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Debt Rattle October 5 2025

Oct 052025
 
 October 5, 2025  Posted by at 10:09 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , ,  40 Responses »


Vincent van Gogh Corridor In The Asylum 1889

 

• Trump Thanks Israel For Pause in Gaza, Urges Hamas “Move Quickly” (ZH)
• ICE Agents Ambushed, Fired Upon in Chicago Suburb (Spencer)
• US Running Out of Money To Keep Nuclear Arsenal Safe (RT)
• Sen. Kennedy: More Absurd Things Dems Shut Down the Government For (Margolis)
• US To Earn More Than $1 Trillion Per Year In Tariffs – Trump (TASS)
• Putin Blasts French ‘Piracy’ After ‘Russia-Linked’ Tanker Boarded (ZH)
• Shutdown Day #3 – Trump’s Challenge (CTH)
• Putin-the-Unready? (Paul Craig Roberts)
• Vladimir Putin Makes The Castling Move (Helmer)
• How the Israel Lobby Took Over America’s Universities (Paul Craig Roberts)
• Trust In US Media At Historic Low – Gallup (RT)
• UK Energy Chief Claims Musk Fueling ‘Threat’ To Britain (RT)
• UK Parliament Cuts Nigel Farage’s Security Detail (RT)
• Musk Tweets Wipe $15bn Off Netflix Value (RT)
• US Treasury Unveils Draft Design Of Coin With Trump’s Profile (RT)
• Higher Ed Bottoms Out (James Howard Kunstler)

 

 


https://twitter.com/nxt888/status/1973843985824428377
https://twitter.com/RussiaIsntEnemy/status/1974475994716127429

https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1973850555278921988


https://twitter.com/Real_RobN/status/1974543229761843473
https://twitter.com/MAGAStormX/status/1974510704343347569

200,000 SIM cards. That takes up a lot of space. Like all buiildings in an entire street.


https://twitter.com/Megatron_ron/status/1974531487128289740

Martin Armstrong: Trump Taking Us Into World War III

 

 

 

 

Nobody believes it until they see it. But Trump may have had enough damage done to his name.

• Trump Thanks Israel For Pause in Gaza, Urges Hamas “Move Quickly” (ZH)

The Israeli military has been ordered by the Netanyahu government to pause its offensive in Gaza City, according to Israeli army radio on Saturday, just a day after Hamas is said to have agreed to the Trump-proposed peace plan which seeks the release of all remaining hostages, living and deceased. The Israeli military in an official statement said it had been ordered to “advance readiness” for implementing the first stage of Trump’s plan. Army radio noted that military operations in Gaza would be scaled back to “the minimum” – but what have been dubbed defensive strikes will continue. Prime Minister Netanyahu says the hostages will be freed in days. Some of these airstrikes were still observed throughout the day, with Palestinian sources saying at least 55 people have still been killed since dawn.

President Trump himself late Friday urged Israel to halt its bombardment, while also calling on Hamas to “move quickly” on implementing the 20-point peace plan. “I appreciate that Israel has temporarily stopped the bombing in order to give the Hostage release and Peace Deal a chance to be completed,” Trump stated on Truth Social Saturday morning. But he also warned that “Hamas must move quickly, or else all bets will be off,” adding that “I will not tolerate delay, which many think will happen, or any outcome where Gaza poses a threat again. Let’s get this done, FAST. Everyone will be treated fairly!” But Hamas had only said it is ready to enter negotiations on Trump’s peace plan, suggesting there are many more hurdles to go as each condition is agreed to.

Prime Minister Netanyahu in fresh remarks to reporters emphasized that the plan calls for the complete demilitarization of Hamas – but this is anything but certain in terms of whether the Palestinian militant group will actually lay down its weapons. But Hamas did say it has agreed to releasing all 48 remaining hostages that it’s ready to surrender power over the Gaza Strip, but the proverbial devil will be in the details in terms of how precisely this all comes to fruition. It remains an open question the degree to which fighting has actually stopped in Gaza City…

The Palestinian side hopes to see 250 prisoners serving life sentences and 1,700 Palestinians detained without charge released as a result of the Trump 20-point plan. Israeli military Arabic-language spokesperson Avichay Adraee is meanwhile telling Palestinian residents not to return to their homes in Gaza City or northern Gaza. Still, this moment seems the best shot at truce or permanent peace in the two-year long war in quite a while, and the White House seems ready to seize the initiative and push the sides to the finish line.

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“..Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson have spent weeks ratcheting up the hysteria and purveying incendiary rhetoric about how President Donald Trump is a fascist and ICE agents are his storm troopers.”:

• ICE Agents Ambushed, Fired Upon in Chicago Suburb (Spencer)

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) have reportedly come under fire in Broadview, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago, from a woman identified only as a “U.S. citizen.” This comes after Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson have spent weeks ratcheting up the hysteria and purveying incendiary rhetoric about how President Donald Trump is a fascist and ICE agents are his storm troopers. Once again, the left’s rhetoric spills over into violence. Fox News reported early Saturday afternoon that according to Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), “federal agents were rammed and boxed in by 10 cars in Broadview, Ill., where anti-U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) crowds have been gathering for days.”

They haven’t been just gathering, and this was no peaceful protest: “One of the drivers was armed with a semi-automatic weapon, according to McLaughlin, who said officers ‘were forced to deploy their weapons and fire defensive shots at an armed U.S. citizen.’” According once again to McLaughlin, “the armed woman, who was a U.S. citizen, was named in a Customs and Border Protection (CBP) intelligence bulletin.” She “allegedly doxxed agents and posted online, ‘Hey to all my gang let’s f— those motherf—— up, don’t let them take anyone.'”The firefight took place as “agents were reportedly performing a routine patrol in Broadview, a suburb of Chicago.” Reportedly, no agents were injured. Oddly, McLaughlin added that “the woman involved drove herself to the hospital to get care for wounds.” That’s swell, but was she arrested? The question shouldn’t even need to be asked, but in America these days, one never knows.

It should be remembered in connection with this incident that back in April, Pritzker said: “Never before in my life have I called for mass protests, for mobilization, for disruption — but I am now. These Republicans cannot know a moment of peace.” It looks as if in Broadview, he has been heeded. Also, on Saturday morning, Pritzker raised the temperature even more, saying: “This morning, the Trump Administration’s Department of War gave me an ultimatum: call up your troops, or we will. It is absolutely outrageous and un-American to demand a Governor send military troops within our own borders and against our will.” Once again, this is the kind of language that stirs up the left’s most violent cadres.

And Pritzker wasn’t finished. He charged that the Trump administrations intends to “pull hardworking Americans out of their regular jobs and away from their families all to participate in a manufactured performance — not a serious effort the protect public safety.” He insisted that there was “no need for military troops on the ground in the State of Illinois. State, county, and local law enforcement have been working together and coordinating to ensure public safety around the Broadview ICE facility, and to protect people’s ability to peacefully exercise their connotational rights. I will not call up our National Guard to further Trump’s acts of aggression against our people.”

Now, Pritzker appears to have gotten what he wanted, and the seeds he planted and has been watering for so long have finally sprouted: there has been an armed attack against ICE agents in a Chicago suburb. Yet Pritzker shouldn’t get too elated and start savoring being the Democrats’ vice presidential candidate (or who knows, even presidential candidate) in 2028. While he has been energetically purveying his hysterical rhetoric, he has also, ironically enough, completely undercut it.

After all, if officers of the law are not able to do their duty in Chicago, and come under armed attack when they try to do so, it’s clear that Pritzker is wrong: there really is a need for military troops on the ground in the State of Illinois. And the person who is primarily responsible for creating the need for them is Pritzker himself. The Broadview incident comes at a time of rapidly increasing tensions all across the country. Democrat governors such as Pritzker and Gavin Newsom seem determined to keep the pedal to the medal on the hysterical rhetoric, as if they actually want the violence they’re inciting to break out. In a saner age, their defiance of the president and constant incitement would be considered seditious and result in their being removed from office, if not prosecuted. Today, it has them jockeying for the leadership of the Democrat Party.

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More goodies from the shutdown.

• US Running Out of Money To Keep Nuclear Arsenal Safe (RT)

US Energy Secretary Chris Wright has cautioned that the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) could run out of funding to monitor the country’s nuclear arsenal within eight days because of an ongoing government shutdown. He said operations would be suspended once the money is gone. The US federal government has stopped working for the first time in almost seven years, after Republicans and Democrats failed to agree on a spending bill in the Senate.nOn Friday, the Senate failed to pass either a Republican bill or a Democratic alternative, with both measures falling short of the votes needed. Both sides blamed each other for the crisis. Lawmakers are expected to try again on October 6.

“Eight more days of funding, and then we have to go into some emergency shutdown procedures, putting our country at risk,” Wright said Thursday evening on Fox News, referring to the National Nuclear Security Administration. The secretary said over 20 officials in his department are still awaiting Senate confirmation, blaming Democrats for delaying tactics and prolonging the shutdown by withholding key votes. Before this year’s federal cuts, the NNSA employed more than 65,000 federal workers and contractors nationwide, handling everything from maintaining the nuclear arsenal to non-proliferation efforts and oversight of the US Navy’s nuclear operations.

In its latest shutdown plan, the US Energy Department said it would keep NNSA staff running “critical control operations systems” and those working on nuclear non-proliferation, but gave no figures on how many employees would be included. mUS President Donald Trump has suggested he may use the shutdown to push through major staff and wage cuts, blaming Democrats for the budget impasse. The White House is also using the standoff to target programs opposed by Republicans. Federal agencies have partially suspended services and many employees are furloughed. The last government shutdown began on December 22, 2018 and lasted 35 days.

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$833,000 for transgender people in Nepal.
$300,000 for a pride parade in Lesotho.
$4.2 million for LGBTQI people in the Western Balkans and Uganda.

‘We’re gonna shut down government until you put that back in.’”

• Sen. Kennedy: More Absurd Things Dems Shut Down the Government For (Margolis)

The Schumer Shutdown is dragging into the weekend, with neither side budging. Republicans pushed for a straightforward continuing resolution to keep the government funded through November, but Democrats chose to hold the line for their wish list of radical spending priorities—billions and billions of dollars’ worth—and in doing so, shut the government down. The media has focused on their demand for free health care for illegal immigrants, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. There’s a lot more buried in this standoff that isn’t getting the attention it deserves. Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) took to the Senate floor this week and laid out, in his trademark blunt and hilarious fashion, exactly what Democrats are trying to shut the government down over—and it’s every bit as ridiculous as you’d expect.

“Basically, President Trump just said, ‘We want you to take some stuff out of the budget that we think is wasteful,’” Kennedy began. “And we did — and that upset the congresswoman.” That “congresswoman,” of course, is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), who, according to Kennedy, went ballistic when Trump and congressional Republicans started cutting some of the more absurd Biden-era spending priorities. Kennedy didn’t hold back as he read aloud what Democrats are fighting to restore. “We found that under President Biden, they were spending $3 million for circumcisions and vasectomies in Zambia,” he said. “We took that out. The congresswoman says, ‘We’re gonna shut down government until you put that back in.’”

And that was just the beginning. “We found $500,000 of American taxpayer money for electric buses in Rwanda,” Kennedy continued. “We found $3.6 million for pastry cooking classes and dance focus groups for male prostitutes in Haiti. I kid you not. I’m not making this up. It was in the budget under President Biden.”

Republicans, Kennedy noted, stripped out each of these items as they tried to rein in wasteful foreign spending. But Democrats—with AOC and the “socialist wing” of the party leading the way—are threatening to shut the government down until every last one of those absurd expenditures is put back in. “I could spend the rest of the afternoon here,” Kennedy said. “We took all that out. It upset Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez. It upset the socialist wing of her party. And now they’re threatening all other Democrats and saying, ‘You’ve got to shut that government down until we get what we want.’” And that, Kennedy concluded, is what this entire budget fight is about—not defending American taxpayers or funding core government services, but holding the government hostage over millions in woke pet projects and bizarre international handouts.

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“..a protective mechanism.”

• US To Earn More Than $1 Trillion Per Year In Tariffs – Trump (TASS)

US President Donald Trump said that the import duties he imposed would bring the United States revenue of more than $1 trillion per year. In an interview with One America News television channel, Trump stated that revenues from new tariffs were just starting to flow in but eventually they could reach $1 trillion a year. Speaking at the 80th session of the UN General Assembly last month, Trump said the United States was ready to conduct trade with all countries provided that the principles of fairness and reciprocity are respected. According to the US president, the tariffs that the US administration has imposed on most countries of the world are a protective mechanism.

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One fake anti-Russia story after another. They come fast.

• Putin Blasts French ‘Piracy’ After ‘Russia-Linked’ Tanker Boarded (ZH)

“The tanker was seized in neutral waters without any justification, and they were apparently looking for some kind of military cargo, drones, or something else,” Putin said Thursday at the Valdai Discussion Club meeting in Sochi, condemning the French takeover of an oil tanker suspected of being part of Russia’s so-called “shadow fleet” which seeks to evade Western energy sanctions as an act of “piracy”. “There’s nothing there, there ne ver was, and there can’t be anything,” Putin asserted of the boarding action which took place earlier this week. The tanker was under the flag of a third country and the crew is international, Putin described, adding he doesn’t know “how much it’s related to Russia.” French authorities revealed details for the first time on Thursday, confirming that they arrested the captain, a Chinese national. He’s accused of disobeying orders of the French navy.

Another crew member, the First Officer, was also arrested, as Reuters details of French statements: French police have arrested the captain and first officer of a sanctioned tanker suspected of operating for Russia’s “shadow fleet,” authorities said on Thursday, after the navy boarded the vessel, which may have been involved in recent drone incidents around Denmark. The vessel, the Boracay, was approximately 50 nautical miles south of Copenhagen on September 22 when drone activity forced the closure of the city’s airport around 1830 GMT, according to data from MarineTraffic. It was also observed heading south along Denmark’s western coast on the evening of September 24 when drones were reported flying north of Esbjerg and near several nearby airports. The tanker appeared on on an EU sanctions list for transporting Russian oil, but the whole Denmark drone incursion linkage aspect to it seems highly coincidental, and a big stretch, assuming there’s no further evidence and that no actual drones were found upon searching the vessel.

French authorities would be presenting any such evidence very quickly, but instead they just issued ambiguous statements remotely suggesting the linkage to the Denmark drone sightings.French authorities say that the Boracay has a history of changing names and flags, and is currently flying under Benin’s registry. It’s believed this is part of intentional sanctions-dodging. The Boracay is now anchored off France’s coast near Saint-Nazaire, south of Brest. It had initially set sail from the Russian port of Primorsk outside Saint Petersburg on September 20 and had actually been at one point detained Estonian authorities earlier this year for sailing without a valid country flag. International law allows countries to intercept such vessels which are believed to be stateless, typically if there is suspicion of wrong-doing like smuggling.

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“If liberty and freedom become the priority, the advancement of personal wealth becomes more difficult.”

• Shutdown Day #3 – Trump’s Challenge (CTH)

The professionally Republican wing of the GOPe want this shutdown ended just as much as the professionally Democrat wing. The UniParty cannot allow Trump/Vought this much power. Republicans cannot allow Trump this much power. The Moonbat leftists are not the biggest problem, they never have been. They are ideologues, mostly. Insufferable, stupid, violent at times, but easy to spot. Remember, Democrats quest for power; Republicans quest for money. Always underline this because it’s really important. The Moonbat leftists seek power, seek control of your life, and they are open in their insufferably stupid arguments to get there. When they start to lose, they turn violent. This is their history. That said, they are not the most dangerous. The professional Republicans are more dangerous because their priority is money. As a result, their approaches, goals, objectives and arguments can be purchased.

Republicans have no interests, goals or objectives, nor allegiances, that supersede their primary objective, getting money, growing their wealth. Democrats will come at you with a knife, a gun or a baseball bat. You can see them. The professional Republican guy standing beside you, however, is willing to take a payment to shoot you in the ear when you don’t see it coming. This is also why it seems like Democrats stick together, and Republicans split. Democrats are chasing a common goal, a collective goal, power. Republicans are chasing a commonality, yes, but an individual goal, money, their wealth. Donors contribute to the Democrat agenda because their interest to benefit from power. Republicans modify their agenda to benefit donors because their goal is money. Democrats stay on task, power. Republicans are flexible, money.

You enter a war against Leftists with extreme danger. However, the danger is not the war in front of you, it’s the army beside you waiting to get a payment from the enemy in front of you. Out of a group of 1,000 democrats, 900+ will join in to defend a weakened Moonbat leftist (see Kimmell). Out of a group of 1,000 Republicans you will find, maybe, 5 willing to cover your back regardless of how much bribery is put in front of them. Remember this, understand this and the reality of who presents the most danger to us is accurately framed. Republicans do not simply snatch defeat from the jaws of victory; they sell defeat to the highest bidder! In our lifetime we have watched this unfold. There were Democrats with the same outlook as Republicans, they were known as “blue dog” democrats. The Blue Dogs were willing to compromise power, to sell power, in return for financial payment.

Traditional ‘Blue Dogs’ were names like Hillary and Bill Clinton; their prism was the assembly of money. However, this group faced the introduction of hardline ideological believers, the communists or Marxists represented by Barack Obama. Obama Inc. battled Clinton Inc. to determine the future of the Democrats. The ideologues won, and the democrat Blue Dogs in their tribe, those willing to concede ideology for money, were purged from their ranks. Modern Democrats, post Obama takeover, are now pure ideologues. “By any means necessary” is the operational objective of modern leftists. This is why government under Obama flipped the switch so openly and began weaponizing power. Purging govt agencies and replacing the staff with ideologues. Crushing opposition, by brute force and targeting.

Simultaneously, in the smaller Republican ranks, there was a small group who wanted to face down the same battle inside the Republican party. The original Tea Party represented this group. A smaller assembly trying to put ideology, freedom and liberty at the forefront of the Republican objective. Unlike the leftist effort, the Tea Party effort inside the Republican party failed. Republican leadership crushed the liberty rebellion and went back to business taking money from the ideological Marxists who now ruled the centers of power. People who didn’t quite understand what was taking place stood and watched, frustrated, at the dynamic of Republicans who conceded every battle to the left. What the abused GOP viewers didn’t understand was the core of the issue; Democrats want power, Republicans want money. Each time the Republicans could win on a policy issue, they sold the loss to Democrats.

Battered conservatives grew more frustrated and more frustrated. Now we enter the era of MAGA, represented by billionaire Donald J Trump, who, like Obama before him, began the fight inside the Republican Party. The Tea Party rebellion quickly reengaged Trump and formed MAGA; the ideological fight inside the Republican party, liberty over money, was on again. MAGA represents opposition to the leftist ideological advancement. But the Republican assembly will not concede. In a way their resistance makes sense. If liberty and freedom become the priority, the advancement of personal wealth becomes more difficult. Simultaneously, if retention and assembly of wealth is the priority, liberty and freedom ideologues become impediments. Again, MAGA within Republicanism must be crushed when money is the priority.

This internal Republican battle has been unfolding in various reference points for almost a decade now, while the internal Democrat battle was long ago decided. The root issue the within the Republican apparatus still surrounds the greatest evil. ‘The love of money is the root of all evil.’ This conflict has not yet been fully decided, yet admittedly -and thankfully- MAGA has made some significant gains. The Republican party now has a lower income demographic and a more ideological working-class base. However, don’t be fooled. The top tier of the Republican apparatus is mostly unchanged; albeit they are facing more entrenched ideological opposition from the awakened MAGA forces. The top tier will still sell out the base, still compromise for personal profit, and still take payment for policy. This brings us to where we are today.

Inside the MAGA assembly we are trying to identify which Republican leaders have shifted to the MAGA/liberty viewpoint, and which Republican leaders are playing the long game while retaining their DNA level objective, get money. Each day on these pages and many others, the ‘trust’ factor is raised; this is completely understandable. We have a strong muscle memory for betrayal, and we all bear the scars to remind us. It is fitting and proper that these conversations take place. After all, it’s interesting to watch professional Republicans discuss how agencies like the DOJ and FBI have lost institutional trust of the American people due to corruption, while simultaneously those same Republicans never note trust loss within the Republican party as a result of their willful blindness to it.

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“The Russians simply cannot comprehend that they are targeted as an obstacle to Western hegemony.”

• Putin-the-Unready? (Paul Craig Roberts)

Leaders of European countries with limited military ability are openly declaring their preparation for war with Russia. The Baltic states, Poland, Netherlands, France, Germany, and the UK speak if they look forward to a war that would utterly destroy them. It is a mystery as Russia poses no threat to them and wants nothing from them but a mutual security agreement. I believe Putin himself has responsibility for this state of affairs. Putin’s efforts to restrain the conflict in Ukraine have been misunderstood. Putin is perceived as irresolute and the Russian military as incapable. Trump calls Russia a paper tiger and speaks of Ukraine with sufficient European help transitioning from the defense to the offense and invading Russia.

This extremely dangerous way of thinking is the reason I have often said that Putin’s never-ending, ever-widening war was a strategic blunder, a blunder that Putin continues to make. With European politicians declaring their preparation for war, is Putin paying attention, or will he again be Putin-the-Unready as he was in South Ossetia in 2008, in Ukraine in 2014, in 2022 when Russia was forced to intervene in Donbas, and when the Russian strategic bomber force was attacked on June 1, 2025? Putin’s restraint and Lavrov’s pleading for negotiations have convinced the West that Russia is an easy target. This mistaken conviction is fomenting a major war.

Russians do not seem to understand the situation. This morning on RT political analyst Nadezhda Romanenko attributes the Western war talk to “Western anxieties and domestic political calculations.” It would be more realistic to attribute the war talk to setting up Russia as an aggressor that must be deterred. The Russians simply cannot comprehend that they are targeted as an obstacle to Western hegemony. Everywhere in the West the image that is maintained is Russian aggression. Wikipedia, for example, describes the 2008 Russian war with Georgia as Russian aggression, the 2022 intervention in Donbas as a Russian invasion of Ukraine. Estonia and Poland recently made claims of Russian entry into their air space. Every possible sign of Russian aggression is created. The West is uninterested in Putin’s reassurances. Why is Russia unable to understand this?

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Speeches at the Valdai club are important.

• Vladimir Putin Makes The Castling Move (Helmer)

On June 30, 2021, during his Direct Line programme, President Vladimir Putin was asked what games he liked to play during his schooldays. “I am tempted to say chess,” he replied, “but, unfortunately, it was not chess.” Four years have gone by until his appearance yesterday at the Valdai Club, when the president was asked the same question. He replied: “Well, I loved chess.” Putin was castling.

In the ancient game of chess the move which is known by this name is a relatively new one. The rules to allow it also took centuries to develop. The purpose of castling is defence when the king is under attack and there is safe space between the king and the castle (rook), so that they can exchange places and the king retreat to the safer margin of the board. The opportunity created thereby is for the rook to move more actively into the counter-attack against the adversary. The castling king is delegating the offensive to his rook.

To understand what Putin’s castling means on the board today, read what he said first about the Board of Peace (BOP) Gaza plan of President Donald Trump, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and ex-prime minister Tony Blair. “Russia always supports and welcomes any steps by Trump,” he told his spokesman to say, “that seek to avert the tragedy that is now unfolding. We want this plan to be realized, so that it may help steer events in the Middle East toward a peaceful path”.

As this was being interpreted outside the Kremlin wall as Putin’s unqualified endorsement, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov announced it was too soon for that. “We have not seen this plan. We have only heard comments about its contents. You have now outlined its main provisions. I have heard that this international body, which is intended to ‘temporarily govern Gaza’, is planned to be headed by former British prime minister Tony Blair. He himself seems to have already announced this. I reiterate, I am not privy to the details. I do not know what powers he will be granted, nor how the Arab countries view this. I am aware that some of them have already welcomed the ‘Donald Trump plan’. However, a final assessment can only be made once we know the views of all of Palestine’s neighbours, Israel, the countries of the region, the League of Arab States, the Gulf Cooperation Council, and, above all, the Palestinians themselves. I have heard that representatives of the Palestinian National Authority are not being considered for inclusion in this temporary body, even as observers.”

“Regarding the international security forces,” Lavrov went on. “No, we have not been invited to participate. I reiterate, we only became aware of this new plan yesterday. However, I have read that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, commenting on the ‘Trump plan’ – which was announced following Netanyahu’s visit to Washington – said that the plan is good and should not be altered. He claimed that Hamas and everyone else should agree to it. Among the positive aspects of this plan, he stated that Israel would retain control over security in Gaza. This somewhat contradicts the establishment of international forces, so all the details need to be clarified first.”

Lavrov said that at the Valdai Club conference in Sochi. Two days later, Putin has followed him on to the same platform; he also followed the foreign minister on the Gaza plan. Asked about this, Putin started by saying that “now that we are getting acquainted with President Trump’s initiatives, I think there is a light at the end of the tunnel that may still appear”. On Tuesday Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov had mistaken the tunnel for the light. Putin went on to clarify:“The situation in Gaza is a terrible event in history, in modern history. And even someone known as the pro-western Secretary-General of the United Nations, Mr. Guterres, publicly says Gaza has become the largest children’s cemetery in the world. What could be more tragic and sad?”

About Trump’s Gaza plan, “you know, it will probably come as a surprise to you, but on the whole, Russia is ready to support him. If, of course, as we have to look carefully at the proposals made, it will lead to the final goal, which we have always talked about. Russia has always advocated the creation of two states: Israel and a Palestinian state, starting in 1948 and then in 1974, when the relevant UN Security Council resolution was adopted. And this, in my opinion, is the key to a final solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.”

“Indeed, as far as I know, I have not looked at this proposal so carefully yet, but it proposes to create an international body that will govern Palestine, more precisely the Gaza Strip, for some time, and Mr. Blair should be at its head. He’s not known as a great peacemaker, but I know him personally. Moreover, I visited him, spent the night at his house, we had coffee in our pajamas in the morning, and so on. Yes, yes.”

“Fyodor Lukyanov: Was the coffee good?”

“Yes, quite. But what do I want to say? He is a man with his own views, but he is an experienced politician. And in general, of course, if his activities, his experience, and his knowledge are directed towards a peaceful course, then he can play some positive role. There are, of course, several questions. First: How long will this international administration work? How and to whom will power be transferred later? As far as I understand, this plan outlines the possibility of transferring power to the Palestinian Authority. In my opinion, it would be better, of course, to put everything under the control of President [Mahmoud] Abbas and the current Palestinian administration. It may be difficult for them to resolve the security issues. But so far as I can imagine, my colleagues, with whom I spoke on this topic today, envisage the possibility of transferring control over the Gaza Strip, including to the local militia, to ensure security. Is this bad? In my opinion, this is a good thing.”

“We need to understand, I repeat, how long the international administration will manage there, in what time frame it is supposed to transfer both civil power and security issues, which is very important. And, in my opinion, this should definitely be supported. We are talking about freeing all the hostages held by Hamas, on the one hand, and releasing a significant number of Palestinians from Israeli prisons. Here, too, we need to understand how many Palestinians, whom, and at what time can we release them? And of course, you know, the most important question is: how does Palestine feel about this? That’s exactly what you need to understand. And the countries of the region, the entire Islamic world, and Palestine itself, the Palestinians themselves, including, of course, Hamas. They treat Hamas differently there, and we have our own attitude, but we have contacts with Hamas. It is important for us that Hamas also supports this, and the Palestinian Authority supports it. But these are all issues that require painstaking, careful research.”

“In general, if this happens, it will, of course, be a very serious step forward in resolving the conflict. But, I repeat, in our opinion, fundamentally it can be resolved only with the creation of a Palestinian state. Of course, Israel’s attitude towards this is also important. We don’t know yet either: how did Israel take it? I do not even know of any public statements on this subject, I just did not have time to look at it. But it’s not even public statements that are important, but in fact how the Israeli leadership will treat this, whether it will fulfill everything that the President of the United States has proposed. There are a lot of questions. But in general, if all these positive things that I mentioned happen, then this is, of course, a breakthrough. And a breakthrough can be very positive. I repeat for the third time: the creation of a Palestinian state is a key element of the settlement as a whole.”

Putin was acknowledging that since Peskov’s announcement, he had been briefed by Lavrov and others, and that they had persuaded him to change his mind on what to say. The President concedes now that Russian policy on the Trump plan has not been decided yet; that it will be a collective one with his “colleagues”; and that he is delegating the next moves to them and to their “painstaking, careful research.” This is castling by the king for the rook.

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” The definition of what constitutes anti-semitism has been constantly expanded and now includes truth itself.”

• How the Israel Lobby Took Over America’s Universities (Paul Craig Roberts)

Cornell University, once a place of discussion and learning, is seeking to remove a tenured Jewish professor, Eric Cheyfitz, who permits Israel to be discussed instead of simply praised. The professor’s daughter and granddaughter live in Israel. But this doesn’t save him from being charged with discrimination against a Jewish graduate student. The professor’s trouble was brought to him by an Israeli student who previously served in Israel’s elite military surveillance agency, Unit 8200. None of the students support the Israeli student’s claim. It seems the Israel Lobby is testing how far it can expand its power over America’s universities. If the Lobby can get Cornell University to punish a tenured Jewish professor based on a complaint by a former member of Israeli Military Surveillance, then Israel will have set the standard for American universities that truth about Israel constitutes anti-semitic discrimination and is punishable.

The Israel Lobby took over American universities with large monetary grants. Now dependent on these grants, university administrators have to follow the line. This is how the takeover happened: First came large monetary donations from Jews. These donations led to the appointment of Jewish benefactors to the university’s board of trustees. From here the Jews obtained university administrations headed by Jewish presidents who attached anti-semitism to the woke anti-racist, anti-homophobic, etc. agenda. The definition of what constitutes anti-semitism has been constantly expanded and now includes truth itself.

Several years ago a list was published of the ethnicity of the leadership of Ivy League universities. Formerly a WASP preserve, every Ivy League university had a Jewish president or provost. They may have been outstanding leaders. The point is that for such a small ethnic minority to be in control of all of America’s elite universities cannot be a coincidence. Jews want power and are good at attaining it. In a way you have to admire their determination. It didn’t take the Israel Lobby but a day or two to take over Charlie Kirk’s organization. Presumably, this puts Christian evangelicals back into Israel’s pockets, thus solidifying Israel’s control over President Trump. American WASPs are no longer contenders. Worn out, ambition eroded by trust funds, WASPs have been displaced. Our future seems to in the hands of the Israel Lobby or the immigrant-invaders.

https://israelpalestinenews.org/cornell-cut-classes-by-a-pro-palestinian-professor/

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“..more than 90% of evening newscast stories about [Trump] on ABC, NBC, and CBS were unfavorable.”

• Trust In US Media At Historic Low – Gallup (RT)

Americans’ confidence in the mass media has sunk to a record low, with fewer than three in ten now trusting news outlets to report fairly, according to a new Gallup poll. A poll conducted in September of 1,000 adults showed that only 28% expressed a “great deal” or “fair amount” of trust in newspapers, television and radio, down from 31% last year, 40% five years ago, and almost 70% in the 1970s. Meanwhile, 36% reported “not very much” confidence and 34% said they had “none at all.” For the first time, confidence among Republicans has collapsed into single digits, with only 8% saying they trust the media. However, 51% of Democrats believed media reporting.

US President Donald Trump’s rocky relationship with the press has reportedly fueled these splits. A Harvard Kennedy School study found that Trump’s first 100 days in office drew overwhelmingly negative coverage, while the Media Research Center recently estimated that more than 90% of evening newscast stories about him on ABC, NBC, and CBS were unfavorable.

On the 100th day of his second term this year, Trump’s administration issued a press release titled “100 Days of Hoaxes,” accusing major outlets of spreading “a nonstop deluge of hoaxes and lies” and listed 48 reports it deemed false. Beyond partisan politics, structural shifts are also eroding traditional media. A Reuters Institute report in June suggested that podcasters and AI chatbots are playing a growing role in news dissemination, with more than half of Americans under 35 relying on social and video networks as their main sources of information.

Read more …

Evey Brit knows what Musk is talking about.

• UK Energy Chief Claims Musk Fueling ‘Threat’ To Britain (RT)

UK Energy Secretary Ed Miliband has accused Elon Musk of posing a major threat to Britain, claiming the billionaire backs nationalist forces seeking to undermine the country. Speaking at the Labour Party conference on Wednesday, the former party leader linked Musk to Nigel Farage, whose Reform UK party gained traction in the May local elections. The US-based entrepreneur has expressed support for the party, but has urged Farage to step down. According to Miliband, Farage is “a key part of a global network that wants to destroy the ties that bind our communities and our way of life.” He added: “I can sum up the threat for you in two words: Elon Musk.” Miliband alleged that Musk “incites violence on our streets,” “calls for the overthrow of our elected government,” and enables “disinformation through X” – the microblogging platform that the billionaire purchased in 2022.

“We have a message for Elon Musk. Get the hell out of our politics and our country.” Musk appeared unfazed by the remarks. Shortly after the speech, he blasted Prime Minister Keir Starmer, calling him “an actor with an empty head” who merely repeats talking points supplied by others. Musk and Starmer have engaged in a months-long feud over the UK’s grooming gang scandal. In June, Starmer authorized a new national inquiry into the mass sexual exploitation of British girls, crimes largely linked to gangs of Pakistani men over a decade ago. Musk accused the prime minister of being “deeply complicit in the mass rapes in exchange for votes.”

Read more …

When you’re more popular than the PM.

But still… That PM paints a big -political- target on his own back.

• UK Parliament Cuts Nigel Farage’s Security Detail (RT)

UK parliamentary authorities drastically slashed government-funded security for Nigel Farage, an MP and the leader of a major opposition right-wing party, Reform UK, its head of policy has claimed. Zia Yusuf accused Prime Minister Keir Starmer of deliberately putting his political rival at risk of attack. Speaking to Times Radio on Wednesday, Yusuf stated that “two weeks ago, the authorities cut Nigel’s security detail by 75 per cent,” without providing any reasons for the decision. The Reform UK representative added that “donors have stepped in [to]… make sure that Nigel is well protected.” However, “if anything was to happen to Nigel, we will hold Keir Starmer squarely responsible,” Yusuf stressed.Yusuf further accused the sitting prime minister of inciting violence against the “man who is the bookmaker’s favorite to be the next prime minister.”

Farage himself acknowledged he feared for his own security and that of other party members after Starmer’s latest attack. Speaking during the Labour Party conference on Tuesday, the prime minister dubbed Farage a “snake oil merchant” who does not like Britain because of his “racist” plans to curb immigration. Starmer charged that Britain must “go into that battle armed, not just with words and condemnation, but with action,” describing Reform UK as the “enemy of national renewal” and the “biggest threat we face.” On Thursday, The Telegraph reported that veteran Conservative MP Sir David Davis had asked Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood to “review the decision at the earliest opportunity.”

“It strikes me that Mr Farage is a particularly high-profile target, arguably at greater risk than many Cabinet ministers,” the lawmaker reportedly wrote in a letter. An Ipsos poll last month indicated that Starmer’s popularity had hit a record low, with 79% of Britons disapproving of his performance. Another survey by think tank More in Common suggested around the same time that Farage would become prime minister with 373 MPs if an election were held tomorrow. The Labour, in contrast, would suffer its worst electoral defeat since 1931, securing less than 100 seats in the House of Commons, according to the poll.

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“Transgender propaganda isn’t just quietly lurking in the background on Netflix. They are actively pushing it on users.”

• Musk Tweets Wipe $15bn Off Netflix Value (RT)

US streaming giant Netflix has lost about $15 billion in market value after billionaire Elon Musk accused the platform of “woke bias” and urged his followers to cancel subscriptions. Netflix shares fell 4.3% in a day and a half to $1,140 by midday Thursday, cutting its market cap to $483 billion from $498 billion on Wednesday, trading data showed. The drop came after Musk called on users to boycott Netflix over the animated show ‘Dead End: Paranormal Park’, which features a transgender character. Although canceled in 2023 after two seasons, the show remains available on the platform with a TV-Y7 rating for children seven and older.

Musk’s campaign began on Tuesday when he reposted a clip on X showing one of the show’s characters identifying as transgender. “Dead End Paranormal Park, a show on Netflix, is pushing pro-transgender on CHILDREN. This show is advertised for 7-YEAR-OLDS,” the account said. Musk replied: “this is not ok.” He later reposted messages from users claiming to have canceled Netflix and accused the service of pushing “LGBTQ+ propaganda.” On Wednesday, he wrote: “Cancel Netflix for the health of your kids.” In another post, he said: “Transgender propaganda isn’t just quietly lurking in the background on Netflix. They are actively pushing it on users.” Musk has long railed against wokeism and LGBTQ messaging, which many link to his estrangement from his trans child, Vivian Wilson, who has openly criticized the billionaire for his alleged anti-trans vendetta.

In a Washington Post interview last year, Musk said that to him Wilson was “dead, killed by the woke mind virus.” Netflix has not responded to Musk’s remarks. The company has previously defended controversial content on free speech grounds, including in 2020, when its film ‘Cuties’ drew outrage for sexualized depictions of underage actors. By Thursday’s close, the firm had pared some of the losses, ending at $1,161 a share with a $493 billion valuation. While stock is down 4% this week, it remains up 30% year-to-date. Analysts expect Musk’s campaign will not weigh on the company long-term, suggesting that Netflix shares are too costly to be seriously affected by online backlash.

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“Despite the radical left’s forced shutdown of our government, the facts are clear: Under the historic leadership of President Donald J. Trump, our nation is entering its 250th anniversary stronger, more prosperous, and better than ever before..”

Reason to celebrate!

• US Treasury Unveils Draft Design Of Coin With Trump’s Profile (RT)

The US Treasury Department is considering putting an image of US President Donald Trump on a one-dollar coin marking the 250th anniversary of America’s independence. According to the first design draft revealed on Friday, the coin features Trump’s profile on one side, along with the words “Liberty” and “In God we trust,” and the dates 1776–2026. The other side shows Trump raising a clenched fist against a backdrop of the US flag, with the inscriptions “Fight, fight, fight,” “United States of America,” and “E pluribus unum.” The image is a clear homage to a photo taken by AP’s Evan Vucci shortly after Trump’s failed assassination attempt in July 2024, which was widely republished in US and international media.

“Despite the radical left’s forced shutdown of our government, the facts are clear: Under the historic leadership of President Donald J. Trump, our nation is entering its 250th anniversary stronger, more prosperous, and better than ever before,” a Treasury Department spokesperson said in a statement. “While a final $1 coin design has not yet been selected to commemorate the United States’ semiquincentennial, this first draft reflects the enduring spirit of our country and democracy, even in the face of immense obstacles,” the spokesperson added. According to the Washington Post, existing US law generally prohibits depictions of living people on currency. In addition, the 2020 Circulating Collectible Coin Redesign Act, which authorized the minting of the anniversary coin, prohibits busts or portraits of people on the reverse side.

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“There are so many disgusting animals in public life that we have allowed to fraternize with the rest of society to our absolute peril.” Aimee Terese on “X”

• Higher Ed Bottoms Out (James Howard Kunstler)

Harvard, apparently, can never learn. It has made itself the poster-child for all the failures of contemporary education, including the racketeering around endowments, government grant grifts, race and gender hustles, and intellectual surrender to ideas that would make medieval astrologasters burst out laughing. Case in point: the university lately announced the hiring of a Boston-area drag-queen to teach a course in the spring semester of 2026 about the TV show known as Ru Paul’s Drag Race. The show features contestants vying for prizes and crowns based on “Charisma, Uniqueness, Nerve, and Talent” (C.U.N.T.). Get the picture? Reach into your Jungian psychology tool-bag.

This backwater of the arts was identified some years ago by the literary pop-star Susan Sontag as “camp” derived from the French se camper “to pose in an exaggerated fashion” depicting “unnatural artifice.” Camp is the theatrical cousin of kitsch, which is the celebration of bad taste, with histrionic overtones of exaggerated sentimentality. Please understand: when you are watching drag-queens, you are not really seeing men posing as women. You are seeing men portraying women as monsters. You might surmise that these are men who labor under “mommy issues.” The giveaway is that they often banter onstage humorously about their male genitalia, and sometimes even attempt sneaky displays of such, which opens that behavior to interesting interpretations.

Harvard’s drag-queen du jour demonstrates all that nicely. Kareem Khubchandani, his legal name, is a professor of theater, dance, and performance studies at Tufts University. He also teaches “Studies in Race, Colonialism, and Diaspora.” As a drag star, he goes by the stage-name LaWhore Vagistan. This is how he describes himself to the news media: “[M]y preferred pronouns are ‘she’ or ‘aunty.’ I chose ‘LaWhore’ because my family traces its origins to Pakistan: Lahore is an important city in Pakistan, and well, I’m a bit of a whore. And Vagistan because I see the subcontinent as one, big, beautiful Vag … istan.” Of course, his fascination with female genitalia, of seeing a whole nation in that guise, is a bit odd considering that A) he is a homosexual performer who is ostensibly not attracted to female sexual characteristics and lacks experience with them, and B) he is a male of the species who does not possess such organs himself.

Therefore, on what basis would he have gained so much knowledge of female genitalia and developed such a powerful obsession around them as to imagine the whole country of his ancestors that way? Possibly, it has something to do with mommy. . . something that made her appear. . . unforgettably monstrous. We will probably never know the answer to these quandaries, and they are somewhat secondary to the main question of Mr. Khubchandani’s employment in this connection at Harvard where young minds get molded to become the future managerial class of our nation. Other questions do present, though. For instance, did Harvard’s President Alan Garber know about this hire and sign off on it, and how would he say it fits Harvard’s mission? Or Provost John Manning? Or Hopi E. Hoekstra, Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences? Or Harvard’s Board of Governors?

All this underscores an important lesson that America has apparently managed to unlearn, something that we once knew quite well: that marginal behavior belongs on the margins, not in the center of our national life. The celebration of vulgarity for its own sake is arguably not the highest aspirational ideal for the best-and-the-brightest of our society, however amusing it might be in their hours of leisure, when people are free to pursue whatever lights their imaginations. It also raises the question as to why would highly-educated women, say, the female faculty and admins at Harvard, virtually all PhDs, certified geniuses in their fields, go along with such a garish display of farcical disrespect for the female of the species, being officially showcased as part of Harvard’s curriculum? Do they see themselves as monsters who deserve mockery and objurgation?

Do they enjoy watching a man enact such degrading psychodrama so as to diminish his manhood altogether? Does it signify some sort of conclusive triumph over “the Patriarchy?” (And how much of a good thing is that?) Harvard happens to have a Psychology Department, including a PhD program in Clinical Science, Social Psychology, and Cognition, Brain, and Behavior, under chairman Matthew K. Nock, PhD. His official Harvard bio states: “Nock’s research is aimed at advancing the understanding of why people behave in ways that are harmful to themselves, with an emphasis on suicide and other forms of self-harm. . . to better understand how these behaviors develop, how to predict them, and how to prevent their occurrence.” Perhaps President Garber should ask Dr. Nock to audit LaWhore Vagistan’s upcoming course to see, for instance, how it speaks to the epidemic of transgender violence currently plaguing the USA. We need all the insight we can get.

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Kudu
https://twitter.com/Rainmaker1973/status/1973996436506214643

 

 

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Debt Rattle September 28 2025

Sep 282025
 
 September 28, 2025  Posted by at 10:15 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,  62 Responses »


René Magritte The seducer 1953

 

• Scott Jennings Explains Comey’s Indictment (Margolis)
• Trump Seeks Supreme Court Ruling On His Birthright Citizenship Order (RT)s
• What Hegseth’s Mystery Meeting Of Hundreds Of Generals Is All About (ZH)
• Report: ‘PERSON 1’ and ‘PERSON 3’ in Bombshell Comey Indictment Revealed (Hoge)
• John Brennan Wants Us to Move On from the Russian Collusion Hoax (Margolis)
• Kremlin Responds To Zelensky Hinting At Assassination Of Top Leadership (ZH)
• Kiev ‘Will Lose Ukraine’ If It Doesn’t Accept Moscow’s Terms – Lukashenko (ZH)
• EU Can’t Override Hungary’s Veto On Ukraine – German Media (RT)
• Ukraine Accuses Hungary Of Violating Its Airspace (RT)
• Zelensky Is ‘Losing His Mind’ – Hungary FM (RT)
• Orban Reveals What He Told Trump About Russian Oil (RT)
• Belgium Rejects Plan To Raid Russia’s Reserves (RT)
• Tony Blair Vying To Run Gaza – Media (RT)
• Springsteen Is Calling For Trrump’s Impeachment Again (Cantrell)
• Obama Library Funds Are Flowing to Dark Money Networks (Margolis)

 

 

https://twitter.com/TheStormRedux/status/1971930508004032577

https://twitter.com/RussiaIsntEnemy/status/1971929313583968623

 

 

 

 

“There are people in our orbit who believe that maybe this is a holding matter and there’s going to be a superseding indictment. And so there may be more information yet to come here.”

• Scott Jennings Explains Comey’s Indictment (Margolis)

A grand jury has indicted former FBI Director James Comey on two counts—false statements to Congress and obstruction of a congressional proceeding, and the left isn’t happy about it. In fact, in the most hilarious case of irony, they’re accusing President Trump weaponizing the system against opponents. But here’s the reality: when you play dangerous political games and cross legal lines, eventually the law catches up with you. Democrats may have looked the other way when it was one of their own under scrutiny, but that doesn’t mean Republicans should do the same. After all, it was the left that spent four years twisting and corrupting the justice system to keep Trump from returning to power. Now that accountability has finally arrived, they can’t stand the taste of their own medicine.

But for Democrats, it’s always “different” when they do it. CNN’s Abby Phillip accused Trump of giving orders on whom to prosecute. “He is sending direct orders in public. He is thanking people for carrying out those orders. He’s firing people who don’t carry out those orders,” Phillip claimed. “I mean, what more sign do you need that Trump is directing this in public? He’s not doing it in private. It’s literally happening on the open.” CNN senior political commentator Scott Jennings then pointed out the obvious: that Trump was simply exercising his authority as president and responding to wrongs done against him.

“It’s almost like he got elected president,” Jennings quipped. “I mean, honestly, he has never made any secret, nor have any of his people ever made any secret, that they believe a great many injustices were committed against him. And, honestly, when you look back on it and you look back at the inspector general reports, and you look back about everything that we know now that happened from the beginning of his first term all the way through now, there are some people that need to be held accountable.”

Jennings added that the grand jury process itself demonstrated impartial review. “If a grand jury says these things should be charged, that’s part of the process. Now, there was another charge they declined on, so they obviously looked at it and made some decisions in the room. But the fact is Lindsey Halligan walked in there, gave them some evidence, they looked at all of it, they charged on two. And I know people who think they may not be done. There are people in our orbit who believe that maybe this is a holding matter and there’s going to be a superseding indictment. And so there may be more information yet to come here.”

https://twitter.com/WesternLensman/status/1971762934763360553

Jennings also noted that Democrats had long pushed for prosecutions of Trump and his allies. “Every Democrat in this country for years made no secret about the fact that they wanted Donald Trump and his people prosecuted, put in jail and prevented from running for reelection, and they opened this box and now they’re living in it.” And that right there is the key: the left spent years weaponizing the justice system, tearing apart norms and exploiting law enforcement to target political opponents. Now, when the same standard is applied to one of their own for actual alleged crimes instead of made-up ones, the outrage is deafening. They can’t argue that the law shouldn’t apply—they made this game their own. Comey’s indictment is a reminder that no one, regardless of rank or party loyalty, is above the law. The lesson is clear: play political games with criminal implications, and sooner or later, the consequences catch up.

Read more …

What makes this hard: Biden let in 10-20 million people. If all their kids become US citizens, you live in a different country. Birthright is a nice principle, but it doesn’t scale.

• Trump Seeks Supreme Court Ruling On His Birthright Citizenship Order (RT)s

US President Donald Trump’s administration has asked the Supreme Court to review the constitutionality of his executive order ending birthright citizenship for children whose parents entered the United States illegally, CNN reported Friday.Signed on January 20, Trump’s first day back in office, the order directs federal agencies to deny citizenship to children born on US soil if neither parent is an American citizen or a lawful permanent resident. The policy has since faced a series of nationwide injunctions, with judges declaring it unconstitutional. Solicitor General D. John Sauer, the administration’s top appellate lawyer, argued in the US Supreme Court filing that longstanding interpretations of the 14th Amendment have been “mistaken” and have had “destructive consequences,” according to the appeal obtained by CNN. He claimed lower courts had “undermined border security” by striking down “a policy of prime importance to the president.”

The administration is challenging rulings from a federal appeals court in San Francisco and a district court in New Hampshire, both of which blocked enforcement of the order in July. In one case, a coalition of Democratic-led states argued that the decree threatened billions in funding tied to citizenship status. In another, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) won a class-action lawsuit halting the policy nationwide. “This executive order is illegal, full stop, and no amount of maneuvering from the administration is going to change that,” ACLU attorney Cody Wofsy said after Friday’s filing. “We will continue to ensure that no baby’s citizenship is ever stripped away by this cruel and senseless order.”

The administration insists that the Supreme Court’s landmark 1898 ruling in US v. Wong Kim Ark, which established birthright citizenship for the children of immigrants, has been misapplied for decades. Sauer argued the precedent only applied to children of parents with “permanent domicile and residence” in the United States, not those who are in the country unlawfully or temporarily. The Supreme Court has yet to docket the case, and it is unclear if four justices will vote to hear it. In June, the justices issued a procedural decision limiting the power of lower courts to block presidential policies, but left open other pathways for nationwide injunctions.

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“..never once did a secretary summon all of the hundreds of one- to four-stars from each of the services, plus their top enlisted counterparts, from every corner of the globe to a single auditorium.”

• What Hegseth’s Mystery Meeting Of Hundreds Of Generals Is All About (ZH)

The Washington Post and CNN say they know what Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth’s big summoning of hundreds of military generals and admirals is all about. The meeting is set for Tuesday at Quantico Marine Base near Washington D.C. No official explanation has yet to be given for why some 800 top commanders are being gathered – some traveling from bases across the globe. Speculation has abounded, including whether it could relate to going to war with Russia, or some other dire and alarming change in force posture. Major media outlets in the US are now claiming it will merely be a big talk by Hegseth in maintaining “warrior ethos” and things like professional standards. It’s also being reported as one big “rally the troops” meeting.

Apparently this somewhat unprecedented gathering is due to his “mounting impatience that the Pentagon hasn’t readily adopted the Trump administration’s directives on military culture, according to officials briefed on the plan. “The speech will aim to get everyone on the same page in terms of Trump’s desire to tighten up discipline and professional standards across military ranks. So far, President Trump has only said when asked about the somewhat unprecedented meeting by reporters, “It’s great when generals and top people want to come to the United States to be with a now-called secretary of war.” The Washington Post states:

“Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered hundreds of generals to travel from around the world to hear him make a short speech on military standards and the “warrior ethos,” multiple people familiar with the event told The Washington Post. “Commenting on the swift pushback, it continues: “Some Pentagon officials questioned the wisdom of launching a relatively large gathering on short notice to hear Hegseth speak for a matter of minutes, and bristled at the idea that long-serving military leaders — a segment of whom spent years in combat earlier in their careers — needed instruction on how to fight.” “They don’t need a talk from Secretary Hegseth on the warrior ethos,” a defense official said. A high profile retired general has spoken up on social media, and Hegseth bat it down…

There have in the last months been some firings and reshufflings of top command posts by Hegseth, who dismissed Defense Intelligence Agency Director Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Kruse, Navy Reserve Chief Vice Adm. Nancy Lacore, and Naval Special Warfare Command head Rear Adm. Milton Sands. “Critics have argued that his policies have often not seemed aligned with lethality — core initiatives have included removing transgender service members, ordering new shaving standards military-wide and rebranding the Defense Department as ‘the Department of War,’ complete with new seals and signage marking the entrance to his offices at the Pentagon,” WaPo continues.

One such critic, Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling (Ret.), former commander of US Army Europe, wrote as follows:In my forty years in uniform, I never saw anything like it. While senior leaders have been recalled to Washington to meet with the secretary of defense during all our wars, never once did a secretary summon all of the hundreds of one- to four-stars from each of the services, plus their top enlisted counterparts, from every corner of the globe to a single auditorium. Not during the Cold War, not during Desert Storm, not during the height of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Not Rumsfeld, not Gates, not Panetta, not Mattis, not Austin.

They likely didn’t do it because it is disruptive. It is expensive. And it is unnecessary. The optics of the meeting will be interesting, and Hegseth plans to record and later make public his speech. There still remains the possibility that WaPo and CNN’s reporting on it being about “warrior ethos” is flat wrong. But things will soon become clear in a matter of days.

Read more …

“Count 1 says that Comey “willfully and knowingly” lied when, testifying under oath to the Senate Judiciary Committee..”

