Hunter Biden Archives - The Automatic Earth

https://twitter.com/ConstitustionX/status/2083425860418457672?s=20 https://twitter.com/JimFergusonUK/status/2083459438984245427?s=20 https://twitter.com/JasonJournoDC/status/2083634392061161770?s=20

“…To Reopen Hormuz After Call With Saudi Crown Prince..”

• Trump Says “Perimeters Of A Deal Reached” With Iran (ZH)

The past few days have been tense. Although no US strikes were launched from Friday night into Saturday morning and the Gulf region remained quiet early Sunday, anticipation surrounding President Trump’s next move is keeping energy traders and Gulf governments on edge. The big concern is that another round of strikes could trigger a wider regional conflict, particularly as the Iranian-backed Houthis have reactivated offensive operations in the southern Red Sea in recent weeks.

The Trump administration and Department of War may pursue de-escalation from here after Trump wrote on Truth Social late Saturday night: “We have just been asked by Iran, and other Middle Eastern Countries, to hold off any attack in that the perimeters of a deal has been agreed to.”

That de-esclation pathway was followed by a new signal early Sudnay from Saudi Press Agency, Saudi Arabia’s official state news agency, stating that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman held a call with President Trump, discussing the “necessity of prioritizing dialogue to de-escalate tensions and the importance of exerting all possible efforts to achieve a truce that paves the way for diplomatic solutions that yield positive results for preserving the security and stability of the region and prevent it from being drawn into a wider conflict whose repercussions would affect regional and international security and stability.”
The MbS-Trump call was first reported by Axios, which got the scoop on Saturday evening: Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman spoke to President Trump on Saturday and expressed concern over his plans for massive new strikes against Iran, according to two U.S. officials and a third source with knowledge of the call. . . .
Such an attack could lead to an unprecedented escalation in the five-month war, which has repeatedly paused as Trump opened the door to negotiations — only to resume when those diplomatic efforts failed. Iran has threatened to retaliate by launching attacks against energy and infrastructure facilities in Israel and the Gulf countries The Saudis expressed concern and asked for clarity about the plan of action,” one U.S. official told Axios.
A second source with knowledge of the call said MBS urged Trump to de-escalate and refrain from launching the strikes. Why the MBS-Trump conversation matters is that Saudi Arabia remains one of Washington’s top Gulf region allies. Riyadh has heavily influenced Trump’s Iran policy at previous inflection points and appears to have exerted similar influence in delaying or narrowing the next phase of US military action.

Paul Craig Roberts. Calls Trump Zionist. I don’t think he fits the definition. For Mamdani perhaps, but for PCR?

The whole headline is nonsense too, of course. We’re losing ourselves.

• Zionist Trump Regime Looks for New Reasons to Escalate Attacks on Iran (PCR)

The New York Times and other of the whore media are reporting cyber attacks on US water systems in 7 states including Minnesota and Michigan. The attacks are attributed to Iran, although “Officials cautioned that they had not definitively determined that Iran was responsible for the attack.” So why report it? Is it news before it happens? It is not certain, but in my opinion likely, that this is disinformation being fed to the presstitutes by the Trump Zionist regime in order to justify more and more risky attacks on Iran. As we all know, Netanyahu has a firm hold on Trump and that is what Netanyahu wants.

American patriots seem inclined to believe that America is always under attack by some designated enemy. The George W. Bush Zionist regime even attributed “weapons of mass destruction” to Iraq, a total impossibility, in order to justify a US invasion in the interests of Greater Israel. As General Wesley Clark said “seven countries in five years.” Moreover, why would Iran, which attacks military, not civilian, targets, focus on water systems? It seems their cyberattacks would, like their military attacks, be focused on military infrastructure.
But assume Iran is behind the attacks on US water systems, keep in mind that Iranian civilian infrastructure and civilian residential areas continue to be targets of Zionist Trump’s attacks on Iran. So, if Iran is attacking US water systems, the cause is Trump’s attacks on Iran’s civilian infrastructure. So, before you get all hot under the collar about Iran, get hot under the collar because of Zionist Trump who is using America for Israel’ benefit. Americans have no right to complain about others attacking us in kind.

Someone organized this. Did israel do it?

• A Two-State Solution for Spain? (Paul Craig Roberts)

Israel is celebrating the overrunning of the Spanish city of Ceuta by 60,000 African immigrant-invaders, an invasion force larger than 50% of the city’s population. As in Jean Raspail’s Camp of the Saints, there was no Spanish force present to defend Spain.

The idiotic Spanish Supreme Court invited the invasion by ruling that the government did not have the authority to evict, and apparently prevent, the entry, of 60,000 invaders without having each of the 60,000 invaders’ “human rights” case heard in court. The imbecilic Spanish prime minister sent 60 troops to “help the police.” As RT reports: “Spanish Prime Minister Sanchez refused to declare a national emergency, but sent a token force of 60 troops.” What good are 60 soldiers against 60,000 invaders? In former times when European ethnicities had confidence in themselves, the Spanish PM would be hanging from the nearest lamp post. The prime minister sacrificed Spaniards to Immigrant-invaders.
Europe is upset, because once the invaders establish themselves in Spain they will continue to enter and spread themselves throughout Europe. “Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, Finnish Interior Minister Mari Rantanen, and Austrian Chancellor Christian Stocker all calling for Spain’s exclusion from the EU’s Schengen borderless travel zone.” But in Israeli circles the reaction was jubilation. More success destroying the weak-willed, weak-minded gentile Europeans who have no sense of ethnic survival, just as Jean Raspail described. The immigrant-invaders into white ethnic civilization are overthrowing it and leaving Israel supreme.
Among the many, Israeli journalist Edy Cohen celebrated the victory against the gentile enemy that once expelled the Jews from Spain because of their financial exploitation of Spanish citizens: “Don’t be surprised if in a few years those same young people who stormed Ceuta are the ones taking to the streets of Madrid and Barcelona shouting the new slogan. He who invites the destruction of the Jewish state suddenly discovers that destruction can also start in his own home.” Centuries later. Jews don’t forget.
“Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir joined in the mockery, congratulating the moronic prime minister of Spain “for his profound commitment to welcoming immigration and ‘human diversity’.” “Ben-Gvir, who has called for the destruction of Lebanon, the execution of Palestinian prisoners, and the use of starvation as a weapon of war, called on Sanchez to go further and aid in the depopulation of Gaza.” Not a word from Israel’s puppet, President Trump, who is so weak, despite his laughable blustering, that he, the President of the United States, is not capable of standing up to Netanyahu.
Later reports allege that Spanish military forces eventually showed up and that the immigrant-invaders voluntarily returned to Morocco. Who really knows? Given the total unreliability of the news, we have no way of knowing. What does seem to be completely clear is that no European ethnicity has the confidence to defend its existence. Every white country is committed to its total destruction by its own government and white liberals. Any white ethnic who wants to know his future needs only to read Jean Raspail’s Camp of the Saints.

”The Ceuta migrant surge was sold as a border panic. The harder question is who benefited from lighting the fuse.”

• Regarding The Causes of The Ceuta Migrant Surge, Look Who’s Gloating (Amar)

The recent burst of illegal migration into Spain’s Moroccan exclave of Ceuta was, above all, a sensational media event produced for political effect. It will have lasting consequences, but not in terms of who ended up where: Of the about 50,000 migrants who suddenly, as if on command, stormed Ceuta by land and sea, almost all quickly went back to Morocco. According to the EU’s home affairs commissioner, not a single Ceuta-crasher made it to the European mainland.

In that sense, the whole thing might as well not have happened. Apocalyptic fantasies of Ceuta turning into a wide open gate to the rest of fortress Europe were always, at best, silly: no, you can’t just travel on into Spain from there or to British Gibraltar, for that matter.
Worse, there have been many deliberate attempts at political profiteering by spreading panic. All through the West, figures from across the political spectrum did not miss a beat trying to exploit the Ceuta emergency: In America, President Donald Trump – under pressure from his self-imposed fiasco in Iran – spoke of a “catastrophe” for Spain and predicted even worse to come in the US if voters dare abandon his Republicans in the upcoming midterms. Elon Musk, richest oligarchs in the world, shared a fragment of the not-so-subtly Zionist horror epic “World War Z” to compare the migrants to Zombies.

Meanwhile in NATO-EU Europe, Italy’s leadership under Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni staged some grand, irrelevant theater about the country’s perfectly unaffected borders, while making sour sounds about Schengen this and Schengen that. Not to be outdone, in France the Rassemblement National’s number two Jordan Bardella charged with equal absurdity that Spain’s socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez and his liberal policies had “opened the doors of Europe.”
While especially strident, the EU’s new right was representative of almost everyone else: 22 governments signed a letter “implicitly criticizing” Spain rather than show solidarity with a fellow-EU member. Spain, meanwhile, is not prepared to meekly submit to this intra-Western hazing session. Sanchez has called out international reactions “driven by prejudice, fake news, ignorance or political interest.”
None of the above means that this fresh and unprecedentedly massive – five or six times as large as previous peaks, according to the Wall Street Journal – Ceuta crisis wasn’t real. Indeed, it was real enough to leave at least 67 casualties behind, namely, those migrants who did not manage to breach the Spanish border fortifications and drowned or were crushed to death. They, however, have met with little interest and no human compassion. Clearly, under Western eyes they are negligible. Western mainstream media and politicians have treated their lives as if they hardly mattered. Almost as if they were, say, Palestinians in Gaza or the West Bank, killed, robbed, and displaced by Israeli genocide and ethnic cleansing.
Which brings us to an especially intriguing aspect of this manufactured panic: Curiously, Israel’s UN representative Danny Danon has felt it is his job to go after Spain as well. “Spain, which never misses an opportunity to lecture Israel, has declared a state of emergency in Ceuta following the crisis over its immigration policy,” he declared, adding “maybe before it continues lecturing us, it’s time it explained to the world why it still maintains colonial enclaves in Africa.”
Ceuta and its sister exclave Melilla really are odd historical remnants, no doubt. But to hear an official representative of Israel, a genocidal settler colony led by an indicted war criminal, go on about colonialism is rich. But then, that is Danon’s default style: aggressive, shameless, and dirty.
More serious is the fact that Israel’s UN ambassador has chosen to make this statement when social media are already abuzz with theories pointing to Israel as somehow behind – if not necessarily alone – the storming of Ceuta. In essence, the idea is that the Zionist apartheid state and its international networks have found a way to pay Spain back for its far from perfect but – in NATO-EU Europe – unusual solidarity with Israel’s Palestinian victims.
No wonder that many Spanish observers, including the Minister of Transport, believe Israel’s involvement is real in this assault on Spain’s territorial integrity and standing within the EU. Indeed, Danon’s comment was so revealing that Israel’s ambassador to Spain, Dana Ehrlich, went into damage control mode, posting that Israel’s UN representative does not represent the position of the Israeli government. Make it make sense.
[..] The likeliest explanation for the Ceuta assault and its lethal consequences may well be a combination of factors. Yet the real question is not simply which causes contributed to this fatal outcome, but whether they came together spontaneously or by design. Was there a trigger or a catalyst? If there is one thing the genocide in Gaza should have taught everybody then it is that when Israel announces a crime, it will follow through and commit it. With that in mind, it is naïve to rule out the very real possibility that Ceuta was an Israeli psy-op against Spain, at the cost of dozens of lives no one in Europe seems to care about.

But that’s what they publicly declare…

“One Ceuta resident posted that around 50,000 invaders remained, the city was collapsed, and the official numbers were pure spin.”

• NO, The Invaders Have Not All Just ‘Gone Home’ (MN)

Spanish authorities and their leftist allies are pushing the line that the tens of thousands of migrants who stormed Ceuta have mostly “gone home.” The claim is pure fantasy. Fresh video from the streets shows the city still under siege, with invaders assaulting facilities, smashing graves, clashing with locals, and turning a Spanish enclave into a no-go zone. This is the same dangerous mass migration reality that open-borders ideologues keep denying, even as the evidence piles up in real time.

The official narrative landed hard on Friday. Spain’s Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares declared that “the practical totality of those who entered Ceuta have already returned to Morocco.” The Spanish Embassy in the UK amplified the message, insisting almost everyone was gone, that no one could reach the mainland without ID checks, and that Schengen integrity remained fully guaranteed.b The Guardia Civil’s own association posted that Ceuta was “breathing again,” with returns advancing little by little and normality returning thanks to security forces.
Locals on the ground immediately called it a lie. One Ceuta resident posted that around 50,000 invaders remained, the city was collapsed, and the official numbers were pure spin. Video filmed that same afternoon showed streets still packed, nothing like the “most have left” story. [..] Just days earlier, we documented the initial invasion and the subsequent rampage through homes and streets. The claim that the crisis simply evaporated overnight collapses under the weight of the footage still circulating.
While Madrid spun the returns, Moroccan migrants were filmed storming a public asylum centre in Ceuta. The CETI facility came under direct assault as the government continued insisting order had been restored. Elsewhere, invaders smashed Christian graves and hurled the broken pieces at Spanish citizens. Locals fought back with whatever they could grab while police and military presence remained inadequate.
https://twitter.com/mattvanswol/status/2083277425287242146?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E2083277425287242146%7Ctwgr%5Ec6f49120ef6451b8882d2102b3804e621e984e77%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fmodernity.news%2F2026%2F08%2F01%2Fno-the-invaders-have-not-all-just-gone-home%2F
Knives came out in the open. Migrants stabbed one another in the streets while Spanish residents stayed locked indoors, prisoners in their own city of roughly 80,000 people now overrun. Cars belonging to locals were attacked simply for driving past and showing dissatisfaction. Grocery stores had to be fenced off and guarded by police to stop looting by the hungry crowds.
https://twitter.com/visegrad24/status/2083168989715243281?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E2083168989715243281%7Ctwgr%5Ec6f49120ef6451b8882d2102b3804e621e984e77%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fmodernity.news%2F2026%2F08%2F01%2Fno-the-invaders-have-not-all-just-gone-home%2F
Vehicles burned at the border as the surge continued. Groups of military-age men, far from the “families and refugees” talking point, were filmed taking escalators and moving through the city with the swagger of occupation rather than desperation.

Muslim Invaders Turned Ceuta Into a THIRD WORLD Hellscape in 24 Hours

What was paradise just yesterday now looks like the country these criminals left.

Import the third world, become the third world. pic.twitter.com/nCYzGygMBO
— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) July 31, 2026

Daniel Lacalle is a Spanish voice. Appropriate.

• Ceuta and the Collapse of Sánchez’s Pro-Migration Experiment (Daniel Lacalle)

The new migration crisis in Ceuta is not an isolated episode or a simple border emergency. It is the result of a deeply irresponsible and damaging political and economic model. Sanchez boasts about aggregate growth while destroying cohesion, productivity, net real income per capita, and institutions. Spain is not an example of growth, migrant integration, or cohesion. It is a statistical mirage juiced by population increase and a fiscal time bomb. It has taken a migration crisis for the European Union to wake up.

Illegal immigration is not a stroke of fate or a recipe for growth and for shoring up public finances; it is a strategy of control and demolition of the nation from within, with the aim of creating a dependent, captive underclass, buying votes by altering demographics and shifting onto future generations the enormous cost to the state of a population increase whose net contribution to public accounts is overwhelmingly negative.
Spain was presented by progressives as a model of migrant integration. It was never true, and now it has become a full- blown crisis. The uncontrolled wave of illegal immigration is the direct result of the socialist government‘s policies: mass regularizations, subsidies, and the constant message that illegal migration pays.
For years, Spain has attracted uncontrolled inflows with promises of regularization and public transfers, while Brussels looked the other way because headline GDP grew and the statistics looked inclusive. However, the cost is enormous and borne by Spanish workers and taxpayers and, increasingly, by the entire European Union. Its elite tolerated Spain’s destructive policies as long as aggregate GDP was fattened, even in the face of the clear warning sign that GDP per capita was stagnating and pressure on public services and social unrest were rising.
The Sanchez government and its coalition have imposed unprecedented regularization processes, presenting them as a model for Europe and explicitly linking them to GDP increases and the supposed sustainability of the welfare state. This was a major deception. Regularized illegal immigration does not make pensions more sustainable; quite the opposite, because its net contribution to public accounts is unquestionably negative, as all studies on the matter show. Meanwhile, the government inflates aggregate GDP, but GDP per capita, net real wages, productivity, and the real effective employment rate remain stagnant.
The Spanish government has presented itself to the world with an openly pro immigration stance, at odds with decisions taken by the European Union itself. However, the Commission and the EU remained silent in the face of the assault on institutions, corruption, and the disaster of migration policy. European institutions bear responsibility because they supported and amplified S·nchez s destructive, extensive migration policy, presenting it as if it were inclusive. They ignored the evidence that Spain s numbers are poor once you look beyond headline GDP.
Stagnant GDP per capita: the IMF’s own estimates show that Spain’s GDP per capita will grow by just 1% a year between 2018 and 2027, exactly the same as the euro area average. Falling net real wages: under Sanchez they have fallen by almost 3%.Real unemployment: 3.7 million real unemployed, including inactive workers registered with the SEPE and 792,341 inactive permanent intermittent workers. The number of effectively unemployed has barely improved since 2019.
Zero fiscal consolidation: the net debt of the public administrations under the Excessive Deficit Procedure has risen to a record 1.6 trillion, while the total liabilities of the public sector have increased by more than half a trillion to 2.2 trillion. Debt to GDP and the deficit only appear to improve because the denominator is being doped with immigration and inflation above the euro area average. An unsustainable Social Security system: Snchez has multiplied Social Security’s debt, and the system needs a bailout every year from a state that is already in deficit. Immigration is not going to reduce that enormous hole; it increases it, as its net contribution is mostly negative.
All the data on the Spanish economy show weakness, statistical illusions, and severe imbalances, but the European Union and the Commission preferred to remain silent, buy the official propaganda, and cling to a doped aggregate GDP. The same thing they did with Greece between 2004 and 2007.
[..] It is not a mistake; it is a power strategy. Sánchez seeks to create a captive underclass, dependent on subsidies and papers, that will vote for him in the future and shift the social consequences and the bill onto taxpayers. While the government sinks under corruption scandals and loses social support, it tries to cling to power by dismantling Spain and its institutions and importing the future voters it is losing today.
Sánchez is not governing Spain; he is dismantling it in an attempt to cling to power. That is the big lie of Sánchez’s “rocket,” bloating up instead of truly growing.
It seemed Elon Musk was on to Sánchez early on. After the prime minister defended his amnesty plan in April, Musk wrote on X, “Dirty Sánchez is guilty of high treason.”

Dirty Sánchez is guilty of high treason
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 19, 2026

Sánchez responded cheekily at the time, “Mars can wait. Humanity can’t.”

Mars can wait. Humanity can’t. https://t.co/Oc4qAYtd3f
— Pedro Sánchez (@sanchezcastejon) January 29, 2026

Why would she try to prove him wrong? He’s read it all. Can’t win that one.

“I’ve actually read the science,” he said. “You don’t want to come back here and debate the science.”

• RFK Jr. Steamrolled Dana Bash Over Fauci’s COVID Lies (Matt Margolis)

Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. obliterated CNN’s Dana Bash during a fiery interview Sunday morning on State of the Union, and it was brutal. The segment aired as measles outbreaks tore through several states, with public health officials warning that unvaccinated communities were fueling the spread of the disease to levels not seen in decades. Those outbreaks trace back to Joe Biden’s presidency, when his administration allowed millions of illegal immigrants to pour across the southern border and bring diseases like measles back into communities that had all but wiped them out.

Bash spent much of the interview pushing Kennedy to look “into the camera” and tell parents to vaccinate their kids against measles. Kennedy did it. He said exactly what she wanted him to say. Then Bash kept going, and the interview went off the rails. The conversation curdled into a fight over how the media treated skeptics and anyone who dared question the Biden administration’s COVID-era public health guidance during the pandemic. Bash opened with an accusation. “You are the HHS secretary, and you are talking about things that lead to vaccine hesitancy in this country,” she said. “And it’s something that causes problems for people when there is not anything.”
Kennedy wasn’t having it. “Let me ask you something,” he said. “Do you see your job as ending vaccine hesitancy or do you see your job as telling the truth to the American people?” Bash insisted her job was telling the truth. “There is study after study after study,” she said. “It’s one of the most studied things out there in science.” Kennedy pounced. “You’re repeating it like a parrot,” he said, twice for emphasis. Bash shot back, “So are you.” Kennedy wasn’t buying it. “I’ve actually read the science,” he said. “You don’t want to come back here and debate the science.”
From there, Kennedy dismantled the premise CNN built its entire segment on: that trusting government “experts” is the same thing as trusting the truth. “All you know how to do is repeat things that people told you and say, trust the experts,” he said. “That’s what you did during COVID. Now we know that Anthony Fauci, who was the ‘expert,’ was lying about everything, about masks, about social distancing, about natural immunity, about the transmission from the vaccine, about the source of COVID. He was lying, and you were punishing people for not trusting the experts. And now you’re rolling out the ‘experts’ again to talk about something that you have no personal knowledge of.”
Bash tried to defend herself. “That is my job, to talk to people,” she said. Kennedy wasn’t finished. “Your job is to tell the truth to the American people,” he replied.

.@SecKennedy NUKES @DanaBashCNN:

"I'm not debating this with you."

"Of course you won't. All you know how to do is repeat things that people told you and say, 'Trust the experts!' That's what you did during Covid. Now we know that Anthony Fauci, who was the 'expert,' was… pic.twitter.com/IVRLJfDSZ6
— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) August 2, 2026

If Bash thought she could lob a bunch of accusations against Kennedy and he would take it quietly, she was sorely mistaken. Kennedy didn’t dodge a single question. He turned every one of them into an indictment of a press corps that spent years demanding blind obedience and calling it science.

The entire video.

“Defending Fauci, Censorship, Govt Fraud and Weaponizing Viruses.. “

• CNN’s Dana Bash Beclowns Herself During Confrontation with RFK Jr (CTH)

CNN propagandist Dana Bash had a full mask down episode today while trying to deny the truth about COVID-19 (all aspects) and defend Anthony Fauci (who she frequently text with according to Fauci’s diary).

