was convinced that Mr. Biden could handle the job. According to the story, Republican attacks about Biden being old and senile were just too much to overcome—even though the mainstream media was rabidly pushing the Democratic Party line.

“Long before the president’s disastrous debate performance, Mr. Schumer had privately concluded that the barrier of Mr. Biden’s age was too much for him to overcome,” the report says. The debate wound up being “a gift” in the eyes of Chuck Schumer, because it became “a forcing mechanism to start an overdue discussion about the president’s political viability.” As concerns mounted over President Biden’s ability to continue his campaign, Biden continued to refuse to step aside, sending a defiant letter on July 8 declaring his intention to stay in the race, angering congressional Democrats. At a tense July 11 meeting, frustrated senators demanded proof of Biden’s fitness, with some warning their silence would soon end.

Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island told Mr. Biden’s aides that the silence from the majority of Democratic senators should not be interpreted as a sign of support. It was out of respect and affection to allow Mr. Biden time to gracefully exit the race, but it would not last forever, he said, because if they continued to vouch for his fitness, they would be “lying.”. As support from the caucus was crumbling, Schumer ultimately was the one who went to Biden’s beach house to “deliver his own blunt message.” Mr. Schumer said if he had even a 50 percent chance of winning, he would probably keep going. “Fifty-fifty, to do this, to stay here; it’s worth it,” he said. “But, Mr. President, you’re not getting the information as to what the chances are.”

When he asked whether Mr. Biden had talked to his pollsters about his chances of winning the race, the president shook his head. “Well, I have talked to them,” Mr. Schumer said. “My guess is you have about a 5 percent chance. None of your pollsters disagree with me.” Only twice did Mr. Biden interrupt to ask a question, and both times it was: “Do you really think Kamala can win?” Mr. Schumer said that he didn’t know, but that she had a far better chance than Mr. Biden did. (Mr. Biden has since made it clear that he disagrees. In an interview with USA Today, the president said of whether he could have defeated Mr. Trump: “It’s presumptuous to say that, but I think yes.”) […] At the time, Mr. Biden revealed little of his own thinking, but he did not argue, and he did not shout. “I need a week,” was all he said.

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“..what passes for “Western democracy.”

• The Man Who Probably Will Not Be Allowed To Lead Romania (Karganovic)

Calin Georgescu rightfully has a huge grievance against what passes for “Western democracy.” He is the clear first-round winner in the Presidential elections held in Romania late last year. Yet his projected even more resounding victory in the second round, scheduled for early December 2024, was scrapped (as the BBC indelicately put it) following a Romanian Supreme Court ruling that the electoral process was marred by alleged hybrid warfare interference conducted by Russia on Georgescu’s behalf.

How do you “scrap” elections in a vibrant democracy such as Romania, which also happens to be a member in good standing of NATO and the European Union, which are bastions of liberal freedoms and the rule of law? Well, you do it by making up a bogus dossier on the political candidate that you dislike and by ordering the local judiciary to act on it as if it were genuine evidence. The dossier purporting to document the alleged interference was so patently phony that at its first sitting to consider the matter the Romanian Supreme Court dismissed it out of hand. This show of integrity did not sit well at all with the paladins of the rules-based order. So they ordered the judges to reassemble forthwith in their chambers and to get it right this time. On 6 December the distinguished Romanian jurists did just that and obediently reversed their ruling issued just four days previously.

Citing Article 146 (f) of the Romanian Constitution concerning the legality and correctness of the presidential elections, the Court ordered that the “entire electoral process will be integrally redone.” So the result of the first round was duly “scrapped” and along with it the second round as well. The second round, which was in progress as the judges hurriedly improvised their new ruling, was stopped in its tracks. As even the Atlantic Council, no friend of elections which go the wrong way, was compelled to admit “the rollout of the decision was somewhat fumbled, as it became public while polling stations were already open for the [Romanian] diaspora in the second-round presidential election, and by the time the process was stopped, around 53,000 citizens abroad had already voted.” Scrapped just in time, because the Romanian diaspora was known to be a hotbed of Georgescu supporters.

The Presidential election was set by the judges for an unspecified date in the future. Some rumours suggest that it might be in May of this year, or whenever it is that the stage can be prepared to ensure the right outcome. In the meantime, Klaus Iohannis, who should have relinquished his post in December to his successor, is now as legally “expired” as his Ukrainian colleague Zelensky. But that does not seem to bother any of the vociferous champions of the democratic process. Iohannis after all is their man. The Romanian public, however, do not seem to take kindly to electoral interference by the compliant judges and their string-pullers, who are widely suspected of being located abroad but not in Russia. Thousands have been marching in the streets of Bucharest and other major cities to oppose the cancellation of the elections.

How much good it will do them in a country that has embraced the principles of Western democracy remains to be seen. The protagonist of this political earthquake who was not permitted to democratically establish his credentials as the new President of Romania, Calin Georgescu, ever since his first-round triumph has been subjected to the full measure of calumny that is reserved for those whom the globalist system perceives as a non-team-player and a threat. The hope was evidently that he would be successfully discredited and simply fade away, allowing the charade of “democratic elections” with a prearranged outcome to be repeated whenever it is judged safe to do so.

Expectedly, the Georgescu affair with its scandalous implications has been largely ignored by the collective West media, except for a few derogatory observations here and there at the banned candidate’s expense. The Georgescu story might have died a quiet death but for the professionalism of American podcaster Shawn Ryan, who decided to perform a public service by travelling to Romania to find out first-hand what the electoral commotion was all about. The result was a remarkable interview with the man who by all reasonable estimates should be sitting today in the Presidential office in Bucharest. It is worth viewing carefully and in its entirety for the insights it affords into the sombre times in which we happen to live.

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Suspend them, but not Fauci? How does that work?

• US Suspends EcoHealth Alliance, Peter Daszak (ZH)

EcoHealth Alliance, the nonprofit that Dr. Anthony Fauci used to offshore risky gain-of-function research 6 months before the Obama administration banned it, has finally been cut off by the US Government – along with its former president, Peter Daszak, for a period of five years following scrutiny over its work in Wuhan, China ahead of the Covid-19 pandemic. The decision by the Department of Health and Human Services was based on findings by the House Oversight Committee, which announced on Friday that EcoHealth and Daszak had been disbarred. “Justice for the American people was served today,” said Oversight Chairman James Comer (R-KY) in a statement.

“Bad actor EcoHealth Alliance and its corrupt former President, Dr. Peter Daszak, were formally debarred by HHS for using taxpayer funds to facilitate dangerous gain-of-function research in China. Today’s decision is not only a victory for the U.S. taxpayer, but also for American national security and the safety of citizens worldwide.” EcoHealth funding had been suspended in May by HHS, which recommended a permanent ban on funding the nonprofit. “Given that a lab-related incident involving gain-of-function research is the most likely origin of COVID-19, EcoHealth and its former President should never again receive a single cent from the U.S. taxpayer,” Comer continued. As journalist Paul Thacker noted in June, the NIH lied about EcoHealth’s gain-of-function research, feeding lies to reporters, while lying to Congress.

Meanwhile, former NIAID director Dr. Anthony Fauci ‘prompted’ the fabrication of a paper by a cadre of scientists aimed at disproving the Covid-19 lab-leak theory. According to US Right to Know, emails obtained in 2020 revealed that a statement in The Lancet authored by 27 prominent public health scientists condemning “conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin” was organized by employees of EcoHealth Alliance, a non-profit group that has received millions of dollars of U.S. taxpayer funding to genetically manipulate coronaviruses with scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The emails obtained via public records requests show that EcoHealth Alliance President Peter Daszak drafted the Lancet statement, and that he intended it to “not be identifiable as coming from any one organization or person” but rather to be seen as “simply a letter from leading scientists”.

To review; The US was doing risky gain-of-function research on US soil until 2014, when the Obama administration banned it. Four months before the ban, Dr. Fauci offshored it to Wuhan, China through New York nonprofit, EcoHealth Alliance. After Sars-CoV-2 broke out down the street from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, Fauci engaged in a massive campaign to deny the possibility of a lab-leak from the lab he funded, and instead pin the blame on a yet-to-be discovered zoonotic intermediary species.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

Clock

 

 

Clean

 

 

Tree

 

 

Real love
https://twitter.com/i/status/1880380928050213339

 

 

Shaolin
https://twitter.com/i/status/1880282013938380849

 

 

Remora

 

 

Frens

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle December 12 2024

Dec 122024
 
 December 12, 2024  Posted by at 10:25 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,  45 Responses »


Alfred Sisley A Village Street in Winter 1893

 

• Trump Wants ‘Day One’ Changes To US Policy (RT)
• Trump Told Zelensky He Wants ‘Immediate Ceasefire’ – Reuters (RT)
• Trump Likely To Leave Ukraine With Financial Black Hole – NYT (RT)
• FBI Director Chris Wray Resigns (ZH)
• Sheriff’s Assn. Embraces Kash Patel As FBI director: ‘He’s A Butt Kicker’ (JTN)
• RFK Jr. Wants To Prove CIA Killed His Uncle – Axios (RT)
• Trump Mocks ‘Bidenomics’ (RT)
• Tulsi Gabbard Goes On Offense With Trump’s Support As Assad Falls (JTN)
• Democrats Ignore Tulsi Gabbard’s Request To Meet (RCW)
• Giuliani Says Blanket Pardons From Biden Could End Up At Supreme Court (JTN)
• Russia Tells Citizens To Avoid Visiting US (RT)
• Euroclear Warns Of Risks If Russian Assets Seized (RT)
• US Loan To Ukraine ‘Theft’ Of Russian Money – Deputy FM (RT)
• Nothing Will Be Left Of Frozen Russian Funds – EU’s Kallas (RT)
• US Media ‘Can’t Calm Down’ Over Loss Of Influence – RT editor-in-chief (RT)
• Judge Rejects the Onion’s Purchase of Infowars in Bankruptcy Sale (ET)
• Liberal World Order Is Over – Orban (RT)
• Syria’s post-mortem: Terror, Occupation, and Palestine (Pepe Escobar)

 

 

 

 

NOTE: I noticed there are lots of RT articles today – again. I even looked for other pieces on the same topics. But I will leave in what RT covers better. It’s not propaganda, it’s a good news service, and Margarita Simonyan is an excellent Editor-in-Chief.

 

 

Kash
https://twitter.com/i/status/1866870168674062465

Waltz
https://twitter.com/i/status/1866650880868851891

Alina
https://twitter.com/i/status/1866592202211619003
https://twitter.com/i/status/1866559337172258879

Dershowitz

Stossel

 

 

 

 

“..plans to issue more than 25 executive orders on his first day in office..”

• Trump Wants ‘Day One’ Changes To US Policy (RT)

US President-elect Donald Trump plans to issue more than 25 executive orders on his first day in office, “dramatically” reshaping a number of government policies, Reuters has said. Executive orders are presidential directives instructing the US government what to do and how, within the boundaries of the constitution. Outgoing President Joe Biden began his term in 2021 by signing 17 such documents, mainly revoking policies Trump enacted during his first mandate. “The American people can bank on President Trump using his executive power on day one to deliver on the promises he made to them on the campaign trail,” Trump spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt told Reuters on Wednesday.

Trump has told his aides he wants to make a “big splash” and act with greater scale and speed than in the first term, two anonymous sources told the agency, revealing the number of anticipated presidential actions. More orders will be issued in the following days and weeks, the sources said. According to Reuters, some of the first executive orders will focus on immigration enforcement, including resuming the construction of the wall on the border with Mexico. While this could face some pushback from states governed by Democrats, under the Biden administration it was established in court that immigration was entirely within the purview of the federal government. One planned executive order would end birthright citizenship, which the US has been granting to anyone born in the country based on a particular interpretation of the 14th Amendment. Trump aides told Reuters that the incoming administration will be ready to defend this in court.

Other rumored executive orders would deal with reversing the Biden administration’s promotion of “equity,” including transgender rules and racial preferences, as well as mandatory “diversity training” for federal contractors. One source from the State Department transition team described an executive order that would review hiring decisions based on identity rather than merit. Stephen Miller, recently announced as Trump’s deputy chief of staff for policy, is reportedly coordinating the executive order effort. The measures are said to be based on drafts provided by think tanks such as the America First Policy Institute, the Conservative Partnership Institute and the Heritage Foundation. Many of Trump’s executive orders from the first term were challenged by Democrats in court. Even though most were eventually upheld, the delay meant they did not end up being implemented before Biden took over.

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“Trump “behaved in a friendly, respectful and open manner and appeared to be in listening mode.”

• Trump Told Zelensky He Wants ‘Immediate Ceasefire’ – Reuters (RT)

US President-elect Donald Trump has told Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky and French President Emmanuel Macron that he wants an end to hostilities between Moscow and Kiev as soon as possible, Reuters reported on Wednesday, citing sources. The three met last week in Paris, where they held talks on the Ukraine crisis, despite Trump’s reported reluctance to attend the sit-down. Following the meeting, Trump claimed that Ukraine “would like to make a deal” to end the conflict with Russia. Zelensky, however, insisted that Kiev must first receive ironclad security guarantees while ruling out any territorial concessions. A Reuters source familiar with the matter said that during a 35-minute discussion that took place without advisers, Trump “behaved in a friendly, respectful and open manner and appeared to be in listening mode.”