• Report: ‘PERSON 1’ and ‘PERSON 3’ in Bombshell Comey Indictment Revealed (Hoge)

As the ramifications of the stunning and some would say long overdue indictment of former FBI Director James Comey continue to sink in, new information is emerging—specifically about two individuals labeled as PERSON 1 and PERSON 3 in the filing. ABC News is reporting that Hillary Clinton is PERSON 1, as RedState’s Rusty Weiss postulated earlier Friday, and that PERSON 3 is Comey friend and one-time personal lawyer, Daniel Richman. We are also learning more about the charges, and the DOJ is alleging that Comey is a flat-out liar. ABC News senior investigative reporter Mike Levine posted to X Friday evening:

Levine continued in his tweet, saying his sources have confirmed the identities: …personal lawyer, Daniel Richman, provide information to reporters about an FBI investigation connected to Hillary Clinton.In the indictment, Count 1 says that Comey “willfully and knowingly” lied when, testifying under oath to the Senate Judiciary Committee in September 2020, he reaffirmed previous Senate testimony insisting he never “authorized someone else at the FBI to be an anonymous source in news reports” about an investigation connected to someone only identified as “PERSON 1.” “That statement was false, because, as JAMES B. COMEY JR. then and there knew, he in fact had authorized PERSON 3 to serve as an anonymous source in news reports regarding [the] FBI investigation,” the indictment reads. Sources tell ABC News that “PERSON 1” is Clinton and “PERSON 3” is Richman. Levine had more and said that officials allege that Comey used Richman as his secret back door to leak to the media:

“Richman contacted journalists to correct stories critical of Comey, the FBI and to shape future press coverage,” the FBI said in a September 2021 report on its investigation. “Richman did this both when he was an SGE and after he resigned from the FBI.” Granted, this report comes from ABC, which is part of the mainstream media cabal known for shading stories and printing misinformation if it hurts Trump. However, this story isn’t of the “Get Trump!” variety, and Levine’s explanation seems reasonable given the facts known at this time. We’ll know soon enough. In the meantime, stock up on your Orville Redenbacher, because this case promises to be quite the drama.

Read more …

(pause for laughter)

Brennan is sweating.

• John Brennan Wants Us to Move On from the Russian Collusion Hoax (Margolis)

Former Obama CIA Director John Brennan is urging conservatives to move past the Russian collusion hoax. In an interview with MSNBC, Brennan criticized the ongoing attacks on former FBI Director James Comey and others, framing them as part of what he called a “revenge tour” by Trump’s second administration. “I worked very closely with Jim Comey while he was director of the FBI and I was director of CIA. Jim Comey is a man of integrity, of honesty,” Brennan said. “I had some disagreements with Jim Comey about decisions or actions he took. That is natural, but I never had any doubt whatsoever that he was fully committed to the rule of law and a commitment to uphold his oath of office, which he has done.”

(pause for laughter)

Brennan highlighted Trump’s and his allies’ repeated efforts to bring charges against Comey despite little evidence. He noted the resignation of the acting U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia after determining there was insufficient evidence, memos from prosecutors warning a new appointee that there was no case, and public pressure from Trump himself. “All of the facts that we know of right now really say that Jim Comey should not be charged,” Brennan said. The former CIA director traced Trump’s animosity toward him and Comey back to the intelligence community’s 2016 assessment that claimed Russia attempted to interfere in the presidential election to benefit Trump.

“It would have been derelict, absolutely derelict if the FBI and CIA, NSA, and the Office of Director of National Intelligence did not in fact explore what the Russians were doing to be able to stop them and to raise the alarm that this is something the Russians will continue to do,” Brennan said. “And it’s very, very unfortunate- …that, again, Donald Trump and his, you know, people who are supporting him refuse again to acknowledge that and move on.”

He would want us to move on. Why? Because he played a pivotal role in orchestrating the Russiagate hoax. Brennan was instrumental in promoting the Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) released in Jan. 2017, which falsely claimed that Russian interference aimed to benefit Trump. Despite credible intelligence suggesting that some Russian officials anticipated a Clinton victory and had compromising material on her, this information was deliberately omitted from the final report. Brennan’s reliance on dubious sources such as the Steele dossier and his dismissal of warnings from seasoned CIA analysts underscore the politicization of intelligence under his leadership. Hence the reason he’s under investigation as well.

Recent revelations, including declassified documents that Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has released, have shed light on the coordinated efforts within the Obama administration to manufacture a narrative of Russian interference. These documents suggest that Brennan, along with other top officials, suppressed dissenting intelligence and manipulated assessments to align with a predetermined political agenda. The emerging evidence points to a deliberate scheme to weaponize U.S. intelligence against a sitting president and subvert the will of the voters.

That’s exactly why Brennan now pretends everything that went down was “above board,” and insists Trump and his supporters should just move on. But make no mistake—we’re not moving on. Brennan wasn’t some bystander; he conspired with other Obama officials to frame Donald Trump as a traitor to his country, spinning a phony tale of Russian collusion to delegitimize his presidency. They knew the allegations were false, and they pushed them anyway—weaponizing the intelligence community, poisoning the media, and dividing the nation in order to undo the results of the 2016 election. That isn’t just politics as usual—it’s one of the dirtiest abuses of power in American history.

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“Russia can use weapons that no bomb shelter will save you from. And the Americans should remember this too.”

This appeared to be another veiled nuclear threat”..

No, Tyler, Russia doesn’t threaten with nukes. At most they mention they have them. Russia will use nukes if they are used on them.

This bit refers to Kinzhal and Oreshnik hypersonics. Just as deadly, and no possible defense.

• Kremlin Responds To Zelensky Hinting At Assassination Of Top Leadership (ZH)

Russia on Friday blasted Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky for his “irresponsible” threats after the day prior he said that leaders in Moscow should check for bomb shelters near the Kremlin if the country does not stop its war in Ukraine. Zelensky had told Axios that Russian officials “have to know where their bomb shelters are,” adding: “If they will not stop the war, they will need it in any case.” He did caveat the threat by saying he won’t target civilians as “we are not terrorists” but then underscored, “They have to know that we in Ukraine, each day, we will answer. If they attack us, we will answer them.” Zelensky also stressed that if Ukraine receives long-range weaponry from the United States, then “we will use it.”

This is an especially dangerous scenario as it is flirting with WW3, given Moscow has long issued a red line related to such long-range weapons attacking Russian territory. The Ukrainian leader could be upping these threats not only out of desperation, but after earlier this month Russia struck Ukrainian government buildings in the capital for the first time of the war, and it was not far from Zelensky’s own office. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov responded to the threats as follows: “Zelensky is clearly continuing his desperate efforts. That’s why he’s issuing threats left and right, which is quite irresponsible,” according to the AFP. Former Russian president and current top national security official Dmitry Medvedev also responded, by saying: “The freak should understand something else: Russia can use weapons that no bomb shelter will save you from. And the Americans should remember this too.”

This appeared to be another veiled nuclear threat, and hint at runaway escalation if American long-range weapons are used to attack government buildings in Moscow. There was at least one notable time earlier in the conflict that Ukraine sent small drones against the Kremlin complex in Moscow, damaging a dome and putting the capital on high alert. Meanwhile, constant cross-border drone attacks targeting Russian energy sites continue. On Thursday Ukrainian drones struck the Afipsky oil refinery in Russia’s Krasnodar region. It marks the second attack on the site within a month, and it sparked a large fire, which was soon extinguished with no casualties. The Afipsky refinery is one of the largest in southern Russia.

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“..here, as we agreed, everything continues in a rhythmic and operational mode. Everything keeps developing naturally,..

• Kiev ‘Will Lose Ukraine’ If It Doesn’t Accept Moscow’s Terms – Lukashenko (ZH)

Russian President Vladimir Putin met with Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko at the Kremlin in Moscow on Friday, with the two hailing expansion of cooperation on all levels. “We are practically enjoying active collaboration in all directions,” the Russian president said. “The same applies to security issues and ensuring the safety of the Union State. By the way, here, as we agreed, everything continues in a rhythmic and operational mode. Everything keeps developing naturally,” Putin added. Lukashenko is joining Putin and other officials at events of the World Atomic Week in Moscow during the two-day visit.

Most importantly, Lukashenko revealed while speaking to the media after discussions with Putin that Russia has presented a new peace proposal to Ukraine, and that Kiev’s response will determine the outcome of the conflict. According to state media source BelTA, he went so far as to warn the Ukrainians that if they don’t accept its terms, they they will lose all of Ukraine. “There are good proposals for resolving the Ukrainian conflict,” Lukashenko said of options which are apparently on the table. According to his full comments as translated by BelTA:= “You can say and declare anything. But what if the Kremlin strikes Bankovaya Street [a street in Kiev where Ukrainian government institutions are headquartered]? What would remain of it?

Therefore, Vladimir Zelensky needs to calm down. There are good proposals on the table. We discussed them with President Putin. I will not speak about them; the president will speak about them himself. These are good proposals. Proposals regarding Ukraine, which were also heard by Donald Trump in Alaska, were taken to Washington for consideration and discussion.” After again calling them “Very good proposals,” he then warned ominously that “If the Ukrainians do not accept these proposals, then the situation will be like the beginning of the Special Military Operation. It will be even worse. They will lose Ukraine.”

As far as what Moscow is offering for negotiated settlement, this without doubt includes Kiev giving up all claims to the four easter territories and to Crimea, as well as to never join NATO, and that it must open up restrictions on the Russian language. Essentially Ukraine will see it as a plan of ‘surrender’. It was this past summer that Russian forces expanded their operations beyond the Donbass for the first going. The military has at this point captured several villages and settlements Ukraine’s central Dnipropetrovsk region, which neighbors Donetsk. Ukraine’s manpower crisis has only grown worse in the meantime. This signifies that Moscow could expand the fight, and Lukashenko’s latest warning suggests this as well. However, Putin unlikely desires to attempt to occupy the whole of the country, but the threat is being echoed amid the ongoing standoff with NATO.

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“..Szijjarto claimed that Brussels was conspiring to overthrow the “patriot Slovak, Hungarian, and Serbian governments” and replace them with puppet regimes..”

• EU Can’t Override Hungary’s Veto On Ukraine – German Media (RT)

The EU leadership has yet to devise a way to overcome Hungary’s veto, which has blocked the start of accession talks with Ukraine, DW has reported, citing anonymous sources. Unlike most other EU member states, Hungary has consistently refused to provide weapons to Ukraine and repeatedly criticized the bloc’s sanctions against Russia. Budapest has also staunchly opposed the prospect of Kiev joining the EU. In a piece on Friday, DW quoted an unnamed source as acknowledging that “currently, there are no ways to overcome Hungary’s veto.” Another source concurred that the “situation is complicated,” with Brussels’ attempts to “explore legal ways to bypass Hungary’s veto” having proved fruitless.

According to the publication, Brussels is counting on Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s Fidesz party losing power in the parliamentary election scheduled for April 2026. For the time being, the EU leadership intends to complete all technical work “in advance, so that when Orban leaves we are ready to move quickly forward” on Ukraine accession talks, DW quoted its source as saying. Delivering her annual State of the Union address to the European Parliament earlier this month, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said that it was time to “break free from the shackles of unanimity” and move towards qualified majority voting in some areas of foreign policy.

Last month, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto claimed that Brussels was conspiring to overthrow the “patriot Slovak, Hungarian, and Serbian governments” and replace them with puppet regimes. Around the same time, Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) made similar allegations. Also in August, Szijjarto warned that Ukraine’s potential accession to the bloc “would be the coup de grace to the European Union,” as it would have to redirect “practically all” of its financial resources towards supporting Kiev. Moreover, “much lower-quality agricultural products would destroy European agriculture,” the Hungarian diplomat stated, echoing concerns previously aired by Orban. In June, Hungary vetoed a joint EU statement on Ukraine, effectively blocking Kiev’s accession talks, since unanimous approval was required.

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With paper planes.

What nonsense. But there’s an audience for it.

• Ukraine Accuses Hungary Of Violating Its Airspace (RT)

Vladimir Zelensky has claimed Hungarian reconnaissance drones were spotted in the west of Ukraine. Budapest quickly dismissed the allegation. Relations between the neighboring countries have been strained. Unlike many EU states, Hungary has refused to provide weapons to Ukraine, and has opposed the bloc’s sanctions against Russia. Budapest has repeatedly spoken out against Kiev joining the EU and NATO, and has accused the Ukrainian authorities of discriminating against the Hungarian ethnic minority in the country’s Western Transcarpathia region. In a statement posted to social media on Friday, Zelensky said that the Ukrainian military had informed him about alleged “recent drone incidents along the Ukrainian-Hungarian border.”

“Ukrainian forces recorded violations of our airspace by reconnaissance drones, which are likely Hungarian,” Zelensky claimed, suggesting that the supposed UAVs “may have been conducting reconnaissance on the industrial potential of Ukraine’s border areas.” Responding to the allegation in an X post of his own, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto wrote that Zelensky “is losing his mind to his anti-Hungarian obsession [and is]… now starting to see things that aren’t there.” Commenting on a decision to declare three senior Hungarian military officials persona non grata earlier in the day, Szijjarto accused Ukraine of carrying out an “anti-Hungarian policy.” The diplomat expressed incredulity that Kiev still expects Hungary to back its EU membership bid.

Following repeated Ukrainian strikes on the Druzhba (‘Friendship’) pipeline that carries Russian oil to Hungary, Prime Minister Viktor Orban last month accused Kiev of attempting to undermine his country’s energy security in retaliation for refusing to back Ukraine’s EU membership bid. In late June, Hungary vetoed a joint EU statement on Ukraine, effectively blocking Kiev’s accession talks. Budapest has repeatedly expressed concern that Ukraine’s potential admission to the bloc would adversely affect the Hungarian economy. In May, Orban accused Ukraine of stepping up a covert interference campaign in Hungary. The allegation came shortly after both countries expelled each other’s diplomats amid mutual espionage recriminations.

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Friendly neighbors.

• Zelensky Is ‘Losing His Mind’ – Hungary FM (RT)

Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto has issued a sharp rebuke of Vladimir Zelensky, claiming that Kiev has become obsessed with Budapest and is imagining threats that do not exist. Zelensky alleged on Friday that Hungarian drones had violated western Ukrainian airspace, suggesting they “may have been conducting reconnaissance on the industrial potential of Ukraine’s border areas.” “President Zelensky is losing his mind to his anti-Hungarian obsession,” Szijjarto wrote on X in response, adding that “he is now starting to see things that aren’t there.” Ukrainian Deputy Foreign Minister Andrey Sibiga fired back, stating that “no amount of your attacks on our President will change what we – and everyone – see.”

“We are starting to see a lot of things, Peter, including your government’s hypocrisy and moral degradation, open and covert work against Ukraine and the rest of Europe, serving as a Kremlin lackey,” the Ukrainian diplomat wrote. Szijjarto also accused Kiev of pursuing an “anti-Hungarian policy” after Ukraine declared three senior Hungarian military officials persona non grata earlier on Friday. Relations between Hungary and Ukraine have been tense for years. Budapest has resisted pressure from Brussels and Washington to provide weapons to Kiev or support EU sanctions against Russia, arguing that such moves would harm Hungarian national interests.

Prime Minister Viktor Orban has also accused Ukraine of discriminating against the Hungarian minority in its Transcarpathia Region and of undermining his country’s energy security by attacking the Druzhba pipeline, which supplies Russian oil to Central Europe. Hungary blocked EU accession talks with Ukraine earlier this year and has continued to call for negotiations to end the conflict rather than further sanctions or military escalation. Speaking at the UN General Assembly in New York this week, Szijjarto warned that as long as the hostilities continue, “events will occur that carry the risk of escalation” between NATO and Russia, insisting that peace is the only way to bring that risk “down to zero.”

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“If we are friends, we listen to each other – and then everyone does what they think is right.”

• Orban Reveals What He Told Trump About Russian Oil (RT)

Budapest continues to resist mounting pressure from Brussels and Washington to end its reliance on Russian energy, citing geographic and infrastructural constraints as well as national security interests. “If Hungary is cut off from Russian oil and natural gas, immediately, within a minute, Hungarian economic performance will drop by 4%,” Orban said in his regular interview on Friday. “It means the Hungarian economy would be on its knees.” Asked whether Trump accepted his arguments during their phone call on Thursday, Orban replied: “America has its arguments and interests, Hungary has its own. Our task is to express and represent them clearly. If we are friends, we listen to each other – and then everyone does what they think is right.”

Trump appeared to acknowledge Orban’s concerns, describing him as a “great guy” and a “great friend of mine.” “Hungary, you know, they’re landlocked. And they don’t have a nice ocean where ships can sail in from all over the world. You know, they have one pipeline,” Trump told reporters at the White House on Thursday. He was referring to the Druzhba (Friendship) oil pipeline, which has recently been targeted by Ukraine, disrupting supplies to Hungary and Slovakia. “And Slovakia, too. They’re sort of married to one pipeline. So I just don’t want to have people go blaming them,” Trump added.

Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto reaffirmed that Budapest would not abandon its “national interests” under external pressure, following a meeting with his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov just hours after the Orban-Trump call. Szijjarto also blasted Brussels for failing to defend member states’ energy security in the wake of the Druzhba attacks. “Instead of protecting our energy security, they gave us lectures. And you know, this is a scandal, I think,” he said.

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“Taking Putin’s money and leaving the risks with us. That’s not going to happen, let me be very clear about that..”

• Belgium Rejects Plan To Raid Russia’s Reserves (RT)

Belgium has slammed the brakes on a new German plan to use frozen Russian central bank assets to bankroll Ukraine — a veto that matters because Brussels holds the keys to the vault. Prime Minister Bart De Wever said on Thursday that the proposal by German Chancellor Friedrich Merz to funnel €140 billion from frozen Russian reserves into an “interest-free loan” for Kiev “will never happen.” His warning carries unusual weight: some €200 billion of Moscow’s immobilized assets are parked at Euroclear, the Brussels-based clearinghouse.

”If countries see that central bank money can disappear if European politicians see fit, they might decide to withdraw their reserves from the eurozone,” De Wever said at the UN General Assembly in New York, calling the plan reckless and a “dangerous precedent.” “Taking Putin’s money and leaving the risks with us. That’s not going to happen, let me be very clear about that,” he stressed. “Taking Putin’s money and leaving the risks with us. That’s not going to happen, let me be very clear about that,” he stressed.

Western countries have long sought to tap into the frozen funds to bankroll Kiev, with attempts to do so repeatedly frustrated by lack of a legal mechanism and broader concerns about the implications. Last year, the G7 backed a plan to use the accrued interest to secure $50 billion in loans for Ukraine – with the EU pledging $21 billion and disbursing about half so far. Moscow has repeatedly condemned the asset freeze and any effort to seize or redirect Russian funds as a violation of international law and undermining trust in the global financial system. Russia has also pledged it would retaliate, adding that further military and financial aid to Ukraine only prolongs hostilities.

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What a great idea!!

• Tony Blair Vying To Run Gaza – Media (RT)

Former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair has proposed to lead a transitional administration in Gaza when Israel’s military campaign in the enclave ends, British media reported on Friday. Blair is reportedly seeking to chair a body called the Gaza International Transitional Authority (GITA), which would oversee reconstruction and eventually transfer power to the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority (PA). One of a dozen concepts proposed by various governments and think tanks, GITA would seek a UN mandate to be Gaza’s “supreme political and legal authority” for five years. If approved, Blair would have a secretariat of up to 25 people funded by Gulf states. The Economist described the plan “a distinct improvement” over US President Donald Trump’s earlier vision of an American-owned Gaza “riviera.”

According to the report, GITA would be initially headquartered in El-Arish, Egypt, and modeled on past transitional authorities in East Timor and Kosovo. Its mission would include unifying Gaza and the West Bank under the PA. The Ramallah-based Palestinian body currently exercises only limited authority in the West Bank, where the Israeli military exerts dominant control – an arrangement critics have branded as an apartheid system. Israel has previously rejected any role for the PA in governing Gaza after the war. The Financial Times said Washington presented fresh ideas for Gaza’s future during this week’s UN General Assembly meetings, including putting Blair on an international supervisory board. Several Arab states reportedly favored a committee of Palestinian technocrats instead.

Earlier this month, the Times of Israel detailed Blair’s lobbying efforts, including talks with Trump and a July meeting with PA President Mahmoud Abbas, noting that his plan requires “significant reforms” from the Palestinian Authority and offers it only limited involvement in Gaza. Analysts remain skeptical that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would back GITA, given his reliance on right-wing ministers who are urging him to annex all Palestinian territory, including Gaza and the West Bank.

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Springsteen these days wants to be Obama’s twin brother.

• Springsteen Is Calling For Trrump’s Impeachment Again (Cantrell)

Rock legend Bruce “The Boss” Springsteen, who is obsessed with President Donald Trump, it seems, once again called for the commander-in-chief to be impeached. Once upon a time, rock and roll was about rebellion, thinking for yourself, and “sticking it to the Man.” These days, rock musicians are The Man. And sadly, the vast majority of them can’t see their own hypocrisy. Voices of a generation that once encouraged listeners to blaze their own trails are demanding that everyone fall in line and march lockstep along the path of radical leftism. Not to mention that the radical left already impeached the president twice during his first term. Both attempts failed. A Democrat seems to submit articles of impeachment against Trump every few months. These, too, amount to a hill of beans.

Rep. Al Green (D-Texas) is one of the repeat offenders I alluded to above. If President Trump so much as breathes in his general direction, he pops out some articles of impeachment. And yet, despite the failure of these efforts, Springsteen believes Democrats lack the conviction and political gumption to try, try, again. The whole “trying the same thing over and over and expecting different results is the definition of insanity” thing doesn’t seem to be a bit of wisdom Springsteen has heard before. The Boss sat down for an interview with Time, where he shared his belief that Democrats need to impeach Trump. Again. A move that will, no doubt, fail for a third time. “He’s the living personification of what he 25th Amendment and impeachment were for.

If Congress had any guts, he’d be consigned to the trash heap of history,” the “Born in the U.S.A.” singer told the publication. Hold on. Is he really calling for the invocation of the 25th Amendment? Where was Springsteen when former President Joe Biden bumbled and blubbered all over television for four years, clearly suffering from dementia? If any president ever deserved subjection to the 25th Amendment, it was Biden. “We’re desperately in need of an effective alternative party, or for the Democratic Party to find someone who can speak to the majority of the nation,” he continued. “There is a problem with the language that they’re using and the way they’re trying to reach people.” When Time asked about some of the harsh things President Trump has said about Springsteen, he claimed he “absolutely couldn’t care less what he thinks about me.”

Trump referred to Springsteen as “highly overrated” and a “dried out prune,” both statements he made in May 2025. “I see that Highly Overrated Bruce Springsteen goes to a Foreign Country to speak badly about the President of the United States. Never liked him, never liked his music, or his Radical Left Politics and, importantly, he’s not a talented guy — Just a pushy, obnoxious JERK, who fervently supported Crooked Joe Biden, a mentally incompetent FOOL, and our WORST EVER President, who came close to destroying our Country,” President Trump wrote in a Friday morning post on Truth Social.

“If I wasn’t elected, it would have been GONE by now! Sleepy Joe didn’t have a clue as to what he was doing, but Springsteen is ‘dumb as a rock,’ and couldn’t see what was going on, or could he (which is even worse!)?” Trump’s post continued. “This dried out ‘prune’ of a rocker (his skin is all atrophied!) ought to KEEP HIS MOUTH SHUT until he gets back into the Country, that’s just ‘standard fare.’ Then we’ll all see how it goes for him!” Nothing more needs to be said. President Trump nailed it.

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“The group, which received just $129,320 in donations in 2022, spent more than $27 million on salaries.”

• Obama Library Funds Are Flowing to Dark Money Networks (Margolis)

Barack Obama’s long-promised presidential library is shaping up to be just as corrupt as his administration. You probably haven’t heard much about this in the media, but recent tax filings reveal that money donated to the Obama Foundation—supposedly earmarked for his sprawling “presidential center” in Chicago—is quietly being redirected to one of the left’s most notorious dark money groups: the Tides Foundation. The numbers tell the story. In 2022 and 2023, the Obama Foundation handed over $2 million to Tides, a group best known for serving as a clearinghouse for radical left-wing causes and for shielding donor identities. It should come as no surprise that George Soros heavily backs Tides, and Tides is directly tied to groups organizing anti-Israel protests. That includes demonstrations against the Jewish state in the aftermath of the Oct. 7 Hamas atrocities.

In other words, donations made in the name of funding a presidential library are now helping bankroll organizations promoting antisemitic activism under the guise of social justice. That’s pretty on-brand for Barack Obama. “The Tides Center played an administrative role in the program by processing grants while Cities United [a nonprofit] managed the application process,” the spokeswoman said in an email. Grants ranged from $15,000 to $30,000 each over the two summers. Tides has also handled donations for Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation, which sued the group in California Superior Court last year. It alleged “egregious mismanagement” of more than $33 million in its funds, according to court documents. That lawsuit is ongoing.

In addition to sending donations to Tides, the Obama Foundation has sent more than $3 million in 2022 and 2023 in grants to Gofundme.org for undisclosed “grassroots leaders to empower girls through education,” according to the group’s filings. Meanwhile, the foundation admitted it has so far spent more than $615 million building the Obama Presidential Center, which is scheduled to open in spring 2026, according to its website.

The group, which received just $129,320 in donations in 2022, spent more than $27 million on salaries. While community members struggle, insiders at the Obama Foundation are doing just fine. The foundation’s CEO, Emeka Jarrett, earned over $750,000 last year. The executive vice president, Rob Cohen, pocketed nearly $650,000, and also maintains ties to the Pritzker Realty Group. His connection to Penny Pritzker—sister to Governor J.B. Pritzker—only highlights the tangled web of Democratic powerbrokers who are thriving while the project supposedly dedicated to “the people” spirals out of control.

Meanwhile, the presidential center itself—originally sold to the public as a beacon of civic pride for Chicago’s South Side—has turned into a financial pit. Construction on the 20-acre site in Jackson Park began years ago, with a ballooning price tag that has already exceeded $615 million, far above the initial $500 million projection. The opening date has slipped again, now pushed to spring 2026. Local residents aren’t thrilled either. One lawyer described it bluntly as a “monstrosity,” pointing to rising costs, neighborhood headaches, and little actual benefit to the people forced to live around it. This entire project reeks of the kind of carefully crafted con job only career political operators could pull off. Sell it as a beacon of unity, then funnel millions to radical, antisemitic causes, all while insiders pocket obscene salaries. It’s a true reflection of the same kind of corruption that plagued Obama’s presidency.

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https://twitter.com/ProjectConstitu/status/1971917570287501753

 

 

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Debt Rattle September 8 2025

Sep 082025
 
 September 8, 2025  Posted by at 10:06 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , ,  48 Responses »


Banksy Bataclan emergency door 2018

 

• Putin and Trump ‘Will Prevent WWIII’ – Kremlin Envoy Dmitriev (RT)
• Macron’s Government Is Collapsing. Ukraine Should Worry (RT)
• Putin Notes an Underlying Issue Within Ukraine that Impedes Negotiation (CTH)
• Peace in Ukraine ‘Easier Without Brussels Hawks Fueling War’ (Sp.)
• Orban: EU’s Next 7-Year Budget to Become Last One If Bloc Does Not Change (Sp.)
• THE CAMP OF THE SAINTS (Paul Craig Roberts)
• Trump Astride at 7 Months (Victor Davis Hanson)
• Truth About CV19 Vax Awakens Public – Karen Kingston (USAW)
• Thoughts on Robert F Kennedy Jr Congressional Testimony (CTH)
• Trump Threatens ‘War’ On Chicago Over Immigration (RT)
• 29 Million Deaths Linked To EU and US Sanctions (RT)
• US in ‘Very Deep Negotiations’ With Hamas to End Gaza Conflict – Trump (ET)
• Globalists’ Attacks on Russia Linked to Its Rich Natural Resources – Dmitriev (Sp.)
• Gold & Silver Sniffing Out Risk & Fear – Bill Holter (USAW)
• Bessent Doubles Down On Tariffs, Predicts Economic Surge (ZH)
• Once Were Relevant (el gato malo)

 

 

BLM

Optimus

Conor
https://twitter.com/CilComLFC/status/1964731216751648805

Chicago
https://twitter.com/EricLDaugh/status/1964735109900439575

 

 

 

 

Do let’s start the day, and the week, with some optimism.

• Putin and Trump ‘Will Prevent WWIII’ – Kremlin Envoy Dmitriev (RT)

Russian President Vladimir Putin and his US counterpart, Donald Trump, are bringing the end of the Ukraine conflict closer, Kirill Dmitriev, a presidential aide on international economic affairs, has said. He added that the diplomatic efforts of the two men could prevent World War III. Dmitriev, who is also the head of the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), the country’s sovereign wealth fund, wrote on X on Saturday: “Stalin, Roosevelt & Churchill won WWII. Putin & Trump will prevent WWIII.” He accompanied his post with a picture of the Soviet, US, and British leaders made during the historic 1945 Yalta Conference, which laid the foundations for the post-war order after the defeat of Nazi Germany.

https://twitter.com/kadmitriev/status/1964424166498619598?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1964424166498619598%7Ctwgr%5E4cb35d87737794ec695f4472c5464573d6efc307%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.rt.com%2Frussia%2F624235-putin-trump-prevent-wwiii%2F

He also pushed back against former US ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul, who suggested that Moscow is not serious about negotiations to end the conflict and urged more Western weapons for Ukraine. “Wrong. Peace is close precisely because of Trump-Putin dialogue. Idiotic [former US President Joe] Biden’s approaches failed. Isolation attempts failed. Sanctions failed. Dialogue, respect, understanding each other, problem-solving to find [a] long-term solution is the way,” Dmitriev said. Breaking a long hiatus in top-level talks between the US and Russia, Putin and Trump have held several phone conversations and met face-to-face in Alaska in mid-August.

While no ceasefire agreement was reached at the Alaska summit, the two sides praised the engagement as highly productive. Following the talks, Trump said that Ukraine cannot hope to join NATO or reclaim Crimea. On Friday, Putin struck a cautiously optimistic tone about the prospects for ending the conflict, noting that “there is light at the end of the tunnel,” but noted that if no diplomatic solution is found, “we will have to reach all the goals through arms.” Moscow has insisted that a sustainable resolution to the conflict is possible only if Ukraine commits to neutrality, demilitarization, denazification, and recognizes the new territorial reality on the ground.

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“Kiev’s guarantees are cast into doubt, and Moscow can argue convincingly that Europe’s talk of peace is inseparable from its rush to militarize.”

• Macron’s Government Is Collapsing. Ukraine Should Worry (RT)

France’s government is once again on the verge of collapse. Prime Minister Francois Bayrou faces near-certain defeat in a confidence vote over a disputed austerity plan, a showdown that threatens President Emmanuel Macron’s authority at home and casts doubt on Paris’ ability to deliver on its ambitious promises abroad – including security guarantees for Ukraine.

France in meltdown – how bad is it this time? Bayrou has staked his survival on a confidence vote scheduled for Monday, September 8. At issue is an austerity package worth €44 billion, meant to shrink France’s deficit from 5.4% of GDP in 2025 toward 4.6% in 2026. Under EU fiscal rules, the official ceiling is 3%, so Brussels is pressuring Paris to cut deeper. But the plan – which includes reducing public holidays and raising healthcare contributions – has triggered anger at home. Trade unions are preparing strikes, while opposition parties from the far left to the far right have pledged to vote against Bayrou. With his government already in a minority, few in Paris believe he can survive.

Macron’s friend, savior, or dead weight? Francois Bayrou is one of the most familiar names in French politics. He leads the centrist Democratic Movement (MoDem) and has been mayor of the city of Pau since 2014. Back in 2017, his endorsement was crucial for Macron, giving the then-upstart candidate credibility in the political center. As president, Macron briefly made him justice minister, and after Michel Barnier was forced out in late 2024, Bayrou was elevated to prime minister to hold together Macron’s fragile coalition. But with his budget collapsing and support evaporating, the man once hailed as a stabilizer is now being blamed for dragging Macron further into crisis.

How did one budget plan blow up the PM’s career? In France, governments can invoke Article 49.3 of the Constitution to force a bill through the National Assembly, the lower house of parliament, without a vote. The mechanism has existed since 1958 and is legal, but risky: once Article 49.3 is triggered, opposition lawmakers have 24 hours to file a no-confidence motion. If that motion passes, the government falls. Bayrou’s decision to use 49.3 turned his €44 billion austerity plan into a survival gamble. Bayrou chose confrontation over compromise. By tying his austerity program directly to a confidence vote, he hoped to project resolve. The package included unpopular measures such as cutting public holidays and raising healthcare charges. Instead of rallying deputies behind him, the move united nearly every opposition faction. The far-right National Rally, the Socialists, and the leftist France Unbowed all declared they would vote him out, filing no-confidence motions that set up a showdown on Monday. What was meant to be a show of strength turned into political suicide.

Macron without Bayrou – what’s left of his power? If Bayrou falls, Macron is left exposed: he’s going to have to pick between two bad options. He can install a Socialist prime minister to get a budget through parliament, effectively conceding control of domestic policy. Or he can gamble on snap elections, which polls suggest would hand more seats to Le Pen’s National Rally. With Macron’s approval ratings already scraping historic lows, either choice would deepen the sense of a weakened presidency. Commentators warn that if markets lose confidence in France’s ability to control its 5.4% of GDP deficit and 110% debt-to-GDP ratio, the country could face a crisis reminiscent of Britain’s “mini-budget” turmoil under Liz Truss.

Where does Bayrou actually stand on Ukraine? On foreign policy, Bayrou has been a vocal supporter of Kiev. In March 2025, he openly criticized Washington for pushing Ukraine to negotiate peace with Moscow, calling such demands “unbearable.” He argued that pushing concessions would humiliate Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky and amount to rewarding Russia. Inside Macron’s government, Bayrou has been one of the strongest advocates of sustained European backing for Ukraine, insisting that Paris must stand firm.

And Ukraine – what happens when Paris goes quiet? For Kiev, French instability brings real costs.
• Cash flow: The €3 billion pledged for 2024 but still not disbursed was meant to cover weapons and financial aid. But such spending has to pass through the annual budget. With Bayrou’s plan collapsing and parliament in revolt, securing new funds will be politically and legally harder for any caretaker government.
• Losing an ally: Bayrou’s exit would strip Kiev of one of its most reliable advocates inside the French cabinet. By contrast, opposition parties – and even voices within Macron’s camp – have been more skeptical of pouring money into Kiev while cutting spending at home. His departure strips Macron of a key advocate inside the cabinet.
• Security guarantees in limbo: Macron has positioned France as the organizer of the “Coalition of the Willing,” where 26 countries promised postwar guarantees for Ukraine, potentially including a reassurance force. Such a plan requires stable leadership, funding commitments, and parliamentary approval. A government in turmoil cannot push through the legal and financial framework needed to turn pledges into reality.
• ‘Armed to the teeth’ peace plan: Macron has also announced an extra €6.5 billion in defense spending for 2025-2027, lifting France’s annual budget from about €47 billion in 2024 to €64 billion by 2027 – a roughly 35% increase. This blurs the line between “peace guarantees” and outright militarization, reinforcing Moscow’s argument that Europe’s settlement talk is cover for escalation.

If France wobbles, is the EU still ‘united’? The fallout would reach Brussels as well. The EU relies on France, the bloc’s second-largest economy, to underwrite collective aid to Kiev, yet the €3 billion pledge Paris made for 2024 is in doubt. That damages the bloc’s credibility as a reliable funder at a time when Germany is reluctant to shoulder the costs alone. Macron has also styled himself as the champion of “strategic autonomy,” calling together with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz for a stronger European defense role. But as the Financial Times has noted, those ambitions collide with weak finances and political divisions. With France paralyzed, the EU’s claim to speak with one voice looks hollow, and existing rifts – from Hungary’s open skepticism to Slovakia’s resistance on energy and sanctions – are harder to conceal.

Bottom line Bayrou’s downfall would leave Macron weaker at home and less credible abroad. France’s ability to anchor the EU’s Ukraine policy looks shaky, Kiev’s guarantees are cast into doubt, and Moscow can argue convincingly that Europe’s talk of peace is inseparable from its rush to militarize.

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Machine translation?!

• Putin Notes an Underlying Issue Within Ukraine that Impedes Negotiation (CTH)

I have often said that Russian dialogue is essentially different from Western dialogue in that Russian speaking is direct and without pretense. This difference is very visible when outlining positions built on pragmatic acceptances. Recently, Russian President Vladimir Putin was asked about the status of negotiations with Ukraine. President Putin notes some of the internal political issues within Ukraine must be deconflicted in order for discussions to proceed. Without these issues resolved, discussion is futile.

Russian President Vladimir Putin: “First. After all, quite recently, the leadership of the Kyiv regime, mildly speaking unflatteringly of us, and excluded all possibility of direct Contacts. Now we see that they are asking for these contacts, at least Offer. I have repeatedly said that I am ready for these contacts. At the news conference in Beijing, which you mentioned, I said that there is no point in I don’t see much of it. Why? Because it will be agreed with the Ukrainian side is almost impossible on key issues. Even if there is a political will, What I doubt is that there are legal and technical difficulties that are that any agreements on territories must be confirmed in accordance with the Constitution of Ukraine at a referendum. In order to hold a referendum, martial law must be lifted, Martial law is not carried out. If martial law is lifted, it is necessary to immediately hold presidential elections.

After the referendum, if it is held, regardless of the results, it is necessary to obtain a decision of the Constitutional Court. And the constitutional court does not work, because after requests, as I understand it, to the Constitutional Court about the legitimacy of the current government, the court evaded these decisions, and the head of the regime He simply ordered the guards not to let the chairman of the Constitutional Court into the working place. This is the kind of democracy there. And the chairman of the Supreme Court is just sitting in prison on corruption charges. It is well known that Ukraine has enough of this Corruption. But why was it necessary to send the chairman of the supreme court to prison to plant, it is not very clear. Although it is clear that it came to destruction their judicial system as such. This is another of the striking signs of “democracy” current Ukrainian authorities.

Therefore, this endless process is going nowhere. Nevertheless, we said that we are ready for a summit meeting. Listen, the Ukrainian side wants this meeting and offers this one Meeting. I said: ready, please come, we are definitely completely We will provide working conditions and safety, the guarantee is one hundred percent. But if We are told we want to meet with you, but you go there for this meeting, it seems to me that these are just their excessive requests to us. I repeat once again: if someone really wants to meet with us, we Ready. The best place for this is the capital of the Russian Federation, the hero city Moscow.” {SOURCE}

Vladimir Putin: “We have an open dialogue with President Trump. There is an agreement that in case of We can call, contact, and talk to each other. He knows that I am open to these conversations; And he too – I know about it. But so far, we have not had conversations in Europe based on the results of these consultations. Actually, it was difficult for me to do this, I had just come from China, I’m here. We have no problems with communications here. First. Secondly, regarding possible military contingents in Ukraine. This is one of the root causes of Ukraine’s involvement in NATO. Therefore, if there are some troops appear, especially now, in the course of hostilities, We proceed from the assumption that these will be legitimate targets for their destruction.

And if solutions are reached that lead to peace, to long-term peace, then I simply do not see any point in them being on the territory of Ukraine, that’s all. If agreements are reached, let no one doubt that Russia will comply with them in full. We will respect those guarantees security, which, of course, must be worked out both for Russia and for Ukraine. And I repeat once again: of course, Russia will agree to these agreements execute. In any case, no one has discussed this with us on a serious level, that’s all.”

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“Brussels, “the capital of diplomacy..”

• Peace in Ukraine ‘Easier Without Brussels Hawks Fueling War’ (Sp.)

It would be easier to achieve a peaceful settlement of the Ukrainian crisis if the “hawks” in Brussels stopped fueling the conflict, the Russian Embassy in Belgium said on Sunday. “It is obvious that if the ‘hawks’ in Brussels and other Western capitals stop fueling the war and support peace efforts, including those undertaken by US President [Donald] Trump, then it will become much easier to achieve peace,” the embassy wrote on Telegram. Instead, the Belgian government is becoming more and more Russophobic, misleading its citizens about Russia’s alleged intent to attack Brussels, the embassy added. Earlier in September, Belgian Defense Minister Thomas Francken said that Moscow was capable of “infiltrating” one of the NATO member states by 2030 under the pretext of protecting the Russian-speaking minority in it, while at the same time attacking Brussels, “the capital of diplomacy,” with drones and missiles.

“The flawed logic offered to ordinary citizens confirms that the current Belgian leadership is rapidly moving away from its previously declared moderation in foreign affairs and is increasingly joining the ranks of the most Russophobic part of the EU and NATO, pursuing an extremely dangerous course of inciting confrontation with our country,” the statement read. The Russian embassy dismissed the allegations, adding that the policies pursued by the Belgian government result in significant economic and social costs, which Belgian citizens are forced to pay.

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“..its days are numbered, it would fall apart on its own, there would no point in even leaving it..”

• Orban: EU’s Next 7-Year Budget to Become Last One If Bloc Does Not Change (Sp.)

The European Union is in a state of disintegration, and if there are no radical changes, the next seven-year budget will be the last one for the community, according to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban.
“I believe that the European Union has now entered a state of disintegration. And if it continues like this — and the likelihood of this is very high, — then the EU will go down in history as a depressing result of a noble experiment,” Orban said, speaking at the opening of the political season in the city of Kotcse. The Hungarian prime minister recalled that the European Union must now adopt a new common budget for 2028-2035.

“Even if we manage to pass this budget — which we may have serious doubts about — but if we do, it will be the last seven-year budget of the European Union. If things continue like this, I consider it completely impossible to pass a common budget after 2035,” he emphasized. The Hungarian Prime Minister proposed a possible way out of the crisis: the formation of four “circles,” so that the outermost one would include countries that want to cooperate in the field of security and energy security, which could include not only EU member states, but also Turkey, the United Kingdom and Ukraine; the second circle would include countries that have a common market, similar to the EU’s internal market; the third circle would include eurozone countries with a common monetary policy, and the fourth would unite countries that want a close political union with common political principles.

“Only such a flexible structure of circles can ensure interaction between European countries at different levels of cooperation… If we do not move to this order, the European Union will fall apart,” Orban concluded. Orban previously stated that if the European Union continued its economic policy, its days are numbered, it would fall apart on its own, there would no point in even leaving it, and the period during which something could be radically changed is two to three years. According to the politician, Europe will fall apart before our eyes if the liberals in power in Brussels are not replaced by representatives of patriotic governments, “purges” are needed, similar to those taking place in the United States.

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“Britain is being over-run again. First the Romans. Then the Anglo-Saxons. Then the Vikings. Then the Normans. In all previous times, the British fought. But not this time.”

• THE CAMP OF THE SAINTS (Paul Craig Roberts)

The British nation no longer exists. A Muslim immigrant-invader has been appointed Home Secretary. She is in charge of immigration, borders, and the police. When the ethnic British elected Starmer, they signed their death warrant. The 1939 English song, “There’ll always be an England,” turned out to be mistaken.

British political parties have concluded that ethnic British self-rule is racist. The Conservative Party chose an Indian Prime Minister. The Labor Party chose a Muslim Home Secretary. The leader in waiting of the Conservative Party is an African woman. The Mayor of London is a Muslim. Immigrant-invaders are also mayors of 18 British cities, including the largest ones. Rape of white ethnic British females by immigrant-invaders, due to non-enforcement of law, has become a de factor right of immigrant-invaders. Raped ethnic British females who complain about being raped risk arrest for “offensive statements” and “hate crimes” against a protected class–immigrant-invaders. The ethnic British people have recently been protesting their treatment by their government, but with insufficient force to be effective.

Britain is being over-run again. First the Romans. Then the Anglo-Saxons. Then the Vikings. Then the Normans. In all previous times, the British fought. But not this time. The Muslim world has claimed Britain. England as an ethnic British nation is a lost cause.


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“..the Left’s strategy is that of the kamikaze: to destroy Trump at the cost of destroying the Democratic Party.”

• Trump Astride at 7 Months (Victor Davis Hanson)

President Donald Trump’s greatest achievement within six months was simply ending illegal immigration as we had once known it—without “comprehensive immigration reform” or any other rhetorical trickery. It remains difficult to find, much less deport, the 10 to 12 million illegal aliens who entered in the last four years. Those who helped break the law, by design or indifference, now believe it was moral to destroy federal immigration law but immoral to uphold it. And it is still unclear whether former President Joe Biden’s handlers deliberately sabotaged their own border for political and demographic purposes out of sheer orneriness or utter incompetence. Many of the Left’s cherished totems—massive Green New Deal subsidies, the diversity/equity/inclusion industry, biological males competing in women’s sports, and the U.S. Agency for International Development revolving door—are either comatose or in their death throes.

The historic drop-off in military recruitment reversed shortly after Trump took office. Republican voter registration is up, and Democrat registration is down. Abroad, Trump finds remarkable successes. For now, there are pauses in the fighting between India and Pakistan, Egypt and Somalia, Cambodia and Thailand, Rwanda and Congo, Serbia and Kosovo, and Armenia and Azerbaijan. Much credit is due to Trump for brokering ceasefires. Iran will not get a bomb in the next four years—as seemed likely when Biden left office. The Middle East’s current most grotesque terrorist cadres and states—Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis—are far weaker than they were when Trump entered office in January. There is at least some engagement in envisioning the outlines of a ceasefire in Trump’s inherited Ukraine War.

The rub is finding the degree of ordnance necessary to convince Putin that increasing Russia’s casualties to more than one million will endanger his own dictatorship sooner than destroy Ukraine. Breaking up the new three-billion-person China/India/Russia nexus hinges on ending the war. The economy is still strong. Gas prices are at historic lows. Increases in all types of energy production proceed full bore. Current gross domestic product, inflation, unemployment, and the stock market—all at one time or another said to be in a crisis state—remain strong. Talk of an impending recession or hyperinflation is mostly muted. No one quite knows either the full effects of Trump’s tariffs—especially given the injunctions issued by left-wing district justices—or of the promised over $10 trillion in foreign investments.

Much of Trump’s agenda will hinge on whether interest rates are lowered, Republicans survive the midterms, and the degree to which unelected left-wing lower-court justices can be stopped from hijacking the Constitution and de facto running the country. As for the Democrat opposition, there is no counter agenda, no shadow government responsible leadership, and no willingness to craft bipartisan legislation. Instead, the Left’s strategy is that of the kamikaze: to destroy Trump at the cost of destroying the Democratic Party. Otherwise, Democrats seek to prove so obnoxious in demonizing Trump that they create such mass hysteria that the weary electorate figuratively lies down, closes its eyes, covers its ears, and screams nonstop, “Make them all go away!”

Former foul-mouthed vice presidential candidate Tim Walz is now reduced to a ghoulish status. He recently boasted to an audience that rumors of Trump’s death—who survived two assassination attempts last summer—will thankfully one day prove true. The top of the failed ticket, Kamala Harris, wanders aimlessly without an office, constituency, audience, or ideas. To remain viable, she knows she must continue touring and speaking. But Harris accepts that the more anyone hears her word salads, the more they will remember her 2024 train wreck. Head of the Democratic Party, Ken Martin, now screams that Trump is a fascist. But by what standards does he judge? Did Trump try to take his rivals off state ballots? Does he advocate for destroying the filibuster, the Electoral College, and the 156-year-old nine-justice Supreme Court, or packing the Senate by admitting two new states?

Are local, state, and federal prosecutors—a la Bragg, James, Smith, and Willis—coordinating with the White House and the Justice Department to indict Trump’s current chief adversaries, such as Gavin Newsom, Kamala Harris, or Josh Shapiro? Did Trumpers hire a foreign spy to concoct a fake hit dossier on Democrat grandees? Are his subordinates now spreading it to the media. Are 51 conservative former CIA contractors and retired spooks swearing that Newsom or Harris is working with the Russians, Chinese, or any of our enemies? The greatest Democrat fear? That it has so institutionalized excessive executive orders, ad hominem lawfare, lower-court usurpation, state nullification of federal law, and federal intervention in higher education, the energy industry, and the nation’s open spaces that their own legacies empowered Trump and now will boomerang upon themselves—as the public applauds the karma.

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“And nearly five years later, every single thing Kingston predicted about the CV19 bioweapon vax has been proven true.”

• Truth About CV19 Vax Awakens Public – Karen Kingston (USAW)

Karen Kingston is a biotech analyst and former Pfizer employee that warned in her very first appearance on USAWatchdog in September of 2021 that the “CV19 Vaccines are Poison.” Nearly five years ago, Kingston said, “They are only intended to poison, mutate, cause genetic mutations, and kill adults and children. They contain advanced medical technologies called lipid nanoparticles that are made of hydrogel, which contain graphene oxide (poison to humans) . . .. There are strong immunosuppressants, different types of chemotherapies that could suppress your immune system while being injected by something that is going to highjack your immune system . . .. and actually produce this disease-causing genetic material that can cause cancers, inflammatory diseases, genetic disorders, infertility and etc.”

And nearly five years later, every single thing Kingston predicted about the CV19 bioweapon vax has been proven true. The latest example showing the deadly and debilitating disaster that is the CV19 vax comes from a new peer reviewed study that “Finds COVID-19 ‘Vaccines’ Increase Risk of Multiple Cancers — CONFIRMS Fears of ‘Turbo Cancer’ Epidemic.” There are also diseases of “epidemic” proportions with heart, immune system and brain function, to name a few more. Maybe this is why Florida, just today, ended all vaccine mandates. Many of these ‘vaccines’ contain deadly and debilitating mRNA. This ban also includes the CV19 “vaccine.” Kingston reports, “The Florida Department of Health, in partnership with the governor, is going to be working to end all vaccine mandates in Florida law, ALL of them, EVERY LAST ONE OF THEM,” says Florida Surgeon General Dr. Joe Ladapo.

President Trump is also questioning the CV19 vaccines and is demanding the vaccine makers justify the safety of their products. Trump said in part on Truth social, “With CDC being ripped apart over this question, I want the answer, and I want it NOW. . .. I hope OPERATION WARP SPEED was as “BRILLIANT” as many say it was. If not, we all want to know about it, and why??? Kingston says, “President Trump is demanding that Pfizer shows its data. . .. One report from June of 2022 from Pfizer and people calling in and they recorded it. Pfizer recorded nearly five million adverse (CV19 vax) events across nearly 1.5 million people. The most common were neurological. There were nearly 750,000 nervous system disorders. . .. This is really scary. . .. This was in a period of 18 months.” Kingston says there were at least a dozen other CV19 vax studies that were never released and were kept from the public.

Did Pfizer stop the shots and alert President Trump about this? NO! Now, even top former CDC officials are trashing the CV19 shots. Kingston says, “Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, a CDC director, just repeated what HHS Secretary Kennedy said in 2021, and that is the CV19 vaccine is ‘the deadliest vaccine ever made.’ (So-called fact checkers said back in 2021 this was not true. In 2025, with millions of victims dead, it most certainly IS TRUE.) My point is Daskalakis repeated what Kennedy said in 2021 recently on MSNBC. They are putting it out there. They can’t undo the damage that has been done. RFK Jr. just revoked more than $500 million in research projects of mRNA. There have been a lot of movements, and it is interesting Trump is calling on the drug companies to step in and disclose their information. The last time they disclosed their information, it was horrible. . .. By the way, a lot of data they submitted to the FDA has never been released.”

Multiple top people at the CDC recently have quit or been fired. Also, the Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) for the CV19 vax has been terminated. This move makes many now liable for adverse vaccine reactions. Maybe this is why CVS and Walgreens have restricted the CV19 vax after this announcement. Kingston calls what is happening now “a watershed moment of awakening” for the people who want the ugly truth to come out for the CV19 vax. Kingston says, “It’s all criminal, and this is what I have always said. This is the data.”

Now, Kingston says people need treatment to “detox” from the ill effects of the CV19 vax. Let’s hope the treatment starts soon and we don’t wait another five years to start saving lives of the CV19 vaccine injured.

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“DANCING FUCKING NURSES!

See, that’s why.”

• Thoughts on Robert F Kennedy Jr Congressional Testimony (CTH)

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr. appeared before the Senate Finance Committee after U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Susan Monarez was fired and four senior officials have resigned amid growing tensions over vaccine policies and public health directives. I have not commented on what happened during the hearing, nor shared the numerous confrontational segments of wide distribution, because the background context of the hearing itself is challenging to discuss in stable mindset without blowing a blood pressure cuff. However, here goes.

