Edward Hopper Hotel by a railroad 1952
Macgregor
All of these Governments in the West are going to be swept away, they are going to be replaced.
France, Germany and us.
They're finished, they're done.
Their populations have had it with them. pic.twitter.com/C9hzcF0O5s
— Douglas Macgregor (@DougAMacgregor) December 19, 2023
Vigano
https://twitter.com/i/status/1735060540333113441
And you thought things were crazy before…
• Colorado Supreme Court Disqualifies Trump From 2024 Ballot (ZH)
The Colorado Supreme Court has disqualified Donald Trump from Colorado’s 2024 presidential election ballot, and in a 4-3 ruling has effectively blocked Trump from seeking the presidency because of his role in the Jan. 6 Capitol attack, citing the post-Civil War-era 14th Amendment to the US Constitution that bans insurrectionists from holding public office. The Colorado case was the first constitutional challenge to Trump’s 2024 run to go through a full trial. Voters, represented by the advocacy group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics, had argued he should be barred from the ballot for inciting the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol. Colorado’s highest court – whose seven-member bench was entirely appointed by Democratic governors – overturned a ruling from a district court judge who found that Trump incited an insurrection for his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, but said he could not be barred from the ballot because it was unclear that the provision was intended to cover the presidency.
In its ruling, the Democrat-controlled court found that Trump engaged in insurrection by inflaming his supporters with false claims of election fraud and directing them to the Capitol. The state justices determined that the office of the president is covered under the insurrection clause, which specifically lists those who previously took oaths to support the Constitution as “a member of Congress,” “officer of the United States,” “member of any State legislature” or an “executive or judicial officer of any State.” The district court had previously ruled that the office of the president was not covered under the clause. The majority opinion was unsigned but joined by four of the seven justices. [..] Three justices dissented from Tuesday’s decision: Chief Justice Brian Boatright, Carlos Samour and Justice Maria Berkenkotter. Each wrote separate dissents taking issue with how the plaintiffs brought their 14th Amendment lawsuit using a provision of Colorado election law.
Berkenkotter wrote that “the majority construes the court’s authority too broadly.” “The questions presented here simply reach a magnitude of complexity not contemplated by the Colorado General Assembly for its election code enforcement statute,” wrote Boatright. “The proceedings below ran counter to the letter and spirit of the statutory timeframe because the Electors’ claim overwhelmed the process.” Samour similarly wrote that Colorado’s election law provides no “engine” for such a lawsuit, also noting that no federal legislation existed to enforce the 14th Amendment’s insurrection clause. “Even if we are convinced that a candidate committed horrible acts in the past—dare I say, engaged in insurrection—there must be procedural due process before we can declare that individual disqualified from holding public office. Procedural due process is one of the aspects of America’s democracy that sets this country apart,” Samour wrote.
Ironically, all this ruling will do is further cement Trump’s status as leading presidential candidate as it not only affirms his status as target #1 of the Biden Department of Justice and liberal court system, but will test the Conservative-dominated Supreme Court appeal over its interpretation of the 14th Amendment, which according to many including a Colorado District court, does not apply to the Presidency. Indeed, as Vivek Ramaswami observed, the 14th Amendment was part of the “Reconstruction Amendments” that were ratified following the Civil War. “It was passed to prohibit former Confederate military and political leaders from holding high federal or state office. These men had clearly taken part in a rebellion against the United States: the Civil War. That makes it all the more absurd that a left-wing group in Colorado is asking a federal court to disqualify the 45th President on the same grounds, equating his speech to rebellion against the United States.”
X thread.
• This Is What An *Actual* Attack On Democracy Looks Like (Ramaswamy)
This is what an *actual* attack on democracy looks like: in an un-American, unconstitutional, and *unprecedented* decision, a cabal of Democrat judges are barring Trump from the ballot in Colorado. Having tried every trick in the book to eliminate President Trump from running in this election, the bipartisan Establishment is now deploying a new tactic to bar him from ever holding office again: the 14th Amendment. I pledge to *withdraw* from the Colorado GOP primary unless Trump is also allowed to be on the state’s ballot, and I demand that Ron DeSantis, Chris Christie, and Nikki Haley to do the same immediately – or else they are tacitly endorsing this illegal maneuver which will have disastrous consequences for our country.
Today’s decision is the latest election interference tactic to silence political opponents and swing the election for whatever puppet the Democrats put up this time by depriving Americans of the right to vote for their candidate of choice. The 14th Amendment was part of the “Reconstruction Amendments” that were ratified following the Civil War. It was passed to prohibit former Confederate military and political leaders from holding high federal or state office. These men had clearly taken part in a rebellion against the United States: the Civil War. That makes it all the more absurd that a left-wing group in Colorado is asking a federal court to disqualify the 45th President on the same grounds, equating his speech to rebellion against the United States.
And there’s another legal problem: Trump is not a former “officer of the United States,” as that term is used in the Constitution, meaning Section 3 does not apply. As the Supreme Court explained in Free Enterprise Fund v. Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (2010), an “officer of the United States” is someone appointed by the President to aid him in his duties under Article II, Section 2. The term does not apply to elected officials, and certainly not to the President himself. The Framers of the 14th Amendment would be appalled to see this narrow provision—intended to bar former U.S. officials who switched to the Confederacy from seeking public office—being weaponized by a sitting President and his political allies to prevent a former President from seeking reelection. Our country is becoming unrecognizable to our Founding Fathers.