HHS Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr was not going to allow CNN to fraudulently present nonsense claims under the guise of “settled science,” and he pushed back hard against her claims. At one point Bash notes she didn’t want to litigate the COVID-19 outcomes and RFK Jr appropriately pushed back saying the experiences need to be relitigated because Americans were censored, shut down, lied to and had liberty destroyed by a political health system devoid from science.
Things became even more heated as Bash was staring at the multi-page talking points prepared for her by corporate advertisers and Kennedy was systematically destroying them. Bash doubled, tripled and quadrupled down with the manipulative and combative questioning, ultimately removing any facade of journalism in the process.

That question apparently is: ‘why have your views changed so dramatically in the past two years, and/or are you just playing a role.‘

• Rubio Discusses Global Challenges and Hints At the Never Asked Question (CTH)

Secretary of State Marco Rubio sat down with Fox News Lara Trump for an extensive discussion on his role and responsibilities in the Trump administration. In the second segment, Rubio actually touched on something many have been curious about regarding his changed perspectives and positions. It is still annoying that no one has ever asked him directly, ‘why have your views changed so dramatically in the past two years, and/or are you just playing a role.‘ The two video segments and transcript are below:

[Transcript] – QUESTION: Secretary, great to have you back. Thank you so much.
SECRETARY RUBIO: Glad to be back. It’s been a while.
QUESTION: Yeah. There’s so much to talk about, but I want to start with Cuba.
SECRETARY RUBIO: Yeah.
QUESTION: This has been of particular interest to the State Department right now. You guys released a 100-page report on Cuba, calling it, “The Capital of 21st Century Communism.” And this report talks about the fact that Cuba’s goal essentially is to erase the United States from the Earth. It also details a Cuban spy network that’s been undermining American interests. How did we get to a place where Cuba has become so much of a threat – it feels like again – to the United States?
SECRETARY RUBIO: I think for those who have followed the issue of Cuba, this is not unfamiliar to us. But to the average American, you see Cuba, a small country 90 miles off our shores, nine and a half million people population. But people forget that when it comes to things like espionage and influence operations, they actually are an influence and espionage superpower. If you look at the history of espionage in the United States, Cuba is the only country that consistently has implanted and embedded spies in our system without even paying them.
We had an ambassador, a U.S. ambassador, who ended up being a Cuban spy and was recently convicted. We’ve had them penetrate the highest levels of the Defense Intelligence Agency. Ana Belén Montes was one of the single biggest intelligence failures on the part of the United States and one of the biggest penetrations we ever had in our system.
So – and then on the influence front, if you look all throughout Latin America, every communist left-wing insurgency that’s destabilized governments across the region, every single one of them over the last 40, 50 years has found its support, its help, in many cases its birth, from a Cuban influence operation. So, it was an important report just to highlight the role they play in our country, a very negative role.
QUESTION: The report also links Cuban influence to the rise in Antifa, the riots that we saw in 2020, as well as the surge of radical activism that we’ve seen all over these college campuses. To the average person, those things, I think, feel generally organic, but it turns out there are a lot of different powers – Cuba being one of them – that are influencing all of these things day to day.
SECRETARY RUBIO: It’s the same network of protesters around the country. They were the same people you saw on the streets burning things in 2020. They then flip it around and they become the pro-Hamas protesters, then they flip it around and within 48 hours of Maduro’s arrest have preprinted signs outside the courthouse demanding his release. And then they’re out there doing the ICE stuff, attacking ICE agents.
There’s nothing organic about it. It is funded, it is organized, and Cuba is a part of that network, and in some cases a critical part of that network. And it’s a network they will weaponize against us, and they talk about it openly, about how they will use that network to pressure American policymakers – not just here in the United States, like Code Pink, but all over the world.
QUESTION: Critics of this report, of course, are saying, oh, well, these are scare tactics to potentially justify some U.S. military action against Cuba. It sounds like this is something we should take seriously, and this report sounds very real.
SECRETARY RUBIO: Everything in there is factual. And frankly, I don’t think they can dispute it. People can argue that we shouldn’t do with it, and I know there are plenty of people in American academia – and frankly in American press – that sympathize with the Cuban regime and have for a very long time. Part of it is motivated by their anti-Americanism, and part of it is motivated by ideological affinity. There are plenty – there are enough people in key nodes of our society, including professors, but frankly, in the past we’ve seen people within our own government, that sympathize with the Cuban regime. It’s the way they get spies without paying them. But it doesn’t mean we can ignore this threat.
Put aside for a moment my history, the fact that I’m Cuban American, the fact that I grew up in Miami. This is 90 miles from our shores. A failed state 90 miles from our shores that happens to be aligned with adversaries to the United States is a national security threat to our country.

“She asked if he goes right to sleep, and he said no, because when you’re working for Trump, who seemingly rarely sleeps, it’s impossible to do that.”

• What Does He Do on a Day Off? Marco Rubio Gets Personal (Sarah Anderson)

Marco Rubio appeared on Lara Trump’s Fox News’ My View with Lara Trump on Saturday night, and I’ll admit that I almost didn’t watch the entire interview. It started with his generic answers to the same old questions.

But Lara is, in my opinion, very good at what she does. When she interviews someone like our dear secretary of state, she doesn’t just ask about Iran and China and Venezuela, she asks him about, well, him. She wants to know about the person behind the news. I love that — it breaks up the monotony of geopolitical situations that he can’t really talk about in full publicly, and it gives us a little glimpse into how he’s handling all of these new-ish roles he’s taken on, after we’ve known him as Senator Rubio for so many years.
On Saturday night, he talked family, football, days off, and even that meme the internet just can’t seem to get enough of, and it was a nice refreshing change of pace, so I thought I’d share some of the details. Lara started by asking how he has changed through all of his many political seasons of life — senator, presidential candidate, secretary of state — and how he thinks the American people perceive him. He gave an answer that I think most of us who have reached middle age can relate to:
“You asked me if you’ve changed. I think everybody – you go through life, right? And as you go through life you learn new things, you see things you hadn’t seen before, you hear things you haven’t heard before. Certainly, I am a different person at 55 than I was at 25 or even 35 because I have 20 and 30 years of experience in between – in life and in work – that inform that.
I think at your core you always want to remain the same person, though, right? And that is what are your priorities in life and what are the values that sort of drive you to do what you do, and I hope that hasn’t changed. And by the way, the world changes too. There are things that are true today that weren’t true 10 years ago. So, I think that’s true for all of us, not just me.”
She also brought up his famous meme that I think everyone is familiar with at this point. As it turns out, Rubio says he hated the initial picture of him sitting on the sofa in the Oval Office, all slumped over, that inspired the meme. He said if you sit there without a pillow behind you, you sink. He said he doesn’t keep up with the meme that closely, but people love to show it to him, and he does think it’s funny.
https://twitter.com/A1Policy/status/2083733216775610484?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E2083733216775610484%7Ctwgr%5E86cb41d7d8f1ad0ebc2930ef7ea6bc9884f94aa4%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fpjmedia.com%2Fsarah-anderson%2F2026%2F08%2F02%2Fwhat-does-he-do-on-a-day-off-marco-rubio-gets-personal-n4955714
On balancing life as the busiest man in the Donald Trump administration with being a husband and father of four, he said it’s actually not that difficult. His children are 26, 24, 21, and 18, and the youngest just graduated high school, so they’re off focusing on careers, furthering their education, and enjoying their own lives. He said because the kids are all grown up, it also makes it easier to spend more time with his wife. “So, it’s the second phase of that relationship, I guess, after all these years,” he said.
So, what does Secretary Rubio do when he finally goes home at night? She asked if he goes right to sleep, and he said no, because when you’re working for Trump, who seemingly rarely sleeps, it’s impossible to do that. He also said it’s good to take some time to do something to disconnect completely from his job, like watch a movie or a sporting event. But he also admits that the “world doesn’t wait for you” in this role, and that plans to do something as simple as watch a movie is often disrupted.
“It’s harder – it was a lot easier to do that when you’re a senator,” he said. “It’s much harder when you’re in this role and in this job, because the world isn’t going to stop and wait for you. Like, you may have made a plan tonight to watch a movie, but in the middle of that movie something blows up somewhere in the world, and you’ve got to know about it and you may have to do something about it. So, it’s harder, but it’s not forever, and it’s fulfilling to be in that role.”
Finally, Lara asked him what he would do if he could have a full week off without anyone having access to him. If you’re familiar with Rubio, his answer probably won’t surprise you. “If I had a full week off, I’d be wondering what was going on,” he said, proving why he’s exactly the right person for his job. “I’m being honest, and maybe that’ll change when I’m out of this job.”
But if he could stop the world for a minute and ensure nothing happens? “Well, my wife’s going to hate this answer, but I’d love to sit down and watch, like, every college football game starting at noon Eastern until one – when the West Coast games end at 2:00 a.m. our time Eastern. I’d love to be able to do that at least one weekend. I doubt I’ll be able to do that anytime soon.”

SECRETARY RUBIO on if he had a week off: “My wife is going to hate this answer, but I’d love to sit down and watch every college football game.” pic.twitter.com/gV1sZgfzU5
— Department of State (@StateDept) August 2, 2026

It’s the stuff football fans’ dreams are made of. Rubio is, of course, a huge Florida Gators and Miami Dolphins fan, and I hope he gets to watch at least a few games this fall.

Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. But let’s also not forget our past. You can’t very well bypass all Jewish lawyers in a place where half the lawyers are Jewish.

• In Mamdani’s New York, It’s 1933 All Over Again (Robert Spencer)

New York City’s Marxist Muslim Mayor Zohran Mamdani acted quickly, once he moved into Gracie Mansion, to demonstrate that his venomous anti-Israel campaign rhetoric was not just an appeal to the Democrat Party’s growing and aggressive hard-left faction. On his very first day in office, he revoked the city’s International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance framework for combating antisemitism. It’s easy to see why Mamdani would not have wanted to be committed to combating antisemitism: he was busy stirring it up. On July 21, Mamdani falsely accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of being a war criminal and carrying out a genocide of “Palestinians.”

Two days later, a Muslim screaming “Allahu akbar” stabbed an identifiably Jewish man who was leaving Jewish services. Nor was that an isolated incident. The Jerusalem Post reported Thursday that “Mamdani’s own police commissioner reported hate crimes up nearly 12% citywide, with 55% targeting Jews, who represent about 10% of the city’s population.” More recently, despite being mayor of the city with the second-largest Jewish population in the world, he has conspicuously left all Jewish lawyers off the city’s 18-member Mayor’s Advisory Committee on the Judiciary.
Jews comprise fully half of the city’s lawyers, but Mamdani didn’t see fit to appoint even one Jewish lawyer to the body that vets and recommends candidates for positions on the city’s courts. The systematic ignoring of the city’s Jewish lawyers will do nothing but contribute to their sidelining within their own profession. Algemeiner reported Tuesday that “a coalition of Jewish legal organizations condemned the appointments, arguing that the omission excludes one of New York’s largest religious and ethnic communities from an influential body responsible for shaping the city’s judiciary.”
The coalition also noted that Mamdani’s snubbing of the Jewish lawyers was just one aspect of “‘a troubling pattern’ that has left many Jewish New Yorkers feeling increasingly marginalized.” That pattern includes not only Mamdani’s rejection of “the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism,” but also “the omission of Jewish neighborhoods from an administration map highlighting immigrant enclaves.”
What’s next? Maybe organized boycotts of Jewish-owned businesses. The BDS (Boycott, Divest, Sanction) movement announced a week after Mamdani took office that it welcomed Mamdani’s “revocation of the anti-BDS Executive Order issued last month by the previous mayor.” The executive order that Mamdani revoked “prevented any mayoral agencies or appointees from doing business with vendors and organizations complying with international law by holding genocidal Israel accountable.” That is, the city was prevented from doing business with entities that boycotted Israel, but no longer.
There are precedents. On April 1, 1933, Adolf Hitler’s newly-minted National Socialist dictatorship in Germany ordered a one-day boycott of Jewish-owned businesses. Six days later, the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Service excluded Jews from positions as university professors and government officials. There quickly followed laws that barred Jews from serving as physicians and teachers, as well as, in a foreshadowing of Mamdani’s choices for the Mayor’s Advisory Committee on the Judiciary, lawyers and judges.
Attorney Eli Albrecht wrote Wednesday that “lawyers need to know the holocaust did not begin with camps. It began when Jews were removed from institutions – above all, legal institutions. Judges stripped of their robes. Lawyers disbarred. Then, when law-groups were Judenrein, they codified laws that made discrimination systematic and ‘legal.’ First, you remove the Jews from the institutions. Then, Jews can be discriminated against without representation.” He declared: “In NYC, there is a concerted effort to disappear Jews from public life and leadership. No one on the Left is speaking out. If this discrimination was happening to any other group, the chorus would be deafening.”
Of course no one on the left is speaking out. Patriots and lovers of freedom, however, can and must do so. For in National Socialist Germany, the harassment and persecution of the Jews did not end with their being barred from certain professions; on the contrary, at that point, it was just beginning. If Mamdani is doing all this now, what will he be doing in five years, or ten? (Those who complacently think he will be voted out after one term should remember that socialism often arrives through the ballot box, but never, ever leaves that way.) And while he has started with the Jews, against whom will he turn next?

Pardons don’t cover bankruptcy.

• Hunter Biden Claims Family is Broke in Defaulting on $17 Million Bill (Turley)

Hunter Biden is no Van Gogh. In addition to having both ears, Hunter’s work has generally been panned beyond an enabling media following. However, he claims he is also a starving artist. The problem appears to be that, as predicted years ago, his sales dried up in the influence-peddling market once his father left office. Now, his lawyers want him to cough up $17 million that he owes them. Hunter says that not only is he broke, but so is his family.

In a deposition in ongoing litigation with the law firm Winston Taylor, Hunter claimed an inability to pay the $17 million he owes his lawyers for representing him in criminal prosecutions, congressional investigations, and civil lawsuits. Hunter claimed under oath that “I don’t own anything of any value other than — and I don’t know the value of it — my paintings which I painted myself. So that’s it. And I don’t even have any other assets at all, stocks, bonds, anything like that, savings accounts.” He also added, “My family doesn’t have any money, and it’s not their debt anyway.”

The statement about his family is curious, since Joe and Jill Biden recently received numerous book contracts and were thought to be worth millions. However, the Wall Street Journal recently reported that Joe Biden is struggling with $800,000 in debt and, ironically, increased property taxes in his blue state of Delaware on his $2.7 million home. (Moving to Florida like many fleeing blue state taxes is not a viable option for the Bidens).
Worse yet, no one wants Biden to do speeches and appearances, cutting off a lucrative post-presidency income. Not only is Biden obviously diminished in his ability to give a speech, but many Democrats blame him for the reelection of Trump by clinging to power despite his obvious deteriorating mental and physical condition. Of course, the former president still rakes in more than $400,000 a year in government pensions. Yet, in the end, Hunter is correct. It is not their debt unless they signed as guarantors on any debt.
Hunter continues to be the darling of the media with podcasts and interviews, including some who have called for him to run for president. He has lived in mansions and luxurious hotels for much of his life. However, that lifestyle was subsidized by wealthy Democratic donors and friends. What is impressive is how Hunter could burn through millions accrued from alleged influence peddling and shady deals. Notably, Fox News reports that the law firm, which is known for representing Democratic figures, has tried to connect Biden with donors to help him cover his legal bills, without success. With his father out of power, no one is willing to bankroll his lifestyle or buy his art.
Gone are the former swaggering threats that Hunter could make to shake down foreign figures. There was a time when he only needed to pick up a phone and send a text message like the one to a Chinese businessman, openly threatening Joe Biden’s displeasure if money is not sent to them immediately. In the WhatsApp message, Hunter stated:
“I am sitting here with my father, and we would like to understand why the commitment made has not been fulfilled. Tell the director that I would like to resolve this now before it gets out of hand, and now means tonight. And, Z, if I get a call or text from anyone involved in this other than you, Zhang, or the Chairman, I will make certain that between the man sitting next to me and every person he knows and my ability to forever hold a grudge that you will regret not following my direction. I am sitting here waiting for the call with my father.”
No one is answering now. Hunter insisted that he is now virtually destitute: “I don’t have any assets. I don’t own a car. I don’t own a phone.” Even his recent dubious award of $1.7 million in a defamation case was immediately claimed by the law firm, though that award can and should be appealed.
Hunter has written extensively on his struggle with drugs and alcohol. It is a great achievement to have overcome those addictions. Yet, the accounts would be more compelling if he did not unleash a scorched-earth campaign against critics when he was sober. He sued or threatened to sue a wide array of people to try to muscle them into silence. I was one of those threatened with a defamation lawsuit by his friend and sponsor Kevin Morris for writing about their curious relationship.
Hunter gamed the system on his crimes and was ultimately rescued from prison only by his father breaking his repeated public promise not to pardon his son. Yet, Hunter is likely to live well as a ward of the privileged class. He remains the toast of the town for the left, a type of foul-mouthed prophet who claims to have been liberated by his own excesses. For those of us who have long been critics of his antics, it remains a bit too familiar. Hunter makes even being broke look like a grift.

“..possessing the humility to recognize that some power should never be wielded at all.”

• J.R.R. Tolkien, the Atomic Bomb, and the Perils of Power (Miltimore)

On Aug. 6, 1945, the Enola Gay dropped “Little Boy” on Hiroshima, instantly killing tens of thousands and marking the first use of a nuclear weapon in warfare. Three days later, a second bomb, “Fat Man,” was dropped on Nagasaki. Within days, Japan surrendered, bringing World War II to an end. For most Americans, the bombings were greeted with celebration. Polls at the time revealed that nearly 70 percent of Americans said the bombing was a “good thing,” while just 17 percent said it was a “bad thing.”

In some respects, this is no surprise. Thanks to the bomb, the war was over. Japan, the nation that had blindsided the United States at Pearl Harbor nearly four years earlier, had finally been brought to its knees, forced to surrender unconditionally. Watching these events unfold from England, a professor of Anglo-Saxon literature saw something very different.

‘Utter Folly’
In 1945, J.R.R. Tolkien was a professor of Old English at Oxford and author of “The Hobbit” (1937), a book that would eventually become one of the most influential works of fantasy literature ever written. Having served as a British Army officer in the trenches of World War I, Tolkien understood firsthand the horrors of modern warfare. Perhaps because of this, he recoiled upon learning of a new weapon that could destroy entire cities. “The news today about ‘Atomic bombs’ is so horrifying one is stunned,” he wrote to his son Christopher. “The utter folly of these lunatic physicists to consent to do such work for war-purposes: calmly plotting the destruction of the world!”
Tolkien was no pacifist, and he recognized that U.S. President Harry Truman’s decision to drop this new superweapon might have a silver lining. “Japan ought to cave in,” he admitted. But even as he acknowledged the bomb’s immediate military value, Tolkien feared its long-term consequences. Humanity had crossed a threshold from which there would be no return. “Such explosives in men’s hands,” he wrote, “while their moral and intellectual status is declining, is about as useful as giving out firearms to all inmates of a gaol and then saying that you hope ’this will ensure peace.’”
On ‘Babel-Builders’
Today, discussions over the atomic bomb usually involve whether it was morally justified to drop it on Japan. Unlike in 1945, Americans are very much split on the matter. Recent polling shows 35 percent say the bombings were justified, while 31 percent say they were not. The fact that a full one-third of Americans say they’re not sure if the bombing was the right thing shows how morally complicated the matter is. (If you doubt this, consider that General Dwight Eisenhower and Fleet Admiral William D. Leahy opposed dropping the bomb on moral grounds and because they doubted its military necessity.)
What is less often asked is whether the bomb should have been developed at all. The question is easy to dismiss. After all, Nazi Germany launched its own nuclear research program in April 1939. Had the Allies declined to pursue the bomb, they might have handed history’s most destructive weapon to Adolf Hitler. There is also a philosophical hurdle. Science has long been celebrated as the engine of human progress. To oppose a scientific breakthrough on ethical grounds has a whiff of Luddism—a kind of rejection of progress itself.
Tolkien, once again, saw things differently. Though admitting “we’re all in God’s hands” now, he offered a word of caution about humanity’s growing faith in its own power. “He does not look kindly on Babel-builders,” he told Christopher. By invoking the famous Old Testament story of the Tower of Babel, in which God confused and scattered the nations for attempting to reach the heavens, Tolkien was warning against a perennial temptation: placing human ingenuity and knowledge above moral wisdom. The theme of man’s lust for knowledge and power would be developed in his next literary masterpiece.
‘An Allegory of Our Own Time’
In 1942, as the Manhattan Project was beginning in the United States, Tolkien was developing the core narrative of what would become “The Fellowship of the Ring,” the first volume of his “The Lord of the Rings” epic.Though the book would not be published until 1954, Tolkien spent much of the 1940s writing and revising the manuscript. The story follows a fellowship of nine companions who embark on a perilous quest to destroy the One Ring, a weapon of immense power that threatens to destroy all of Middle-earth.
The Ring is so powerful that no one—not even the heroes of the story—should possess it. Indeed, Tolkien’s wisest and bravest characters all reject it. The wizard Gandalf refuses the Ring when it is offered to him. The elf queen Galadriel does the same. Aragorn, whose ancestor was killed after being corrupted by the Ring, is wary of its power and never seeks it.
Meanwhile, those who desire the Ring or attempt to wield its power—Boromir, Sauron, and Gollum—are ultimately destroyed by it. The One Ring has rightly been interpreted as a metaphor for power; after all, Tolkien himself called it the “Ring of Power.” But in a 1947 letter to his publisher, he put a finer point on the idea. “You can make the Ring an allegory of our own time, if you like,” he wrote, “an allegory of the inevitable fate that awaits all attempts to defeat evil power by power.”
These words help explain why Tolkien viewed the atomic bomb with such horror. It was a weapon created to “defeat evil power” through overwhelming force. In Tolkien’s view, the danger was not simply the weapon itself, but the modern faith in power and the belief that it could be controlled by those who possessed it. Tolkien’s line about “Babel-builders” and “lunatic physicists” could give the impression that he rejected science. He did not. He was simply recognizing the limits of science. The fantasy writer, a devout Catholic, understood that even though scientists could unlock the power of the atom, they could not fix humanity.
By 1945, it had become apparent that moral wisdom and scientific progress do not necessarily advance at the same pace. If the Great War and the horrors of the Soviet Union in the 1930s had not made this clear, the military destruction of the 1940s and the liberation of Auschwitz in January 1945 did. Humanity had acquired unprecedented power without acquiring the corresponding wisdom to restrain it. For Tolkien, this was the great danger of the modern age. Man was learning to harness the forces of nature even as he slid comfortably toward its oldest sins: pride, envy, and the lust for power.
None of this is to say the Ring of Power is an allegory for nuclear weapons. It is not. Tolkien himself made that quite clear in a BBC interview in the 1960s.Yet a central lesson of his literary masterpiece is that some forms of power are simply too great for humans to possess. Perhaps, then, the greatest virtue is not seeking out people who can wield great power wisely, but in possessing the humility to recognize that some power should never be wielded at all.