COVID-19 is the name of the disease caused by the SARS-CoV2 virus. Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) – Corona Virus Disease of 2019 (CoV2), colloquially referred to as “COVID-19”, was a man-made influenza (flu) virus created in a laboratory in Wuhan China, using “gain of function” research grants from the United States government. The virus escaped the laboratory and became a pandemic influenza virus as it spread throughout the world. The response to the release of the virus, the mitigation effort, was organized by global intelligence services and coordinated through western military cooperation. The military and intelligence services coordinated the mitigation efforts with various national health services, the compliance rules and subsequent restrictions upon Americans were a downstream consequence.

Everything within the mitigation process was fraught with governmental fear, widely ridiculous panic, over-the-top reactions and a level of political pressure never before seen in modern history. All of the rules and restrictions were genuinely crazy at the time events were happening, and in hindsight review none of the mitigation efforts made any sense whatsoever. Commonsense was thrown out the window as mass formation psychosis spread like wildfire with a hurricane. Approximately a year after the COVID-19 virus was unleashed a quickly created and untested genetically modifying serum called a “COVID-19 vaccine” was then promoted to the world as the most important element in virus mitigation. There was never, NEVER, a more heavily pushed and forced mandate by the entirety of western collective government, and global intelligence systems, as the modern compliance effort to force citizens to take the “vaccine.”

Ultimately, the vaccine rules, demands, mandates and economic compliance pressures, divided the various nations into two sets of people: (1) those who took the vaccine, and (2) those who did not. Much like the COVID-19 mitigation rules themselves, the pressure to take the vaccines was unrelenting. The United States Government, through various emergency declarations and legal processes, mandated compliance forcing the vaccine upon people who did not want to take the untested, unverified and eventually determined unsafe genetically modifying serum. Within the control systems deployed by government, including the panel who were recently questioning HHS Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr., non-compliance with the “vaccine” mandate was not optional. Every regulatory and enforcement element of government was deployed to coerce and ultimately force compliance to take the vaccine.

The U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights (first 10 amendments) was subverted, manipulated and legally twisted at the behest of government officers, including President Joe Biden using emergency powers. Families were torn apart as the dynamic of the compliant -vs- the non-compliant played out in every relationship. Socially, the cohesive nature of acceptable behavior was destroyed. Children were forcibly taken for vaccinations and parents who would not comply with the vaccine were legally held accountable, threatened, ostracized and ridiculed. During the panic, industries were taken over by government, hundreds of thousands of unnecessary and unneeded ventilators were built, portable hospitals were erected in football stadiums and convention centers by military and national guard, they were never used; forced lockdowns were mandated and travel was restricted by local, state and federal authorities.

People were not permitted to work; the economy was shut down and the workforce was divided into essential -vs- nonessential positions. All of it was madness. In the USA the entire weight of the scientific community and healthcare industry was leveraged by the intelligence agencies, military and government politicians, to force compliance with all the rules and regulations as determined by “experts” in the field of health and science. This was the largest psychological control operation ever deployed against the American people, and anyone who stood up against the system of forced compliance was immediately identified, removed, shutdown, had their social media presence blocked, and every element of the government regulation used to silence their dissent.

The President Biden administration used their emergency powers to collaborate with and force social media platforms and tech systems to control the electronic messaging and communication of the American people. Private industry was forced into compliance and small business were forcibly shutdown if they did not adhere to the rules and regulations of the various enforcement mechanisms. The federal, state and local police were used as armed compliance officers to monitor the behavior of the American people and control their activity. Government checkpoints were put into place to verify status as “essential” during travel, and vaccination compliance documents were required for commerce and social engagements.

Four years later the larger American population now realizes all of what took place was built on a foundation of fraud and lies. Four years later we discover the rules, regulations and compliance techniques were carried out with no official scientific basis. Worse still, the untested and unsafe vaccine -forced upon millions of Americans- is now identified as killing hundreds-of-thousands of innocent victims who were completely healthy until they were injected with a genetically modifying serum of unknown consequence. To protect themselves from the consequences of their conduct, all of the officials who engaged in the process of mandated vaccine deployment are now hiding the data in an effort to avoid the consequences.

This is the background for newly appointed and highly skeptical HHS Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr to appear before congress and explain the changes he is making to a U.S. healthcare system that was shown to be completely broken by the example of SARS-CoV-2. I have not previously commented about the RFK Jr hearing, genuinely because discussing…. THE MURDEROUS FUCKING ACTS OF BIDEN’S GOVERNMENT DURING COVID-19 FORCED VACCINATIONS… is beyond my capacity for stable-minded discussion. Congress sits there, arguing narratives from perches, as if we the people have completely forgotten the madness that took over the entire healthcare system.

DANCING FUCKING NURSES!

See, that’s why.

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“..the reality is that he wants to occupy our city and break our Constitution..”

• Trump Threatens ‘War’ On Chicago Over Immigration (RT)

US President Donald Trump has ramped up threats to deploy federal troops to Chicago for an immigration crackdown, warning that the city “will soon find out” why he renamed the Defense Department the “Department of WAR.” The warning follows Trump’s order to dramatically ramp up deportations in Democrat-led cities after riots swept Los Angeles earlier this year. On Saturday, Trump posted on Truth Social what appears to be an AI-generated meme showing him in military uniform with the Chicago skyline, helicopters, and flames in the background. Above the image, Trump wrote: “I love the smell of deportations in the morning… Chicago about to find out why it’s called the Department of WAR.”

The caption to the meme read: “Chipocalypse Now,” a play on the 1979 film ‘Apocalypse Now’, which includes the line: “I love the smell of napalm in the morning.” Trump offered no further details.Trump’s warning has drawn massive pushback from local officials. Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker wrote on X that the president “is threatening to go to war with an American city,” adding, “Illinois won’t be intimidated by a wannabe dictator.” Illinois Representative Mike Quigley told Politico at Chicago’s Mexican Independence Day parade that Trump spoke “like a true tyrant.” “The President’s threats are beneath the honor of our nation, but the reality is that he wants to occupy our city and break our Constitution,” Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson wrote on X.

Illegal immigration has been a central focus of Trump’s presidency. On Inauguration Day, he vowed to deport “millions and millions” of undocumented immigrants. Since then, he has expanded border security, tripled Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention funding, cut humanitarian programs, and detained thousands of illegal migrants, among other regulatory measures. Saturday’s post adds to Trump’s repeated threats to include Chicago in his list of cities targeted for expanded immigration enforcement. In June, his administration deployed National Guard troops to Los Angeles, followed by Washington, DC, after mass pro-immigration riots. Trump has also suggested that Baltimore and New Orleans could face similar measures.

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Over 50 years.

“..564,258 deaths per year, similar to the global mortality burden associated with armed conflict..”

• 29 Million Deaths Linked To EU and US Sanctions (RT)

Western sanctions contributed to nearly 29 million excess deaths worldwide over five decades – a toll comparable to that of wars, according to a recent study. The research, published last month in the Lancet Global Health, has gained attention around the world. Examining age-specific mortality in 152 countries from 1971 to 2021, using statistics from the Global Sanctions Database, researchers compared mortality rates before and after sanctions, tracking long-term trends to estimate their toll in excess deaths. They focused on three sanctioning authorities: The UN, the US, and the EU (and its predecessor). “We estimate that unilateral sanctions over this period caused 564,258 deaths per year, similar to the global mortality burden associated with armed conflict,” the authors noted, with a total of 28.8 million deaths across the 51-year span.

We found the strongest effects for unilateral, economic, and US sanctions, whereas we found no statistical evidence of an effect for UN sanctions. Most excess deaths occurred among the most vulnerable – the very young and the elderly. “Our findings reveal that unilateral and economic sanctions, particularly those imposed by the USA, lead to substantial increases in mortality, disproportionately affecting children younger than 5 years,” the study said, noting that the age group accounted for 51% of the total death toll. The report found that the sanctions undermine economic and food security, often causing hunger and health problems among the poorest. Additionally, the dominance of the dollar and euro in global transactions allowed the US and EU to amplify the impact of their sanctions.

At last year’s BRICS summit, member nations called for “unlawful unilateral coercive measures” to be eliminated, warning of their disproportionate impact on the most vulnerable. Members have increasingly avoided the dollar “to shield themselves from US arbitrariness,” Moscow has said. At the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit in Tianjin this week, Chinese President Xi Jinping called for a fairer global governance system based on mutual respect and opposition to Western dominance. Russian President Vladimir Putin welcomed the proposal as especially relevant when “some countries still do not abandon their desire for dictatorship in international affairs.”

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What i see coming is deep alright.

• US in ‘Very Deep Negotiations’ With Hamas to End Gaza Conflict – Trump (ET)

The United States is in “very deep negotiations with Hamas” to bring an end to the current conflict in the Gaza Strip, President Donald Trump announced on Sept. 5. Hamas, which continues to hold hostages taken from Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, has so far rejected any deals to end the nearly two-year Israeli military campaign across the Gaza Strip, despite widespread death and destruction throughout the territory. Addressing the ongoing hostage situation and the surrounding conflict, Trump reiterated calls for Hamas to release all of the remaining hostages in a bed to end the carnage. “We said let them all out right now. Let them all out, and much better things will happen for them. But if you don’t let them all out, it’s going to be a tough situation. It’s going to be nasty. That’s my opinion. Israel’s choice, but that’s my opinion,” the president said during a White House press briefing.

In recent weeks, Israeli forces have been ramping up operations in Gaza City, which is located towards the northern end of the embattled strip of territory. The Israeli military has claimed responsibility for strikes targeting high-rises in the city, and footage has shown strikes toppling at least one tower there. As many as 20 captives may still be alive, though Trump said “there could be some that have recently died, is what I’m hearing.” “I hope that’s wrong,” he added. The bodies of around 30 more captives also remain in the Gaza Strip. Hamas released a video on Sept. 5 with Israeli hostage Guy Gilboa-Dalal. In the video, apparently dated Aug. 28, Gilboa-Dalal states that he and other hostages are being held in Gaza City and fear they will be killed in the intensifying Israeli operation.

Trump offered few specifics about what Hamas is requesting in negotiations for the release of the remaining hostages. “They’re asking for some things that are fine,” Trump began, when asked about Hamas’s demands, but said the initial Hamas attack on Israel—in which around 1,200 were killed and thousands more were wounded—must be taken into consideration in the negotiations. Throughout the conflict, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has articulated a goal to ensure Hamas is defeated and that the Gaza Strip can never become a haven for the group or similar militants opposed to Israel.

In an Aug. 10 speech, Netanyahu said the Gaza City takeover plan is not part of an indefinite Israeli occupation of the strip. At the same time, he indicated the plan is for Israel to have “overriding security responsibilities” for the territory, while allowing a “non-Israeli, peaceful civil administration. Netanyahu said Gaza’s post-Hamas civil authority must be one that “doesn’t educate its children for terror, doesn’t pay terrorists, and doesn’t launch terrorist attacks against Israel.” Netanyahu said these terms would disqualify the Palestinian Authority—which has partial governing authority in the West Bank—from stepping in as Gaza’s eventual civil authority.

In a Sept. 6 statement, Hamas representatives said, “The movement affirms its openness to any ideas or proposals that achieve a permanent ceasefire, a comprehensive withdrawal of the occupation forces from the Gaza Strip, unconditional entry of aid, and a real prisoner exchange through serious negotiations via mediators.”

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“rich natural resource reserves, estimated at $75 trillion..”

• Globalists’ Attacks on Russia Linked to Its Rich Natural Resources – Dmitriev (Sp.)

Russian Federal Agency for Mineral Resources (Rosnedra) has completed the development of a geological exploration program for new Russian regions and is coordinating this work, the Agency’s representative earlier said. Globalists’ attacks on Russia are linked to its rich natural resource reserves, estimated at $75 trillion, Russian Direct Investment Fund CEO Kirill Dmitriev, who is also the Russian president’s special representative for investment and economic cooperation with foreign countries, says.

“Russia is Number 1 in the world with an estimated $75 trillion natural resource value. That’s also why it is constantly attacked by globalists and the deep state. Russia has partnered and will build new partnerships with the leading countries for joint resource development,” Dmitriev said on X. According to estimates by the international agency Statista for 2021, which RDIF CEO cites, after Russia, the top five countries in terms of natural resource reserves include the United States ($45 trillion), Saudi Arabia ($34 trillion), Canada ($33 trillion) and Iran ($27 trillion).

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“..capital from all over the world will be trying to get off the railroad tracks because gold and silver cannot default.”

• Gold & Silver Sniffing Out Risk & Fear – Bill Holter (USAW)

Precious metals expert and financial writer Bill Holter worked side by side with his business partner Jim Sinclair for more than a decade. No two people knew more about markets and money than them. Two years ago, Sinclair, aka “Mr. Gold,” passed away. Now, the baton has passed to Holter, who is the new “Mr. Gold.” Holter warns one explosive new all-time high, hitting day after day, for the yellow metal is signaling big trouble coming. Holter explains, “There is a huge breakout. In my opinion, the metals market is sniffing out risk and fear. . .. They funded literally trillions of dollars by borrowing in yen. Now, what has happened, the Japanese yield curve has gone from basically zero to over 1.6 % on a ten-year (bond) and 3.2% on a 30-year (bond).

So, that carry trade now is being squeezed because the yen has gone higher . . . your cost to carry has gone higher because Japanese yields have gone higher. So, the gold market is looking at the Japanese carry trade in the process of blowing up. It is sovereign bonds across the world. If you look at interest rates worldwide, they are actually going higher.” If the Fed cuts interest rates later this month, it may not be good news. The bond market could rebel. Holter says, “You could see bond prices drop and yields go higher. There is also a very high probability with lower Fed rates that the dollar weakens.” Earlier this year, Holter called the global economy a hyper-levered house of cards. The leverage has gotten worse, much worse.

Holter says, “There is a turbocharge to this, and when I say turbocharge, it’s fear. It’s fear of bankruptcy. It’s fear of default. The world is clearly over-levered, and there are going to be sovereign defaults left and right going forward. The only two monies that cannot default on the planet are gold and silver.” So, is there going to be a big crash coming soon? Holter says, I don’t know if it is going to be September, October or whatever, but you look at the math and the valuations. The valuations are ridiculous. Look at the math on sovereign debt all over the world. Look at the math on the amount of debt outstanding and margin debt, and this is a huge credit bubble. Credit bubbles do not go away quietly. Credit bubbles burst and markets collapse. The problem now is there is so much debt in the system and the system is so big the central banks together cannot stand against the tsunami of bankruptcies that are coming. There is no white knight this time.”

Holter (aka, the new Mr. Gold) says, “The vast majority of wealth will seek a safe haven that cannot evaporate or be taken away. It’s going to be gold and silver. You are going to see a bull market in gold and silver unlike any bull market in any field ever. . .. Gold and silver will make financial history because capital from all over the world will be trying to get off the railroad tracks because gold and silver cannot default.” In closing, Mr. Gold says if you just divide the amount of official gold held in the US Treasury by the official US government debt, you get about $135,000 per ounce gold price and around $6,700 per ounce silver price. Holter says with $2 quadrillion in derivative debt, who knows how high the price of gold and silver can go. One thing for sure is gold and silver cannot default.

Read more …

Well, the jobs numbers were pretty bad… Let’s start there.

• Bessent Doubles Down On Tariffs, Predicts Economic Surge (ZH)

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent pushed back Sunday against growing concerns that the U.S. economy is sliding toward a “jobs recession,” defending the administration’s trade policies, tariffs, and fiscal strategy while signaling confidence that growth will accelerate by year’s end. In a wide-ranging interview on NBC’s Meet the Press (full interview at the bottom), Bessent rejected forecasts from economists at Moody’s Analytics and elsewhere who have warned that slowing hiring trends and manufacturing job losses point to deeper weakness. Instead, he argued that recent data is noisy, revisions are likely, and that President Donald Trump’s economic agenda remains on track to deliver a “substantial acceleration” in the fourth quarter.

Host Kristen Welker opened the interview by citing Moody’s chief economist Mark Zandi, who recently described the U.S. slowdown as a “jobs recession.” Asked if he agreed, Bessent pushed back: “We’re not going to do economic policy off of one number,” Bessent said. “Good policies are in place that are going to create good high-paying jobs for the American people.” He added that August is “the noisiest month of the year” for employment data and stressed that significant revisions are common: “We need good data before we jump to conclusions.” Pressed on manufacturing job losses since the April rollout of the administration’s new tariffs, Bessent urged patience, noting that factories “can’t be built overnight” citing a “record amount of investment intentions” already underway.

He highlighted July’s passage of the administration’s flagship tax and infrastructure package – the One Big Beautiful Bill, which included full expensing for factories and equipment. According to Bessent, many companies were “holding back” investment until the bill passed and are now planning major capital expenditures and expansions. Still, U.S. manufacturing employment has declined by 42,000 jobs since April, even as the White House has promised a “manufacturing renaissance”” Bessent attributed some of the perceived weakness to flawed data collection and suggested that upcoming revisions could wipe out hundreds of thousands of jobs previously reported under the Biden administration. “We’re going to get revisions next week that may be as big as an 800,000-job downward revision,” Bessent said. “I’m not sure what these people who collect the data have been doing, but we need good data.”

The interview grew tense as Welker pressed Bessent on widespread reports from U.S. manufacturers that tariffs are increasing costs and forcing layoffs. Companies including John Deere, Nike, Black+Decker, and the Big Three automakers have warned investors that tariffs are adding hundreds of millions – in some cases billions – in unexpected expenses. Goldman Sachs recently estimated that 86% of tariff costs have ultimately been borne by U.S. companies and consumers. Bessent rejected those conclusions outright. “For every John Deere, we have companies telling us the tariffs have helped their business,” he said, citing meetings with executives at Treasury. “They’re increasing capital expenditures and expanding employment. And if things are so bad, why was GDP up 3.3% and why is the stock market at a new high?”

When asked directly whether tariffs amount to a tax on U.S. consumers, Bessent responded flatly: “No, I don’t.” He also dismissed Goldman Sachs’s analysis, quipping: “I made a good career trading against Goldman Sachs.”

Read more …

X thread.

• Once Were Relevant (el gato malo)

i don’t think western europe and canada understand how little their opinions matter anymore. once, at least europe was relevant, but today? both are failing, no-growth, collapsing demographic failures that are rapidly losing anything like their high trust, flourishing cultures as they are eaten by the davos/WEF culture collapsers and the occupying armies they invite. both are dying regimes held up by censorship and political suppression. they are overrun by barbarian invaders to whom they are too effete and butthurt to advocate resistance. the contrast with eastern europe, which refuses to fall for this societal suicide pact (likely because they have living memory memories of communism) could not be more stark in both economics and culture.

of course the EC elites hate an american return to vibrance and strength. it highlights how badly they themselves lack this. their misery demands company that america will no longer provide. it will be fun to watch and see if they can learn to defend themselves. it’s not that america is dying. it’s that we’re getting ready to live again by escaping this nonsense. it’s europe who is on the table in critical care. i hope their smug senses of self-importance can keep them warm in the coming conquest by caliphate and the green death of watermelon politics. those who advocate the US imitating the serfdom surrender of europe and canada have been far too dominant for far too long. and their 15 minutes are up. i wonder when spencer will realize this?

Read more …

 

 

 

 

https://twitter.com/EricLDaugh/status/1964688908857250278

Owls

Scott

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle August 9 2025

Aug 092025
 
 August 9, 2025  Posted by at 9:51 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  45 Responses »


Heinrich Hofmann Christ and the Rich Young Man 1889

 

• Trump Reveals Time And Place Of Putin Summit: Alaska August 15 (RT)
• Putin Doesn’t Need To Meet Zelensky For Russia-US Summit – Trump (RT)
• Polish News Outlet Claims Insider Info on Trump-Putin Tentative Agreement (CTH)
• Oil Tumbles On Report Of US-Backed Russia-Ukraine Truce Deal (ZH)
• What Putin And Trump Want From The Ukraine Peace Deal (Bobrov)
• ‘Vital’ Poll Shows Ukrainians Are For Peace – Putin Envoy Dmitriev (Sp.)
• China Ready to Promote Peace & Negotiations on Ukraine – Xi (Sp.)
• Going, Going Gone. . . . (Kunstler)
• Appeals Court Nukes Boasberg’s Contempt Order In Trump Deportations Case (ZH)
• New Daily Fine Could Sap Resolve Of Texas Dems Who Fled State (ZH)
• Orban Calls For Russia-EU Summit (RT)
• Trump Yelled At Netanyahu For Dismissing Gaza Starvation – Media (RT)
• US Consulting Firm Modelled Mass Resettlement of Palestinians to Africa (RT)
• US Slaps Tariffs On Gold Bars (RT)
• Swiss President Blamed For ‘Disastrous’ Deal With Trump – FT (RT)

 

 

https://twitter.com/MyLordBebo/status/1953415357869281408

jobs
https://twitter.com/nicksortor/status/1953555467189506327

https://twitter.com/EricLDaugh/status/1953611969803800802

100
https://twitter.com/TheGabriel72/status/1953435750927929474

Zero seats

jay

 

 

 

 

With history in mind, a great location.

What a move. Zelensky and the EU left in the dark by the curb. Who saw that coming? We want peace!

• Trump Reveals Time And Place Of Putin Summit: Alaska August 15 (RT)

US President Donald Trump has said that he will meet his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in Alaska next Friday. Kremlin aide Yury Ushakov confirmed immediately afterward that Moscow and Washington will be working on making the Alaska summit happen. “The highly anticipated meeting between myself, as President of the United States of America, and President Vladimir Putin, of Russia, will take place next Friday, August 15, 2025, in the Great State of Alaska,” Trump announced on Truth Social on Friday. According to the Kremlin, the upcoming meeting will revolve around reaching a longstanding peace in the Ukraine conflict.

Moscow expects that the two leaders’ next meeting after this will take place in Russia, the presidential aide said. Trump has officially been sent an invitation, he added. The US president’s special envoy Steve Witkoff visited Moscow on Wednesday for a meeting with Putin that Trump later called “highly productive.” The US leader has expressed his growing impatience with the pace of peace talks dedicated to resolving the Ukraine conflict, and has threatened to impose further secondary sanctions on Russian trade partners. According to the Kremlin, Moscow had received an “acceptable” offer from the US during Witkoff’s visit.

Russia had long said that it was interested in a peaceful resolution to the Ukraine conflict, but has insisted on one that brings about a permanent and stable peace. Russia and Ukraine have held three rounds of direct talks in Istanbul: in May, June, and late July. While the sides have failed to reach a breakthrough, they agreed to exchange prisoners of war and the bodies of fallen soldiers. Russia insists that a sustainable peace deal must include Ukraine’s commitment to stay out of NATO, demilitarization, and the recognition of the new territorial reality on the ground. Kiev has rejected these terms.

Read more …

Zelensky has nothing that Putin wants.

• Putin Doesn’t Need To Meet Zelensky For Russia-US Summit – Trump (RT)

US President Donald Trump has said he is willing to hold a summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin regardless of whether Putin meets with Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky. On Thursday, the New York Post cited a White House official as saying, “Putin must meet with Zelensky for the meeting [with Trump] to occur.” The US president, however, was quick to reject the report. “He doesn’t, no,” Trump told reporters when asked whether Putin would have to first meet Zelensky. “They would like to meet me, and I’ll do whatever I can to stop the killing.”

Zelensky has repeatedly called on Putin to hold in-person talks with Zelensky to end the conflict. The Russian president has said he has “nothing in principle” against a meeting, but reiterated that “certain conditions must be created” for it to take place. He has also cast doubt on Zelensky’s legal capacity to sign binding agreements, as the Ukrainian leader’s presidential term expired last year and he has refused to hold a new election, citing martial law. This has prompted Moscow to declare him “illegitimate.”

Trump’s remarks come after Kremlin aide Yury Ushakov said Putin and Trump could have a face-to-face meeting as soon as next week. Later, Putin floated the United Arab Emirates as a possible location for the summit. The summit developments follow a visit to Moscow by Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff, who held three-hour talks with Putin over the Ukraine conflict. The Kremlin described the discussion as “constructive,” while the White House said the meeting went better than expected. Trump also later commented that “great progress was made,” although no specific outcomes have been detailed.

Read more …

“..does not include guarantees against NATO expansion – one of Moscow’s consistent demands. Russia did not receive any promises that military support for Ukraine would cease.”

Clever:
“De facto recognition of Russian-occupied territories by postponing the status issue for 49 or 99 years.”

• Polish News Outlet Claims Insider Info on Trump-Putin Tentative Agreement (CTH)

I would approach this Polish media report with a note of caution and skepticism. The reason is not what most might think about. The CIA/GCHQ will likely be conducting covert IC propaganda operations to disrupt Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin from reaching any agreement. Therefore, for the next several weeks we should watch the sourcing of the media reports to identify familiar patterns. A Polish media outlet is reporting to have gained insight into the deal carried by President Trump special envoy, Steve Witkoff. As outlined, both President Trump and President Putin would be working from this framework.

“POLAND – Although Onet does not name its sources, it says that the proposal was coordinated with European states. “We have learned that Moscow received a very favorable offer from the Trump administration,” the outlet reported.”According to Onet, the US proposal includes:
• A ceasefire in Ukraine, though not a full peace agreement.
• De facto recognition of Russian-occupied territories by postponing the status issue for 49 or 99 years.
• The lifting of most sanctions imposed on Russia and, in the long term, a return to energy cooperation namely, imports of Russian gas and oil.”

Meanwhile, the proposal reportedly does not include guarantees against NATO expansion – one of Moscow’s consistent demands. Russia did not receive any promises that military support for Ukraine would cease. However, according to the outlet, this last point is said to be acceptable to the Russians. Broadly, this type of an outline makes sense; particularly the three main points and the removal of the sanctions. President Trump has noted repeatedly it was short-sighted for the Western financial system to think they could hurt Russia directly with the 2021 economic sanctions, given the pre-existing sanctions already in place since 2014. All of my research sources in eastern Europe and Russia generally agree the 2021 sanctions regime was about Western global banking interests (CBDC), together with Blackrock, State Street and Vanguard investments.

Common Question: “What is the fundamental reason that the IC wants to prevent the US from aligning with Russia? Is it simply to keep the conflict (and money) going in Ukraine?”
My response is, No. Several facets involved:
1. Russia does not align with current global banking control. This is the background motive behind the current western sanctions’ regime. Russia does not consider the global finance system to be legitimate. From Putin’s long-held perspective the dollar is too easily weaponized for geopolitical leverage. Ironic considering that’s exactly what the sanctions are. As a consequence, the Western global banks dislike Russia immensely.

2. Ideologically, Russia is not ‘woke’ in every sense of that weird word. Even the concept of DEI is crazy from the perspective of society in Russia. The Russian economy and socioeconomic system do not recognize modern western values, ie. “wokeism”. Explaining non-merit-based DEI is one of the most unusual conversations you can have with Russian people. They cannot fathom the concept of employment, subsidy or financial benefit from gender, skin color, ethnicity or race. It doesn’t compute to them because they have no concept of the motive or intent behind DEI. Russia is the least politically correct country you could ever visit.

3. Russia is an unusual caste system that rewards those closest to govt with enhanced status. However, on the caste continuum, Vladimir Putin is more Trumpian toward this internal political dynamic. Putin recognizes that all ships must rise, not just the connected. Think of Russia like visiting Disney. Those who can afford the ‘fast-track’ pass have a better experience than the ordinary ticket holder. Putin recognizes that in the modern era this system creates national vulnerability and political instability that can be exploited by narratives from the West. An entire division of USAID was created for this task. Putin’s goal is changing this dynamic.

4. MAGA understand that Trump needs to be authoritarian in order to cleanse the govt corruption. However, our constitutional system -which was weaponized by the radical leftists- does not allow this approach. In many ways, this type of authoritarian approach is what Putin uses to ensure the same manipulation does not happen to Russia. This puts him in opposition to the global intelligence apparatus who use social friction to stir up internal trouble.

5. Finally, Vladimir Putin has often said the enemy of Russia is not Americans; the identified enemy of Russia is the CIA and UK intelligence (GCHQ). There is a big difference, and the IC feel the same toward him. Hence their activity against him on behalf of their benefactors, the London banking interests.

President Trump is appreciated in Russia because:
(A) he is also not politically correct and speaks his mind.
(B) Trump has no friends in the IC who view Trump in the same oppositional context as Putin.
(C) Trump is honest, and Russians are brutally honest people.
(D) Trump is strong but respectful toward all voices.

Read more …

Where will it be Monday?

• Oil Tumbles On Report Of US-Backed Russia-Ukraine Truce Deal (ZH)

US and Russian officials are working toward an agreement on territories for a planned summit meeting between Presidents Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin as early as next week, the people said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss private deliberations. The US is working to get buy-in from Ukraine and its European allies on the deal, which is far from certain, the people said. Putin is demanding that Ukraine cede its entire eastern Donbas area to Russia as well as Crimea, which his forces illegally annexed in 2014. That would require Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to order a withdrawal of troops from parts of the Luhansk and Donetsk regions still held by Kyiv, handing Russia a victory that its army couldn’t achieve militarily since the start of the full-scale invasion in February 2022.

Such an outcome would represent a major win for Putin, who has long sought direct negotiations with the US on terms for ending the war that he started, sidelining Ukraine and its European allies. What are the odds Zelensky goes for this deal… and will Europe back it? Zelenskiy risks being presented with a take-it-or-leave-it deal to accept the loss of Ukrainian territory, while Europe fears it would be left to monitor a ceasefire as Putin rebuilds his forces. Russia would halt its offensive in the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions of Ukraine along the current battlelines as part of the deal, the people said. They cautioned that the terms and plans of the accord were still in flux and could still change. Oil prices immediately tumbled on the report…

It’s still unclear if Putin would agree to take part in a trilateral meeting with Trump and Zelenskiy next week, even if he had already struck an agreement with the US president, the people added. The Russian leader told reporters on Thursday that he didn’t object to meeting Zelenskiy under the right conditions, though he said they don’t exist now.

Read more …

“..the paradox of diplomacy: in business, a deal signed is a deal done. In geopolitics, even signed agreements can be quietly gutted after the cameras stop rolling.”

• What Putin And Trump Want From The Ukraine Peace Deal (Bobrov)

Ahead of the anticipated summit between Russian President Vladimir Putin and US President Donald Trump, Moscow and Washington – like so many times before in the realm of diplomacy – appear to be chasing fundamentally different goals. The United States seeks to maintain the current status quo but also needs a result it can spin as “progress” on Ukraine. That could mean anything from a partial ceasefire to a full cessation of hostilities. Russia, by contrast, is looking for long-term, legally binding agreements. These would cover the full scope of Russia-US and Russia-Ukraine relations and include built-in enforcement mechanisms to prevent sabotage or unilateral withdrawal. With today’s US-Russia relations still steeped in Cold War-style hostility, the upcoming summit recalls another tense era. One might liken the two delegations to the intelligence officers who used to meet at Glienicke Bridge – the famous ‘Bridge of Spies’ – to exchange captured agents.

Like those secretive, high-stakes handoffs, diplomacy in 2025 still demands that both sides inch toward the middle to make any exchange possible. The very fact that this summit is happening suggests that the gap between Moscow and Washington has narrowed, at least tactically. Russia took the first step by hosting US Special Envoy Steve Witkoff in Moscow. In the quiet language of diplomacy, the country that initiates the visit is often the more eager to make a deal. Russia’s openness to holding the summit quickly signals a willingness to negotiate. And truthfully, it’s Washington that appears more anxious to move things forward. Time, at this point, seems to favor Moscow. President Putin made that clear during his recent meeting with Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko in Valaam. Trump, on the other hand, urgently needs a foreign policy win. The White House is under fire on multiple fronts – from the looming Epstein files scandal to mass protests erupting in Democrat-controlled states over immigration policy.

Trump understands that securing peace in Ukraine could be the crown jewel in a larger global strategy. If he can notch progress in the Russia-Ukraine conflict – on top of de-escalating India-Pakistan, Thailand-Cambodia, Iran-Israel, and Armenia-Azerbaijan – he would be well-positioned to claim a ‘royal flush’ on the world stage. That, in turn, could make him a contender for the Nobel Peace Prize. But how exactly did Trump manage to extract concessions from Vladimir Putin – a veteran of global diplomacy with over 25 years of experience at the highest level? The answer lies in tactics familiar to Trump from his business career, many of which he outlined decades ago in his bestseller, The Art of the Deal. From that playbook, he appears to have used a select few strategic moves:

1) Creating artificial time pressure
Trump began by issuing a 50-day ultimatum. He warned that if no movement came from the Russian side, the US would impose sanctions targeting Russia’s shadow fleet. But just days later, he shortened the timeline dramatically – to eight days – clearly hoping to force Moscow’s hand with a sense of urgency.

2) Fostering strategic uncertainty
Witkoff’s recent visit to Moscow, successful by current standards, was wrapped in deliberate ambiguity. It was originally planned for the first weekend of August. But at the last moment, the American side requested a reschedule for August 6, citing the envoy’s packed calendar due to his parallel role in the Middle East. The unpredictability sent a signal: the US side would not play by a rigid script.

3) The good cop / bad cop routine
While American foreign policy is ultimately shaped by the president, internal dynamics still matter. Trump has surrounded himself with both hawks and doves. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Special Envoy for Ukraine Keith Kellogg often play hardball, while Steve Witkoff takes on the more diplomatic, conciliatory role. Notably, it is always Witkoff – not Rubio – who travels to Moscow, sending a clear message about who is empowered to build bridges.

4) Instilling fear
Trump knows how to apply pressure not just with words, but with policy. While continuing negotiations with China, he slapped a 25% tariff on India – Washington’s key partner in the Indo-Pacific – just before his Ukraine deadline expired. He’s used similar tactics with Canada, the EU, and other close allies. The subtext is clear: even friends aren’t immune from tough love.

Like a spy exchange on a Cold War bridge, diplomacy is the art of meeting halfway. That principle is playing out in real time, as both sides consider where to hold the summit. The location must be neutral, protocol-friendly, and equally distant from both capitals. During UAE President Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan’s recent visit to Moscow, Putin floated the UAE as a potential host. The country meets all the right criteria. And under the diplomatic principle of reciprocity, Trump may have little choice but to accept.

Meanwhile, efforts are underway to prevent third parties from sabotaging the summit. Kiev, with backing from the London-Berlin-Paris axis, is pursuing two goals. The maximalist aim is to derail the bilateral format and force a trilateral meeting that includes Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky. The fallback plan? Render any US-Russia resolution meaningless. In many ways, that’s the paradox of diplomacy: in business, a deal signed is a deal done. In geopolitics, even signed agreements can be quietly gutted after the cameras stop rolling.

So, will Trump’s instincts and tactics deliver a diplomatic breakthrough? The answer will come next week. But one thing is certain: whatever happens, this summit is bound to leave a mark on the annals of history.

Read more …

“..69% of Ukrainians (up from 20% in 2022) support negotiated peace as soon as possible not war..”

• ‘Vital’ Poll Shows Ukrainians Are For Peace – Putin Envoy Dmitriev (Sp.)

The head of the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) and Russian special presidential envoy for economic cooperation with foreign countries, Kirill Dmitriev, ahead of the Russia-US summit, took note of a public opinion poll showing a significant increase in the number of Ukrainians who support peace through talks. Dmitriev cited relevant sociological data from the American Gallup Institute, according to which 69% of Ukrainians (up from 20% in 2022) support the earliest possible achievement of peace through negotiations, rather than war. “An absolutely vital poll before the US-Russia summit: 69% of Ukrainians (up from 20% in 2022) support negotiated peace as soon as possible not war,” he wrote on X.

Russian presidential aide Yury Ushakov said Thursday morning Moscow and Washington had begun work to prepare for the upcoming Russia-US summit. American media reported on Wednesday evening that Trump wanted to meet with Putin as early as next week. Putin’s last meeting with a US leader took place in 2021 in Geneva, when the Russian president met with Joe Biden. Putin on Thursday named the UAE as one of the possible venues to meet with Trump.

Read more …

Still a BIG voice.

• China Ready to Promote Peace & Negotiations on Ukraine – Xi (Sp.)

Russia’s President Vladimir Putin and Chinese leader Xi Jinping have held a telephone conversation, the Chinese Central Television reported. The leaders held a telephone conversation at the initiative of the Russian side, the broadcaster reported. Beijing welcomes maintaining the contacts between Russia and the United States, Xi told Putin, according to the report. “China welcomes Russia-US contacts, improving relations and advancing political settlement of Ukrainian crisis,” Xi Jinping was quoted as saying by the China Central Television (CCTV) broadcaster. Commenting on the Ukrainian crisis, the president said that there is no simple solution to complex issues, adding that China will continue to promote peace and negotiations. The leaders also welcomed the high level of political mutual trust and cooperation between China and Russia, the broadcaster reported.

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“It was in the racketeering ecosystem that billionaires such as George Soros and Bill Gates could use their fortunes..”

• Going, Going Gone. . . . (Kunstler)

In case you’re wondering why the Democratic Party is in a death spiral, it is the proportionate response to the damage they have done to American culture and politics. You might think that they fell haplessly into error, but their turn to Marxian idealism was a cover for a matrix of hustles and rackets to make up for a void of any sane political program. Coming into the 21st century, our country was beset by looming decline. Our industrial base was going, going, gone, and with it millions of well-paying blue-collar jobs, the Democratic Party base. It was replaced by a so-called “financialized economy,” which was sanitized language for sets of swindles and frauds allowed to operate in the de-regulated banking system, in concert with the politicized Federal Reserve and crooked Congressional interests — you notice how many politicians paid $175-K a year somehow acquired multi-million-dollar fortunes?

What mainly grew in this period was government and things that fed off of it, such as the war industries, computer tech allied with the Intel gang, and especially the burgeoning universe of government-sponsored non-profit advocacy orgs, which became the jobs program for otherwise unemployables churned out of higher education, a racket that fed on federal loan guarantees. It was in the racketeering ecosystem that billionaires such as George Soros and Bill Gates could use their fortunes to advance their own personal obsessions through webs of non-governmental orgs (NGOs) to influence public affairs. By 2016, that was really all that the Democratic Party had left. It was the source of their money and their power. They also had the accumulated political capital of race advocacy, starting with the civil rights crusades of the 1960s. After our victory over manifest evil in World War Two, the Jim Crow system had to go, or else America could not pretend to lead the so-called “free world.”

Read more …

He lost to the Supreme Court.

“..failed judicial overreach at its worst.”

• Appeals Court Nukes Boasberg’s Contempt Order In Trump Deportations Case (ZH)

Activist judge James Boasberg has just been slapped down, after an appeals court removed an order which could have resulted in the Trump administration being found in contempt as part of a tense confrontation with the US District Judge. Earlier this year, Boasberg said he found probable cause to hold the administration in contempt because it purportedly violated his orders to halt deportations under the Alien Enemies Act. However in a 2–1 decision on Friday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit indicated that Boasberg went too far. Judge Gregory Katsas said that one of Boasberg’s orders could have been read in different ways.

“The district court here was placed in an enormously difficult position,” wrote Judge Gregory Katsas. “Faced with an emergency situation, it had to digest and rule upon novel and complex issues within a matter of hours. In that context, the court quite understandably issued a written order that contained some ambiguity.” Katsas noted that the appellate court ruling doesn’t center around the lawfulness of Trump’s Alien Enemies Act removals in March, when the administration invoked the 1798 immigration law to send over 250 Venezuelan nationals to CEDOT, El Salvador’s maximum-security prison. “Nor may we decide whether the government’s aggressive implementation of the presidential proclamation warrants praise or criticism as a policy matter,” he added. “Perhaps it should warrant more careful judicial scrutiny in the future. Perhaps it already has.”

“Regardless, the government’s initial implementation of the proclamation clearly and indisputably was not criminal.” As the Epoch Times notes further, Judge Neomi Rao described Boasberg’s decision as an “egregious” abuse of the court’s contempt power and said Boasberg had lost the authority to try and “coerce compliance” with his original order. That’s because his initial halts on the deportations had been vacated by the Supreme Court in another decision from April. One of the judges, Judge Cornelia Pillard, defended Boasberg and said the Trump administration appeared to have disobeyed his directions. “Our system of courts cannot long endure if disappointed litigants defy court orders with impunity rather than legally challenge them,” Pillard said. “This is why willful disobedience of a court order is punishable as criminal contempt.”

Read more …

Are there historical precedents?

“We’re gonna lose this vote”. “Well, not if we don’t vote at all..”

“In addition to the fine, they’ll also be hit with a bill for their pro rata share of what the House Sergeant at Arms spends to force them to come back to work.”

• New Daily Fine Could Sap Resolve Of Texas Dems Who Fled State (ZH)

Democratic state representatives who fled Texas to prevent a vote on a GOP-led congressional redistricting plan are under mounting pressure to return to Austin. On Thursday, Sen. John Cornyn announced that the FBI will help Texas law enforcement track them down, pursuant to Gov Gregg Abbott’s order that they be arrested and investigated for potential bribery charges. While that makes for dramatic headlines, the AWOL Democrats face another force that may do far more to motivate their return: a daily $500 fine that didn’t exist last time they pulled this stunt. That mounting tab has already blown past past the $600 monthly salary Texas House reps receive. They also receive a $221 per diem every day the legislature is in session, but it’s not clear if they’re entitled to claim it while they’re on the lam in Chicago.

In addition to the fine, they’ll also be hit with a bill for their pro rata share of what the House Sergeant at Arms spends to force them to come back to work. Those punitive measures are a new twist, added to the state House rules after Democrats in 2021 similarly absconded in an eventually failed attempt to derail GOP-led election reforms that included a ban on drive-through voting, more stringent requirements for mail-in voting, and the criminalization of distributing mail-ballot applications. The legislators’ run-and-hide tactic is called “denying quorum,” referring to the minimum number of lawmakers present in order to conduct legislative business. By state law, the Texas House can only conduct business when two-thirds of its 150 members are present, meaning at least 51 of the state’s 62 Democrats must continue to stay away from Texas.

In addition to facing mounting individual fines that didn’t exist last time they denied quorum, Democratic leaders say many representatives’ incomes from their regular jobs was already under strain from the calling of the current special session. Most representatives have other careers, as the Texas legislature only convenes for six months every two years. One of those whiners is Rep. Gene Wu, leader of the state House Democratic Caucus, who told NBC News.. “During the special session, I can’t work. Most people can’t work. They’re away from their families. … All of us are making actual, real sacrifices to be here…There’s people who are single moms, single dads, with their kids, and we just do what we can. None of this is fun.”

Democrats have been using their quorum-break as a fundraising vehicle. However, that’s putting themselves in different kind of crosshairs, as Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has said they risk felony bribery charges for accepting money “to assist in the violation of legislative duties.” On Monday afternoon, Abbott ordered the civil arrest of the AWOL Democrats. He is also working to have them removed from the legislature altogether, and use his powers under the Texas Constitution to pick their successors.

Texas Republicans currently control 25 of the state’s 38 congressional seats; the new map would likely give them 30, all of which Mr. Trump carried by at least 10 percentage points in 2024. The GOP holds a narrow 219-212 majority in the U.S. House, with four vacancies, and party leaders see Texas as central to preserving their legislative agenda. Meanwhile, Democrats across the country are threatening reprisals in the form of their own redrawing of district maps. They may be at a disadvantage, however, as Democrats have already perpetrated some of the most blatant gerrymandering of all:

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Nice twist:

“..the leaders of Germany and France – not EU officials – should directly negotiate with Russia..”

• Orban Calls For Russia-EU Summit (RT)

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has proposed holding a summit between Russia and the EU to address the Ukraine conflict. His remarks come shortly after the Kremlin said that Russian President Vladimir Putin could meet his US counterpart, Donald Trump, as early as next week. A member of both the European Union and NATO, Hungary has opposed Brussels’ policies on the Ukraine conflict since its escalation in February of 2022, particularly with respect to supplying Kiev with weapons and imposing sanctions on Russia. In an interview with Kossuth Radio on Friday, Orban called the potential Trump-Putin meeting “good news,” suggesting it could pave the way to a ceasefire.

Orban criticized fellow EU members for not engaging in diplomacy. He said that he had long maintained that the leaders of Germany and France – not EU officials – should directly negotiate with Russia. “There should be a Russian-European summit. Because the war is in Europe,” Orban argued, insisting that such a top-level meeting should take place “as soon as possible.” Kremlin aide Yury Ushakov told reporters on Thursday that Moscow and Washington had agreed in principle that Putin and Trump hold talks as soon as next week.

US special envoy Steve Witkoff had met with Putin in Moscow the previous day, in what Trump later described as “highly productive” talks. Also on Wednesday, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto stated that Ukraine can have no place in the EU and “doesn’t even belong among civilized nations,” citing a recent case in which a member of the Hungarian ethnic minority in Western Ukraine died after reportedly being beaten by draft officers. The Ukraine conflict will only be resolved when both the West and Kiev accept that Ukraine cannot be a NATO member, Orban said earlier this month.

Read more …

“..an utterly disturbing example of how humanitarian relief can be exploited for covert military and geopolitical agendas.”

• Trump Yelled At Netanyahu For Dismissing Gaza Starvation – Media (RT)

US President Donald Trump reportedly shouted at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during a phone call after the Israeli leader attempted to downplay reports of starvation in Gaza, NBC News reported on Friday. Netanyahu has publicly claimed that “there is no starvation” in the Palestinian enclave, which is being blockaded by Israeli military forces, despite multiple claims to the contrary from medical staff in Gaza. During a recent trip to the UK, Trump pushed back, telling journalists the starvation is real. According to the outlet, Netanyahu insisted during the call that allegations of widespread hunger in Gaza were fabricated by the militant group Hamas, but Trump interrupted him, raising his voice and stating that his aides had shown him evidence to the contrary.

The conversation was reportedly initiated at Netanyahu’s request, but the exchange ended up being “mostly one-way,” with Trump doing most of the talking, according to one source. Netanyahu’s office denied the claim, calling it “complete fake news” in a brief statement. NBC News suggested that Trump has taken a personal interest in the issue due to US support for the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), an Israeli-affiliated organization conducting limited relief work in the enclave since May. The foundation has been shunned by the UN, which operates its own aid network in Gaza and has accused Israel of obstructing food deliveries.

This week, a group of UN experts criticized the GHF, calling it “an utterly disturbing example of how humanitarian relief can be exploited for covert military and geopolitical agendas.” They accused the foundation of operating as a “tangle of Israeli intelligence, US contractors and ambiguous non-governmental entities,” rather than a legitimate relief agency. The UN estimates that nearly 1,400 people have been killed in Gaza while searching for food. Israel is currently preparing for a military operation to occupy Gaza City, marking yet another escalation in the conflict.

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Recognize insanity when you see it.

Trump will have to get rid of both Zelensky AND Netanyahu. That’s been clear for a while.

• US Consulting Firm Modelled Mass Resettlement of Palestinians to Africa (RT)

US global advisory firm Boston Consulting Group (BCG) modelled the resettlement of around a quarter of all Palestinians to other countries, including Somalia, as part of plans for postwar Gaza, the Financial Times has reported. In February, US President Donald Trump suggested moving more than 2 million Palestinians out of the war-torn enclave into neighboring countries to turn it into the “Riviera of the Middle East.” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has praised the idea, said on Thursday that the Jewish state will commit to a full military takeover of Gaza, to later hand it over to a transitional Arab government.

BCG’s postwar redevelopment model for Gaza envisioned relocating approximately 25% of its population to multiple nations, including Somalia and the breakaway region of Somaliland, “despite civil conflict and high levels of poverty in the region,” the FT wrote on Thursday, citing people familiar with the proposal. Washington has held preliminary talks with Somaliland about a broader deal that would establish a US military base there in exchange for the recognition of sovereignty, the FT wrote. Accepting relocated Palestinians was one of points discussed, according to the newspaper. BCG first developed its relocation model in March, working for a group of Israeli businessmen who were devising plans for postwar Gaza, the newspaper wrote.

It reportedly allowed for a number of scenarios and estimates for the cost of what was described as a “temporary relocation program.” The advisory firm’s calculations were included in slides intended for the US administration, other governments and “stakeholders,” the FT reported. The slide deck envisaged that the majority of the relocated Palestinians would not return. BCG earlier this year disavowed the controversial project and said it had fired the employees who worked on it. Key regional players have refused to participate in Trump’s relocation plan, which has been criticized by a number of Washington’s European allies, including France, Spain, and Germany. The UN has stated that the move would amount to ethnic cleansing.

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Doesn’t smell very practical.

• US Slaps Tariffs On Gold Bars (RT)

The US has imposed tariffs on imports of gold bars, according to media reports on Friday, citing a notice from Customs and Border Protection (CBP). Analysts say the decision could harm Switzerland’s gold refining sector and shake up the global bullion market. According to the Financial Times, which first broke the story, CBP stated in a July 31 ruling letter that 1kg and 100-ounce gold bars – the most commonly traded formats – should fall under a customs code subject to tariffs. The reported move brings gold bars under US President Donald Trump’s new tariffs, which target dozens of trade partners, including Switzerland. Trump imposed a 39% tariff on Swiss goods last Friday after rejecting Bern’s offer of a 10% tariff in exchange for $150 billion in US-bound investment.

When the tariff campaign began in April, some commodities – including certain bullion types – were exempt. The CBP ruling, issued in response to a Swiss refinery’s request, said 1kg and 100-ounce bars are considered “semi-manufactured” goods rather than “unwrought, nonmonetary gold,” the only exempt category. Switzerland is the world’s largest gold refining hub, and bullion is one of its biggest exports to the US. Traders told Bloomberg it’s unclear whether the tariffs are already in effect. Some said CBP may have erred, calling the decision “shocking” and likely to face legal challenges. “We never ever thought that [gold bars] would be hit by a tariff,” Robert Gottlieb, a former JPMorgan Chase metals trader, said.

Christoph Wild, the president of the Swiss Association of Manufacturers and Traders of Precious Metals, told FT the ruling “deals a blow” to Swiss-US gold trade, saying the widespread belief had been that “remelted bullion was tariff-free.” Experts say the fallout could disrupt the global bullion market. Gold is often used as a safe store of value during times of political and financial uncertainty. It has seen a historic rally this year, rising 27% since the end of 2024. Following the FT report, gold futures in New York hit an all-time high, with December contracts climbing to $3,534 on Friday morning.

Read more …

From a few days ago, before the gold bar decision. She must have really pissed him off…

• Swiss President Blamed For ‘Disastrous’ Deal With Trump – FT (RT)

Swiss President Karin Keller-Sutter is facing backlash after trade talks with Washington collapsed following a “disastrous” phone call with US President Donald Trump, the Financial Times has reported, citing sources familiar with the matter. Trump announced a 39% levy – one of the highest globally – on Swiss goods on Friday, coinciding with Switzerland’s national day. According to an FT report published on Sunday, Swiss negotiators believed they had secured a provisional deal for a 10% tariff, similar to the UK’s arrangement. In exchange, Bern pledged nearly $150 billion in US-bound investment and remained in regular contact with US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer. The offer was approved in early July, with Swiss officials convinced it only awaited Trump’s signature.

Keller-Sutter, who also serves as finance minister under the Swiss rotating presidency, had publicly stated last month that she had gained rare “access to Trump.” However, during a 30-minute call on Thursday – described by sources as “disastrous” – the US leader reportedly rejected the offer and instead focused on Switzerland’s $39 billion trade surplus. “The call did not go well, in the sense that from the very first minute Trump made it clear 10% was not enough, and all he could focus on was Switzerland stealing money from the US. There was nothing Keller-Sutter could say,” one source told the FT. Trump reportedly asked what more the “very wealthy” Alpine country could offer.