I pledge to withdraw from the Colorado GOP primary ballot until Trump is also allowed to be on the ballot, and I demand that Ron DeSantis, Chris Christie, and Nikki Haley do the same immediately – or else they are tacitly endorsing this illegal maneuver which will have disastrous… pic.twitter.com/qbpNf9L3ln
— Vivek Ramaswamy (@VivekGRamaswamy) December 20, 2023
“..psychological lawfare stuff – intended for media consumption..”
• The Colorado Supreme Court 4-3 Decision Is Pure Nonsense (CTH)
Three main points before getting to the substance.
#1) It was a 4-3 decision. Meaning it was the politics of the court, literally the political makeup and perspective therein, that determined the outcome of the decision. This is showcased in point #3, which is the funniest part.
#2) The entire framework of the case against Trump in the Colorado decision is predicated on this: “[the complainants] asserted that he was ineligible under Section Three because he engaged in insurrection on January 6, 2021, after swearing an oath as President to support the U.S. Constitution.” [pdf, page 6] REMINDER – President Donald Trump was not charged with “insurrection,” is not accused of “insurrection,” does not fit the complaint under the definitions of “insurrection,” and has never been found guilty of insurrection. The complaint is moot before the court. But hey, it’s Lawfare… and we all know Lawfare is created for public media consumption, so that takes us directly to the biggest point.
#3) Instead of me writing it, let me screengrab it so we can all laugh together.
Wait, what? Yes, that’s correct. As long as President Trump appeals the decision to the Supreme Court, the appeals court stays their own ruling – essentially indefinitely. The Colorado primary ballots printed, and the primary election will be over, before the Supreme Court puts this on their docket. In addition to the virtual guarantee the high court will overrule this political nonsense, SCOTUS can make the entire issue moot before them by following their own normal schedule for submissions, arguments, deliberation and opinions delivered by the court. The Colorado appellate court knows this, that’s why they put this self-stay into their 4-3 ruling. It’s a politically correct way of giving the optics of telling their tribe, ‘hey we’re with you,’ without the ramifications of the political backlash. In other words, psychological lawfare stuff – intended for media consumption.
Making the issue that much better for Donald Trump, the efforts of the Prescott-Bush clan (look it up – they live in CO) will backfire bigly. The public backlash against a judicial ruling that interferes with the right of the citizens to determine their own election candidates plays perfectly into the sunlight operation against the Lawfare left. This backlash will be epic, albeit hidden by MSNBC and the rest of the insufferable media. Why? Because it doesn’t fit the Lawfare narrative. I’m not even going to highlight the nonsense from the leftists who are in a frenzy over this one. Just smile, pretend it’s the end of the world, eat your favorite foods and live your best life while trying not to laugh. Seriously, this is just that level of goofy. Remember what I said about Ron DeSantis in 2022, and everyone looked at me funny. Well, this is way more predictable than me saying DeSantis will collapse in sunlight.
“If he defeats Biden, he “would likely install loyalists in key positions in the Pentagon, State Department and CIA whose primary allegiance would be to him..”
• Trump Could Leave NATO – Reuters (RT)
Donald Trump’s potential second term in the White House might see Washington stop funding Ukraine, withdraw from NATO, and further cut economic ties with China, Reuters reported on Monday, citing anonymous sources. During his 2017-2021 presidency, many of Trump’s policies ended up obstructed by unelected government officials and sometimes even his own appointees, according to numerous insider accounts. He seeks to get around that problem by appointing “loyalists” more amenable to his “isolationist policies and whims,” the outlet claimed. Reuters admitted that Trump himself has offered “few clues” about his intentions. The article was based on interviews with almost 20 current and former aides and diplomats, most of whom were not named.
According to eight European diplomats, there are “acute fears” that the second Trump administration would cut off aid to Ukraine and doubts whether it would honor the US commitment to “defend NATO allies.” “There are rumors that he wants to take the US away from NATO or withdraw from Europe, of course it sounds worrying but… we are not in a panic,” said a diplomat from one Baltic country. Another diplomat, representing a northern European NATO member state, outlined the options his and some other embassies have sent to their capitals about the November 2024 election. If the incumbent president, Democrat Joe Biden, is reelected, “Things might go rather well: the US keeps on rehabilitating herself,” he said.
A “mild” version of the second Trump presidency would be “a repetition of his first term with some aggressive overtones.” If he actually follows through on pledges to dismantle the ‘Deep State’ apparatus, that would be the “doomsday option,” according to the diplomat. Trump is currently the favorite for the Republican presidential nomination. If he defeats Biden, he “would likely install loyalists in key positions in the Pentagon, State Department and CIA whose primary allegiance would be to him,” the anonymous aides told Reuters. That would enable him to “advance his foreign policy priorities faster and more efficiently than he was able to when previously in office.”
Making political appointments is the constitutional prerogative of US presidents. However, Trump has hinted he might purge the lower ranks of the federal bureaucracy, on many occasions describing the “Washington swamp” as an impediment to genuine reforms. “President Trump came to realize that personnel is policy,” Robert O’Brien, Trump’s fourth national security advisor, told Reuters. “At the outset of his administration, there were a lot of people that were interested in implementing their own policies, not the president’s policies.” Four people who “converse” with the 45th president have said that he regularly gets advice from former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe, Ambassador Richard Grenell, and his one-time deputy, Kash Patel. None of them responded to Reuters’ interview requests. Neither Trump nor his campaign commented on the story.