https://twitter.com/FarmGirlCarrie/status/2083387792269414476?s=20 https://twitter.com/Tironianae/status/2083652865202033034?s=20 https://twitter.com/BasilTheGreat/status/2083810019053584617?s=20

The CCP is THE #1 external threat to the United States of America. https://t.co/lojlzTXhIt
— General Mike Flynn (@GenFlynn) August 1, 2026

https://twitter.com/KanekoaTheGreat/status/2084030292256497995?s=20

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Debt Rattle Quatorze Juillet 2026

Jul 142026

July 14, 2026 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 9:49 am Finance Tagged with: defamation, Hunter Biden, Lindsey Graham, Mamdani, socialism, war resumption 50 Responses »

Claude Monet The Japanese Bridge 7 1924

• Trump Formally Notifies Congress Of Iran War Resumption (ZH)

• Carrot and Stick (James Howard Kunstler)

• British MP Exposes Secret Society Behind UK’s Lurch Toward Socialism (HUSA)

• Prescription for a Socialist Workforce (Daniel McCarthy)

• Mamdani’s Affordability Agenda Flops As NYC Rents Surge To Record Highs (ZH)

• Will Far-Left Influencers Face Charges in Rallying America’s Enemies? (Turley)

• Without US, Credit Rating for EU Sovereign Countries Will be Lowered (CTH)

• Open Borders Are a Death Sentence to Western Nations (J.B. Shurk)

• American Democracy Has Proven Itself to Be a Fraud (Paul Craig Roberts)

• Evidence Mounts of Noncitizens Reaching Voter Rolls, Casting Ballots (JTN)

• Lindsey Graham Was A Monster, But Not Exceptional (Amar)

• Hunter Biden Wins Defamation Suit Over ‘Iran Bribery’ Claims (RT)

• The Absurdity of the Hunter Biden Defamation Case (Turley)

https://twitter.com/BrandieWithABee/status/2076280641084112964?s=20 https://twitter.com/imPascalNajadi/status/2076391417333596621?s=20

Had Lindsey Graham not saved the Brett Kavanaugh nomination with his amazing rant in 2018, the Democrats' plan would've worked. The SCOTUS would look much different today, Trump might not have gotten immunity two years ago, and Kamala would probably be your president today! RIP pic.twitter.com/FbJEj7ZSqc
— Vince Langman (@LangmanVince) July 12, 2026

https://twitter.com/MAGA__Patriot/status/2076369354485109139?s=20 https://twitter.com/NanLee1124/status/2076144616383103029?s=20

Trump wants no war,

• Trump Formally Notifies Congress Of Iran War Resumption (ZH)

WH Formally Notifies Congress War has Resumed
We are very far past the little “excursion” the administration talked about in the earlier phases of Operation Epic Fury, per reports late this afternoon and early evening: President Trump formally notified Congress last week that the U.S. has resumed military strikes against Iran, providing the Pentagon an extra 60 days to utilize U.S. forces in the U.S. Central Command (Centcom) theater absent congressional approval. Trump told lawmakers in a 2-page letter on Friday that U.S. strikes resumed against Iran on July 7, alerting legislators in line with the War Powers Act, which stipulates the commander-in-chief has to inform Congress within two days of the military conducting kinetic action abroad.

President Trump is still insisting that the US won’t get sucked into a ground war, akin the Iraq or Afghan wars. “United States ground forces are not involved in these strikes. These strikes are limited, measured, planned and executed in a manner designed to minimize civilian casualties,” the president wrote in the letter. Overnight reports say Iran has in turn renewed its retaliation on Gulf allies hosting American bases, especially Bahrain.
Pentagon Announced 3rd Night of Major Strikes
In case anyone had doubts that the region has witnessed a return to full-scale US-Iran war, CENTCOM has announced that it has begun launching the third consecutive night of strikes on Iran in the overnight hours (local):

This as President Trump has claimed Monday that the US had a “deal with [Iran] two days ago” but that Tehran wanted “to negotiate it further”. However when asked by a reporter whether he thinks a negotiated settlement is no longer possible Trump responded: “I never reached that conclusion.” He explained his beleif that the “most effective” way to put pressure on Iran is va a combination of a blockade and “hitting them”. Earlier he and the Pentagon announced that a full blockade of Iranian ports is back on.

JUST IN – US strikes against Iran begin pic.twitter.com/YWCvSepJp8
— Insider Paper (@TheInsiderPaper) July 13, 2026

“Where do the enemies of our country — including the ones inside our country — get the idea that Iran is winning this war?”

“Persian kings did not build empires by being naive about deception; they practically invented the genre.” —Jesus Enrique Rosas

• Carrot and Stick (James Howard Kunstler)

Where do the enemies of our country — including the ones inside our country — get the idea that Iran is winning this war? They wish it into existence. The wishing is necessary to put across the talking points that President Trump and his advisors don’t have a plan, don’t know what they are doing, that the USA is persecuting and oppressing Iran for no good reason.

We pounded Iran over the weekend for a very good reason: Iran needs to learn the hard way that there are consequences for breaking agreements. For instance, at around 7:15p.m. local time, Iran fired a projectile at the Cyprus-flagged container ship GFS Galaxy, managed by Dubai-based Global Feeder Shipping, in the Strait of Hormuz. Iran claimed it was “a warning shot,” but it was a direct hit on the ship’s engine room, disabling the vessel. The crew had to abandon ship in lifeboats — and were soon rescued by a combination of other commercial ships and Omani navy vessels. One crew member went missing.
Hours after the attack, Iran declared the Strait of Hormuz closed. And soon after that, President Trump asserted that the Strait was open to commercial traffic, with US forces positioned to ensure freedom of navigation, contradicting Iran’s announcement of closure “until further notice.”
It’s not the President and his advisors who are confused, it’s the situation, and for a good reason: Iran’s leadership is confused. It’s as if Mr. Trump has to stand between Abbott & Costello doing their Who’s on First routine. All the while the IRGC fulminates and fires what remains of its ordnance at ships and other countries in the region, Iran’s putative civilian leadership, Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, Foreign Minister Seyyed Abbas Araghchi, and Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi, are talking desperately on the phone to mediators in Qatar and Pakistan about how to implement “technical issues” in the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU).
All of this indicates that Iran’s leadership is badly split between its civil government and the IRGC (Revolutionary Guard) forces that operate as a competing Mafia-style command structure with an attached military of its own, separate from Iran’s regular army. The major discord between the two entities is that the civil government would apparently like the conflict with America to resolve in a way that will allow their country to salvage its economy and return to normal relations with the rest of the world, while the IRGC remains obdurately bent on jihad, no matter what it means for their country and its people.
The problem with jihad is that it must be waged against all infidels, meaning the people of Western Civ — a major part of the rest of the world — and now even many states around the Persian Gulf region who have joined President Trump’s Board of Peace — Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, Qatar, Egypt, Jordan, Turkey, Pakistan — that might qualify as targets of jihad, too. Why? Because Israel was one of the initial signatories, making the Board of Peace a creature of The Great Satan (the USA) and Little Satan (Israel).
Of course, a key precept in jihad is taqiyya, which prescribes lying and deception in the service of jihad, which further suggests that, for the jihadist IRGC, there can be no real understanding in the Memorandum of Understanding that Iran’s civil government signed. Taqiyya requires the IRGC to lie, which it has demonstrated it is determined to do. . . like, firing missiles at commercial vessels in the Strait of Hormuz after it promised not to. How can such conduct possibly produce mutual understanding?
And so, if you picture the negotiations as a carrot-and-stick type process, you see that Iran’s IRGC is oblivious to carrots. Only the stick might avail, and Mr. Trump is obliging them with it. By the way, rumors circulated the past twenty-four hours that the IRGC’s newest commander, Ahmad Vahidi, was killed in his bunker by an American bomb over the weekend. True? Dunno. We’ll probably learn soon enough. Vahidi became the IRGC Commander in March of this year after his predecessor, Mohammad Pakpour, was successfully blown up. Who’s available to step-up into the job now? I guess we’ll find that out soon enough, too.
Speaking of targets, we also learned that President Trump was targeted for assassination by Iran (surprise surprise) upon leaving last week’s NATO confab in Turkey — Israeli intel informed him — necessitating that switcheroo between the new Air Force One gifted by Qatar, and the good old baby-blue Air Force One just recently retired from service going all the way back to Bush One. The old plane had better defensive weaponry aboard, our officials explained.
If I were president of our country, at this point in the quarrel with Iran, I’d consider just dropping Graham Platner over Tehran. And if that fails to get their minds right, follow-up with Rosie O’Donnell and Ana Navarro.

US, UK,->Socialism. Takes some getting used to.

• British MP Exposes Secret Society Behind UK’s Lurch Toward Socialism (HUSA)

The stunning transformation of Great Britain in recent years – from a beacon of decorum and stiff upper lips to a cautionary tale of wokeness run amok – has been blamed on everything from socialism to satanism. However, Rupert Lowe, a member of the British Parliament and founder of the organization Restore Britain, said the reality may be even more sinister.

In a recent appearance on Joe Rogan’s podcast, he said a shadowy group of elites known as the Fabian Society was deliberately trying to wreck the country. “I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of the Fabian Society, but if you go and have a look at it, it was basically most of the Labour Party for many, many years,” Lowe said, referring to England’s leading left-wing party, the equivalent of U.S. Democrats.

The British people need to understand the powerful malign influence of the Fabian Society. pic.twitter.com/i3uY9sJfj8
— Rupert Lowe MP (@RupertLowe10) July 11, 2026

America’s Left may be facing a similar identity crisis as it tries to shake off the subversive influence of the Justice Democrats, Democrat Socialists of America and other fringe elements that are pushing neo-Marxist ideas. But the British version has been around for nearly 150 years. The club, founded in 1884, was a direct reaction to the philosophy of Karl Marx (who died a year earlier in London). Rather than forcing a collectivist government as Marx suggested, through class struggle — which generally led to uncomfortable outcomes for aristocrats — the society advocated for a socialist society to take root slowly and incrementally.
It was the brainchild of intellectuals including the man who first created “My Fair Lady” heroine Eliza Doolittle — playwright George Bernard Shaw. Science-fiction visionary H.G. Wells also counted himself a member. “It’s the most extraordinary organization,” Lowe told Rogan. “Their emblem is a wolf in sheep’s clothing, as if that doesn’t tell you what they’re doing.”Among the beliefs it endorsed was eugenics, the idea of breeding out unwanted attributes through various means, scientific and otherwise.
While the Nazis would go on to run with the idea — and ultimately help to effect its demise — the Fabian Society also was rumored to have inspired author George Orwell, whose dystopian 1984 (written in the late 1940s) was set exactly 100 years after the society’s founding.

The Fabian Society was created in 1884, & why George Orwells book is called 1984, as he figured the Fabian Society would have completed their mission within 100 years.

He was a bit off with the timing, but not with their evil agenda & what they are trying to achieve. pic.twitter.com/70LA5kyaHW
— NWO Dissident 1776. (@An89390Anglo) July 10, 2026

According to Lowe, not all of the society’s ideas have vanished entirely. Rather, some of them simply evolved into a modern political framework. “Everyone should look at the Fabian Society, because that runs deep through the veins of Labour,” he said. Writing for The Telegraph, former Fabian research director Stephen Pollard sought to dismantle the claims by attacking Lowe as a conspiracy theorist. However, his argument may have only helped to make the case for some that “basically what it wants to do is destroy all good and create a dependency culture.”
After defending ideas like eugenics as having been widely accepted in their time, Pollard insisted that the current society was more concerned with selling magazine subscriptions than world domination. Many of its policy papers now deal with addressing the nation’s housing crisis. “To take that and conclude that they are in fact part of a secret cabal dedicated to destroying Britain is not so much misguided as a sign that someone is truly away with the fairies,” he claimed.

“In 1990, manufacturing was the top employment sector in most states[..] Today, healthcare is the nation’s biggest employer..”

• Prescription for a Socialist Workforce (Daniel McCarthy)

America has a socialism problem, and it’s bigger than most citizens realize. When candidates aligned with the Democratic Socialists of America win Democratic party primaries, or New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani hails “the warmth of collectivism,” socialism’s advance is obvious. But it’s making gains in other ways, too, especially in the transformation of America’s workforce — which is coming to be chiefly employed in a sector one step removed from outright government control: healthcare. In 1990, manufacturing was the top employment sector in most states, including New York and California. Today, healthcare is the nation’s biggest employer and is No. 1 in almost every individual state — New York, California, Texas, even Pennsylvania.

When Mary Talley Bowden, the founder of Americans for Health Freedom, posted a chart on X last weekend illustrating this revolution in American labor, it went viral, garnering more than 2.5 million views and eliciting hundreds of follow-up comments. Many noted America hasn’t changed from a nation of makers into a nation of caregivers: Healthcare employment is growing less because we’re adding doctors and nurses than because we’re adding far more administrators. The health workforce contains an army of bureaucrats whose jobs are based on keeping up with government regulation. nThis is the 21st-century twist on socialism: Instead of government owning industry outright, it forces industries to remodel themselves in the shape of Washington’s own bureaucracies.
Healthcare isn’t the only victim of this — compliance bureaucracies and human-resources departments set up to address mountains of federal, state and local regulations have taken root everywhere. But healthcare is special: It’s not only more heavily regulated than other fields, it’s tied to the massive entitlement systems of Medicare and Medicaid, and a host of lesser programs as well. The socialists who are an increasingly powerful bloc in the Democratic Party aren’t content with the slow conversion of American healthcare into a quasi-public sector, however. They’re eager to expand Medicare into “Medicare for All,” and many still dream of outright nationalization of medicine, on the model of Britain’s National Health Service.
Whether the takeover occurs gradually through regulation or suddenly at a stroke, the consequences of merging of healthcare and government are monumental for social values as well the economy: Progressives see gaining power over medicine as a shortcut to winning battles over abortion, euthanasia, biological sex and gender, and much else. And the more Americans are made dependent on government — for their health or their jobs — the less free they are to vote against the people running the system. The Trump administration’s efforts to bring back manufacturing jobs are, among other things, an attempt to restore balance and freedom to our economy.
Tariffs that stop foreign producers from flooding the American market are just a first step, one that has to be coupled with creating a competitive environment for domestic firms. A multiplicity of domestic producers keeps prices down — and gives workers a choice of employer, as companies must compete to offer the best wages and benefits. Workers well-paid in the private sector, whose jobs are helped by protection but not merely a byproduct of government regulation — like the growing healthcare bureaucracy — are secure enough to exercise political choice, too. Yet too many old-guard Republicans and libertarians are so repulsed by tariffs that they fail to see how much worse the alternative is.

Won’t he just go crazier?

• Mamdani’s Affordability Agenda Flops As NYC Rents Surge To Record Highs (ZH)

New York City’s socialist mayor, Zohran Mamdani, and his radical-left lieutenants in City Hall promised voters free bus rides, government-run grocery stores, cheap housing, and much more. Yet the dream of a left-wing utopia has not materialized. In fact, rents in the NYC metro area just hit a record high.New data from The Corcoran Group, a major residential real estate brokerage founded in NYC, shows that rents in the metro area have climbed to a new record high. Manhattan’s median rent rose 8% from a year earlier to $5,295, while Brooklyn reached $4,350, also up 8%, according to the report. Manhattan’s vacancy rate narrowed to 1.49%. In Queens, Rego Park posted particularly sharp increases, with one-bedroom rents up 12% and studio rents up more than 20%.

“Manhattan renters are chasing a shrinking pool of available apartments, and the result has become predictable — record rents. Available listings dropped 16% year-over-year in June, while the borough’s median rent climbed to a new high of $5,295 . Leasing activity clocked in 7% below last year’s pace due to the lack of inventory, causing competition to remain fierce. Additionally, June marked one year since implementation of the FARE Act, a milestone that may still be influencing pricing trends, particularly within the non-doorman market. Across the board, quality apartments are commanding a premium, and renters have little room to negotiate,” Corcoran COO Gary Malin wrote in the report.
Malin continued, “Brooklyn’s rental market is also rewriting the record books. Median rent jumped 8% year-over-year to an all-time high of $4,350 and apartments spent 30% fewer days on the market. This steep annual decline underscores how tight the market has become, with flat inventory and strong demand strong causing available units to rent far faster than a year ago. While lease signings were lower on an annual basis, activity picked up from May as renters moved quickly to secure apartments ahead of the busiest stretch of the summer season. Throughout the borough, competition.”
City Comptroller Mark Levine commented on the new report, saying, “NYC’s housing affordability crisis is at DEFCON 1. We need to push harder on every front to address our housing shortage.” “Update zoning, invest more City $ in affordable units, lower the time & cost City bureaucracy imposes on construction, get 1000s of vacant regulated units back on the market. We need bold action. This is a crisis,” Levine added.

Rents in NYC have just hit an all-time high.

Median market rate in June…

Manhattan: $5,295/mo (+8.2% year-over-year)

Brooklyn: $4,350 (+8.1%)

NYC’s housing affordability crisis is at DefCon 1. We need to push harder on every front to address our housing shortage.

Update…
— Mark D. Levine (@MarkLevineNYC) July 12, 2026

We don’t have a housing shortage. We have an illegal alien invasion https://t.co/4JW59k17Uu
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) July 13, 2026

Turley attacks Max Blumenthal.

• Will Far-Left Influencers Face Charges in Rallying America’s Enemies? (Turley)

On July 4, 1916, Iva Ikuko Toguri was born in Los Angeles — 25 years before she would go to Japan and become known as the infamous Tokyo Rose during World War II. Roughly one hundred years later, Calla Walsh, 21, has stepped forward as a type of Tehran Rose, cutting propaganda films for one of the most blood-soaked regimes in the world. Walsh appeared at the funeral of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and praised him as the “greatest anti-imperialist leader.” Walsh is not alone. Other young Americans have rallied to the anti-American cause. That includes Jackson Hinkle, who appeared on a stage in Tehran, cheering on a crowd chanting “Down with America.”

It also includes Max Blumenthal, 48, the son of Sidney Blumenthal, the columnist who became notorious as the “attack dog” for Bill and Hillary Clinton. While supporting a regime that denies free speech and other human rights to its citizens, they are protected in the U.S. in voicing unpopular views, including denouncing their own nation. The question is where the line is between that and criminal conduct. Walsh, Hinkle and Blumenthal fit a pattern not just as young and privileged radicals, often downwardly mobile from their parents’ careers and accomplishments, but also as voices groomed by U.S. media culture for years.
Walsh was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to Boston University English professor Chris Walsh and Mary Sullivan Walsh, an instructor with Harvard’s Extension School. She was raised a progressive Brahman. The media fawned over the radical college dropout as an exciting new voice. The New York Times gushed over her, and Teen Vogue published her screed in favor of socialism.She would work on the campaigns of Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Boston Mayor Michelle Wu. (Her work on the campaigns drew gushing reviews in The New York Times and Boston Magazine).
Hinkle was also celebrated by the media after he embraced socialism and then communism. Born in San Clemente, California, he was named one of “The 17 Most Inspirational Kids of 2017” by Reader’s Digest. As with Walsh, he was featured in Teen Vogue as an inspirational young activist. In a Los Angeles Times article, he was described by a source as “the kind of guy who gives you hope about the future … Jackson is fearless and well-informed.” Today, he is a vocal supporter not only of Iran’s regime but also of Vladimir Putin’s Russia and its war against Ukraine.
The scion of the Democratic establishment, Blumenthal attended the exclusive Georgetown Day School in Washington and graduated from the University of Pennsylvania. His connections gave him immediate access to elite publications. He wrote books denouncing Israel and espousing increasingly radicalized values. He also wrote far-left columns for the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times. Liberal websites, including The Nation, The Daily Beast, and The Huffington Post, featured his work. He is viewed as an apologist for regimes fighting the U.S., often dismissing atrocities committed by countries such as Syria and Russia. (His father, Sidney Blumenthal, sent Hillary Clinton roughly two dozen of his son’s columns. Hillary responded with such praise as “Max strikes again!” and “He’s so good.”)
All three are examples of today’s radical chic in media and higher education, all given platforms as influencers. And there are thousands like Walsh, Hinkle, and Blumenthal. Indeed, our colleges are cranking out radicalized young people who have a paucity of job prospects but an abundance of rage. Recently, a Fourth of July event captured this culture in Chicago. The event featured Bill Ayers, a former professor, former fugitive, and one of the founders of the domestic terrorist organization, the Weather Underground.
The other speaker was Princeton’s Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, a chaired professor in the African-American Studies department and a writer for the New Yorker. Taylor delighted the young audience by saying that they were all part of the “F— the U.S.” crowd and called on others to reject “the idea of loving a nation state, which is what patriotism is.” She repeatedly returned to the theme that borders are “deadly” and “borders kill people,” denouncing all borders as “a tool of death and destruction.”
Walsh’s emergence as a face of Iranian propaganda raises striking parallels to Toguri, who was arrested and convicted of treason after World War II. She was actually just one of several women who participated in the infamous propaganda radio programs for the Japanese military. The difference is that Toguri, whom President Gerald Ford later pardoned, may have been an unwilling participant in the programs. Unlike Walsh, Toguri was effectively trapped in Japan after the U.S. refused to recognize her citizenship, preventing her from returning home to California.
Toguri was effectively destitute, subjected to cruel treatment by the Japanese. She insisted that she had been coerced into reading anti-American scripts and that even then she refused to attack the United States in her programs. Walsh was not just a willing participant; she is a raving anti-Semitic ally to the Iranians — and seemingly any country that can do harm to the U.S.