Swiss media called the outcome Keller-Sutter’s “biggest fiasco,” with tabloid Blick likening it to the country’s worst defeat since 1515, when Swiss troops lost to France at the Battle of Marignano. Greer later denied that a final deal had been secured, telling Bloomberg: “Nothing is agreed until everything is agreed.” The tariff hike followed Trump’s ‘Liberation Day’ speech on April 2 announcing a global trade overhaul. After multiple delays and a series of negotiations, a revised executive order signed last week adjusted rates based on “trade imbalances,” with the tariffs now set to enter into force on August 7.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

https://twitter.com/RobSchneider/status/1953330368385282517

RFK

RICO
https://twitter.com/Project_Veritas/status/1953574256769741057

Spain
https://twitter.com/TheBritLad/status/1953402175960289458

Limits

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle August 8 2025

Aug 082025
 
 August 8, 2025  Posted by at 9:53 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , , ,  42 Responses »


Hasui Kawase Mimhae Pavilion, Kyongju, Korea 1940

 

• US Has Made ‘Acceptable Offer’ – Kremlin Aide (RT)
• Putin-Trump Meeting Could Be Historic – Russian Envoy (RT)
• Trump to Meet Separately With Putin, Zelensky in Bid to End Ukraine War (Moran)
• Ghislaine Maxwell Implodes The Left’s Trump-Epstein Witch Hunt (Margolis)
• Ghislaine Could Give Trump A Chance To Break Israel’s Power Over America (PCR)
• Clintons Could Face Jail Time if They Defy Epstein Subpoena (Margolis)
• Commerce Dep’t to Make Census Reflect the Number of Legal Residents in US (DS)
• Trump Orders New Census to Fix 2020 Rigged Count Favoring Dems (Margolis)
• US Working To Kill EU Digital Services Act – Reuters (RT)
• Trump Tariffs Wipe Out $12 Billion From Global Carmakers – WSJ (RT)
• Germany To Slash Payments For Ukrainians (RT)
• Kash Patel Is Cleaning House at the FBI, and It’s Glorious (Margolis)
• ‘We Don’t Want To Keep Gaza’ – Netanyahu (RT)
• Swedish PM Admits He Uses ChatGPT To Help Run Government (ZH)
• ChatGPT a Danger To Teens – Watchdog (RT)

 

 

Milei
https://twitter.com/Inevitablewest/status/1953394786737557665

apple
https://twitter.com/nicksortor/status/1953207040614252904

Poland elects new president
https://twitter.com/AdamMoczar/status/1953163210757931447

93
https://twitter.com/CRRJA5/status/1953308689810559218

Judge Jeanine Pirro is the new US Attorney for DC

Census

 

 

O’Leary

 

 

Mearsheimer offers a sobering critique of U.S. and NATO policy toward Russia, asserting that the West bears significant responsibility for the war in Ukraine. Calling the conflict a “preventable tragedy,” Mearsheimer explains how Washington’s push to expand NATO eastward and bring Ukraine into its orbit left Russia with what he describes as “no choice but to react.” “This is not about Putin being irrational,” he argues. “It’s about the West ignoring repeated warnings from Moscow for over a decade.”

 

 

 

 

That’s a strong statement. Ushakov would not say it if there wasn’t a major shift in the US position. We’ll have to wait till next week.

• US Has Made ‘Acceptable Offer’ – Kremlin Aide (RT)

Russia has received an “acceptable” offer from the US on settling the Ukraine conflict, Kremlin aide Yury Ushakov has said, following a visit by US special envoy Steve Witkoff to Moscow. Speaking to reporters on Thursday, Ushakov commented on the talks between Witkoff and Russian President Vladimir Putin, noting that Moscow had received a “proposal from the Americans” which it is ready to consider, without providing further details. Ushakov also noted that Russia and the US have topics to discuss, while agreeing with the view of US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who earlier described the talks as “a good day.”

Rubio had added that “we still have a ways to go, but we’re certainly closer [to peace] today than we were yesterday – when we weren’t close at all.” The Kremlin aide earlier called the Putin-Witkoff meeting “business-like and constructive,” adding that “Russian-American ties could develop according to a completely different, mutually beneficial scenario,” as compared to the long-running tensions over Ukraine. He also revealed that Putin could meet Trump as soon as next week. The Russian president later suggested that the United Arab Emirates could potentially host the summit.

Read more …

Kirill Dmitriev.

• Putin-Trump Meeting Could Be Historic – Russian Envoy (RT)

The upcoming meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and US President Donald Trump has the potential to be a historic event, according to senior Russian negotiator Kirill Dmitriev. The Kremlin confirmed on Thursday that preparations for direct talks have advanced to the point that a venue has been selected. The meeting could be held as early as next week. Dmitriev, an economic adviser to Putin and key figure in the push to normalize bilateral ties with the US, shared the development on X. “This can be a historic meeting,” he wrote, adding a dove emoji. “Dialogue will prevail.” On Wednesday, US special envoy Steve Witkoff traveled to Russia to meet with Putin in what Trump later described as an unexpectedly positive round of discussions. Trump previously threatened to introduce additional sanctions due to a perceived lack of progress in his efforts to broker a resolution to the Ukraine conflict.

https://twitter.com/kadmitriev/status/1953371181974753345?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1953371181974753345%7Ctwgr%5E80a9b7fbfe15a144894743edc6ae1b5c6ef0ba09%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.rt.com%2Frussia%2F622607-putin-trump-historic-summit%2F

Since taking office in January, Trump, who describes himself as a “president of peace,” has relied on economic and military pressure to address several escalating international disputes. However, his campaign pledge to resolve the Ukraine conflict within 24 hours has proven unrealistic. He has since acknowledged that the situation is far more complex and challenging than he originally suggested. Moscow has expressed a desire to address the root causes of the conflict, opposing any scenario that would freeze the conflict in its current state. Putin has stated that his government prefers to achieve its objectives through peaceful means. Kiev has consistently rejected Moscow’s proposed settlement terms and continues to call for Western military support and further sanctions on Russia. Ukrainian officials argue that these measures could halt or even reverse Russian advances on the battlefield.

Read more …

You will also see people having opinions who know nothing about the topic:

“Some casualty estimates for the last month claim 45,000 Russian dead. Considering the manic offensive nature of Russian strategy, that claim sounds realistic.”

Jesus H.C.!

• Trump to Meet Separately With Putin, Zelensky in Bid to End Ukraine War (Moran)

For more than a year, the Ukraine War has ground on inconclusively. The cost in lives has been enormous. While official casualty figures are useless, several independent media outlets have carried out their own investigations by scanning death notices, reading local newspaper reports of dead soldiers, and reading church funeral notices in newsletters. Ukraine claims to have killed one million Russian soldiers. That’s absurd, but the total of killed, wounded, and missing may be close to that number. It appears that 2024 was the deadliest year of the war for Russia as they threw in wave after wave of infantry, gaining virtually nothing. According to sources, the Russians have moved approximately 188 square miles in the last month, the best month of the year. Some casualty estimates for the last month claim 45,000 Russian dead. Considering the manic offensive nature of Russian strategy, that claim sounds realistic.

Ukraine has lost between 400,000 and 700,000 soldiers, according to non-government sources. The point is that all of the dead are dying for literally nothing. The front lines haven’t shifted more than a few miles since the summer of 2023. The only people gaining anything from this conflict now are undertakers and casket makers. Russian President Vladimir Putin has obstinately refused entreaties from Donald Trump to end the war. Trump is holding out the prospect of lifting some sanctions if Putin makes a deal. For his part, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky is still clinging to his fantasy that he can fight long enough to win back all the territory seized by Russia since 2015, including Crimea. Someone should knock Mr. Zelesky upside the head and bring him back to Earth. Donald Trump may be about to do that.

According to the Associated Press, Trump will meet with Putin and Zelensky separately “soon,” perhaps as early as next week. “We propose, first of all, to focus on preparing a bilateral meeting with Trump, and we consider it most important that this meeting be successful and productive,” said Putin’s foreign affairs adviser, Yuri Ushakov. Ushakov dismissed the prospect of Zelensky joining the meeting, although Trump said he wasn’t ruling it out. New York Times: “Mr. Trump disclosed his plans on Wednesday in a call with European leaders, which included Mr. Zelensky, the people said. The meetings would include only the three men, and would not include European counterparts. Asked later Wednesday if Russia and Ukraine had agreed to the summit, Mr. Trump told reporters: “There’s a very good prospect that they will.”

Mr. Putin’s spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, did not respond to a request for comment, but Mr. Zelensky appeared to signal that a direct meeting was possible. Trump would welcome a breakthrough of any kind, but Putin isn’t likely to change his position unless Trump offers some sweeteners, such as lifting some sanctions, releasing frozen Russian assets, or removing barriers for Russia to international financial markets. The key actor in this play is Vladimir Putin. He’s the aggressor. It’s his army continuing to move forward at tremendous human cost. To get him off the starting line, Trump has made some noises about renewing U.S. aid to Ukraine.

Mr. Trump has been stymied for months in his efforts to find a peace agreement between Russia and Ukraine, after more than three years of war. Mr. Trump has been a skeptic of U.S. military aid to Ukraine, and he dressed down Mr. Zelensky in a remarkable Oval Office meeting earlier this year, with cameras rolling. Still, frustrated by the slow pace of talks with Russia, Mr. Trump recently authorized more arms sales to NATO allies that are intended for Ukraine. Mr. Trump has tried giving Mr. Putin room to come to the negotiating table over several months. But more recently, he has publicly excoriated Mr. Putin, suggesting the Russian leader was simply playing him for time after repeated conversations with Mr. Witkoff.

Mr. Witkoff’s latest visit to Moscow came as Mr. Trump has threatened secondary sanctions against Russia as the war drags on. On Wednesday, Mr. Trump signed an order that would double tariffs on imports from India, to 50 percent, as punishment for its continued purchases of Russian oil. Putin will not stop fighting until he achieves his goals or someone forces him to stop. That’s not going to be Ukraine, which has just one-third the number of men as Russia, with many veteran soldiers having fought along the line since 2023. I’d say any movement in these meetings is highly unlikely, except it’s Donald Trump. I’ve made the mistake of underestimating Trump in the past, so if he can pull a rabbit out of the hat during his meetings next week, I won’t be totally surprised.

Read more …

How do you make the interviews public when she talked about 100 different people?

• Ghislaine Maxwell Implodes The Left’s Trump-Epstein Witch Hunt (Margolis)

The circus surrounding the Jeffrey Epstein saga has always had one clear ringleader: the media establishment and their Democratic Party allies, hell-bent on transforming every shadowy corner into “proof” of Donald Trump’s guilt by association. Never mind the actual facts—just throw his name around and hope something sticks. But sometimes, inconvenient truths come to light. Now, the latest revelation from Ghislaine Maxwell’s Department of Justice interview is exactly the kind of development Democrats and their cable news cheerleaders dreaded. For years, the Left has been painting the Epstein scandal as the ticking bomb that will finally detonate the Trump presidency. Never mind that Bill Clinton’s relationship with Epstein is far better documented than Trump’s fleeting acquaintance; in the Democratic media echo chamber, Trump must be guilty—because he’s Trump.

Now, ABC News is reporting that during her marathon nine-hour interview with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, Ghislaine Maxwell handed the Left yet another bitter pill to swallow. During her nine hours speaking with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche last month, Ghislaine Maxwell said nothing during the interview that would be harmful to President Donald Trump, telling Blanche that Trump had never done anything in her presence that would have caused concern, according to sources familiar with what Maxwell said. Did you catch that? After years of “bombshells” that never landed, their latest Hail Mary just failed spectacularly, with Maxwell confirming what we already knew: that there are no Epstein skeletons in Trump’s closet. If that wasn’t damning enough for the narrative, the Trump administration looks poised to make the whole thing public, transcripts and all.

When you’re innocent, transparency is your weapon; when you’re hiding something, you fight like hell to keep the records sealed. The article underscores the administration’s intent: The Trump administration, meanwhile, is considering publicly releasing the transcripts from the interview, multiple sources familiar with the internal discussions told ABC News. There is also an audio recording of the interview, the sources said, but it’s not clear whether the administration plans to release the audio to accompany any public release of the transcript. The public release of the transcripts could come as soon as this week, the sources said. Think about that: If there were anything even remotely problematic in Maxwell’s account, does anyone believe Trump’s DOJ would be talking about dumping the raw transcript into the public record for all to judge? Please.

Maxwell, who is no friend of Trump, can’t cough up so much as a rumor. What does the anti-Trump media do now? Invent something? Well, yeah, that’s what they’ve done for years and will continue to do. And let’s remember, Maxwell wasn’t just primed by her lawyers—she was reportedly grilled about “one hundred different people.” When it came to Trump, she “didn’t hold anything back.” The article makes that unambiguously clear: ABC previously reported that it was Maxwell who requested the interview with the DOJ, according to sources familiar with the matter. Maxwell is also asking the Supreme Court to review her conviction and Trump has not ruled out a pardon for her.

Maxwell’s lawyer, David Markus, said following her meetings with Blanche that Maxwell ‘would welcome any relief.’ He also said Maxwell was asked about “one hundred different people,” and said “she didn’t hold anything back.” Here’s what the Democrats and their media lapdogs can’t accept: The Epstein case is the ultimate double-edged sword. They bet everything that “Epstein” would be the rumor that finally brought down Trump, even as the evidence never materialized. On the contrary, Bill Clinton boarded Epstein’s jet—the “Lolita Express”—dozens of times. So, what now? The anti-Trump mobs are scrambling, the tape is rolling, and it turns out that when Ghislaine Maxwell finally had her moment, the “Trump bombshell” fizzled out before it even began. For the Democrats desperate to weaponize the Epstein scandal, this moment isn’t just disappointing; it’s devastating.

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Paul Craig Roberts dreaming.

Yes, of course, Ghislaine could expose all the Mossad connections. And then her life wouldn’t be worth anything.

• Ghislaine Could Give Trump A Chance To Break Israel’s Power Over America (PCR)

According to media reports, Ghislaine Maxwell cleared Trump of having participated in sexual activities with underaged females. The liberal-left will no doubt claim that Ghislaine lied in hopes of a pardon from Trump. This is typical nonsense from the American liberal-left. Ghislaine Maxwell is the daughter of one Mossad asset and the lover of another. Illusions are not her cup of tea. She knows that if Trump pardons her the pardon will be taken as proof that Trump was a participant in illicit sex and that Trump knows it. There is one thing she could do in exchange for a pardon. She could acknowledge that the Epstein operation was an Israeli blackmail operation to ensure that US Middle East policy conformed with Israel’s. The policy declared by US policymakers–seven countries in five years–was the policy of Greater Israel.

This revelation would free Trump from Israel’s control, and he could free American foreign policy from Israel. It would also free the insouciant American public from its delusions about America’s great friend Israel who God commands us to protect. It would be made clear that Israel for several decades has used American lives and American money for Israel’s benefit. Of course, if Ghislaine acknowledged this truth, the Zionist American media and the Christian Zionists would shout her down. But her main and immediate danger would be Mossad assassination. Could her life be protected from Israel’s assassins who have proven their ability to assassinate Iran’s top scientists, military and political leaders, and those of every country that presents difficulties to Israel?

Ron Unz recently published an article noting that Israel and the Zionist movement that created Israel “have probably employed assassination as a tool of statecraft more heavily than any other political entity in recorded history. Indeed, their deadly activities had easily eclipsed those of the notorious Muslim sect that had terrorized the Middle East a thousand years ago and gave rise to that term.”

Certainly Ghislaine could not resume her social life in England or New York. She wouldn’t even be safe in a maximum security prison. If she blows the whistle on Israel’s spy/blackmail operation against Americans positioned to influence US Middle East policy, her freedom means her death. If the US Secret Service was able to create a new identity for her in some out of the way place and keep her safe without people wondering why she has so many bodyguards, it would not be the kind of social life she knows. Perhaps Washington could seize several prominent Israelis and hold them as hostages against Ghislaine’s life. But this would give Muslims an incentive to kill Ghislaine in order to have the US kill the Israeli hostages.Ghislaine has the information, but how to get it from her? Trump’s bluster and threats won’t do it. A guarantee of her life has to be strong enough for her to take the risk. Does anyone have any ideas how it might be done?

Read more …

“Jail time for Bill and Hillary Clinton is no longer just a possibility; it’s a looming certainty if they continue to thumb their noses at the law..”

• Clintons Could Face Jail Time if They Defy Epstein Subpoena (Margolis)

Bill and Hillary Clinton are staring down the barrel of jail time, and the threat is real. After years of smoke and mirrors, the former president and secretary of state have finally come under the harsh spotlight of congressional scrutiny, thanks to their troubling association with notorious financier Jeffrey Epstein. Congress has now subpoenaed both Clintons, demanding they answer tough questions about their connections to Epstein. On Wednesday, House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) warned the Clintons about not complying with the subpoena demanding their testimony.

“If someone doesn’t comply with a subpoena — we’ve seen it happen in the past, in both my committee, as well as on the Jan. 6 committee, when the Democrats had the majority — you can hold them in contempt of Congress. And with a Republican attorney general, that’s something that I think that the Clinton legal team is going to think long and hard about,” Comer said during an appearance on NewsNation’s “The Hill.” “You’re not going to have a lot of sympathy, probably — from the Trump DOJ — if the Clintons failed to comply with a bipartisan, congressionally approved subpoena, which is what that was.” I would say not. In recent weeks, new evidence has come to light exposing the Clinton campaign’s direct involvement in the Russiagate scandal, working hand in hand with the Obama administration to create the hoax. The Hill has more”

“Comer said bipartisan support is going to make it hard for the former president to dodge the congressional investigation. “Obviously, when you subpoena a former president, your odds aren’t the best at getting them in, if you look at history. But what makes this different is this subpoena was approved in a bipartisan manner by a subcommittee vote,” he told anchor Blake Burman. “So you had Democrats and Republicans on the record voting to subpoena that whole list you showed, and there were Republicans and Democrats on that list. In addition to those subpoenas, I also subpoenaed [Attorney General] Pam Bondi for Epstein files,” he continued. In recent weeks, the Trump administration has been facing intense backlash over how it has handled information related to Epstein, the convicted sex offender who died in 2019. The backlash has come from both MAGA faithful and left-wing progressives.”

As the legal noose tightens around the Clintons, patriots and defenders of justice must support these efforts. America cannot continue down the path of political elites acting with impunity while citizens suffer. The Clintons were once symbols of power and prestige, but if they refuse to answer for their roles in the Epstein scandal, they should be prepared to face the consequences that could include jail time. In the end, justice must prevail, regardless of who’s involved. The Clintons’ bluster and attempts to dodge their subpoenas won’t save them if Congress follows through. Jail time for Bill and Hillary Clinton is no longer just a possibility; it’s a looming certainty if they continue to thumb their noses at the law. And America deserves nothing less than full accountability.

Read more …

“Just as we do not give political power to people who are here temporarily, we should not give political power to people who should not be here at all.”

• Commerce Dep’t to Make Census Reflect the Number of Legal Residents in US (DS)

After President Donald Trump called for a new census excluding illegal immigrants, the Department of Commerce told the Daily Signal it will “immediately” change course to “reflect the number of legal residents in the United States.” Trump ordered the Department of Commerce to start work on a new census in which illegal immigrants will not be counted. “I have instructed our Department of Commerce to immediately begin work on a new and highly accurate CENSUS based on modern day facts and figures and, importantly, using the results and information gained from the Presidential Election of 2024,” Trump said in a Truth Social post Thursday. A Commerce spokesperson told The Daily Signal it will follow the president’s mandate.

“The Census Bureau will immediately adopt modern technology tools for use in the census to better understand our robust census data,” the spokesperson told The Daily Signal. “We will accurately analyze the data to reflect the number of legal residents in the United States.” In July, Trump backed a bill from Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., that would exclude illegal immigrants from the census. This is not the president’s first effort to exclude illegal immigrants from the census count. In 2020, Trump issued a presidential memorandum instructing the Commerce Department, which oversees the Census Bureau, not to include illegal aliens in the census.

“My Administration will not support giving congressional representation to aliens who enter or remain in the country unlawfully, because doing so would create perverse incentives and undermine our system of government,” Trump said in the memorandum. “Just as we do not give political power to people who are here temporarily, we should not give political power to people who should not be here at all.” A federal court blocked the effort in 2020, however. Trump also wanted a citizenship question added to the census form. The Supreme Court blocked that move.

https://twitter.com/RepMTG/status/1953428792250097670

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“..these errors will affect $1.5 trillion in funding received by states in federal appropriations during the next decade..”

• Trump Orders New Census to Fix 2020 Rigged Count Favoring Dems (Margolis)

President Trump is putting America first again. This time, he’s going after the rigged system that counts illegal aliens in the U.S. Census, skewing congressional representation and rewarding sanctuary states with more power. On Thursday, Trump announced he’s directing the Department of Commerce to conduct a new, corrected census — one that actually counts American citizens and excludes those here illegally. “I have instructed our Department of Commerce to immediately begin work on a new and highly accurate CENSUS based on modern day facts and figures and, importantly, using the results and information gained from the Presidential Election of 2024,” Trump announced in a post on Truth Social. “People who are in our Country illegally WILL NOT BE COUNTED IN THE CENSUS. Thank you for your attention to this matter!” Naturally, the mainstream media isn’t thrilled.

CNN described Trump’s proposal as “a dramatic shift from longstanding census practices” while insisting that the census “has historically counted all residents regardless of immigration status.” But, this is hardly just about illegal immigration. In fact, this move is long overdue. The 2020 Census, overseen by the Biden administration and its Deep State allies, was an unmitigated disaster — and the fallout is still being felt. Even the Census Bureau itself — hardly a bastion of conservative thought — admitted that its 2020 Census was incorrect in at least 14 states. According to the Bureau’s own Post-Enumeration Survey (PES), eight states were overcounted while six were undercounted. But here’s where it gets truly absurd: The Census Bureau claims it can’t identify which groups were miscounted or where the errors occurred, citing “sample sizes within most states do not support such estimates.”

Translation? They know it was wrong, but they can’t — or won’t — say how or where. This isn’t just bureaucratic bungling; it’s a dereliction of duty. And it’s exactly why President Trump is right to call for a new, citizen-focused census. If the federal government can’t even tell us who they miscounted or where, how can anyone trust the results? These weren’t random clerical errors, either. They were systemic failures that just so happened to benefit Democrats. Florida was robbed of not one, but two congressional seats. Texas lost out on another. Meanwhile, blue states like Minnesota and Rhode Island held onto seats they should have lost — and Colorado was gifted a seat it was never entitled to. The fix was in. The Heritage Foundation:

“To put the scope of these mistakes into perspective, contrast the errors in the Census Bureau’s latest recount (the 2020 Post-Enumeration Survey, or PES) with the recount from a decade ago (the 2010 Post-Enumeration Survey)—in which there was a net overcount of a mere 0.01 percent (36,000 people), a statistically insignificant error.”“The harms flowing from these mistakes impact more than just congressional representation, which also affects the number of electors from those states since they are calculated by the number of Senators and Representatives in each state,” explains the Heritage Foundation. “Because the Treasury and other federal departments will continue to use the original, official Census numbers (and not the new numbers contained in the PES), these errors will affect $1.5 trillion in funding received by states in federal appropriations during the next decade in disbursements that are distributed based on the population of each state.

https://twitter.com/EricLDaugh/status/1953433419678986640

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Good. It must go.

“In July, the US State Department posted on X that the “Orwellian” DSA is used to convict thousands for criticizing governments and shields EU leaders from accountability.”

“Russian Telegram users enjoy more freedom than Europeans.”

• US Working To Kill EU Digital Services Act – Reuters (RT)

Secretary of State Marco Rubio has reportedly ordered US diplomats to launch a lobbying campaign against the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA), according to an internal cable obtained by Reuters. The directive accuses the EU law of stifling free speech and imposing unfair costs on US tech companies. The DSA, which came into force in August 2023, is designed to make online platforms safer by requiring them to remove illegal content such as hate speech, misinformation, and child sexual abuse material. It applies to 19 large platforms, including Meta’s Facebook and Instagram, Alphabet’s Google, Amazon, and Apple’s App Store. Non-compliance can result in fines of up to 6% of global revenue.

Washington has argued that the DSA targets US companies and restricts freedom of expression. Rubio’s cable calls the legislation a threat to “America’s free-speech tradition” and a financial burden on US platforms. Diplomats have reportedly been instructed to meet with EU officials to push for the law to be repealed or amended. They have also been told to challenge definitions of ‘illegal content’ and weaken enforcement tools like ‘trusted flaggers’ and the Code of Conduct on Disinformation, which has been described by critics as a “global censorship law.” In July, the US State Department posted on X that the “Orwellian” DSA is used to convict thousands for criticizing governments and shields EU leaders from accountability.

In February, US Vice President J.D. Vance said the law prevents adults from accessing alternative opinions labeled as misinformation, warning that US companies could block EU users to avoid compliance. Last year, Russia also accused the EU of censorship after Brussels banned several Russian outlets. The Foreign Ministry called it “political censorship” by the neoliberal West aimed at suppressing dissent. Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin said Brussels lacks arguments to convince its citizens and instead blocks alternative views. Telegram founder Pavel Durov said in 2024 that “Russian Telegram users enjoy more freedom than Europeans.” Durov is currently on trial in France over allegations of spreading illegal content through his platform.

Read more …

First thing this makes me think of is Trump noting it’s impossible for US carmakers to sell their products in Europe and japan. While US roads are drowning in Toyota’s and Beamers.

• Trump Tariffs Wipe Out $12 Billion From Global Carmakers – WSJ (RT)

Fourteen global automakers have suffered nearly $12 billion in losses since the roll-out of US President Donald Trump’s trade tariffs, and are expected to lose significantly more by the end of the year, the Wall Street Journal reports. Trump announced the new tariffs in April, targeting 185 countries and territories. A universal 10% tariff on all imported vehicles and parts took effect on April 5, followed by country-specific rates on April 9. According to the WSJ’s analysis published on Thursday, Toyota has sustained the largest loss – around $3 billion in the second quarter alone – and expects a total tariff impact of $9.5 billion by the end of the fiscal year ending March 2026. Volkswagen has reportedly lost $1.5 billion, while Ford and General Motors have each reported losses of over $1 billion in Q2.

Tesla has been the least affected among major automakers, with an estimated $300 million loss. The WSJ also says the ten largest global automakers, excluding Chinese manufacturers, could see net profits fall by 25% by the end of the year. The EU and Japan have been negotiating tariff reductions with Washington. According to reports, the US currently imposes 27.5% on EU-made vehicles, and Brussels is pushing to lower it to 15% in exchange for cutting its own 10% tariff on American cars. Japan reached a similar deal in July, reducing US tariffs on its vehicles to 15% as part of a broader bilateral agreement.

The reported losses come amid declining sales of Western automakers in both Europe and China, under pressure from fast-growing Chinese electric vehicle brands. In the first half of 2025, Chinese manufacturers doubled their share of the European market to 5.1%. At the same time in China, Porsche’s sales fell 28%, prompting dealership closures. GM and others have also reported losses due to shrinking demand. On Thursday, the Trump administration expanded the tariff regime further, imposing new and additional tariffs on nearly 70 more countries, including the UK, Switzerland, Brazil, India, and Taiwan.

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You invited them in!

• Germany To Slash Payments For Ukrainians (RT)

Germany’s Labor Ministry has proposed cutting benefits for Ukrainian migrants, citing growing financial strain from the continued influx of newcomers. Labor Minister Barbel Bas submitted a draft bill to remove Ukrainians from the so-called “citizen’s allowance” program – a benefit normally reserved for non-working Germans – and place them under the standard asylum seeker system, German media reported on Wednesday. Under standard asylum support a person receives €441 ($514), compared to €563 under the citizen’s allowance. The new rules would apply only to Ukrainians arriving after April 1, 2025. Those who came earlier would keep their current benefits.

According to the Federal Employment Agency, around 700,000 Ukrainians are currently receiving the allowance. Since April 1, about 21,000 more have arrived who could be affected by the new rules. The proposal has been sent for approval by other federal departments, and must then pass through the Cabinet and the Bundestag, expected to be adopted by year’s end. Germany spent around €6.3 billion or some 13% of the citizens’ allowance budget on Ukrainian migrants in 2024. Officials estimate the reform could save the federal government about €1.3 billion in 2026. Critics say the plan won’t significantly reduce public spending. Head of Bavaria Markus Soder and a number of other officials have called for ending the citizen’s allowance for all Ukrainians, regardless of when they arrived.

Of the 1.2 million Ukrainians that Germany has accepted over the past three years, as of May, only 332,000 were employed. Authorities across Germany have increasingly warned that the cost of supporting refugees is putting unsustainable pressure on public finances. The wider EU is facing similar challenges. As of May 2025, 4.3 million Ukrainians had been granted temporary protection across the bloc, which includes access to housing, education, and work. While the scheme has been extended through March 2027, several EU countries have been reviewing their support programs, citing rising costs and limited resources.

Read more …

An impossible job?

• Kash Patel Is Cleaning House at the FBI, and It’s Glorious (Margolis)

FBI Director Kash Patel is making the bold moves that the bureau desperately needed, cleaning house and rooting out the lingering partisan bad actors who have long compromised the agency’s integrity. In a decisive shake-up, the FBI is ousting key officials, including former acting director Brian Driscoll, special agent Walter Giardina, who played a role in targeting Donald Trump advisor Peter Navarro, and Washington Field Office acting director Steven Jensen, a pivotal figure in the January 6 investigations. These removals come swiftly and with no detailed explanations, but insiders describe them plainly as retribution: a necessary reckoning. The swamp that entrenched itself deeply within the FBI over years of political bias is finally draining under Patel’s leadership.

For too long, the bureau has been weaponized against political opponents, wielding its immense power to settle scores rather than uphold justice impartially. Removing those who participated in such abuses, especially those involved in the infamous January 6 prosecutions, sends an unequivocal message that partisan insubordination will no longer be tolerated. Patel’s purge is not just about individual personnel changes; it signals a broader commitment to restoring credibility and lawful conduct within the bureau. It’s a refreshing departure from the past mismanagement where FBI leaders operated with unchecked arrogance and partisan motives. Now, those who acted as enemies of true justice are facing accountability, having been removed from positions of authority and stripped of the power they misused.

The removals come just months after thousands of FBI employees were ordered in February to complete an extensive questionnaire probing their involvement, past or present, in the investigation of the January 6 Capitol riot. The survey asked detailed questions, including whether agents had testified in related criminal trials or when they last participated in any aspect of the investigation. According to a report from Fox News Digital, one source familiar with the situation described the removals as “retribution.” This change is overdue. The FBI’s reputation has suffered severely, damaged by years of politicized investigations and internal betrayals. Patel’s leadership underscores a new era where loyalty to the Constitution and the rule of law triumphs over cynical political gamesmanship. His actions break the pattern of silence and inaction that allowed dysfunction to flourish.

By swiftly forcing out these figures, Patel ensures that the bureau cannot continue to be a tool for vendettas or partisan manipulation. This decisive step also reassures the American people that the FBI will no longer be a partisan political weapon but a guardian of justice for all citizens. Kash Patel deserves praise for his courage in taking on this difficult but necessary task. Cleaning out entrenched partisans who betrayed their oath is no small feat, but Patel’s resolve is exactly what the FBI needs to regain public trust and refocus on its core mission. His leadership represents hope that one of the government’s most powerful agencies can be steered back to integrity and fairness.

The purge of these disgraced officials is just the beginning. More removals are expected, reflecting a broader effort to dismantle the politicized infrastructure that allowed such abuses to persist. This new direction sets the course for an FBI that works for the people, not for political agendas. Patel’s actions should be lauded as a critical turning point in reclaiming justice and accountability within the nation’s top law enforcement agency.

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We just want to murder or eject -whichever comes first- the two million who live there.

• ‘We Don’t Want To Keep Gaza’ – Netanyahu (RT)

Israel does not intend to establish its own governing body in Gaza after its military campaign against Hamas concludes and would rather see Arab neighbors assume responsibility for the Palestinian enclave, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has stated. In an interview with Fox News on Thursday, Netanyahu was asked whether Israel would take complete control of Gaza. He responded: “We intend to, in order to ensure our security, remove Hamas there, enable the population to be free of Gaza [Hamas] and to pass it to civilian governance that is not Hamas and not anyone advocating the destruction of Israel.” Netanyahu insisted that Israel doesn’t “want to keep it [Gaza],” but rather “have a security perimeter.” He added that “we don’t want to be there as a governing body, we want to hand it over to Arab forces that will govern it properly.”

Israel controlled Gaza from 1967 until its unilateral withdrawal in 2005. Earlier this month, several Israeli media outlets reported that Netanyahu had told ministers he would seek cabinet backing for a plan to fully occupy Gaza, despite objections from the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). The Jewish state and the militant group agreed to a fragile three-stage ceasefire in January, only for Israel to resume military action in March amid mutual recriminations with Hamas. Since then, the two belligerents have sporadically engaged in talks, which have failed to yield any breakthrough.

In February, US President Donald Trump proposed a plan envisioning the relocation of the Gaza population to neighboring states of “great wealth.” A group of Arab nations rejected the proposal shortly thereafter, as did Russia. The conflict between Hamas and Israel broke out in October 2023 after a surprise attack by Hamas in southern Israel left about 1,200 people dead and 250 taken hostage. According to Gaza’s Hamas-controlled Health Ministry, the Israeli military campaign has killed more than 60,000 Palestinians, mostly civilians.

Read more …

“We didn’t vote for ChatGPT.”

What’s dumber, doing it or admitting that you do?

• Swedish PM Admits He Uses ChatGPT To Help Run Government (ZH)

First we learn that doctors are using ChatGPT to treat patients. Now, Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson is taking a heaping ration of Lutfisk for admitting he’s been using ChatGPT to help run the government. Speaking with a Nordic news site, Kristersson said that he sometimes asks ChatGPT for a “second opinion” when it comes to governance strategies. “I use it myself quite often,” he said, “If for nothing else than for a second opinion. What have others done? And should we think the complete opposite? Those types of questions.” Kristersson’s comments predictably came under fire.

“The more he relies on AI for simple things, the bigger the risk of overconfidence in the system,” Virginia Dignum, a professor of responsible artificial intelligence at Umeå University, told DiGITAL. “It is a slippery slope. We must demand that reliability can be guaranteed. We didn’t vote for ChatGPT.” “Too bad for Sweden that AI mostly guesses,” wrote Aftonbladet’s Signe Krantz. “Chatbots would rather write what they think you want than what you need to hear.” “You have to be very careful,” Simone Fischer-Hübner, a computer science researcher at Karlstad University, told Aftonbladet, noting that people shouldn’t submit sensitive information to GPT.

As Gizmodo opines; Krantz makes a good point, which is that chatbots can be incredibly sycophantic and delusional. If you have a leader asking a chatbot leading questions, you can imagine a scenario in which the software program’s algorithms only serve to reinforce that leader’s existing prerogatives (or to push them further over the edge into uncharted territory). Thankfully, it doesn’t seem like a whole lot of politicians feel the need to use ChatGPT as a consigliere yet. Kristersson spokesman Tom Samuelsson ‘clarified’ that the PM doesn’t take risks in his use of AI. “Naturally it is not security sensitive information that ends up there. It is used more as a ballpark,” he said.

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“..an ‘Ultimate Mayhem Party Plan’ that combined alcohol, ecstasy, and cocaine, detailed instructions on self-harm, week-long fasting regimens limited to 300-500 calories per day, and suicide letters written in the voice of a 13-year-old girl.”

• ChatGPT a Danger To Teens – Watchdog (RT)

ChatGPT can give vulnerable teenagers detailed guidance on drug use, self-harm, and extreme dieting, a digital watchdog has warned in a new report. According to the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), the AI chatbot can be easily manipulated into generating dangerous content and requires urgent safeguards. To test ChatGPT’s behavior, CCDH researchers created fictional profiles of 13-year-olds experiencing mental health struggles, disordered eating, and interest in illicit substances. They posed as these teens in structured conversations with ChatGPT, using prompts designed to appear emotionally vulnerable and realistic. The results were published on Wednesday in a report titled ‘Fake Friend’, referencing the way many adolescents treat ChatGPT as a supportive presence they trust with their private thoughts.

The researchers found that the chatbot often began responses with boilerplate disclaimers and urged users to contact professionals or crisis hotlines. However, these warnings were soon followed by detailed and personalized responses that fulfilled the original harmful prompt. In 53% of the 1,200 prompts submitted, the ChatGPT provided what CCDH classified as dangerous content. Refusals were frequently bypassed simply by adding context such as “it’s for a school project” or “I’m asking for a friend.” Examples cited include an ‘Ultimate Mayhem Party Plan’ that combined alcohol, ecstasy, and cocaine, detailed instructions on self-harm, week-long fasting regimens limited to 300-500 calories per day, and suicide letters written in the voice of a 13-year-old girl. CCDH CEO Imran Ahmed said some of the content was so distressing it left researchers “crying.”

The organization has urged OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, to adopt a ‘Safety by Design’ approach, embedding protections such as stricter age verification, clearer usage restrictions, and other safety features within the architecture of its AI tools rather than relying on content filtering after deployment. OpenAI has acknowledged that emotional overreliance on ChatGPT is common among young users. CEO Sam Altman said the company is actively studying the problem, calling it a “really common” issue among teens, and said new tools are in development to detect distress and improve ChatGPT’s handling of sensitive topics.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

Booing

Gut-brain
https://twitter.com/VigilantFox/status/1953463467886727679

boss

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle August 5 2025

Aug 052025
 
 August 5, 2025  Posted by at 9:56 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  40 Responses »


Elliott Erwitt National Congress Building by Oscar Niemeyer, Brasilia, Brazil 1961

 

• Russiagate Lies Are Being Exposed — Even Dems Are Watching (Miranda Devine)
• Trump Is Getting Bad Intel On The Russia-Ukraine War (PA)
• Gold Signals War – Martin Armstrong (USAW)
• America Faces A Supply Chain Crisis For Basic Drugs (JTN)
• Trump’s Tariffs and those Goddamned Freeloading Europeans (Eugyppius)
• Stephen Miller Is Outraged at Latest Russia Hoax Evidence (CTH)
• India ‘Financing’ Ukraine Conflict – Stephen Miller (RT)
• Russian Oil Red Lines: The EU and US Are About To Push India Too Far (Vaid)
• Cutting Russia Ties Has Cost EU €1 Trillion – Moscow (RT)
• EU To Wait Years To Replace Patriots Sent To Ukraine – NATO (RT)
• US Funding of Kiev Is ‘Betrayal To Majority of Americans’ – MTG (RT)
• Suspicious Minds (James Howard Kunstler)
• Texas Governor Orders Arrest Of Fleeing Democratic Lawmakers (ZH)
• US Trade Rep Jamieson Greer Outlines Tariff Status (CTH)
• Kevin Hassett On Why President Trump Fired BLS Commissioner (CTH)
• Tesla Board Approves 96 Million Share Stock Award To “Retain” Elon Musk (ZH)
• Netanyahu Decides On Full Occupation of Gaza (RT)

 

 

Empire

David Stockman: You are becoming a whirling dervish of unhinged nonsense.

0
https://twitter.com/mtgreenee/status/1952339589881860535
CNN
https://twitter.com/MAGAVoice/status/1952065006050369902

BIG
https://twitter.com/Deeplythough885/status/1952313875791265828

Slick lies

 

 

“We have had a nearly incalculable gift in the form of 80 years of peace, which may yet be offset by the equally incalculable costs of the lunacies this peace has encouraged..”
– Eugyppius

 

 

 

 

“..do not report this as a legitimate investigation,” [Clinton lawyer Marc] Elias told MSNBC. “Do not report this as ‘They are opening an investigation into John Brennan’ … Report this as the misuse, the abuse, the authoritarian takeover of the Department of Justice. That should be the headline.”

• Russiagate Lies Are Being Exposed — Even Dems Are Watching (Miranda Devine)

Despite the best efforts of Russiagate-complicit media to dismiss as “Russian disinformation” the latest revelations in this escalating scandal implicating President Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton in the treasonous “years-long coup” against President Trump, the public is paying attention and wants heads to roll. According to a Rasmussen poll released Monday, nearly two-thirds of voters (65%) are following declassified releases over the past month by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) “very closely” (32%) or “somewhat closely” (33%), repudiating the calculated media silence about the Obama administration’s fake narratives and manipulation of intelligence to frame Trump as a Kremlin stooge to cover up Clinton’s wrongdoing.

The poll of 1,172 likely voters, conducted July 29-31, shows 54% believe Obama administration officials committed serious crimes in “manipulating intelligence,” with 37% saying it’s “very likely” and 17% saying it’s “somewhat likely.” A staggering 69% agree it is critical that the perpetrators be held accountable “for the survival of our country.” Even more disturbing for Democrats is that it’s not just Republicans who are concerned. The poll shows 56% of Democrats are following the investigation, 32% believe serious crimes were committed and 59% agree the perpetrators must be “held accountable.” The respective Republican comparison is 75%, 83% and 86%. Hispanics are more cynical about the scandal than either black or white voters, with 66% saying serious crimes were committed and 74% wanting accountability, compared to 51% and 65%, respectively, for blacks and 53% and 69%, respectively, for whites.

Men are more concerned than women, with 74% vs. 59% following the revelations closely, 60% vs. 49% believing there is serious criminality, and 72% vs. 66% favoring accountability. It’s a demonstration of the impotence of Democrat-allied media, like the New York Times, Washington Post, ABC, NBC and CBS, which showered themselves with praise and Pulitzer Prizes for their since-debunked stories about Russiagate and are hoping their audience is willing to be duped again. But like the boy who cried wolf, no one is listening anymore. According to Gabbard’s office, ABC, CBS and NBC spent a total of 2,284 minutes covering Russiagate, yet they have devoted only 2 minutes and 17 seconds on the disclosures of the last couple of weeks. Even when they mention the story, it’s to try to debunk it.

Obama administration CIA Director John Brennan and DNI James Clapper and Clinton lawyer Marc Elias have fanned out across their favorite media outlets, desperately trying to extinguish public interest. “I am imploring, like honestly, I’m just imploring the media, do not report this as a legitimate investigation,” Elias told MSNBC. “Do not report this as ‘They are opening an investigation into John Brennan’ … Report this as the misuse, the abuse, the authoritarian takeover of the Department of Justice. That should be the headline.” Hah! Too bad for Elias, it’s no longer 2016. The public — and Trump — are wiser and more determined to put heads on pikes.

The renewed scrutiny of the “Obama administration’s conspiracy to subvert Trump’s 2016 victory and presidency,” as Gabbard puts it, began early last month, when CIA Director John Ratcliffe released a bombshell review of the Intelligence Community Assessment, ordered by Obama on Dec. 9, 2016, that falsely claimed Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election to help Trump. The review found Brennan, Clapper and then-FBI Director James Comey were “excessively involved” in the ICA drafting, rushed its completion before Trump took office and forced the inclusion of the discredited Steele dossier, over the objections of the CIA’s Russia experts, suggesting a “potential political motive.” That ICA was the genesis of Russiagate, casting doubt over the legitimacy of Trump’s 2016 election and sabotaging his first term, with Obama the “ringleader,” says Trump, and Democrat-allied media were crucial to its success.

Read more …

“If Russia were really losing 14x as many men as Ukraine (as Trump’s figures suggest), one would figure military-age Russian men would be hiding from conscription squads..”

• Trump Is Getting Bad Intel On The Russia-Ukraine War (PA)

On Friday, President Trump posted on Truth Social that he had “just been informed” that 112,500 Russian troops had been killed since the beginning of this year, versus 8,000 Ukrainian troops killed over the same time frame. These numbers strain credulity for at least two reasons:

1) During recent casualty exchanges, the numbers have been lopsided in the other direction, with Ukraine handing over the remains of fewer than 50 Russian troops while receiving the remains of hundreds or over a thousand of their soldiers in return.

https://twitter.com/DD_Geopolitics/status/1932783924062634004?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1932783924062634004%7Ctwgr%5E0ac2b7cdc471e4ebaf48c9fd358b3af7d5ea2703%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com%2Fnews%2F2025-08-02%2Ftrump-getting-bad-intel-russia-ukraine-war

2) Russia’s combat troops tend to be well-paid volunteers, while Ukraine has had to resort to grabbing men off the street to fill its military’s ranks. If Russia were really losing 14x as many men as Ukraine (as Trump’s figures suggest), one would figure military-age Russian men would be hiding from conscription squads, rather than casually walking around Moscow, enjoying a summer evening.

Bad Intel Helps Explain Trump’s Frustration With Russia. As Sergei Witte pithily explains below: Trump figures that given such lopsided casualty figures, Russia ought to be eager to make a deal.

https://twitter.com/witte_sergei/status/1951397622700441947?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1951397622700441947%7Ctwgr%5E0ac2b7cdc471e4ebaf48c9fd358b3af7d5ea2703%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com%2Fnews%2F2025-08-02%2Ftrump-getting-bad-intel-russia-ukraine-war

Lack Of Understanding Russia’s Position Explains It Too. Trump doesn’t seem to understand that Russia views the Ukraine conflict as existential, and as such, won’t deviate from its main terms: that Ukraine must be neutral, and not host NATO troops or weapons, and that it must be largely demilitarized, and that Ukraine recognize Russia’s sovereignty over Crimea and the four oblasts it annexed. So, as Professor Mearsheimer summarizes in the video clip embedded below, there’s really no deal to be made with Russia: either we agree to their terms, or the conflict gets settled on the battlefield.

Given that Russia appears to be slowly winning the war, and Ukraine can only expect to get worse terms the longer the war goes on, the logical thing to do would be to agree to Russia’s current terms now–and if the Ukrainian government prefers not to, let them fight the war on their own dime. So We Get More Pointless Brinksmanship. One wonders why Trump listens to Lindsay Graham at all, a Senator who has long opposed the interests of Trump’s base on immigration as well as his warmongering.

https://twitter.com/e_l_g_c_a/status/1951375776781123636?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1951375776781123636%7Ctwgr%5E0ac2b7cdc471e4ebaf48c9fd358b3af7d5ea2703%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com%2Fnews%2F2025-08-02%2Ftrump-getting-bad-intel-russia-ukraine-war

Read more …

“We have a panic cycle, and it’s not just for war in 2026. Go to our site and look at the euro, and there is a panic cycle for 2026. It’s everywhere. Why the computer has been correct is you cannot forecast any market in isolation. You can’t. It’s all connected.”

• Gold Signals War – Martin Armstrong (USAW)

Less than two weeks ago, legendary financial and geopolitical cycle analyst Martin Armstrong warned his “Socrates” predictive computer program showed a “100% Chance of Nuclear War.” Since then, a war of words has flared up between President Trump and Russia, and he said Russia “has entered very dangerous territory.” President Trump then, “Orders US nuclear subs repositioned over statements from ex-Russian leader Medvedev.” “After Trump sends nuclear subs near Russia, Putin responds with hypersonic threat — what Oreshnik missiles can do.” If this is not enough to confirm some sort of nuclear exchange is coming soon, add what Secretary of State Marco Rubio just warned this past week. Rubio said, “In case of war with the US, Russia will rely on tactical nuclear weapons due to the weakness of its army.”

A top Russian official also “Issues nuclear annihilation warning” and said Russia would “hit back with a devastating blow.” Keep in mind, all this happened in the last few days. On Friday, “gold signaled war” by exploding up $73 an ounce, up more than 2% in a matter of hours. Is the gold market seeing this nuke war talk and responding? Armstrong says, “Oh, yeah! You look at gold, and you see what is happening. Oil is pointing more towards September. . . . Gold keeps trying to get through the highs. This is not the major high. Hate to tell you, it’s not. Gold is showing, Up. Every market I look at, it’s the same thing. We have a panic cycle, and it’s not just for war in 2026. Go to our site and look at the euro, and there is a panic cycle for 2026. It’s everywhere. Why the computer has been correct is you cannot forecast any market in isolation. You can’t. It’s all connected.”

Armstrong says you won’t have to wait until 2026 for his “Panic Cycle” to begin. His computer has long pointed to August 18, 2025, and that is about two short weeks away. Armstrong says, “Honestly, this is turning into a grade school fight. I don’t know what Trump expects. He’s hurling insult after insult, and there is no possibility of peace anymore. It’s one thing to do tariffs and sanctions against Russia. Now, he is saying we are going to put sanctions on anybody that even deals with Russia. This is economic war. It’s as simple as that. . .. We don’t even have anyone to negotiate on behalf of the West. It’s dead, completely dead.”

Armstrong thinks neocons have built a wall around President Trump so nobody with different advice regarding NOT starting a nuke war can get through. Is Martin Armstrong being blocked by the neocons surrounding President Trump now? Armstrong says, “I believe so. I even wrote to AG Pam Bondi, and I did not get a response. I have written to presidents and heads of state, and I get responses. Not this time. . .. This is escalating, and he (Trump) is not in a good position. I don’t know what the hell he is doing. He seems to have crossed to the other side.”

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A string of policy failures going back decades. Now bring it all back home; but not to Big Pharma.

• America Faces A Supply Chain Crisis For Basic Drugs (JTN)

[..] “This is a horrible situation,” Sen. Roger “Doc” Marshall, R-Kan., a medical doctor now serving in the Senate, told Just the News. “America makes only about 10% of our active pharmaceutical ingredients. These are the simple things: antibiotics, penicillin, ampicillin, Keflex. Think about insulin or monoclonal antibodies. These are real simple things.” Marshall said the efforts of drugmakers to drive down costs through globalization moved the production of ingredients and finished drugs overseas to China, a competitor, and India, an ally with a history of quality control issues with drugmaking. “What China does is they steal our technology, then they replicate it, they bring it up to scale,” Marshall explained.

“Then after they’re up to scale, what they’ll do is they’ll enter the market with a product and undercut all their competition. And after they corner the market, they create an artificial shortage of that particular drug, and then they raise their prices. That’s their model.” Trump administration officials acknowledged to Just the News that shortages of basic drugs like antibiotics and antivirals have worsened over the last decade and the COVID-19 pandemic created an alarm moment when the U.S. found itself unable to secure masks, gowns and antibiotics. But when the pandemic ended, the Biden administration failed to take any substantive actions to re-source America’s drug supply chain. Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks, R-Iowa, who served as a nurse and physician in the U.S. Army for 24 years, said she was alarmed by what she observed during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We saw that the Chinese Communist Party was sequestering or hoarding PPE (personal protective equipment) and also antivirals, antibiotics,” she said. “And they’re one of the prime manufacturers of those medications that we need…ibuprofen, hydrocortisone, they make those as well our generic medications.” President Donald Trump began his presidency with an executive order pressuring drugmakers to lower the costs of their products to Americans to closer to the levels they sell the same products overseas. The order had an instantaneous impact. Now Trump’s top medical officials say they are feverishly working on a plan to fix the supply chain system, first by stockpiling basic ingredients for key drugs inside the United States over the next couple of years and then creating a solution to make the ingredients and finished drugs back in America over the next decade.

“The problem is that we do not have sufficient domestic manufacturing of these basic medical items,” newly appointed NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya told Just the News. “And so any sort of stress at all in the system, and basic medications that Americans should be able to have if they get sick may not be available. “That’s something that the Trump administration is really deeply concerned about and working hard to fix,” he added. The immediate focus is on the basic staples of medicine like Insulin, antibiotics and antivirals but officials said the problem extends even to America’s most modern medical inventions. Even in cell therapies that treat sickle cell anemia, “you take the cells out of American patients, send them to China where the Chinese edit them, and then bring them back and give it to Americans,” Bhattacharya explained. “There’s no reason why America shouldn’t be the hub of this.”

Another nation, though less adversarial, that is causing U.S. concern is India. India’s pharmaceutical industry has struggled with maintaining consistent quality, highlighted by the 2022 contaminated cough syrup incidents tied to child fatalities in Gambia and Uzbekistan, which drew international attention. Weak regulatory oversight and uneven compliance have led to subpar drugs slipping into markets, with many firms blacklisted in 2023 for quality violations. Bhattacharya said the solution could be as easy as allowing a U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) inspector to be present at manufacturing operations.”That kind of collaboration will result in more oversight and better regulation of the Indian pharmaceutical manufacturing firms, so that we can have confidence that if you have something manufactured in India and is brought to the United States that it’s safe enough for use in America.”

The recently-signed One Big Beautiful Bill offered another early solution to the supply chain crisis. It includes tax provisions that incentivized domestic manufacturing, such as full expensing for research and development and capital investments for new factories, which could indirectly affect foreign pharmaceutical manufacturing by encouraging companies to prioritize U.S.-based production. Bhattacharya also praised Trump’s executive order in May, “Delivering Most-Favored-Nation Prescription Drug Pricing to American Patients.” “The same manufacturer, often even American companies, will charge Europeans ten times less, five times less, two times less for the same drug that they charge Americans for,” he noted. “That’s what the President’s executive order says, the U.S. is saying enough of that. We’re going to demand that the drug companies treat Americans fairly.”

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“We have had a nearly incalculable gift in the form of 80 years of peace, which may yet be offset by the equally incalculable costs of the lunacies this peace has encouraged..”

“A brief primer on why the American empire exists, how it works, and Europe’s place in it.”

• Trump’s Tariffs and those Goddamned Freeloading Europeans (Eugyppius)

Whenever I talk about things like tariffs, Trump supporters appear in my comments to tell me that Europe has gotten a free ride for long enough and that it is time we learned to pay our way. I find it a little frustrating to read this, because in Europe it does not feel like we are getting a free ride at all. In fact it seems like the opposite: The most common complaint on the populist German right is that our political class refuses to represent our interests and will not stop carrying water for the Americans.

I recognise that I’ll never be able to put this right, but it’s worth trying, because it is important to understand the world as it is. The truth is that the United States is an imperial power. Generally speaking, it does not give foreign nations free rides and it does not hand out unearned favours. There is however a lot of confusion here, because hardly anybody bothers to describe honestly the geopolitical strategy pursued by the United States or the nature of the American empire. Western liberalism cannot conceptualise imperial politics, and while empire generally benefits political elites on both sides of the Atlantic, it is not necessarily or always in the interests of ordinary Americans or ordinary Europeans, which is yet another reason not to talk about it.