“The Czech leader, who previously served as a senior NATO military official and is a staunch supporter of Kiev in its fight with Moscow..”
• Russia Is Counting On Donald Trump’s Return – Czech President (RT)
The Ukraine conflict may experience a “significant shift” next year, and not “in the good sense of the word,” Czech President Petr Pavel told the news service of the web portal Seznam.cz in an interview published on Monday. The Czech leader, who previously served as a senior NATO military official and is a staunch supporter of Kiev in its fight with Moscow, pointed to the 2024 presidential election in the US as the key moment for the confrontation. He claimed that Russian President Vladimir Putin was counting on Donald Trump winning at the ballot box come November and then striking a deal with Russia on Ukraine, which would ignore the wishes of Kiev and other European nations. The outcome, according to Pavel, would be “some kind of compromise that would theoretically return Russia to the status of a key player, and the others would have to put up with it somehow.”
He described the scenario as “unfavorable” for EU nations, including his own. In his public statements, Putin previously rejected the analysis outlined by Pavel. He argued that the personality of the US president was largely irrelevant to the country’s policy vis-a-vis Moscow. “[Trump] was accused of having a special relationship with Russia, which is total nonsense and bulls**t. But he was the president who introduced the most sanctions against Russia,” Putin noted in September at the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok. The US elites perceive Russia as an existential enemy, he added. They suppress the voices of Americans, who want good relations with Moscow, the Russian leader claimed.
“We have no idea who will be elected, but whoever it is, the anti-Russian vector of US policy is unlikely to change,” Putin concluded. Kiev has recently suffered a series of setbacks in terms of securing Western aid on both sides of the Atlantic. In Washington, a partisan conflict over border security caused a White House request for over $60 billion in additional Ukraine assistance to be blocked. In Brussels, Hungary vetoed a European Commission proposal to allocate €50 billion ($54 billion) over four years to support Kiev. In his interview, Pavel also said Putin had “made it clear” that peace talks on Ukraine are only possible with the US, and not Kiev or any European nation. Moscow perceives the conflict to be part of a Washington-led proxy war against Russia and believes the US has the ultimate say on it.
“Do we remember when, not long ago, whistleblowers were noble?”
• We Are Well Beyond Hypocrisy (Victor Davis Hanson)
The Left is saturating the airwaves with outrage over the current House Republicans’ impeachment inquiry. They allege that formally investigating Joe Biden’s role in the family grifting operation is somehow a poor constitutional precedent, if not out-of-bounds entirely. So we hear further arguments that it will be unwise to impeach a first-term president when he loses his House majority, that there is no reason to “waste” congressional time and effort when Biden will be automatically acquitted in the Democratically controlled Senate, and that the impeachment is cynically timed to synchronize with president’s reelection efforts. All of these are the precise arguments many of us cited when Donald Trump was impeached in December 2019 (as his reelection campaign began, and immediately after being cleared of the 22-month, $40-million-special-counsel Russian-collusion hoax).
The Democrats tried to remove an elected president over a phone call without a special counsel’s report. So Trump was impeached only after the 2018 election led to a Democratic House majority, which went from eating up nearly two years of his administration in the Russian-collusion hoax straight into the impeachment farce. There was no concern about the cost to the nation of putting an elected government into a continual state of siege. There is one difference, though, between the Trump impeachment and the Biden impeachment inquiry. Donald Trump was impeached because he accurately accused the members of the Ukrainian government of paying Hunter Biden, with his zero fossil fuel expertise, an astronomical sum to serve on the Burisma board—as the costly quid that earned the lucrative quo from his dad Vice President Joe Biden.
No one now denies that Joe Biden got prosecutor Viktor Shokin fired by threatening to cancel legislatively-approved U.S. aid. Shokin knew about the skullduggery through which the Biden family eventually received $6.5 million from Ukraine—and so Biden ensured his firing, and publicly bragged about it in performance-art fashion. In sum, Trump had a perfect right as commander in chief to delay (he did not cancel) aid to Ukraine, to ensure that its government was not still paying off the Bidens for their lobbying efforts on its behalf. It is also now clear that Biden serially lied about his ignorance of Hunter’s shake-down operation. In fact, he was, as Devon Archer emphasized, “the brand” central to Hunter’s scheme to coerce money from foreign governments. Joe was proverbially, in Hunter’s words “the man sitting next to me” and thus able to either punish or reward foreign interests, depending on the size of the checks they wrote to his various fronting family members.
The left is now furious that Hunter has been subpoenaed by the House to testify in private about how he earned his multimillion-dollar income, whether he fully paid taxes on it, and to whom he distributed his winnings. Hunter has refused to testify. He is now being held in contempt of the U.S. Congress—to the silence of the usually self-righteous former senator Joe “pay your fair share” Biden. We hear sanctimonious harangues that Joe is guilty of loving “his only son” Hunter too much, or that it is way out of bounds for a Department of Justice prosecutor to hound Joe Biden by going “after his family,” or that Republican congressional subpoenas and contempt findings should be summarily ignored. Ask Peter Navarro or Steve Bannon whether one can simply ignore a House subpoena. Ask Ivanka Trump whether she was, or was not, subpoenaed to appear before the January 6 committee. Ask the Trump sons whether they could breezily say “no” to Letitia James’s subpoenas in her farcical real-estate-valuation suit against Trump.