Several sources also suggested that the president-elect appeared to be trying to build a personal rapport with his counterparts. According to four sources, the three leaders “did not discuss specific details of any vision for peace,” but Trump insisted that he “wanted an immediate ceasefire and negotiations to end the war quickly.” Neither the president-elect nor his team “have been forthcoming on how exactly they envisage a solution” to the conflict, the article added. However, a Ukrainian source told the agency that the issue of security guarantees to prevent a resumption of hostilities was raised during the meeting. Asked about Trump’s reaction, the source noted that “he’s thinking about all the details.” Trump vowed on the campaign trail that he would bring the Ukraine conflict to a swift end if reelected, even before he is sworn into office in January.

Last month, he announced that he would appoint retired Army General Keith Kellogg as a special envoy for Ukraine and Russia. Kellogg was reportedly one of the authors of a peace plan that would freeze the conflict along the current front line without recognizing Russia’s sovereignty over territories claimed by Ukraine while suspending Kiev’s NATO membership ambitions. Moscow has repeatedly ruled out freezing the conflict, stressing that all the goals of its military operation, including Ukraine’s neutrality, demilitarization and denazification, must be met. Russian President Vladimir Putin said this summer that Moscow would immediately declare a ceasefire and start peace talks once Kiev withdraws troops from all Russian territories, including the Donetsk and Lugansk republics, and Kherson and Zaporozhye regions.

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Ukraine IS the black hole.

• Trump Likely To Leave Ukraine With Financial Black Hole – NYT (RT)

US President-elect Donald Trump and the Republican Party are unlikely to provide Ukraine with the same level of financial support as the outgoing administration of President Joe Biden, the New York Times reported on Tuesday. Kiev has been heavily reliant on foreign aid throughout the conflict to keep its economy afloat. However, this support could be significantly reduced once Trump takes office in January, according to the outlet. The Republican has repeatedly signaled that he would “probably” reduce American spending on Ukraine and has instead been calling for an “immediate ceasefire” between Moscow and Kiev. Trump has also suggested that he would be able to resolve the conflict within 24 hours of taking office, although he has not provided concrete details about how he would achieve this.

Some believe he could use the threat of reduced US aid to force the Ukrainian leadership to begin negotiations with Moscow while simultaneously threatening to increase aid to pressure Russian President Vladimir Putin into talks. The New York Times prediction comes after the Biden administration has been spending its last weeks seemingly trying to leave Kiev with something for when Trump takes over. On Tuesday, the White House approved the transfer of some $20 billion to Ukraine in the form of a loan to be repaid using the interest generated by Russia’s frozen central bank assets. The loan is part of a broader $50 billion deal devised earlier by the G7 countries, which also includes a $20 billion EU commitment and another $10 billion to be split by the UK, Japan, and Canada.

Last month, Biden also wrote off about $4.7 billion in taxpayer-funded loans to Kiev. State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said that the move is in the “national interest of the US and its EU, G7+ and NATO partners.” Trump, meanwhile, has insisted that any future aid to Kiev must be granted in the form of loans instead of taxpayer-funded gifts. The Ukrainian government is almost entirely reliant on Western aid to support its economy. As of October, Kiev’s public debt had exceeded $155 billion, according to the Ukrainian Finance Ministry, with over $111 billion represented by foreign liabilities. In September, Ukrainian MP Irina Gerashchenko reported that Kiev’s 2025 budget deficit is estimated to amount to some $37.6 billion, or nearly 20% of GDP. She stated that Ukraine expects to raise only $944 million from partners next year and stressed that without donor support the Ukrainian economy “will not survive.”

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Trump appointed Wray, who then directed the raid on Mar-a-Lago.

• FBI Director Chris Wray Resigns (ZH)

Before President-elect Donald Trump could say “You’re Fired!” – FBI Director Christopher Wray has resigned, and will leave his post at the end of President Joe Biden’s term. Wray’s decision comes weeks after Trump nominated Kash Patel as his replacement. Patel, a fierce critic of the FBI, has said he would seek to shrink the agency’s power, close its Washington headquarters, fire its top ranks, and prosecute corrupt agents. While Wray’s departure was always in the cards, the move comes two days after Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) wrote an 11-page letter to Wray asking him to step down, accusing him of mismanagement and “failure to take control of the FBI.” “These failures are serious enough and their pattern widespread enough to have shattered my confidence in your leadership and the confidence and hope many others in Congress placed in you,” wrote Grassley.

As the Epoch Times notes further, in November 2022, Grassley published FBI documents showing that higher-ranking officials were sometimes penalized less severely than subordinates. Wray had addressed this disparity, saying in a Bureau-wide email on Dec. 11, 2020, that the agency “has zero tolerance for any form of sexual harassment or sexual misconduct.” On March 4, 2022, FBI Deputy Director Abbate warned all FBI employees: “Regardless of your rank and title, every one of us has the responsibility to treat everyone with dignity, respect, and professionalism. … Harassment of any kind will not be tolerated.” Grassley also mentioned in his letter his inquiry about the vetting of refugees from Afghanistan through the Operation Allies Welcome program.

In February 2022, the Department of Justice (DOJ) reported that the Department of Homeland Security had not cross-checked these evacuees against data from the Department of Defense. As a result, 50 individuals who had been flagged as “potentially significant security concerns” by the National Ground Intelligence Center were allowed into the United States. Requests to the FBI for further information were ignored, Grassley said. Wray said “in a classified multi-agency briefing to congressional staff” that he was unsure of the location of other refugees who might pose a threat, Grassley wrote. “I can’t sit here right now and tell you that we know where all are located at any given time,” Grassley quoted Wray as saying. He pointed out that one potential terror threat had been foiled when the FBI arrested Nasir Ahmad Tawhedi on Oct. 7 of this year. Tawhedi was allegedly planning a terror attack to disrupt the U.S. election on Nov. 5.

Grassley also accused Wray and the FBI of exercising a double standard by refusing to investigate President Joe Biden’s or former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s mishandling of classified information. President-elect Donald Trump appointed Wray in 2017 after firing the previous director, James Comey. In a recent interview with “Meet the Press,” Trump expressed displeasure over Wray’s performance. “He invaded my home,” Trump said, referring to the 2022 FBI raid on his Florida residence, Mar-a-Lago. Trump also cited Wray’s initial claim that his ear was struck by shrapnel instead of an assassin’s bullet, and waning public respect for the FBI as an institution. “I can’t say I’m thrilled,” he said.

The president-elect has already named Kash Patel the new FBI director, indicating that Wray’s time at the post is nearly over. However, Grassley wants Wray and Abbate to step down sooner. “For the good of the country, it’s time for you and your deputy to move on to the next chapter in your lives,” the letter says. The agency told The Epoch Times in an emailed statement: “The FBI has repeatedly demonstrated our commitment to responding to Congressional oversight and being transparent with the American people. “Director Wray and Deputy Director Abbate have taken strong actions toward achieving accountability in the areas mentioned in the letter and remain committed to sharing information about the continuously evolving threat environment facing our nation and the extraordinary work of the FBI.”

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“..the FBI is way too lawfare, way too weaponized and way too corrupt.”

• Sheriff’s Assn. Embraces Kash Patel As FBI director: ‘He’s A Butt Kicker’ (JTN)

A prominent leader of an influential sheriff association on Tuesday publicly embraced President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for FBI Director, Kash Patel, claiming he was a “butt kicker.” Trump nominated Patel to replace current FBI Director Christopher Wray last month. But Wray, who was selected by Trump in 2017, can legally remain in his position until 2027. Former Arizona sheriff Richard Mack, who founded and leads the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association, said his group has already endorsed Patel and encouraged the nominee to pick a sheriff as his deputy director. “We already endorsed him publicly, and we love that he’s there. He’s a butt kicker. That’s exactly what we need,” Mack said on the “Just The News, No Noise” TV show.

“There’s a lot of good sheriffs that really could help him clean Washington, D.C., up, but the FBI is way too lawfare, way too weaponized and way too corrupt.” Mack said he has connections to the FBI through his father, who retired from the bureau, and a cousin who was deputy director, and still believes the bureau needs some “revamping.” “I’d like to see [Patel] completely redo the FBI, abolish it and then bring back a few to keep it going where they’re really needed,” the former law enforcement officer said. “But the sheriffs and local officials and state officials can do a lot of what they’ve been doing, and there’s duplicity all over the place … We really have too many bureaucrats in Washington, D.C., and this bureaucratic nightmare needs to end.”

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“Shortly after RFK Jr. endorsed him in August, Trump promised to declassify the last of the documents pertaining to the JFK assassination through a new presidential commission.”

• RFK Jr. Wants To Prove CIA Killed His Uncle – Axios (RT)

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is lobbying for his daughter-in law to become deputy CIA director so she can get to the bottom of the assassination of his uncle, John F. Kennedy, the Washington outlet Axios has claimed. President Kennedy was fatally shot in Dallas, Texas in November 1963. The official investigation identified Lee Harvey Oswald as the sole suspect. Oswald himself was killed soon afterward by local resident Jack Ruby. RFK Jr. has long suspected the CIA of being behind the hit, however. “RFK believes that and wants to get to the bottom of it,” an anonymous Republican source told Axios on Wednesday, suggesting this rationale might be behind the proposal to nominate Amaryllis Fox Kennedy as deputy director of the CIA.

Fox Kennedy ran her father-in-law’s independent presidential campaign after the Democrats closed off their primaries. RFK Jr. ended up endorsing Republican Donald Trump, who won in November. The former Democrat has been nominated to head the Department of Health and Human Services in the next administration, while former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe has been tapped to head the CIA. According to Axios, RFK Jr. has been telling people that Fox Kennedy would help get to the truth about JFK. She has previous experience at the CIA, having been an undercover agent for almost a decade. Shortly after RFK Jr. endorsed him in August, Trump promised to declassify the last of the documents pertaining to the JFK assassination through a new presidential commission.

In an interview with Tucker Carlson in August 2023, RFK Jr. claimed that the CIA had the means, motive, and opportunity to murder his uncle and suggested the agency may have been behind the 1968 assassination of his father as well. According to RFK Jr., the commission that investigated the Dallas assassination and pinned it on Oswald was not really run by Justice Earl Warren but by Allen Dulles, the long-running CIA chief that JFK had sacked in November 1961. The CIA and Dulles had a personal vendetta against JFK because he had cracked down on their operations against Cuba after the 1962 missile crisis with the Soviet Union and threatened to purge the agency’s planning division, RFK Jr. has argued.

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“You pay taxes, I send it to Ukraine. They send it back to Hunter. Hunter gives it to me. Pardon Hunter.”

• Trump Mocks ‘Bidenomics’ (RT)

US President-elect Donald Trump has mocked his predecessor’s economic agenda, using a meme involving funding for Ukraine and the recently pardoned Hunter Biden. Earlier this month, President Joe Biden gave his son Hunter, a convicted felon who lied about his addiction to crack cocaine while applying for a gun license, a blanket pardon for anything he may have done between January 2014 and December 2024. Before pulling out of the US presidential race, Biden had insisted on multiple occasions that he would not pardon his son. Trump’s campaign slammed the decision as an example of how the current government has weaponized the justice system. On Tuesday evening, Trump shared a meme on his Truth Social platform, describing how ‘Bidenomics’ works in practice. It showed Biden standing beside a whiteboard with a list of items. “You pay taxes,” the list begins. “I send it to Ukraine. They send it back to Hunter. Hunter gives it to me. Pardon Hunter.”

Hunter Biden was paid millions of dollars to sit on the board of a Ukrainian gas company while his father was vice president of the US and lead on Washington’s relations with Kiev. According to the contents of a laptop the younger Biden forgot at a Delaware repair shop, 10% of all international contracts went to “the Big Guy,” widely assumed to be a reference to his father. Biden officially defeated Trump in 2020 and embarked on an ambitious plan to reinvent the US economy after the Covid-19 pandemic that his advisers dubbed ‘Bidenomics’. Vice President Kamala Harris, whom the Democrats put forth as their candidate this year, spent the campaign insisting that the economy was in great shape and that ‘Bidenomics’ was working. American voters apparently disagreed, handing Trump victories in the electoral college, popular vote, and all seven swing states.

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“The notion that we must just blindly accept and follow as truth, that which the government or those in power tells us is true goes against the very essence of our Constitution and Bill of Rights..”

• Tulsi Gabbard Goes On Offense With Trump’s Support As Assad Falls (JTN)

With the fall of the Assad regime in Syria, Director of National Intelligence-designate Tulsi Gabbard is doubling down on her anti-intervention stance with backing from President-elect Donald Trump as she faces a contentious confirmation battle. Gabbard, a former Hawaii representative and veteran who served in the Middle East, left the Democratic Party after unsuccessfully seeking the party nomination for president in 2020. She joined the GOP ahead of the 2024 election and has become something of a Republican fan favorite among those opposed to foreign interventions. Her positions have roiled Democrats and establishment Republicans alike, with some going as far as to baselessly smear her as a “Russian asset.” She had previously attracted ire over her opposition to intervention in Syria, even should that leave the Assad regime in power.

After her nomination, Tulsi was expected to be on defense over Assad, but the stunning collapse of his government over the course of mere days and the complete evaporation of the Syrian Arab Army in the face of a renewed offensive from rebel groups based in the country’s northwest has changed the script entirely. While President Joe Biden has supported U.S. involvement in the Syrian transition process, Trump has called for keeping the U.S. out of the conflict entirely and signaled that the Assad regime’s collapse should bring Russian President Vladimir Putin to the table to end the war in Ukraine as well. “There was never much of a benefit in Syria for Russia, other than to make Obama look really stupid. In any event, Syria is a mess, but is not our friend, & THE UNITED STATES SHOULD HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH IT. THIS IS NOT OUR FIGHT. LET IT PLAY OUT. DO NOT GET INVOLVED!” Trump posted.