“Moodys: Without U.S Military Leading Europe,…”

“EU Sovereign Countries” have no armies to defend themselves.

• Without US, Credit Rating for EU Sovereign Countries Will be Lowered (CTH)

Essentially this notice can be summarized as follows: If you really end the Marshall Plan, credit rating agencies will have to lower their credit rating for all of Europe due to increased financial risk. Now, tell me again how Europe is not living on the back of America.

LONDON, July 13 (Reuters) Progressive U.S. disengagement from European security affairs is negative for Europe’s sovereign credit ratings, Moody’s said on Monday, due the increased defence costs the region’s governments will now face.
A summit of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO)) in Turkey last week saw its 32 member countries agree to shift the balance of responsibility for Europe’s defence to the alliance’s European members, and away from the United States. The (U.S.) disengagement is credit negative for European sovereigns, a report by two of Moody s top rating analysts said. It said the credit effect would depend on how the shift was managed in the coming years
When it comes to irony, Emmanuel Macron has, quite possibly, the world’s worst timing.

“Governments have refused to respect the wishes of their citizens…”

• Open Borders Are a Death Sentence to Western Nations (J.B. Shurk)

As simmering conflicts between Western citizens and Western governments boil over the next few years, we must never forget how we got to this point: Elected officials and irremovable bureaucrats occupying permanent administrative roles have refused to respect the wishes of the citizens whom they ostensibly represent and serve. From the United States to the United Kingdom, citizens have demanded that their governments secure national borders and end the steady flow of illegal aliens into their communities. From France, the Netherlands, and Germany to Australia and New Zealand, citizens have demanded that their governments arrest and remove Islamic immigrants who are guilty of rape, murder, or other violent crimes.

With the exception of President Trump’s efforts to enforce immigration law and deport illegal alien criminals (despite formidable resistance from the courts, leftist NGOs, and Establishment politicians from both the Democrat and Republican Parties) in the United States, no Western official has done anything to remedy the scourge of unlawful mass invasion in a deliberate, meaningful, and effective way. Instead, Western governments hide from their citizens the true number of illegal immigrants living among them. Western governments hide from their citizens a full accounting of the crimes committed by foreign nationals who should never have been permitted entry in the first place.
Mass illegal immigration is not a new problem. In the United States, President Ronald Reagan signed the Immigration Reform and Control Act into law in 1986. Defended by both political parties as a way of combating illegal immigration while providing long-term lawbreakers legal status, it effectively awarded millions of foreign nationals amnesty. Politicians convinced the American people to support this trade-off: In return for citizens’ reluctantly permitting the government to reward the unlawful behavior of foreign immigrants who had no right to reside in the United States, the government would protect citizens by cracking down on future illegal immigration and punishing businesses that hired illegal immigrant workers. The U.S. government never lived up to its side of the bargain.
Instead, U.S. officials have lied to their citizens for forty additional years. Until President Trump entered office, U.S. borders were not secured. Businesses were rarely punished for hiring illegal aliens. Unbeknownst to most American citizens, State and federal welfare programs continued to add illegal aliens to their taxpayer-funded dole rolls. School districts in both cities and small towns continued to enroll illegal alien children. Hospital emergency rooms continued to overflow with illegal alien patients seeking “free” medical care. American jobs — especially blue-collar jobs — continued to go to illegal aliens because employers could pay foreigners less, avoid state and federal taxes, and use the threat of deportation as exploitative leverage over their workforces.
Illegal alien workers continued to place downward pressure on hourly wages. Illegal aliens continued to place upward pressure on the costs of housing, energy, and household necessities. Sometime in the ‘90s, American politicians and government bureaucrats began admitting to Americans that there were roughly eleven million illegal aliens inside the United States. For the next thirty years, politicians and bureaucrats repeated the same “eleven million” figure as if no net-increase in immigration had occurred. Anybody living in small-town America knew this to be a demonstrable lie. In the nineties, local school classrooms were made up almost entirely of American kids who grew up speaking English in households whose families had been living in the United States for generations.
As each year passed, those same classrooms were increasingly filled with kids whose parents had come from all over the world, and even small school districts were forced to hire staff who could attend to the needs of an increasingly foreign student body unfamiliar with basic English. Former Border Patrol Commander Greg Bovino has said repeatedly that there are more than one hundred million illegal aliens residing in the United States. In other words, roughly one out of every three people living inside the borders of the U.S. is a foreign national unlawfully here. If those foreign nationals are employed, then they are likely guilty of identity fraud and committing a number of additional state and federal crimes.
Of those committing identity fraud, many are using social security numbers stolen from American citizens. Illegal aliens who steal Americans’ identities adversely affect citizens’ credit scores, tax obligations with the IRS, and background checks. Illegal aliens who fraudulently vote by claiming to be American citizens steal votes from actual American citizens. Foreign nationals who illegally vote in American elections deny American citizens legitimate representation and undermine Americans’ constitutional form of self-government.
In 1986, lawmakers from both parties promised an end to illegal immigration. Instead, tens of millions of new illegal aliens have continued to arrive. In return for grudgingly acceding to the government’s desire to provide a one-time gift of amnesty to those foreigners whose first act in the country was to break our immigration laws, Americans continued to lose jobs, pay more for everything, and be defrauded by identity theft. Even worse, they were forced to watch as foreign cultures transformed their schools and towns. They were forced to watch as foreigners successfully ran for political office and pushed foreign policies and beliefs upon American citizens.
New York City has a Muslim mayor from Uganda who has been a naturalized U.S. citizen for only eight years. Minneapolis has a Muslim member of Congress from Somalia who became a naturalized U.S. citizen at the age of seventeen.
Roughly 4% of Congress are foreign-born naturalized citizens, while 15% of Congress have at least one immigrant parent. A third of the judges occupying prestigious and powerful positions on the D.C. District Courts were born in foreign nations. These numbers are going in one direction — up!

In some instances, for sure.

• American Democracy Has Proven Itself to Be a Fraud (Paul Craig Roberts)

In my younger days conservatives and libertarians contrasted government unfavorably with private business. Government consisted of black hat guys and business of white hat guys. If government won, tyranny would be the result. If business won, liberty would stay alive. Conservatives and libertarians saw power as something that government wanted, but not business. There was no room for power in private life where business governed by competition competed for the consumer’s dollar. In the business sector, the people were king. In the government sector bureaucracies wrested power away from the people.

This was the narrative, and the US Chamber of Commerce kept it alive. For awhile I thought this way myself. Liberals reinforced the narrative, because they always wanted more power for government to rein in private sector wrongs. Liberals were perceived by conservatives and libertarians as wanting to transfer power from citizens to government regulators. It didn’t take me long to see that this narrative had problems. If it were true, what explained the success of business lobbies that lined K Street in Washington, D.C.? You didn’t have to open your eyes very wide to see, for example, agri-business use an alleged oil crisis to collect a federal corn subsidy to dilute gasoline with 10% of ethanol made from corn.
The federal regulatory agencies that were created in the 1930s all ended up in the hands of the business interests that they were supposed to regulate. Think, for example, of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which the pharmaceutical industry turned into a shill for its interests. The way modern capitalism works, if capitalism it still is, is by corporate pacs purchasing with political campaign contributions the House and Senate and then handing to committee chairmen laws that they want passed. As a person who has served on House and Senate staffs, both personal staffs and committee staffs, I have experienced the process.
Some years ago Congress passed a law, pretending to show its opposition to big business, that if a corporation paid an executive more than one million dollars, it could not be deducted as a business expense unless the pay was “performance related.” To be performance related means it has to result in higher profits, which supposedly serve shareholders but in fact are given to executives and boards in “performance bonuses,” the main source of their pay, and to shareholders in the form of higher stock prices. Once this law was passed, anything that reduced costs increased profits and thereby executive pay.
The easiest way to increase profits is to lower labor costs. There are four ways of doing this. One is to move manufacturing jobs offshore where labor is cheaper. Another is for corporations to claim falsely that there is a shortage of American labor and to get H1-B and L-1 visas approved to bring in cheaper foreign labor to displace American workers. Another is to replace humans with AI and robotics. Another is to move back office operations and consumer service to countries where wages are low. The most visible are the work visa entrants into the United States.
When the corrupt US Congress passed the law that enables US corporations to fire their US work force and replace it with imported non-American labor, a few members who still represented Americans instead of corporations put into the law that the visa programs depended on corporations being unable to find American workers.
There were unlimited amounts of American workers available , including those abandoned by US corporations who took their production for US markets offshore to lower paid foreign labor. But American law firms rushed to hide the availability of American workers. For example, the law firm Cohen & Grigsby used a marketing video to demonstrate how the firm could enable clients to evade the restrictions on replacing their American workers with imported foreigners on work visas. Hire us, said the law firm’s marketing manager, and we promise “not to find a qualified and interested US worker.”
My book, The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism, published by Clarity Press 13 years ago exposed the scheme that the US President, the US House, the US Senate, the US whore media, and the US whore economics profession perpetuated in order to transfer the earnings of middle class blue collar American workers into multi-million dollar bonuses for corrupt US corporate executives in the form of totally fake “performance bonuses.” The only “performance” was the success of the lie, aided and abetted by such US firms as Cohen & Grigsby. Wall Street shared with corporate executives the responsibility for replacing US workers by threatening corporations with takeovers if they did not take advantage of opportunities to lower labor costs.
The latest news is that Microsoft after receiving approval for thousands of visas for foreign workers laid off 6,400 Americans in order to make room for their foreign replacements. The difference in labor costs go directly into the pockets of the Microsoft executives. Clearly American Capitalism No longer serves American citizens. Why haven’t Americans organized boycotts of their products. Why do Americans support firms that force social costs on them?
Economists who shill for jobs offshoring and work visas claim that it is necessary if US corporations are to compete. However, the US market is large enough to support successful companies, and it was the offshoring of manufacturing jobs to China that transferred the technology and business know-how that gave rise to foreign competition. Think about it, even today what competition does Microsoft and Apple, for example, have?

Individuals. Nothing of any scale.

“..as DOJ speeds crackdown Trump DOJ has secured about two dozen noncitizen voting arrests, prosecutions or convictions in the last few months, with about another 90 more cases under investigation.

• Evidence Mounts of Noncitizens Reaching Voter Rolls, Casting Ballots (JTN)

A small town Kansas mayor born in Mexico. A Filipino senior citizen living in Hawaii. Two Pakistani men residing in New Jersey. An Aussie in Louisiana. And a Chinese student studying at the University of Michigan. They all have one thing in common. Each has been charged in the last year with illegally voting in U.S. federal elections as foreigners, part of a sudden wave of prosecutions led by the Trump Justice Department for a crime that used to be among the rarest in the federal court system.

The Trump Justice Department has secured about two dozen non-citizens voting arrests, prosecutions or convictions in the last few months alone, with about another 90 more cases under investigation, officials told Just the News. And all 50 states were sent notices this month that election officials can and will be prosecuted too if they allow non-citizens to vote.
“It isn’t just bad policy to let non-citizens vote in federal elections, it’s a crime. And this Department of Justice will intend to prosecute that crime if these election officials, having been informed that they are non-citizens on the voter rolls, knowingly allow those people to vote, enable their enrollment on the voter rolls, are passive in the face of this knowledge, etc. This is not some idle threat,” Assistant Attorney General for Ciril Rights Harmeet Dhillon told the Just the News, No Noise television show.
DOJ officials have found three major problems in policing states’ voter rolls ahead of the 2026 election: hundreds of thousands of dead people still eligible to vote, tens of thousands of illegal aliens on the rolls and scores of foreigners having gone beyond registering to, in fact, vote in a federal election, which is illegal. Dhillon, the top election cop inside the DOJ, believes the numbers of foreigners illicitly voting in elections is probably higher but has been frustrated that U.S. Attorney offices across the country haven’t made illegal voting a larger priority until just recently. “
We are trying to empty an ocean with a teaspoon because there isn’t a culture of U.S. attorneys going after these,” she explained. That’s changing with the sudden explosion of cases.Just before the 250th American birthday celebration, three non-United States citizens in Florida confessed to having knowingly voted in federal elections despite not being eligible to do so. Federal law requires voters to be American citizens to vote on the federal level, but some states and cities allow non-citizens to vote in local elections.
The three non-citizens voted in Florida and two of them – one from Cuba and the other from Haiti — admitted to voting in 2020 federal elections. The third, a Brazilian, voted in a federal election in 2024 after becoming a lawful permanent resident. “Voting in federal elections is one of the most important rights and responsibilities of American citizenship,” U.S. Attorney Jason Reding Quiñones, for the Southern District of Florida, said in a statement. “Federal law is clear: only United States citizens may vote in federal elections. These defendants admitted that they knowingly violated that law.”

“Normal people would be ashamed to be seen with him, dead or alive; Western elites are boasting of how close to him they were.. “

• Lindsey Graham Was A Monster, But Not Exceptional (Amar)

Lindsey Graham is dead. And if we were to apply the old Spartan and then Roman adage “about the dead, nothing but the good,” then this is where this text would have to end. Some readers may find this shocking or unkind. But it is a fact that there is no way to write about the intriguingly sudden end of the long-term US senator from South Carolina in a ‘balanced’ manner and stay honest. Graham was an almost cartoonishly evil man and since he was also very powerful, his moral depravity made a big difference to the lives of all too many.

Downplaying that fact out of misplaced piety would be perverse; it would mean to disrespect the many victims of perfidious and brutal US and, in fact, Israeli policies of vicious violence and outrageous injustice that Graham promoted with every fiber of his being for his whole political life. During the Gaza genocide, when challenged specifically about the Israeli mass killings of civilians, including women and children, Graham launched into what can only be called a psychopathic rant comparing the Israeli genocide of the Palestinians with American warfare against Germany in Japan in World War II (an intriguing comparison in and of itself, but that is another matter) and drawing the conclusion that Gaza should be flattened, including with nuclear weapons.
Gaza has been flattened, and to his dying day, Graham never showed an ounce of compassion for those slaughtered by his Israeli friends and did everything he could to support that slaughter. That is, of course, also why internationally wanted war criminal – really genocidaire – Benjamin Netanyahu rushed to offer his public condolences.
Speaking of Graham’s obvious subservience to Israel, the senator was, unsurprisingly, also a great fan of going to war with Iran, tirelessly calling for attacking it as violently as possible. He spread the Orwellian lies that Iran was about to pose a nuclear threat to the US and that its ballistic missile arsenal was a tool of reckless aggression, all to produce domestic support for yet another criminal American war. Himself addicted to hiding his foul character behind a bigoted and utterly fake Christian piety, Graham compared Iran’s leaders to Hitler and called them “religious Nazis,” thereby not merely offending brave men towering above him in moral and intellectual terms, but also helping to drum up propaganda for murdering them.
It is an irony of history or, maybe, divine justice that he lived just long enough to see the US follow his insane and corrupt advice and suffer a geopolitically catastrophic defeat for it. Yet Graham was a monster long before the Gaza Genocide and the US-Israeli war against Iran. He was obsessed with brutalizing as many other countries and societies as possible. He could not see an opportunity for a war and not do his worst to make it happen. Graham’s record of warmongering is so extensive that it is hard to reproduce it in its entirety. Just shortly before his end, he had been calling for more US violence in Cuba, Lebanon, Nigeria, Venezuela, and Yemen – apart, obviously, from his eternal compulsion to scream for, in effect, more dead Palestinians and Iranians.
In true American fashion, if being Graham’s target was terrible, being his ‘friend’ was no better. Ukraine has come to stand for that experience. Even while pretending to be its ardent supporter, Graham was always among those most brutally open about using Ukraine and its people for the geopolitical and commercial interests of the US. He praised opportunities to rob Ukraine of crucial raw materials and he clearly considered pumping money into its ultra-corrupt Zelensky regime a great deal as it produced dead Russians (and, he failed to mention, Ukrainians, too, of course).

Apparently, there’s some case playing out right now. Why only RT reports on it, I do not know.

”The son of the previous US president was awarded $1.7 million in damages in his dispute with Trump ally Patrick Byrne..”

“..Biden brought Byrne to court over repeated claims that he sought an $800 million bribe from Iran during his father’s presidency “..

• Hunter Biden Wins Defamation Suit Over ‘Iran Bribery’ Claims (RT)

A US federal judge on Friday awarded Hunter Biden $1.7 million in damages in a defamation suit against Patrick Byrne, former Overstock.com CEO and outspoken backer of US President Donald Trump. The lawsuit had been dragging on since 2023, when Biden brought Byrne to court over repeated claims that he sought an $800 million bribe from Iran during his father’s presidency. Byrne alleged that in exchange for the massive payout, Biden promised to get some $8 billion in Iranian funds unfrozen and to ensure a softer stance in nuclear talks with Tehran.

While Byrne has insisted he believed the allegations to be genuine, he failed to “provide to this court, throughout the course of litigation, any documentary evidence that could allow a reasonable person to believe the story to be true,” the judge said in his ruling. Moreover, the court found “ample evidence” indicating the defendant knew the claims were false but spread them nonetheless. The claims disseminated by the defendant “went far beyond mere negligence,” and the former CEO acted with “intentional misrepresentation” and “conscious disregard,” continuing to spread the claims even after he was sued by Hunter and encouraging social media users to propagate them further.
“The evidence is clear and convincing that [Byrne] has engaged in intentional misrepresentation with conscious disregard towards [Biden’s] rights,” the judge wrote in the ruling, which awarded Hunter $1.7 million in punitive damages. The legal team of the ex-president’s son hailed the ruling as a “complete vindication” for their client against the “false statements” made by Byrne. “As found by the court, Byrne had no basis to say that Hunter had any involvement with Iran whatsoever,” Hunter’s attorney Bryan Sullivan said in a statement.
Over the past years, Biden has been embroiled in assorted legal troubles and claims to have racked up a massive debt primarily stemming from court fees, even despite his father granting him a pardon for convictions on federal gun and tax charges in the last days of his presidency. Byrne is no stranger to controversy either, being one of the central figures of the scandal involving Russian gun activist Maria Butina, with whom he admitted to having an intimate relationship. Butina was ultimately convicted of “conspiring to act as an unregistered foreign agent” and expelled to Russia after serving a prison term.
The affair prompted Byrne to step down from his executive role in 2019, with the businessman focusing primarily on political activism ever since. He has strongly supported US President Trump, including by backing the allegations that the latter was cheated out of the 2020 election win, as well as bankrolling legal efforts to challenge the outcome.

Before I saw the RT coverage, I wrote:

Jonathan Turley omits to explain why he is dealing with this right now. Isn’t this 2-3 years old? Is there a new case we should all know about?

• The Absurdity of the Hunter Biden Defamation Case (Turley)

I have taught torts, including defamation for over 30 years, but I have never seen the like of the Hunter Biden defamation case. The defendant made defamatory statements and then just refused to appear. That led to an equally bizarre $1.7 million award by U.S. District Judge Stephen Wilson of the Central District of California to Biden, consisting of just $1 in nominal damages and the rest in punitive damages. Here is the most interesting line of the opinion: “the damage to Plaintiff’s reputation is difficult to calculate.” It may be the single greatest understatement in the history of judicial opinions.

However, the court also noted “Plaintiff does not seek actual damages above a nominal amount.” That means that Hunter Biden’s counsel, in a default case, elected not to argue for compensatory damages due to loss of reputation. Why would he do that? It might be that he has little reputation to lose and that opening up that part of the case was fraught with perils. However, it also created a potential major appellate issue. His counsel was making it clear that they were litigating purely for punitives.
For Hunter Biden, this is a much-needed windfall. His art sales notably collapsed with the value of currying favor to the Bidens. He is reportedly being pursued by creditors, including former counsel. The question is whether the award will stand. For many critics, Hunter Biden is virtually ‘libel proof” as an individual who has no reputation to lose. However, as we have previously discussed, that status is reserved for the most reviled personalities who cannot be defamed due to the lack of any positive reputation.
Judge Wilson, a Reagan appointee, admits in his opinion that determining reputational harm to someone like Biden is difficult to do and further recognizes the argument that “prior tarnishing of Plaintiff’s reputation may reduce the reprehensibility of Defendant’s conduct.” The case involves a claim by former Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne that Biden took part in an $800 million bribery scheme involving Iran and failed to defend his claims in court. Hunter Biden has long been accused of influence peddling that generated millions for him and his family. I have been one of his longest critics as part of a corrupt family enterprise.
However, this claim was not one of those that his critics, and Congress, focused on during the Biden years. There is no evidence that he took a bribe or payment in a quid pro quo for releasing the money to Iran. The lawsuit was part of a flurry of such actions brought against Biden’s critics. Most were later dismissed, but played a part in the scorched-earth campaign of Biden. I was even threatened with such an action after criticizing his counsel and financial backer, Kevin Morris. As Biden dropped the other lawsuits, this one continued to be litigated. It was an easy kill. Byrne simply did not defend himself and defaulted. That left the matter to Judge Wilson, who was clearly irate.
The opinion recounts an extraordinary pile-up as Byrne sought to replace lawyers: “Defendant initially attempted to replace Mr. Murphy with three new lawyers: Eric Neff, Tom Yu, and Stefanie Lynn Lambert Junttila. ECF Nos. 290, 291, 292. Ms. Lambert was not a member of the California Bar, and her application to appear pro hac vice was denied2 due to her recent history of unethical conduct, which gave the Court reason to doubt she would abide by the Court’s rules and practices. ECF No. 295. When Defendant learned that Ms. Lambert was not qualified to represent him in this case, Defendant also instructed Mr. Neff and Mr. Yu to remove themselves.
Moreover, Defendant himself, now unrepresented, still failed to appear at trial. Accordingly, the Court issued an order to show cause why it should not enter default judgment against Defendant and ordered the parties to return the following day. At that hearing, on July 30, 2025, Defendant again failed to appear. Mr. Yu, who was not authorized to represent Defendant at trial, argued on Defendant’s behalf for a continuance, in lieu of default judgment.”

https://twitter.com/Dogetothemoon/status/2076398023652065674?s=20 https://twitter.com/DrcharlieWardQ/status/2075984789392261450?s=20

Antarctica is colder and more icebound today than at any point in the past 5,000 years.