Do we remember when, not long ago, whistleblowers were noble? The alleged whistleblower Eric Ciaramella, an Obama holdover who had burrowed inside the Trump administration, had zero firsthand knowledge of the Trump phone call to Ukrainian president Zelensky. Ukrainian expatriate Lt. Col Alexander Vindman was on the call, as a member of the Trump national security team. He broke the law and apparently disclosed the classified call—in outrage that Trump was apparently too hard on his native Ukraine— to Ciaramella, and then hid the latter’s identity. Both met privately with Rep. Adam Schiff (D—CA) to engineer an impeachment writ. Instead, both came forward as whistleblowers to testify before Congress about how the Biden Justice Department deliberately and carefully ensured that the mountain of evidence for the prosecution of Hunter Biden that they had presented had simply been ignored—at least long enough for the statute of limitations to run out on his most egregious crimes.
When they both made their case that facts proved the Biden family received huge sums for selling access to or action from Joe Biden, they were roundly trashed by Democrats in congress and pilloried as disgruntled politicos by a toady press.
“The choice is between demanding an end to the Gaza humanitarian tragedy or escalating the conflict into a war that will have global consequences.”
• US Escalation in the Red Sea – A Lose/Lose Proposition (Bentley)
The latest escalation in world military affairs, the situation in the Red Sea and Yemen, has the real potential to eclipse both the war in Ukraine and the invasion of Gaza, both in terms of military and economic impact, on a global scale. The hubris and abject idiocy of US plans to open yet another conflict that they cannot hope to win, and that cannot lead to anything but the destruction of the world economy can only be described as criminally insane. In a recent letter to “Dear America”, the Houthi leaders wrote, “A desperate plea for reflection. The consequences are dire, and the responsibility lies with the guardians of the American dream. Beware, for the path you tread upon carries weighty consequences, reverberating across oceans and continents. Choose wisely…” The choice is between demanding an end to the Gaza humanitarian tragedy or escalating the conflict into a war that will have global consequences. The US has already announced its intention to choose the latter. It is a choice for which the American people, if they allow it to happen, will suffer gravely.
The US and UK have moved at least 24 combat ships into the seas off the coast of Yemen, ostensibly “to protect global shipping lanes”. This is a lie. The Houthis have clearly stated that, one, that they are only targeting ships serving Israeli interests, and that all other shipping is under no threat, and two, that they are willing to cease all military operations against Israeli shipping as soon as Israel stops its attacks on Gaza and the West Bank. It is ONLY Israeli shipping that is under threat, and it is ONLY Israeli shipping that US and UK naval forces are deployed to protect. But by escalating the situation in the Red Sea, they are putting at risk ALL shipping passing through the Red Sea and Suez Canal, which accounts for 12% of all global trade and 30% of all container shipping, as well as about 8% of world trade in both oil and LNG, for a total annual value of over a trillion US dollars.
As things stand now, only Israel-linked shipping is at risk, and even that risk can be completely eliminated by the cessation of Israeli attacks on Gaza and the West Bank. But if the US attacks Yemen, the Houthis will respond, and they do have the capability to sink US Navy ships in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden. And once that happens, the Red Sea becomes an active war zone, and then, all bets are off, along with all shipping in the Red Sea, and 12% of all global trade. Think about it… The economies of the EU nations are already in serious decline. The US national debt stands at over $33 TRILLION, and the era of the US dollar’s reserve currency status in global trade is closing fast. A 12% overnight decline in global trade would almost certainly lead these economies into economic depression equivalent to the Great Depression of almost 100 years ago.
As I have said many times before, economic war and military war are two sides of the same coin. The Houthis have a major economic advantage based on their geography to influence and even threaten global economic activity, and have proven their ability and willingness to use it. And it is by no means certain that the Western armada assembled along the Yemeni coast can even defeat the Houthis militarily without unacceptable and unsustainable losses. According to Fabian Hinz, a research fellow at the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies, the Houthis are known to possess two types of larger anti-ship ballistic missiles: The Asef, which has a ranger 450km range, and the Tankil,which has a range of 500km. These missiles can travel at speeds up to Mach 5, and carry warheads of between 300 to 500 kg. (By comparison, Chinese anti-ship missiles with 600 kg warheads have been dubbed “Aircraft Carrier Killers”.) The range of these missiles allows the Houthis to cover not only the southern third of the Red Sea, but all of the Gulf of Aden and much of the Arabian Sea as well.
“No empires have lasted forever and that of the US/NATO world will be the last..”
• Ukraine – Another Lost US/NATO War With No Regrets (Sp.)
One of the enigmatic aspects of international politics is that big and militarily superior countries have systematically lost wars in smaller countries over the last 50 years, from Vietnam to Ukraine. “Losing” here means military defeat, being forced out, losing the struggle for the hearts and minds of the people, and facing fiasco when it comes to achieving the professed noble motives like introducing human rights, democracy, freedom or liberating women. And given the tremendous human costs, particularly in the Middle East, the US’ “Global War on Terror” since September 11, 2001 is also an intellectual and moral disaster. The US – by far the world’s largest military spender, interventionist, warrior, occupier, global base-builder with the most militarized foreign policy – is in a class of its own. In losing wars too.