After Assad left Damascus, Trump opined that Russia had lost interest in protecting him due to Moscow’s focus on Ukraine and highlighted the estimated death tolls. “There should be an immediate ceasefire and negotiations should begin. Too many lives are being so needlessly wasted, too many families destroyed, and if it keeps going, it can turn into something much bigger, and far worse,” Trump then posted. “I know Vladimir well. This is his time to act. China can help. The World is waiting!” Trump’s calls for non-involvement and de-escalation of global conflicts seem to have given Gabbard the ammunition she needed to fight back against perceptions of herself as a foreign policy radical and portray her stances as in line with the White House’s main stream. “I stand in full support and wholeheartedly agree with the statements that President Trump has made over these last few days with regards to the developments in Syria,” Gabbard said.

A stalwart champion of the First Amendment, Gabbard’s nomination has some conservative Republicans jubilant, despite her prior time as a member of the opposing party. In 2022, Gabbard ruffled feathers with her appearance at the Reagan Dinner, hosted by the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). In that event, Gabbard highlighted the importance of free speech and excoriated efforts to crack down on “misinformation”, saying “the latest strategy and tactic that they’re using is to try to undermine our free speech by taking it upon themselves to say they’ve got the responsibility to protect us from so called misinformation.” “The notion that we must just blindly accept and follow as truth, that which the government or those in power tells us is true goes against the very essence of our Constitution and Bill of Rights,” she added.

Several GOP heavyweights, particularly in the lower chamber, have expressed hope for reform on federal censorship and surveillance efforts with her in charge of the nation’s intelligence. Freedom Caucus lawmakers Reps. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, and Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., for instance, have opined that her position in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence could pave the way for significant reform to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act’s (FISA) Section 702, which allows for warrantless surveillance in limited cases. The provision has attracted scrutiny from conservative hardliners over the prospect that such surveillance may acquire information on American citizens. “Yeah, I think this is one where we can, we can actually have a chance to get it through,” Biggs said of FISA reform in light of Gabbard’s nomination. He made the remarks in November on the “Just the News, No Noise” television show.

“So again, having Tulsi at ODNI. I mean, she’s a champion of the First Amendment,” said House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, on the same program. “I mean having, this is what I love so much about President Trump’s elections, is he is putting people in these cabinet agencies, nominating people who have the attitude the American people elected, that American people voted for, which is we’re going to go serve the people, protect their liberties, make government actually more efficient smaller, working for the country and protecting their rights.”

“That, I think is great, and Tulsi believes in the First Amendment, free speech and freedom,” he added. “That’s why I’m hopeful. She’s going to be confirmed and be our next ODNI director.” Gabbard herself was placed on the Biden/Harris administration’s TSA’s terrorism watchlist, the “Quiet Skies” program, which monitors “elevated risks to aviation security.” Hawaii News Now reported that at least five agents and two explosive detection canine teams were following Gabbard and her husband in July.

Rand Paul
https://twitter.com/i/status/1866607629252112473

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“Trump remains unbothered by the meeting with Assad. Asked by NBC News if the meeting “compromises her,” the president-elect all but rolled his eyes.”

Individuals may sympathize with her, but the party as a whole -which she turned her back on- can not.

• Democrats Ignore Tulsi Gabbard’s Request To Meet (RCW)

The return of Tulsi Gabbard to Capitol Hill began with breakfast in the Senate dining room courtesy of Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst, followed by back-to-back meetings with other Republicans, all of whom were happy to welcome the former Hawaii Democrat and discuss her nomination to lead the U.S. intelligence community. But members of her old political party, including one-time House colleagues, largely ignored her. It’s still early in the process, but Gabbard has been unable to schedule a single meeting with Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee. Virginia Sen. Mark Warner, outgoing chairman of the committee, has not responded to her requests for a meeting, according to a source directly familiar with Gabbard’s efforts. Others have replied to her outreach but remain hesitant about putting anything on the books. At least one Democrat scheduled a sit-down this week only to abruptly cancel.

The cold shoulder comes nearly a month after President-elect Donald Trump picked Gabbard to be his director of national intelligence, two years after she quit a Democratic Party that she called “an elitist cabal of warmongers,” and immediately after the fall of President Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria. Gabbard met with the now-deposed dictator twice in 2017 while on a “fact-finding mission” to the war-torn country. These meetings proved to be an impediment when she ran for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination in 2020. “What do you say to Democratic voters who watched you go over there, and what do you say to military members who have been deployed repeatedly in Syria, pushing back against Assad?” Kasie Hunt asked two years later during an MSNBC interview. Gabbard replied that U.S. troops deployed there “without understanding what the clear mission or objective is.”

Gabbard added that Assad was “not the enemy of the United States because Syria does not pose a direct threat to the United States.” Hillary Clinton promptly accused Gabbard, then a major in the Hawaii National Guard, of being a “Russian asset.” The Republicans who will control the Senate next year do not see the meeting with Assad eight years ago as disqualifying or insurmountable. Despite the suggestion of Democrats such as Sen. Tammy Duckworth, who recently worried that Gabbard “couldn’t pass a background check,” Republicans point out that as a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army Reserves, Gabbard already has a top-secret security clearance. More than 250 military veterans co-signed a letter published Monday endorsing her as “a warrior whose vote cannot be bought.” Trump remains unbothered by the meeting with Assad. Asked by NBC News if the meeting “compromises her,” the president-elect all but rolled his eyes.

“I met with Putin,” he said of the Russian president now sheltering the Syrian dictator. “I met with President Xi of China. I met with Kim Jong-un twice. Does that mean that I can’t be president?” Nonetheless, Gabbard will be grilled about her Syria meeting. Defense hawks, Republicans and Democrats alike, are expected to press her for details in committee and challenge her foreign policy views that some have described as “isolationist.” Allies of the president-elect prefer the term “America First.” And it is increasingly the new orthodoxy among a GOP base wary and weary of overseas entanglements. There is some evidence that skepticism of a muscular foreign policy has gained traction among younger Democrats and independents in the last four or five years. When Hillary Clinton questioned Gabbard’s logic and loyalty, Gabbard punched back.

In a series of tweets, she called the former secretary of State and 2016 Democratic presidential nominee “the queen of warmongers” and “personification of the rot that has sickened the Democratic Party.” Upstart presidential candidate Andrew Yang took Gabbard’s side. “Tulsi Gabbard deserves much more respect and thanks than this,” Yang tweeted. “She literally just got back from serving our country abroad.” As Gabbard made the rounds Monday, the nominee mostly ignored shouted questions from reporters. The only public statement Gabbard made was a reiteration of the Trump policy announced over the weekend that the U.S. would stay out of Syria.

“My own views and experiences have been shaped by my multiple deployments and seeing firsthand the cost of war and the threat of Islamist terrorism,” Gabbard said. “It’s one of the many reasons why I appreciate President Trump’s leadership and his election where he is fully committed, as he has said over and over, to bringing about an end to wars, demonstrating peace through strength and putting the national security interests and the safety, security and freedom of the American people, first and foremost.”

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Blanket pardon? “The King of England could only pardon what he knew about.”

• Giuliani Says Blanket Pardons From Biden Could End Up At Supreme Court (JTN)

Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani said that if President Joe Biden issues blanket pardons, they could end up being challenged in the Supreme Court. “I think if he does it across the board….these blanket pardons of maybe eight to 10 people, then we’ll have a real Supreme Court test of whether the blanket pardon is unconstitutional,” Giuliani said on the “Just the News, No Noise” TV show. Biden earlier this month pardoned his son on gun and tax charges, as well as any other crimes committed in the last ten years, despite promising not to make such a move.

Congressman Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., predicted that Biden would pardon his brother James. Giuliani said that many law professors wrote against President Gerald Ford pardoning President Richard Nixon, arguing it wasn’t constitutional. “You cannot give a pardon for a crime that may be committed because the pardon power derives from the power of the King of England,” he said. “The King of England could only pardon what he knew about.”

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“..weaponizing its justice system to detain and imprison Russians on trumped up and politically motivated charges.”

• Russia Tells Citizens To Avoid Visiting US (RT)

Russian nationals should avoid making non-essential trips to the US and allied countries, the Russian Foreign Ministry has said, warning that they could be “hunted down” by the American authorities for political reasons. Travelling to the US poses “serious risks” due to “the increasing confrontation in the Russian-American relations,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said during a regular press briefing on Wednesday. She stated that more Russian nationals were being “hunted down by American authorities, especially by secret services,” with Washington utilizing “fraudulent schemes” to lure Russians abroad in order to prosecute them for “political reasons.” “For the upcoming holidays and beyond, we strongly advise to avoid non-emergency visits to the US and allied countries, especially Canada and, with rare exception, the countries of the European Union,” Zakharova said.

“When staying abroad, you should avoid situations, in which you can become a victim of provocations and be detained under the pretense of supposedly violating local laws,” the spokeswoman added. Zakharova urged Russian citizens to consider potential “tragic incidents” on foreign soil when planning trips abroad, claiming that the US justice system “leaves no room for a fair trial.” The US has blacklisted multiple Russian nationals over the conflict in Ukraine, which led to the unprecedented level of tensions between the two countries. Even before the conflict broke out in February 2022, Moscow has frequently accused Washington of weaponizing its justice system to detain and imprison Russians on trumped up and politically motivated charges.

Famous cases include the prosecution of businessman Viktor Bout and pilot Konstantin Yaroshenko, who were released during prisoner swaps in 2022. Another high-profile incident involved activist and journalist Maria Butina, who was convicted of failing to register as a foreign agent in the US and was deported to Russia in 2019, after spending nearly 120 days behind bars. Several Russian citizens who were part of the last major prisoner swap in August were originally extradited to the US from European countries. Vadim Konoshchenok was arrested in Estonia on a US warrant, while Vladislav Klyushin was extradited from Switzerland in 2021. The August exchange also included Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and former US Marine Paul Whelan, both of whom were convicted of espionage in Russia.

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This will go awfully wrong.

• Euroclear Warns Of Risks If Russian Assets Seized (RT)

Belgian-based clearinghouse Euroclear, which holds the bulk of Russia’s frozen assets, has said it does not want to be held liable if the EU confiscates the funds and hands them over to Ukraine. Euroclear immobilized an estimated €197 billion ($213 billion) in assets belonging to the Russian central bank as part of Ukraine-related sanctions. The frozen assets generated €5.15 billion in interest in the first three quarters of this fiscal year. Earlier this year, the EU decided to give Ukraine a chunk of that interest but stopped short of tapping the assets themselves. The move prompted renewed accusations of theft from Russia. Euroclear CEO Valerie Urbain told Bloomberg on Tuesday that any plan to seize the assets should also transfer all of the liabilities.

“We cannot be in the situation whereby the assets have been seized, but, in a couple of years, Russia comes and knocks at the door and says, ‘I want to recoup my securities,’ while the securities assets would have been gone,” she said. “If there is a confiscation of assets, everything should move, liabilities included.” Euroclear recently revealed having made a first payment of about €1.55 billion ($1.63 billion) to the European Fund for Ukraine in July from the interest generated by the Russian assets. That month, the European Commission announced an allocation of €1.5 billion to Kiev as a first tranche of aid. In October, the European Parliament approved a loan of up to €35 billion to Ukraine to be repaid with future revenues generated by the Russian funds. The loan is the EU’s part of a package the G7 agreed in June to provide Kiev with up to $50 billion in financial support.

The government of outgoing US President Joe Biden on Tuesday announced a transfer of Washington’s portion of the loan, totaling $20 billion, to Kiev. The funds are “paid for by the windfall proceeds earned from Russia’s own immobilized assets,” the Treasury Department said in a statement. Because US President-elect Donald Trump has threatened to cut aid to Kiev, the idea of using the assets themselves is likely to resurface, noted Bloomberg. According to Urbain, however, taking this step would threaten the euro’s role as a reserve currency and pose risks to the broader stability of the bloc’s finances. A similar warning was issued earlier by the president of the European Central Bank, Christine Lagarde.

On Tuesday, a delegation from the European Parliament arrived in Kiev to discuss the bloc’s financial aid to Ukraine.The head of the delegation, Iratxe Garcia, said that he had asked High Representative Kaja Kallas to “put forward a legal proposal to use the €200 billion of frozen Russian state assets in order to arm and reconstruct Ukraine.” During the meeting, Zelensky reiterated Kiev’s call to use the immobilized Russian funds to cover the cost of weapons for Ukraine, stating that $30 billion would be enough to “fully cover our skies.”

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“..this act falls under the classification of robbery [on the part] of an organized group..”

• US Loan To Ukraine ‘Theft’ Of Russian Money – Deputy FM (RT)

The disbursement by the US of a $20 billion loan to Ukraine funded by Russia’s frozen central bank assets could be classified as theft, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov has said. The US loan is part of a broader $50 billion G7 loan deal, which includes a separate $20 billion commitment by the EU and $10 billion to be split by G7 members Great Britain, Japan, and Canada. On Tuesday, the US Treasury Department announced the money had been transferred to a World Bank fund that will send it on to Kiev. “I can say that this act falls under the classification of robbery [on the part] of an organized group, I mean [on the part] of the Group of Seven,” Ryabkov told journalists on Wednesday. The US and its allies froze an estimated $300 billion in assets belonging to the Russian central bank following the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in February 2022.

In June, the G7 members pledged a $50 billion loan for Kiev, with the frozen Russian assets to be used as collateral, to help Kiev buy weapons and rebuild its infrastructure. The agreement was finalized in October. Ukraine theoretically is expected to repay the multibillion-dollar G7 loan over 40 years. According to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, the loan transfer will provide Ukraine a “critical infusion of support.” The money covers around half of Kiev’s current deficit. The country’s state budget for next year, signed by Vladimir Zelensky into law last month, anticipates revenues of $49 billion and expenditures of $87 billion, putting the overall deficit at $38 billion. Zelensky said on Tuesday he was “deeply grateful” to Biden, Yellen, and lawmakers who supported using seized Russian assets to bolster Ukraine’s defense, describing their decision as a “powerful act of justice.”