Research by Hall (2023) found that West Antarctica cooled by more than 1.8C between 1999 and 2018.

Satellite data confirm continent-wide cooling, as do multiple glacier studies.

Piccini… pic.twitter.com/KI3C7CTlxD
— Electroverse (@Electroversenet) July 12, 2026

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Debt Rattle June 14 2026

Jun 142026

June 14, 2026 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 10:04 am Finance Tagged with: ActBlue, birthday, Carney, FISA, G7, Hunter Biden, Macron, managed poverty, migration, peace deal, Russia, suicide, Tren de Aragua, Trump 35 Responses »

John Singer Sargent Corfu-Lights and Shadows 1908

• President Trump ‘Utterly’ Defies Age As He Turns 80 (Earle)

• Trump Says Iran Peace Deal To Be Signed Sunday (ZH)

• Hillary Clinton Fears Revolution Preventing US From Being A Rainbow Nation (ZH)

• Trump Announces Strike on Tren de Aragua Leadership with Venezuela (CTH)

• Trump: We Got Another One -And This One Is HUGE (Sarah Anderson)

• Russia Is Single-Handedly Standing Against The West: Putin (ZH)

• Carney in France 3 Days Early for Trump Strategy Session with Macron (CTH)

• Why Have I Spent a Decade Focusing on FISA (CTH)

• Leftist Judge Blocks ActBlue Lawsuit to Protect Democrat Candidates (Margolis)

• “It’s Just Me”: The New Hunter Biden Seems Strikingly Like the Old (Turley)

• 400 Businesses, $6 Billion in Fed Contracts, No Physical Addresses (Salgado)

• A Villainous Blueprint For Managed Poverty (Veronique de Rugy)

• The Suicide Of Europe: Historic EU Migration Pact Goes Into Force Today (RMX)

https://twitter.com/RealAmVoice/status/2065601982237176076?s=20

JOE ROGAN: “As much as people hate Trump, and hate his decisions, and hate what he’s doing, and hate how he talks…”

“My experiences with him personally, have always been fun, unfortunately. Unfortunately for everybody else.”

“If he likes you and you’re on his good side, he’s… pic.twitter.com/UxH98F7kJZ
— Overton (@overton_news) June 12, 2026

Elon just created 4,400 millionaires in a single day.

400 of them are now worth over $100 million.

These aren't VCs. They're SpaceX employees, and the list includes welders, technicians, and cafeteria staff, because for two decades the company paid every level of the workforce… pic.twitter.com/tc2LuK7Gd7
— Shruti (@heyshrutimishra) June 12, 2026

https://twitter.com/playmatejaylene/status/2065419827263774941?s=20

pic.twitter.com/OC6l7harKj
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 12, 2026

Ukraine leads DIRECTLY to 9/11.

I hope the world is ready to find out What's TRULY been happening because the same disgusting rats that have been placing Biolabs in Ukraine to weaponize genetically supercharged viruses as exposed in 2018 by Dilyana Gaytandzhieva, were ALSO… https://t.co/qmlQfXCqzR pic.twitter.com/xziVr3MnPa
— Bridgett Fertig (@LightOnLiberty) June 12, 2026

I looked up and down for an article that simply congratulates Trump on his 80th.

Not that he wants to be 80.

Very hard to find. This, from the New York Post, was the only thing that came up in a Google search for “Trump”, “birthday”.

I still don’t understand why people dislike the man so much.

‘I don’t know where he gets the energy’.

• President Trump ‘Utterly’ Defies Age As He Turns 80 (Earle)

President Donald Trump on Sunday will become the second octogenarian to occupy the White House – and his admirers told The Post he still has plenty of spring in his step. “At least to date, he has seemed to utterly defy age,” said Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), 55, who ran against Trump for president a decade ago. “I don’t know where he gets the energy that he displays, but he is up early in the morning and late at night,” he added. In a chamber where Iowa Sen. Charles Grassley, 92, is the senior-most Republican and third in line to the presidency, Republicans who work closely with Trump insisted age is nothing but a number.

“He calls me at sometimes 2 o’clock in the morning,” said Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.). The 74-year-old lawmaker quickly added: “I mean, just because you’re 80 doesn’t mean you’re falling apart. For some people it does — but other people are fine.” “Age is relative,” agreed former Sen. John Breaux (D-La.), 82, who served three terms in the Senate – including two years alongside Sen. Strom Thurmond (R-S.C.), who retired from the chamber at 100. “I knew people who were senile at 40, and I knew people in their 70s that were contributing members of the Congress. It depends on the individual, and you have to judge an individual not by the chronological age, but by their ability, and some are great at 80, and some are not so great at 40.”
And he’s not slowing down, said former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, 82, a longtime Trump advisor who drew some life advice from the president. “President Trump, in the Kissinger tradition, has gained in stamina as he has gotten older. He is so interested in the wide range of things he is achieving that he has no time to get older,” he said. “His life invigorates him and fits what we now know about longevity. If you have a big goal, like what you are doing and have friends you live longer, healthier, and with more energy. All that fits President Trump.”
Trump keeps a vigorous schedule, regularly fielding questions from reporters during marathon press events and posting on Truth Social about war and peace during odd hours. “If there’s one thing I know about President Trump, it’s that nothing slows him down,” said Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-Texas), the former White House physician who tended to Trump after Thomas Crooks shot at him in Butler, Pennsylvania and wounded his right ear. The president plans to spend his birthday at a UFC fight organized on the South Lawn of the White House before jetting to France for the annual G7 meeting.
Eldest son Donald Trump, Jr. and his new wife Bettina, son Eric and wife Lara Trump, daughter Ivanka and her husband Jared Kushner all were set to join him for the bouts. Democrats are relishing the opportunity, for a change, to poke at the age of the other party’s standard bearer. Former White House spokesman Andrew Bates questioned Trump’s memory regarding inflation, despite Bates’ ex-boss, former President Joe Biden, delivering a 2024 debate performance so bad his wife thought he was having a stroke. “But you have to give it to him that a White House ballroom is the ultimate senior arts and crafts project,” he quipped.
Trump has been fatalistic when speaking after numerous attempts on his life. “I wasn’t worried. I understand life. We live in a crazy world,” he said after Cole Thomas Allen allegedly opened fire at the White House Correspondents Dinner in April. “It’s not a number I like, but I’m here nevertheless,” he said in a video posted Thursday by Medicare and Medicaid Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz. But if he frets about aging, he can turn to White House Physician Dr. Sean Barbabella’s memo after his latest visit to Walter Reed Medical Center. It proclaimed him to be in “excellent health” and estimated his cardiac age as “approximately 14 years younger than his chronological age.”

That was the birthday present Trump wanted for himself.

• Trump Says Iran Peace Deal To Be Signed Sunday (ZH)

President Trump said a long-awaited deal to end the war in the Middle East is scheduled to be signed on Sunday, paving the way for the opening of the strategic Strait of Hormuz. In a statement issued through Truth Social, President Trump first took a shot at President Obama: “Barack Hussein Obama’s Deal with Iran, the JCPOA, was an easy, beautiful, smooth road to a Nuclear Weapon, which Iran would have had six years ago, and would have used long before now.”

Then explained why his deal is different: “My Agreement with Iran is the exact opposite, A WALL TO NO NUCLEAR WEAPON! In fact, they no longer want a Nuclear Weapon, nor will they have one, either through purchase, development, or any other form of procurement. The Deal is scheduled to get signed tomorrow, and immediately after it is signed, the Hormuz Strait is OPEN TO ALL.” Building relationships: “Our relationship with Iran is a much different and better one than previous Administrations have had. Unlike Obama’s Hundreds of Billions of Dollars in payments to them, including 1.7 Billion Dollars in green, cold cash, no money will exchange hands. We look forward to working with Iran, and the entire Middle East, long into the future.
About the nuclear dust: “At the appropriate time, when all is calm, we will go in and get the Nuclear Dust, buried deep under the powerful sunken granite mountains, thanks to our beautiful B-2 Bombers and their brilliant pilots, and downblend and destroy it, whether in Iran, or the United States. Hopefully, this process will all work out quickly, easily, and smoothly.If it doesn’t, we have the ultimate alternative, hopefully never to be used again!
Trump’s statement, however, ran counter to Iran’s foreign ministry which indicated earlier in the day that the deal would not be signed Sunday, according to state media reports. We shall see …
Iran Peace Deal Signing Expected Within 24 Hours, Technical Talks To Follow, Pakistan’s Sharif Says
After Friday witnessed a rare moment of agreement between Tehran and Washington saying that indeed a peace deal Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) is indeed ‘very close’ – there’s been more color issued by Pakistan. The country’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said that the United States and Iran have agreed to the final text of the agreement, but that curiously Pakistan is now preparing for an electronic signing expected within the next 24 hours. Is this going to be history’s first Docusigned peace agreement?
Sharif further indicated this signing will be followed by technical-level ` talks this upcoming week - but this is definitely where the proverbial devil will be in the details. Contained within the MoU signing will reportedly be an extension of the April 7 ceasefire by 60 days, during which the Strait of Hormuz would gradually reopen - or we should say that this is at least the very optimistic version of things, given that Tehran still insists that its military is in control of the Strait, which the Pentagon has flatly rejected is a a reality. So Iran is seeking to hold on tightly to its obvious geographic leverage, while the US is rejecting that this is the case at all.
Another interesting possibly point of contention - but which looks to be merely papered over for now - is the status of the nuclear file, which has long been a major point of fierce contention. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi made clear Friday Iran’s understanding that terms dealing with the country’s nuclear program would be finalized in the 60 days after the initial agreement is signed. So in essence, this means Iran could get its wish of pushing nuclear negotiations back, only after the hot conflict has clearly ended. Iran has long sought to separate the issues of a final end to the war from consideration of its nuclear program.
Importantly Araghchi indicated the two sides could extend the 60-day period further, and a yet a lot could go wrong in such an extended interim. Still, it remains that Washington - and certainly the American public - doesn’t have the appetite for an escalation that would lead to a boots-on-the-ground scenario complete with full regime change operations (and this means almost inevitable nation-building).
We are closer to a peace deal than ever before. With finalisation likely expected in the next 24 hours, Pakistan is preparing for the electronic signing of the peace deal immediately after, followed by technical level talks next week.

We would like to thank United States of…
— Shehbaz Sharif (@CMShehbaz) June 13, 2026

Most Americans don’t want to live in a Rainbow Nation.

• Hillary Clinton Fears Revolution Preventing US From Being A Rainbow Nation (ZH)

The word “Democracy” is thrown around frequently within progressive circles as a call to arms; a rallying cry based on a fraudulent narrative of patriotic duty. Throughout the entirety of Joe Biden’s first and last term, the political left painted conservatives as a threat to democracy. Anyone who opposed pandemic mandates, compelled vaccination, open borders, mass immigration, gender ideology in public schools etc., was labeled a danger to society.

The inherent fallacy being that leftists (and by extension Democrats) represent the majority of the nation. However, this notion has been consistently debunked by multiple elections, polls and the fact that the vast majority of liberal movements have been exposed as astroturf funded by NGOs. If Democrats actually cared about democracy, they would listen to the actual American majority, instead of waging a propaganda war on the majority in order to manufacture a false consensus. And, the majority of Americans do not support multicultural or “intersectional” ideology. The liberal vision is on the decline and that’s a good thing.
Not surprisingly, Hillary Clinton disagrees. At the first Rainbow PUSH Coalition conference since the death of Reverend Jesse Jackson in February. Pete Buttigieg and Hillary Clinton took to the stage in front of a small audience in Chicago this week to sell their Utopian future, but mostly they slandered the Trump Administration. Their rhetoric continues to echo the message of the Biden era, that conservatives want the end of civil rights and voting rights in the US. Buttigieg asserted that the Trump Administration was “corrupt” and “corruption is bad”.

The former DOT Secretary makes no mention of the fact that he shares a stage with Clinton, widely known as one of the most corrupt politicians in recent American history. While Democrats spend endless media time trying to tie Donald Trump to Jeffrey Epstein, it’s the Clinton Family that is well documented as being truly friendly with the globalist pedo pimp. Around 90% of Epstein’s political contributions went to the Democratic Party including multiple donations to Hillary Clinton. None of his donations went to Trump.
Buttigieg faced extensive backlash for his handling of the pandemic lockdowns, including his avid support for draconian mandates which were ultimately found to be useless in stopping the spread of covid; and all over a virus with a 99.8% average survival rate. He continues to echo the party line, calling for rigging of the Supreme Court to ensure Democrat supremacy.

Pete Buttigieg: We have to deal with a Supreme Court that is now a rogue Supreme Court. It’s time to think big. Nowhere in the constitution does it say there have to be nine justices… We could have 13.
pic.twitter.com/17epK62lyM
— Defiant L’s (@DefiantLs) June 13, 2026

Buttigieg is expected to run in the 2028 Democrat primaries for President. Though, he lacks any mainstream popularity and, like most Democrats, he continues to campaign as if he’s running against Trump even though Trump is leaving office. Clinton, on the other hand, seems less concerned with Trump and far more concerned with the larger conservative and anti-woke movements which have left Democrats stunned and bewildered. Clinton calls these movements a “counter-revolution” which she believes is undermining the liberal order established over the last several decades. Clinton fearmongers with the usual rhetoric, claiming that civil rights and voting rights are under threat.

Hillary Clinton: "We are in a counterrevolution. It is a revolution to turn the clock back and take away the rights we have worked so hard to achieve. This counterrevolutionary crew in Washington right now doesn't want us to be a Rainbow Nation." pic.twitter.com/5sBnJuhwru
— TheBlaze (@theblaze) June 12, 2026

She is ostensibly referencing the end of redistricting using race-based gerrymandering, which exclusively worked in the favor of Democrats. But, this was enforced by the Supreme Court, not Trump or the MAGA movement. Clinton is also a vocal opponent of the Save Act, which would make proof of citizenship a requirement for voting in the US (a bill which is supported by around 80% of American voters). Her comments on the “Rainbow Nation” might be confusing for those who don’t understand what this entails. Jackson used “Rainbow” to describe a broad coalition of “marginalized groups” (Black Americans, Latinos, Asians, Native Americans, LGBTQ+ people, low wage workers, etc.) uniting for political power and social justice. His organization commonly promotes Marxist “intersectionality” and multiculturalism.
Clinton has made similar anti-populist statements in recent months, arguing that the rise of American conservatism has the potential to break apart the liberal west. At the Munich Security Conference in February, she participated in panels on what they call the “West-West Divide”, warning of democratic backsliding on human rights (including women’s and LGBTQ+ rights), and authoritarian dangers. Clinton called for civil rights and grassroots networks to counter the weakening of liberal institutions. She made the same call for popular opposition in Chicago.
“We have to reconstitute the movements that moved us forward, that made it possible to claim we were trying to get to that more perfect union. They were not led by politically elected officials. They were led by clergy, they were led by business leaders, they were led by civic organizers, they were led by young people. So we don’t need to have a bunch of elected officials leading this new movement. We need to have it be from the bottom up, the grassroots, coming back to get organized and move forward again.” In other words, if they can’t win (or steal) the elections and if they can’t gain the majority approval of the voters, then they will turn to mob actions to disrupt reforms and force the public to accept woke ideology anyway. Democrats only romanticize democracy when it works in their favor. When it doesn’t, they completely abandon it.

Venezuela as the 51st state?

• Trump Announces Strike on Tren de Aragua Leadership with Venezuela (CTH)

President Trump announces a deadly strike on the leadership of the Tren de Aragua criminal gang with support from the interim Venezuela government.

TRUTH SOCIAL – “At my direction, the United States Southern Command delivered a swift and lethal kinetic strike to successfully execute Niño Guerrero, the infamous leader of Tren De Aragua, one of the most bloodthirsty Terrorist Organizations on Planet Earth. Before I returned to office, Joe Biden opened our Southern Border to millions of Illegal Criminals, and allowed this foreign army to rape, maim, and murder American Citizens with total impunity. During my Campaign, I pledged to expel these monsters from our Country, and bring Justice to the families of those they slaughtered, including the precious 12-year-old Jocelyn Nungaray, 22-year-old Laken Reilly, and countless other beautiful souls. With this action, the United States Military has brought retribution for them, their families, and their loved ones.
Early in my Administration, I delivered on my promise to designate Tren de Aragua as a Foreign Terrorist Organization, deport thousands of evil criminals, and wage war against the Cartels, who have long been waging war against our Citizens, while weak leaders left America helpless and defensive. This action was coordinated closely with our friends in Venezuela, with whom we are working very well. As a result, Tren de Aragua terrorists no longer have safe haven in Venezuela or anywhere else and, under my leadership, we will find these vicious murderers and drugs lords anytime, anyplace, and send them to the depths of hell where they belong. GOD BLESS AMERICA!”
~ President DONALD J. TRUMP
Venezuela’s government released a statement confirmed its participation in the operation and revealed it took place in the southeastern state of Bolivar. “During the operation, clashes occurred with members of criminal groups, resulting in the death of Héctor Rusthenford Guerrero Flores, alias ‘Niño Guerrero,’ the leader of one of these criminal organizations,” according to the statement.

“..Just in case you need a refresher, Nicolás Maduro claimed TdA didn’t exist, but the reality is that he was using the members as his own henchmen..”

• Trump: We Got Another One -And This One Is HUGE (Sarah Anderson)

On Friday night, Donald Trump announced that the United States, along with our “friends in Venezuela,” took out another very, very bad guy. This one is a big one. Héctor Rusthenford Guerrero Flores, aka Niño Guerrero, was the kingpin of c (TdA). He started out as a local thug, with a rap sheet full of homicides, robberies, and other crimes, but he turned a stint in prison into one of the biggest criminal organizations in the world. Here’s what I wrote about him in April 2025:

“But TdA actually dates all the way back to 2014 when a man named Hector Rusthenford Guerrero Flores, aka Niño Guerrero, was locked up at Tocorón Prison, which is located in the Aragua state of Venezuela. According to the State Department, ‘During his time there, Guerrero expanded the influence of Tren de Aragua from extorting prison inmates and bribing prison guards to assuming the overall control of the Tocorón prison as well as the control of gold mines in Bolivar State, drug corridors on the Caribbean coast, as well as control of some of the clandestine border crossings between Venezuela and Colombia.’
The BBC reported that because of Guerrero’s growing power, the jail essentially turned into a luxury resort and included a zoo, nightclub, and swimming pool. ‘Families of inmates moved into the compound. Inmates had access to a makeshift bank, a betting shop, a restaurant, and a baseball diamond, while their children could marvel at flamingos and ostriches in the animal enclosure.’ Meanwhile, Guerrero came and went as he pleased, reportedly living ‘like a king.’ He had his own floor in the prison, complete with personal bodyguards. He also had no major rivals or opposition, which helped him grow TdA throughout Venezuela. It eventually made its way to the Colombian border. By 2018, it was spreading through other South American countries, including Colombia, Peru, Ecuador, Chile, Bolivia, and Brazil.
Leaders in these countries reportedly put pressure on Venezuela to shut it down. In 2023, the country’s government reportedly sent 11,000 soldiers and police into the prison to take control and after the fact, they claimed it went off without a hitch. However, Guerrero, who is currently 41 years old, wasn’t there — though it took Venezuela some time to make this information public — and a manhunt began across numerous South American countries. As of last summer, the State Department, in conjunction with Colombian National Police, have offered up to a $5 million reward for information leading to Guerrero’s arrest, as well as an additional $7 million for the arrest of two other TdA leaders.”
Just in case you need a refresher, Nicolás Maduro claimed TdA didn’t exist, but the reality is that he was using the members as his own henchmen, sending them to the United States and other countries to wreak havoc and even reportedly having them kill some of his enemies. Joe Biden’s open-border policies played right into the Maduro regime’s hands, while Trump and Marco Rubio designated TdA as a Foreign Terrorist Organization almost immediately when Trump began his second term.
The fact that our “friends in Venezuela” played a role in this (and let’s face it, they — and by “they” I mean “acting president” Delcy Rodríguez — really didn’t have a choice but to play ball) is an incredible turn of events from what was going on in that country just five or six months ago. Anyway, I won’t rehash the whole TdA story, but you can read more about it here: The Truth Behind Tren de Aragua. So what happened exactly? Here’s what Trump posted on Truth Social:
“At my direction, the United States Southern Command delivered a swift and lethal kinetic strike to successfully execute Niño Guerrero, the infamous leader of Tren De Aragua, one of the most bloodthirsty Terrorist Organizations on Planet Earth. Before I returned to office, Joe Biden opened our Southern Border to millions of Illegal Criminals, and allowed this foreign army to rape, maim, and murder American Citizens with total impunity. During my Campaign, I pledged to expel these monsters from our Country, and bring Justice to the families of those they slaughtered, including the precious 12-year-old Jocelyn Nungaray, 22-year-old Laken Reilly, and countless other beautiful souls.
With this action, the United States Military has brought retribution for them, their families, and their loved ones. Early in my Administration, I delivered on my promise to designate Tren de Aragua as a Foreign Terrorist Organization, deport thousands of evil criminals, and wage war against the Cartels, who have long been waging war against our Citizens, while weak leaders left America helpless and defensive. This action was coordinated closely with our friends in Venezuela, with whom we are working very well. As a result, Tren de Aragua terrorists no longer have safe haven in Venezuela or anywhere else and, under my leadership, we will find these vicious murderers and drugs lords anytime, anyplace, and send them to the depths of hell where they belong. GOD BLESS AMERICA! President DONALD J. TRUMP”
Secretary of War Pete Hegseth also confirmed the news that Guerrero was killed: As did SOUTHCOM Commander Gen. Francis L. Donovan:

“We extend our gratitude to the Venezuelan security forces for their support to the successful joint operation against a Tren de Aragua compound that resulted in the death of the narco-terrorist organization’s leader Hector Rusthenford Guerrero Flores, alias “Niño Guerrero.”… https://t.co/GT4z4FMyYq
— U.S. Southern Command (@Southcom) June 13, 2026

Guerrero was reportedly hiding out in Bolívar state, specifically the mining area around Las Claritas at a TdA compound. I can’t express what a big blow this was to TdA, and to organized crime and drug trafficking in the Western Hemisphere in general. I’m sure the lefties in the U.S. will be besides themselves over it, but if my social media and communication with my Venezuelan contacts are any indication, most of the sane people in Venezuela, in Latin America, and in the United States are celebrating this almost as much as they did the capture of Maduro in January. They just want to know if Diosdado Cabello is next. Let’s hope.
https://twitter.com/iamGermania/status/2025941192869810310?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E2025941192869810310%7Ctwgr%5E59850d30c63a003e8fb18de821213ac223484379%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fpjmedia.com%2Fsarah-anderson%2F2026%2F06%2F13%2Ftrump-we-got-another-one-n4953924

Should he have seen this coming? Be more suspicious? He suggested making Russia part of the west.