It is now rapidly losing legitimacy, relevance and credibility in the eyes of most of the world outside US/NATO/EU/ANPO/AUKUS. Firstly, all these imperial militarist adventures have been woefully anti-intellectual and imbued with the arrogance of power, elements of racism and hubris. Secondly, after quite predictable fiascos and defeats – such as in Iraq – there comes a time when propaganda, psychological operations (PSYOPS), media influencing, and psycho-political projection no longer do the trick. There comes a time, too, when even the biggest military spender and economy cannot finance its weapons addiction and its arsenals of weapons and ammunition dry up.
It’s called over-extension and diminishing legitimacy in the eyes of others, it’s called militarism to death and is transforming into imperial decline and eventual fall. No empires have lasted forever and that of the US/NATO world will be the last. No one is so foolish to believe that, in an incredibly diverse world, everybody else would accept one player to be the all-dominating system and shape others into its own image. Missionary times are a thing of the past. Enter Ukraine. NATO set itself up in Kiev immediately after it became independent and declared in 2008 that it would become a member of the alliance. It was a gross violation of the promises indisputably given to the last Soviet President, Michael Gorbachev, but such was the unipolar we-can-do-whatever-we-want sentiment.
In an autistic manner, NATO refused to listen to Russia’s legitimate security concerns and also did not bother about the fact that there was only a tiny minority among the Ukrainian people in favour of membership of NATO. Instead, a regime change in Kiev was all that was needed: installing a pro-Western leadership, paying it well and giving it an offer it could not refuse by wooing it step-by-step into the ever-expanding alliance. Russia then put its foot down, and insult had to be added to injury: We will help you, Ukraine, for as long as it takes for you to win “our” war against Russia and “weaken” it; you’ll be covered the whole way, just fight for us to the last Ukrainian.
“..73% claiming that retaining their Ukrainian passport was not worth the risk..”
• Ukrainians Tell MP They Would Give Up Citizenship To Avoid Conscription (RT)
A majority of Ukrainians responding to a Facebook poll by a leading lawmaker have said they would be willing to renounce their citizenship in order to avoid being drafted into the military. In a series of Facebook posts on Monday, Mariana Bezuglaya, an MP from President Vladimir Zelensky’s ruling party, initially asked female followers if they would give up their Ukrainian passports to avoid potential forced mobilization to “rear positions” in the military industry. Even though the lawmaker emphasized that frontline combat positions are currently out of the question for women, some 65% of the more than 3,800 respondents said they would renounce their citizenship rather than take the risk.
In two follow-up polls, the MP wondered if women would at least consider registering with the military authorities for potential mobilization in the future, in exchange for reopening the borders for men, or for the demobilization of those who have already served for two years. Only 17% and 22% of respondents agreed, respectively. In her last “experimental survey” on Monday, Bezuglaya addressed men with a similar question: “In order not to be mobilized, am I ready to renounce Ukrainian citizenship?” Over 4,300 users took part in the poll, with 73% claiming that retaining their Ukrainian passport was not worth the risk. Bezuglaya is currently deputy chair of the parliamentary committee on National Security, Defense and Intelligence, and is best known for proposing a bill in May 2022 that would have allowed Ukrainian officers to execute soldiers for insubordination without a trial.
Earlier this month, the lawmaker marked International Volunteer Day by thanking everyone who had already signed up to the military, but demanded more enlistment and urged women to join the ranks. The 35-year-old claimed she had undergone military training herself in 2015, when the government in Kiev was waging its “anti-terrorist operation” against the residents of Donbass. Kiev’s push to recruit more troops follows its underwhelming summer counteroffensive, which according to estimates by the Russian Defense Ministry has cost Ukraine over 125,000 troops. Last month, Zelensky promised a “comprehensive proposal” to reform the conscription system, which has yet to be announced. According to Russian intelligence, Ukraine’s backers in the West have demanded that the draft be expanded to teenagers, older men, and women.
“The presumption here is preposterous: that Elon doesn’t care if his product is flawed and doesn’t desire improvement.”
• The Multifront Attack on Elon Musk (Jeffrey Tucker)
[..] Musk bought the Twitter platform and purged 4 out of 5 employees, including the many government agents who had been hired to turn Twitter into a government propaganda machine. Since then he has upheld the First Amendment and innovated a series of tools that allow for internal and crowd-source fact-checking to make his renamed platform the most reliable source of news and opinion in the world. Since he took over, he has faced a barrage of state-generated attacks. The SEC has sued Musk over the purchase of the platform. According to the New York Times, “his takeover has been the subject of several lawsuits and investigations by the federal authorities. The Federal Trade Commission has probed whether X had the resources to protect users’ privacy after he laid off much of its staff and several senior executives responsible for privacy and security resigned. The agency has also sought to depose Mr. Musk. Former Twitter shareholders have also sued Mr. Musk for fraud in a case related to his belated disclosure of his stake in the company.”
The FTC has demanded internal X documents. Says The Hill: “the FTC has sent more than a dozen letters to Twitter since Musk completed his acquisition in October. It states that the agency has demanded Twitter provide internal communications “relating to Elon Musk” from any Twitter employee, information about the platform’s Twitter Blue verification subscription service and the names of journalists who were granted access to Twitter records.” The Biden Department of Justice has sued SpaceX…get this…for not hiring refugees for secret rocket technology. CNN says: “The suit claims that ‘from at least September 2018 to May 2022, SpaceX routinely discouraged asylees and refugees from applying and refused to hire or consider them, because of their citizenship status, in violation of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA),’ according to an August 24 DOJ news release.”