A week earlier, the outgoing US president authorized a new $725 million military aid package for Ukraine and imposed additional economic sanctions on Russia. Moscow has repeatedly accused the West of “stealing” its money and warned that tapping these funds would be illegal and set a dangerous precedent. Finance Minister Anton Siluanov warned in October that Moscow would respond in kind to the West’s use of the income generated by its frozen central bank reserves. Last month, he said Russia would respond by using the income from the frozen assets of Western investors. The International Monetary Fund has also warned that any decisions regarding the seizure of frozen Russian assets should be backed with “sufficient legal support,” noting that without this, the move could undermine trust in the Western financial system.

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The EU needs diplomats, not warmongers.

• Nothing Will Be Left Of Frozen Russian Funds – EU’s Kallas (RT)

The European Union’s top diplomat, Kaja Kallas, has expressed doubt that Russia will ever see its sovereign assets frozen by the bloc as part of Ukraine-related sanctions. In an interview with Politico on Tuesday, the EU’s new foreign policy chief admitted that Russia legally had a “legitimate claim” to the assets immobilized by the West since the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in 2022. She added, however, that the bloc should use the cash to reconstruct Ukraine before handing back whatever remains. “But I doubt there is anything left over,” the former Estonian prime minister said. Kallas did not specify whether she was referring to the interest generated by Russian assets or to the assets themselves. Kallas took over the EU’s top diplomatic post from Josep Borrell on December 1. She has advocated for tougher sanctions on Russia and is known for her strident stance against Moscow.

The US and its allies have immobilized around $300 billion of assets belonging to the Russian central bank since 2022. The bulk of the funds, around €197 billion ($213 billion), is being held at the Brussels-based clearinghouse Euroclear, where they generated €5.15 billion ($5.55 billion) in interest in the first three-quarters of this fiscal year. Earlier this year, Brussels decided to give Ukraine a chunk of the interest. In July, the European Commission announced it would allocate €1.5 billion to Kiev, mainly for weapons, as the first tranche of aid. In a press release in October, Euroclear stated that it had made a first payment of about €1.55 billion ($1.63 billion) to the European Fund for Ukraine in July. The second tranche, expected to amount to €1.9 billion, could reportedly be disbursed next spring.

The G7 countries also agreed in June to give Kiev a $50 billion aid package financed by revenues from frozen Russian central bank assets. The EU and US both recently approved respective contributions of $35 billion and $20 billion to the package. Russia has repeatedly accused the West of “stealing” its money. Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov on Tuesday described as “a robbery organized by the G7” the transfer of $20 billion to Kiev that was announced by the US Treasury the day before. Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said last month that Russia would use income from the frozen assets of Western investors in response to the moves by the US and EU.

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“..the states that sanction Russian news outlets are violating their own principles of freedom of speech and freedom of the press..”

• US Media ‘Can’t Calm Down’ Over Loss Of Influence – RT editor-in-chief (RT)

The US media continues to be unsettled by a journalism course organized by the RT Academy in Africa, one month after its completion, RT Editor-in-Chief Margarita Simonyan posted on Telegram on Wednesday. Her remarks came in response to a feature in the National Interest, a US-based bimonthly, titled ‘Combating Russia’s Global Disinformation Campaign’. The lengthy article, published earlier this week, warns Western media of the presumed dangers posed by Russian journalism, which is rapidly evolving and becoming influential in the countries of the Global South. According to the article, while Russia’s main tactic to compete with Western news media was previously to create alternative outlets such as RT and Sputnik, Moscow has recently changed course by introducing journalism training and fact-checking.

“Russia – with its eye particularly trained on the Global South – seems intent on advancing its own mirror image of Western journalism training, one in which Russian media practices are portrayed as the gold standard,” the article states. It names RT Academy, launched in February, as an example of such practices, recalling that it welcomed journalists from all over the world to train and had a course specifically for African participants in October. The article also claims Russia’s tactics “follow decades of effort by Moscow to ingratiate itself with journalists, especially in the Global South,” so as to challenge the Western narrative. The piece then offers Western news organizations advice on how to counter Russia’s growing influence, chiding them for overlooking the Global South and failing to provide enough of their own coverage there. Simonyan found the attention of Western press on RT Academy amusing.

“American media just can’t calm down. They are discussing our RT Academy course for journalists from Africa a month after its completion,” she stated in a Telegram post on Wednesday, adding a tongue-in-cheek: “You’re falling behind, comrades. We already have a course for journalists in Chinese in full swing.” Russian media, and RT in particular, has been repeatedly smeared and targeted in the West. MSNBC host Rachel Maddow last month claimed that US President-elect Donald Trump will try to turn the American media into an “American-accented version of RT,” suggesting that it would be the end of free press in the country.

BBC chief Tim Davie said in October that Russian media outlets were spreading “unchallenged propaganda” across the Global South. The US State Department has sanctioned a host of Russian news outlets over the past two years, including RT and its parent company, accusing the latter of acting as an extension of Russian intelligence. However, many experts, including some in the West, have criticized the incessant targeting of Russian media, noting that the states that sanction Russian news outlets are violating their own principles of freedom of speech and freedom of the press.

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“This should have been opened back up, and it should have been opened back up for everybody..”

• Judge Rejects the Onion’s Purchase of Infowars in Bankruptcy Sale (ET)

A federal judge in Texas on Dec. 10 rejected the auction sale of Alex Jones’s Infowars website to satirical publication The Onion, ruling that the process did not result in the best possible bids and citing concerns about transparency in the auction. The Onion was named the winning bidder of Infowars’ assets during the Nov. 14 auction, part of a personal bankruptcy case Jones filed in late 2022 after he was ordered to pay nearly $1.5 billion in several defamation lawsuits. The lawsuits were filed against Jones in Connecticut and Texas by relatives of victims of the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, which Jones repeatedly claimed was staged as part of a government plot to increase gun control. A total of 20 children and six educators were killed in the shooting. Jones has since acknowledged that the shooting took place and was “100 percent real.”

He said that he attempted to correct the claims that he initially made, but that “[the media] won’t let me take it back.” Following a two-day hearing in Houston, U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Christopher Lopez said he would not approve the sale. He rejected claims by Jones that the bankruptcy auction was plagued with collusion and fraud but noted problems, not wrongdoing, with the auction process. The Onion’s bid of $1.75 million with additional incentives for Infowars’ assets was backed by the families of the massacre victims. The bid won despite a higher $3.5 million cash offer from First United American Companies, which runs a website in Jones’ name and sells nutritional supplements. The Connecticut-based Sandy Hook families, who are Jones’ largest creditors, augmented the Onion’s bid by agreeing to forgo $750,000 of the proceeds from the sale in favor of other creditors, providing the creditors with more money than First United’s higher cash offer.

That concession caused the bankruptcy trustee to value The Onion’s bid at $7 million overall. The judge said Christopher Murray, a court-appointed trustee who oversaw the auction made “a good-faith error” when he asked for final offers for Infowars instead of encouraging more back-and-forth bidding between The Onion and First United American Companies. “This should have been opened back up, and it should have been opened back up for everybody,” Lopez said. “It’s clear the trustee left the potential for a lot of money on the table.” Lopez also said the two offers for Infowars were just a fraction of the money that Jones has been ordered to pay in defamation lawsuits, and noted the extent of his debts. He left it up to the trustee to resolve the disputes between the creditors before making a new attempt to sell Infowars.

After winning the auction in November, The Onion said it planned to relaunch Infowars in January as a parody website alongside advertiser Everytown for Gun Safety, the largest gun violence prevention organization in the country. In a complaint filed in November, Jones urged the federal bankruptcy court in Texas to disqualify The Onion’s bid and instead recognize First United American Companies as the rightful winner of the auction. Lopez’s ruling puts The Onion’s plan to take possession of the Infowars website and its associated assets on hold. In a Dec. 11 social media statement, Ben Collins, CEO of The Onion’s parent company, Global Tetrahedron, said the publication is “deeply disappointed” but will “continue to seek a resolution that helps the Sandy Hook families receive a positive outcome for the horror they endured.”

Collins said the company will also continue to “seek a path” towards purchasing Infowars in the coming weeks. “It is part of our larger mission to make a better, funnier internet, regardless of the outcome of this case,” Collins said. Christopher Mattei, a lawyer for the Sandy Hook families who sued Jones in Connecticut, also expressed disappointment over the judge’s ruling. “These families, who have already persevered through countless delays and roadblocks, remain resilient and determined as ever to hold Alex Jones and his corrupt businesses accountable for the harm he has caused,” Mattei said in a statement. “This decision doesn’t change the fact that, soon, Alex Jones will begin to pay his debt to these families and he will continue doing so for as long as it takes.”

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Hungary is “the westernmost Eastern and the easternmost Western nation..”

• Liberal World Order Is Over – Orban (RT)

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has claimed that his country’s refusal to conform to liberal ideology will yield considerable benefits in the future. “The liberal world order is over,” he declared during a speech in Budapest on Tuesday. The conservative nationalist politician has been in power since 2010, winning successive elections on a platform of defying what he considers to be authoritarian rule by Brussels. EU leaders have accused Orban of undermining democracy in Hungary and harming the economic bloc’s solidarity on the Ukraine conflict. He has argued that Brussels’ policies have been disastrous for EU member states.

“As the changes come, only those nations can be winners that can bring the most out of themselves,” Orban told a gathering of university students, as quoted by his office. “Those who assimilate, fall into line, are unable to show their own values or discover the strength inherent in their national character will soon become irrelevant,” he added. Hungary is “the westernmost Eastern and the easternmost Western nation,” and it seeks to “connect to all the economic powerhouses of the world,” Orban said.

Budapest claims that the West’s response to the Ukraine conflict, including its attempts to punish Russia with economic sanctions, has caused a decline in living standards and other problems in Europe. Unlike other national leaders, who intend to support Kiev “for as long as it takes” to defeat Moscow, Orban has refused to send any military assistance and has attempted to mediate peace talks. Earlier this year, the prime minister made visits to Ukraine, Russia, China and the US during what he called a peace tour in a bid to facilitate negotiations. Orban expects US President-elect Donald Trump, whom he supports, to bring about radical changes on Ukraine after he is inaugurated in January.

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“After Aleppo fell, it became clear that Assad had no real intentions of staying in power, so we started to engage in diplomatic talks..”

• Syria’s post-mortem: Terror, Occupation, and Palestine (Pepe Escobar)

The short headline defining the abrupt, swift end of Syria as we knew it would be: Eretz Israel meets new-Ottomanism. The subtitle? A win-win for the west, and a lethal blow against the Axis of Resistance. But to quote still-pervasive American pop culture, perhaps the owls are not what they seem. Let’s start with former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s surrender. Qatari diplomats, off the record, maintain that Assad tried to negotiate a transfer of power with the armed opposition that had launched a major military offensive in the days prior, starting with Aleppo, then swiftly headed southward toward Hama, Homs, aiming for Damascus. That’s what was discussed in detail between Russia, Iran, and Turkiye behind closed doors in Doha this past weekend, during the last sigh of the moribund “Astana process” to demilitarize Syria.

The transfer of power negotiation failed. Hence, Assad was offered asylum by Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow. That explains why both Iran and Russia instantly changed the terminology while still in Doha, and began to refer to the “legitimate opposition” in a bid to distinguish non-militant reformists from the armed extremists cutting a swathe across the state. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov – his body language telling everything about his anger – literally said, “Assad must negotiate with the legitimate opposition, which is on the UN list.” Very important: Lavrov did not mean Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the Salafi-jihadi, or Rent-a-Jihadi mob financed by the Turkish National Intelligence Organization (MIT) with weapons funded by Qatar, and fully supported by NATO and Tel Aviv.

What happened after the funeral in Doha was quite murky, suggesting a western intel remote-controlled coup, developing as fast as lightning, complete with reports of domestic betrayals. The original Astana idea was to keep Damascus safe and to have Ankara manage HTS. Yet Assad had already committed a serious strategic blunder, believing in lofty promises by NATO messaged through his newfound Arab leader friends in the UAE and Saudi Arabia. To his own astonishment, according to Syrian and regional officials, Assad finally realized how fragile his own position was, having turned down military assistance from his stalwart regional allies, Iran and Hezbollah, believing that his new Arab allies might keep him safe. The Syrian Arab Army (SAA) was in shambles after 13 years of war and ruthless US sanctions. Logistics were prey to deplorable corruption. The rot was systemic.

But importantly, while many were prepared to fight the foreign-backed terror groups once again, insiders say Assad never fully deployed his army to counterattack the onslaught. Tehran and Moscow tried everything – up to the last minute. In fact, Assad was already in deep trouble since his visit to Moscow on 29 November that reaped no tangible results. The Damascus establishment thus regarded Russia’s insistence that Assad must abandon his previous red lines on negotiating a political settlement as a de facto signal pointing to the end. Apart from doing nothing to prevent the increasing atrophy and collapse of the SAA, Assad did nothing to rein in Israel, which has been bombing Syria non-stop for years. Until the very last moment, Tehran was willing to help: two brigades were ready to get into Syria, but it would take at least two weeks to deploy them.