• Russia Is Single-Handedly Standing Against The West: Putin (ZH)

“It was they who carried out the coup d’etat in Ukraine, which forced us to take the people of Crimea under protection. When they started the war, they started bombing Donetsk using warplanes” – Putin in a fresh address to Russian service members came out swinging, giving a familiar lesson in recent history. And quite provocatively, he emphasized that Russia is now practically fighting against the entirety of the collective West in the Ukraine conflict in the Friday remarks. “Russia is standing against the so-called Collective West single-handedly,” Putin said, state media cited, and he noted that the ‘special military operation’ he ordered to stave off NATO encroachment is revealing itself to be “exceedingly high-tech.”

“The NATO nations are all, without exception, ramping up efforts to do all they can to orchestrate actions against Russia,” he added, sate media continued. He stressed that Moscow did not initiate the Ukraine conflict, but that the Western allies and their hegemonic expansion and meddling did. He perhaps for the first time acknowledged some pain inflicted on Russia due to Ukraine’s long-range drone waves, which for months have been inflicting serious damage primarily on oil and energy sites: Now, Western nations have set out to “inflict a strategic defeat on Russia,” but “this is not something that can be done,” Putin said.
“The enemy is expanding the use of [kamikaze] drones… trying to strike at our morale, trying to break up Russian society… and cause economic damage,” he noted, stressing that “they will not succeed.” These drones have grown more long-range in their targeting and increasingly effective, as Russia’s anti-air defense – which are set up primarily to intercept higher flying and faster inbound missiles or jets – seem powerless.
Or rather, if Ukraine sends 100 drones on Russia on any given night, at least dozens are bound to make it through, the recent pattern has shown. But Putin also seems to be strongly suggesting that Western intelligence is assisting Ukraine’s drone mayhem on the Russian populace. Earlier this month, the Putin-hosted St. Petersburg Economic Forum came under significant drone attack from Ukraine. Videos revealed that international dignitaries entered the venue against the backdrop of thick black smoke from drone hits on oil and other facilities.

“.. strategize with President Emmanuel Macron the best way to defeat Godzilla Trump. ”

• Carney in France 3 Days Early for Trump Strategy Session with Macron (CTH)

The media frame the early arrival of Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney as part of a bilateral discussion ahead of the G7 which begins on June 15. However, those who have followed the nuance of geopolitics well understand Mark Carney is in Paris early so that he can strategize with President Emmanuel Macron the best way to defeat Godzilla Trump. There is a certain irony that amid the G7 only one economy is growing, the USA. EU leaders including U.K Prime Minister Keir Starmer, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and Emmanuel Macron himself are all barely hanging on to power with almost no public support.

Historically, Macron always tries to reposition his domestic lack of support by focusing on international affairs. Macron and Carney have one nemesis in common, President Donald Trump. Emmanuel Macron is famous for scheming subtle ways to overcome his own inadequacy, and hosting the G7 puts him in the spotlight. Mark Carney is coming back to Europe after previously giving a speech in Davos calling for a collective alignment of middle-economy nations to stand united against the terrible Trump. There is little doubt the pontificating duo has any other topic other than Trump in their scheme and planning folder.
Factually the G7 is a joke now, with likely around 15 to 20 countries showing up. The G7 used to be the USA, France, Canada, Germany, Italy, Japan, and the U.K. Then they added the EU, which brings three more Brussels figureheads, and if the last G7 in Canada is any indication of the intention, there will likely be at least a dozen more showing up. This G7 is deemed critical due to the issues of Iran and Ukraine, in combination with President Trump’s international reset that has diminished the economic status of Europe significantly. Trump doesn’t chase the climate change agenda, and that is another policy disconnect from the rest of the group.
Macron wants to avoid the G6+1 narrative that has come to define the assembly in the era of Trump because France needs to be seen as a coequal within the group. However, in reality in addition to the USA the only other country that matters in this new geopolitical framework is Japan; all other nations are a mess of globalist chaos, domestic political trouble and economy shrinking energy problems. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and French President Emmanuel Macron need to position themselves as the leaders of the anti-Trump movement. Thus, they get together three days in advance to figure out the best way to diminish Trump’s appearance. That’s really what this early bilateral nonsense is about.

A key that fits in many doors?

• Why Have I Spent a Decade Focusing on FISA (CTH)

My dearest friends, I have not spent a decade focusing on FISA or the ‘702’ issues because defeating the pending surveillance state has been the priority; that is an ancillary matter against powerful financial interests. No, the core of my focus has always been on what FISA (702) represents. FISA (702) et al, is a tool, a key per se’. A key that unlocks a data library. We debate control of the key, but do not spend enough time focusing on the data library itself and what it represents. I’m not even sure if President Donald Trump is fully aware of this or not, but I am generally confident that DC insiders understand the potential.

The NSA database is essentially a library of information about activity. It is a storage box of metadata and within that data there is a sub-set, a flow of information related to election activity.Behind that part of the issue, with that thought in mind, you now have an expanded perspective of why the ODNI would be involved in election type investigative activity. The DNI is above the NSA Director. The ODNI is an access point to the data library. Tulsi Gabbard as DNI has a vested interest in all the data housed within that vault. Congress stood jaw agape at the appearance of DNI Gabbard in Fulton County, Georgia, without actually recognizing what stakeholder interests are represented by the content in Fulton County election warehouses.
Essentially, the NSA data vault shows XXX activity, and the factual paperwork supporting XXX exists in physical warehouses. The data is within a digital library. The factual paperwork is on the ground. Now, pause for a moment and understand the digital library is one aspect. Access to that digital library is an entirely different kettle o’ fish. The lockbox to open the digital record is accessed using the recently discussed 702 pathways. As presented for several years, the FISA (702) key is simply a tool. The tool is needed to unlock the data. Arguably, if you cannot access the data there is no reason to capture it. As a result, without FISA (702) there is no collection, because there is no need for metadata collection. Understood?
As a consequence, FISA (702) is not about foreign stuff as it relates to the common discussion; instead, it is the baseline of the entire data capture. Understanding this takes you to a mental reset. The capture is never discussed (see Edward Snowden -vs- James Clapper), we only see debate on the access. So, if you take your thinking back to the data collection itself, then you ask what is in that massive digital vault we call the NSA library. There’s a lot of stuff in there, including all of the electronic data that surrounds elections. All of that data can be filtered permitting a granular look at election outcomes and all the background electronic communication that comes attached to it. [Hence, the DNI stakeholder interest in Fulton, County.]
FISA (702) essentially represents the authority, the key that unlocks the ability to review the data. Think very carefully. If the database contains the digital records of elections, and if those digital records show manipulation of election data, then anyone accessing that massive library would represent a risk. How many people in DC are in elected office as a result of election manipulation? Now, does the recent display of extreme concern from specific people in congress start to take on a new context?

“There’s just one problem with that claim. Paxton’s investigation into ActBlue started in Dec. 2023. Talarico didn’t enter the Senate race until Sept. 2025…”

• Leftist Judge Blocks ActBlue Lawsuit to Protect Democrat Candidates (Margolis)

A federal judge handed ActBlue a get-out-of-jail-free card on Thursday, blocking Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton from pursuing a lawsuit against the Democrat fundraising platform. District Judge Richard Stearns decided the lawsuit was political. Specifically, Stearns concluded Paxton filed it to retaliate against ActBlue for raising money for his U.S. Senate opponent, James Talarico. Stearns wrote in his decision, “The lawsuit in Texas is undoubtedly an adverse action. And having previously found bad faith, the court agrees with ActBlue that the evidence in the record compels the conclusion that, far from protecting Texas consumers, the action was filed in retaliation for ActBlue’s fundraising on behalf of Talarico, Paxton’s current political rival for the Senate seat.”

There’s just one problem with that claim. Paxton’s investigation into ActBlue started in Dec. 2023. Talarico didn’t enter the Senate race until Sept. 2025. That’s nearly two years before the “political rival” Stearns claims Paxton was targeting even announced a candidacy. And the judge knows this, because his own ruling says so. The factual background section of that same ruling tells a different story. Stearns wrote:
ActBlue is a prominent fundraising platform for Democratic candidates for public office, amassing as much as $19 billion in donations, mostly from small contributors, since its founding in 2004. In December of 2023, Paxton began investigating ActBlue with the stated purpose of determining “whether ActBlue’s operations are compliant with all applicable laws.” The next month, he served ActBlue with a Request to Examine (RTE) to be conducted at ActBlue’s headquarters in Somerville, Massachusetts. Think about that for a second. Stearns literally acknowledged in his own ruling that the investigation began in late 2023, well before Talarico was a candidate. But he still “concluded” it was retaliatory? What a joke.
Here’s the real problem. The lawsuit itself has real substance. Paxton alleges ActBlue violated Texas law by misleading consumers about its fundraising practices. The platform told Congress in 2024 that it had stopped accepting donations via gift cards and foreign prepaid debit cards, only to quietly resume accepting gift card donations afterward. That’s a serious allegation, with nothing to do with Talarico. None. Nada. Zilch. It’s about whether ActBlue lied to Congress and, in the process, broke state consumer protection laws.
Paxton had already been pushing on this at the federal level. In 2024 (again, before Talarico was even a candidate), he filed a Petition for Rulemaking with the Federal Election Commission, to close the fundraising loopholes ActBlue exploits. This was a sustained, multi-front legal effort that predated Talarico’s Senate announcement by nearly two years. Reuters left all of that context out of its report on the injunction. Convenient. Paxton will obviously appeal the ruling. “Texas has every right to enforce its own laws to protect our citizens, and we will continue to fight to hold ActBlue accountable,” he said on X.
Good. Because what Stearns did here goes well beyond bad legal reasoning. ActBlue has funneled billions into Democrat campaigns, and now gets judicial protection the moment a state attorney general tries to examine whether its practices are even legal. The platform told Congress one thing, did another, and a federal judge decided the Republican who noticed was the real problem. Stearns isn’t applying the law. He’s running interference for a fundraising machine the entire Democrat Party depends on to stay competitive. If ActBlue’s practices hold up under scrutiny, it has nothing to fear from Paxton’s lawsuit. A judge swooping in to kill that scrutiny tells you exactly what this ruling is actually about: helping Democrats.

He needs money.

• “It’s Just Me”: The New Hunter Biden Seems Strikingly Like the Old (Turley)

Hunter Biden is once again reinventing himself with the help of an ever-enabling media and the Democratic establishment. The media is full of reports that people are rediscovering Hunter and finding him strikingly honest and refreshing. In his pitch, he assures viewers that now “it’s just me” and not some team of advisers. The problem is that, for some of us who have been critics of the Bidens for decades, there is nothing new about the new Hunter other than a podcast audience.

For the record, I have been a critic of the Biden family for decades as one of the most corrupt political families in U.S. history. Joe Biden and his family have been influence peddlers and self-dealers since his time in the Senate — enriching themselves with positions and shady dealings. Hunter Biden was the ultimate personification of that corruption — both financial and moral. He spent his life attacking those who tried to investigate his dealings, including filing ruinous lawsuits against individuals who would not yield.
At the same time, he spent lavishly with money that he acquired by leveraging the access and influence of his father. Some of this conduct continued during periods of sobriety as well as addiction. That includes his disgraceful record with regard to his daughter Navy Joan, whom he fought not to recognize or support. Hunter has repeatedly sought to reinvent himself with the help of an army of advisers. His current pitch is that everything that he did for literally decades was because he was an addict and that he is now proud and unafraid. The problem is that the facts do not fit the pitch. Hunter was cashing in on the family business from the moment that he emerged from law school. He was entitled and eager to use his father to enrich himself.
For a party that often seems on a recurring loop of mantras condemning white privilege and entitlements, Hunter Biden would seem the last person that the left would embrace. However, the use of his identity as a recovering addict is drawing crowds and accolades. He presents himself as a virtual sage as a result of the struggle. I have previously expressed sympathy for Hunter’s recovery and credited him for writing about it. However, his honesty about addiction is notably missing in his account of his influence peddling and corruption. He prefers to focus on how he spent the money and not how he got it.
We’re missing accounts of his strong-arming of foreign figures, such as BHR Partners CEO Jonathan Li. In the summer of 2019, Li wired $250,000 to Hunter Biden from Beijing, with Joe Biden’s Delaware home listed as the beneficiary address. There were diamonds as gifts, lavish expense accounts, and a sports car, in addition to massive payments that Hunter claimed were “loans.” There are messages like the one to a Chinese businessman , openly threatening Joe Biden’s displeasure if money is not sent to them immediately. In the WhatsApp message, Hunter stated:
“I am sitting here with my father, and we would like to understand why the commitment made has not been fulfilled. Tell the director that I would like to resolve this now before it gets out of hand, and now means tonight. And, Z, if I get a call or text from anyone involved in this other than you, Zhang, or the Chairman, I will make certain that between the man sitting next to me and every person he knows and my ability to forever hold a grudge that you will regret not following my direction. I am sitting here waiting for the call with my father.” Hunter puts all of these dealings and his attacks on critics into a deep memory hole while thrilling liberal audiences as the liberated voice of reason.
Hunter continues to twist history to fit his needs. In an interview with Gov. Gavin Newsom, Biden explained how his infamous pardon was simply proof of “how much you know my dad loves me.” He said that his father “chose me over his legacy.” That last point may be the only unassailable point from his interviews. However, Hunter notably stuck to the same carefully crafted narrative put out by his family in interviews on the pardon — insisting that it was made necessary by Trump’s election to protect him from retaliation.
Hunter told Newsom: “My dad said that he wouldn’t give me a pardon and he was absolutely 100% genuine about it…he said it at a moment in time where he thought that he was going to be the next president of the United States and there would be a Justice Department that would treat me fairly…It would have been like having a gun to my family’s head for the next four years at least, so that’s why he pardoned me. It’s a really incredibly rational decision and a really difficult decision.”

The fraud in the US is staggering.

• 400 Businesses, $6 Billion in Fed Contracts, No Physical Addresses (Salgado)

Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Chairman Andrew Ferguson exposed yet more horrifying details of the mass taxpayer funding fraud network in the U.S.

Ferguson said on Fox News that there are many tools and laws at hand for the federal government to use in identifying, investigating, and eliminating fraud, but the previous administration wasn’t interested in using them. In fact, the Biden-Harris administration deliberately removed fraud guardrails. Now, the FTC, the General Services Administration (GSA), and other federal entities have found that “400 businesses, with contracts worth $6 billion, originally allocated by the Biden administration, didn’t even file physical addresses at their businesses. That’s a statutory requirement.”
Ferguson emphasized, “You’re not supposed to be able to get any money from the United States government unless you put down a physical mailing address, and they just didn’t do it. And so [we], with the GSA, in conjunction with the [White House] task force, issued letters to these businesses, it says you have 30 days or we’re cutting you off. There’s still $3 billion unpaid on these contracts as of today.” That would be a fair amount of money we would save. “And that’s just a drop in the bucket over at the Justice Department,” Ferguson added.
The DOJ has “gotten indictments and convictions just in the last week worth almost half a billion dollars. We started turning off Medicaid and Medicare dollars to providers that [it has] become clear are fraudulently charging the government with our partners at HHS.”
For too many years, Ferguson declared, “dishonest citizens, and tons and tons of foreigners and foreign governments, have been putting their hands into the pockets of ordinary and honest Americans and taking that money from them, and President Trump is the first president to take this problem seriously, and that’s why the task force is being successful.”
Fox’s Kayleigh McEnany asked Ferguson if a single Democrat governor had shown any initiative in helping to identify fraud. Ferguson answered, “No, in fact, all I’ve heard from Democrat governors until early this week was, ‘The fraud isn’t a problem. This is all a hoax. This is all a distraction.’ Now, of course, it’s clear that they understand the political pain that the empire of fraud, that [Gov.] Gavin Newsom has constructed in California, is gonna cause California Democrats, because this week, he had the attorney general of California and the governor touting all the work they’re doing on fraud, total bull crap.”
In reality, Ferguson stated, “They have been sitting on top of tens of billions of dollars in known fraud for decades, and doing nothing about it, and not just doing nothing about it, they have been facilitating it. Let me give you an example of this. The government sends tens of millions of dollars to the states every year to fund their Medicaid and Medicare fraud fighting units. Hawaii, just since 2021, has gotten millions and millions of dollars from the federal government to fight Medicaid fraud. Do you know how many convictions they’ve gotten since 2020? Zero.”
That’s why the federal government temporarily decertified Hawaii for Medicaid funding. We need to make these fraud-loving Dems feel the financial pain.

Piketty.

• A Villainous Blueprint For Managed Poverty (Veronique de Rugy)

Writer and philosopher Ayn Rand was often accused of inventing cartoonish villains.Rogues like Ellsworth Toohey in “The Fountainhead” would scheme to seize the global economy’s commanding heights in pursuit of a distorted sense of justice.But the people who hold such ideas don’t just appear in cartoons or in Rand’s novels. Enter Thomas Piketty and company. In early June, Piketty – the French economist whose work on inequality has made him something of a rock star even while being serially challenged for methodological errors, data imputations and cherry-picked baselines – and his large team unveiled what can only be described as a villainous plan.

It’s a comprehensive program for global managed decline dressed up in the language of climate justice and equality. The plan is far too ambitious for most nations to accept. But given the influence of Piketty and his circle of economists on U.S. wealth taxes and prominent global policy proposals, we should take its underlying ideas seriously. Piketty’s plan would cap GDP per capita in wealthy countries at roughly $69,000, far less than America’s current $94,430.The plan would also limit annual global economic growth to between 0 percent and 0.5 percent. Monsieur Piketty would allot only 0.115 percent annual growth to the U.S, whose GDP has expanded by more than 3 percent on average since 1930. This would hurt not just the billionaires but every American.
The plan would mandate an international three-day work week and reduce construction activity by 70 percent, manufacturing by 87 percent and even leisure-sector activity by 58 percent. There would be massive and punishing trade actions against noncompliant countries. It envisions a “Global Justice Fund” financed not by taxing carbon but by global wealth and income taxes. This fund would be 20 times the size of current development aid and would be administered by a new international bureaucracy answerable to heaven knows who.
Don’t be fooled by Piketty’s training as an economist. This is not economic thinking. Consider the utter inconsistency of relying on a vast stock of wealth (mostly from the U.S.) for redistribution while suffocating long-term growth to near zero. Much of the value of the assets needed to finance this scheme would be destroyed. It is also disqualifying to claim that sub-Saharan Africa will grow at 4 percent if we crush the economies that provide the capital for its investments and buy its exports. Let’s ask the uncomfortable question: What would it require to enforce Piketty’s plan? About this matter, he is conveniently vague.
Confiscating something on the order of 10 percent of world GDP and redirecting it through a newly created supranational body does not happen by asking nicely. You cannot restructure the global economy at that scale without a coercive apparatus that dwarfs anything in human history. The mechanism must be authoritarian. It would require a world government with the power to tell billions of people which jobs they may and may not hold, what they may build, what they may eat and how many hours they are permitted to work. And to what end?
“Climate change” is an insufficient answer when Piketty’s entire edifice is built on a discredited foundation. The report relies on a baseline from the “RCP8.5” climate scenario that projects Earth warming by as much as 4.8 degrees Celsius by 2100. But last month, the UN’s own climate panel officially retired RCP8.5 (always a high-end estimate) as “implausible.” A more central projection is around 2.7 degrees Celsius. Replies to Piketty’s X feed pointed this out immediately. His response, as far as anyone can tell, has been silence.
That leaves the inequality argument. Worldwide income inequality is nearing a 150-year low, but Piketty insists that radical redistribution of wealth is essential for the Global South. And where have billionaires and wealth been popping up fastest in recent decades? Embarrassingly, data from Piketty’s World Inequality Database confirms that it’s in South and Southeast Asia and East Asia. These are the exact Global South regions that have spent recent decades rescuing hundreds of millions of people from poverty through market-directed economic growth.
A core confusion of the degrowth ideology is its conflation of inequality and poverty, in fact two very different things. Reducing inequality by making everyone poorer is not a victory for the poor. The billions of people still lagging in the global income distribution have one realistic path out: growth. Dynamic, market-driven, property-rights-protected growth is the only proven path to prosperity. It’s also the path to environmental improvement, which costs money.
Degrowth is the ultimate luxury belief. It’s dreamed up by tenured professors in Paris and progressive think-tank pundits in Brussels. These are people who already have high incomes, comfortable apartments, generous health care and pensions and whose ideas would pull up the ladder on billions of poor people. Rand’s villains always insisted they were acting for the greater good. They always had elaborate plans. They always needed just a little more power to make it work. And they thought little about the terrible burdens their plans would impose on ordinary people.