The Biden Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commision have sued Tesla over improper perks. Forbes says: “The widened investigation comes after federal prosecutors and the SEC began probing a secret Tesla project known as Project 42 that employees described as a glass house for Musk in the Austin, Texas, area near Tesla’s factory, the Journal reported in August.” The Biden Department of Justice has opened a criminal investigation against Tesla over self-driving cars. Reuters reports: “The U.S. Department of Justice launched the previously undisclosed probe last year following more than a dozen crashes, some of them fatal, involving Tesla’s driver assistance system Autopilot, which was activated during the accidents, the people said.” The presumption here is preposterous: that Elon doesn’t care if his product is flawed and doesn’t desire improvement.
There is a federal investigation of Neuralink. Reuters again: “Elon Musk’s Neuralink, a medical device company, is under federal investigation for potential animal-welfare violations amid internal staff complaints that its animal testing is being rushed, causing needless suffering and deaths, according to documents reviewed by Reuters and sources familiar with the investigation and company operations.”Then there is the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission investigation over harassment at Tesla. The EEOC says: “Since at least 2015 to the present, Black employees at Tesla’s Fremont, California manufacturing facilities have routinely endured racial abuse, pervasive stereotyping, and hostility as well as epithets… Slurs were used casually and openly in high-traffic areas and at worker hubs.
“Black employees regularly encountered graffiti, including variations of the N-word, swastikas, threats, and nooses, on desks and other equipment, in bathroom stalls, within elevators, and even on new vehicles rolling off the production line.” Finally, we have the aggressive advertising boycott on the part of major corporations, including Disney, CNBC, Comcast, Warner Bros, IBM, and the Financial Times, among many others. Musk has refused to be intimidated by these people. He has said that he refuses to be blackmailed by money and instead told the companies to “Go f*** yourself.” Which is rather remarkable and really does speak to a major problem in social media today, which is the extent to which so many platforms are willing to do the bidding of the corporatist system in order to serve the bottom line.
“..radical left-wing organizations who would like nothing more than to limit freedom by reducing participation in the public square..”
• Media Matters Sues Texas AG In Federal Court (ET)
Media Matters for America is suing Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in federal court, arguing that reporting by its senior investigative reporter on Elon Musk’s X app is being “chilled” by the AG’s announced investigation. Media Matters, a progressive watchdog group, filed its lawsuit Tuesday. It had reported last month that, according to its analysis, X was a platform hosting bigots and that it had paid far-right extremists, warning advertisers that their content was running beside pro-Hitler and anti-Semitic content. The report was then cited by major companies, like Apple, Disney, Sony, and Fox Sports, who announced they were boycotting the platform from their advertising campaigns.
This triggered Mr. Paxton to announce on Nov. 21 an investigation into Media Matters “for potential fraudulent activity” in its report, after X responded to the allegations saying that the progressive group had manufactured its results. X has sued Media Matters for defamation over the report in a Texas federal court, citing advertising data showing that report author Eric Hananoki was among only two users to see an Apple ad next to the hateful content, while explaining that content follows the search history of users. “Attorney General Paxton was extremely troubled by the allegations that Media Matters, a radical anti-free speech organization, fraudulently manipulated data on X.com (formerly known as Twitter),” the Office of the Attorney General in Texas said in announcing its investigation following X’s comments.
Mr. Paxton argued that his case was to protect the First Amendment rights of Texans. X has come under attack from progressive groups after Mr. Musk’s takeover of Twitter and the release of internal communications that revealed the company censored speech in favor of then-presidential candidate Joe Biden in the run-up to the 2020 election. Mr. Paxton’s office explained in its statement that it was pursuing its investigation of Media Matters’s report under the Texas Business Organizations Code and the Deceptive Trade Practices Act, which allows his office to “vigorously enforce against nonprofits who commit fraudulent acts in or affecting the state of Texas.” “We are examining the issue closely to ensure that the public has not been deceived by the schemes of radical left-wing organizations who would like nothing more than to limit freedom by reducing participation in the public square,” Mr. Paxton said of the negative publicity directed at X since Mr. Musk’s takeover and efforts to reform the platform in favor of free speech for all Americans, regardless of political view.
“Of course I don’t regret it,” Mr Giuliani told reporters on 11 December. “I told the truth. They were engaged in changing votes.”
• Giuliani Sued Again By Election Workers Over Latest False Claims (BBC)
Two Georgia poll workers have filed a new lawsuit against Rudy Giuliani, days after winning a $148m (£116m) defamation case against him. Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss allege that Mr Giuliani continued to lie when he repeated false claims mid-trial that “they were engaged in changing votes”. The mother-daughter pair are seeking an injunction to bar Mr Giuliani from making further false statements about them. “It must stop,” the lawsuit demands. An attorney for Mr Giuliani did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The new legal action says that Mr Giuliani “has engaged in, and is engaging in, a continuing course of repetitive false speech and harassment”.
They added in their filing that his “wrongful conduct was extreme and outrageous, and it was calculated to cause harm to Ms Freeman and Ms Moss”. The two women previously filed a defamation case against Mr Giuliani, who was found liable for spreading lies that the poll workers had tampered with votes during the 2020 election. A jury ultimately ordered Mr Giuliani to pay the women $148m (£116m) in damages.. During the trial, Mr Giuliani insisted numerous times that he told the truth about the women and reiterated falsehoods about them. These statements are the source of the new lawsuit. “Of course I don’t regret it,” Mr Giuliani told reporters on 11 December. “I told the truth. They were engaged in changing votes.”