The Fars News Agency explained the mechanism in detail – from the Syrian leadership’s inexorable lack of motivation to fight the terror brigades to Assad ignoring serious warnings from Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei since June, all the way to two months ago, with other Iranian officials warning that HTS and its foreign backers were preparing a blitzkrieg. According to the Iranians: “After Aleppo fell, it became clear that Assad had no real intentions of staying in power, so we started to engage in diplomatic talks with the opposition, and arranged the safe exit of our troops from Syria. If the SAA does not fight, neither will we risk our soldiers’ lives. Russia and the UAE had managed to convince him to step down, so there was nothing we could do.”

Read more …

 

 

 

 

Colossus

 

 

Box
https://twitter.com/i/status/1866861978154607060

 

 

Tractor
https://twitter.com/i/status/1866922481891807454

 

 

Overreact
https://twitter.com/i/status/1866527187026776325

 

 

 

 

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Debt Rattle January 21 2021

Jan 212021
 
 January 21, 2021  Posted by at 10:20 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,  37 Responses »


Jackson Pollock Man with knife 1938-40

 

• WHO Warns That PCR COVID Tests Are More Likely To Give False Positives (PM)
• No Decline In Very High COVID Rates During 1st Week Of UK’s 3rd Lockdown (ITV)
• France Issues Warning Over Use Of Homemade Masks Against New Variants (G.)
• Biden To Sign 53 Executive Orders In First 10 Days (Hill)
• Inaugural Display Symbolizing 56 US States, Territories (JTN)
• Globalist “Manifesto” For Post-Trump Economic “Reset” (ZH)
• Biden Will Recognize Guaido As Venezuela’s Leader – Blinken (R.)
• US To Keep Embassy In Jerusalem – Blinken (AlJ)
• John Brennan’s ‘List’ Of Ideologies Biden Intel Community Should Go After (ZH)
• Call For New “Secret Police” Force to Spy on Trump Supporters (SN)
• Silicon Valley CEOs Can’t Decide Laws And Rules – EU Commission President (RT)
• Germany Enacts Major Overhaul of Its Competition Regime for the Digital Era (WSGR)
• The Fed’s Inconvenient Truth: Inflation Is “M.I.A.” (RIA)

 

 

We went from 24/7 negative about Trump to 24/7 positive about Joe Biden. And then they’ll find out that 24/7 positive does not induce clickbait. And then what happens after that?

And really? J-Lo singing Woody Guthrie to celebrate the DC culture?

 

 

Here’s the state of your media for the next 4 years:

 

 

Today’s best meme:

 

 

They’re actually going to do it, they’re going to lower the PCR cycle threshold as soon as Biden comes in? That would be hilarious.

“The notice was released only one hour after President Joe Biden was sworn into office..”

• WHO Warns That PCR COVID Tests Are More Likely To Give False Positives (PM)

The World Health Organization issued a notice on Wednesday warning medical professionals to follow instructions of PCR tests for coronavirus to avoid getting false positive results. The notice was released only one hour after President Joe Biden was sworn into office, leading some observers to question the timing of the release. If the PCR tests are resulting in false-positives, and that information is now used to mitigate the large positivity numbers, the number of case counts will begin to drop. The optics of a decreasing COVID-case count would be a boon for the launch of the Biden administration. The new guidance states that the “WHO reminds IVD users that disease prevalence alters the predictive value of test results; as disease prevalence decreases, the risk of false positive increases (2).”


The notice reads: “This means that the probability that a person who has a positive result (SARS-CoV-2 detected) is truly infected with SARS-CoV-2 decreases as prevalence decreases, irrespective of the claimed specificity.” Former President Donald Trump has been heavily criticized for his handling of the coronavirus pandemic, with the United States leading the world in both total cases and total deaths, although not per capita, according to official statistics. A big problem for Trump had been the continuous increase in COVID-case counts. If many of those cases were established as extant with the help of PCR tests that were resulting in false-positives, that would mean that the case count for which Trump was criticized was not a factual number.

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In the UK, this will be a bitter fight.

• No Decline In Very High COVID Rates During 1st Week Of UK’s 3rd Lockdown (ITV)

The spread of coronavirus did not decline during the first week of England’s third lockdown, a study has shown. The latest React study, from Imperial College London and Ipsos Mori, states that during the initial 10 days of the third Covid-19 lockdown in England, “prevalence of coronavirus was very high with no evidence of decline”. Researchers also found that the prevalence of Covid-19 across England increased by 50% between early December and the second week of January. After testing more than 142,900 volunteers in England between January 6 and 15, they found that one in 63 people were infected. The report, which researchers said does not yet reflect the impact of the national lockdown, also showed there were “worrying suggestions of a recent uptick in infections”.


National prevalence of the virus increased by half, from 0.91% in early December to 1.58%, the latest React study showed. While there was a rise in prevalence across all adult age groups, it was highest in 18- to 24-year-olds, and more than doubled in the over 65s age group. London saw the highest regional prevalence, jumping from 1.21% to 2.8%, while there were also rises in the south east, east of England, West Midlands, south west and north west. The only region to see a decrease was Yorkshire and the Humber, and prevalence remained stable in the East Midlands and north east, but the researchers warned infection numbers are still high even in these areas. Additionally, they found large household sizes, living in a deprived neighbourhood, and areas with higher numbers of black and Asian individuals were associated with increased prevalence.

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Better masks only make sense when a virus is more easily transmitted? None of the below makes sense.

• France Issues Warning Over Use Of Homemade Masks Against New Variants (G.)

French health officials have advised people against wearing home-made fabric masks as they offer less protection against highly contagious new Covid-19 variants. The scientific committee, which reports back to the French government, says category 2 masks are unlikely to halt the spread of the “English variant” or new coronavirus strains from Brazil and South Africa. The experts’ advice, presented to ministers on Monday but not published, also suggested France double its social distancing rule from 1m to 2m. France’s Haut Conseil de Santé Publique (high council for public health – HCSP) decided over the weekend that many cloth masks, often preferred because they can be washed and reused, did not guarantee protection against the new variants. “Category 2 or material masks only filter 70%, while category 1 masks, like surgical masks, can go as high as 95% if worn properly.


As the variant is more easily transmitted, it is logical to use masks with the highest filtering power,” Daniel Camus, of the Pasteur Institute in Lille and a HCSP member told France Info. “We are not questioning the masks used up to now … but as we have no new weapons against them (new strains) the only thing we can do is to improve the weapons we already have,” Camus added. Home-made barrier masks made under Europe-wide established specifications are consider category 1. However, even though they are subject to making them more efficient filters, the HSPC said they may not guarantee the correct level of protection. Didier Lepelletier, the co-president of the committee’s Covid-19 working group, said everyone should now choose category 1 masks adding that home-made masks “have not been tested in terms of their performance”.

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“Restoring America’s Place in the World”

-Rejoin Paris accord
-Fortify DACA
-Undo Muslim ban
-Stop border wall
-Order unified Covid response
-Eviction/foreclosure freeze —> 3/31
-Extend student loan pause —> 9/30
-Rescind Trump’s 1776 commish
-Undo Trump EO on Census

• Biden To Sign 53 Executive Orders In First 10 Days (Hill)

President Biden is poised to take action on 53 executive items over the next 10 days as he seeks to rapidly reverse some Trump administration policies and implement his own, according to a document outlining the schedule for Biden’s first two weeks in office. The document, which was circulated to individuals close to the administration and obtained by The Hill, shows that Biden will take executive action each weekday through the end of January, with each day centered around specific themes such as climate, economic relief, health care and immigration. The timetable lays out which days Biden is expected to act on anticipated items such as reversing the Mexico City policy, creating a task force to reunite separated migrant families and establishing a policing commission.

The schedule notes that the specifics of certain executive actions are to be determined, reflecting how the Biden team is still hashing out details as it takes office following delays in the transition after the November election. The themes are expected to extend into February, which has been designated around the idea of “Restoring America’s Place in the World,” according to the document. This week, Wednesday’s theme is focused on the inauguration and addressing “four crises” — the coronavirus pandemic, climate, the economy and equity. Among the items Biden will sign are an order mandating masks be worn on federal lands, an extension of eviction moratoriums, a repeal of Trump’s travel ban and a proclamation halting border wall construction.

Thursday’s theme will focus on the pandemic, according to the document. Biden is expected to sign off on executive orders to review the supply chain ahead of any use of the Defense Production Act and to implement public health measures on public transportation, airplanes and trains. Friday’s theme is economic relief, with two executive orders expected to be signed, according to the document. One will direct agencies to take action on Medicaid, Pell grants and unemployment insurance, while the other will restore collective bargaining rights to federal employees and initiate a rollback of a Trump administration rule on Schedule F. The theme for Monday is “Buy American,” and Biden will sign one executive order seeking to ensure agencies use U.S. suppliers.

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Or it may be nothing.

• Inaugural Display Symbolizing 56 US States, Territories (JTN)

President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration decor touting 56 U.S. states and territories provokes new questions about whether Biden will push for new statehood for six U.S. territories, which could aid the Democratic Party in the Electoral College. Under the U.S. Constitution, statehood requires only a simple majority in Congress, which could be achieved if Democrats decide to remove the 60-vote filibuster threshold currently in place in the Senate. As part of the “Field of Flags” display at the National Mall ahead of Biden’s inauguration, the Presidential Inaugural Committee planted nearly 200,000 state and territory flags on Monday night, meant to represent the American people unable to travel to Washington, D.C., for Inauguration Day due to the COVID-19 pandemic and security threats.

Fifty-six pillars of neon blue light, representing the U.S. states and territories, were also lit up for 46 seconds to mark the inauguration of the 46th president of the United States, Joe Biden. The prominent light beams were reminiscent of the grounds of the 9/11 Memorial in Manhattan. Biden has said he supports statehood for Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia. Other U.S. territories with permanent civilian populations include Guam, American Samoa, the Northern Mariana Islands, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

[..] Historian Jason Steinhauer told Just the News on Tuesday that the National World War II Memorial “serves as a useful reference point for the Field of Flags display” because it contains 56 pillars representing each state and territory from its period, including the District of Columbia. Those 56 pillars represented a different assortment of states and territories from that time period: 48 states, plus the territories of Alaska and Hawaii, the District of Columbia, the Commonwealth of the Philippines, Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Steinhauer noted that memorial opened in 2004, during the George W. Bush administration.

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In case you wondered who won.

• Globalist “Manifesto” For Post-Trump Economic “Reset” (ZH)

Proponents of the QAnon “conspiracy theory,” which the NYT can’t seem to stop writing about, are going to love seeing this. A memo that has reportedly been circulating among policymakers on both sides of the aisle for weeks was finally released to the press on Tuesday when Dealbook editor and CNBC “Squawk Box” host Andrew Ross Sorkin got the scoop: a memo penned by a group of senior-level bureaucrats, including – who else? – Henry Kissinger and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair has provided a kind of “blueprint” for the Biden Administration to undo all of President Trump’s trade-war tactics and other policies that didn’t exactly help promote free trade.

As Trump recounted in his farewell video published earlier Tuesday afternoon, his administration dramatically altered the American trade landscape, pulling the US out of the TPP, renegotiating Nafta into the USMCA, and – most consequentially, at things would turn out – the trade war with China, which inspired waves of hysterical lobbying by the Chamber of Commerce and special-interest groups from Big Tech to Wal-Mart and other major retailers, and others. So, as Biden prepares his first 100-day blitz of policy directives, many of the architects of the globalist system created by groups like the Trilateral Commission are joining with a gaggle of former cabinet-level officials (both Dems and GOP) along with the CEO of one of America’s largest banks, former British Labour Party Prime Minister Tony Blair and – who else? – Henry Kissinger, have essentially penned a manifesto that is being circulated among lawmakers, along with top-level officials in the cabinet and the West Wing, to help restore the globalist system that Trump helped to disrupt.

Who better to leak the story to than Andrew Sorkin, who first brought up the existence of the memo during an interview during Tuesday morning’s episode of “Squawk Box” on CNBC during a conversation with Harvard economist Austan Goolsbee. According to Sorkin’s column, “the memo comes from an under-the-radar group of global boldfaced names that act as a private advisory committee to JPMorgan Chase. They include Tony Blair, the former British prime minister; Condoleezza Rice and Henry Kissinger, two former secretaries of state; Robert Gates, the former secretary of defense; Alex Gorsky, chief executive of Johnson & Johnson; Bernard Arnault, chairman of LVMH; and Joseph C. Tsai, executive vice chairman of Alibaba, among others.” The group, which even Sorkin concedes is exclusively staffed with members of the “globalist part of the globalist establishment that fell out of favor during the Trump years, typically meets once a year in a far-flung location with JPMorgan’s chief, Jamie Dimon.”

Read more …

But we’ll keep the craziest stuff.

• Biden Will Recognize Guaido As Venezuela’s Leader – Blinken (R.)

U.S. President-elect Joe Biden’s administration will continue to recognize Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido as the South American country’s president, Anthony Blinken, Biden’s nominee for secretary of state, said on Tuesday. Blinken told members of the U.S. Senate that Biden would seek to “more effectively target” sanctions on the country, which aim to oust President Nicolas Maduro – who retains control of the country. Blinken said the new administration would look at more humanitarian assistance to the country. The United States, along with dozens of other countries, recognized Guaido – the leader of Venezuela’s opposition-held National Assembly – as the country’s president in January 2019, arguing Maduro’s 2018 re-election was rigged.


“We need an effective policy that can restore Venezuela to democracy, starting with free and fair elections,” Blinken said. Guaido’s push to oust Maduro – who has overseen a collapse in the once-prosperous OPEC nation’s economy and stands accused of corruption and human rights violations – has stalled. Maduro calls Guaido a U.S.-puppet seeking to oust him in a coup. His allies have expressed a desire to engage in negotiations with the Biden administration after years of tensions and escalating U.S. sanctions.