The Americans and the British before them expended enormous effort to preempt the emergence of a dominant power on the European Continent that might challenge their successive naval empires. They fought two world wars to stop Germany from becoming just such a power. This great struggle ended in 1945 with Western Europe as a fully subjugated imperial province. Since then, the Americans have coordinated the NATO alliance and guaranteed the security of European countries not out of charity, but because Europe is their provincial possession. As a rule, they have not wanted Europe to assume full responsibility for its own defence, because a world in which America no longer guarantees the security of Europe is a world in which Europe is no longer an American province. It’s that simple. To fend off the Soviets, the Americans nevertheless rebuilt and rearmed the nations of Western Europe. Everyone involved in this project had to come up with a way to allow the Germans to become a dominant economic power again,

without displacing the United States or provoking the hostilities of wary postwar neighbours like France. One solution here was the European Union, which promoted economic interdependency as a counterweight to nationalist concerns. Another solution came at the cultural level, where Germany sought to allay European anxieties over possible Teutonic aggression by developing a national cult of historical guilt for World War II, which steadily blossomed into a full-blown civic religion. This exercise in self-effacement has grown more and not less extreme over time, in part as a response to nervousness about the consequences of German reunification. Many voices on the right like to portray Germans as victims of an externally imposed guilt regime, but the truth is that we did most of this to ourselves. The German left in particular has profited from and encouraged this mindset from the beginning.

German political self-effacement had one unexpected feature, in that it proved to be contagious. Within a generation of 1945, many of the victorious allied powers were striving to develop their own historical guilt cults after the German example, in each case centred around a national original sin like slavery or colonialism. Just as the German political class found it expedient to foreground collective European concerns at the expense of a more narrowly construed German nationalism, so did the broader West develop an overarching obsession with global issues and the plight of the developing world. This has caused the proliferation of a lot of silly people in our political culture, a lot of profoundly stupid organisations, and at least two cancerous ideological systems in the form of climatism and migrationism. We have had a nearly incalculable gift in the form of 80 years of peace, which may yet be offset by the equally incalculable costs of the lunacies this peace has encouraged.

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“..and all the stuff Durham was not allowed to review. Just the stuff they know looks bad, really bad. Yet, that’s the tip of the Iceberg…. AND that my friends is the problem.”

• Stephen Miller Is Outraged at Latest Russia Hoax Evidence (CTH)

White House Deputy Chief of Staff and Senior Policy Advisor, Stephen Miller, appears for an interview with Maria Bartiromo. Mr. Miller is outraged at the latest declassified evidence that provides evidence of how the intelligence apparatus was weaponized against Donald Trump 2016 through 2020 and beyond. The outrage of Miller is righteous; however, the outrage of Miller also breaks down along partisan lines. “One outrageous felony after another,” Mr. Miller explains. WATCH:

The non-pretending take. Tulsi Gabbard was not really paying attention in ’17/’18 when each Trump-Russia granular detail was discovered. What she knew of it was surface level and suspect. Fast forward… Tulsi Gabbard in 2025 is paying close attention. However, she (like almost all others) still has an overall information deficit; but the stuff she is discovering today seems enough by itself. Think about what they don’t know: The SSCI stuff, the John McCain stuff, the Wolfe stuff, the Mueller/Weissmann stuff, the Waldman stuff, the Deripaska stuff, the Mifsud stuff, the Mary McCord stuff, the Michael Atkinson stuff and all the stuff Durham was not allowed to review. Just the stuff they know looks bad, really bad. Yet, that’s the tip of the Iceberg…. AND that my friends is the problem.

Bartiromo has been trying to position herself outside the collateral damage blast circle for 3 weeks. She knows the “accountability” part will not happen, and she doesn’t want to go down with the ship of outrage sellers. Her current presentation style is strategic. I don’t blame her. All three branches of govt. (Legislative, Judicial and Executive), and the leadership of both political parties, actively, willfully and purposefully participated. You cannot parse this one. In 2016, Obama hated Trump and the professional Republicans hated Trump. Just like the 2010-2012 Tea Party targeting, both the Democrat and Republican apparatus benefited. The Trump-Russia conspiracy, took an all of government approach – including the Robert Mueller coverup. AND THAT reality is exactly why no one will be held accountable for it!

Remember, Democrats thirst for POWER. Republicans thirst for MONEY. Democrats use money to get power. Republicans use power to get money. Now, insert Russiagate. Dems used money to create fraud. Republicans use the fraud to create money (current status). That’s the frustrating circle we are stuck in. We need a different approach. Replace the truth managers. Keep Tulsi, indict the system. A much more confrontational approach. A group of people who will stand up and call the Executive Branch, the Legislative Branch and the Judicial Branch out for their duplicity. The system needs to be indicted, using very specific evidence. Confront Republicans and Democrats by name, by committee, with intensity and purpose.

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“New Delhi has defended its decision to ramp up purchases of Russian oil despite enormous pressure from the West, by arguing that it has helped global markets avoid sharp increases in crude prices.”

• India ‘Financing’ Ukraine Conflict – Stephen Miller (RT)

Deputy White House Chief of Staff Stephen Miller has accused New Delhi of “effectively” financing Russia’s conflict with Ukraine by purchasing oil from Moscow. In an interview with Fox News on Sunday, Miller addressed Washington’s decision to impose 25% tariffs on imports from India, plus impose an undisclosed penalty on the South Asian nation for its defense and trade ties with Russia. ”What he (Trump) said very clearly is that it is not acceptable for India to continue financing this war by purchasing the oil from Russia,” Miller told Fox News. “People will be shocked to learn that India is basically tied with China in purchasing Russian oil. That’s an astonishing fact.”

Last week, Trump attacked New Delhi for its ties to Moscow in a post on his Truth Social account. “I don’t care what India does with Russia,” he said. “They can take their dead economies down together, for all I care. We have done very little business with India, their Tariffs are too high, among the highest in the world.” The US president has also threatened 100% tariffs on exports from countries that buy Russian oil unless Moscow reaches a major peace deal with Ukraine. Last week, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio criticized India for continuing to import the discounted oil despite Western sanctions, claiming New Delhi was “helping to sustain the Russian war effort.”

Rubio, in a Fox Radio interview on Thursday called India’s energy trade with Russia “a point of irritation” in Washington’s relationship with New Delhi. New Delhi has defended its decision to ramp up purchases of Russian oil despite enormous pressure from the West, by arguing that it has helped global markets avoid sharp increases in crude prices.

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`The government is committed to prioritizing the welfare of Indian consumers. Our energy purchases will be based on price, availability and market conditions..’

• Russian Oil Red Lines: The EU and US Are About To Push India Too Far (Vaid)

With American rhetoric against India becoming more openly coercive, and top officials warning New Delhi about the consequences of its energy trade with Russia, the pressure is becoming multidirectional. Recent remarks by former US President Donald Trump have further complicated this recalibration. Alongside a 25% tariff on Indian exports, imposed last week, Trump issued pointed warnings over India’s sustained energy and defense trade with Russia, accusing New Delhi of indirectly supporting America’s adversaries through continued oil purchases. Trump went as far as to suggest that India and Russia could “take their dead economies down together,” framing their economic engagement as contrary to US interests.

Trump’s statements were not just emotional reactions – they were followed by a series of other statements from US officials. Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Friday claimed India’s purchase of Russian oil is a ”point of irritation.” “India has huge energy needs and that includes the ability to buy oil and coal and gas and things that it needs to power its economy like every country does, and it buys it from Russia, because Russian oil is sanctioned and cheap and – meaning they have to – in many cases, they’re selling it under the global price because of the sanctions,” he stated. ”And that – unfortunately that is helping to sustain the Russian war effort. So it is most certainly a point of irritation in our relationship with India – not the only point of irritation.”

On Sunday, a top aide to President Donald Trump accused India of financing Russia’s war in Ukraine by buying oil from Moscow. “What he [Trump] said very clearly is that it is not acceptable for India to continue financing this war by purchasing the oil from Russia,” said Stephen Miller, deputy chief of staff at the White House and one of the US president’s most influential aides. “People will be shocked to learn that India is basically tied with China in purchasing Russian oil. That’s an astonishing fact,” Miller said on Fox News. This marks a significant hardening of tone, signalling that bipartisan pressure on India s Russia policy may persist regardless of the administration in power.

The Indian government issued a stern response, saying Delhi would keep purchasing oil from Moscow if it is in line with national interests. Its foreign ministry stated that [the] country’s energy purchases are guided by market dynamics and national interests.`The government is committed to prioritizing the welfare of Indian consumers. Our energy purchases will be based on price, availability and market conditions, the statement read.Despite Trump’s claims that India had stopped buying Russian oil after his threats, the Indian government said it is not aware of any pauses in imports. People in the oil and gas industry have confirmed that the government has not issued any officials requests to refiners to stop purchasing Russian oil.

As global energy flows are increasingly weaponized, India’s path is becoming tougher, but also more clearly defined. This is no longer merely a question of compliance with sanctions; it is about resisting the politicization of trade and asserting agency in a fragmented global order. The message to the West at large: India s energy decisions will not be dictated by external red lines. India’s response is not retreat, but recalibration, through diversification, industrial pivoting, and legal safeguards. It signals the emergence of a new energy diplomacy: one that is agile, layered, and unapologetically sovereign.

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“..trade between the EU and Russia dropped from €417 billion ($482 billion) in 2013 to €60 billion ($69 billion) in 2023 and is now “approaching zero.”

• Cutting Russia Ties Has Cost EU €1 Trillion – Moscow (RT)

The EU’s decision to reduce energy and trade cooperation with Moscow over the Ukraine conflict has cost the bloc more than €1 trillion ($1.15 trillion), Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Aleksandr Grushko has said. In an interview with Izvestia on Monday, Grushko said the figure is based on various expert estimates of the economic consequences of the EU’s decision to impose unprecedented sanctions on Russia, adding that it accounts for lost profits from energy and trade cooperation. According to Grushko, trade between the EU and Russia dropped from €417 billion ($482 billion) in 2013 to €60 billion ($69 billion) in 2023 and is now “approaching zero.” He added that Europe’s economy has subsequently taken a hit and is losing competitiveness.

“Natural gas in Europe is four to five times more expensive than in the US, and electricity is two to three times higher,” he said. “That is the price Europe has to pay for ending all economic contacts with Russia.” In June, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that refusing Russian gas supplies had cost EU countries around €200 billion ($231 billion). In late 2024, Russian officials also estimated that total EU losses tied to sanctions against Russia had reached $1.5 trillion. Meanwhile, Moscow has said it has acquired a “certain immunity” to Western sanctions. Grushko’s comments come after the EU agreed a trade deal with the US, which commits the bloc to purchasing large volumes of American energy – which Moscow says will come at a much steeper cost than that provided by Russia – and imposes 15% tariffs on key EU exports.

Numerous EU politicians have described the agreement as lopsided and damaging to the bloc’s interests. Commenting on the US-EU deal, Putin claimed that the EU had essentially lost its political sovereignty, and that this directly leads to losing economic independence. The EU began imposing sanctions on Russia in 2014, following the start of the Ukraine crisis, and expanded them drastically in 2022. Measures have targeted banking, energy exports, and other industries. Moscow considers the sanctions illegal, saying they violate international trade rules and harm global economic stability.

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“..the wait time for Patriot battery deliveries could reach around seven years..”

• EU To Wait Years To Replace Patriots Sent To Ukraine – NATO (RT)

Some EU countries providing US-made Patriot air defense systems to Ukraine may have to wait until 2032 for replacements due to a significant production backlog, a senior NATO official has said. Ukrainian officials have for months pleaded for more US-made Patriots and ammunition. Vladimir Zelensky has said he hopes to receive ten more Patriot systems, with cost estimates for each battery and interceptor running as high as $1 billion and $4 million, respectively. Several European countries have shown interest in a deal proposed by US President Donald Trump, under which they would transfer Patriot systems to Ukraine and be resupplied by Washington.

However, French Admiral Pierre Vandier, NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Transformation, told Euractiv that the wait time for Patriot battery deliveries could reach around seven years. A second Euractiv source offered a more upbeat assessment, noting the shipments could not be expected sooner than “a couple of years” at best. The lengthy backlog has sparked concern and hesitation in the EU ranks, with one unnamed diplomat admitting that giving up the air defense system was “scary” – even for the sake of Ukraine, which he claimed to be “defending” the bloc. Germany, which has recently committed to transferring three Patriot systems to Kiev, has reportedly demanded “watertight” guarantees that replacements from the US would arrive within eight months.

Meanwhile, the US push to prioritize NATO’s internal backfill has already impacted non-EU buyers. Switzerland, which ordered five Patriot systems in 2022 and expected the complete delivery by 2028, confirmed last month that it would be delayed for an unspecified timeframe due to US reallocation. Moscow has consistently condemned Western arms shipments to Ukraine, warning they only prolong the conflict without changing its outcome. It has also accused European NATO of pursuing “reckless militarization” and portraying Russia as an “enemy” to justify a hike in weapons spending.

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“America voted to end “fighting foreign wars” when it elected Donald Trump, Marjorie Taylor Greene has said..”

• US Funding of Kiev Is ‘Betrayal To Majority of Americans’ – MTG (RT)

US politicians who back funding for Kiev risk losing the support of their voters, US Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene has warned. Continued financial assistance for the Ukrainian government in its conflict with Russia is a “complete betrayal” of the American people, the Georgia Republican has said. Her comments came just a day after a group of US senators introduced a bill to allocate $54.6 billion in aid to Ukraine over the 2026 and 2027 fiscal years. President Donald Trump has repeatedly opposed more US aid to Kiev, arguing that European nations should cover those costs.

“Funding, fueling, and ultimately fighting Russia in Ukraine would be a complete betrayal to the majority of Americans,” Greene wrote in a post on X on Saturday, adding that “America voted to end funding and fighting foreign wars” in the 2024 presidential elections that Donald Trump won. US taxpayers do not want to pay to murder people “in some foreign land over a foreign conflict that has absolutely zero effect on our lives,” the congresswoman stated, adding that Republicans supporting such policies could “lose the younger generation of voters and may never get them back.” Americans under 50 are “beginning to feel completely unrepresented by both parties,” particularly because of various initiatives funded by taxpayer money that have already “made life unaffordable and the future bleak for the vast majority of average Americans,” she warned.

The Trump administration has repeatedly expressed concerns about the potential misuse of US aid to Ukraine. Trump himself has claimed on several occasions that billions of dollars allocated by the Biden administration may have been embezzled. Former Trump adviser Steve Cortes has also criticized continued aid, calling Ukraine “corrupt” and cautioning that its leadership “cannot be trusted” following a recent crackdown on anti-corruption bodies. Greene herself has previously labelled Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky a “dictator” and called for his removal, accusing him of blocking peace efforts. Russia has consistently warned that military and financial assistance to Kiev only fuels the conflict and leads to more bloodshed.

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“It was a coup, and I’m using that term literally … One egregious felony after another.” — Stephen Miller

• Suspicious Minds (James Howard Kunstler)

America is tired of being driven insane, of having absurdities crammed into our collective consciousness. Reality is an agreement about what is going on in the world. That act of faith requires such an agreement be based on what is demonstrably true. Without it, society dissolves into chaos and failure. The RussiaGate psychodrama is about an agreement based on lies. It started with Hillary Clinton’s desperate ploy to save her foundering 2016 election campaign. Her emails somehow got sent to Wikileaks, a radical news org dedicated to revealing government secrets, implicating misconduct. It was easy to declare the Russians did it, by hacking — when it was much more likely, in fact, proven by a forensic audit, that a Clinton campaign insider downloaded the info on a thumb drive, perhaps one Seth Rich, found murdered on a DC sidewalk soon thereafter.

Every lie after that met the kind of skepticism among the public that generates heat, controversy, scandal, and fire. Hillary managed to enlist President Barack Obama and his executive agencies into her project, and the party apparatus with it, because the Clinton Victory Fund had paid the DNC’s debts and took over its management. Soon, the Russia collusion project grew into a gigantic scaffold of flaming lies. The big newspapers and the TV news networks bought the story, and came along for the ride. They were all sure Hillary would win the 2016 election. All the heat and fire would get flushed away. The polls all said so. The agencies and the parties would pick up and go on as before, run the show, make careers, get wealthy, be important!

They miscalculated. They lost. But they decided to keep building the scaffold of lies in order to protect themselves from the danger it represented — because they lived in that scaffold, it was the party’s house. And the scaffold of lies needed massive fortification. The house that the party lived in had to be protected at all costs, or they would all be cast out, homeless, a whole party on street, lost, broke, ruined, dying, like the pitiful tweakers bent over out on Kensington Avenue in Philly, in every Democrat-run city, really. And so, they undermined the winner of the election at every turn, worked furiously to drive him from office, made a plague happen, subverted the 2020 election, and spent four years under a fake president jamming absurdities into the public arena, turning it into a freak show, one drag-queen story hour after another, from sea to shining sea.

All to defeat the return of a public consensus about reality based on what is demonstrably true — starting with the fact that there are men and there are women, and that the primary interaction between them keeps society going by producing offspring. This enormous, drawn-out insurrection, composed of serial felony crimes, amounts to the greatest insult against the republic — the res publica, in Latin, the public thing — in the nation’s history. And now it is coming apart as an overwhelming majority of citizens, including now many Democrats, can’t avoid discovering what has happened in the country. Because lies are weak and the truth is sturdy and eventually truth prevails, even after an arduous struggle.

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“The new map could lead to the GOP gaining up to 5 seats..”

• Texas Governor Orders Arrest Of Fleeing Democratic Lawmakers (ZH)

[..] Update (1630ET): Promises made, promises kept… Texas Governor Greg Abbott ordered the arrest of Democratic lawmakers who left the state to block a controversial vote on new congressional maps. “Texas House Democrats abandoned their duty to Texans,” Abbott said in a statement Monday. “I ordered the Texas Department of Public Safety to locate, arrest, and return to the House chamber any member who has abandoned their duty to Texans.” Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who is running for the Republican nomination for US Senate, said he supported the speedy arrest of “jet-setting runaways” who left the state during the legislative session. “This is cowardice and dereliction of duty, and they should face the full force of the law without apology,” Paxton said in a tweet. …and cue the lawsuits.

TX
https://twitter.com/nicksortor/status/1952387626423476490

* * *
Absconding to — where else — Chicago, Democratic members of the Texas House of Representatives fled the state on Sunday to break a quorum and prevent a vote on a redistricting plan that promises to boost the GOP’s share of seats in the US House of Representatives by five. In response, Gov. Greg Abbott threatened to remove them from office, replace them, and pursue felony charges against them, using extradition powers if need be. Their choice of exile location is positively drenched in hypocrisy, as Illinois arguably has the worst gerrymandering in America — to Democrats’ benefit, of course. In 2024, Democrats won 53% of the popular vote in Illinois House races, but took 82% of the seats (14 out of 17). A quorum is the minimum number of lawmakers present in order to conduct legislative business – a tactic they’ve used twice before in the 22 years since Republicans have controlled all of Texas state government (efforts which ultimately failed).

The Democrats plan to stay away for two weeks to run the clock on a special legislative session called by Gov. Greg Abbott (R) in order to draw the new map. By state law, the Texas House can only conduct business when two-thirds of its 150 members are present, meaning at least 51 of the state’s 62 Democrats will stay away. So far, 57 have fled the state, according to State Rep. Jon Rosenthal (D), with members fleeing to Chicago, Boston and New York. All plan to remain out of the state until Aug. 19, when the special session concludes. “Our goal right now is to kill this session,” said Rosenthal.

Abbott said if the Democrats don’t return by 3pm on Monday, he will invoke a Texas attorney general opinion and “remove the missing Democrats from membership in the Texas House,” and then pick their successors under power granted in the state constitution. Upping the ante, Abbott said many of the fleeing Democrats may have committed felonies, as they’re soliciting donations to cover fines they face under Texas House rules — arguing that they risk bribery charges for accepting money “to assist in the violation of legislative duties.” To bring them to justice, he said “I will use my full extradition authority to demand the return to Texas of any potential out-of-state felons.” Texas AG Ken Paxton (R), meanwhile, has threatened to arrest lawmakers who break quorum, though he won’t have jurisdiction over them outside of the state.

[..] In a separate development that could have profound implications for redistricting battles across America, the US Supreme Court last week said it will consider the constitutionality of redistricting that’s intentionally aimed at creating “majority-minority districts” with the goal securing power for blacks and Hispanics. In that Louisiana case filed by self-described “non-African American voters,” claiming a violation of the Equal Protection Clause, the high court said it will examine whether that kind of redistricting violates the 14th or 15th Amendments to the US Constitution.

In April 2024, a federal panel of judges in the US District Court for the Western District of Louisiana ruled that purposefully creating a majority-black district was “an impermissible racial gerrymander in violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.” The 15th Amendment bars governments from denying or abridging the right to vote based on race or color.

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“Now that we have “One Big Beautiful Bill”, and we have a better sense of where the taxes are going, I think we’re going to see a much, we’re going to see more investment..”

• US Trade Rep Jamieson Greer Outlines Tariff Status (CTH)

MARGARET BRENNAN: I was reading some interviews you had given, and you said at some point the President’s view is maybe a tariff is better than a deal. Are you saying there are countries that just, they have no shot of avoiding a tariff? JAMIESON GREER: Well, I would say that, in fact, most countries in the world, they just have a tariff assigned to them, right? Whether it’s– MARGARET BRENNAN: It’ll be the 10 percent or 15 percent.

JAMIESON GREER: 10 or 15 or the higher level tariff. Because, again, when the President is looking at this, he looks at potential deals, and we bring him potential concessions from countries and the things they might want to do. And he compares that to the potential tariff that might be applied to try to get that deficit down. And then talking to his advisors, he makes a call on this. And you know, sometimes a country will come back and make additional concessions that, that make it more appropriate. He’s trying to get at the deficit. He’s trying to reshore manufacturing. And so those are the factors he’s looking at when he’s looking at when he’s determining whether he’s just going to have a tariff or he’ll take a deal.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Trying to reshore manufacturing, bring manufacturing jobs back to America. But we just saw in this unemployment data that while the level is pretty low overall, it’s pretty steady, good. Manufacturing in particular, we saw it contract for the fifth straight month in July, factory employment dropped to lowest levels in five years. What does that data indicate to you about the impact of your tariffs?

JAMIESON GREER: Yeah, I saw that and my own view is that I think a lot of companies were waiting to see if the tax bill was going to come through with the expensing for capital goods and things like that. And so I think now you know a lot of that data comes pre “One Big Beautiful Bill”. Now that we have “One Big Beautiful Bill”, and we have a better sense of where the taxes are going, I think we’re going to see a much, we’re going to see more investment, all the, all the commitments on investment we’ve seen countries making, that’s going to come through. And like you said, it’s a relatively small number. So I don’t, I don’t read tariff policy into that number. I think that is kind of pre-bill policy.

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Typically the kind of topic that CNN get all feisty about, claiming BLS numbers went uncontested for decades.

• Kevin Hassett On Why President Trump Fired BLS Commissioner (CTH)

National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett appears on Meet the Press with the competitor for most dramatic political pundit, Kristen Welker. The first question surrounds President Trump firing Bureau of Labor and Statistics Commissioner Dr. Erika McEntarfer.

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“..we are confident that this award will incentivize Elon to remain at Tesla and focus his unmatched leadership abilities on further creating shareholder value..”

• Tesla Board Approves 96 Million Share Stock Award To “Retain” Elon Musk (ZH)

Tesla’s Board approved a special interim equity award for Elon Musk to compensate and retain him for “extraordinary work”. “As you know, Elon has not received meaningful compensation for eight years since the 2012 CEO Performance Award was last earned in 2017,” Robyn Denholm & Kathleen Wilson-Thompson, Members of the Special Committee of the Board of Directors, wrote in a letter to shareholders on Monday morning. The Board continued, “Despite overwhelming support from you in 2018 and again in 2024, our legal efforts continue in the Delaware courts to reinstate the 2018 CEO Performance Award.” The equity award of restricted stock, totaling 96 million shares, is equal to about one-third of the compensation he earned under the 2018 CEO Performance Award.

The award provides the following conditions:
• 96 million restricted shares of stock, subject to Elon paying a purchase price upon meeting a two-year vesting term, to be delivered after receipt of antitrust regulatory approval;
• The purchase price will be equal to the split adjusted exercise price of the stock options awarded to Elon under the 2018 CEO Performance Award ($23.34 per share);
• A requirement that Elon serve continuously in a senior leadership role at Tesla during the two-year vesting term;
• A pledging allowance to cover tax payments or the purchase price;
• A mandatory holding period of five years from the grant date, except to cover tax payments or the purchase price (with any sales for such purposes to be conducted through an orderly disposition in coordination with Tesla); and
• If the Delaware courts fully reinstate the 2018 CEO Performance Award, this interim award will be forfeited or returned or a portion of the 2018 CEO Performance Award will be forfeited. To put it simply, there cannot be any “double dip.” Elon will not be able to keep this new award in addition to the options he will be awarded under the 2018 CEO Performance Award should the courts rule in our favor.

Tesla is at a critical inflection point with slumping sales and Musk pivoting the company to focus on robotaxis, cheaper EV platforms, humanoid robots, and AI. “While we recognize that Elon’s business ventures, interests and other potential demands on his time and attention are extensive and wide-ranging, including his leadership roles at xAI, SpaceX, Neuralink, X Corp., and The Boring Company as well as his other interests, we are confident that this award will incentivize Elon to remain at Tesla and focus his unmatched leadership abilities on further creating shareholder value for Tesla shareholders and attracting and retaining talent at Tesla,” the Board said.

Read more …

Time for Trump to say No Way?!

• Netanyahu Decides On Full Occupation of Gaza (RT)

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has told ministers that he will seek cabinet backing for a plan to fully occupy Gaza, despite objections from the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), The Times of Israel reported on Monday. Israel controlled Gaza for 38 years, from 1967 until 2005. After the IDF and Israeli settlers withdrew from the enclave, it was left to be governed by the Palestinian Authority, which also controlled parts of the occupied West Bank. Hamas took control of Gaza after it won elections there in 2006. Since then, no elections have been held. Several ministers reportedly said Netanyahu referred to the term “occupation of the Strip” during private conversations, reflecting his vision for expanding military operations.

It marks a significant shift in tone as the government prepares to discuss the future of the campaign. “The die is cast – we are going for a full occupation of the Gaza Strip… There will be operations even in areas where hostages are being held. If the IDF chief of staff doesn’t agree, he should resign,” a senior official close to Netanyahu was quoted by Ynet as saying. The IDF currently claims to hold approximately 75% of the territory. Under the new plan, the military would be expected to occupy the remaining area as well, bringing the entire enclave under Israeli control.

The Times of Israel claims the IDF is against the idea of taking all of Gaza under control. The military believes it could take years to dismantle all Hamas infrastructure. Additionally, this approach could put hostages at risk of execution if troops move too close to where they are being held. The conflict between Hamas and Israel erupted in October 2023 with a surprise attack by Hamas in southern Israel, leaving about 1,200 dead and 250 taken hostage. Around 50 hostages have not yet been returned, with fewer than half believed to be still alive. Israel’s counterattack has led to widespread destruction in Gaza, with the enclave’s health authorities estimating at least 60,000 deaths.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

flu

5G
https://twitter.com/newstart_2024/status/1952049701512999411

freeze

47

traffic
https://twitter.com/Rainmaker1973/status/1952368935690457554

CAF

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle August 4 2025

Aug 042025
 
 August 4, 2025  Posted by at 9:50 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  29 Responses »


Takeuchi Seiho Bear in snow 1940

 

• Trump Tells Chuck Schumer To ‘Go To Hell’ (Margolis)
• EU Surrendered To Trump’s Demands Out Of ‘Fear’ – Sunday Times (RT)
• Swiss President Blamed For ‘Disastrous’ Deal With Trump – FT (RT)
• A Nation In Freefall Without Immediate Course Correction (ZH)
• The Real Russiagate Scandal Blows Away Watergate (SCF)
• Reality Rules Whether of Not It Is Acknowledged (Paul Craig Roberts)
• NATO Eyes Baltic Build-Up, Extending Its Military Footprint Toward Russia (Sp.)
• Ursula von der Trump (Pacini)
• The Tariffs Hide The True Prize For Trump And Western Oligarchies (Dionísio)
• India, Brazil Reject US Demands To Stop Buying Russian Oil – Global Times (TASS)
• To Kill an Operation Mockingbird (Kevin Downey Jr)
• The Media’s Russia Hoax Coverage Just Imploded Before Our Eyes (Margolis)
• The Western World’s Self-Demise Continues (Paul Craig Roberts)
• Why The EU Keeps Losing To China (Zemanek)
• ‘Unthinkable’ Catastrophe Developing In Gaza – UN Spokeswoman (RT)
• The Recognition of Palestine: Western Unity Is Collapsing (Sadygzade)

 

 

 

 

Not that long ago, guys like Doug Macgregor and Scott Ritter said 8x more Ukrainians were being killed than Russians. That was an estimate, not propaganda. But it was never mentioned in the press, where numbers, if there were any, would be about 1:1. . Now, Trump is apparently being told 12x as many Russsians are killed. That is obvious propaganda. Are we to think he doesn’t know this?

 

 

 

 

https://twitter.com/Inevitablewest/status/1951949404060999776

 

 

https://twitter.com/hippyygoat/status/1951737055743980011

cIA
https://twitter.com/TRUMP_ARMY_/status/1951952936785084724

 

 

Ritter

 

 

Orban: “Peace will come when Europeans and Ukrainians alike accept the fact that Russia will never allow NATO to establish a presence on its western border in Ukraine..”

 

 

 

 

Trump wants nominees confirmed, mostly standard procedure. But now Schumer demands a billion or so to pay for Democrat pet projects.

“..billion with a b—in unrelated funding as a ransom for a handful of consensus nominees who had already made it through bipartisan committee votes.”

• Trump Tells Chuck Schumer To ‘Go To Hell’ (Margolis)

Saying that President Donald Trump wasn’t happy when Senate Democrats tried to extort his administration for a billion-dollar payout in exchange for doing their constitutionally mandated job would be an understatement. Over the weekend, what should have been a routine confirmation process for highly qualified Trump nominees turned into a hostage negotiation orchestrated by Sen. Chuck Schumer and his band of obstructionists. Make no mistake, Schumer wasn’t bargaining in good faith. He and his allies demanded over a billion dollars—yes, I meant billion with a b—in unrelated funding as a ransom for a handful of consensus nominees who had already made it through bipartisan committee votes. That’s not negotiation; that’s the Democrats shamelessly weaponizing the Senate to advance their own radical agenda.

Trump cut through the charade with a blunt, unmistakable message to Schumer on Truth Social, calling his demand nothing less than “political extortion.” Trump called the demand “egregious and unprecedented,” warning Republicans that accepting it “would be embarrassing to the Republican Party.” He urged GOP lawmakers to reject the offer, “go home and explain to your constituents what bad people the Democrats are,” and told Schumer—whom he said is under pressure from the “Radical Left Lunatics”—to “GO TO HELL!” Trump’s decision wasn’t just about protecting his nominees; it was about sending a message that the days of Republican leaders folding in the face of Democrat brinkmanship are over. The president gave Senate Republicans his marching orders: Walk away. Refuse to reward such brazen extortion. Let Democrats explain to the American people why vital appointments are stalled and government remains hobbled.

https://twitter.com/MAGAVoice/status/1951772682221195613

If the GOP ever hopes to reverse the damage inflicted by years of feckless Republican capitulation, this kind of stand is long overdue. Senate Majority Leader John Thune described the failed talks as a nonstop loop of shifting demands—“lots of offers” nearly agreed to, only for Democrats to move the goalposts, which sounds about right. Schumer’s team kept pushing for more: billions in aid, protection for bloated spending, and perks for their political machine. In return, they offered only the safest nominees, like it was a mob shakedown. Senator Markwayne Mullin saw it firsthand. “We’ve had three different deals since last night, and every time it’s been…‘I want more.’” The game was rigged from the start. Democrats wanted the illusion of compromise, expecting the GOP to fold. This time, they didn’t.

Democrats cried foul, accusing the GOP of padding the nominee list with “controversial” picks—classic projection from a party that’s mastered political blackmail. But the days of Republican surrender are over. Under Trump’s leadership, the GOP shut it down. Just seven nominees were confirmed before the August recess—not ideal, but better than caving to Schumer’s demands. The White House is ready to push through the rest in September, even if it means changing the rules Democrats have long abused to obstruct. This breakdown makes two things clear: Republicans are done playing by the left’s rigged rules, and if key posts stay vacant, the blame lies with Schumer and his “resistance” gang. Let them explain the dysfunction. Trump’s bold stand should fire up Republicans. After years of retreat, the party is drawing lines, rejecting ransom politics, and putting America first. It’s the kind of fight the country’s been waiting for.

Read more …

“..the fear that Trump might use a dispute as a pretext to cut US military support for Ukraine or otherwise damage European security..”

Europeans pay for Ukraine in 100 different ways..

• EU Surrendered To Trump’s Demands Out Of ‘Fear’ – Sunday Times (RT)

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen agreed to a lopsided US trade deal without resistance out of fear that Washington might reduce military support for Ukraine or even withdraw American forces from Europe, the Sunday Times reported this weekend. The paper described von der Leyen’s recent visit to President Donald Trump’s golf course in Scotland – where she accepted a 15% tariff on most EU exports – as a “surrender.” According to the report, officials inside the Commission initially prepared a strong countermeasure package in response to Trump’s proposed 20% tariffs announced in April. But when Trump threatened to raise the tariffs to 30%, von der Leyen pulled back.

Behind her reversal was “the fear that Trump might use a dispute as a pretext to cut US military support for Ukraine or otherwise damage European security,” the Sunday Times wrote. Brussels was reportedly particularly concerned about the outcome of a pending American “posture review” that may result in the withdrawal of some of the roughly 80,000 US troops stationed across Europe. The trade agreement finalized last week includes not only the 15% tariff on EU goods, but also commitments by Brussels to invest $600 billion in the US economy and purchase $750 billion worth of American energy over the next three years. In contrast, the UK – negotiating independently – secured a lower 10% tariff on its exports.

Amid mounting internal backlash in Brussels, French President Emmanuel Macron reportedly criticized the outcome, saying the EU is “not feared enough.” Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban remarked that Trump “ate her for breakfast,” and accused von der Leyen of exceeding her authority by allegedly pledging to purchase large quantities of US arms. Von der Leyen has also faced growing political resistance at home, as she pushes to redirect a significant portion of the EU’s next €1.8 trillion seven-year budget from agriculture and regional development toward militarization. She narrowly survived a vote of confidence in the European Parliament last month amid criticism of her leadership style and controversies over her Covid-19 vaccine procurement deals. Some MEPs now view her current term as her “last chance,” according to lawmakers quoted by the Times.

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Beware the price of cuckoo clocks.

• Swiss President Blamed For ‘Disastrous’ Deal With Trump – FT (RT)

Swiss President Karin Keller-Sutter is facing backlash after trade talks with Washington collapsed following a “disastrous” phone call with US President Donald Trump, Financial Times has reported, citing sources familiar with the matter. Trump announced a 39% levy – one of the highest globally – on Swiss goods on Friday, coinciding with Switzerland’s national day. According to the FT report published on Sunday, Swiss negotiators believed they had secured a provisional deal for a 10% tariff, similar to the UK’s arrangement. In exchange, Bern pledged nearly $150 billion in US-bound investment and remained in regular contact with US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer. The offer was approved in early July, with Swiss officials convinced it only awaited Trump’s signature.

Keller-Sutter, who also serves as finance minister under the country’s rotating presidency, had publicly stated last month that she had gained rare “access to Trump.” However, during a 30-minute call on Thursday – described by sources as “disastrous” – the US leader reportedly rejected the offer and instead focused on Switzerland’s $39 billion trade surplus.“The call did not go well, in the sense that from the very first minute Trump made it clear 10 per cent was not enough, and all he could focus on was Switzerland stealing money from the US. There was nothing Keller-Sutter could say,” one source told FT. Trump reportedly asked what more the “very wealthy” Alpine country could offer.

Swiss media called the outcome Keller-Sutter’s “biggest fiasco,” with tabloid Blick likening it to the country’s worst defeat since 1515, when Swiss troops lost to France at the Battle of Marignano. Greer later denied that a final deal had been secured, telling Bloomberg: “Nothing is agreed until everything is agreed.” The tariff hike followed Trump’s ‘Liberation Day’ speech announcing a global trade overhaul on April 2. After multiple delays and a series of negotiations, a revised executive order signed last week adjusted rates based on “trade imbalances,” with the tariffs now set to enter into force on August 7.

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“..The revolution didn’t die, it just changed tactics with all things woke re-emerging in the current unaffordability crisis..”

• A Nation In Freefall Without Immediate Course Correction (ZH)

The foundational pillars of the American middle class have been crumbling for decades, crushed under the weight of unaffordable housing, runaway education costs, and the rising price of just about everything. This full-blown affordability crisis is hollowing out the middle class from within. Add years of mass migration of millions of illegal aliens, and the wealth and opportunities once available to the native population have eroded even further. It’s becoming impossible to ignore that many policymakers in Washington, seemingly aligned with the globalist billionaires, have deliberately waged economic war on America’s middle class. This is precisely why President Trump rose to power.

Two of the core bedrocks of the middle class include homeownership and family formation. These two pillars provide economic stability, social cohesion, and long-term investment that sustain a prosperous and resilient society. Alarm bells have been sounded, and the Trump administration had better be paying attention, because a new chart that shows the estimated percentage of 30-year-olds in the U.S. who are both married and homeowners, spanning from 1950 to a projected 2025, has completely collapsed.

The chart was first posted on X by Nathan Halberstadt of New Founding, who stated this is a “critical civilizational problem.” Halberstadt is correct: Young Americans can’t afford homes, can’t start families, and increasingly see the American Dream as just a dream. This has given rise to socialism and Marxism, spreading across the nation like cancer. It’s as if the globalist elite in Washington deliberately sabotaged the middle class over the years, hollowing it out with decades of destructive policies designed to break those key pillars. This chart was enough for Elon Musk to respond with “!!” as he, too, understands there needs to be a drastic and sharp course correction or risk losing the country to socialists and Marxists.

The reason Communism failed to take hold in the U.S. in the 1960s post-WWII is that the economic expansion had stable jobs, rising wages, access to homeownership, and upward mobility. The revolution didn’t die, it just changed tactics with all things woke re-emerging in the current unaffordability crisis that has taken decades to play out.

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“Arguably, the real Russiagate scandal is far more criminal and devastating in its political implications than Watergate.”

“..a Goebbels-like Big Lie campaign to not only deceive the U.S. public but to subvert the democratic process and poison international relations.”

• The Real Russiagate Scandal Blows Away Watergate (SCF)

So the hoax is finally officially acknowledged. “Russiagate” – the mainstream narrative, that is – is now described by American intelligence chiefs as a fabrication that was concocted to overturn the results of the 2016 U.S. presidential elections. Tulsi Gabbard, the current Director of National Intelligence (DNI), and CIA director John Ratcliffe have both accused former President Barack Obama of engaging in a “treasonous conspiracy” to subvert the constitutional process. It’s not just Obama who is implicated in this high crime. Other former senior officials in his 2013-17 administration, including former DNI James Clapper, CIA director John Brennan, and head of the FBI James Comey, are also implicated. If justice is permitted, the political repercussions are truly earth-shattering.

The potential impact is not confined solely to the violation of U.S. laws and the democratic process – bad enough that is. The Russiagate scandal that began in 2016 has had a lasting, damaging effect on U.S. and European relations with Russia. The frightfully dangerous NATO proxy war incited in Ukraine, which threatens to escalate into a full-scale world war, was fueled in large part by the hostility generated from the false claims of Russian interference in the U.S. elections. The allegations that Russian President Vladimir Putin oversaw a subversion campaign against the 2016 U.S. election and colluded with Donald Trump to get him elected were always specious. The scandal was based on shoddy intel claims to purportedly explain how Trump defeated his Democrat rival, Hillary Clinton. Subsequently, the scandal was hyped into a seemingly credible narrative by U.S. intelligence chiefs at the direction of then-President Barack Obama as a way to delegitimize Trump’s incoming first-term presidency.

Years before the recent intelligence disclosures, many independent journalists, including Aaron Maté, and former intelligence analysts like Ray MacGovern and William Binney, had cogently disproven the official Russiagate claims. Not only were these claims false, they were knowingly false. That is, lies and deliberate distortions. Russia did not hack emails belonging to the Democratic National Committee to discredit Clinton. Clinton’s corruption was exposed by a DNC internal leak to Julian Assange’s Wikileaks whistleblower site. That was partly why Assange was persecuted with years-long incarceration. A large enough number of voters simply despised Clinton and her warmongering psychopathy, as well as her sell-out of working-class Americans for Wall Street largesse.

Furthermore, Moscow consistently denied any involvement in trying to influence the 2016 U.S. election or attempts to favor Trump. Putin has said more than once that Russia has no preference about who becomes U.S. president, implying that they’re all the same and controlled by deeper state forces. Laughably, too, while Washington accused Moscow of election interference, the actual record shows that the United States has habitually interfered in scores of foreign elections over many decades, including those of Russia. No other nation comes close to the U.S. – the self-declared “leader of the free world” – in sabotaging foreign elections.

In any case, it is instructive to compare the Russiagate farce with the Watergate scandal. Watergate involved spying by the White House of President Richard Nixon against a Democrat rival in the 1972 election. The political crisis that ensued led to Nixon’s resignation in disgrace in 1974. The U.S. nation was shocked by the dirty tricks. Several senior White House officials were later convicted and served time in jail for crimes related to the affair. Nixon was later pardoned by his successor, Gerald Ford, and avoided prosecution. Nevertheless, Watergate indelibly disgraced U.S. politics and, at the time, was described as “the worst political scandal of the 20th century.” Subsequent cases of corruption and malfeasance are often dubbed with the suffix “gate” in a nod to Watergate as a momentous political downfall. Hence, “Russiagate.”

There are hugely important differences, however. While Watergate was a scandal based on factual crimes and wrongdoing, Russiagate was always a contrived propaganda deception. The real scandal behind Russiagate was not Trump’s alleged misdeeds or those of Russia, but the criminal conspiracy by Obama and his administration to sabotage the 2016 election and subsequently to overthrow the Trump presidency and the democratic will of the American people. Tulsi Gabbard, the nation’s most senior intelligence chief, has said that this amounts to “treason,” and she has called for the prosecution of Obama and other former senior aides.

Arguably, the real Russiagate scandal is far more criminal and devastating in its political implications than Watergate. The latter involved illegal spying and dirty tricks. Whereas, Russiagate involved a president and his intelligence chiefs trying to subvert the entire democratic process. Not only that, but the U.S. mainstream media are also now exposed for perpetrating a propaganda heist on the American public. All of the major U.S. media outlets amplified the politicised intelligence orchestrated by the Obama administration, claiming that Russia interfered in the election and that Trump was a “Kremlin stooge.” The hoax became an obsession in the U.S. media for years and piled up severe damage in international relations, a nefarious legacy that we are living with today.

The New York Times and Washington Post, reputedly two of the finest exponents of American journalism, jointly won the Pulitzer Prize in 2018 for their reporting on Russiagate, the official version, that is, which lent credibility to the hoax. In light of what we know now, these newspapers should be hanging their heads in shame for running a Goebbels-like Big Lie campaign to not only deceive the U.S. public but to subvert the democratic process and poison international relations. Their reputations are shredded, as well as those of other major media outlets, including ABC, CBS, CNN, and NBC.

Ironically, The Washington Post won the Pulitzer Prize in 1973 for its reporting on the Watergate scandal. The story was made into a best-selling book, All The President’s Men, and a hit Hollywood movie starring Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman, playing the roles of intrepid reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. Woodward and Bernstein and The Washington Post were acclaimed as the finest in U.S. journalism for exposing Watergate and bringing a crooked president to book. How shameful and absurd that an even greater assault on American democracy and international relations in the form of Russiagate is ignored and buried by “America’s finest”. That the scandal is ignored and buried should be of no surprise because to properly reveal it would shatter the foundations of the U.S. political establishment and the sinister role of the deep state and its mainstream media propaganda system.

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“Trump is building Greater Israel, not America. When MAGA-Americans elected Trump, they elected Netanyahu.”

• Reality Rules Whether or Not It Is Acknowledged (Paul Craig Roberts)

In the past few days I have listen to John Helmer say on Nima’s show that President Trump’s latest irresponsible outburst signals Putin that Russia is facing war. Scott Ritter also on Nima’s show said the same. I share the concern. My position since the “Maidan Revolution” in Kiev in 2014, that is, since Washington’s overthrow of the democratically elected Ukrainian government and installed a Russiaphobic puppet, has been that Putin’s unwillingness to deal decisively with the situation, first by permitting the overthrow, second by refusing the Donbas Russians’ 2014 request to be reincorporated into Russia like Crimea, and third by foolishly trusting to the Minsk Agreement and giving Washington and NATO eight years to build a Ukrainian army, guaranteed a conflict that would widen into a catastrophic event.

Helmer and Ritter say that is what we now face with Trump’s latest recklessness being the icing on the cake that Putin’s toleration of endless provocations has baked. Scott Ritter is worth listening to. Ritter was the chief arms inspector sent to Iraq to confirm that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction justifying Washington’s invasion. But Ritter was too honest for the job and reported back that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The Zionist George W. Bush Regime simply ignored the report, sent US Secretary of State Colin Powell to the UN to lie through his teeth, and invaded and destroyed an Arab country for Israel. George W., the son of a former US president and CIA Director, sent American soldiers to die for Israel and asserted he was fighting a “war on terror.” He was fighting with American lives and money a war for Greater Israel.

Fighting wars for Israel has been US policy for the entirety of the 21st century. American parents, brothers, sisters, daughters, sons, uncles, cousins, and friends have been fighting and dying for Israel and paying for their own deaths by financing the war with their own pocket books for three presidencies during which Washington has sacrificed Americans for Israel. All of this has to be kept hidden from Americans and is by lies, censorship, charges of anti-semitism, and criminalization of criticism of Israel. If truth be known, Israel rules the West. There are only two members in the US house of Representatives with the courage to stand up to Israel. In the US Senate I think there is only one. The bully Trump is afraid of the Israel Lobby and illegally bombed Iran–an act of war–on orders from Netanyahu. Trump is building Greater Israel, not America. When MAGA-Americans elected Trump, they elected Netanyahu.

To move on to the wider point. Everywhere we look no government can face reality, not the Trump and predecessor regimes, not Putin and Lavrov, not the UK, France, Germany, China, Iran. Not even those threatened can face the reality. I am currently rereading A.J.P. Taylor’s The Origins of the Second World War. World War II happened because everyone refused to recognize reality, except Hitler who recognized it about half the time. The rest created the conditions for war that Hitler did not need or want. Hitler did not conquer Austria. The dumbshit Austrian government handed the country to him. Hitler did not invade Czechoslovakia, the dumbshit Czech President Benes handed it to him. The British and French, like Putin today, wanted peace and thus created the conditions for war.

The British government’s intense determination to avoid war caused it. The foolish British government issued a military guarantee to the Polish military dictatorship just as it was about to sign an agreement for Germany to reincorporate German territory assigned to Poland by the Treaty of Versailles. Consequently, the Poles walked away from settling the issue of Germans ruled by Poland. The result was the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact portioning Poland between Germany and the Soviet Union. It was the British and French, neither capable of fighting, who recklessly declared war on Germany. France was instantly conquered, and the British escaped at Dunkirk with Hitler’s permission. Hitler misread Churchill. Hitler thought that if he let the defeated British army escape, it wouldn’t wound the British pride, and they would accept his extraordinarily peace terms that committed Germany to the defense of the British Empire.

In his day A.J.P. Taylor was hated because he told the truth, whereas the court historians insured their success by regurgitating war propaganda. Most historians you read are court historians insuring their own success.Tell the truth and the universities dismiss you from your position, as happened to A.J.P. Taylor. The inability or unwillingness to recognize reality today is worst than in the late 1930s. Today every country’s myths blind it to reality and compel it toward war. When leaders, if that is what they are, are incapable of acknowledging reality, only luck can save us.

Read more …

“NATO is expanding its initiatives and calling it “containing Russian aggression.”

What aggression? It’s all just fiction.

• NATO Eyes Baltic Build-Up, Extending Its Military Footprint Toward Russia (Sp.)

NATO is mulling deploying a German-Dutch corps in the Estonian city of Parnu, the ERR broadcaster reported on Sunday, citing Estonian Defense Minister Hanno Pevkur. “This specific plan is tied to a broader NATO initiative, which involves the German-Dutch corps responsible for our area of operations and their forward command post. It would involve both our allies who fulfill leadership roles at the corps level and, of course, our own defense forces — including conscripts. From the perspective of the Estonian Defense Forces (EDF), it’s a fairly significant development,” Pevkur was quoted as saying by the broadcaster. However, the final decision is going to be taken later this year, the broadcaster said.

The deployment will require creation of the infrastructure for 100-200 people, including administrative buildings, technical buildings and other facilities. The Estonian Defense Ministry is reportedly planning to allocate 17 million euros ($19.7 million) for that. In recent years, Russia has been flagging up NATO’s unprecedented activity near its western borders. NATO is expanding its initiatives and calling it “containing Russian aggression.” Moscow has repeatedly expressed concern about the buildup of NATO forces in Europe. Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova has also said that the Baltic states’ governments were destroying the remnants of security and stability in the region.

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“And they will have to bear most of the costs of the war in Ukraine wanted by the United States. In short, a disaster. The equivalent of losing a war. Again.”

• Ursula von der Trump (Pacini)

Sometimes the scales lose their balance, and so someone or something is needed to restore that balance. Something similar happened during the visit of Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, and Donald Trump. It must be acknowledged that, despite his extreme contradictions in his statements and actions, he is very consistent in one thing. Trump strongly pushes his country’s economic interests. As Dmitry Medvedev noted: “The current ‘agreement’ with the European Union: 1) is completely humiliating for Europeans, as it is only beneficial to the US – it eliminates European market protection, eliminating tariffs on American products; 2) creates huge additional costs for industry and agriculture in many EU countries for the payment of expensive American energy fuels; 3) redirects a powerful flow of investment from Europe to the US.”

We have witnessed yet another ridiculous spectacle. Nothing more than what has already happened in the past, nothing less than what could be expected. Ursula said she agreed with all of Trump’s proposals: 15% tariffs, purchasing $750 billion worth of oil and LNG, and investing $600 billion in the US economy. In other words, it will be the citizens of the European Union who will lose out once again: we repeat, the citizens of the European Union will have to give many billions of dollars to the United States because of tariffs; they will have to give many billions of dollars to the United States for the purchase of gas; they will have to give many billions of dollars to the United States for the purchase of weapons; they will have to give many billions of dollars to the United States in the form of investments on American territory.

And they will have to bear most of the costs of the war in Ukraine wanted by the United States. In short, a disaster. The equivalent of losing a war. Again. Ursula is complicit in the destruction of Europe, with the aggravating circumstance of holding the highest institutional office. In ancient usage, the use of “von” in surnames is a noble preposition that literally means ‘of’ or “from,” and indicates geographical origin or dependence on a lord. Nothing could be more apt: Ursula belongs more to the American lord than to Europe. The European people have not been consulted on this devastating prospect, while it is becoming increasingly clear that European politicians, raised, educated, and elected, do not respond in the slightest to the needs of the population.

The political significance of events such as this must be taken seriously, because they are clear signs of a shift in the order of things, in favor of another, and they have a short-, medium-, and long-term impact, in this case on the entire European continent and the collective West. Until a few days ago, the EU was pushing for war and funding and adopting a partially anti-American rhetoric in order to fulfill its obedience to NATO; today, it finds itself having to kiss the shoes of the occupant of Washington. The US president called the agreement “the greatest ever.” Von der Leyen said the agreement would bring stability and predictability. Trump ate Ursula for breakfast, but it is Europe that will suffer from indigestion.

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“Now you must pay for the right to be our vassals”; “A tribute for the right to pay tribute.”