They have condemned their children to bitter fights.,

• The Suicide Of Europe: Historic EU Migration Pact Goes Into Force Today (RMX)

Six years ago, in 2020, French political leader Marine Le Pen described the Migrant Pact, which was then in the planning stages, as the “suicide of Europe.” She said it would bring 60 to 70 million new migrants to Europe, as Remix News reported at the time. Europe is about to find out just how prophetic its critics have been. On June 12, the highly contested EU Migration Pact officially came into force, instantly triggering a sharp political divide across the continent. Brussels is already signaling a hardline approach toward resistance; the bloc’s own EU Migration Commissioner recently admitted that the Union is preparing a “crackdown” on member states that refuse to comply with the new relocation directives.

At the heart of the controversy is the pact’s mandatory migrant quotas, framed by Brussels as “burden-sharing.” In practice, critics argue this distribution system allows nations like Germany and France a convenient mechanism to offload asylum seekers onto Central and Eastern European nations – such as Poland and Hungary – which have historically maintained strict anti-refugee stances.Europe’s anti-immigration politicians are already responding to what they say is a law that will bring disaster to Europe. Le Pen, six years later, is calling for a “constitutional referendum on immigration.”
“Tomorrow, the Migration Pact will enter into force. It will require the States of the European Union to welcome migrants, under penalty of fines. When we come to power, we will propose to the French a constitutional referendum on immigration, the only means to regain control of our migration policy,” she wrote on X. The financial penalties for defiance are severe. Non-compliant governments face fines as high as €21,000 per migrant, potentially costing dissenting nations hundreds of millions of euros. Furthermore, the pact allows for these financial penalties to be adjusted upward in the coming years, which could quickly escalate the cost of non-compliance into billions of euros.
Meanwhile, other establishment European politicians are celebrating the move. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz tried to frame the migration pact as a positive for controlling immigration. “The migration turnaround has been initiated—nationally and at the European level. As of today, the Common European Asylum System applies: better control and order, faster procedures, and a fair distribution of responsibility. The reform must be implemented effectively. This is how our country will benefit,” wrote Merz. Of course, the EU is also trying to sell the pact on social media as well.
The end goal of the EU Migration Pact
Linguistically, the EU’s emphasis on sharing a migration “burden” represents a stark rhetorical departure from the peak of the 2016 refugee crisis. A decade ago, newcomers were widely championed by Brussels as Europe’s future workforce—the doctors, lawyers, and engineers destined to salvage the continent’s aging pension systems. Today, that idealistic language has been replaced by the utilitarian vocabulary of managing a “burden.” Strategically, the pact acts as a political pressure valve. By reducing the immediate concentration of migrants in Western Europe, Brussels hopes to blunt the rapid electoral rise of populist right-wing parties.
Simultaneously, the framework seeks to introduce demographic diversity into Eastern European nations, which EU leadership has long criticized as being overly homogenous and politically conservative. Over the long term, the naturalization and family reunification of these migrants could fundamentally alter the electoral dynamics in these traditionally conservative regions in favor or left-wing and pro-migration parties. However, Central and Eastern European populations remain overwhelmingly opposed to forced relocation. Decades of polling show a deep societal preference for maintaining current demographic structures, setting the stage for protracted constitutional and political gridlock between national capitals and Brussels.
Hungary under new leadership
The EU’s political chess board has also shifted significantly with Hungary’s recent transition of power. Former Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, long the most fierce opponent of Brussels’ migration quotas, has been succeeded by Prime Minister Péter Magyar. A report in Euractiv’s newsletter questions “whether some national governments are ready” for the EU Migration Pact, which has “raised questions over whether Brussels will need to crack down on non-compliant capitals.” In an interview, Migration Commissioner Magnus Brunner said they are ready to use “sticks” to make countries like Hungary fall into line.
“There are sticks and carrots in the pact. So, you get funding, you get money, only if you apply the pact,” he said. In fact, Euractiv is quite open that Magyar may be more than willing to sell out the public on the issue of migrant quotas. “Péter Magyar, Hungary’s prime minister, once firmly opposed to the EU migration pact, is now keeping his options open. Pressed by the opposition Fidesz to rule out implementation, he sidestepped the question, saying only that ‘there will be no illegal migrants in Hungary’ under a Tisza government,” wrote Euractiv.
This carefully worded distinction leaves the door wide open for the arrival of migrants who are processed “legally” under the parameters of the new EU framework. Unsurprisingly, Commissioner Brunner has lauded the new Hungarian administration’s shift, calling the government “very constructive” and adding, “Our job is to explain the advantages for Hungary and make them visible on a political level.” Certainly, Brunner was smart enough to not frame the new migration pact as the “suicide of Europe” while trying threaten the new Hungarian government. He can be given that much credit.

Elon responded to Warren calling him a “freeloader" in 2021:

“I'm actually paying the most tax that any individual in history has ever paid this year. Ever."

"And she doesn't pay taxes basically at all. Her salary is paid for by the taxpayer, like me. If you could die by irony,… https://t.co/FOY6sZi7Bm pic.twitter.com/OnycwBJblo
— Western Lensman (@WesternLensman) June 12, 2026

Congratulations @ElonMusk.

Thanks to SpaceX's IPO, he's the first Trillionaire.

He didn't TAKE money from anyone. He CREATED wealth.

He launched satellites that connect even the poorest, most remote parts of the world.

Our world needs more MAKERS like Musk; fewer TAKERS like: pic.twitter.com/wXlTBXPWUV
— John Stossel (@JohnStossel) June 12, 2026

https://twitter.com/GreereMedeea/status/2065467174605513183?s=20

The Turin shroud, brought to life by AI pic.twitter.com/2yPz1xK8zG
— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) June 12, 2026

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

Debt Rattle May 24 2026

May 242026

May 24, 2026 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 9:39 am Finance Tagged with: Candace Owens, Disney, Hunter Biden, Iran, Justice Roberts, marriage, Marvel, mass deportations, Memorandum of Understanding, Morocco, White House 27 Responses »

Vincent van Gogh July 14th in Paris 1886

• Trump Says ‘Agreement Largely Negotiated’ Between US and Iran (Spencer)

• Finish the Job, Mr. President (A.j. Christopher)

• What Iran Says — or Threatens — as Trump Admin Seeks War’s End (Salgado)

• More Shots Fired Near White House Perimeter (CTH)

• Gunman Killed At White House Had Previous Run-ins With Secret Service (JTN)

• The Russia-China Spaceship Rushes Towards Planet Multipolar (Pepe Escobar)

• Morocco Launches Mass Deportations To Block Europe Migration Route (ZH)

• What the Democrats’ Push to Impeach Chief Justice Roberts Is About (Margolis)

• The Democrat POTUS Possibles for ’28 (Florack)

• Candace Owens Interviews Hunter Biden (Tim O’Brien)

• Mexico Signs Trade Deal with European Union (CTH)

• Disney’s Marvel Comics Faces Mass Layoffs And New Woke Leadership (ZH)

• No Wonder Men Are Opting Out (Bettina Arndt)

Pray for President Trump.

Not sure what’s happening.

But whatever issue brought him back to Washington must be serious. pic.twitter.com/hffJroAfVN
— Mike Lee (@BasedMikeLee) May 22, 2026

President Trump FIRES UP the crowd at his New York rally, telling them they’re “going to see numbers like you’ve never seen” — as recession odds plummet to ALL-TIME lows.

The crowd loved every minute of it, especially when he TORCHED the Democrats as “bullsh*t artists” for… https://t.co/f1wgSgbTBU pic.twitter.com/Sn95DqXvML
— Overton (@overton_news) May 22, 2026

Elon Musk: "Trump is not evil, the real villains are the media and their game of lies." pic.twitter.com/bQCnCS9u3Q
— Joe Rogan Podcast News (@joeroganhq) May 22, 2026

https://twitter.com/GreereMedeea/status/2057934621619470795?s=20

Gone again by the afternoon, as seems usual? Got to say, it’s a whole lot of people this time.

• Trump Says ‘ Agreement Largely Negotiated’ Between US and Iran (Spencer)

President Donald Trump made the momentous announcement on his Truth Social account on Saturday afternoon at 4:30 p.m.:

[VIA TRUTH SOCIAL] – “I am in the Oval Office at the White House where we just had a very good call with President Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud, of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, of The United Arab Emirates, Emir Tamim bin Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim bin Jaber Al Thani, and Minister Ali al-Thawadi, of Qatar, Field Marshal Syed Asim Munir Ahmed Shah, of Pakistan, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, of Türkiye, President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, of Egypt, King Abdullah II, of Jordan, and King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa, of Bahrain, concerning the Islamic Republic of Iran, and all things related to a Memorandum of Understanding pertaining to PEACE. An Agreement has been largely negotiated, subject to finalization between the United States of America, the Islamic Republic of Iran, and the various other Countries, as listed. Separately, I had a call with Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu, of Israel, which, likewise, went very well. Final aspects and details of the Deal are currently being discussed, and will be announced shortly. In addition to many other elements of the Agreement, the Strait of Hormuz will be opened. Thank you for your attention to this matter!
~ President DONALD J. TRUMP
The long list of participants in the call adds a gravity to this announcement that previous ceasefires did not have. It is also noteworthy that the president says that he has been in touch with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, but on a call separate from the one on which he spoke with the leaders of Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, Turkey, and more. The hostility of the Muslim states toward Israel remains implacable, and is likely to cause future conflicts, but for now, the fighting will apparently stop.
It is likewise noteworthy that the agreement is between, as the president noted, the U.S. and “the Islamic Republic of Iran.” Iran’s Islamic regime is still in place, and this is not a cause for rejoicing for anyone who cares for the well-being of the long-suffering Iranian people. Leading the Islamic Republic, even after its top leaders have been killed, is a group of fanatical Shi’ite Muslim believers who will not set aside their core beliefs, and those core beliefs do not allow for the possibility of a permanent peace between a Muslim entity and a non-Muslim entity.
As long as the Islamic Republic remains in power in Iran, it will continue to fight against the two countries it regards as its foremost enemies, the United States of America and the State of Israel. The U.S. is the “Great Satan” because its promise of a just society resulting from a government that derives its just powers from the consent of the governed is in direct competition with the Islamic Revolution’s idea of a government that derives its powers from Allah alone and rules solely according to his law. The Ayatollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic, reiterated many times that the Islamic Revolution was not for Iran only, but that it was a foremost imperative of the Tehran regime to export that revolution’s core principles around the world. The U.S. has been and remains the chief obstacle to that goal.
And then there is the “Little Satan,” Israel, which the Islamic Republic hates with particular intensity, not because there is some territorial or economic dispute between the two countries, but because Israel is a Jewish state existing on land that was once under the rule of Islamic law. “Drive them out from where they drove you out,” says the Qur’an (2:191), and that is the foundation for the Islamic theological principle that any land that was once Islamic must always be Islamic, and that Muslims must wage war to recapture lost territory.
Thus, there is nothing more certain than that the Islamic Republic will fight on when it is able. Free people can only hope that the regime will collapse before then, or that it has been so extensively damaged that it will not be able to resume its jihad for years to come. In the meantime, the forces of the U.S. and its weary Israeli allies get a respite as much as the Islamic Republic gets a chance to regroup. That in itself is a small blessing.

“In this game, the most committed wins.”

• Finish the Job, Mr. President (A.j. Christopher)

If you’re a movie geek like me, you’ll remember the 1998 film The Siege, in which FBI agent Anthony Hubbard (Denzel Washington) and CIA agent Elise Kraft (Annette Benning) attempt to root out and stop an unknown number of Islamic terrorist sleeper cells from wreaking havoc across New York City.

Agent Kraft has worked underground in the Middle East and knows the mindset of Islamic terrorism, whereas Agent Hubbard is a by-the-book, stick-to-protocol guy who can’t wrap his head around the warped reasoning of his adversaries. He’s used to dealing with criminals who avoid prison and fear death. Agent Hubbard assures Agent Kraft that he’ll be able to stop the terrorists once the judge approves his request for a warrant. The terrorists have a warrant from Allah, counters Agent Kraft.
Agent Hubbard tries to convince her (or himself) that the FBI will ultimately prevail. They have the infrastructure, the funding, the surveillance, the manpower, the training, the weaponry, and the advantage of being the good guys on their side, and in the end they’ll win this game. In this game, the most committed wins, counters Agent Kraft. It was early April when the ceasefire with Iran began. And by “ceasefire,” I mean that Iran continues its open hostilities against the United States and its allies, albeit at a lower intensity. For over a month before that, the militaries of the United States and Israel decimated Iranian leadership, its navy, its air force, and its ballistic missile defenses.
During Operation Epic Fury, Iran managed to infuriate any wavering potential allies, such as Qatar, by lobbing missiles and drones with reckless abandon at almost all of its neighbors. Since the ceasefire began, China has openly abandoned Iran, and whatever assistance it receives from Russia will continue to serve as little more than a mere annoyance. We’ve successfully blockaded the Strait of Hormuz, and are starving the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) of its only lifeline, its oil.
President Donald Trump claims that he holds all the cards. So why won’t the ayatollahs and the IRGC thugs see reason? Can’t they accept that they’re beaten? Don’t they understand that, like Agent Hubbard in The Siege, that we have the infrastructure, the funding, the surveillance, the manpower, the training, the weaponry, and the advantage of being the good guys on our side? President Trump holds every card except one.
The Iranian government sounds no different today from how it sounded in the months before Operation Epic Fury. The Iranian government sounds no different today from how it sounded on October 7, 2023, or on Sept. 11, 2001, or after the Beirut bombings in 1983, or after they took Americans hostage in 1979. Because its whole reason for existence is to spark a global apocalyptic war which will usher in the Hidden Imam, under whose rule the entire world will fall under the chains of Islam. And people who fancy themselves the future personal bodyguards for Allah’s earthly slave master don’t lie awake at night worrying about international law or public opinion or starving civilians, or even whether they themselves live or die.
In this game, the most committed wins. For the record, I don’t think President Trump is going to let Iran weasel its way out of anything here. I think his instincts tell him that negotiating with Iran is an exercise in futility. And I think we’ll see a resumption of military action sometime sooner rather than later. But I also think he leans too much on his desire to make a deal, to the point where making the deal is done simply for the sake of making the deal.
Ironically, this is the same trap that one of his predecessors, Barack Obama, fell into. The Iranians very badly wanted to pursue nuclear weapons. Barack Obama very badly wanted a piece of paper saying they wouldn’t. The JCPOA gave both of them what they wanted. Why we implemented a ceasefire with Iran to begin with is beyond me. My pea brain can only produce two assumptions. Either we were running low on armaments, and needed this past month as a breather to restock and reload. Or we had pummeled them so badly that we assumed that, if we let up for a bit, they’d be crazy not to jump at the first deal with offered them.
Well, they didn’t jump at the first deal. They went right back to the “Death to America” schtick, with zero retreat whatsoever from their stated desire to acquire nuclear weapons. And it’s not because they’re crazy. It’s because they’re committed. In this game, the most committed wins. Earlier this month, President Trump ordered limited strikes against Iran after they targeted U.S. destroyers in the Strait of Hormuz. Trump referred to our retaliatory strikes as a “love tap.”
All due respect, Mr. President, but the IRGC doesn’t need a love tap. It needs to be vaporized. It needs to be pounded into dust. It needs to be buried, once and for all, under a pile of rubble so deep that the world will forget it ever existed. Islamic theocracy is a cancer, and no matter how strongly you irradiate cancer, it will continue to spread and to kill until it itself has been completely annihilated.
Mr. President, forget the Democrats and half the Republicans. Forget the midterms. Forget the two-faced cowards in Europe. Forget our squeamish Gulf allies. Forget the fifth column traitors we call the media, who, we already know, will frame every military victory as a setback. Forget Tucker and Candice and the antisemites. Forget the anti-American campus nepo-mobs. Finish the job, Mr. President. Cement your legacy. Protect the American people. Show that your passion for making America great again overpowers the IRGC’s genocidal bloodlust to turn the world into an Islamic prison camp with underage harems.
In this game, the most committed wins.

“.. the Iranian parliament is drafting legislation to offer a reward of €50 million for assassinating Donald Trump..”

• What Iran Says — or Threatens — as Trump Admin Seeks War’s End (Salgado)

As the American public waits for President Donald Trump to decide whether to attack the Iranian regime again or not, the Iranian regime has made its warlike intentions clear. Trump seemed to be more in favor of striking Iran again as of Saturday morning, since he had canceled all his weekend plans and posted a map showing an American flag over Iran with the comment, “United States of the Middle East?”

The Kobeissi Letter, which sometimes has the inside scoop and sometimes jumps the gun, claimed that the following deal was under consideration, extending the ceasefire by 60 days:
1. This would include a “gradual reopening” of the Strait of Hormuz
2. It would also include a commitment to discussing the “diluting or handing over” of Iran’s highly enrich uranium
3. The US would ease its blockade of the Strait of Hormuz and agree to sanctions relief
4. The US would also begin a phased unfreezing of Iran’s assets
Both sides are nearing a “memorandum of understanding” to extend a ceasefire. The problem is that the Iranian regime has broken the ceasefire we have currently many times, and we really shouldn’t give them any relief until and unless they give us more concessions. We are the winning side in this conflict, while they merely want us to give them a little bit of respite as they rally for another round. In fact, the Iranian parliament is drafting legislation to offer a reward of €50 million for assassinating Donald Trump. And an Iranian-tied terrorist is now in American custody after committing multiple terrorist attacks culminating in an attempt on Ivanka Trump.
On May 14, Majlis National Security and Foreign Policy Committee Chairman Ebrahim Azizi declared, “We expect the government to pay a €50 million [roughly $58 million] reward to anyone who carried out this religious mission” of assassinating Trump. Majlis National Security and Foreign Policy Committee member Abolfazl Zohrevand also declared his intention of orchestrating the assassination of Trump. The U.S. government has identified more than one Iranian assassination team in the U.S.
One problem that has always surfaced with Western nations that prefer not to be at war is that we have a tendency either to make deals that are compromising for us, or optimistically assume until it is too late to take the initiative that the other side must really want peace as well. This is an assumption born of cultural imperialism rather than reality. Adolf Hitler wanted war much, much more than Neville Chamberlain wanted peace. Yasser Arafat and his successor Mahmoud Abbas wanted/want their jihad to continue until Israel is wiped off the map, no matter how many American presidents pander to them. And the Islamic regime of Iran has made terrorist war its consuming focus for half a century. It is never going to stop attacking America and Israel, not as long as any members of that regime are in power.

“..approximately 30 shots..” That’s a lot.

Sundance posted the second video somewhere near the article. Not sure about that.

• More Shots Fired Near White House Perimeter (CTH)

The White House was placed into lockdown after a series of approximately 30 shots were heard being fired near the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. Journalists and media correspondents reported hearing a series of multiple shots fired and were then told to go into the Brady Room of the White House where they were protected while secret security evaluated the danger.

Secret Service agents were seen on the White House grounds with their weapons drawn responding to the alarm. As far as currently reported, around 6pm a single gunman approached the White House gate on West Side. The gunman brandished pistol and fired toward the White House at least six shots. Secret Service returned fire and the shooter was taken down. A bystander on street is also reported to have been hit. The gunman never got through the security perimeter.

“The New York Post obtained a photo of the gunman and said he believed he was Jesus Christ.“

• Gunman Killed At White House Had Previous Run-ins With Secret Service (JTN)

Dozens of gunshots were reportedly heard near the White House on Saturday night. The incident resulted in a lockdown. The U.S. Secret Service shot and killed the shooter after he approached a security checkpoint and started firing at officers.The U.S. Secret Service said the suspect “removed a weapon from his bag and began firing at posted officers.” A bystander was also shot. Their condition is unclear at this time. The gunman has been identified as Nasire Best, 21, of Maryland. Reports said he suffered from mental health issues and had previous encounters with the Secret Service.

The New York Post obtained a photo of the gunman and said he believed he was Jesus Christ. Earlier on Saturday, FBI Director Kash Patel had confirmed a gunman fired shots and said law enforcement was on the scene. The shots were reportedly fired at the corner of 17th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue Northwest. Members of the press ran into the White House briefing room after hearing the shots.

Pepe is so focused on China that his prediction comes true of necessity: it’s all about China.

“The New Silk Roads/BRI and its derivations such as the Northern Sea Route/Arctic Silk Road remain alive and kicking..”

• The Russia-China Spaceship Rushes Towards Planet Multipolar (Pepe Escobar)

SHANGHAI – This is it.The Russia-China strategic partnership, the leaders in the process of Eurasia integration, the leaders of multipolar bodies BRICS and the SCO, have formally endorsed and boosted the drive towards multipolarity and a new system of international relations via a strategic joint declaration signed, sealed and delivered during President Putin’s visit to China this Wednesday.This is one for the History books – in several more ways than one. I was privileged to follow the proceedings in Beijing during the whole day at the Aurora College, a top Shanghai private school and university, among a fabulous congregation of teachers and students.