In another instance on 15 December, he said his statements “were supportable and are supportable today”. The women’s new lawsuit notes several other instances where Mr Giuliani made allegedly defamatory statements during and after the trial, including in right-wing media appearances. Last week, a Washington DC jury heard hours of painful testimony from Ms Moss about the fallout of those claims. She testified that she and her mother were subjected to violent and racist threats that made them fear for their lives. Mr Giuliani did not testify during the trial, but Judge Beryl Howell, who presided over the case, warned his attorneys that his remarks could be defamatory.
“..9/11, which was blamed without any evidence on Muslim terrorists when all evidence points to an inside job so that the US could remake the Middle East for Israel.”
• The Terror Watchlist Prepared the Way to Tyranny (Paul Craig Roberts)
Did you know that there are 2,000,000 names on the Federal government’s terror watchlist? The National Security Council claims most are not Americans, but the Department of Homeland Security admits that there have been tens of thousands of Americans who have been treated like terrorists. It does not occur to the National Security council that there are no terrorist events corresponding to two million terrorists. If there truly were two million terrorists, the US would be in chaos. So what is the list for? It expands the security bureaucracy. The list has grown from 120,000 to two million, seventeen times larger than its original figure. Is this in response to terrorists events? You name the events.
The list enables the FBI to pressure people into becoming informants and false witnesses in frame ups by threatening to add them to the terror list, The list allows authorities to punish and to silence truth-tellers who expose the official narratives for the lies that they are. You can add your own explanations. Remember, the Nazi-sounding Department of Homeland Security and the terror watchlist were the creations of 9/11, which was blamed without any evidence on Muslim terrorists when all evidence points to an inside job so that the US could remake the Middle East for Israel.
In other words, a false flag attack was used to strip Americans of their rights to travel. It is unclear to me how the watchlist can continue to exist after Federal Judge Anthony Trenga declared the watchlist unconstitutional. Did the federal nazis appeal his decision and get it over-ruled? The watchlist is just a way of controlling people. Its other useful function is to acclimatize Americans to the warrantless invasion of their privacy and accustom them to obeying arbitrary orders. The watchlist is a way of preparing Americans for tyranny.
“.. It is likely to grow by $5.2 billion daily for the next ten years..”
• US National Debt Jumps $2.6 Trillion In Six Months (RT)
US national debt has continued to mount, jumping by $2.6 trillion in the six months through December to reach $33.8 trillion, according to the Treasury Department. The Treasury indicated that factors such as tax cuts, stimulus programs, increased government spending, and decreased tax revenues have been driving up debt. “The national debt just exceeded $100,000 per citizen,” Republican Congressman John James said last week. “This should send a message to the White House that this reckless federal spending is at a breaking point.” The latest fiscal data showed that as of November 2023, it cost $169 billion for the US to maintain the debt, which equates to 16% of total federal spending. Interest payments on the national debt are estimated to have surged above $1 trillion on an annualized basis as of the end of October, according to Bloomberg calculations based on US Treasury data.
According to Bank of America (BoA), public debt could surge by $20 trillion over the next decade. It is likely to grow by $5.2 billion daily for the next ten years, which would put it at around $54 trillion by 2033, BoA warned last month. The US exceeded its debt ceiling, which was legally set at $31.4 trillion, in January 2023. After months of warnings of a potentially disastrous default from the Treasury, President Joe Biden signed a bipartisan debt bill in June that allowed the limit to be lifted until January 2025. This effectively permitted the government to continue unlimited borrowing through next year. Debt spiked to $32 trillion less than two weeks after the bill was approved, and has been piling up ever since. The situation has caused major international credit ratings agencies Fitch and Moody’s to cut their outlooks for the US this year.
“..Judge Loretta Preska calls for Epstein’s connections to be “unsealed in full”.
• US Judge Orders More Than 170 Jeffrey Epstein Associates To Be Named (BBC)
The names of more than 170 associates of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein could be made public next month after a ruling from a US judge. Prince Andrew is expected to be among them, if evidence is released from a woman who claims he groped her in 2001. The identities are being revealed under a settled lawsuit against sex trafficker and Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell. Anyone on the list has until 1 January to appeal to have their name removed. Epstein, a millionaire financier known to mix with high-profile figures like Prince Andrew, died in jail in 2019. His death, as he awaited federal sex-trafficking charges, was ruled to be a suicide by the New York medical examiner. The 51-page ruling issued on Monday by New York Judge Loretta Preska calls for Epstein’s connections to be “unsealed in full”.
It is the latest filing in the case brought by Ms Giuffre against Maxwell, a former British socialite who is serving a 20-year prison term for the crimes she committed with Epstein. Ms Giuffre’s defamation lawsuit was brought in 2015 and settled in 2017, leaving the names of scores of Epstein associates under a court-ordered seal. They include 40 documents of evidence from Johanna Sjoberg, who has claimed Prince Andrew groped her breast while sitting on a couch inside Epstein’s Manhattan apartment in 2001. Buckingham Palace has previously said the allegations are “categorically untrue”. Last year, the Duke of York paid millions to Ms Giuffre to settle a lawsuit she filed claiming that he sexually abused her when she was 17 years old.