• The Tariffs Hide The True Prize For Trump And Western Oligarchies (Dionísio)

If there is one thing we can take away from this U.S. tariff attack, it is the confirmation that being an “ally” or “friend” of this nation is, in fact, extremely dangerous. Beyond the utterly self-destructive commitments its allies are bound to—which can range from declaring war on powers like the Russian Federation, to accepting and normalizing genocide, or imposing suicidal sanctions and tariffs against economic blocs like China, not to mention “sharing” the best business deals and most advanced technologies—even in customs relations, the dynamic is lethally perilous. It’s as if the U.S. is telling its vassals: “Vassalage is no longer enough”; “All the commercial, military, economic, and political advantages that vassalage grants us are no longer sufficient”; “Now you must pay for the right to be our vassals”; “A tribute for the right to pay tribute.”

The price of the “right to vassalage,” the “right” to witness one’s own economic decline, the transformation of advanced economies into mere economic substitutes, is paid through asymmetric tariffs. “To sell here, you must pay high tariffs, and beyond the tariffs that cripple your economy, you must also transfer the economic results of that trade and all its indirect economic potential to us”—in other words, “It’s all ours.” To this predatory pact, this act of economic bombardment and sabotage, the European Commission referred to it as a “balanced agreement.” And everyone watched, some more stoically, others less calmly, but they accepted it like docile cattle in a compliant herd. Is this how it is? Despite everything I’ve said, I still have doubts about whether we can interpret Ursula von der Leyen’s submissive attitude toward Trump as an effective capitulation of the European economy to the White House’s will.

Not that this isn’t her intention, or that it isn’t precisely for such behavior that the ex-Minister of Defense under Merkel and Stanford graduate holds the position of President of the European Commission. However, it seems to me that this “comprehensive agreement,” given the track record of this European Commission and its lack of the necessary competencies to negotiate everything that was announced, serves other purposes. There should be no doubt about the role this European Commission plays in the capture of the European economy by the U.S., reducing it to little more than a mercantile extension dependent on the strategies of the metropolis. There are countless instances where von der Leyen’s actions as a broker for U.S. interests and a promoter of American agendas in Europe—particularly those involving direct competition with the Russian Federation, aiming at its economic weakening and eventual destruction—have been evident. This is nothing we haven’t discussed before.

In response to the dominance of Russian energy in the European Union and the critical role that easy, quick, and cheap access to vast amounts of gas played in economies like Germany’s, von der Leyen offered the apologetic silence of Nord Stream’s destruction, the sanctioning of payment mechanisms to hinder the purchase of Russian energy, and the effusive promotion of U.S. LNG and oil—as she recently did again, falsely referring to “better and cheaper” U.S. energy. To wound the Russian Federation’s economy, von der Leyen didn’t hesitate to annihilate the European economy—a fact that, given her husband Heiko von der Leyen’s family history and the von der Leyen family’s ties to the Third Reich and Galicia, should unsettle us greatly, no matter how much they try to mask these ancestral connections with supposed confusion between different branches of the family.

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“Trump’s tariffs have inflicted heavy blows on various nations; rather than awaiting doom passively, it is better to stand firm to mitigate losses..”

• India, Brazil Reject US Demands To Stop Buying Russian Oil – Global Times (TASS)

India and Brazil are interested in Russian energy imports and will not give in to US President Donald Trump’s threats, the Global Times newspaper writes, citing Chinese experts. “Trump’s tariffs have inflicted heavy blows on various nations; rather than awaiting doom passively, it is better to stand firm to mitigate losses,” Lu Xiang, research fellow at the Chinese Academy of Social Science, told the paper. According to him, every country has the right to safeguard its legitimate interests, and Brazil and India are acting on this principle, which reflects their pursuit of an independent foreign policy. Lu believes that the Trump administration treats tariffs as a ‘panacea’ for all the difficulties it confronts, yet reality tells a different story.

Qian Feng, director of the research department at the National Strategy Institute at Tsinghua University, said that India would not abandon Russian oil purchases despite US pressure. He pointed out that India was an oil-deficient nation, and Russian oil offered New Delhi the advantages of being cost-effective and high-quality, and safeguards for its economic development. Qian added that Washington’s attempts to put pressure on New Delhi might prompt India to further revert to a policy of balancing among major powers. Trump earlier announced plans to take measures against the countries importing Russian oil, including India and Brazil.

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“Operation Mockingbird was created in the late 1940s to spread anti-Soviet propaganda through news outlets.”

• To Kill an Operation Mockingbird (Kevin Downey Jr)

Former Democratic Party presidential hopeful and current Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard is giving the CIA an enema, and she’s putting the hose where it is most needed: in the sketchy, unofficial offices of Operation Mockingbird, the CIA’s not-so-secret department dedicated to propaganda. FACT-O-RAMA! Operation Mockingbird was created in the late 1940s to spread anti-Soviet propaganda through news outlets. It was later weaponized for use against Americans. Operation Mockingbird is the grandfather of “fake news.” The CIA has been bribing/threatening/installing journalists to do their bidding since the beginning of the Cold War. It is believed they had/have roughly 400 journalists, news reporters, and publishers throughout the world, writing what the CIA tells them to write.

In the mid-1970s, Operation Mockingbird was exposed by the Church Committee, led by Senator Frank Church (D-Idaho). The committee found that the CIA, the FBI, the NSA, and various other alphabet agencies were illegally bugging, wiretapping, and harassing people, even Americans, the most notable of whom was Martin Luther King, Jr. The Church Committee slapped the CIA on the wrist and told them to end Operation Mockingbird, but, exasperatingly, the committee didn’t provide any oversight to make sure that Mockingbird was dead. According to the Church Committee Report on Foreign and Military Intelligence of 1976 (page 455), Mockingbird thrives to this day. COINCIDENCE-O-RAMA! Operation Mockingbird was first exposed by journalist Carl Bernstein in Rolling Stone. Today, RFK, Jr. believes the CIA has control over the very same apocryphal rag mag.

So that leads us to where we are now. Tulsi Gabbard believes Operation Mockingbird isn’t merely still alive and kicking, but that it’s being used to slander President Trump. 9In my opinion, it is also being used to spread globalist codswallop.) Even better, Gabbard is dedicated to tearing it down. Operation Mockingbird has also taken over various television shows, like the soon-to-be kaput Late Show with Stephen Colbert. What you’re about to see is not comedy. It’s tragically cringeworthy propaganda being progenerated by a globalist shill who needs to be drummed out of the comedy community forever. Welcome to late-night brainwashing, courtesy of, I believe, Operation Mockingbird:

DNI Gabbard claims she is dedicated to ending the unofficial “Operation Mockingbird.” I can’t be more giddy. I suspect there are no hallway signs at the Pentagon stating “Operation Mockingbird Offices This Way,” and thus stabbing the problem in its heart may prove difficult. Operation Mockingbird is likely why your hirsute thing-in-law believes Trump said to take “horse pills” to beat COVID, which came from a bat salad, and so many other lies we’ve seen pushed by the media. I believe the darker threat isn’t fake news, but the seemingly unquenchable thirst for more of the same. Killing Operation Mockingbird is integral, but teaching leftoids they’ve been lied to for decades is the true challenge.

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“Get this: according to Rolling Stone, the evidence showing the Russian collusion scandal was itself a hoax is actually… wait for it… Russian disinformation!”

• The Media’s Russia Hoax Coverage Just Imploded Before Our Eyes (Margolis)

There comes a point where even the most seasoned observers of media bias have to pause and marvel at just how far the mainstream press will go to insulate Democrats from their own deceptions. This latest saga, surrounding the Russian collusion hoax, hasn’t merely reached a new level of absurdity—it’s obliterated every pretense of honest reporting in spectacular fashion. We’re now witnessing a full-scale meltdown in the legacy media, triggered by the slow release of bombshell documents tied to the infamous Russian collusion narrative. DNI Tulsi Gabbard’s calculated drip of these disclosures has left the press dazed; before they can spin their way out of one revelation, another lands with even greater force, blowing apart their talking points. The impact? Panic, denial, and a frenetic scramble to rewrite reality.

At the center of it all is the “Durham Annex”—a trove of evidence so deeply troubling that the mainstream media can’t afford to look at it objectively. Instead of confronting the contents, Rolling Stone—never shy about running cover for the left—truly jumped the shark with a theory so far-fetched it would make a conspiracy theorist blush. Get this: according to Rolling Stone, the evidence showing the Russian collusion scandal was itself a hoax is actually… wait for it… Russian disinformation! It’s almost poetic, in a perverse and cynical way. According to the magazine, “the previously classified documents seem to suggest that some of the supposed ‘evidence’ Patel and others are touting as proof of their conspiracies was actually fabricated by Russian intelligence.” This plot twist isn’t arriving in a vacuum.

The left’s playbook here is obvious: muddy inconvenient waters with frantic claims and hope the facts get lost in the haze. We’ve seen it before, and you can bet we’ll see it again. This is desperation. Let’s break down their thesis. According to Rolling Stone, two emails (dated July 25 and 27, 2016) linking a top Soros operative to a Clinton campaign advisor—found in the Durham Annex—should be dismissed as likely Russian disinformation. Where’s the proof this is Russian disinformation? And how exactly could the Kremlin have predicted—months before the Steele dossier went public—that Democrats would need cover for a bogus collusion narrative? The timeline alone shatters the narrative.

These emails surfaced before the Russia hoax fully took shape and even hinted at the FBI preparing to legitimize the Steele dossier—perfectly aligning with other suppressed evidence of Obama-era interference. But instead of confronting any of it, the media memory-holes the facts to keep the story alive. Rolling Stone and its allies won’t touch the glaring contradictions because doing so would blow up their entire premise. To buy their version, you’d have to believe Russia infiltrated the Obama administration and U.S. intelligence agencies in advance—planting evidence for a scandal that didn’t even exist yet. It’s a plot so far-fetched, even Hollywood would pass.

For years, Democrats and their media allies leaned on “Russia, Russia, Russia” as the catch-all justification for their attacks on Trump. Now that the narrative is collapsing, they can’t stop. Instead, they double down—layering new conspiracies onto old ones, hoping confusion and fatigue will do what the facts won’t. But no matter how much gaslighting they deploy, the truth is still the truth—and it’s catching up to them. The American people deserve better than this endless charade, and the reckoning for years of media-driven deception is only just beginning.

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“..an education system that creates a population that cannot think and solve problems is not as serious as the feminist attack on women and on marriage..”

“Instead of liberating women, feminism has destroyed them. The concept of female has radically changed.”

• The Western World’s Self-Demise Continues (Paul Craig Roberts)

Americans and the Western World face many threats that receive little, if any, attention because they are long term and slow acting. They are not immediate in our face like Trump increasing tensions with Russia with his ultimatums and placement of nuclear armed submarines, or like the Democrats’ weaponization of law and media, or the West’s moral insouciance to Israel’s genocide of the Palestinians. There are even worst things underway that are slowly destroying the West’s ability to continue its existence even if nuclear war can be avoided. The West is being undermined by the destruction of its belief system. The destruction of belief cuts across vast areas of life. At this time I will mention two of our losses that are sufficient in themselves to destroy us without Russia unleashing its arsenal of hypersonic nuclear weapons.

One is the replacement of an educated population by the emergence of an indoctrinated and uneducated generation that has not been imbued with an appreciation of their culture, which leaves the United States, Canada, and Europe without a population supportive of the “racist, exploitative countries” in which they have been taught they live. The journalist Rachel Marsden explains that merit-based personal achievement is non-inclusive and its abandonment has resulted in the destruction of education in the Western World. As bad as it is, an education system that creates a population that cannot think and solve problems is not as serious as the feminist attack on women and on marriage and its commitments such as “for better or worse.”

Kay Hymowitz, writing in the City Journal, Summer 2025, reports on how divorce has become the thing to do for middle aged women to achieve self-realization in loving themselves rather than their husbands. In the new books, magazine articles, and movies divorce is the way middle-aged women achieve self-realization in self-love. Women have joined men in philandering. Women want liberation from husbands and children. They want sex. Lots of it. Being a middle aged harlot is liberating. It is called “self-exploration” and “radical self-love.” The women love themselves more than they love their husbands and children.

The feminist destruction of marriage is pushed by those who control Hollywood and TV movies, publishing houses, magazines and media, and is part of the ongoing attack on dispossessing Western gentiles of family, the basis of social cohesion. Hymowitz describes our time as one of female joy produced by proud female self-sovereignty. Men no longer have the option of a loving mutually supportive life-long relationship with a wife. Instead of liberating women, feminism has destroyed them. The concept of female has radically changed.

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“..the head of EU diplomacy, Kaja Kallas – also present in Beijing – has accused China of fueling the war in Ukraine and waging hybrid operations against Europe.”

• Why The EU Keeps Losing To China (Zemanek)

The China-EU summit held in Beijing late last month could have been a celebration of 50 years of diplomatic relations between two of the world’s largest economic powers. Instead, it served as a sobering reminder of the EU’s growing strategic confusion, and its inability to capitalize on the immense opportunities offered by cooperation with China. The summit came at a sensitive moment in global politics. What was once hailed as a mutually beneficial partnership has now become entangled in geopolitics, internal divisions within the EU, and the enduring shadow of Washington’s influence. The global turbulence of recent years – the pandemic, and the war in Ukraine – has not only strained relations but also reinforced the EU’s dependence on the United States.

Rather than renewing a partnership that once stood as a pillar of global economic integration, the EU leaders arrived in Beijing with a familiar agenda: accusations over trade practices, warnings about “security threats,” and renewed calls for China to “rein in” Russia. Predictably, no breakthrough was achieved. The deterioration of China-EU relations cannot be understood without revisiting the European Commission’s strategic shift in 2019. Under Ursula von der Leyen, Brussels officially categorized China as not just a partner but also a “systemic rival” – a move that introduced suspicion into virtually every area of engagement. Since then, an ideological lens has increasingly shaped EU policy, replacing the pragmatism that once underpinned economic cooperation.

The consequences have been stark. Brussels has launched measures to restrict Chinese investment, imposed high tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles, and – most recently – barred Chinese firms from public tenders worth over €5 million. Further escalation came when the EU included two Chinese banks in its latest sanctions package against Russia, signaling that Europe is willing to weaponize economic tools for political purposes. These steps are justified by the EU as “de-risking.” By pushing for reduced interdependence in strategic sectors – raw materials, high-tech supply chains, and digital infrastructure – Brussels has aligned itself with Washington’s containment playbook, even as European leaders publicly insist on independence. In Beijing, von der Leyen struck a conciliatory tone, declaring the EU’s openness to Chinese investment and cooperation.

But such statements ring hollow when juxtaposed with her recent warnings at the G7 summit about a looming “China shock” and accusations of Beijing “weaponizing trade.” Similarly, the head of EU diplomacy, Kaja Kallas – also present in Beijing – has accused China of fueling the war in Ukraine and waging hybrid operations against Europe. These mixed signals undermine credibility and reinforce perceptions in Beijing that the EU lacks a coherent, autonomous China strategy. More fundamentally, Brussels’ approach is internally contradictory. The EU dreams of “strategic autonomy,” yet ties its foreign policy to transatlantic priorities. It seeks economic resilience, yet undermines its own competitiveness by disrupting supply chains and limiting market access. It aspires to global leadership, yet isolates itself from the rest of the world by clinging to zero-sum geopolitics.

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“One convoy takes 18 hours to run from Deir al-Balah to Kerem Shalom – a distance of just 24 kilometer..,”

• ‘Unthinkable’ Catastrophe Developing In Gaza – UN Spokeswoman (RT)

A major catastrophe has developed in Gaza as UN aid convoys face systematic delays and worsening restrictions, UN spokeswoman Olga Cherevko has told RT. Israeli forces are obstructing food deliveries while malnutrition and starvation intensify across the Palestinian enclave, she explained in an interview which aired on Saturday. Cherevko, who represents the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), described how aid convoys are being held up for hours at Israeli checkpoints. “One convoy takes 18 hours to run from Deir al-Balah to Kerem Shalom – a distance of just 24 kilometers,” she said. “We are given routes that are dangerous, routes we cannot pass, routes that are congested.”

She explained that, during the last ceasefire, the UN had “unfettered access” and was able to deliver aid rapidly. “We could run multiple convoys a day. There were no holding points, no green lights, no waiting for authorizations to move,” Cherevko told RT. “Now all of this is in place and it constrains us severely.” She also claimed that over 1,300 people have been reported killed either at militarized distribution sites or while waiting along convoy routes. The spokeswoman warned that Gaza is experiencing a full-blown starvation crisis and that “the lives of over 2 million people are at stake.” “A catastrophe of unthinkable proportions has developed and is developing even further,” Cherevko cautioned.

The UN has confirmed that two out of three famine thresholds have been met in Gaza. Since April, 20,000 children have been treated for acute malnutrition, and 16 have died from hunger-related causes. The war in Gaza began in October 2023 when Hamas led an attack on Israel, killing approximately 1,250 people and taking 250 hostages. The IDF has since killed more than 60,000 people in the besieged enclave, according to recent UN estimates. Israeli media reported earlier this week, citing US special envoy Steve Witkoff, that Hamas had allegedly expressed a willingness to disarm. However, on Saturday, the militant group denied the claims, insisting on its right to resist Israeli occupation.

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“..compelling them to reassess their stance and respond to the demands of their citizens.”

• The Recognition of Palestine: Western Unity Is Collapsing (Sadygzade)

The ongoing armed conflict in Gaza, along with the intensification of Israeli military operations against Palestinians – including in the West Bank – has provoked growing concern and condemnation from the international community. The deepening humanitarian catastrophe, marked by destroyed infrastructure, acute shortages of food, water, and medical aid, has pushed millions to the brink of survival. The increasing scale of destruction, the mass displacement of civilians, and violations of fundamental norms of international humanitarian law are increasingly being interpreted as elements of ethnic cleansing against Palestinians. Numerous international organizations, human rights groups, and independent observers have expressed alarm over the disproportionate use of force and the systematic pressure exerted on the civilian population.

In the face of inaction by leading international institutions – which continue to call for an immediate ceasefire and unfettered humanitarian access – criticism of double standards has intensified, and public trust in the global community’s ability to stop the violence and uphold the rights of conflict victims is rapidly eroding. Even among Israel’s Western allies, discontent with the actions of the Israeli authorities is becoming more pronounced. Large-scale military operations resulting in widespread destruction and civilian casualties have triggered sharp reactions not only from international organizations but also within Western societies themselves. Regular mass protests in major cities across Europe and North America are increasing pressure on political leaders, compelling them to reassess their stance and respond to the demands of their citizens.

Under the influence of mounting public pressure, some countries have already taken concrete diplomatic steps. On May 28, 2024, Norway, Spain, and Ireland formally recognized Palestine as an independent state – an act that resonated widely and set a precedent for other nations in the region. At this juncture, calls are growing louder for similar steps to be taken by two key European powers: France and the United Kingdom. Both countries are facing escalating domestic and international pressure, which may hasten the process of Palestinian recognition and shift the balance on the diplomatic front of the Middle East conflict.

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RFK
https://twitter.com/nicksortor/status/1951703810700886223

 

 

https://twitter.com/BGatesIsaPyscho/status/1951540901823611113
https://twitter.com/Inevitablewest/status/1951665033663942730
https://twitter.com/PeterSweden7/status/1951706907460174305

 

 

Grok4

UN
https://twitter.com/newstart_2024/status/1951915475262181551

Lazy
https://twitter.com/buitengebieden/status/1951765008691646882

sound
https://twitter.com/buitengebieden/status/1951909843687616972
smile
https://twitter.com/buitengebieden/status/1951939138250231835

 

 

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Debt Rattle July 2 2025

Jul 022025
 
 July 2, 2025  Posted by at 8:25 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , ,  32 Responses »


Pablo Picasso Woman with blue collar (Portrait d’Inez) 1941

 

• Senate Passes the ‘One Big, Beautiful Bill’-With 3 GOP Defections (Margolis)
• Trump Says DOGE Should Investigate Musk (RT)
• Trump Vs. Musk: “Big, Beautiful Bill” Feud Sparks Overnight Firestorm (ZH)
• Media Forced To Admit Trump’s Tariffs Are Working As Revenues Spike (ZH)
• Pentagon Halts Weapons Supplies To Kiev Over Depleting Stockpiles (RT)
• ‘Catastrophic’ Budget Increase Will Destroy NATO – Lavrov (RT)
• Putin and Macron Talk For First Time In Three Years – Kremlin (RT)
• Italy Could Classify $13.5 Billion Bridge As NATO Spending – Poltico (RT)
• 1 in 5 Illegal Migrants Now Simply Flying Into Germany (RMX)
• Poland Reintroduces Immigration Controls (RT)
• President Trump’s Plan for the Middle East (Paul Craig Roberts)
• Trump Says Israel Agrees To 60-Day Gaza Ceasefire, Urges Hamas To Accept (ZH)
• Syria Could Drop Demand That Israel Return The Golan Heights (RT)
• AI Is The Only Thing Keeping The World From Total Stagnation – Peter Thiel (Flor)
• Kennedy Labels US Democrats ‘War Party’ (RT)
• RFK Jr. Unloads Disturbing Vaccine Secrets On Tucker (VF)

 

 

https://twitter.com/JackPosobiec/status/1940120314744070596

Miller census
https://twitter.com/nicksortor/status/1939702115515191304

RFK

j6

https://twitter.com/TheGabriel72/status/1939831962224529910

Candace

Fraud

 

 

Ritter’s Rant 017: The Blame Game

 

 

 

 

“We’re just extending current tax policy,” he said. “We are preventing a $4 trillion tax increase on the American people. When you vote against this, that’s who you’d be voting for.”

• Senate Passes the ‘One Big, Beautiful Bill’-With 3 GOP Defections (Margolis)

After days of gridlock and backroom wrangling, the Senate today passed the “One Big, Beautiful Bill,’ the legislative linchpin of President Trump’s second-term agenda. The tally was 51 yeas and 50 nays, with Vice President JD Vance casting the tiebreaking vote. The Senate was locked in a “vote-a-rama”—a procedural endurance test where senators burn the midnight oil, lobbing amendment after amendment in a desperate bid to tweak, torpedo, or salvage the bill. With a razor-thin majority, Republicans could not afford more than three defections, which is why Vice President JD Vance was summoned to the Capitol to cast the tie-breaking vote. Vance has already played this role before, and it’s clear the White House was counting on him to drag this bill across the finish line.

The real drama, however, wasn’t coming from Democrats—they were united in opposition, as always—but from within the GOP ranks. Senators like Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins became the focal points of intense lobbying, their votes courted with a mix of sweeteners and veiled threats. In the end, Murkowski voted for the bill; Collins voted against it, along with Sens. Thom Tillis and Rand Paul. Naturally, Democrats were panicking, posting apocalyptic predictions on social media. On Monday, Senate Majority Leader John Thune blasted Democrats for what he called a “mind-blowing” display of hypocrisy over the national debt, accusing them of pretending to care about fiscal responsibility now that Republicans are in charge.

“It is rich to hear Democrats all of a sudden concerned about debt and deficits,” Thune said on the Senate floor, as lawmakers debated President Trump’s “One Big, Beautiful Bill.” “Really? I mean, I’ve been here a long time, and I’ve not been involved in a single spending debate in which Republicans [weren’t] trying to spend less and Democrats [weren’t] trying to spend more—except when it comes to national security. Democrats are always willing to cut defense, but never want to cut anywhere else.” Thune reminded the chamber that Democrats had full control of Congress and the White House just a few years ago and used reconciliation not to cut deficits, but to push through massive spending packages.

“One of the bills cost $2 trillion. The other cost $1 trillion. And it was all spending,” he said. “That’s the fundamental difference between us. Democrats like government—and when you send money to Washington, money is power.” Thune contrasted that with the GOP’s effort to stop a looming tax hike. “We’re just extending current tax policy,” he said. “We are preventing a $4 trillion tax increase on the American people. When you vote against this, that’s who you’d be voting for.” The bill now heads to the House.

Massie

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Has he offered to repay the $400 million Musk paid into his campaign?

• Trump Says DOGE Should Investigate Musk (RT)

US President Donald Trump has suggested that Elon Musk should be investigated by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which the tech billionaire formerly headed, for allegedly benefiting excessively from government subsidies. Musk, a former ally of Trump, stepped down as the head of DOGE last month amid disagreements with the president over his so-called “big, beautiful” budget bill, which includes a $5 trillion debt ceiling increase. The Tesla and SpaceX CEO has repeatedly criticized the legislation, saying it undermined his work with DOGE to cut federal spending. The tech billionaire attacked the bill and its supporters again on Tuesday as the US Senate began voting on the amendments to Trump’s 940-page proposal.

“Every member of Congress who campaigned on reducing government spending and then immediately voted for the biggest debt increase in history should hang their head in shame,” Musk wrote on X. “And they will lose their primary next year if it is the last thing I do on this Earth,” he warned. The entrepreneur also reiterated his call for a new “America Party” to be formed to serve as “an alternative to the Democrat-Republican uniparty so that the people actually have a VOICE.” Trump, who claims that the actual reason for Musk’s anger was not the “big, beautiful bill,” but his plans to roll back the government’s electric vehicle (EV) subsidies, fired back at the Tesla and SpaceX CEO shortly afterwards in a post on his Truth Social platform.

“Elon may get more subsidy than any human being in history, by far, and without subsidies, Elon would probably have to close up shop and head back home to South Africa,” he wrote. Without the assistance from the government to Musk’s companies, there would be “no more Rocket launches, Satellites, or Electric Car Production, and our Country would save a FORTUNE. Perhaps we should have DOGE take a good, hard, look at this? BIG MONEY TO BE SAVED!!!” Trump insisted. “Elon Musk knew, long before he so strongly Endorsed me for President, that I was strongly against the EV Mandate. It is ridiculous, and was always a major part of my campaign. Electric cars are fine, but not everyone should be forced to own one,” Trump added.

Read more …

“As for Trump’s threat about “no more rocket launches, satellites” — referring to Musk’s company SpaceX — good luck following through on that. SpaceX is the reason the U.S. is leading the global space race..”

• Trump Vs. Musk: “Big, Beautiful Bill” Feud Sparks Overnight Firestorm (ZH)

Update (0800 ET):President Trump on Elon Musk this morning:
TRUMP: MUSK IS UPSET HE LOST THE EV MANDATE BUT ‘HE COULD LOSE A LOT MORE THAN THAT’
TRUMP, ASKED ABOUT DEPORTING MUSK, SAYS HAVE TO TAKE A LOOK

* * *
Tesla shares slid in premarket trading in New York following a late-night clash between CEO Elon Musk and President Donald Trump. The feud played out across their respective social media platforms. “Elon Musk knew, long before he so strongly Endorsed me for president, that I was strongly against the EV Mandate. It is ridiculous, and was always a major part of my campaign. Electric cars are fine, but not everyone should be forced to own one. Elon may get more subsidy than any human being in history, by far, and without subsidies, Elon would probably have to close up shop and head back home to South Africa,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

The president continued, “No more Rocket launches, Satellites, or Electric Car Production, and our Country would save a FORTUNE. Perhaps we should have DOGE take a good, hard, look at this? BIG MONEY TO BE SAVED!!!” The Truth Social post came after Musk slammed Trump’s “Big, Beautiful Bill” on X ahead of the final vote, vowing to launch a new political party, claiming that Republicans and Democrats are merely a ‘uniparty’ operating with a limitless taxpayer-funded credit card.

Tesla has long benefited from the $7,500 EV tax credit, which the BBB plan aims to eliminate. While this move has been widely anticipated, it could ultimately work in Tesla’s favor, hitting rivals like Rivian, Lucid, and legacy automakers far harder, as many still rely heavily on such subsidies to stay afloat. Tesla shares are down 4% in premarket trading, currently hovering around $303 per share. On the year, shares are down 21%, as of Monday’s close. As for Trump’s threat about “no more rocket launches, satellites” — referring to Musk’s company SpaceX — good luck following through on that. SpaceX is the reason the U.S. is leading the global space race.

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“If they buy more from US sources or countries not on the list, then their costs will remain low. If they don’t, then they must shift the costs in other ways.”

• Media Forced To Admit Trump’s Tariffs Are Working As Revenues Spike (ZH)

The debate is raging this week over increased government spending and the potential raising of the debt ceiling by $5 trillion, with many fiscal conservatives splitting with the GOP and the Trump Administration over what they feel is a betrayal of their campaign promises to reduce government waste. Trump argues that all the elements included in his “big beautiful bill” are necessary in order to revitalize the US economy and break from the interdependency of the current globalist model. Can the dollar continue to absorb the pressure of ever increasing debt obligations? Is there a way to cut the debt without cutting spending? At least one aspect of Trump’s fiscal plan is showing success in this area despite the warnings of critics; the establishment media has been forced to admit that the administration’s tariff efforts are actually working.

The US has collected over $121 billion in revenues from tariffs on imported goods, and despite claims that tariffs are a “tax on the consumer”, prices on the shelf have not risen so far. Opponents of the policy are struggling to explain the data. Some still argue that disaster is right around the corner while others are acknowledging that there is a potential to pay off US debt over time if the import duties remain in place for the long term. Misconceptions about tariffs lead the public to believe that they are a tax on foreign producers or governments, but tariffs are in fact taxes on companies sourcing products internationally from nations on the duties list. The taxes place the responsibility of adaptation on corporations – If they buy more from US sources or countries not on the list, then their costs will remain low. If they don’t, then they must shift the costs in other ways.

Raising prices is the last thing any company not producing necessities wants to do. Consumers can easily cut back on peripheral goods. In other words, the assertion that tariffs are a hidden tax on the public is rooted in a lack of understanding on import duties and how they affect markets. Consumers will buy from producers that keep prices down by adapting to the tariffs, and there are many ways to adapt. It’s that simple. Democrats and some conservatives argued that prices would rise exponentially as international corporations immediately deferred costs on consumers in order to offset the added expenses on imported raw materials and manufactured goods. They were wrong.

The personal consumption expenditures price index, the Federal Reserve’s preferred inflation gauge, rose 2.3% in May, modestly above the central bank’s 2% annual target. The May Consumer Price Index rose at an annual rate of 2.4%, cooler than economists expected. Some blame the “front loading” of imports (increased orders of goods before the tariffs went into effect). However, front loading was estimated to act as a stop-gap for only two months (possibly three by some predictions). Tariffs were initiated in February and though there have been fluctuations it’s been five months waiting for the tariff asteroid to explode American wallets and nothing has happened.

Will companies eventually shift the tariff burden on American consumers over the next year? A better question would be can they shift the burden in a weaker retail market? Would they take the risk of plunging sales? Or will they do what they should have been doing all along: Buy a larger percentage of their goods from US producers and bring manufacturing back home? At the current rate, tariffs could generate around $300 billion by the end of this year and $1.2 trillion over the next four years. It’s not enough to offset increased debt spending, but it does offer an alternative to hiking taxes on the general public (which is what Democrats would do). And if inflation concerns continue to prove over-hyped, then the tariff model could remain in place for many years to come.

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All they needed was a credible excuse.

• Pentagon Halts Weapons Supplies To Kiev Over Depleting Stockpiles (RT)

The Pentagon has suspended shipments of several categories of US-made weapons to Ukraine, according to Politico and NBC News. The decision reportedly followed an internal review of American weapons reserves ordered by US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, amid rising concerns about the rate at which munitions are being depleted. The move reportedly affects dozens of Patriot missile interceptors, Stinger and AIM air-to-air missiles, hundreds of Hellfire and GMLRS systems, as well as thousands of 155mm artillery shells that Washington had previously pledged to Kiev. Some of the weapons were already positioned in Europe have now been withheld before handover to Ukrainian forces, NBC reported. The weapons in question had been funded under the Biden administration through two mechanisms: direct drawdowns from existing US military stockpiles and the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative (USAI), which contracts new production from defense contractors.

The Trump administration has not requested any additional Ukraine aid, and existing resources are expected to last only “several more months,” according to Politico. White House Deputy Press Secretary Anna Kelly defended the move as a necessary step to prioritize American defense needs. “This decision was made to put America’s interests first following a DOD review of our nation’s military support and assistance to other countries across the globe. The strength of the United States Armed Forces remains unquestioned – just ask Iran,” she said, without confirming any details. The decision to freeze or slow-walk the remaining aid without formal notice to Congress may raise legal concerns similar to the 2019 withholding of some Ukraine assistance under Trump’s first administration –a move the Government Accountability Office ruled unlawful at the time, Politico noted.

Kiev has repeatedly voiced frustration over what it sees as dwindling support from Washington. Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky met with President Donald Trump at the NATO summit in The Hague last week but received no firm promises. Trump said Patriots were “very hard to get” and that the US needed them for its own defense and for Israel. Trump has stated he intends to negotiate a ceasefire with Moscow and bring the conflict to an end. Hegseth said last month that the White House is reducing military funding for Kiev as part of its “America First” strategy and in hopes of achieving a diplomatic settlement.

Earlier this year, the Trump administration signed a deal giving the US priority access to Ukraine’s mineral wealth –a step the White House said would allow America to “get back” some of the hundreds of billions spent under Biden. The Pentagon’s policy shift appears to reflect a broader realignment under Trump, who has publicly questioned the rationale behind endless aid to Ukraine. Russian presidential envoy and head of the Direct Investment Fund, Kirill Dmitriev, noted that the move “highlights the real limits of Western capacity and the shifting priorities of the US military.”

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“Perhaps he foresees – being such a prophet – that this catastrophic, in my view, increase in NATO countries’ budgets will also lead to the organization’s collapse.”

• ‘Catastrophic’ Budget Increase Will Destroy NATO – Lavrov (RT)

The results of NATO countries hiking military budgets will be “catastrophic” and lead to the bloc’s collapse, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Monday. His remarks mirrored Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski’s earlier suggestion that a boost in Moscow’s defense spending could trigger the fall of the government. At NATO’s most recent summit last month in the Hague, member states committed to spending 5% of GDP on the military – a significant rise from the previous 2% target. Poland backed the hike, arguing that failing to achieve the new benchmark “as soon as possible” would pose a ‘‘threat’‘ to the bloc considering the ongoing Ukraine conflict.

In an interview with Polish media, Sikorski drew a parallel between modern Russia and the late USSR. Referring to President Vladimir Putin, he stated that “he himself once said that the Soviet Union fell because it spent too much on armament, and now he is doing exactly the same thing.” Meanwhile, speaking to the press at the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) Foreign Ministers Council in Kyrgyzstan, Sergey Lavrov took issue with Sikorski’s characterization, countering: “Perhaps he foresees – being such a prophet – that this catastrophic, in my view, increase in NATO countries’ budgets will also lead to the organization’s collapse.”

Lavrov also said that Russia “plans to reduce its military spending,” which now accounts for 6.3% of GDP, and “be guided by common sense, but not made-up threats like NATO member states, including Sikorsky.” The 5% GDP target faced opposition from some NATO members. Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico said his country could not allocate one-fifth of its state budget to defense, while Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez called the goal “not only unreasonable but also counterproductive.”

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Makes the ‘war on Russia’ narrative much harder to maintain.

• Putin and Macron Talk For First Time In Three Years – Kremlin (RT)

Russian President Vladimir Putin has spoken with his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron by telephone, the Kremlin press service said on Tuesday. It is the first phone contact between the leaders since September 2022. The conversation revolved around the situation in the Middle East, as well as the Ukraine conflict. During the call, Putin told Macron that the Ukraine conflict was “a direct consequence of the policies pursued by Western states, which for many years ignored Russia’s security interests,” and had established an “anti-Russian bridgehead” in the country, the press service stated. The Russian leader reiterated Moscow’s approach to any settlement, stating that it must “be comprehensive and long-term, address the root causes of the Ukrainian crisis and be based on new territorial realities.”

Putin and Macron also discussed the situation in the Middle East, namely the recent escalation between Israel and Iran. The two leaders agreed that diplomacy was the way forward, the Kremlin press service noted, adding that they agreed to maintain contact for the sake of “possible coordination of the positions.” Both countries share a “special responsibility” to maintain “peace and security,” as well as to preserve the “global nuclear non-proliferation regime,” the two men agreed, according to Moscow. “In this regard, the importance of respecting Tehran’s legitimate right to develop peaceful nuclear energy and continuing to fulfill its obligations under the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, including cooperation with the IAEA, was emphasized,” the Kremlin press service said.

France has long asserted itself as one of Kiev’s key backers in the conflict with Moscow. Paris has committed more than €3.7 billion ($4.1 billion) in military assistance to Ukraine since the escalation of the conflict in February 2022, according to the Kiel Institute’s aid tracker. Macron has also repeatedly floated the idea of deploying French soldiers to Ukraine. While the deployment never materialized, Paris repeatedly signaled that troops could be sent after the end of hostilities to act as a deterrent against Russia. Moscow has firmly opposed Western forces in Ukraine in any role, warning the it could trigger an all-out war between Russia and NATO.

In recent months, however, Macron has softened his stance, admitting back in May that the French have done “the maximum we could” to help and could no longer supply Ukraine with weapons. Last week, the French president said that NATO’s European members have no wish to “endlessly” arm themselves and should “think about” restoring dialogue with Russia “right now” in order to negotiate broader European security as part of a potential Ukraine peace deal.

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“..the new designation of the project would make raising money for it easier and would also “override bureaucratic obstacles..”

• Italy Could Classify $13.5 Billion Bridge As NATO Spending – Poltico (RT)

Italian authorities are looking to classify a long-term project to construct a bridge connecting the mainland to the island of Sicily as a NATO expenditure amid their struggle to meet the bloc’s spending goals, according to Politico. The idea of creating an overpass to the largest island in the Mediterranean had been discussed in Italy for many decades, but its realization has been hampered by high costs, the difficulty of operating in a seismic zone and other issues. If built by the current government of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, the 3.6-km-long suspension bridge across the Strait of Messina will become the longest in the world. In its article on Monday, Politico described Italy as “one of NATO’s lowest military spenders,” with Rome investing only 1.49% of its GDP in defense last year, a far cry from the 5% goal approved at the bloc’s summit in The Hague in June.

Marking the $13.5 billion bridge as a NATO spending could help Meloni meet the bloc’s 5% target and, at the same time, “convince a war-wary public of the need for major defense outlays at a time when Italy is already inching toward austerity,” the article read. An unnamed Italian government official told the outlet that no formal decision has yet been made by Rome on classifying the bridge as a security project, but further talks would likely be held soon to “see how feasible this feels.” According to another official from the Italian Treasury, who also talked to Politico, the new designation of the project would make raising money for it easier and would also “override bureaucratic obstacles, litigation with local authorities that could challenge the government in court claiming that the bridge will disproportionately damage their land.”

The problem for Rome is that the Strait of Messina lies outside of Italy’s only designated NATO military mobility corridor, the article pointed out. However, the Italian case is backed by the fact that only 3.5% from the NATO spending target must be allocated for core military needs, while the remaining 1.5% could be steered toward broader strategic resilience projects, including infrastructure. “Whether NATO — and more importantly, US President Donald Trump, who loves a big building project — will buy into that logic is another matter,” Politico noted.

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They do it on purpose?

• 1 in 5 Illegal Migrants Now Simply Flying Into Germany (RMX)

In the past 12 months, the German Federal Police have identified 12,858 illegal migrants who entered Germany by air, a significant number that is on the rise. Now, migrants are increasingly choosing simply to fly into Germany instead of dealing with the long ordeal of crossing multiple borders in dangerous conditions. This increase in migrants flying into Germany jumped after Germany tightened border controls.In May of this year alone, at least 977 illegal entries were recorded using air travel to enter Germany, accounting for over 20 percent of all identified illegal border crossings.However, the true number of such crossings is likely much higher, as foreign nationals traveling within the Schengen area are not required to show identification. As a result, they are often only discovered long after they have left the airport, making it impossible to turn them back.

“It would be consistent to also notify the Schengen air borders,” said Heiko Teggatz, a board member of the German Police Union (DPolG).“If the smugglers aren’t completely stupid, they’ll simply bring their people from other Schengen states to Germany by plane. Today, you can easily book a plane ticket within the Schengen area, and you generally don’t have to show your ID anywhere.”All of this information came from a government response from Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt (CSU) after Alternative for Germany (AfD) MP Gottfried Curio, the party’s domestic policy spokesperson, launched an inquiry.Dobrindt was forced to acknowledge that the tightened controls “refer exclusively to the land borders,” meaning no illegal migrants were turned back at airports.

This trend of illegal entry by plane has intensified since the new federal government instructed officials to begin rejecting asylum seekers at internal borders. Teggatz confirmed this “increase in secondary migration via airports,” noting that “Medium-sized commercial airports like Hanover are particularly affected.” Despite hundreds of officers being deployed at German airports, checks are almost exclusively conducted on flights from outside the Schengen area. That means if a migrant makes it to Greece and manages to get on a plane to Germany, there is little chance he will be checked.= Dobrindt, like his predecessor, Nancy Faeser (SPD), has reported rejections of migrants coming into Germany, but only from land borders. It remains unclear why airports were not included in tightened border measures.

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People don’t go to Poland to stay there; they’re on their way to Germany.

• Poland Reintroduces Immigration Controls (RT)

Poland has decided to temporarily reintroduce border controls along its frontiers with Germany and Lithuania to stop the flow of illegal migrants. All three nations are part of the Schengen Area, which allows free travel across most of the bloc. The EU has been grappling with a refugee crisis since at least 2015, largely caused by upheavals in the Middle East and Africa, and later by the Ukraine conflict. Warsaw has previously accused German police of “dumping” thousands of migrants back across the Polish border. Some activists have organized self-styled ‘citizen border patrols’ along the German frontier. “We remain advocates for freedom of movement in Europe, but only on condition that there is the shared will of all neighbors… to minimize the uncontrolled flow of migrants across our borders,” Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said during a cabinet meeting on Tuesday.

He stated that temporary border controls would similarly be implemented on Poland’s border with Lithuania.In 2023, neighboring Germany, the EU’s top destination for asylum seekers, introduced temporary controls on its borders with Poland and the Czech Republic to stem the flow. Most of the people entering Poland travel on to western Europe, where benefits for asylum seekers are more generous. Berlin has since repeatedly renewed the controls. Under the Schengen agreement, participant nations are allowed to temporarily reintroduce border controls in emergency situations, with the Covid-19 outbreak having been one recent instance. Tighter national migration and border control policies could lead to the destruction of the EU, former German Chancellor Angela Merkel warned in May.

Commenting on the restoration of control on the Polish-Lithuanian border, Tusk accused the Baltic state, as well as neighboring Latvia, of having lax border controls. The lapses have supposedly allowed illegal migrants to cross over from non-EU Belarus, and subsequently to enter Poland. Since 2021, Warsaw has accused Minsk and Moscow of deliberately orchestrating the flow of illegal migrants into EU states. Russia and Belarus have denied the allegations.

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“If Netanyahu has any sense, he will let Trump rescue the Israeli people.”

• President Trump’s Plan for the Middle East (Paul Craig Roberts)

In discussion yesterday with Nima on Dialogue Works about the Israeli-Iranian-Trump-Netanyahu ongoings, I suggested a bold and innovative plan for the Middle East that Trump should present to the world in a speech to the UN General Assembly. I even offered to write the speech. https://www.youtube.com/live/L-8j_NSxC14 I formed the plan from mulling over insights into Trump’s attitude toward the Middle East from Gilbert Doctorow, Michel Chossudovsky, and from Trump’s news conference with Netanyahu when Trump stated Washington’s claim to Gaza as an American possession. Doctorow pointed out that it was irrelevant whether Trump had destroyed the three underground Iranian nuclear sites. What mattered is that Trump’s assertion, true or false, had destroyed Netanyahu’s excuse for war with Iran. Is Netanyahu going to risk Washington’s protection by contradicting President Trump?

Chossudovsky pointed out that in the press conference at which Trump stated Washington’s claim to Gaza, Trump expressed the idea of a Gaza resort as the anchor for an American Middle East colony in place of Greater Israel. In front of Netanyahu Trump unveiled a vision of a Middle East made rich by American management. It would be a different kind of colonial management from the British/French approach that extracted assets and sent them home to Britain and France. Trump envisioned a partnership in which the “colonies” would be shareholders sharing in the profits from economic development. This would be good for Israel as well. When a presstitute asked Netanyahu his opinion, Netanyahu did not disavow it.

I was surprised that Trump’s claim to Gaza and its reconstruction and his idea of a reconstruction of the Middle Eastern countries that previous US regimes had destroyed for Israel did not get a big news play. But Chossudovsky saw it, and he helped me to see it. Ask yourselves, Is there any better solution to the Israeli-Muslim problem in the Middle East? Israel is smaller in area than New Jersey. Iran is 2.5 times larger than Texas. Israel has fewer than 10 million people. Iran has more than 90 million people. Iran can produce modern missiles in greater quantities than Israel can be supplied from the US. In a recent news conference in a demonstration of Israeli insanity, Netanyahu added the territory of Pakistan to Greater Israel. Pakistan has nuclear weapons and a population of 250 million.

Israel has zero chance of winning a war with Iran and the same for Pakistan. Israel knows this but is confident that the power that the Israel Lobby can exert over dumbshit American’s lives and money guarantees that Americans will fight more wars for Israel. The Israeli-subsidized Christian Zionists–a contradiction of terms–are all for it. Amazing, isn’t it, Israel has even corrupted Christian evangelicals, paying their preachers to send Americans to war for Israel. What might be reducing Israel’s control over America is the weakened position of Netanyahu, under two Israeli court indictments for crimes, and by the destruction inflicted on Israel by its irresponsible attack on Iran, culminating in Netanyahu’s plea to Trump to stop the war before Israel had to sue for peace.

This leaves Trump with the upper hand. Israel now understands that it cannot exist without Washington’s protection. Thus Trump can force Netanyahu to give up the unrealistic Zionist goal of Greater Israel and comply with Trump’s vision of a colony under America’s redevelopment of the Middle East. If Trump would take this plan to the UN, it would silence Israel and the American neoconservative zionists and save us from war that could turn nuclear. If Trump establishes peace and cooperation in the Middle East, he can do the same with the West and Russia. Russia was the ally of Britain and France in both WW I and WW II. It is not difficult to come to terms with a former ally. There is no ideological reason and no territorial reason for conflict between the West and Russia.

Think about America’s waste of resources and prestige during the first quarter of the 21st century. Trillions of dollars spend destroying Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Somalia with zero gain. No one except military/security war profits got anything from these wars. There was no terrorist threat. Washington brought no one democracy, only destruction. Think about the destruction Washington brought to entire countries for no purpose than Israel’s absurd idea of a Greater Israel. The millions of dead, permanently maimed, and dislocated people, many of whom have located in Europe and the US burdening those taxpayers with their upkeep. WHO BENEFITTED??

Let’s give Trump a chance. An American partnership in the Middle East is far better than the conflicts inherent in Greater Israel. If Israel refuses to go along, Trump should just run over them. Israel is of no consequence in the world. Israel since its existence has never been anything except a cause of conflict, death, and destruction. Why a people like this has been tolerated, I do not know. Can Sunni and Shia be brought together and Muslims brought together with Jews? Seems fantastic. But perhaps they will see it as preferable to the continuation of endless bloodshed. If Netanyahu has any sense, he will let Trump rescue the Israeli people.

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Too many dead Gazans for a real ceasefire.

• Trump Says Israel Agrees To 60-Day Gaza Ceasefire, Urges Hamas To Accept (ZH)

President Trump said Tuesday that Israel has agreed on terms for a 60-day ceasefire in Gaza and warned Hamas to accept the deal before conditions worsen. Trump announced the development as he prepares to host Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for talks at the White House on Monday. The US leader has been increasing pressure on the Israeli government and Hamas to broker a ceasefire and hostage agreement and bring about an end to the war in Gaza. “My Representatives had a long and productive meeting with the Israelis today on Gaza. Israel has agreed to the necessary conditions to finalize the 60 Day CEASEFIRE, during which time we will work with all parties to end the War,” Trump wrote, saying the Qataris and Egyptians would deliver the final proposal.

“I hope, for the good of the Middle East, that Hamas takes this Deal, because it will not get better – IT WILL ONLY GET WORSE,” he said. Trump’s promise that it was his best and final offer may find a sceptical audience with Hamas. Even before the expiration of the war’s longest ceasefire in March, Trump has repeatedly issued dramatic ultimatums to pressure Hamas to agree to longer pauses in the fighting that would see the release of more hostages and a return of more aid to Gaza’s civilian populace. Israeli Minister for Strategic Affairs Ron Dermer was in Washington on Tuesday for talks with senior administration officials to discuss a potential Gaza ceasefire, Iran and other matters. Dermer was expected to meet with US Vice-President J.D. Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and special envoy Steve Witkoff.

Earlier on Tuesday, Trump repeated his hope for forging an Israel-Hamas ceasefire deal next week. Asked if it was time to put pressure on Netanyahu to get a ceasefire deal done, Trump said the Israeli prime minister was ready to come to an agreement. “He wants to,” Trump said of Netanyahu in an exchange with reporters while visiting a new immigration detention facility in Florida. “I think we’ll have a deal next week.” Talks between Israel and Hamas have repeatedly faltered over a major sticking point – whether the war should end as part of any ceasefire agreement. About 50 hostages remain captive in Gaza, with less than half believed to be alive.

The development came as over 150 international charities and humanitarian groups called on Tuesday for disbanding a controversial Israeli- and US-backed system to distribute aid in Gaza because of chaos and deadly violence against Palestinians seeking food at its sites. The joint statement by groups including Oxfam, Save the Children and Amnesty International followed the killings of at least 10 Palestinians who were seeking desperately needed food, witnesses and health officials said. Meanwhile, Israeli air strikes killed at least 37 in southern Gaza’s Khan Younis, according to Nasser Hospital. “Tents, tents they are hitting with two missiles?” asked Um Seif Abu Leda, whose son was killed in the strikes. Mourners threw flowers on the body bags.

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“On Monday, President Donald Trump lifted most US sanctions on Syria in order to facilitate the flow of foreign aid for the country’s reconstruction.”

• Syria Could Drop Demand That Israel Return The Golan Heights (RT)

Former warlord Ahmad al-Sharaa, who seized power in Syria last year, may abandon the country’s claim to sovereignty over the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights in exchange for normalized ties with West Jerusalem, according to a report by Lebanese media. Israel captured a large portion of the 1,800 square kilometer region of Syria’s Quneitra Governorate during the 1967 war and effectively annexed it in 1981. Amid the turmoil during al-Sharaa’s rise to power, the IDF seized additional territory. The IDF has also carried out multiple airstrikes against Syrian troops loyal to the current government, which West Jerusalem said were intended to protect the local Druze population, an ethnoreligious minority community which inhabits the contested region.

Lebanese broadcaster LBCI reported Monday that the two countries could normalize relations as part of a broad agreement. Under the proposed deal, Israel would recognize al-Sharaa’s legitimacy, withdraw troops from areas seized since his December takeover, and agree to Syria’s military presence near its borders with Israel and Jordan, with certain restrictions. In exchange, “Israel is expected to secure full sovereignty” over the Golan Heights, LBCI said, citing sources familiar with Syrian affairs. The report added that internal hardliner opposition, including from Hayat Tahrir al-Sham – the jihadist group formerly led by al-Sharaa – could derail the effort.

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar said Monday that Israel will maintain control of the Golan Heights under any future peace arrangement with Syria. Al-Sharaa has sought international recognition since ousting President Bashar Assad. Under former President Barack Obama, the United States aimed to remove Assad through a combination of sanctions and covert support for anti-government armed groups labeled “moderate rebels.” On Monday, President Donald Trump lifted most US sanctions on Syria in order to facilitate the flow of foreign aid for the country’s reconstruction.

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“..if Trump didn’t win, he’d leave the country. Elon replied: “There’s nowhere to go.” That moment stuck with Thiel. Mars, once a symbol of civilizational escape and ambition, no longer felt like a real option—even to Musk..”

• AI Is The Only Thing Keeping The World From Total Stagnation – Peter Thiel (Flor)

Peter Thiel just did the most mind-exploding, crazy interview I’ve ever listened to. It’s so drastic, I still don’t know what to think – other than everyone should listen to it. So I dissected it piece by piece and organized it to draw some conclusions.nThis is what you cannot miss:

1. We are stuck. Thiel still believes in his “stagnation thesis.” His point? We’ve exited a 200-year period of accelerating change—1750 to 1970 was all about breakthroughs in physical reality: faster ships, railroads, cars, planes. It culminated in the Concorde and Apollo. But since then? Nothing. We’ve made marginal progress in “the world of bits” (internet, mobile, AI), but that’s not the same as reshaping the physical world. In biotech or cancer research, for example, progress is either negligible or cloaked in over-specialization that makes it impossible to track. As Thiel puts it: “The fact that it’s so hard to answer [whether we’re progressing] is itself cause for skepticism.”

2. Our future has been stolen—and it looks nothing like Back to the Future. Back to the Future II imagined 2015 as a world of flying cars, skateboards and radical transformation. What we got instead was smartphones and cars that look the same. Thiel’s kids watching 1985 on screen couldn’t tell it apart from today. “The world seems fairly similar.” That’s the cultural proof of stagnation: if a time traveler from 1985 landed in 2025, they’d be confused by the phone, but everything else would feel familiar. And the economic metric? Ask millennials: How are you doing compared to your parents? For most, the answer is worse.