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Remember the loud protests?

• US To Keep Embassy In Jerusalem – Blinken (AlJ)

The incoming administration of President-elect Joe Biden will keep the US embassy in Israel in Jerusalem, his nominee for secretary of state affirmed at his Senate confirmation hearing. “Do you agree that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel and do you commit that the United States will keep our embassy in Jerusalem?” asked Republican Senator Ted Cruz of Texas. “Yes and Yes,” said Antony Blinken in testimony on Tuesday. Outgoing President Donald Trump announced the US recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital in December 2017. The US moved its embassy to Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in May of the following year.


Jerusalem remains at the heart of the decades-long Middle East conflict, with the Palestinian Authority (PA) insisting that East Jerusalem – illegally occupied by Israel since 1967 – should serve as the capital of a Palestinian state. “The only way to ensure Israel’s future as a Jewish, democratic state and to give the Palestinians a state to which they are entitled is through the so-called two-state solution,” Blinken said. “I think realistically, it’s hard to see near-term prospects for moving forward on that. What would be important is to make sure that neither party takes steps that make the already difficult process even more challenging,” he added.

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The scariest face of them all. And that’s saying something.

• John Brennan’s ‘List’ Of Ideologies Biden Intel Community Should Go After (ZH)

Well this is alarming and ominous to say the least… Former CIA Director John Brennan told MSNBC in an interview on inauguration day that the intelligence community under newly sworn in President Biden is “moving in laser-like fashion” to try and uncover dangerous plots against the country. Naturally, there’s been much of this worrisome commentary about what political ideologies should be targeted and monitored coming out of NatSec hawks in the wake of the Capitol Hill mayhem of January 6. But this is the first time such a broad array of groups have been so bluntly lumped into a Pro-Trump “insurgency” by an influential media pundit and former spook. Brennan expressly said they are “violent” and remain a domestic threat.


He said in the MSNBC interview without the least concern for violation of Americans’ rights that intelligence agencies should look into “religious extremists, authoritarians, fascists, bigots, racists, nativists, even libertarians…”. He said these belief systems have come together under the umbrella of a supposed pro-Trump movement capable of committing violence. Ah yes, “even libertarians”… “I had white knuckles because of the nature of the threats,” he began by recalling his days as CIA Director. We’ve seen “the growth of this polarization in the United States and domestic violence and White supremacist groups,” he continued. Comparing this “threat” to a foreign insurgency which the US has lately battled overseas, he said it— “brings together an unholy alliance of religious extremists, authoritarians, fascists, bigots, racists, nativists, even libertarians.”

Read more …

“Neither the FBI nor the NSA has the culture of brutal hostility toward their own country’s population needed to efficiently repress dissidents in the unfolding police state.”

• Call For New “Secret Police” Force to Spy on Trump Supporters (SN)

Perhaps channeling the spirit of the Soviet NKVD, leftists are now literally calling for a new “secret police” unit to be created at the federal level to spy on Trump supporters. In an article published by the Daily Beast, Jeff Stein argues that existing federal agencies like the FBI are ill-equipped to stop “white terror” because they missed signs of the the pre-planning of the Capitol building siege. The solution is to create a new “secret police” (yes, he literally uses those words) in order to “infiltrate and neutralize armed domestic extremists,” which according to the media’s latest narrative potentially includes 70 million Trump voters.

Stein even compares the Capitol breach to 9/11, an attack that killed nearly 3,000 people, and argues that a similar response to that should be directly inwardly against American citizens directed by a new “domestic spy agency.” “One response to the 9/11 tragedy may well get renewed attention after the Capitol assault—especially if armed white nationalists are successful in carrying out more attacks in the coming days and weeks: The call for a secret police,” he writes. The existence of a “secret police” force that subverts constitutional norms to repress the population is of course a hallmark of all dictatorial regimes, but that doesn’t appear to bother self-proclaimed “progressives.”

“Hundreds of Black Lives Matter/Antifa riots, some of which entailed firing mortars at, firebombing, or burning down police stations, did not qualify as domestic terrorism. But the Capitol Riot was terrorism, due to the usual double standard,” points out Dave Blount. He also hits the nail on the head about the real reason why the creation of a new secret police unit would be necessary. “Neither the FBI nor the NSA has the culture of brutal hostility toward their own country’s population needed to efficiently repress dissidents in the unfolding police state.”

Read more …

Told, you, they will regret the Trump ban. Genie’s out of the bottle.

Mind you, she also said: “After four long years, Europe has a friend in the White House.”

• Silicon Valley CEOs Can’t Decide Laws And Rules – EU Commission President (RT)

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has sent a message to US tech companies ahead of President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration, warning that Silicon Valley CEOs can’t decide their own laws and rules.
During a speech delivered in the European Parliament, von der Leyen laid out a series of areas in which the European Union (EU) is hoping to work with the incoming Biden administration, including climate change and the regulation of American-based tech companies that have an international reach. The EU has been working to introduce global standards for digital companies that provide a clear set of rules and responsibilities for the way they operate and the content that is distributed via their sites. However, rebuffing suggestions from tech giants to allow them to moderate themselves, von der Leyen was clear that governments must now intervene.


“This kind of decision must be taken in accordance with laws and rules…not by an arbitrary decision in the power of Silicon Valley CEOs.” Citing the recent attack on the US Capitol and linking the behavior of those President Donald Trump supporters to division and disinformation that appeared online, von der Leyen said in a tweet that regulation must be imposed on social media sites to “ensure that hate & fake news can no longer spread unchecked.” This is not the first time that the EU has sought to control the power of social media companies and tech giants. Google has been a target of the EU’s antitrust body in recent years, with the search engine having been hit with over $9 billion of fines, and further investigations are underway.

Read more …

Germany does it “gründlich”.

• Germany Enacts Major Overhaul of Its Competition Regime for the Digital Era (WSGR)

On January 18, 2021, the 10th amendment of the German Act against Restraints of Competition (ARC) entered into force. The so-called “ARC Digitization Act,” designed to modernize German competition law enforcement for the era of big-data, i) creates sweeping new powers for the Federal Cartel Office (FCO) to regulate digital platform companies; ii) expands prohibitions on abuses of market power by firms with “relative market power” and firms that refuse access to data, networks, or infrastructure; and iii) raises the thresholds for German merger control. Because of the potential that large technology companies could be required to make dramatic changes to their current business practices, the FCO is poised to become one of the most consequential competition agencies for large technology companies.

Indeed, FCO President Mundt has repeatedly emphasized the willingness and readiness of his authority “not to squander the head start” and to apply the new rules soon after their entry into force. Under the new Section 19a of the ARC, the FCO gains novel powers to designate certain companies as having “paramount significance for competition across markets.” Upon making such a designation, the FCO can then order such companies to cease engaging in prohibited types of conduct, such as self-preferencing. The ARC Digitization Act also introduces changes to the burden of proof and the appeals process, designed to enhance the FCO’s ability to take swift action. The FCO may issue a decision declaring an undertaking to be of paramount significance for competition across markets.

The factors the FCO may consider in making this determination include:
• its dominant position in one or more markets;
• its financial strength or its access to other resources;
• its vertical integration and its activities on otherwise related markets;
• its access to data relevant for competition; and
• the importance of its activities for third parties’ access to supply and sales markets and its related influence on third parties’ business activities.

The qualitative nature of these factors provides the FCO with considerable discretion in making Section 19a declarations. As clarified by the German legislators’ explanatory memo, only a small number of (digital) “ecosystems” is likely to fulfill the threshold of having such “paramount significance.”2 The intended targets of the new rules are large and “often dominant” digital platform companies “with the resources and strategic position to significantly influence the commercial activities of third parties or expand their own activities to new markets and sectors.”3 We expect that the FCO will initially target “GAFA” and a few other (mostly U.S.-based) digital platforms.

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An old favorite theme of mine: What if money doesn’t move?

• The Fed’s Inconvenient Truth: Inflation Is “M.I.A.” (RIA)

“The amount of money in the US economy is 25% higher than it was at the start of 2020, eclipsing any pace of money growth seen since the Federal Reserve was established (1913)” RB Advisors Deputy CIO Dan Suzuki. In recent weeks we have seen a non-stop flow of ominous statements like the one above. The author is 100% factual and it should be a cause for deep concern. Historically, such surges in the money supply were often met with significant inflation. While the sharp increase in the money supply provides context to the depth of our economic problems, our inflation warning bells are not ringing, at least not yet. Here is why.


Inflation, or aggregate price increases, results from economic activity, along with the amount of money and its velocity. A famous economic formula called the Monetary Exchange Equation uses those factors to create a mathematical identity that precisely determines the inflation rate. We co-authored an article with Brett Freeze entitled Stoking The Embers of Inflation. The article went into great detail about the monetary exchange equation. We summarize a few key points here: Per the inflation identity, the rate of inflation or deflation (%P) is equal to the rate of money growth (%M), plus the change in velocity (%V), less the rate of output growth (%Q).

• %M – As noted earlier, the change in the monetary base is a direct function of the Fed’s monetary policy actions. To increase or decrease the monetary base, the Fed buys and sells securities, typically U.S. Treasuries and more recently Mortgage-Backed Securities (MBS). • %V – Velocity is nominal GDP divided by the monetary base (Q/M). Velocity measures people’s willingness to hold cash or how often cash turns over. Lower velocity means that people are hoarding cash, which usually happens during periods of economic weakness, credit stress, and fear for banking institutions’ going-concern.

So if we exclude GDP, inflation is dependent on money supply and velocity changes. Money supply data is published weekly and easily forecastable with the Fed’s QE schedule. Velocity, on the other hand, is posted once a quarter and much more challenging to forecast. As such, let’s dive into velocity. Velocity is a measure of how fast cash circulates in an economy. We consider two extreme examples of money printing and monetary velocity to appreciate the interaction of money supply and velocity. • The Fed prints $10 trillion and buries it in a hole. • The Fed prints $10 trillion, sends each American a $30,000 check, and tells them they have five days to spend it or lose it The two examples have polar opposite effects on prices, despite the same massive increase in the money supply.

In example 1, the Fed does not affect inflation. The $10 trillion is not fungible as long as it stays buried. In example 2, hyperinflation would result as the new money rapidly circulates through the economy and dwarfs the economic system’s production capacity. Essentially, the demand for goods and services outstrips the supply. The amount of money greatly matters, but equally important is how it moves through the economy. The graph below compares the money supply chart above with the velocity of money and inflation.

Read more …

 

 

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Medhurst – America Just Replaced One Monster With Another
https://twitter.com/i/status/1325622342370922496

 

 

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Debt Rattle August 9 2020

Aug 092020
 
 August 9, 2020  Posted by at 10:04 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,  20 Responses »


Albert Kahn Paris, Autochrome Lumière color photo 1914

 

• COVID19 Pandemic To ‘Bring Socialism To US’, Transform The World – Taleb (RT)
• What’s In Trump’s Coronavirus Executive Orders (R.)
• Russia COVID19 Vaccine Registration Expected August 12 (RT)
• SARS-CoV-2 Fatality Risk In A Nationwide Seroepidemiological Study (Medrxiv)
• Chuck Schumer Says Schools Must Reopen Or Economy Suffers (RT)
• Trump Aides Exploring Executive Actions To Curb Voting By Mail (Pol.)
• No Payment, No Problem: Bizarre New World of Consumer Debt (WS)
• Social Media Imposing Modern-Day ‘Hays Code’ On Political Speech (RCP)
• Twitter Reportedly Joins Growing List Of Potential TikTok Suitors (ZH)
• US To Cut Troop Levels In Afghanistan To ‘Less Than 5,000’ – Esper (R.)
• Oil Giants Cut Production By 1 Million bpd Amid Massive Writedowns (R.)
• Zelensky Says Ukraine Staying Out Of US Internal Politics, Elections (R.)
• George W. Bush Laid the Groundwork for Today’s Immigration Nightmare (MPN)
• West’s Favorite Hong Kong ‘Freedom Writer’ Is American In Yellowface (GZ)
• Solidarity with the Germans (Varoufakis)

 

 

Weekend, so lower numbers. US new deaths were below 1,000 (976), so I lost that grpah.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hedge funds dollar

 

 

Who would have thought that the first socialist president of the United States would be Donald Trump?

• COVID19 Pandemic To ‘Bring Socialism To US’, Transform The World – Taleb (RT)

In a remarkable twist, the raging coronavirus pandemic has forced even countries like the US to adopt “socialist” welfare programs, acclaimed author and risk analyst Nassim Taleb has told RT. While people spend days worrying about global wars, our biggest threats have always been the pandemics, the author of ‘The Black Swan’ and ‘Skin in the Game’ told RT’s Sophie Shevardnadze on her show SophieCo. Visionaries. The advent of the novel coronavirus will tremendously change societies in many ways, making them better ready for future crises, he said. “So the world will be different, wiser. But, hopefully, it will be good for peace, because people will understand tomorrow that the enemy is not some person with weapons. The enemy is that thing you don’t see: a tiny little germ you can have on top of a pencil,” the writer added.

What I think is going to happen is a transformation of economic structures to accommodate potential pandemics. Even if they never happen again, people will be prepared for them. He cited the boom of teleworking, Zoom conference calls, and online shopping as examples of people adapting to the new reality. According to Taleb, globalization would become more “guarded,” rather than disappear entirely. “The physical movement of population… would be reduced, and business travel will not be as active as we saw in the past,” he said. One of the most remarkable changes the pandemic has brought, the writer noted, was how some governments have been “extremely helpful” to citizens trapped in quarantines and lockdowns.