Prince Andrew said he had never met Ms Giuffre and denied her allegations. In her ruling, Judge Preska noted that many of the individuals named in the lawsuit have already been publicly identified by the media or in Maxwell’s criminal trial. She added that many others “did not raise an objection” to the release of the documents. Some of the names on the list will remain sealed, including those belonging to child victims, the judge said in her ruling. US congressional Republicans are pushing to subpoena the flight logs for Epstein’s private plane. Convicted in 2008 for soliciting prostitution from a minor, Epstein had moved in social circles that included key figures in the world of business and politics.
“The US officials allegedly hinted to the Pakistani diplomat that if the prime minister lost an impending no-confidence vote in parliament, “all will be forgiven in Washington.”
• Imran Khan Uses AI To Deliver Speech From Prison (RT)
Former Pakistani Prime Minister, who is currently imprisoned, has used artificial intelligence to deliver a speech to his supporters. The four-minute address was broadcast during a ‘virtual rally’ attended by more than 4.5 million people across Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), and YouTube. Pakistani authorities have clamped down on gatherings organized by Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party since he was briefly arrested for the first time in May. The former prime minister was sentenced to three years behind bars in August for illegally selling state gifts. The 71-year-old faces a slew of other charges, all of which he claims are politically motivated. According to PTI representatives, the cricket-star-turned-politician wrote a script for the speech and passed it on to his supporters through lawyers. It was then dubbed with the help of a tool developed by the AI firm ElevenLabs, which can create a ‘voice clone’ of a person based on speech samples.
In his message, Khan accused the Pakistani government of kidnapping and harassing activists from his party.He also stressed that his “determination for real freedom is very strong,” thanking the PTI social media team for “this historic attempt” to circumvent government restrictions. Meanwhile, the NetBlocks watchdog reported that it had detected disruptions in social media availability in Pakistan, starting late on Sunday. The group alleged that this may have been due to deliberate “internet censorship.” Khan was charged by a special court in October with breaching state secrecy laws over an alleged conspiracy to reveal what he characterized as proof of US interference in orchestrating his removal from power last year.
The diplomatic cable at the center of the case was sent by then-Pakistani Ambassador to the US Asad Majeed Khan after his meeting with two senior US State Department officials in March 2022. According to multiple media reports purportedly based on the document, Washington made clear that it was unhappy about Khan’s failure to toe the West’s line. The US officials allegedly hinted to the Pakistani diplomat that if the prime minister lost an impending no-confidence vote in parliament, “all will be forgiven in Washington.”Khan was ousted about a month after the meeting, and has since mounted a major protest campaign. While the US has denied exerting any pressure on Pakistan, the International Monetary Fund unexpectedly extended a $3 billion bailout for Islamabad in July – a decision that The Intercept has claimed was influenced by Washington.
“..what will likely be his last appeal against being extradited..”
• Assange Appeal Hearing Set for February (Lauria)
Imprisoned publisher Julian Assange will face two High Court judges over two days on Feb. 20-21, 2024 in London in what will likely be his last appeal against being extradited to the United States to face charges of violating the Espionage Act. Assange’s wife Stella Assange confirmed that the hearing will take place at the Royal Courts of Justice. Assange had had an earlier request to appeal rejected by High Court Judge Jonathan Swift on June 6. Assange then filed an application to appeal that decision and the dates have now been set. Assange is seeking to challenge both the home secretary’s decision to extradite him as well as to cross appeal the decision by the lower court judge, Vanessa Baraitser.
Baraitser had ruled in January 2021 to release Assange from Belmarsh Prison and deny the U.S. request for extradition based on Assange’s mental health, his propensity to commit suicide and conditions of U.S. prisons. On every point of law, however, Baraitser sided with the United States. The U.S. appealed her decision, issuing “diplomatic assurances” that Assange would not be mistreated in prison. The High Court, after a two-day hearing in March 2022, accepted those “assurances” and rejected Assange’s appeal. His application to the U.K. Supreme Court to hear the case was then denied. Assange then applied for a new appeal of Baraitser’s legal decisions and the home secretary’s extradition order.
Swift rejected Assange’s 150-page argument in a three-page ruling. The appeal of that decision will now take place in February. If convicted under the World War I-era Espionage Act, the WikiLeaks publisher and journalist is facing up to 175 years in a U.S. dungeon for publishing classified material revealing crimes by the U.S. state, including war crimes. Assange was also charged with conspiracy to commit computer intrusion, though the indictment against him does not accuse him of stealing U.S. documents or even of helping his source, Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning, to do so.
Kory
There have been 158,000 more unexpected deaths than during this same period in 2019.
Why are so many young, healthy people dropping dead? What happened in the American workplace in 2021 that led to these deaths?
Thank you, @pierrekory pic.twitter.com/IJZvcfgthJ
— Dr. Simone Gold (@drsimonegold) December 19, 2023
https://twitter.com/goddeketal/status/1737200419397414943
Impawsible
https://twitter.com/i/status/1737082852989440073
Basket star
This creature is a basket star
pic.twitter.com/FDiBTf7Mgk— Science girl (@gunsnrosesgirl3) December 19, 2023
The Cashew of Pirangi is the world’s largest cashew tree located in Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil. It covers an area between 7,300 and 8,400 square meters. Having the size of 70 normally sized cashew trees, it has a circumference of 500 meters. The spread over a hectare of land was, unlike other trees, created by the tree’s outward growth. When bent towards the ground (because of their weight), the branches tend to take new roots where they touch the ground. The tree is said to have been planted in 1880s. However, based on its growth characteristics, the tree is estimated to be more than a thousand years old.
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