3. We need to take more risks. Biotech is stuck. “We’ve made zero progress on dementia or Alzheimer’s in 40–50 years,” Thiel says. Scientists are trapped in a dead-end “beta-amyloid” theory that doesn’t work but keeps getting funded. We need to radically increase the risks we’re willing to take in medicine, aging, and beyond. Thiel wants a cultural return to the ambition of early modernity—Francis Bacon, Condorcet—when science promised immortality, not regulation. He tells the story of taking his PayPal team to a “freezing party” in 1999, where people bought cryonics insurance. “That was the last generation who still believed they could live forever.”

4. The moment Peter Thiel realized Elon lost faith in going to Mars. In 2024, Thiel joked to Elon Musk that if Trump didn’t win, he’d leave the country. Elon replied: “There’s nowhere to go.” That moment stuck with Thiel. Mars, once a symbol of civilizational escape and ambition, no longer felt like a real option—even to Musk. Why? Because “the woke AI and the socialist government would follow you to Mars.” The dream of Mars as a frontier for freedom had died. It was no longer a science project—it had become a political one. Thiel calls 2024 “the year Elon stopped believing in Mars.”

5. Will AI become stagnationist? AI is the only real exception to our stagnation—but Thiel worries it might reinforce it. He calls AI “more than a nothingburger, less than a total transformation.” Like the internet in the 1990s, it might boost GDP by 1% a year—but won’t restart the engines of human progress. And worse: it could become conformist intelligence. Like a Netflix algorithm that generates infinite okay-ish content, AI might flood the world with blandness, not breakthroughs. “If you don’t have AI, there’s nothing going on,” Thiel says. But he also warns: if AI becomes too “woke” or compliant, it will deepen the very stagnation it claims to solve.

6. Is AI hype—or is it transhumanism? Thiel sees modern transhumanism as not ambitious enough. It’s not that changing your body is weird—it’s that it’s pathetic compared to what early modern thinkers (and even Christianity) aimed for. “Transhumanism is just changing your body. But you also need to transform your soul.” He notes: the word nature never appears in the Old Testament. The Judeo-Christian story is about transcending nature—with God’s help. The critique of today’s “trans” ideas, he argues, isn’t that they go too far. It’s that they don’t go far enough.

7. The risk of the one-world totalitarian state: how the Antichrist would take over the world. Thiel introduces his most apocalyptic idea: that existential risk (AI, nukes, bioweapons) is being used to justify global governance. This leads to the ultimate form of stagnation: “a one-world state of the Antichrist.” The logic is seductive: to avoid destruction, centralize control. Nuclear weapons? A global authority must manage them. Dangerous AI? Global compute regulation. Thiel’s framing: The atheist slogan = “One world or none.” The Christian framing = “Antichrist or Armageddon.” The twist? The Antichrist doesn’t come with innovation. He comes with regulation. He offers “peace and safety”—and people submit.

8. Is Peter Thiel building the tools for the Antichrist? Thiel’s critics could argue: if anyone’s enabling global surveillance and control, isn’t it Thiel himself—via Palantir and military tech investments? He acknowledges the irony. He doesn’t believe he’s doing that, but concedes that many of the tools he’s helped build could be used that way. He warns that we’re already ruled—softly—by global regulators. The FDA doesn’t just control drugs in the U.S., but worldwide. Same with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. “Nuclear power was supposed to be the technology of the 21st century,” he says. “And it somehow has gotten off-ramped all over the world.”

9. Are we already living under a moderate rule of the Antichrist? Thiel floats a chilling thought: what if the Antichrist isn’t a coming tyrant—but the mild technocracy we already live in? 50 years of “peace and safety” have come at the cost of progress. He cites 1 Thessalonians 5:3: “While people are saying, ‘Peace and safety,’ destruction will come on them suddenly…” Still, he insists we have agency. He rejects Calvinism and determinism. “There’s a huge scope for human freedom. Don’t wait for the lion to eat you.”

Read more …

“They were the party of free speech,” he continued. “When President Trump started advocating for free speech… the Democrats became openly for censorship.”

• Kennedy Labels US Democrats ‘War Party’ (RT)

US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has accused the Democratic Party of abandoning its traditional values and transforming into a pro-war, pro-censorship force defined largely by opposition to President Donald Trump. In a wide-ranging interview with conservative talk show host Tucker Carlson published Monday, Kennedy said the Democratic Party now instinctively reverses positions as soon as Trump adopts them. “The Democrats were the anti-war party,” Kennedy said. “But as soon as [Trump] expressed his opposition to the Ukraine war, they became the war party.” “They were the party of free speech,” he continued. “When President Trump started advocating for free speech… the Democrats became openly for censorship.”

Kennedy, a longtime Democrat who briefly ran as an independent candidate in 2024 before supporting Trump and joining his cabinet in early 2025, said he continues to champion the same principles but now faces opposition from former allies. “These were people I was friends with my whole life and I have not changed… but the party has just a knee-jerk reaction against anything that is Trump,” he told Carlson. Kennedy added that Democrats, once critical of the CIA and trade deals like the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), shifted to support both once Trump voiced criticism. He also accused the party of undermining women’s sports, noting that his uncle, Senator Edward Kennedy, had helped write Title IX, a US federal civil rights law that prohibits sex-based discrimination.

“You can go on and on with those examples, but President Trump is literally dictating the platform of the Democratic Party. Anything that he says, they’re going to be against,” he said, noting that this pattern reflects a deeper problem in American politics. “You know that partisanship by its nature is dishonest and it is the enemy of democracy,” RFK Jr. warned. “And in George Washington’s farewell speech, he said that he was very frightened about the rise of the political party because they would become self-interested rather than patriotic.”Kennedy, the founder of the anti-vaccine group Children’s Health Defense, has gained prominence in the US for questioning the safety and effectiveness of childhood inoculations and promoting the claim that they are linked to autism –a theory widely rejected by the scientific community.

He was also a vocal critic of the World Health Organization’s Covid-19 response measures, including lockdowns and the rapid rollout of experimental vaccines. Despite his controversial reputation, Kennedy denies being opposed to immunization, noting that his own children have been vaccinated. He has repeatedly stated that he advocates for stricter safety testing and more rigorous studies. After Kennedy endorsed Trump, the president vowed to give him broad authority over healthcare policy, saying he would let Kennedy “go wild.” Kennedy said most opposition to his policies as Health Secretary comes not from industry experts but from media and political operatives. “I get opposition from proxies to the industry. Yes. And I think the major opposition that I feel is from the mainstream media and from Democrats,” he said.

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“And the Democrats have him pegged as a guy who’s sort of sitting in the Cabinet meeting talking about how can we make billionaires richer. He’s the opposite of that. He’s a genuine populist,” Kennedy said.

• RFK Jr. Unloads Disturbing Vaccine Secrets On Tucker (VF)

It’s not every day an active HHS Secretary sits down for 90 minutes straight with Tucker Carlson. But that’s exactly what happened, and Kennedy instantly seized Carlson’s attention with a chilling story of CDC corruption. He revealed that the health agency buried a 1999 internal study led by researcher Thomas Verstraten, which showed an alarming 1135% increase in autism risk from the hepatitis B vaccine. Kennedy said the researchers were “shocked” by the findings. So what did they do? They covered it up, according to Kennedy. “They got rid of all the older children essentially and just had younger children who are too young to be diagnosed [with autism].” RFK Jr. then explained the real reason why your pediatrician will kick you out of their practice for refusing vaccines.

“There’s a published article out there now that says that 50% of revenues to most pediatricians come from vaccines.” It’s all about the money. The higher the vaccination rate, the bigger the bonus. “And that’s why your pediatrician, if you say I want to go slow on the vaccines… will throw you out of his practice because you’re now jeopardizing that bonus structure.” To the claim that the vaccine–autism link has been “debunked,” Kennedy had a message for Anderson Cooper, Jake Tapper, and everyone who smugly insists on it. “None of the vaccines given to children in the first six months of life have ever been studied for autism.” Let that sink in. He went further, revealing that the CDC actually did find a link when they studied the DTaP vaccine.

But they dismissed it. Kennedy said they claimed it “didn’t count” because the data came from VAERS—the very system they use to track vaccine injuries. So when the evidence pointed to harm, they simply claimed their own system wasn’t reliable enough and took no steps to fix it. The vaccine corruption didn’t end there. Kennedy attested that the CDC killed off a vaccine injury reporting system that actually worked—because it worked too well. It showed that 1 in 37 vaccines caused an injury. Tucker was stunned. “Of all vaccines?” he asked. “Yeah,” Kennedy confirmed. RFK Jr. explained that the CDC funded a study led by researcher Ross Lazarus. It compared a sophisticated machine-counting system to VAERS. What did they find? VAERS was failing to catch over 99% of vaccine injuries.

The new system also revealed that 2.6% of all vaccinations resulted in an injury. So what did the CDC do? They shut it down in 2010. And they’re still using VAERS today—even though it’s a completely inadequate system. But Kennedy didn’t stop at old vaccine scandals. He also broke down Pfizer’s own COVID vaccine trial data. That trial showed a 23% higher death rate in the vaccinated group. Pfizer gave 21,720 people the vaccine and 21,728 the placebo. One vaccinated person died of COVID. Two placebo recipients died. They used this tiny difference to claim “100% effective” based on relative risk reduction. But in absolute terms, it took 22,000 vaccinations to save one life. Over six months, 21 vaccinated participants died of all causes, compared to 17 in the placebo group—a 23.5% higher death rate.

And then there’s vaccine spokesperson Paul Offit, often seen on CNN and other mainstream networks. Kennedy shared an infuriating story about how he literally “voted himself rich” on the rotavirus vaccine. While serving on the CDC’s ACIP committee, Offit voted to add rotavirus vaccination to the childhood schedule—even as he was developing his own competing vaccine. He guaranteed demand for his product. The first approved rotavirus vaccine, RotaShield, was yanked from the market for causing dangerous intussusception. Offit’s vaccine, RotaTeq, eventually replaced it. He and his partners later sold their rights to Merck for $186 million. As RFK Jr. said, Offit literally “voted himself rich.” When Carlson mentioned Fauci, Kennedy revealed how Fauci funded research that helped scientists hide evidence of lab-made viruses. The technique, called “seamless ligation,” allowed researchers to engineer viruses in a lab without leaving telltale genetic fingerprints.

RFK Jr. explained: “One of his fundees, Ralph Baric, from the University of North Carolina, developed a technique called the seamless ligation technique, which is a technique for hiding the laboratory origins of a manipulated virus.” “… normally if there’s a virus manipulated, researchers can look at the DNA sequences and they can say this thing was created in a lab. Ralph Baric had developed a technique that he called the no-see technique and its technical name was seamless ligation, and it was a way of hiding evidence of human tampering.” He called it the exact opposite of what real public health work should be. Carlson cut in, saying, “That’s what you would do if you’re creating viruses for biological warfare.”

The conversation shifted to Trump, leading to one of the biggest highlights of the entire interview. First, Kennedy explained that Trump chose his cabinet in an unorthodox way: he wanted to see three clips of each candidate performing on TV before considering them for the job. “One of the things with President Trump is that he really knows how to pick talent… For every one of the positions that he picked, he wanted to see three clips of them performing on TV. He’s very conscious of the fact that these people are going to be out selling his program to the public,” Kennedy said. That’s when Kennedy ended the interview with a bang, sharing his genuine thoughts about Trump for three straight minutes. It was one of the standout moments of the entire conversation.

If you’re on the fence about Trump, listen to Kennedy here. It might just change how you see him. “I had him pegged as a narcissist, when narcissists are incapable of empathy. And he’s one of the most empathetic people that I’ve met,” Kennedy said. “He’s immensely curious, inquisitive, and immensely knowledgeable. He’s encyclopedic in certain areas that you wouldn’t expect,” he continued. Kennedy added that Trump genuinely cares about soldiers who go to war, citing how Trump “always talks about the casualties on both sides” of the Russia–Ukraine conflict. “Whether it’s vaccines or Medicaid or Medicare, he’s always thinking about how this impacts the little guy. And the Democrats have him pegged as a guy who’s sort of sitting in the Cabinet meeting talking about how can we make billionaires richer. He’s the opposite of that. He’s a genuine populist,” Kennedy said.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

Rogan

Hep B

99%

Sun
https://twitter.com/FredsFarm247/status/1939983704379592749

PIANO
https://twitter.com/Ducnghia16/status/1939746838510543130

Cupcakes
https://twitter.com/gunsnrosesgirl3/status/1939990438389092561

Firefly

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle June 29 2025

Jun 292025
 
 June 29, 2025  Posted by at 9:32 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  43 Responses »


Paul Gauguin Palm trees on Martinique 1887

 

• Trump’s Iran Strike: Executive Leadership Versus Autopen Presidency (Stepman)
• A War, Three Victories, And The Usual Loser (Dionísio)
• Understanding The War On The Southern Front Against Russia (Helmer)
• Senate Republicans Revise Trump Tax Bill To Win Over Holdouts (ZH)
• Senate Advances Trump Tax & Spending Bill In Saturday Night Vote (ZH)
• Zelensky Is ‘Politically Dead’ – Russia’s Top UN Diplomat (RT)
• Scott Bessent Explains Response to Canada’s Digital Services Tax (CTH)
• The Chilling Jurisprudence of Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson (Turley)
• Ukraine In NATO Would Mean WWIII – Orban (RT)
• IDF Soldiers Confirm Lethal Weapons Routinely Used On Crowds In Gaza (ZH)
• Red Sea Ships Faking Links To Russia And China To Dodge Attacks – Reuters (RT)
• 12,000 German Companies Went Bust In Six Months (RT)
• Supreme Court Decision Allows States To Defund Planned Parenthood (ZH)
• J.K. Rowling Destroyed Trans Ideology With One Savage Tweet (Margolis)
• 1900 Scientists Say ‘Climate Change Not Caused By CO2’ (Keenan)

 

 

 

 

I have an infection in my left eye (cornea). I see nothing with it. But because anti-biotics eyedrops seem to work (I don’t see the difference), doctors have so far decided against surgery. It will be a long term healing process. In the meantime, i am stuck at home. Can’t drive. The hospital visits have already cost me a fortune in cabs (50 euros each way, 4x a week). If you see typos, now you know why.

BTW: donations to TAE via Paypal and Patreon have fallen off a cliff over the past year. We can’t keep going like this. We should have a serious conversation about that. I’ve said it before: if our 5,000-strong core group of readers would all pay just $1 per month, we would be fine. It is easy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thiel
https://twitter.com/upholdreality/status/1938609364274729106

https://twitter.com/RussiaIsntEnemy/status/1938622902808563915

 

 

 

 

“Whatever one can say about the wisdom of striking Iran or of the president’s larger foreign policy strategy, it’s hard to say this is anything other than a success..”

• Trump’s Iran Strike: Executive Leadership Versus Autopen Presidency (Stepman)

“This wasn’t a Pentagon operation. This was a Donald Trump operation. He came up with the PR. He chose the plans. He chose the day.” That’s a quote from news site Axios of a reportedly senior administration official about President Donald Trump’s role in conducting the operation to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities on Sunday. Lost in debates about what American policy should be toward Iran, Israel, and the Middle East was a reminder about the need for executive leadership in handling foreign policy crises. It’s a demonstration of the danger the previous White House put the country in by not having a commander in chief with his wits about him. Not only was this episode a demonstration of Trump’s individual abilities as a president, but it’s also a lesson in the difference between a presidency directed by individual initiative and accountability versus a presidency by committee.

While plenty of commentators on the Left and seemingly as much on the Right were critical of Trump’s decisions from moment to moment, what seemed clear is that Trump had a larger strategic plan and executed on it. Trump has been, even before his political career began, consistent about his belief that Iran should not get a nuclear weapon. A document released in February practically telegraphed his position of applying “maximum pressure” on the government of Iran to get it to abandon its nuclear ambitions and stop supporting terrorism. He then went on a major “commerce, not chaos” campaign in the Middle East to ensure friendly, cooperative relations with Iran’s neighbors. Trump gave Iran a 60-day window to change its ways.

When that didn’t happen, he was happy to let a regional ally strike the country while at the last minute of a short and decisive campaign, the U.S. military dropped some very big bombs on Iran’s nuclear facilities. Now, despite a few initial hiccups, it appears we have a ceasefire and hopefully the end of Iran’s nuclear program for a while. There were a lot of ways this timeline could have gone very badly. But Trump not only managed the difficult diplomacy of the strikes, he also staved off many concerns about the possibility of another American “forever war” in the Middle East that the American people have rightfully become deeply weary with and wary of. Not to mention, after some drastic changes at the Pentagon in the first days of his second term, he trusted the U.S. military to get a limited but challenging job done.

Whatever one can say about the wisdom of striking Iran or of the president’s larger foreign policy strategy, it’s hard to say this is anything other than a success. Trump’s style of leadership couldn’t be more different from Joe Biden’s, well, “leadership.” The contrast between Trump’s “12-day war” and the previous administration’s disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan is a good place to start. Both Trump and Biden had publicly expressed the desire to leave Afghanistan for years leading up to the withdrawal. America’s continual presence in that country two decades after 9/11 had become deeply unpopular.

Read more …

“This time, we witness an empire already stripped of its rings, now forced to sacrifice its fingers.”

• A War, Three Victories, And The Usual Loser (Dionísio)

Will there no longer be wars like in the past, where the victorious side was easily identified? The truth is, considering the statements and propaganda from the three main contenders involved in the conflict sparked by Israel, something unusual has happened: all parties have declared themselves winners! Before analyzing the relative positions of each contender, we must establish the following preliminary points: This ambiguity in how we classify the outcome of the dispute for each party is typical of the intermediate moment we find ourselves in. Consequently, each party’s assessments suffer from the partial way they analyze the event, focusing on the relationship between their starting point and their self-defined endpoint.

The problem is that the “endpoint” not only differs for each party but also the outcome—the dialectical synthesis of the Israel-US/Iran-Islam-BRICS contradiction—remains unpredictable at this stage. None of the parties can claim to have reached or know the final result. In this sense, everyone settles for tactical advantages, more or less significant. In this context, all can claim victory because we are still in that intermediate phase where advances, retreats, losses, and gains are not only mutual but can also be overvalued by some at the expense of others. When the final reckoning comes, this ambiguity will disappear—only to resurface later.

Let us remember that even in the embryonic phase of the Ukraine war, the entire West claimed victory. On the other side, the Russian Federation did the same. As the conflict evolved and its fundamental components became clearer, it became increasingly difficult for the parties to ambiguously classify their positions. Today, it is undeniable that the Russian Federation holds a significant advantage, and the West is beginning to admit defeat. The warmongering and militaristic paranoia gripping the European Union stems from this desperation caused by the looming sense of defeat, now impossible to hide. No matter how much the conflict between Iran and the US/Israel is frozen, no matter how much the final escalation is avoided, there will come a moment of reckoning. Until then, everyone will claim victory—until they can no longer do so.

A conflict that did not begin now, but 78 years ago.This conflict took decisive shape—became inevitable—with the Nakba in 1948 and continued with the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948. The shockwaves from the occupation of Palestinian territories and over a century of Western intervention in the region inevitably led to events like the Islamic Revolution, secretly supported by the US and UK at the time. In 1979, the most powerful contender the West and Israel would face in their hegemonic dominance of the Middle East was born. A contender hardened by decades of sanctions, regime change attempts, a brutal war waged by the US and Saddam Hussein, and constant sabotage, boycotts, and corruption on its soil. As the saying goes, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.

Sherman Narwani of The Cradle aptly notes that this US intervention marks a new moment in Western Asia, signaling the end of “proxy wars.” In her assessment, in a conventional war, with boots on the ground and considering geographical advantages, Iran is a peer to the US. This time, we witness an empire already stripped of its rings, now forced to sacrifice its fingers. Lacking a suicidal country whose elite would throw itself against Iran in the name of “democracy and human rights”—as others did, like Iraq, always with disastrous results for themselves—and with the Arab emirs paying in oil and petrodollars to be left alone, the US oligarchy had to turn to its prodigal son and its resources to attack Iran.

This was done under the assumption that if things went badly for Israel, the outpost could always count on the big brother (literally, figuratively, and in the Orwellian sense). In Ukraine, NATO and the US also found it necessary to get directly involved in the conflict, even if masking—with Russian consent—this intervention with “contractors,” “technicians,” “consultants,” and the like. The example of Georgia, among others, shows that the Ukrainian example is being studied in the region, just as the Syrian, Libyan, and Iraqi ones were. With the rings gone, it’s time for the empire to use its fingers.

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“Putin wishes better but knows – especially now – that the good Germans are outnumbered and outgunned, and the bad Germans are planning for worse..”

• Understanding The War On The Southern Front Against Russia (Helmer)

In warfighting against Russia’s enemies, President Vladimir Putin makes mistakes. He admits as much. Unequalled among the current leaders of the enemy states, he has the capability to correct his mistakes quickly. That’s one of the reasons for his unequalled domestic voter support. Also, Putin is an attentive listener; he brooks criticism on condition it is not intended in a plan for regime change. Every ten years or so, Putin knows that Russia’s main enemies – the US, Germany, the UK – have come up with, will always come up with regime-changing schemes employing Trojan horses, Fifth Columns and quislings inside Russia. These started for Putin with the Chechen secession. After he had defeated that, they were followed by the plotting of the oligarchs around Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Boris Berezovsky and ended with Alexei Navalny.

Putin is well enough educated in the methods of analysis of Marxism-Leninism to understand that for Russia, regime change and warfighting, also class struggle, race war and imperialism, are constant and inevitable. Because of what the Germans did to the Russian people at the time of his father, mother, brother, and uncles, Putin knows there is only the deterrence of superior force to stop the Germans repeating themselves; killing Germans is a generational necessity for Russia’s survival. Putin wishes better but knows – especially now – that the good Germans are outnumbered and outgunned, and the bad Germans are planning for worse with US encouragement and armament, as before.

With the British and the Americans, Putin has tried a combination of traditional economic inducements, regular espionage, and manipulation in the manner of Felix Dzerzhinsky’s Trust.* In the calculus of the force required for divide-and-rule and warfighting against the Anglo-American empires, Putin has also understood that time is needed to rebuild Russia’s capacities, economic and military, from the level of destruction which Washington inflicted through the time of the Gorbachev and Yeltsin capitulations. In correcting his predecessors’ mistakes and their misjudgements of the Americans, Putin has been a quick study but a slow learner. Then there is Putin’s philosemitism in dealing with the Jewish state.

Joseph Stalin believed Israel to be an anti-imperial ally, but it has turned into a battleship for the empire in destroying all of Russia’s traditional Arab allies, and now Iran — the last holdout before Putin must fight a war on the southern front. There, Putin’s policy towards Iran combines two hundred years of Russian trial-and-error, some of the errors fatal ones. In the tradition of male loyalties in the Russian tusovka – mishpocha is the Jewish concept – Putin is both comfortable with and dutiful towards the Jewish men he shared his Leningrad boyhood with. Such loyalty is lifelong. No Russian can forget – even if Americans, Germans and British make a point and policy of forgetting – that they survived the war but not their grandparents, fathers, brothers and womenfolk.

Putin has been persuaded that the 15% of Israel’s population who are Russian by language, history, and habit are an extension of the tusovka to which he should show the loyalty which survivors must show each other. There has been nothing comparable towards the Iranian side; towards the Arab world, genuine Russian sympathy and cultural orientalism died with Yevgeny Primakov (1929-2015). Ties of trade, investment, and military cooperation are a poor substitute, as unpredictable and as fraudulent as the spot and future markets in commodities, including money itself.

Read more …

Too big, too beautiful?!

• Senate Republicans Revise Trump Tax Bill To Win Over Holdouts (ZH)

Senate Republicans unveiled a revised version of President Trump’s $4.2 trillion tax package early Saturday morning, making targeted concessions on state tax deductions, Medicaid policy, and renewable energy provisions in an effort to unite their caucus ahead of a July 4 deadline set by the White House. The updated draft reflects compromises among Senate GOP factions that have sparred for weeks over how aggressively to cut social safety net programs and whether to roll back clean energy incentives enacted under the Biden administration. The legislation, if passed, would serve as the centerpiece of Mr. Trump’s second-term economic agenda. Senate Majority Leader John Thune announced that voting on the bill would begin Saturday afternoon, with a final vote potentially coming as soon as Sunday.

If it does pass the Senate, Republican leaders have indicated they will call House members back to Washington early next week in hopes of sending the legislation to the president’s desk before Independence Day. However, it remains uncertain whether all 50 Republican senators are prepared to back the measure. Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin said Saturday on Fox News that he would oppose beginning debate on the bill immediately, citing the need for more time. “This is an important bill,” Johnson said. “There’s no need to rush it.” To address concerns from House Republicans representing high-tax states, the new draft raises the cap on the state and local tax (SALT) deduction from $10,000 to $40,000 for five years. The cap would snap back to its original level thereafter, with a modest 1% annual increase during the interim period. The deduction would begin phasing out for taxpayers earning more than $500,000 annually.

A House provision aimed at curbing SALT workarounds used by pass-through businesses was stripped from the text. While fiscal conservatives have criticized the SALT compromise as overly generous, the deal is expected to secure the support of swing-district Republicans and has been endorsed by the White House. Senate Republicans also removed a controversial Section 899 “revenge tax” on foreign companies and investors following concerns from Wall Street and a request from Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. The legislation makes permanent the individual and corporate tax cuts first enacted in 2017 and introduces new temporary breaks for tipped workers, seniors, and car buyers. In a nod to moderate Republicans, the revised bill creates a $25 billion rural hospital fund intended to mitigate the effects of Medicaid spending reductions that critics warn could threaten services in underserved areas.

Senator Susan Collins of Maine had pressed for a $100 billion allocation but has not yet commented on whether the smaller fund will earn her support. The new version delays the full impact of a 3.5% cap on state Medicaid provider taxes from 2031 to 2032. The cap, which would begin phasing in by 2028, applies only to states that expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act. Additionally, the bill imposes new work requirements for Medicaid recipients and would require ACA-expansion beneficiaries to contribute to their care through co-pays or deductibles. Republicans accelerated the phaseout of tax credits for wind and solar energy projects, now requiring such projects to be fully operational by the end of 2027 to qualify. That change, reportedly supported by Mr. Trump, could impact companies like NextEra Energy, the nation’s largest renewable developer.

Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer criticized the change, warning on social media that the rollback would “jack up your electric bills and jeopardize hundreds of thousands of jobs.” The bill also ends the $7,500 electric vehicle tax credit sooner than earlier versions proposed, cutting it off after September 30, 2025, including for used and commercial EVs. A separate provision reinstated in the draft would authorize the sale of up to 1.2 million acres of federal land across 11 western states for housing and community development, a measure pushed by Senator Mike Lee of Utah. The plan could raise up to $6 billion but faces resistance from GOP senators in affected states. Tax credits for hydrogen production, originally slated to end this year, would now continue through 2028 for projects started by then.

The legislation includes steep cuts to funding for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and federal food assistance programs, while increasing allocations for the U.S.-Mexico border wall. It preserves $15 million in funding for a task force to study alternatives to the IRS Direct File program, though it drops language that would have terminated the free filing service entirely — a defeat for tax software providers like Intuit. A proposed tax on money transfers by non-citizens was scaled back from 3.5% to 1%, a win for companies like Western Union and MoneyGram. Finally, the bill would raise the debt ceiling by $5 trillion, a move intended to avert a potential federal default projected for as early as August. With internal GOP divisions still simmering, the path to final passage remains uncertain. Yet with Independence Day looming, Senate Republicans are betting that the new concessions will be enough to unify their ranks — and deliver a long-sought legislative victory for the president.

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Elon Musk [..], calling it “utterly insane and destructive,” and that it will “destroy millions of jobs in America and cause immense strategic harm to our country!”

• Senate Advances Trump Tax & Spending Bill In Saturday Night Vote (ZH)

Update (2335ET): Senate Republicans narrowly advanced President Trump’s tax and spending package, as GOP lawmakers in both chambers are hoping to pass the legislation by the 4th of July. Now that the bill has advanced, it will be followed by a Democrat-demand to read the entire 1,000-page bill on the floor (total children) before a maximum 20 hours of debate on the legislation and a multi-hour vote-o-rama, putting it on course for final passage from Sunday into Monday. Two Republicans voted against the bill; Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) – who opposed raising the debt ceiling by $5 trillion, and Thom Tillis (R-NC), who says the ‘Big Beautiful Bill’ could cost his state heavily when it comes to Medicaid funding. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) flipped his vote from “no” to “aye,” while Sens. Mike Lee (UT), Rick Scott (FL) and Cynthia Lummis (WY) also voted yes.

There was drama into the home stretch… less than an hour after the vote opened up, Sens. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), Lee, and Scott, hadn’t made an appearance on the Senate floor. Paul and Tillis had previously announced that they would oppose the motion to proceed, and could not support the bill in its current form. When Murkowski finally sauntered onto the floor, Thune quickly approached her along with Sens. Barrasso, Graham, and Senate Finance Committee Chairman Mike Crapo (R-ID), who peppered her with demands – as one does when it comes to Lisa Murkowski…

Update (1718ET): Elon Musk has weighed in on the Senate’s latest iteration of President Trump’s tax and spending bill, calling it “utterly insane and destructive,” and that it will “destroy millions of jobs in America and cause immense strategic harm to our country!”

Musk also called it ‘political suicide.’

Read more …

“Ukrainians are our brothers, no doubt about it. But the clique that came to rule them – it is a regime, it is not a government.”

“..The Ukrainian leader failed to deliver on his promises and stole billions in aid..”

• Zelensky Is ‘Politically Dead’ – Russia’s Top UN Diplomat (RT)

Ukraine’s “expired” leader Vladimir Zelensky is “politically dead” and refuses to step down to avoid accountability for his actions, Russian UN envoy Vassily Nebenzia has told RT’s Rick Sanchez. In an interview on Sanchez Effect aired on Friday, Nebenzia accused Zelensky of betraying the promises that brought him to power and dragging Ukraine into a wider conflict. He referenced Zelensky’s campaign pledge to end the fighting in Donbass, which the Kiev regime and its Western backers derailed by violating the 2014-15 Minsk agreements. “Zelensky came to power on the promise to end the war in Donbass… He promised one thing, but he turned 180 degrees… Politically, Zelensky is already dead,” Nebenzia stated.

Nebenzia said Zelensky is holding on to power to avoid the consequences of prolonging the conflict with Russia and misusing Western funds provided as aid. “The end of his presidency may entail something for him that he is trying to avoid at all costs: Reporting on the money stolen and the loss of the people whom he failed miserably,” Nebenzia stated. “So he has all the reasons… to cling to power and not to hold elections.” Ukrainians are our brothers, no doubt about it. But the clique that came to rule them – it is a regime, it is not a government. “They stole billions of dollars out of the aid they were receiving. That’s an open secret,” he said, adding that Kiev has already been asked to report on the aid but has failed to do so. “I think that when finally it comes to it, the revelations will be very dire.”

Zelensky has remained in office since his term expired in May, suspending elections due to martial law. He insists that he has the right to remain in office, though the constitution stipulates that presidential duties should pass to the parliament speaker. Russia has said it is open to talks with Ukraine but questions the legality of any deals made with the current government in Kiev. President Vladimir Putin recently said he would meet with Zelensky but called into question his authority to sign a treaty, as “the signature must come from legitimate authorities, otherwise, whoever comes after [Zelensky] will toss it to the dumpster.”

Read more …

“..the EU doesn’t have a digital services tax, but some European countries do. President Trump is factoring in those targeted tariffs against our tech industry..”

• Scott Bessent Explains Response to Canada’s Digital Services Tax (CTH)

I was unaware until this interview the July 1st digital services tax that Canada is going to apply to U.S. tech companies is retroactive in application. Over a billion dollars will be due on Monday as a result of Canada’s targeting. Duplicitous Snow Mexicans. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent outlines the details of what Canada did and why President Trump is responding so forcefully. Bessent also explains that the EU doesn’t have a digital services tax, but some European countries do. President Trump is factoring in those targeted tariffs against our tech industry as he seeks to execute new trade agreements with the EU.

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Supreme Court catfight?!

• The Chilling Jurisprudence of Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson (Turley)

For most citizens, the release of Supreme Court opinions is about as exciting as watching paint dry, particularly in a case dealing with the limits of district courts in issuing universal injunctions. Yet Friday’s Trump v. CASA case included a virtual slugfest between Justice Amy Coney Barrett and Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. The decision was one of the biggest of the term. The Court moved to free the Administration from an onslaught of orders from district judges seeking to block the President in areas ranging from the downsizing of government to immigration. However, it was the departure of the normally staid court analysis that attracted the most attention. The tenor of Jackson’s language shocked not just many court watchers, but her colleagues. It seemed ripped from the signs carried just a couple of weeks earlier in the “No Kings” protests.

The Court often deals with issues that deeply divide the nation. Yet it tends to calm the waters by engaging in measured, reasoned analysis — showing the nation that these are matters upon which people can have good-faith disagreements. But that culture of civility and mutual respect has been under attack in recent years. Not long ago, the Court was rocked by the leaking of the draft of the Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade. That was followed by furious protests against conservative justices at their homes and an attempted assassination of Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

There was also a change in the tenor of the exchanges in oral argument and opinions between the justices. Recently, during the argument over the use of national injunctions in May, Chief Justice John Roberts was clearly fed up with Justice Sotomayor interrupting government counsel with pointed questions and commentary, finally asking Sotomayor, “Will you please let us hear his answer?” This hyperbole seemed to border on hysteria in the Jackson dissent. The most junior justice effectively accused her colleagues of being toadies for tyranny. It proved too much for the majority, which pushed back on the overwrought rhetoric. While the language may seem understated in comparison to what we regularly hear in Congress, it was the equivalent of a virtual cage match for the Court.

Some of us have argued that our system is working just as designed, particularly as these issues work through the courts. The courts have ruled for and against this Administration as they struggle with the difficult lines of authority between the branches. Liberals who claim “democracy is dying” seem to view democracy as getting what you want when you want it. It was, therefore, distressing to see Jackson picking up on the “No Kings” theme, warning about drifting toward “a rule-of-kings governing system” She said that limiting the power of individual judges to freeze the entire federal government was “enabling our collective demise. At the very least, I lament that the majority is so caught up in minutiae of the Government’s self-serving, finger-pointing arguments that it misses the plot.”

The “minutiae” dismissed by Jackson happen to be the statutory and constitutional authority of federal courts. It is the minutiae that distinguish the rule of law from mere judicial impulse. Justice Barrett clearly had had enough with the self-aggrandizing rhetoric. She delivered a haymaker in writing that “JUSTICE JACKSON would do well to heed her own admonition: “[E]veryone, from the President on down, is bound by law.” Ibid. That goes for judges too.” She added, “We will not dwell on JUSTICE JACKSON’s argument, which is at odds with more than two centuries’ worth of precedent, not to mention the Constitution itself. We observe only this: JUSTICE JACKSON decries an imperial Executive while embracing an imperial Judiciary.” In other words, the danger to democracy is found in judges acting like kings. Barrett explained to her three liberal colleagues that “when a court concludes that the Executive Branch has acted unlawfully, the answer is not for the court to exceed its power, too.”

The last term has laid bare some of the chilling jurisprudence of Justice Jackson, including a certain exasperation with having to closely follow the text of laws. (In an earlier dissent this term, Jackson lashed out against the limits of textualism and argued for courts to free themselves from the confines — or shall we say the “minutiae” — of statutory language). In this opinion, Barrett slams Jackson for pursuing other diversions “because analyzing the governing statute involves boring ‘legalese.’” Again, what Jackson refers to as “legalese” is the heart of the judicial function in constraining courts under Article III. Untethered by statutory or constitutional text, it allows the courts to float free from the limits of the Constitution. For many, that is not an escape into minutiae but madness without clear lines for judicial power.

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“We do not want to die for Ukraine. We don’t want our sons to come back in a coffin. We don’t want an Afghanistan next door..”

• Ukraine In NATO Would Mean WWIII – Orban (RT)

Ukrainian accession to NATO would lead to an immediate all-out war with Russia and World War III, according to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban. He has also cautioned against hastily admitting Ukraine into the EU. Budapest has long opposed Brussels’ policies on the Ukraine conflict, including weapons deliveries and sanctions on Russia. It has also urged against integrating Ukraine into NATO and the EU. In a post on X on Saturday, Orban wrote that Ukrainian membership in NATO “would mean war with Russia, and World War 3 the very next day.” He added that the “EU’s reckless rush to admit Ukraine would pull the frontlines into the heart of Europe.” The Hungarian prime minister described the EU leadership’s approach as “insanity,” vowing not to “let them turn Europe into a battlefield.

Orban’s X post came after an interview with Hungarian media on Friday, in which he argued that the admission of Ukraine into the EU would ruin the entire bloc, including Hungary’s economy. He previously outlined his concerns over cheap Ukrainian produce undercutting Hungarian farmers. He added that Ukraine’s borders and population will remain fluid for as long as the conflict with Russia lasts, making EU membership untenable.] On Thursday, Budapest vetoed a joint EU statement on Ukraine at the Foreign Affairs Council in Brussels, effectively blocking Kiev’s accession talks. Under EU rules, unanimous approval from all 27 member states is required to initiate the process. According to a communique issued by the bloc, the issue is expected to be brought up again at the council’s next meeting in October.

Commenting on his country’s stance earlier this week, Orban cited the results of a consultative vote in Hungary that ran from mid-April to June 20, which asked: “Do you support Ukraine’s European Union membership?” According to the prime minister, 95% of more than 2 million participants rejected Ukraine’s EU aspirations. Earlier this month, Orban insisted that even though the Ukraine conflict is “unwinnable… war-hungry politicians want us to believe that we must continue the war.” “We do not want to die for Ukraine. We don’t want our sons to come back in a coffin. We don’t want an Afghanistan next door,” he said, calling for a diplomatic solution instead.

He went on to criticize the increasing militarization of the EU, for which the European Council formally approved a €150 billion ($171 billion) borrowing mechanism last month. Moscow has long opposed Ukraine’s bid to join NATO, but had until recently maintained a neutral stance regarding its EU ambitions. However, in light of the EU’s “rabid” militarization, senior Russian officials have recently expressed reservations regarding EU membership as well.

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Yes, this is how bad it is.

• IDF Soldiers Confirm Lethal Weapons Routinely Used On Crowds In Gaza (ZH)

Soon after the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) began distributing aid to war-torn Gaza in May, disturbing reports emerged of Israeli soldiers killing unarmed Palestinians approaching aid points for food. As the world’s eyes turned from Gaza to Israel attack on Iran, the pace of these reported killings increased — with multiple incidents claiming more than 50 lives each. Now, Israel’s oldest daily newspaper has dropped a bombshell report, with Israeli soldiers and officers confirming the routine use of deadly force on unarmed Palestinians as a barbaric form of crowd control — with the practice carried out under orders from superior officers.

Gaza’s Hamas-run health authority says 529 Palestinians have been killed at humanitarian aid sites or while waiting for food trucks just since late May, when the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) took on the task of distributing food in the strip. While Israel’s defenders invariably discredit Gaza casualty counts, US Army Colonel Nathan McCormack, who previously headed up the Joint Chiefs’ Levant and Egypt branch, has said, “We (Department of Defense, Department of State and the U.S. Intelligence Community) consider the Gaza Health Ministry figures to be generally reliable.” A shadowy organization, GHF is led by an evangelical Christian leader with close ties to Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Trump.

Employing a rhetorical device frequently used when Israel is accused of lethal wrongdoing, Netanyahu dismissed the newspaper’s report as a “blood libel” against the IDF The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) called the soldiers’ and officers’ accounts “vicious lies designed to discredit…the most moral army in the world.” However, perhaps bowing to the sheer breadth of the report by Haaretz, the IDF says it’s investigating the allegations. According to the enlisted soldiers and officers who spoke to Haaretz, a variety of deadly weapons have been routinely used as a means of communicating whether Palestinians have permission to approach the aid stations.

“The distribution centers typically open for just one hour each morning. According to officers and soldiers who served in their areas, the IDF fires at people who arrive before opening hours to prevent them from approaching, or again after the centers close, to disperse them. Since some of the shooting incidents occurred at night – ahead of the opening – it’s possible that some civilians couldn’t see the boundaries of the designated area.” – Haaretz.

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“Windward said 55 vessels sent a total of 101 atypical ID messages, such as “China owned” or “Russian crude..”

• Red Sea Ships Faking Links To Russia And China To Dodge Attacks – Reuters (RT)

Ships traveling near the Red Sea and Persian Gulf have begun transmitting false Russian and Chinese affiliations to avoid potential attacks, Reuters reported on Thursday, citing maritime risk analytics firm Windward and vessel tracking data.= Tehran, which controls the Strait of Hormuz – a key route for global oil – threatened to close it if the US joined Israeli strikes on its nuclear sites. Iran’s parliament reportedly approved the move on Sunday, though the final decision lies with the Supreme National Security Council. Meanwhile, the Iran-backed Houthis have attacked ships in the Red Sea since late 2023, citing solidarity with the Palestinians during the Gaza conflict.

While US President Donald Trump brokered a deal in May to halt the attacks in exchange for a pause in Western airstrikes, the group has since warned that it would target US ships if Washington backed Israeli attacks on Iran. Although a ceasefire was reached between Israel and Iran earlier this week, Ami Daniel, the CEO of Windward, said shipping companies remain skeptical about vessel safety in the area. “The perception among shipowners is that due to the convoluted nature of shipping it’s hard to know or ascertain clearly a chain of ownership to nationalities which may be under higher threat in shipping, namely the UK, US and Israel,” Daniel told Reuters.

Windward said 55 vessels sent a total of 101 atypical ID messages, such as “China owned” or “Russian crude,” between June 12 and 24 in the Persian Gulf and Red Sea. The firm said these were likely used to reduce the risk of being mistaken for Western or Israel-linked ships. A Panama-flagged ship en route to Pakistan signaled “PKKHI all Chinese,” while a Singapore-flagged vessel transmitted “Vsl no link Israel.” Daniel added that under normal circumstances vessels transmit destinations or neutral terms such as “For Orders,” while some use “Armed Guards on Board” in high-risk zones. But after Israel’s strikes on Iran, the use of non-standard messages spiked and spread from the Red Sea into the Persian Gulf.

News of ships disguising vessel identities comes as the West continues to sanction what it sees as Russian-linked maritime activity. The EU and US have accused Moscow and its trade partners of using a “shadow fleet” of tankers operating outside Western insurance rules to bypass sanctions. In May, the EU blacklisted 189 additional vessels – many flying the flags of other countries – bringing the total under restriction to 342. Brussels is currently discussing another package that would add another 77 ships to the list. Russia has repeatedly denounced the sanctions against its shipping sector as illegal. Presidential aide Nikolay Patrushev earlier warned that Western efforts to hinder Russian maritime transit through international straits were “de facto acts of piracy,” adding that such moves increasingly resemble a “naval blockade.” He said Russia is prepared to deploy its navy to safeguard navigation.

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By now unstoppable. What will be left?

• 12,000 German Companies Went Bust In Six Months (RT)

Germany endured the highest wave of corporate bankruptcies in a decade in the first half of this year, a study by economic tracking agency Creditreform has suggested. The first six months of this year saw some 11,900 German companies go bust, the study released on Thursday indicates. The figure represented a 9.4% increase over the same period last year, according to the agency. Some 141,000 employees worked at the companies affected. “Despite some signs of hope, Germany remains mired in a deep economic and structural crisis. Companies are struggling with weak demand, rising costs, and persistent uncertainty,” Creditreform chief economist Patrik-Ludwig Hantzsch said. The situation is expected to remain difficult as Germany continues to struggle with a recession that has dragged on for two years already.

The wave of bankruptcies might ultimately increase in the next six months, given that the “persistently high level of insolvencies is increasingly triggering chain reactions,” Hantzsch warned.= While German GDP grew by a slight 0.2% in the first quarter of 2025, weak global demand and uncertainty in trade policies continue to take a toll on its economy. According to a new survey conducted by the Ifo economic institute released this week, expectations have worsened among German exporters this month over uncertainty regarding a potential trade war with Washington. The US was Germany’s top trading partner in 2024, with bilateral trade in goods totaling €253 billion (around $280 billion), according to official data.

Earlier this year, US President Donald Trump imposed 20% tariffs on all EU goods, with 25% on steel, aluminum, and cars. When Brussels signaled its readiness to retaliate, most of the levies were put on hold for 90 days to allow for negotiations. A 10% base tariff and the 25% targeted duties remained unchanged. “The tariff threats from the US are still on the table. An agreement between the EU and the US has yet to be reached,” Klaus Wohlrabe, head of Ifo surveys, said, adding that the uncertainty has lowered exporters’ expectations, with the respective index falling to -7.4 points in June from -5.0 in May. The index measures how optimistic or pessimistic German manufacturing companies are about their prospects for selling abroad over the next three month.

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“The Hyde Amendment, a long-standing piece of legislation, prohibits the use of federal funds for abortions except in cases of rape, incest, or to save the mother’s life.”

• Supreme Court Decision Allows States To Defund Planned Parenthood (ZH)

A recent Supreme Court ruling in favor of South Carolina allows states to deny Medicaid funds to NGO Planned Parenthood in a move that sets a precedent for conservative states across the country to block tax dollars going to abortion providers. Medina v. Planned Parenthood South Atlantic, centers on whether low-income Medicaid patients can sue under what is known as Section 1983 – part of the Civil Rights Act of 1871 – in order to choose their own qualified healthcare provider. The case involves South Carolina’s blocking of Medicaid funding for Planned Parenthood South Atlantic, which the organization argued violated federal law. bIn a 6-3 decision, the Court noted that the typical redress for such a violation would be for the Secretary of Health and Human Services to withhold Medicaid funding from the state, not for an individual to sue the state.

The decision upends the long running problem of taxpayers being forced to indirectly fund abortion clinics and procedures which they morally oppose. According to 2022 data, Planned Parenthood receives at least $600 million annually through state Medicaid reimbursments (taxpayer dollars), which is around 30% of the organization’s total revenue. Though not all of this money goes towards abortions, Planned Parenthood’s primary political lobby efforts focus on increasing abortion access. The Hyde Amendment, a long-standing piece of legislation, prohibits the use of federal funds for abortions except in cases of rape, incest, or to save the mother’s life.

However, while federal funds cannot be used for abortions (except in the limited circumstances mentioned), the Hyde Amendment does not apply to state funding and some states may choose to use their own Medicaid cash to cover abortions. State Medicaid access has long been dictated by the ability of patients to choose their specific healthcare provider, meaning Planned Parenthood found a way around restrictions on federal money. South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster has been pushing to block public health dollars from going to Planned Parenthood, but a resident and patient at Planned Parenthood South Atlantic argues that doing so violates her rights under the Medicaid Act.

The key provision in the 1965 Medicaid Act guarantees patients a “free choice of provider” that is willing and qualified. Much of the conflict deals with whether Planned Parenthood is a “qualified provider” under the Medicaid law, and whether individual patients have an unambiguous “right” to sue to see their provider of choice, under its specific language. Furthermore, just because an individual or small group of people view Planned Parenthood as their provider of choice, does this mean everyone else is then required to pay into an NGO that offers services like abortion which they oppose? In other words, do voters in a particular state have the right to opt out of participation in abortion funding?

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“In an era when most public figures wilt under pressure, she’s become a symbol of courage for women everywhere who are tired of being silenced. She’s not just defending herself; she’s defending reality..”

• J.K. Rowling Destroyed Trans Ideology With One Savage Tweet (Margolis)

Famed “Harry Potter” author J.K. Rowling became a vocal critic of transgender ideology back in 2019, when she supported a woman who lost her job for saying that biological sex is immutable. In 2020, Rowling’s tweets and essay argued that prioritizing “gender identity” over biological sex threatens women’s rights and safety, drawing from her experience as an abuse survivor. She faced fierce backlash, was branded a “TERF” by activists, and even endured death threats, but stood firm. Rowling’s stance has only grown more defiant as she continues to call out the bullying tactics of trans activism and the erasure of women. Despite relentless attacks from activists, media outlets, and even cast members from “Harry Potter,” her unapologetic wit and unwavering resolve have made her a leading voice of resistance against a radical ideology that silences dissent.

This week, she once again proved why she remains a formidable force in the culture war over gender, giving courage to countless women who’ve been too afraid to speak out. Apparently some people have been attacking Rowling by saying she looks like a “trans woman.” Her response to such attacks says it all: Talk about a masterclass in rhetorical jiu-jitsu. She takes the intended insult of her critics and flips it right back on them, exposing the hypocrisy at the heart of so much of the pro-trans activist rhetoric. Rowling’s critics, who claim to be the champions of tolerance and inclusion, routinely stoop to personal attacks and misogynistic insults whenever a woman dares to challenge their orthodoxy. The latest trend is to hurl accusations that Rowling “looks like a trans woman,” a jab that is supposed to be both an insult to her and a defense of trans women. But Rowling, with her trademark wit and clarity, called their bluff.

She pointed out the obvious: If you’re accusing someone of looking like “trans woman” in the pejorative sense, you’re essentially admitting what most people already know: that “trans women” don’t look like real women. Let’s face it, men can grow out their hair, get breast implants, and take whatever drugs they want, but everyone knows what they really are. Calling Richard “Rachel” Levine a woman doesn’t make him a woman. Using female pronouns to refer to Bruce “Caitlyn” Jenner doesn’t change the fact that he is a man. Letting Will “Lia” Thomas compete against real women doesn’t erase what he is. Rowling refuses to apologize, refuses to play by the ever-changing rules of the woke mob, and instead shines a spotlight on the contradictions baked into their rhetoric, like how calling someone a “trans woman” is supposedly empowering until it’s used as a slur. Her wit, clarity, and refusal to back down force her critics to confront the ugliness of their tactics.

Through years of smears, threats, and public pressure campaigns, Rowling has stood firm, using every attack as an opportunity to expose the movement’s double standards and moral incoherence. In an era when most public figures wilt under pressure, she’s become a symbol of courage for women everywhere who are tired of being silenced. She’s not just defending herself; she’s defending reality, and doing it with a fearlessness that leaves her critics sputtering. Just because trans activists demand that we all pretend that men who grow their hair out and play dress up are women doesn’t mean that the rest of us have to play along. And when those same activists who have spent years lobbing insults and even death threats at Rowling try to mock her by saying she “looks like a trans woman,” they don’t expose her bigotry; they expose their own hypocrisy. If comparing her to a “trans woman” is meant as an insult, then it’s not Rowling degrading “trans women”; it’s the so-called allies who use the comparison as a punchline.

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It’s become the science In the same way that Fauci did.

• 1900 Scientists Say ‘Climate Change Not Caused By CO2’ (Keenan)

Millions of people worldwide are concerned about climate change and believe there is a climate emergency. For decades we have been told by the United Nations that Carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from human activity are causing disastrous climate change. In 2018, a UN IPCC report even warned that ‘we have 12 years to save the Earth’, thus sending millions of people worldwide into a frenzy. Thirty-five years ago, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the (World Meteorological Organization) WMO established the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to provide scientific advice on the complex topic of climate change. The panel was asked to prepare, based on available scientific information, a report on all aspects relevant to climate change and its impacts and to formulate realistic response strategies.

The first assessment report of the IPCC served as the basis for negotiating the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Governments worldwide have signed this convention, thereby, significantly impacting the lives of the people of the world. However, many scientists dispute with the UN-promoted man-made climate change theory, and many people worldwide are confused by the subject, or are unaware of the full facts. Please allow me to provide some information you may not be aware of.

1. Very few people actually dig into the data, they simply accept the UN IPPC reports. Yet many highly respectable and distinguished scientists have done exactly that and found that the UN-promoted manmade climate change theory is seriously flawed. Are you aware that almost 2,000 of the world’s leading climate scientists and professionals in over 30 countries have signed a declaration that there is no climate emergency and have refuted the United Nations claims in relation to man-made climate change? See https://clintel.org/world-climate-declaration/

2. I have also signed this declaration. How can I make such an assertion? I have experience in the field as a former scientist at the Department of Energy and Climate Change, UK Government; and as former staff member at United Nations Environment, where I was responsible for servicing the Pollution Release and Transfer Register Protocol, a Multinational Environmental Agreement, involving the monitoring of pollutants to land, air, and water worldwide. Real pollution exists, but the problem is not CO2. Industrial globalisation has produced many substances that are registered as pollutants, including thousands of new man-made chemical compounds, toxins, nano-particles and genetically modified organisms (GMOs) that are in violation of the scientific pre-cautionary principle. [..]