This touched the US as well, where a $2 trillion stimulus package was adopted in May, the largest in the nation’s history. Who would have thought that the first socialist president of the United States would be Donald Trump? He gave people universal basic income for a few months, and they took possession of companies. If that’s not socialism, I don’t know what is. So, the individuals got a protective net that they didn’t have before. “Mark my words, if you want a headline done – ‘Who would have expected the Covid to run both domestic and foreign policy?’, ‘Covid to bring socialism to countries like the United States,’” Taleb said.

Read more …

Yeah. No. Everyone may get this wrong or confused, but from what I can see he signed just one executive order (on payroll tax), the other three are memoranda. Details on that:

The hierarchy is: Proclamations, executive orders, presidential memoranda, presidential notices, and presidential determinations. Notices and determinations are usually required by Congress on specific issues. Authority: Under an executive order signed by President John F. Kennedy, an executive order must cite the authority the president has to issue it. That could be the constitution, or a specific statute. Presidential memoranda have no such requirement.

• What’s In Trump’s Coronavirus Executive Orders (R.)

After failing to reach a deal with the U.S. Congress for a fresh round of coronavirus pandemic relief, President Donald Trump signed a series of executive orders aimed at pumping up America’s pandemic-hit economy. The orders are likely to face some legal challenges. Trump’s order cuts enhanced federal unemployment benefits – a lifeline for the tens of millions of Americans thrown out of work during the pandemic – from $600 to $400 per week. Democrats had been lobbying to extend the original $600 a week enhanced benefits, which expired on July 31. Trump proposes taking most of the money from the coffers of the Federal Emergency Management Agency – $44 billion, according to the order – with 25% of the money coming from states.

It’s not clear how Trump will convince state governments, whose revenues have been hard hit by the crisis, to pony up their proposed share. Trump called the reduced payments “generous.” Trump’s first order waives the payroll tax that funds Social Security in a bid to inject extra money directly into salaried employees’ pockets. Trump has been pushing the idea for a while but it has found little support in Congress from Democrats or his fellow Republicans. The executive order says the cut comes into effect on Sept. 1, but Trump said it “most likely” would be retroactive to Aug. 1 and translate into “bigger paychecks for working families.”

Trump’s order protecting homeowners and renters from evictions is unlikely to face a challenge from Democrats; indeed, House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi this week encouraged the move. But it isn’t clear how it will be executed. The order directs authorities to provide “temporary financial assistance” to renters and homeowners “struggling to meet their monthly rental or mortgage obligations.” Even Trump seemed a little hazy on the order’s ultimate effects, saying “we don’t want people being evicted and the act that I am signing will solve that problem – largely, hopefully, completely.” Trump said that interest on student loan payments – frozen since March – would be suspended until the end of the year.

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“Americans were surprised when they heard Sputnik’s beeping, it’s the same with this vaccine. Russia will have got there first..”

• Russia COVID19 Vaccine Registration Expected August 12 (RT)

Moscow’s Gamelei Center could register the world’s first coronavirus vaccine on August 12, Russia’s deputy health minister has revealed. Oleg Gridnev says medical workers and the elderly will be given priority for immunization. The senior minister at the department, Mikhail Murashko, announced last week that a nationwide mass vaccination program is planned to begin in October. Murashko added that all expenses will be covered by the government. “The registration of the vaccine developed at the Gamelei Center will take place on August 12,” Gridnev told journalists in Ufa on Friday morning, as cited by RIA Novosti. “Now the last stage, the third, is underway. This is the testing part and is extremely important. We have to understand that the vaccine itself must be safe.”

The Health Ministry, in an official statement, clarified that “the documents required for registration of the vaccine developed by the Gamelei Center, including data from clinical trials, are under examination. The issue of its registration will be decided upon the results of the examination.” Clinical trials of the formula began at Moscow’s Sechenov University on June 18. In a study involving 38 volunteers, it passed safety protocols. It was observed that all those who took part developed immunity to the infection. The speed with which Russia has managed to research and approve a formula has raised some eyebrows in the West, but Vadim Tarasov, a top scientist at Sechenov, said the country had a head start as it has spent the last 20 years developing skills in this field and trying to understand how viruses transmit.

The haste is fairly easy to grasp when you consider the effect Covid-19 has had on the world’s largest country. With more than 870,000 cases, it is among the four countries worst affected by the epidemic, along with the US, Brazil, and India. Russia’s 14,725 fatalities is the 11th highest in the world, although when measured per capita, the death rate ranks 47th, below Germany, but above Austria. The technology behind the Russian vaccine is based on adenovirus, the common cold. Created artificially, the vaccine proteins replicate those of Covid-19, triggering “an immune response similar to that caused by the coronavirus itself,” Tarasov said. In other words, immunization is similar to having survived the virus, but without its life-threatening risks.

Kirill Dmitriev, the head of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund, which has bankrolled the research, last week compared the vaccine discovery process to the Space Race. “Americans were surprised when they heard Sputnik’s beeping, it’s the same with this vaccine. Russia will have got there first,” he told US TV.

Read more …

Much deadlier in men. Much deadlier than the seasonal flu.

• SARS-CoV-2 Fatality Risk In A Nationwide Seroepidemiological Study (Medrxiv)

The magnitude of the infection fatality risk (IFR) of SARS-CoV-2 remains under debate. Because the IFR is the number of deaths divided by the number of infected, serological studies are needed to identify asymptomatic and mild cases. Also, because ascertainment of deaths attributable to COVID-19 is often incomplete, the calculation of the IFR needs to be complemented with data on excess mortality. We used data from a nation-wide seroepidemiological study and two sources of mortality information -deaths among laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 cases and excess deaths- to estimate the range of IFR, both overall and by age and sex, in Spain.


The overall IFR ranged between 1.1% and 1.4% in men and 0.58% to 0.77% in women. The IFR increased sharply after age 50, ranging between 11.6% and 16.4% in men ≥80 years and between 4.6% and 6.5% in women ≥80 years. Our IFR estimates for SARS-CoV-2 are substantially greater than IFR estimators for seasonal influenza, justifying the implementation of special public health measures.

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Not the first time that the Dems cry murder over something Trump says, only to make it look like they invented it mere weeks later.

• Chuck Schumer Says Schools Must Reopen Or Economy Suffers (RT)

Republicans and Democrats failed to reach a compromise on a Covid-19 economic relief bill, but one comment from Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-New York) about schools needing to reopen has some seeing hypocrisy on the left. Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-California) and Schumer addressed the press after failed negotiations with Republicans on a potential relief bill. While many of their complaints about Republicans refusing to continue robust unemployment and other government programs was to be expected, one comment from Schumer went viral as it didn’t seem to match the outrage shown to President Donald Trump when he mentioned the same thing. “If you don’t open up the schools, you’re going to hurt the economy significantly,” Schumer said, “because lots of people can’t go to work.”

The president has floated the idea of fully reopening most schools in the fall despite the coronavirus pandemic, but he has found pushback with liberal critics each and every time. Schumer’s admission that not reopening schools will hurt the economy, which the president has argued, was seen as a surprising “moment of clarity” by critics on social media who latched onto the comment. The disagreement on reopening schools comes down to federal funding. Schumer and Pelosi have argued the only way to safely let kids back into the in-person education system is through major federal funding. Trump has argued that schools in hotspots for the coronavirus should be taking precautions when reopening, but the failure to add federal funding into a Covid-19 economic package has the left and right at a standstill on the issue.

Already a heated debate, it is only bound to get more heated as the country draws nearer to the dates schools would normally open their doors again. Experts have argued since schooling is a childcare issue, keeping them closed affects not only children and employees of the education system, but also parents who cannot return to work. “Because children and parents are dying from that trauma, too. They’re dying because they can’t do what they’re doing. Mothers can’t go to work because all of a sudden they have to stay home and watch their child, and fathers,” the president told CBS News last month when asked why he considered not reopening schools a “terrible decision.”

Pelosi has argued the president is “messing” with childrens’ health and risking another outbreak of the virus with his support for reopening schools. “Going back to school presents the biggest risk for the spread of the coronavirus,” she told CNN. “If there are CDC guidelines, they should be requirements.”

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Oh, we’re going to have so much fun over the nest three months. And then there may be another three months needed to count the votes. Solid entertainment into Spring 2021. And Pelosi as President.

• Trump Aides Exploring Executive Actions To Curb Voting By Mail (Pol.)

Just because Trump’s claims of rampant mail-in voting fraud aren’t supported by evidence doesn’t mean election experts aren’t concerned about problems holding a presidential election during a pandemic. It’s unknown whether the United States Postal Service can handle a surge of mail-in ballots in a timely fashion, and other officials have cautioned about long lines and a shortage of workers at in-person polling stations, which have been limited during the coronavirus outbreak. Some have predicted the crush of remote voting could mean a final winner in the presidential race between Trump and Democrat Joe Biden won’t be known for days or even weeks.

Democrats are pushing for $25 billion for USPS in the next coronavirus recovery bill to help address those concerns, but it remains a source of disagreement with Republicans. There have already been some some notable delays in down-ballot elections during the pandemic, including one New York race this summer. Six weeks after a Democratic primary for a U.S. House seat, all of the ballots have yet to be counted. “This is a rare case where the president is not overstating the case,” argued Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, a conservative group that has sued in North Carolina and Pennsylvania over the accuracy of voting rolls. “Frankly he’s understating the problem that I think we are going to face on Election Day. The system is going to break.”

The Trump campaign is holding events touting its legal actions on voting rules. And privately, the White House is debating possible further action, according to two people familiar with the situation. The White House declined to comment on whether Trump would be signing an executive order on the issue. “All Americans deserve an election system that is secure and President Trump is highlighting that Democrats’ plan for universal mail-in voting would lead to fraud,” said White House spokeswoman Sarah Matthews. “While Democrats continue to call for a radical overhaul of our nation’s voting system, President Trump will continue to work to ensure the security and integrity of our elections.”

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It’s just like a biblical jubilee.

• No Payment, No Problem: Bizarre New World of Consumer Debt (WS)

The New York Fed released a doozie of a household credit report. It summarized what individual lenders have been reporting about their own practices: If you can’t make the payments on your mortgage, auto loan, credit card debt, or student loan, just ask for a deferral or forbearance, and you won’t have to make the payments, and the loan won’t count as delinquent if it wasn’t delinquent before. And even if it was delinquent before, you can “cure” a delinquency by getting the loan deferred and modified. No payment, no problem. Student loan borrowers were automatically rolled into forbearance under the CARES Act, and even though many students had stopped making payments, delinquency rates plunged because the Department of Education had decided to report as “current” all those loans that are in forbearance, even if they were delinquent. Yup, according to New York Fed data, the delinquency rate of student loan borrowers, though many had stopped making payments, plunged from 10.75% in Q1, to 6.97% in Q2, the lowest since 2007:

Student loan forbearance is available until September 30, and interest is waived until then, instead of being added to the loan. In a blog post, the New York Fed said that 88% of the student-loan borrowers, including private-loan borrowers and Federal Family Education Loan borrowers, had a “scheduled payment of $0,” meaning that at least 88% of the student loans were in some form of forbearance. Until September 30. And then what? And because delinquencies in student loans, auto loans, credit card debt, and mortgages are being “cured” by putting the loans in deferral programs and modifying the delinquent loans, they become “current” loans even though no catch-up payments have been made.


Still, about 32 million people are claiming unemployment insurance. A much smaller employment shock during the Financial Crisis caused the percentage of delinquent loan balances to soar, and the percentage of “current” loan balances to plunge, to bottom out at 88% in Q4 2009. Not this time. As the percentage of delinquent loan balances fell, the percentage of “current” loan balances jumped to 96.4%, a record high in the New York Fed’s data going back to 2003. Yup, crazy world. Ally Financial reported in its 10-Q filing with the SEC for the second quarter that about 21% of its auto-loan customers were enrolled in its deferral program where they don’t have to make payments for 120 days. “The vast majority of our loan deferrals for customers in the program are scheduled to expire by the end of August 2020,” it said. And then what?

Lenders like these types of programs because they can kick the can of delinquencies down the road, and instead they have “performing loans” for which they can accrue interest which makes their investors happy, even though the customers don’t make any interest or principal payments. Bank regulators normally get nervous about deferral programs. But it appears that bank regulators have been told the shelter at home until further notice. Across all lenders, about 5.9% of the $1.34 trillion in auto loans – so close to $80 billion – are in forbearance, according to the New York Fed. And as a result, borrowers who cannot make the payment, don’t have to make it, and their loans are still deemed “current,” and the percentage of auto loans that are newly delinquent dropped to 6.29%, a record low in the data – while during the last crisis, the delinquent balances were above 10% for nearly two years:

Read more …

Yes, they’re censoring TV networks now. Scary. So is this: when Elon Musk tweeted in March that “kids are essentially immune,” Twitter clarified that his tweet did not violate its COVID-19 rules.

• Social Media Imposing Modern-Day ‘Hays Code’ On Political Speech (RCP)

Social media companies continued to assert their power over the political sphere this week, with Twitter temporarily suspending the Trump campaign’s ability to post until it removed a clip of a Fox News interview with the president regarding COVID-19. When the Democratic National Committee reposted the video to debunk it, Twitter similarly banned the DNC from tweeting until it too deleted the footage. With Twitter seemingly unbothered by the implications of suspending a presidential campaign’s account just 12 weeks before the election, what might the future hold as control of our public squares is increasingly centralized?

Twitch became the first social media platform to formally suspend a presidential candidate’s account this past June when it deleted two of President Trump’s campaign rally videos for violations of its “hateful conduct” rules. In doing so, it emphasized the divide between physical and virtual campaigning. At an in-person rally a candidate can present the policy proposals he or she believes supporters want. Virtual rallies, however, are policed by an army of moderators enforcing ever-changing acceptable speech policies, forcing politicians to self-censor or risk deletion from the online world that increasingly shapes elections.

In the case of this week’s ban, the story is all the more remarkable because the video in question was actually a cable TV interview with the nation’s leader, meaning that social platforms were in effect banning a major news organization’s reporting. As news is increasingly consumed through social media, the upshot is that the online platform’s acceptable speech rules are being applied to traditional news outlets. Additionally, rather than link the video to an outside fact check, Facebook simply deleted it as “a violation of our policies around harmful COVID misinformation” while Twitter forced the campaign to delete the post as a “violation of the Twitter Rules on COVID-19 misinformation.” Both companies cited as the offending statement Trump’s claim that children have “much stronger immune systems” than adults and thus “they don’t have a problem” when infected.

While oversimplifying, Trump’s claims are not that far removed from those of CDC Director Robert Redfield and infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci, who have cited the pathogen’s significantly reduced severity in children in their calls to safely reopen schools this fall. While more measured than the “immunity” claimed by Trump, the gist of his statement — that COVID-19’s impact on children appears to be less severe than its effect on older Americans — aligns with the public statements of his medical advisers. Moreover, when Elon Musk tweeted in March that “kids are essentially immune,” Twitter clarified that his tweet did not violate its COVID-19 rules. To this date, Musk’s tweet carries no warnings or fact-checking statements from Twitter refuting it or adding additional context to his claims.

In many ways, social media platforms have become modern-day incarnations of the Hays Code that governed Hollywood from the 1930s to 1960s, establishing “morality” standards and enforcing them with an army of censors. By shaping popular culture through its control of movies, the Hays Code ensured that generations of Americans were presented an idealized world of benevolent public institutions, including police and politicians whose good works were spotlighted and any wrongdoing was punished. Moreover, as an extrajudicial speech regulation, studios could modify the rules and exempt content at will, much as social platforms do today.

Read more …

And the censoring power will only get more centralized, unless politics calls a halt to it. But then there’s always the strong links to intelligence services.

• Twitter Reportedly Joins Growing List Of Potential TikTok Suitors (ZH)

The ideological battle over the fate of TikTok is provoking fist fights in the Oval Office, and a scramble among the country’s biggest tech firms to see if they might be able to come up with a workable pitch that would allow them to win approval to buy the US operations (along with New Zealand, Australia and Canada, and possibly more) of the popular Chinese-owned social media platform – the only real obstacle to a deal at a time when corporate credit is essentially free. It’s becoming increasingly obvious that the app, which the Trump Administration is threatening to shut down in the US over fears of a “national security threat” (Chinese law forces all Chinese companies to cooperate with state security forces, provoking fears that ByteDance, TikTok’s owner, might be compelled to set up a pipeline of Americans’ private information straight to Beijing), has become perhaps the biggest political football at a time of intense strain in the bilateral relationship.

But amid the chaos and the geopolitical posturing of the leaders of the world’s two largest economies, America’s tech giants apparently see an opportunity, however unlikely, to circumvent opposition to further tech-industry mergers and seal what very well might be the last major merger in the industry for quite some time. And with the world headed into a period of protracted slowdown, companies might as well take advantage of the free money, and lock in that future EPS growth while they can. Since anti-trust scrutiny is such a hot issue in the world of big tech right now, it seems every company that has reportedly engaged in “talks” about the prospects for a deal has a reason for why it might assuage regulators and lawmakers and convince both Congress and the White House to agree to the deal.

Being the smallest of the three major companies rumored to be potential suitors, Twitter obviously has the best case from a purely anti-trust standpoint (although it seems reporters keep coming up with excuses for why Microsoft or Facebook could still make it work). Plus, Twitter’s comparatively tiny $29 billion market cap means it would likely need help from outside investors – a great opportunity for Sequoia and the other big VC firms who backed ByteDance who reportedly were in talks about a deal to bring TikTok into the US under their purview. The deal would have valued TikTok at $50 billion, according to unconfirmed reports.

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How awful! Let’s do something!

• US To Cut Troop Levels In Afghanistan To ‘Less Than 5,000’ – Esper (R.)

The United States plans to cut its troop levels in Afghanistan to “a number less than 5,000” by the end of November, Defense Secretary Mark Esper said in an interview broadcast on Saturday, adding detail to drawdown plans U.S. President Donald Trump announced earlier this week. The United States currently has about 8,600 troops in Afghanistan. Trump said in an interview released Monday by Axios that the United States planned to lower that number to about 4,000.

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Hey! You’re not driving enough! Want to collapse the economy or something?

• Oil Giants Cut Production By 1 Million bpd Amid Massive Writedowns (R.)

The world’s five largest oil companies collectively cut the value of their assets by nearly $50 billion in the second quarter, and slashed production rates as the coronavirus pandemic caused a drastic fall in fuel prices and demand. The dramatic reductions in asset valuations and decline in output show the depth of the pain in the second quarter. Fuel demand at one point was down by more than 30% worldwide, and still remains below pre-pandemic levels. Several executives said they took massive writedowns because they expect demand to remain impaired for several more quarters as people travel less and use less fuel due to the ongoing global pandemic that has killed more than 700,000 people.


Of those five companies, only Exxon Mobil did not book sizeable impairments. But an ongoing re-evaluation of its plans could lead to a “significant portion” of its assets being impaired, it reported, and signal the elimination of 20% or 4.4 billion barrels of its oil and gas reserves. By contrast, BP took a $17 billion hit. It said it plans to re-center its spending in coming years around renewables and less on oil and natural gas. Weak demand means oil producers must revisit business plans, said Lee Maginniss, managing director at consultants Alarez & Marsal. He said the goal should be to pump only what generates cash in excess of overhead costs. “It’s low-cost production mode through the end of 2021 for sure, and to 2022 to the extent there are new development plans being contemplated,” Maginniss said.

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Isn’t he also interfering by NOT investigating Burisma, Hunter and the clip where Joe Biden brags about blackmailing Poroshenko into firing a prosecutor?

• Zelensky Says Ukraine Staying Out Of US Internal Politics, Elections (R.)

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Saturday that it was a matter of Ukraine’s national security to stay out of U.S. internal politics, particularly its election. “#Ukraine did not and will not allow itself to interfere in the elections and thus harm our trusting and sincere partnership with the #USA,” he wrote on Twitter late on Saturday. Zelenskiy, 42, was a comic actor when he won a landslide election last year. But the first year of his presidency was overshadowed by Ukraine’s unwitting involvement in events that led to the impeachment of Republican U.S. President Donald Trump. Trump had unsuccessfully pressed Ukraine to launch an investigation into his Democratic rival in the 2020 presidential race, former Vice President Joe Biden.


“Never, under any circumstances, it’s acceptable to meddle in another country’s sovereign elections,” Zelenskiy wrote. Zelenskiy appealed to Ukrainian politicians to avoid any actions that could be linked to U.S. elections, nor allow themselves to try to solve any of their personal, political or business problems that way. “Ukraine’s reputation is worth much more than the reputation of any of our politicians,” the president said.

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“It is perhaps the most American of issues, and it should be one that unites us..”

Hard to read that with a straight face, let alone for him to say it.

• George W. Bush Laid the Groundwork for Today’s Immigration Nightmare (MPN)

George W. Bush, the 43rd president of the United States, has announced he is releasing a new book called “Out of Many, One” which will celebrate America’s diversity and immigrant populations. “Our immigrant heritage has enriched America’s history. It continues to shape our society. Each generation of Americans — of immigrants — brings a renewal to our national character and adds vitality to our culture. Newcomers have a special way of appreciating the opportunities of America, and when they seize those opportunities, our whole nation benefits,” the former president said. The book, scheduled for release in March 2021 will feature 43 images of immigrants, painted by Bush himself [..]

“While I recognize that immigration can be an emotional issue, I reject the premise that it is a partisan issue. It is perhaps the most American of issues, and it should be one that unites us,” he said in a press release. “My hope is that this book will help focus our collective attention on the positive impacts that immigrants are making on our country.” With immigration becoming an increasingly hot partisan issue, the move celebrating the practice is the latest in a series of actions that Bush has taken to distance himself from the current Republican president. Both Bush and his father claimed they did not vote for Trump in 2016, leading to delight from many Democrats. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, for example, yearned for a by-gone age, admitting to wishing Bush were still president, even though at the time she described him as a “total failure” in every aspect of governing.

[..] Bush bragged about greatly increasing the U.S.’ detention capacity for immigrants, using drones to patrol the area, and building 700 hundred miles of fencing and wall, which served as a stepping stone to Trump’s border plans. The increasingly militarized border mirrored the increasingly hostile rhetoric towards immigrants that dominated the Republican Party today. Bush is no stranger to covering controversial topics in his art. In 2017, he released a similar bestselling book called “Portraits of Courage: A Commander in Chief’s Tribute to America’s Warriors.” In it, he painted dozens of fallen American servicemen, all of whom died fighting in wars he started under false pretenses and has expressed no remorse for doing so. Neither Bush nor the great number of outlets who praised the book appeared at all interested in Middle Eastern victims of his policy.

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A Trojan horse in the 2020’s.

• West’s Favorite Hong Kong ‘Freedom Writer’ Is American In Yellowface (GZ)

An American man with ties to Amnesty International and key Hong Kong separatist figures has been posing online as a Hong Kong native named Kong Tsung-gan. Routinely cited as a grassroots activist and writer by major media organizations and published in English-language media, the fictitious character Kong appears to have been concocted to disseminate anti-China propaganda behind the cover of yellowface. Through Kong Tsung-gan’s prolific digital presence and uninterrogated reputation in mainstream Western media, he disseminates a constant stream of content hyping up the Hong Kong “freedom struggle” while clamoring for the US to turn up the heat on China.


Whispers about Kong’s true identity have been circulating on social media among Hong Kong residents, and was even mentioned in a brief account last December by The Standard. The Grayzone spoke to several locals outraged by a deceptive stunt they considered not only unethical, but racist. They said they have kept their views to themselves due to the atmosphere of intimidation looming over the city, where self-styled “freedom fighters” harass and target seemingly anyone who speaks out publicly against them.

The Twitter user Kong Tsung-gan (@KongTsungGan) first appeared in March 2015. Kong Tsung-gan’s earliest tweets featured commentary about Tibet and the Hong Kong Umbrella Movement. At some point, Kong changed his Twitter avatar to a black-and-white headshot of an unknown Asian person. A search of the Wayback Machine internet archive shows that this photo remained up until sometime in late 2019. Later, Kong changed his Twitter avatar to an image depicting Liu Xia, the wife of the late Nobel Prize-winning dissident Liu Xiaobo. Liu Xiaobo was a right-wing ideologue who celebrated the US wars on Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq, and was rewarded with the 2014 Democracy Award by the National Endowment for Democracy – the favorite meddling machine of the US government.


[..] At around the time he created his Twitter account, Kong Tsung-gan published his first Medium post. He has since filled his Medium feed with protest timelines, lists of recommended human rights books and journalism (including a link to the questionable China “expert” Adrian Zenz), and “first-hand accounts” of his protest experiences on the ground. In one account, Kong Tsung-gan claimed he attended a Band 1 government school, implying he was a native Hong Kong resident. Kong’s work has been amplified by Joshua Wong, the Hong Kong protest poster-boy who has enjoyed photo-ops with neoconservative Republican senators like Marco Rubio and Tom Cotton.

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Rich eat poor everywhere.

• Solidarity with the Germans (Varoufakis)

A recent study has confirmed that half of Germany’s population owns just 1.5% of the country’s wealth, while the top 0.1% own 20%. And inequality is getting worse. During the last two decades, the real disposable income of the poorest 50% has been falling while that of the top 1% has been rising fast, along with house and share prices. It is against this background of high and rising inequality that the mood of the German public must be understood, in particular popular resistance to the idea of a eurozone fiscal union. German workers, who are increasingly struggling to make ends meet, understandably refuse to endorse the idea of huge amounts of money being constantly channeled to citizens of other countries. The fact that Germany is getting richer overall is irrelevant to them.

From experience, they know that any money sent to Italy or Greece will probably come from them, not the top 0.1% – not to mention that it will probably end up in the pockets of vile Greek oligarchs, or of private German companies that have purchased Greek assets for next to nothing. As a result, the European Union’s recently agreed €750 billion ($880 billion) pandemic recovery fund, dubbed Next Generation EU, threatens to deepen divisions across Europe, rather than being the unifying balm of many commentators’ dreams. Setting aside the scheme’s macroeconomic insignificance, it is important to take a fresh look at it from the perspective of a typical German worker languishing among the bottom 50% of the country’s wealth distribution.

Her government, a typical German worker is told, will be liable for €100 billion of new debt that the EU will use to help foreigners recover from the pandemic’s economic fallout. “Italians will receive €80 billion from Europe’s Recovery Fund,” she hears. “Spaniards will collect €78 billion, and even the Greeks will pocket €23 billion.” And what will she get? Less than nothing. Because her government is already in fiscal consolidation mode, trying to return its budget to a small surplus by 2021, she can expect only stagnant wages and more austerity for her local hospitals, schools, roads, and other infrastructure.1 While she may well feel compassion to the Italians and Spaniards, who lost so many people to COVID-19, she will never accept repeating this exercise in debt mutualization on behalf of southern or East Europeans. The solidarity of German workers, toward whom no one shows any solidarity, has its limits – as it should.

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