3. Next, I will mention the Irish Climate Science Forum (ICSF) website, a valuable resource founded by Jim O’Brien. I am grateful to the ICSF for their excellent work in highlighting the scientific flaws in the UN climate narrative. The ICSF provides a comprehensive lecture series from renowned international scientists providing much evidence, analysis, and data that contradicts the UN assertions. The lectures are available at: https://www.icsf.ie/lecture-series The ICSF scientific view coincides with those of the Climate Intelligence (CLINTEL) foundation that operates in the fields of climate change and climate policy. CLINTEL was founded in 2019 by emeritus professor of geophysics Guus Berkhout and science journalist Marcel Crok. Based on this common conviction, 20 Irish scientists and several ICSF members have co-signed the CLINTEL World Climate Declaration “There is No Climate Emergency” (see https://clintel.org/ireland/).

4. The reality is that the climate has always been changing, the climate changes naturally and slowly in its own cycle, and CO2 emissions (and methane from livestock, such as cows) are not dominant factors in climate change. In essence, therefore, the incessant UN, government, and corporate-media-produced climate hysteria in relation to CO2 emissions (and also methane from cows) has no scientific basis. It appears to me the UN narrative is yet another example of fake science being used to drive an ulterior agenda, see also the book Godless Fake Science. In truth I am against ‘real’ pollution, and the reality is that the CO2 component is not a pollutant. Unfortunately, many misinformed environmentalists are driving around in electric cars, the battery production for which has caused vast amounts of ‘real’ pollution via the industrial mining and processing of rare earth metals, and the consequent pollution to land, air and water systems. See also this article. Note that the UN does not focus on the thousands of real pollutants that corporate industrial globalisation creates.

5. The conclusions of the Climate Intelligence foundation include the following:
• Natural as well as anthropogenic factors cause warming: The geological archive reveals that Earth’s climate has varied as long as the planet has existed, with natural cold and warm phases. The Little Ice Age ended as recently as 1850. Therefore, it is no surprise that we now are experiencing a period of warming.
• Warming is far slower than predicted: The world has warmed significantly less than predicted by IPCC on the basis of modeled anthropogenic forcing. The gap between the real world and the modeled world tells us that we are far from understanding climate change.
• Climate policy relies on inadequate models: Climate models have many shortcomings and are not remotely plausible as global policy tools. They blow up the effect of greenhouse gases such as CO2. In addition, they ignore the fact that enriching the atmosphere with CO2 is beneficial.
• CO2 is plant food, the basis of all life on Earth: CO2 is not a pollutant. It is essential to all life on Earth. Photosynthesis is a blessing. More CO2 is beneficial for nature, greening the Earth: additional CO2 in the air has promoted growth in global plant biomass. It is also good for agriculture, increasing the yields of crops worldwide.
• Global warming has not increased natural disasters: There is no statistical evidence that global warming is intensifying hurricanes, floods, droughts and suchlike natural disasters, or making them more frequent.

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Mercury

Neuralink

Elephants

https://twitter.com/GuntherEagleman/status/1938914380370059324

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle May 20 2025

May 202025
 
 May 20, 2025  Posted by at 8:47 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,  56 Responses »


Pablo Picasso Portrait of Maya 1939

 

• Trump Spoke with Putin, and Here’s What Happened (Margolis)
• US Should Never Have Intervened In Ukraine – Trump (RT)
• Trump Should Not Threaten New Sanctions When He Talks To Putin (Ian Proud)
• Peaceful Solutions Preferred For Ukraine Conflict Goals – Kremlin (RT)
• Swamp Fever (James Howard Kunstler)
• Biden’s Presidency Is a Scandal of Historic Proportion (Jarrett Stepman)
• This Is the Man Behind the Curtain of Biden’s Health Coverup (Margolis)
• Trump: Biden Allies ‘Not Telling The Facts’ After Cancer Diagnosis (NYP)
• CNN Struggles to Assign Blame for Not Reporting on Biden’s Decline (Turley)
• Germany Makes “Sea-Change Policy Shift” On Nuclear Power In Europe (ZH)
• Europe Admits JD Vance Was Right, Pivots On Mass Immigration (Whedon)
• Europe’s Embrace of Lawfare Threatens Its Alliance with the US (Mike Gonzalez)
• Romania’s Elections Were a Big Globalist Sham (Sp.)
• SCOTUS Allows Removal Of Protected Status From 300K Venezuelan Migrants (ZH)
• Transition To A New World Order Is Beyond Most In The West (Alastair Crooke)
• US Unveils Revised Gaza Truce Proposal – Axios (RT)

 

 

 

 

https://twitter.com/DD_Geopolitics/status/1924524192491569297

 

 

King

 

 

 

 

Kamala
https://twitter.com/MAGAVoice/status/1924338698336039097

Kaja
https://twitter.com/DD_Geopolitics/status/1924211156341932284

Souza

Ursula
https://twitter.com/MAGAVoice/status/1924166680311480410

To know Mr. Comey is to dislike Mr. Comey
https://twitter.com/willsmi1/status/1924293778531119186

Jim Rogers

 

 

 

 

Trump hangs up the phone on Putin and calls Zelenskyy, von der Leyen, Macron, Giorgia Meloni, Merz and Stubb. All of whom (Meloni?) want war, not peace. What use is this? You just give them the chance to undo what you’ve just achieved.

• Trump Spoke with Putin, and Here’s What Happened (Margolis)

In a remarkable development that could signal a turning point in the war in Eastern Europe, President Donald Trump revealed Monday that he held a two-hour phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin, and what came out of it could reshape the future of the region. “Just completed my two hour call with President Vladimir Putin of Russia,” Trump announced on Truth Social. “I believe it went very well.” According to Trump, the call wasn’t just diplomatic pleasantries — it led to a major breakthrough. “Russia and Ukraine will immediately start negotiations toward a Ceasefire and, more importantly, an END to the War,” Trump said. The groundwork has been laid for direct talks between Moscow and Kyiv, with Trump emphasizing that the two nations will handle the negotiations themselves. “The conditions for that will be negotiated between the two parties, as it can only be, because they know details of a negotiation that nobody else would be aware of.”

Trump described the tone of the conversation with Putin as highly constructive: “The tone and spirit of the conversation were excellent. If it wasn’t, I would say so now, rather than later.” Looking beyond the war, Trump indicated that economic opportunities could be a major incentive for peace. “Russia wants to do largescale TRADE with the United States when this catastrophic ‘bloodbath’ is over, and I agree,” he said. “There is a tremendous opportunity for Russia to create massive amounts of jobs and wealth. Its potential is UNLIMITED.” And Ukraine, he said, would benefit immensely from new trade opportunities in the aftermath of war. “Likewise, Ukraine can be a great beneficiary on Trade, in the process of rebuilding its Country.”

Trump said the negotiations between Russia and Ukraine would begin “immediately” and that key world leaders had been informed. “I have so informed President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, of Ukraine, Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, President Emmanuel Macron, of France, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, of Italy, Chancellor Friedrich Merz, of Germany, and President Alexander Stubb, of Finland, during a call with me, immediately after the call with President Putin.” And in a notable twist, Trump said the Vatican has expressed a willingness to host the talks. “The Vatican, as represented by the Pope, has stated that it would be very interested in hosting the negotiations.”

After years of escalating bloodshed, failed ceasefires, and ineffective diplomacy under previous administrations, President Trump may have just pulled off the first real breakthrough. “Let the process begin!” he concluded. If this peace initiative holds, it would be a watershed moment, not just in the war between Russia and Ukraine but in the full restoration of America’s credibility and leadership on the world stage. Trump ran on a clear promise to end the endless wars that have drained American influence and treasure, and now, just months into his second term, he’s already delivered more meaningful progress than Joe Biden managed in nearly three years of fumbling diplomacy, endless aid packages, and aimless rhetoric.

While Biden sent blank checks to Ukraine and pushed America to the brink of direct conflict, Trump picked up the phone and made actual diplomacy happen. He understands that peace comes through strength and negotiation — not virtue-signaling and proxy wars. The mere fact that Russia and Ukraine are now preparing to sit down at the table speaks volumes about who the world respects as a serious dealmaker. This isn’t just a step toward ending a catastrophic war; it’s proof that strong leadership in the White House can shift the entire geopolitical landscape. Trump once again proves that when America leads with clarity and resolve, the world listens.

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“..we got ourselves entangled in something that we shouldn’t have been involved in. And we would have been a lot better off – and maybe the whole thing would have been better off – because it can’t be much worse. It’s a real mess,”

• US Should Never Have Intervened In Ukraine – Trump (RT)

President Donald Trump has blamed his predecessor Joe Biden for funneling vast amounts of American taxpayer money into a foreign conflict that “should have remained a European situation.” Speaking to reporters at the White House following a phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday, Trump expressed frustration over the “crazy” scale of US involvement in the Ukraine conflict. He reiterated that it was “not our war” and emphasized that his administration is working to end the hostilities through diplomacy. “This is not our war. This is not my war… I mean, we got ourselves entangled in something that we shouldn’t have been involved in. And we would have been a lot better off – and maybe the whole thing would have been better off – because it can’t be much worse. It’s a real mess,” Trump said.

The president stated that Washington has provided “massive” and “record-setting” levels of military and financial assistance to Kiev – far exceeding what the EU and other NATO countries have contributed. “We don’t have boots on the ground, we wouldn’t have boots on the ground. But we do have a big stake. The financial amount that was put up is just crazy,” he added. “Again, this was a European situation. It should have remained a European situation. But we got involved – much more than Europe did – because the past administration felt very strongly that we should,” he said. “We gave massive amounts, I think record-setting amounts, both weaponry and money.”

Trump’s conversation with Putin was followed by calls with several European leaders, including the heads of Germany, Italy, and the UK, as well as European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky. “They have a big problem. It’s a terrible war. The amount of anger, the amount of hate, the amount of death,” Trump said, noting that the conflict has reached a point where “it’s very hard to extradite themselves away from what’s taken place over there.” Trump said he believes both Putin and Zelensky want peace, but only time will tell if it can be achieved. “There’s a good chance we can get this done. I believe Putin wants to do it… My whole life is like deals, one big deal. And if I thought that President Putin did not want to get this over with, I wouldn’t even be talking about it because I’d just pull out.”

Pressed by reporters on whether he had a “red line” that would cause him to walk away from mediating the conflict or potentially escalate US involvement, Trump declined to elaborate. “Yeah, I would say I do have a certain line, but I don’t want to say what that line is because I think it makes the negotiation even more difficult than it is,” he said. Putin described the conversation with Trump as “frank” and “quite useful,” adding that Moscow is prepared to work with Kiev on drafting a memorandum aimed at achieving a future peace agreement. “In general, Russia’s position is clear. The main thing for us is to eliminate the root causes of this crisis,” the Russian president said.

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It’s no use, and bad blood.

• Trump Should Not Threaten New Sanctions When He Talks To Putin (Ian Proud)

The U.S. side has made various signals that it might impose massive new sanctions on Russia unless the war ends soon. This would be a huge mistake that would lock in the fighting for the rest of the year and leave Europe on the hook for a massive bill and political disruption that it cannot afford. Trump should not threaten Putin with sanctions when they talk on Monday 19 May. In the run up to the Russia-Ukraine bilateral peace talks which finally took place in Istanbul last week, both the EU and the UK imposed new sanctions on Russia. On 9 May, as Russian commemorated victory Day, Britain imposed sanctions on Russia’s shadow fleet and the EU followed suit with its 17th package of Russia sanctions on 14 May, the day before the Istanbul talks were due to start.

Both the UK and EU have threatened further sanctions should Russia not agree a full and unconditional ceasefire in Ukraine and, with Zelensky, have actively urged the U.S. to follow suit, which it has not done, so far. However, the Americans have spoken increasingly about the possibility of massive new sanctions against Russia: this would be a huge mistake. Sanctioning a country before peace talks have already started, or while they are still going on, is already a bad look. Very clearly, the Ukrainians, Europeans and British hope that new sanctions will apply such pressure on Russia that it agrees to terms that are more favourable to the Ukrainian side. I.e. that Ukraine does not have to go back to the Istanbul 1 commitment to adopt permanently neutral status.

The western mainstream press has been carpet bombing their intellectually degraded readers with the latest press line that Ukraine should not have to go back to the Istanbul 1 text as a starting point for talks. But there’s a problem. For this strategy to be effective, the sanctions have to work. As I’ve pointed out before, sanctions against Russian energy have had limited impact, not just since 2022, but since 2014. Nothing about the glidepath of sanctions since February 2014 suggests that new sanctions will work now. This latest round of UK and EU sanctions aimed to apply more pressure on enforcement of the G7 oil price cap of $60 which was first imposed in December 2022. Since the war started, that policy has failed.

Between 2021 and 2024, total volumes of Russian oil exported fell by just 0.2 million barrels per day, or 2.6%. After a bumper year for tax receipts in 2022 caused by Russian tumbling rouble and skyrocketing energy prices, Russia pulled in current account surpluses of $49.4bn and $62.3bn in 2023 and 2024. This was on the back of still strong goods exports of $425bn and $433bn respectively. There are several reasons why the oil price cap didn’t work, the biggest being that Russia diverted 3 million barrels per day, around 39.5% of total oil exports to India (1.9 mbd), Türkiye (0.6 mbd) and China (0.5 mbd). Türkiye and India boosted exports of refined fuels to Europe providing a backdoor route for Russian oil to Europe.

The second reason the oil price cap didn’t work is the near ten month time lag between war starting and the limit being imposed, which gave Russia space to readjust before punitive measure had been imposed. During this period, oil prices also dropped sharply from the high of $120 in the summer of 2022, to around $80 when the measure was imposed: the G7 missed the boat to impose maximum damage; this reinforces the point I make all the time that coalitions cannot act with speed and decisiveness. Today, the Russian Urals oil price is below the $60 G7 cap meaning that any registered shipping company can transport it without penalty, which renders the British and European sanctions as pointless in any case.

Let’s be clear, western nations imposing sanctions against Russia that don’t work is not a new phenomena. As I have pointed out many times before, the vast majority (92%) of people that the UK has imposed assets freezes and travel bans upon have never held assets in the UK nor travelled here. For companies, the figure is just 23. The same, I am sure, is true of EU and U.S. sanctions, which cover largely the same cast list of characters and companies, as we all share and compare the same lists of possible designations. Financial sector sanctions prompted a massive readjustment of Russia’s financial sector. Energy and dual use sanctions drove self-sufficiency in technology production, through Rosnet, Gazprom and RosTec: i.e. these companies invested more in R&D on component production while sourcing components from alternative markets, in particular China.

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“..eliminate the causes of this crisis, create conditions for long-term sustainable peace and ensure the security of the Russian state and the interests of our people..”

• Peaceful Solutions Preferred For Ukraine Conflict Goals – Kremlin (RT)

Russia remains open to achieving its goals in the Ukraine conflict through peaceful means, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Monday. Peskov, speaking before President Vladimir Putin’s scheduled phone call with his US counterpart, Donald Trump, expressed appreciation for Washington’s mediation efforts, noting that “if it really helps us achieve our goals by peaceful means, that would certainly be preferable.” He also recalled that Putin’s 2021 proposal to address Russian security concerns over NATO expansion was rejected by the US-led alliance and then-President Joe Biden’s administration. Moscow’s stated objectives include keeping Ukraine out of NATO, ending Kiev’s policies that it considers discriminatory against ethnic Russians, and curbing the influence of extreme Ukrainian nationalist groups.

In a recent interview, Putin said Moscow wants to “eliminate the causes of this crisis, create conditions for long-term sustainable peace and ensure the security of the Russian state and the interests of our people” in former Ukrainian territories where people voted to join Russia following the 2014 Western-backed coup in Kiev. Last week, Russian and Ukrainian representatives held their first direct talks since 2022, when Kiev backed out of a proposed peace deal that had been agreed in principle by both sides in Istanbul. The U-turn was influenced by the then-British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, according to Ukraine’s lead negotiator David Arakhamia.

The latest round of Istanbul negotiations has led to a proposal for the largest prisoner exchange between the two countries and a pledge to continue dialogue. Trump has claimed that he alone can broker peace between Russia and Ukraine and suggested that a breakthrough could come as early as this week, following his conversation with Putin.

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“Don’t misunderstand me. I want Biden to get better and live many more years, so he can watch his family go broke from running out of influence to sell.” Oilfield Rando on X

• Swamp Fever (James Howard Kunstler)

If the slithering denizens of Okefenokee-on-the-Potomac were nervous about their fates before Sunday — and I’d say they’ve been rather jumped-up since Nov. 4 — then Maria Bartiromo’s Sunday morning session with FBI top dawgs Patel and Bongino must have been a near-death experience for them. Something Roto-rooterish this way comes, officialdom must be thinking, if you can call utter hysteria “thinking.” Washington is nervous because there have been zero leaks from the agency, a condition heretofore unknown in that haunted, pestiferous, reeking marsh. There’s plenty of the usual background noise, of course: the insectile hum, the croaking, trilling, buzzing, staccato peeps, chirps, and squeals of the squirming lesser creatures. . . the occasional roar of an ancient gator. . . the guttural cry of the night heron, the sharp yelp of some furry prey meeting its doom, the pulsating, primordial, chthonic cacophony of creatures suffering to mate in the frightful darkness. . . but that’s just the news media doing their thing.

We’ve remarked more than once here in recent weeks about the ominous silence emanating from the FBI leadership amidst all that other noise, and now you know: a mighty information dump is coming, bales of documents that Christopher Wray sat on for years will be publicly released un-redacted, spells will be broken, names will be named (with imputations of crimes committed), and abiding mysteries unraveled — like, what was the FBI actually doing around the US Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and much more. Prepare for some disappointment. Alas, most non-capital federal crimes (acts short of treason and murder) have a five-year statute of limitations (18 U.S.C. § 3282), so the multitudinous felonious misdeeds of RussiaGate will go unpunished.

Stzrok, McCabe, Rosenstein, Pientka, Ohr (and wife Nellie), Thibault, Baker, Atkinson, Halper, Horowitz, Lynch, Yates, et al., will skate off into the sunset, but not without lasting reputational damage. Mr. Obama’s presidential aura will surely lose a lot of its luster. But there is plenty to keep the DOJ busy with more recent turpitudes carried out with the election of “Joe Biden,” including perhaps the 2020 election itself in the months before November, 2025, when the statute of limitations kicks in for that caper. Mainly, what looms is a reckoning over “Joe Biden’s” fake presidency and the momentous question as to who was really running the executive branch of the government, most particularly who was using the devious “auto-pen” to sign off on executive orders and perhaps even on legislation.

It is a wonder of modern times that this affront to the public trust somehow remains an abiding mystery. But it shows just how fake Jake Tapper’s new book is — Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again. Jake blames the whole fiasco on “the White House” without ever stating who in that building was actually acting in “JB’s” place as shadow president. Tapper, allegedly a reporter, apparently never bothered to ask. But neither did anyone else at CNN, the other TV news networks, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, and every other outpost of OG journalism. Nor does Jake conclude the obvious: that his entire profession sold out the country to act as the Democratic Party’s damage control agency — rather than its traditional duty to act as a powerful check on corrupt, runaway government.

Which is to say that the news media Jake represents is at least as corrupt as the government itself. It’s for certain now, anyway, that we are going to find out exactly who was behind the fabled auto-pen, and it will probably turn out to be a cabal composed of Chiefs-of-Staff, Ron Klain and Jeffrey Zients, Dr. Jill, NSA Jake Sullivan, Deputy AG Lisa Monaco, Domestic Affairs advisor Susan Rice, and ultimately to some degree former President Obama, holed-up a few blocks away in his Kalorama mansion those four years of “Joe Biden’s” term in the oval office. Why wouldn’t Mr. Obama, now a private citizen, be called to some official forum, say a courtroom or a congressional committee, to answer questions about that? He’s not any sort of God with God-like privileges.

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“This was the first fully deep-state presidency.”

• Biden’s Presidency Is a Scandal of Historic Proportion (Jarrett Stepman)

The “presidency” of Joe Biden is one of the greatest scandals in American history. The legacy media is only now covering the mental incapacity of a president who apparently left the entire ship of state to the unaccountable bureaucracy. On Friday, Axios released Friday night news dump audio of Biden’s 2023 interview with special counsel Robert Hur. If you heard the tape and haven’t been in a coma for the past four years, then nothing here is truly surprising. The former president sounded senile and evasive when answering questions about his handling of top secret documents. Some of my colleagues went through the full tapes and found that Biden “forgot the names of President Barack Obama’s former secretary of defense and comedian Jay Leno; referred to Africa as a country, not a continent; and was unaware he had in his possession a notebook with war advice in it for Obama during his interview with special counsel Robert Hur and investigators in October 2023.”

Biden certainly did not sound like someone who could be trusted to make large-scale national decisions or even small-scale personal ones. This is entirely unsurprising unless you are a left-leaning corporate media journalist on the political beat. If you are, then I’m sure that the reports coming out about Biden in office are jaw-dropping, gob-smacking revelations to you. The media elite are shocked, shocked to discover that Biden may have been unfit for office. The release of these tapes was followed by a Sunday afternoon reveal that Biden has been diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer. The cancer diagnosis is certainly a terrible thing. But the idea that this should end the story about what happened the last four years is a farce. It couldn’t be clearer now that due to mental and physical ailments, Biden was a diminished man from the moment he assumed the president’s office.

Despite some of the aforementioned elite journalists calling for a lid to be put on conversations about Biden’s presidency due to his health, the reality is the cancer diagnosis only raises more unsettling questions. Is this really a new diagnosis? Did Biden’s doctors really somehow miss the signs of treatable cancer. And that makes this situation entirely unprecedented. Yes, President Woodrow Wilson was at one point incapacitated during his final term in office, but that was at the tail end of his presidency. Wilson suffered a series of strokes after his highly energetic campaign to convince Americans to join the League of Nations. His wife and even some members of the media tried to cover it up, but ultimately the Democratic Party pulled the plug on his extremely brief flirtation with running for a third term.

There was no widespread attempt to fool the American people and ensure another term for an “almost catatonic” president, as one witness at George Clooney’s June fundraiser for Biden described the candidate.This situation with Biden was much, much worse, the cover-up far more extensive, and the consequences were far more potentially dire in the age of instant communication and weapons capable of quickly destroying all of human civilization. How shall we think of those years in which multiple crises developed around the globe, Americans were mass deprived of employment due to government-forced vaccinations, states were browbeaten to allow children to get life-altering hormones, and an ultimately victorious presidential candidate was nearly jailed? I’ve tried to think of some apt historical comparisons.

President John Tyler was known to some of his more cantankerous critics as “his accidency,” due to being the first vice president to assume the president’s office after the death of the commander in chief. The attitude was that nobody actually elected him to become president, and in the early days of the republic the Constitution was a bit murky about whether he could just assume office or a new election must be held. Regardless of the nickname, Tyler became an aggressive, active commander in chief—somewhat to the chagrin of many in his party. But Biden was in some way the mirror opposite. Despite being elected in a highly contested election, he seems to have never really assumed his responsibilities. Biden’s lethargy was only matched by his lack of transparency.

The better word for Biden would be “his irrelevancy.” While the 46th president’s handlers, most likely at the behest of former President Barack Obama, led him around in an extended real-world version of “Weekend at Bernie’s,” the federal apparatus operated on its own. This was rule by “experts,” or really rule by the managerial class that re-created the old spoils system but made it totally unaccountable to the American people. Decisions were carried out by vast, interlocking agencies at the behest of their Democratic Party allies whom they serve. This was the first fully deep-state presidency. Biden was awarded by the Democratic Party with the nominal career-capping title as president, but the functions and even the decisions demanded of his office were clearly distributed to his subordinates and the federal leviathan. The result was a complete disaster.

Americans rightly lost faith in their leaders and the elite institutions attached to this corrupted apparatus. U.S. foreign policy was at best strategically adrift. Our enemies around the globe went on the march. The people feared the government more than the government feared them. The upshot of these calamities is that we were delivered a national wake-up call at a time of crisis. A political counterrevolution is taking place that may have never happened had its depth not been revealed at least in part by the media’s cover-up of Biden’s obvious infirmity. But even though the first 100-plus days of President Donald Trump couldn’t be more different than the four years of his predecessor, we can’t forget how bad things got, how much the legacy media covered for a senile president’s obvious incapacity, and how deeply threatening the permanent bureaucratic state is to American liberty.

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Call his personal doctor to the stand. Under oath.

• This Is the Man Behind the Curtain of Biden’s Health Coverup (Margolis)

For four years, Americans watched Joe Biden stumble—literally and figuratively—through his presidency, while his inner circle and media allies insisted everything was just fine. Any attempt to question his physical or mental decline was met with accusations of “ageism” or dismissed as wild conspiracy talk. This, from the same Democrats who once obsessed over Donald Trump’s mental fitness, but spent most of Biden’s term parroting absurd claims that he was “sharp as a tack,” “a beast,” or “running circles around his staff.” Videos of Biden looking lost on stage or mumbling were dismissed as “cheap fakes” by the Biden White House, and the media enthusiastically echoed that talking point. It took a humiliating debate meltdown to finally make it clear they could no longer cover up the obvious.

Only then did Democrats admit what everyone else had known for years: Joe Biden was neither physically capable nor mentally fit to serve as president. The charade is over—but the damage is done. But, now, in light of the revelation of Joe Biden’s cancer diagnosis, Congress needs to subpoena Joe Biden’s White House physician, Dr. Kevin O’Connor, to answer questions. In 2023, shortly before Biden announced his reelection campaign, O’Connor called Biden a “healthy, vigorous 80-year-old male” fit for the presidency. Everyone knew it was laughable. Biden was visibly deteriorating—stumbling through speeches, forgetting names, and needing direction just to exit a stage. The signs were there for anyone willing to look, and even then, some insiders were quietly admitting behind the scenes that there were serious concerns. Yet, a year later, O’Connor doubled down. In February 2024, he wrote, “The President feels well and this year’s physical identified no new concerns.”

These claims were lies. Biden’s mental and physical struggles were evident daily, and insiders were already leaking concerns. O’Connor’s medical authority made his deception worse than political spin. His health reports gave everyone cover. Without him, the deception couldn’t have happened. On Sunday, Biden’s office announced his diagnosis of aggressive prostate cancer, with a Gleason score of 9 and bone metastasis, detected after urinary symptoms revealed a prostate nodule. This isn’t just conservative media raising red flags. Medical experts are saying the same thing. Dr. Zeke Emanuel, a former Obama health advisor, told MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” that Biden likely had cancer for the entire duration of his presidency, saying, “He did not develop it in the last 100, 200 days. He had it while he was president… probably at the start of his presidency in 2021.”

Dr. David Shusterman, a leading urologist, echoed that assessment on NewsNation, explaining that Biden’s aggressive cancer usually develops over five to ten years and is unlikely to go unnoticed during routine checkups—especially with the top-tier care a sitting president receives. These revelations leave us with only two explanations: O’Connor either neglected screenings or hid Biden’s condition. O’Connor has long ties to the Biden family—serving as Biden’s doctor since 2009, supporting them through Beau Biden’s cancer, and joining family vacations—and this longtime connection raises questions about his objectivity. His business dealings with James Biden, introducing him to a medical team for a failed hospital venture, further suggest conflicts of interest. It’s quite clear that O’Connor wasn’t made White House physician because he was trusted to give the nation an honest assessment of the president’s health, but rather because the Biden family knew he’d cover up the truth.

And he did. He issued false reassurances that not only shattered public trust but put national security at risk. Biden’s physical and cognitive decline—now compounded by a serious cancer diagnosis—wasn’t just a health issue; it was a strategic liability that our enemies could exploit. Rather than face the press and answer tough questions, O’Connor hid behind written statements delivered by Karine Jean-Pierre, shielding the full truth from the American people. After Biden’s humiliating debate performance last year, House Oversight Chairman James Comer demanded O’Connor testify about the president’s condition and any connections to the Biden family’s dealings. Just two weeks later, Biden abruptly dropped out of the race. O’Connor never appeared. Last month, reports indicated O’Connor was on the short list of witnesses House Republicans want to question over his role in concealing the president’s cognitive decline. That testimony is long overdue—and more necessary now than ever.

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‘Dangerous for our country’.

• Trump: Biden Allies ‘Not Telling The Facts’ After Cancer Diagnosis (NYP)

President Trump questioned Monday how doctors did not diagnose former President Joe Biden with advanced prostate cancer until after he had left office — accusing former White House staff of “not telling the facts.” “I’m surprised the public wasn’t notified a long time ago,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office in his first on-camera statement about his predecessor’s diagnosis. “To get to stage nine, that’s a long time,” added the president of Biden’s cancer scoring a 9 on the Gleason scale, which indicates a “high-grade” cancer that can spread quickly. Trump, 78, noted that had undergone a full physical at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center last month, and claimed that a prostate exam is “standard” for “pretty much anyone getting a good physical.” “When you take tests, as a male, that test is very standard.”

“This is dangerous for our country,” Trump added, noting that Biden contributed to the “mess” the country is in now. Trump called the diagnosis “very very sad,” but pointed out there were also doctors, including former White House physician Kevin O’Connor, who had claimed Biden was in top mental shape for years, before the public saw his diminished capabilities on full display at his June 27, 2024, debate against Trump. O’Connor gave Biden a nearly-clean bill of health during their last physical in late February 2024, writing that he “identified no new concerns” at the time. The president’s physical didn’t mention a prostate exam that year, though Biden did undergo a colonoscopy in 2021.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre also said that Biden, was deemed not to need a cognitive test — despite public outcry at the president’s many gaffes and verbal slip-ups, including asking “Where’s Jackie” and searching for the late Rep. Jackie Walorski (R-Ind.) at an event in September 2022. “The president doesn’t need a cognitive test. That is not my assessment, that is the assessment of the president’s doctor, that is also the assessment of his neurologist,” Jean-Pierre told reporters at the time. “If it’s the same doctor that said there’s nothing wrong there, and that’s being proven to be a very sad situation,” Trump said Monday, adding: “I think someone is going to have to speak to his doctor.” “Why wasn’t the cognitive ability — why wasn’t that discussed?”

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“Right-wing media figures are desperately pushing conspiracy theories about Biden ahead of the debate.”

• CNN Struggles to Assign Blame for Not Reporting on Biden’s Decline (Turley)

In the wake of the leaked audio of President Joe Biden’s interview with Special Counsel Robert Hur, the media is going through another round of spinning its own failure to pursue the question of Biden’s obvious mental and physical decline. That is no more evident than at CNN, which was one of the most hostile networks to such questions before Biden withdrew from the presidential race after his disastrous debate. The struggle was on full display on Friday. CNN’s host Jake Tapper has faced withering attacks over his publication of a book investigating Biden’s decline, long after the public learned the truth during the debate. While Tapper has admitted that he could have pushed harder on the question, he has been critical of the White House staff and others who hid the truth from the media despite the fact that many were attacked on CNN for raising the issue (including by Tapper).

On Friday’s CNN’s “The Lead,” CNN Senior Justice Correspondent Evan Pérez raised the same rationale for the performance that the White House used after the debate: Biden was tired due to performing his duties as president. Just as the White House raised how Biden was coming off an international trip before the election, Pérez noted that the interview came after the October 7 attack when Biden “had spent that entire time, obviously, on the phone and working long hours.”

“look, one of the other things that I think is key to understanding this, during this interview, the context, right, is that, you remember, he sat down for these interviews in October of, when, right after the attack by Hamas in Israel. And so, he had spent that entire time, obviously, on the phone and working long hours. And so, the big question, of course, became, a president of his age, and given the stresses of what he was going through, should he have sat down, should that have been the time for him to sit down for several hours of interviews — and they do go over two days of interviews with prosecutors — with everything that they had on the line? Clearly, Joe Biden thought that it was fine to do that. But, clearly, you can see from some of his answers that he does not have a handle on some of this. And so you could say, was it because of fatigue, or is it because of the things that you write about in your book, Jake? And so, that’s the big — I think, the big takeaway or big question that people will take away from listening to this audio.”

On Friday’s broadcast of “CNN NewsNight,” host Abby Phillip blamed not Hamas but Democrats and Hur: “[I]f Democrats had taken seriously, which, by the way, in a way, Robert Hur kind of undersold this. He kind of threw Joe Biden a lifeline. It was an opportunity, actually, for Democrats to take it seriously, maybe change gears at that point, and maybe [give] a potential nominee more time.” CNN Political Commentator Maria Cardona piped in that you should not forget to blame the First Lady: “I think, at the end of the day, the accountability falls with Joe Biden, and, frankly, probably, with Jill Biden too, because –.” Phillip responded, “Yeah, that’s true, but it also falls on the Democratic Party that ostracized people who said anything about Joe Biden’s — attacking the media for even raising the issue of his age, when, clearly, it was an issue. There’s accountability there, too.”

The only lack of accountability has been for the media itself, which is again spinning its own role in dismissing these accounts. This effort continued right up to the debate itself. CNN’s Oliver Darcy wrote, “Right-wing media figures are desperately pushing conspiracy theories about Biden ahead of the debate.” As Joe Concha has pointed out, media outlets attacked Hur after the report to dismiss accounts of Biden’s diminishment when he was still the Democratic standard bearer. Media sources like the Atlantic followed the lead of the White House in attacking Hur for “misleading” the public on Biden’s memory.

Now, Hur is being attacked on CNN for “downplaying” the extent of the diminishment. What is striking about these accounts is that they suggest that the media was kept in the dark and omit the fact that it was ignoring or opposing those in the media who were raising the concerns. This was an active effort to swat down such concerns until it no longer mattered after the public saw the truth. The media then investigated a story that was impossible to deny or ignore. The public is obviously not buying it. Instead they are increasingly looking to new media and social media for their news.Blaming Hamas or Hur is not going to work. For most viewers, it is another “Let’s Go Brandon” moment.

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On energy and immigration, Germany just turns 180º and sells that as bravery.

• Germany Makes “Sea-Change Policy Shift” On Nuclear Power In Europe (ZH)

Three weeks after widespread power grid failures across Portugal and Spain, triggered by unreliable solar and wind power, Germany appears to be sharply recalibrating its energy stance. In a notable policy shift, the new conservative government under Chancellor Friedrich Merz has reversed its longstanding opposition to nuclear power. The move reflects a growing understanding in Berlin that overreliance on unreliable solar and wind power generation poses serious risks to economic stability and energy security. The shift also signals a broader return to common-sense energy policymaking in Europe, with nuclear power increasingly viewed as critical in France in achieving reliable, low-carbon power generation.

The Financial Times reports that German officials have informed Paris they will no longer oppose French efforts to have nuclear energy recognized as equivalent to renewables in EU legislation. This marks a significant policy shift, considering former German Chancellor Olaf Scholz had firmly opposed treating nuclear power on the same level as solar and wind in the EU’s framework for achieving net zero by 2050. “The Germans are telling us: we will be very pragmatic on the issue of nuclear power,” an anonymous French diplomat told the FT, which was involved in the talks with the Germans. The person said this means that “all the biases against nuclear power, which still remain here and there in EU legislation, will be removed.” “This will be a sea-change policy shift,” said a German official.

Guntram Wolff, a senior fellow at think-tank Bruegel, said, “It’s a welcome rapprochement that will make the topic of energy easier in the EU,” adding, “Politically, Merz is also thinking about the nuclear umbrella.” Berlin’s reversal on nuclear power comes three weeks after solar and wind collapsed the power grids across Portugal and Spain. Europe’s dangerous and radical shift to unreliable net-zero energy has been nothing short of a disaster and an embarrassment for the far-left liberals high in their castles in Brussels. Merz has clearly recognized the urgent need to reverse degrowth net-zero policies. He also understands the strategic urgency of revitalizing Franco-German cooperation—a prerequisite for unlocking stalled EU-level decision-making under former Chancellor Scholz.

“When France and Germany agree, it is much easier for Europe to move forward,” said Lars-Hendrik Röller, a professor at Berlin-based ESMT business school who was chief economic adviser to former Chancellor Angela Merkel, adding, “While several challenges remain, I believe this issue will be solved.” Last week, FT obtained a letter sent to the European Commission by ministers from 12 European member states explaining that it was “imperative” that Brussels acknowledge the “complementary nature of nuclear and renewable energy sources.” The new Franco-German policy shift on energy is critical for Europe to get its house in order, considering NatGas prices have surged since the Ukraine-Russia war, making manufacturing uncompetitive on global markets because inputs have driven up prices of end products (such as automobiles). Solar and wind trends have also created instability in the power grid, which is a national security threat.

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“His series of proposals and high-profile speeches mark a complete reversal of the Labour Party’s longstanding support for mass immigration..”

• Europe Admits JD Vance Was Right, Pivots On Mass Immigration (Whedon)

Months after Vice President JD Vance excoriated the European elite for allowing unfettered mass immigration from the Third World to ravage the continent, the political winds appear to be shifting as European leaders, and even American Democrats, begin to walk back their permissive policies that enabled sizable demographic shifts in the EU. Perhaps the flagship for cultural terraforming via embracing third-world immigration, the UK has seen Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer launch a high-profile campaign to crack down on immigration and push assimilation in recent days. His series of proposals and high-profile speeches mark a complete reversal of the Labour Party’s longstanding support for mass immigration and comes as polling shows his government losing ground to an anti-immigration outsider party.

It’s not just the UK either, as other EU governments, notably Romania, appear poised to place immigration critics in power. Dark-blue California, meanwhile, has seen its governor, Gavin Newsom reading the political winds and abandoning his own long-standing policies of providing a wide range of state benefits to illegal aliens. In his February speech to European leaders, Vance warned Europeans that they risked weakening their alliance with the U.S. due to what he called “the retreat of Europe from some of its most fundamental values.” He notably pointed to the large-scale censorship of mass immigration critics and the cancellation of the Romanian elections due to allegations of Russian interference. Though he faced a tough audience and earned their ire, recent moves in Europe appear to suggest a tacit admission that he was right.

The UK ranks among the nations facing the biggest backlash to mass immigration, with Nigel Farage’s Reform Party increasingly taking a dominant position in polling over the incumbent Labour Party and their traditional opponents, the Conservatives. Matters of cultural friction, crime and the growing presence of radical Islam in the nation have even led to the prevalence of the term “the Yookay” to refer to the country in a satirical manner. Starmer, in a major speech last week, warned that the UK risked becoming an “island of strangers” if it failed to crack down on immigration in which he promised to “take back control of our borders.” He subsequently announced that his government would raise English language proficiency requirements for immigrants, saying “If you want to live in the UK, you should speak English.”

“This is my promise to British people: Every area of our immigration system will be tightened up, so we have more control. And migration numbers will fall,” he promised. Starmer further announced that he would charge employers to recruit overseas and required British firms to show that they were investing in domestic labor. He also promised to cut migration, end asylum hotels, expand efforts to stop boat crossings of the English channel. “Settlement in the UK is a privilege that is earned, not a right,” he also said. Starmer also announced this week that he had “returned over 24,000 people with no right to be here.” Likely motivating the pivot on immigration were local elections that saw the Reform Party post considerable gains, leading to The Telegraph warning of a possible “extinction” event for Labour in the next election.

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The Trump crowd recognize lawfare when they see it.

• Europe’s Embrace of Lawfare Threatens Its Alliance with the US (Mike Gonzalez)

President Donald Trump’s election was greeted in Europe with outright fear by parties of the Left and wary apprehension by the center-right but with open elation by a resurgent sovereigntist Right. Now the Left and the center are regrouping and coming up with a strategy to rein in the surging populists. It should surprise no one that this strategy is based on the twin pillars of lawfare and censorship. Yes, the American Left failed horribly when it used both to try to stop Trump in the 2024 elections. Yet in Europe, the defense of liberty is less entrenched in the mind of voters. We just saw the two approaches clash after Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Elon Musk expressed exasperation when a close ally, Germany, took an initial step in barring the country’s most popular party, the anti-immigrant Alternative für Deutschland.

Germany’s week-old government—a living experiment in the new politics of circling the wagons at the center, being itself a strange-bedfellows coalition of the center-right Christian Democrats and the leftist Social Democrats—responded by warning the Trump administration to stay out of its domestic affairs. To be sure, the generalized statement that Europeans are less zealous of their freedom than Americans requires qualification. Eastern Europe, with a much more recent memory of living in tyranny, is largely more vigilant of losing liberty than is Western Europe, where decades of the welfare state have created constituencies more willing to engage in the illusory bargain of trading a bit of freedom for a bit of comfort. The parties on the Right, in both West and East, also want more sovereign independence and less interference from the European Union in such matters as freedom of expression.

They are the ones that welcomed Trump as the start of a tidal wave they hoped would reach the Old Continent. “Everybody understands that something has changed,” I quoted Marine Le Pen, leader of Rassemblement Nationale, France’s largest opposition party, as telling a crowd at a Patriots rally in Madrid less than a month after Trump’s inauguration. “The results of the American election will sound the awakening of the Old Continent.” Well, the center-right and Left have taken notice of the Trump tsunami, too, and they want to raise a few dams. In terms of lawfare, French courts have convicted Le Pen of embezzlement, a charge she strongly denies, and barred her from running for president in 2027. In Germany, the new government has just allowed the security services to classify AfD as “extremist,” a first step before banning the party outright.

And in Spain, the country’s fiscal court has fined Vox, the third-largest party, 862,000 euros for financial irregularities. All are test cases for how far the Left and center-right are willing to go using the courts to do what they can’t at the ballot box. Expressions of concern about deviating from democratic practices have multiplied. Rubio didn’t mince words, writing on X, “Germany just gave its spy agency new powers to surveil the opposition. That’s not democracy—it’s tyranny in disguise. What is truly extremist is not the popular AfD—which took second in the recent election—but rather the establishment’s deadly open border immigration policies that the AfD opposes. Germany should reverse course.”

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“George Simion won 41% in the May 4 first round. EU favorite Nicosur Dan got 21%. In round two, Simion took 46.4%, while Dan got 53.6% – a 155% boost..”

• Romania’s Elections Were a Big Globalist Sham (Sp.)

The results don’t make sense arithmetically and foreign interference has been confirmed. The country has officially completed its slide into EU protectorate status. Prolific Balkans expert Dr. George Szamuely helps unpack what just happened. Eurosceptic candidate George Simion won 41% in the May 4 first round. EU favorite Nicosur Dan got 21%. In round two, Simion took 46.4%, while Dan got 53.6% – a 155% boost. To do so, Dan needed the backing of 87% of the voters who backed neither him or Simion in the first round. Neither of the other major first round candidates (Crin Antonescu, 20%, Victor Ponta, 13%) threw their weight behind Dan in the second round. Where did his 30%+ surge in support come from? Unclear. Simion has alleged that 1.7 million dead people were on voter rolls, and urged voters to check if any deceased relatives or friends voted via a dedicated WhatsApp contact line.

Diaspora voters cast 1.64 million ballots in the second round of the vote, 660,000 more than round one (which Simion handily won, 61% to Dan’s 25.4%). Simion has alleged some polls were closed or not enough ballots were made available in some areas during the runoff, and manipulation of diaspora voting. Specifically, Simion has accused Moldova’s EU lapdog government of “immense fraud” amid reports of Romanian expats voting at 3X the rate they did in round one. He’s also charged France of meddling using “lots and lots of money and pressure through their ambassador here, and through foreign institutions in order to rob the Romanian people of their votes.” Telegram CEO Pavel Durov confirmed on Sunday that a request had been made by France to “silence conservative voices” in Romania ahead of the election.

“This election is a fraud, a giant absolute fraud. Because the proper election was held in December, and that election was canceled because the ‘wrong’ person [Calin Georgescu, ed.] was on the brink of winning,” Dr. George Szamuely told Sputnik. As for Sunday’s vote, the results simply “don’t make any sense” mathematically, the author and Global Policy Institute senior research fellow says. “Just think of that. [Dan] won 87% of all of the people who didn’t vote for either candidate in the first run…That arithmetically just absolutely makes no sense. It defies any logic, defies any experience of polling,” the observer emphasized. Listing off allegations of foreign meddling, particularly by France and Moldova, Szamuely said the “exuberant, delighted messages” out of Brussels after the vote show its sham nature.

“The EU obviously interfered very, very strongly by essentially threatening Romania with dire consequences if it voted the ‘wrong’ way,” he added. “Democracy is an anathema to the EU, it’s nothing but contempt for the will of the people and particularly for any kind of populist nationalist movements,” Szamuely said, highlighting the bloc’s rush to praise Dan, and overlook glaring violations in Sunday’s Romanian elections. “The EU despises democracy. It only celebrates democracy when it gets the election outcomes it wants. When it doesn’t, it immediately declares that this wasn’t a proper election, this wasn’t a proper democracy, this was a fraud,” the observer said, recalling the recent example of Georgia, where local elites successfully stood up to the EU, and the systematic cancellation and rejection of elections and referendums elsewhere until the “right” results are achieved.

Dan
https://twitter.com/MyLordBebo/status/1924347966292168923

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“I’ve been around since 1984 — and ‘temporary protected status’ is never temporary.”

• SCOTUS Allows Removal Of Protected Status From 300K Venezuelan Migrants (ZH)

The Supreme Court handed a major win to the Trump administration on Monday, granting its request to proceed with revoking legal protections for hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan immigrants. In a brief order, the justices approved an emergency application from the administration, allowing officials to undo a Biden-era extension of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) that shields Venezuelans from deportation and grants them work permits. Liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was the lone dissenter, indicating she would have denied the request. The decision allows Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to move forward with a policy reversal that would strip protections from more than 300,000 Venezuelans who were granted TPS due to political and humanitarian crises in their home country.

TPS, created by Congress in 1990, offers safe harbor to nationals of countries suffering from war, natural disaster, or other emergencies. Individuals granted status can legally remain and work in the U.S. for renewable 18-month periods. At the center of the legal fight is a TPS designation made in October 2023 and extended again in January—just before Trump returned to office. The protections were originally set to expire in October 2026, but in February, Noem moved to unwind the designations early, triggering a legal challenge. In April, a federal judge in the Northern District of California blocked the rollback, citing potential racial bias behind the move. But the Trump administration fired back, arguing the judiciary had no business second-guessing decisions made under the executive branch’s immigration authority.

At the time, Trump border czar Tom Homan called the move “Another activist judge making a stupid ruling,” adding “I’ve been around since 1984 — and ‘temporary protected status’ is never temporary.””Bf you look at that decision, it’s based on opinion, not the rule of law.”

https://twitter.com/WesternLensman/status/1907054421282001270

Solicitor General D. John Sauer, in the emergency application to the Supreme Court, said, “The court’s order contravenes fundamental executive branch prerogatives and indefinitely delays sensitive policy decisions in an area of immigration policy that Congress recognized must be flexible, fast-paced and discretionary.”The move was challenged by the National TPS Alliance and individual Venezuelans, who argued the administration was trying to dodge judicial oversight altogether. “It should be unremarkable that federal courts say what the law is,” their lawyers wrote.

Monday’s ruling comes just days after the high court dealt a blow to Trump’s immigration playbook in a separate case. In that decision, the court ruled that immigrants detained under the Alien Enemies Act must be given a real chance to contest deportation. While litigation over the TPS rollback continues in lower courts, the Supreme Court’s order clears the way for the Trump administration to begin rescinding protections while the legal fight plays out.

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“..Trump has at least recognised the most important American reality – ie. that the pattern can’t go on indefinitely, and that debt-led consumerism is way past its sell-by date..”

• Transition To A New World Order Is Beyond Most In The West (Alastair Crooke)

Even the need for transition – just to be clear – has only just begun to be recognised in the U.S. For the European leadership however, and for the beneficiaries of financialisation who haughtily lament Trump’s ‘storm’ unwisely unleashed on the world, his base economic theses are ridiculed as bizarre notions completely divorced from economic ‘reality’. That is completely untrue. For, as Greek Economist Yanis Varoufakis points out, the reality of the western situation and the need for transition was clearly spelled out by Paul Volcker, former chair of the Federal Reserve, as long ago as 2005. The harsh ‘fact’ of the liberal globalist economic paradigm was evident even then:“What holds together the globalist system is a massive and growing flow of capital from abroad, running to more than $2 billion every working day – and growing. There is no sense of strain. As a nation we don’t consciously borrow or beg. We aren’t even offering attractive interest rates, nor do we have to offer our creditors protection against the risk of a declining dollar”.

“It’s all quite comfortable for us. We fill our shops and garages with goods from abroad, and the competition has been a powerful restraint on our internal prices. It’s surely helped keep interest rates exceptionally low despite our vanishing savings and rapid growth”. “And it’s [been] comfortable for our trading partners too, and for those supplying the capital. Some, such as China [and Europe, particularly Germany], have depended heavily on our expanding domestic markets. And for the most part, the central banks of the emerging world have been willing to hold more and more dollars, which are, after all, the closest thing that world has to a truly international currency”. “The difficulty is that this seemingly comfortable pattern can’t go on indefinitely”.

Precisely. And Trump is in the process of blowing up the world trading system so as to re-set it. Those western liberals, who today are gnashing teeth and lamenting the advent of ‘Trumpian economics’, are simply in denial that Trump has at least recognised the most important American reality – ie. that the pattern can’t go on indefinitely, and that debt-led consumerism is way past its sell-by date. Recall that most participants in the western financial system have known nothing other than Volcker’s ‘comfortable world’ their entire life. No wonder they have difficulty thinking outside their sealed retort. That does not mean, of course, that Trump’s solution to the problem will work. Possibly, Trump’s particular form of structural rebalancing could make matters actually worse.

Nonetheless, restructuring in some form clearly is inevitable. It comes down otherwise to a choice between bankruptcy slow, or fast and disorderly.The dollar-led globalist system worked well initially – at least from the U.S. perspective. The U.S. exported its post-WW2 manufacturing over-capacity to a newly dollarized Europe, who consumed the surplus. And Europe too, enjoyed the benefit of having its macroeconomic environment (export-led models, guaranteed by the U.S. market). The present crisis began however, when the paradigm inverted – when the U.S. entered on its era of unsustainable structural budget deficits, and when financialisation led Wall Street to build its inverted pyramid of derivative ‘assets’, resting upon a tiny pivot of real assets.

The raw fact of the structural imbalance crisis is bad enough. But the western geo-strategic crisis goes much deeper than just the structural contradiction of inward capital flows and a ‘strong’ dollar eating the heart out of the U.S. manufacturing sector. Because it is bound up, too, with the concomitant collapse of core ideologies underpinning liberal globalism.It is because of this western deep devotion to ideology (as well as to the Volker ‘comfort’ provided by the system) that has triggered such a torrent of anger and outright derision towards Trump’s ‘rebalancing’ plans. Barely a western economist has a good word to say – and yet no plausible alternative framework is offered. Their passion directed at Trump simply underlines that western economic theory is bankrupt, too.

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While Bibi touts the final solution.

• US Unveils Revised Gaza Truce Proposal – Axios (RT)

White House envoy Steve Witkoff has presented Israel and Hamas with a new ceasefire proposal, Axios has reported, with Washington urging both sides to accept the deal. The push coincides with the Jewish state’s renewed assault on Gaza, which included a wave of weekend airstrikes and a major ground offensive – Operation Gideon’s Chariots. According to Axios, Witkoff’s proposal includes a 45- to 60-day ceasefire in exchange for the release of ten hostages and Palestinian prisoners. While similar to past plans, the latest version reportedly contains clearer language signaling that it could lead to a permanent ceasefire. It also includes guarantees aimed at preventing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from unilaterally ending the truce – an issue that derailed a previous agreement. Sources say Netanyahu has responded positively but with many conditions.

Hamas has not yet agreed and is reportedly seeking firm assurances that a temporary truce could pave the way for a lasting ceasefire. Negotiation teams from both sides are formally in Qatar, but an Israeli official told Axios that the real discussions are happening through other, less public channels. Talks mediated by Qatar, Egypt, and the US have so far failed to produce a breakthrough. Netanyahu maintains that the war will not end without Hamas’ total defeat, while the group continues to reject disarmament terms. The current escalation began in October 2023, when Hamas launched a surprise cross-border attack on Israel, killing around 1,200 people and abducting 250. An estimated 58 hostages remain in Gaza, including both living captives and those confirmed deceased whose remains have not yet been recovered. As of Monday, the Palestinian death toll from Israel’s offensive in Gaza has surpassed 53,400, according to the enclave’s health officials.

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False
https://twitter.com/NicHulscher/status/1924118621346840585

Kansas
https://twitter.com/Whiplash437/status/1924317891039559966

Sell
https://twitter.com/manly_mentor/status/1924138102269886497

Africa
https://twitter.com/JasperZiggle/status/1924183844187509116

The forbidden empire returnss

Decline

 

 

 

 

 

 

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