So we had plenty of time to discuss the implications of how the Top Two Eurasia powers – and global powers – are establishing the lineaments of a new geopolitical future for most of mankind. The exceptions will be exceptionalist recalcitrants and vassals addicted to commit serial political suicide. We all remember President Xi’s visit to Russia in 2023, when leaving the Kremlin, side by side with Putin, he voiced what he was already polishing for some time, in a very concise way: “Right now there are changes we have not seen in 100 years.” And then Xi and Putin agreed that now, “we are the ones driving these changes together”. The practical result is the sharply focused Beijing joint statement, penned by unmistakable “civilizations with ancient history.”
Let’s go through some of the highlights. The declaration minces no words and no concepts when it comes to offering a serious alternative to the current – dwindling – unilateral historic moment.
Polycentrism: “The attempts of a number of states to single-handedly manage global affairs, impose their interests on the entire world, and limit the sovereign development of other countries in the spirit of the colonial era have failed.” Russia-China will focus on establishing a “long-term state of polycentrism.”
The ”law of the jungle”: “Basic universally recognized norms of international law and international relations are regularly violated (…) there is a danger of fragmentation within the international community and a return to the ‘law of the jungle’.”
A new security architecture: “It is necessary to pay due attention to the rational concerns of all countries in the field of security, to focus on cooperation on security issues, to reject bloc confrontation and zero-sum game strategies, to oppose the expansion of military alliances, hybrid wars, and proxy wars, and to promote the creation of an updated, balanced, effective, and sustainable global and regional security architecture (…) It is unacceptable to force sovereign states to abandon their neutrality.”
This is exactly what Moscow proposed to Washington and NATO in December 2021: indivisibility of security. The non-response response precipitated the SMO in Ukraine two months later, as it became obvious to Moscow that NATO’s plan was a blitzkrieg in Donbass.
Hegemony: “Hegemony in the world is unacceptable and should be prohibited. No state or group of states should control international affairs, determine the fate of other countries, or monopolize opportunities for development.”
Global governance: that’s President Xi’s cherished concept, fully delienated in the SCO summit last year in Tianjin: “In global governance, which is an important tool for streamlining the system of international relations, it is necessary to adhere to the principles of sovereign equality, the rule of international law, multilateralism, human-centeredness, and results-oriented approach.”
The United Nations: it’s necessary to “strengthen the role of multilateralism as the primary tool for addressing the multifaceted and complex global challenges, and to prevent the weakening of the United Nations.” That should lead to “the reform of the United Nations”. Yet everyone knows that will definitely not happen under the current administration in the White House.
Point 4 of the declaration: global civilizational and value diversity. That may be the crux of the matter – inexorably burying any Exceptionalist pretensions: “The spiritual and moral system of any civilization cannot be considered exceptional or superior to others. All countries should advocate a view of civilizations based on equality, mutual exchange of experience, and dialogue, and should strengthen mutual respect, understanding, trust, and exchanges between different nationalities and civilizations, promote mutual understanding and friendship among the peoples of all countries, and protect the diversity of cultures and civilizations.”

“Moroccan security forces have stepped up their role as Europe’s de facto border enforcer ..”

• Morocco Launches Mass Deportations To Block Europe Migration Route (ZH)

Since April 14, Morocco has been conducting large-scale deportation operations targeting sub-Saharan Africans migrating to Europe, reportedly arresting over 100 per day, local sources told Middle East Eye. According to Moroccan human rights groups, around 800 people were detained during coordinated raids in the forests between Fnideq and Belyounech, in the northern tip of the North African state, where many were sheltering before attempting to reach Europe.

The operation is still ongoing, with authorities then moving their focus to operations in and around Tangier. Witnesses have described mass arrests, beatings, racist abuse and forced transfers toward the Algerian border.Sudanese and Chadian detainees were bused south and abandoned near border zones, while people from countries including Senegal, Mali, Mauritania, Burkina Faso and Guinea were deported on flights departing Casablanca. The crackdown comes as the European Union has intensified its cooperation with Morocco as part of its border externalization strategy, which is a key component of the bloc’s new Pact on Migration and Asylum set to take effect in June.
The EU increasingly outsources immigration enforcement to North African nations with poor human rights records, designating over €900 million within the bloc’s Global Europe development instrument to fund stricter migration control, border management and surveillance initiatives across the region. “The EU wants to restrict people’s mobility as far down the route as possible – what officials describe as stopping migration downstream,” Frey Lindsay, a journalist on Statewatch’s Outsourcing Borders project, which tracks how the EU outsources migration control, told Middle East Eye. “It’s about exerting border control without getting your hands dirty, basically.”
Raids and expulsions
Morocco is a key transit country for sub-Saharan Africans en route to Europe. They sail across the Strait of Gibraltar or climb the towering razor wire fence that separates Morocco from Ceuta and Melilla, Spanish enclaves within the kingdom. Over the years, Morocco has increased cooperation with Frontex, the European Border and Coast Guard Agency, to prevent migrants from departing the North African coast. In 2025, Moroccan authorities thwarted 73,640 irregular migration attempts toward Europe, according to a report from the interior ministry, a slight decline from 2024 – attributed to alternative migration routes.
In recent weeks, Moroccan security forces have stepped up their role as Europe’s de facto border enforcer, carrying out regular raids on makeshift forest camps and key transit points used by people trying to reach Spain. Attacks on migrant camps have long been pervasive, but have escalated since April 14, with operations concentrated in the north of the country. People who are not deported are typically exiled to the south in an effort to disrupt migration routes.
“According to migrants we have been in contact with, they were subjected to various forms of humiliation, insults and mistreatment by authorities,” Chad Boukhari, a journalist and member of Border Resistance, a grassroots collective that supports migrants across the Mediterranean, told MEE. Some were abandoned near the Algerian border without food or water, where they were detained by Algerian forces. “The Algerian army allegedly tortured many of them. Some individuals also found the bodies of other migrants in the desert,” Boukhari added.

“Democrats are laying the groundwork to pack the court the next time they hold power, and they need a narrative to justify it. Every impeachment article, every ethics accusation, every outraged floor speech is a brick in that foundation.”

• What the Democrats’ Push to Impeach Chief Justice Roberts Is About (Margolis)

Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.) filed an impeachment resolution Thursday against Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts. I guess we should just add it to the pile of impeachment resolutions Democrats have filed against President Donald Trump and members of his administration, right?

Cohen has represented Tennessee’s 9th Congressional District for years, but he’s retiring after Tennessee Republicans redrew his seat following a late-April Supreme Court ruling declaring racial gerrymandering unconstitutional. Rather than accept the outcome, Cohen decided to go out with a fire-sale grievance tour, targeting the most consequential figure in American law. In announcing the resolution, Cohen said, “I have come to the unfortunate conclusion that while John Roberts remains Chief Justice, correcting this misconduct and ensuring the Justices and the Court itself comply with their legal obligations will be impossible.” The problem is that his resolution is absurd.
Take Article I, which accuses Roberts of allowing the court to become “a political instrument” through its handling of election and redistricting cases. This is rich coming from a party that spent decades running to the courts to block policies it couldn’t kill through legislation, and to impose policies it couldn’t pass through Congress. It’s funny how when the courts were a rubber stamp for the left, they were oracles of justice. Now that they’re not, they’re corrupt.
Article II claims Roberts “entrenched minority rule” through decisions that have enabled partisan gerrymandering. Cute story. Remind me again which party aggressively gerrymandered blue states for decades? Oh right.
Article III blames Roberts for campaign finance rulings that allegedly “empowered the rich.” For starters, that isn’t even a constitutional argument, but if you can find me the part of the Constitution that says that “the rich” have fewer rights than “the poor,” we can talk.
Article IV targets Trump v. United States and the issue of presidential immunity. Cohen apparently forgot that presidents of both parties have long asserted immunity protections for official actions; Democrats were just the first party to weaponize justice against a former president.
Of course, my favorite is Article VI, which alleges that Roberts failed to recuse himself from cases involving law firms connected to his wife. Democrats have never raised similar concerns about Justice Elena Kagan, who declined to recuse herself from Obamacare cases, despite previously arguing for the law’s constitutionality as Obama’s solicitor general. George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley has noted that the majority of Supreme Court decisions are unanimous or near-unanimous (often, Biden’s DEI pick is a lone dissenter), which runs counter to the narrative that the court is a 6-3 ideological machine grinding out partisan rulings on command.
Strangely, the inconvenient facts never make it into the Democrats’ talking points. Here’s the thing: This impeachment resolution has zero chance of passing. So why bother? Because this was never about impeachment or removing Roberts. Democrats are laying the groundwork to pack the court the next time they hold power, and they need a narrative to justify it. Every impeachment article, every ethics accusation, every outraged floor speech is a brick in that foundation. Trust me, I used to be an architect. The left is merely trying to delegitimize the court so that, when the moment comes, the public is already primed to accept packing the court.

Read and weep.

• The Democrat POTUS Possibles for ’28 (Florack)

Think about it. When did the Democrats last field anything resembling a quality presidential candidate, even from the rather myopic view of a Liberal Democrat voter? Let’s look at the history of the thing. (By the way, the barf bags are in the storage on the seat back in front of you.) Hillary Clinton? A genuinely terrible candidate — and that’s before you factor in the steamer trunk of baggage she dragged behind her everywhere she went. Just horrible. By the way, I have no plans whatever to kill myself, in case the subject should come up.

Joe Biden? His campaign strategy consisted of hiding in a basement and hoping America was desperate enough to bite on the pablum he offered up. And yes, they were. He won — though we’re learning more every day about just how dishonestly that win was assembled. Then he got into office, and exactly as I and most others predicted, he delivered an unmitigated disaster that answered every question anyone had left about him and the people hanging onto his coattails. (Autopen, anyone? I mean, who was actually making executive decisions? We still have no real answer for that, and it doesn’t seem likely the Democrats will ever want to find out.)
Kamala Harris? Her own party wanted nothing to do with her. In her entire lifetime, she’s never won a primary vote. By the way, that seems the likely reason why the Democrats didn’t subject her to a primary vote in ’24, but bypassed their own voters to install her, like someone replacing a dead headlight with another dead headlight. She tops the polls, now, sure — but two points there:
1: These are the same pollsters who called her a shoo-in in 2024.You might recall how that worked out, though I’ve begun to wonder if SHE does.
2: That she tops the polls now only suggests how weak the remainder of the field is.
Harris’ entire rationale for running now is staying visible enough to shake down speaking-fee money from people who inexplicably still believe she matters in the slightest. Even she knows she’s got no chance.mThen there’s Gavin Newsom — a man who locked himself out of serious contention using nothing but his own mouth and his ability to slam leftist policy through a one-party legislature. He’s the kind of politician who endangers anyone standing between him and a microphone. But California — that magnificent catastrophe he built — will crush any national ambitions flat. Voters will look at what he did to that state and treat his presidential run like a restraining order.
There’s the towering political vision of Mark Kelly. A man who has masterfully built his entire brand around disliking one specific person. Sure, that razor-sharp platform of “Orange Man Bad” will absolutely carry him through a primary, a general election, and straight into the history books. Who needs ideas when you have feelings?mAlexandria Ocasio-Cortez has graciously stepped into a role that blonde jokes previously held. But really, who needs punch lines when the subject writes them herself? We’ll just leave it at that, shall we? No further elaboration required.
And Pete Buttigieg — ah yes, the man who turned disappearing into an art form. A truly stunning record of achievement: successfully located an exit door at the exact moment his job required him to show up. The fine people of East Palestine, Ohio — Democrats included, bless their hearts — must be simply overwhelmed with gratitude for his dedicated service. Surely they’re already printing the Buttigieg 2028 yard signs as we speak. He’ll get their votes any day now.
JB Pritzker? Why would anyone vote for him? Particularly Democrats. Oh sure. Absolutely inspired choice. Because nothing screams “man of the people” like a billionaire aristocrat. And Illinois as a model for the nation? Please, sign the rest of America up immediately for that glorious experiment in governance. (Chicago! Just… Chicago.) A party that treats “millionaire” like a slur suddenly rallying behind one? Oh, that’ll be a completely seamless pivot, no cognitive dissonance whatsoever.
Josh Shapiro? Brilliant. A party that has spent the better part of a decade cozying up to some rather… let’s say colorful ideological company on the Jewish question, suddenly deciding a Jewish candidate is its standard-bearer? Totally coherent. Makes complete and perfect sense. Nothing to untangle there at all. And the thing is, not a one of them cracks 10% in the polls, currently.
There’s this, too; Has anyone seen any efforts on the part of the Democrats to get their primary act together? After Hillary’s manipulation of that process, there was a fair amount of noise from some quarters that the DNC had to make the Democrat party’s primary system actually democratic. A great concept, but if there’s ever been any action at all toward that goal in all the time since then, I’ve not heard of it. If I haven’t, then it’s a pretty good bet most Democrat voters haven’t, either.
The lack of effort to learn from the mistakes of 2024, given what they’ve showed us with that joke of an election autopsy report, shows us clearly that the Democrats aren’t rebuilding. Add it all up, and they’re just reshuffling the same losing hand and waiting for someone to sell to the Democrat voters that it looks different and better this time.

‘I pray to God that by the end of this, that you think of me as a friend, because if anything ever happened to me, I want you’ — Hunter Biden to Candace Owens

• Candace Owens Interviews Hunter Biden (Tim O’Brien)

Another item that Owens clearly wanted to feature prominently for this interview is what looks like a golden Catholic reliquary vessel, but I’m only going by the visual, and cannot assume she has an actual relic of a saint in that vessel. That’s what reliquary vessels are for – to house relics from Catholic saints. Needless to say, these aren’t typical adornments for a Catholic home. They most often can be found in actual churches or faith-based institutions.

There are many reasons a person would have something like this in their home and for public display. One is they are seriously devout Catholics, and whoever would have such items on display would expect you to stop here. But other reasons could be that the individual is a non-religious collector, or an obsessive-compulsive where nothing is ever enough; or the person could be what is known as a “magpie,” which is someone who collects shiny or impressive items and is known as overly talkative or gossipy.
Owens is a newly christened Catholic, having been baptized in 2024, and so I’ll just leave all of that here. Against this backdrop, literally, Owens interviewed one of the most disgraced members of the Biden White House, namely Hunter Biden, the president’s son and intermediary for so much of what Joe Biden did in his personal life before and during his tenure as president. Stating the obvious, if Owens were a conservative, Biden would never have agreed to allow her to interview him. So why did he do it? We can assume that each had their own reasons, which may include the fact that they both dislike the same people, they know an interview like this will give them more clout, it keeps them in the public conversation, or all of the above.
I’ve long believed that Owens has never taken the time to study up on conservatism and has no ideology that can’t be changed on a dime to suit her insatiable desire for attention. Hunter Biden seems to be equally shallow, having no principles that can’t be compromised if the promise from the other end of a given transaction is a pile of cash or a hit of cocaine. And so, these two users decided to use each other by using microphones, a camera, and Owens’ loyal audience. The leftists who saw the interview were relieved that for starters, Owens made it clear she wouldn’t cast any shade on Joe Biden.

Candace Owens started the Hunter Biden interview off beautifully.

“I will say to the audience right now. I have already made the pledge right when I got on the phone with you— that obviously I’m not going to make you say anything about your father, because that would just be… pic.twitter.com/2dTQnE92MJ
— Kay Su (@KaySu00) May 21, 2026

The first hour of their nearly two-hour interview centered mostly on Biden’s drug use. This gave Owens an opportunity to show her empathetic side, something she has yet to show towards Charlie Kirk’s widow Erika Kirk. During this hour, Owens gave Biden the opportunity to set the record straight on that bag of cocaine that was found in the White House situation room. You’ll be relieved to hear that Hunter said it was not his, and Owens appeared to take his word for it.
“Was it (the cocaine) yours?,” Owens said. “No,” Biden said, adding that if it were his, he never would have “forgotten it in a cubby to go into the Situation Room.” In a nod to those Catholic decorations in Owens’ studio, Biden made sure to talk about how hard his life is and was, and that his Catholic faith has sustained him. He did not talk about whether that faith made him a better father to the illegitimate child he had with a stripper, whom he had abandoned until he and the Biden family were shamed into publicly acknowledging the child.
All of that was just a setup to what both seemed to really want to talk about, which is President Donald Trump and the Joos. Biden described Israel’s response to the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks and murders of innocent Israelis as “wholesale murder of a population in Gaza.” Owens brought up what she described as Trump’s family making money off of his presidency. Yes, she really did that while talking to Hunter “Barisma” Biden. And she did it with a straight face. Using Hunter Biden as a sounding board, she actually tried to make a case that it’s the Trump family that’s corrupt — all with no sense of irony that she was sitting across from the Biden family’s consigliere.
Using that as a jumping-off point, Biden gave his approval of Owens’ backbone “for asking questions” about the public execution of her supposed friend Charlie Kirk. Owens is now notoriously best known for demonizing Kirk’s family, his team, and anyone who might come to their defense against Owens’ own conspiracy theories, mostly centered on Israel. Never mind that the alleged assassin has already confessed to the crime, and is awaiting trial.
In a moment of magnanimity, Owens actually apologized to Biden for things she had said about him over the years. She told him that she felt “terrible” when she commented on his self-imposed scandal surrounding the “Hunter Biden Laptop” controversy. On that topic, Biden is now blaming Israel for the scandal. He told Owens that two Israeli-Americans, Alexander Smirnov and Gal Luft, were at the center of the situation, which itself is centered on tons of indefensible content that Biden has never denied being from him.

Hunter Biden claims his laptop story was "all a hoax" with no criminal activity.

Candace Owens as the terrible "journalist" she is gives zero push back pivots to Trump.

Laptop showed, emails, text messages with foreign governments, meetings with officials with 10% for Joe… pic.twitter.com/bHd9deff18
— J (@JayTC53) May 21, 2026

Still, Owens is sorry she talked badly about Biden and said so, “Genuinely, I am so sorry.” She may want to redirect that apology to Erika Kirk, but I digress. I guess in order to get an apology from Owens, you need to just despise the same people she does. Then the two chatted about how the narrative, as Biden’s own allies concocted at the time, falsely alleged that the scandal was a “Russian disinformation” op.
It’s getting hard to keep track. Who was behind the Hunter Biden laptop? The Russians? Israel? Or, could Hunter himself have had something to do with it? Biden did tell Owens that was him smoking crack in a motel room with hookers, but because that was him as a drug addict, it was not really him. He even had the nerve to say, “That was addiction. That wasn’t corruption.” Well, that makes it all better, doesn’t it?

“It’s not Mexico that needs a trade deal with Europe, it’s the opposite. “

• Mexico Signs Trade Deal with European Union (CTH)

It’s not Mexico that needs a trade deal with Europe, it’s the opposite. For almost two decades Europe has been investing heavily inside Mexico, particularly noted in the auto industry, as they positioned themselves to take advantage of NAFTA and later the USMCA as an entry to the U.S. market. European auto companies spent billions on assembly plants in Mexico, where they could ship EU manufactured component goods to be assembled into NAFTA/USMCA compliant vehicles. As President Trump and USTR Greer begin focusing on eliminating the USMCA trade agreement in favor of two bilateral deals (U.S-Canada and U.S-Mexico), Europe now needs to protect prior investment. The prior Mexico-EU trade agreement has existed since 2000 (NAFTA timeframe). In 2025 they agreed to a revised Free Trade Agreement (FTA) and finalized the terms and conditions yesterday.

MEXICO CITY, May 22 (Reuters) – Mexico and the European Union signed a long-stalled free trade agreement on Friday as they seek to decrease dependence on the U.S. and partially insulate themselves from U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs. The accord, which they reached broad agreement on in 2025 but have delayed signing, expands a Mexico-EU trade accord from 2000, which covered only industrial goods. The new pact adds services, government procurement, digital trade, investment and farm produce. Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President Antonio Costa are to sign the deal in Mexico City in their first summit in over a decade.
“This agreement is a true geopolitical statement,” Costa said on Friday, shortly after signing the agreement. “With the modernized global agreement, we are better prepared to face the challenges of our time.” […] Mexico’s economy ministry estimates the new agreement could increase Mexican exports to the EU from around $24 billion a year to $36 billion by 2030. The EU exports around $65 billion in goods annually to Mexico. Trade between Mexico and the EU has increased 75% in a decade, dominated by transport equipment, machinery, chemicals, fuels and mining products.
The new deal provides duty-free access for almost all goods including farm products such as Mexican chicken and asparagus and European milk powder, cheese and pork, albeit with some quotas. (read more) I love how Reuters uses the term “transportation equipment” to cloud the actual content, EU vehicle components for auto assembly. Sometimes you just have to snicker at the silliness of it all. In essence, in order for the EU to retain their investment status, they are telling Mexico they will import more chickens, pork, dairy and row crops. All of it subject to “quotas” established as an outcome of analysis about what bureaucrats in Brussels will tell EU farmers they have to accept.
A conversation akin to, ‘we’re going to buy more vegetables in order to keep our auto manufacturing systems in place.’ However, once those EU vehicles like BMW are assembled in Mexico, then what? It’s not like Mexican workers are going to be running to the showrooms to purchase exotic cars. All of these maneuvers are designed around one central strategic intent, keep the auto assembly close to the USA market and then pay Mexican officials through roots and vegetables to negotiate the best bilateral trade agreement with the United States that keeps European investment alive. Europe needs Mexico to think about -and represent- their interests when Mexico is negotiating a bilateral with Trump.

How to kill a highly successful franchise or entire field: go woke. You would think they figured that out by now.

• Disney’s Marvel Comics Faces Mass Layoffs And New Woke Leadership (ZH)

The saga of woke comics is the saga of woke America. Much like video games, comics and superhero movies were ignored by conservative movements as “meaningless kids stuff” until recently, which is part of the reason why those industries were so easily invaded by leftists and used to indoctrinate millions of children and teens a decade ago. Culture is more important than politics. This is obvious. It’s a fact that leftists have understood for generations and one that conservatives have foolishly dismissed. Only in the past few years has there been a shift; at least, the progressive rampage through America’s various media institutions has been stalled and slightly reversed.

But, the most captured platforms are not going to change anytime soon, even in the face of financial decline and mass layoffs. Disney and Marvel have recently announced a shake-up of the comics division, with over a thousand layoffs this year (after moderate layoffs over the past few years), and new executive leadership. Far-left DEI advocate Dan Buckley is on the way out. This change is being presented as a retirement, though some skeptics argue he is being forced out as part of the company’s restructuring.
Buckley replacement is not much better, however. TV Chief Brad Winderbaum is taking over as Marvel President and his track record on Marvel TV series includes some of the biggest woke failures in streaming history – Ms. Marvel (Muslim Pakistani representation), She-Hulk: Attorney at Law (feminist/meta take, which he defends as a strong performer despite critical failure), Ironheart (feminism and BLM propaganda), Echo, Agatha All Along, Wonder Man (prominent LGBT elements). In other words, superhero fans hoping that the company changes will result in a renewed respect for the source materials are probably going to be disappointed. Marvel’s direction is unlikely to improve.
Marvel Comics, a subsidiary of Disney, has been at the forefront of far-left propaganda in content for many years, and their woke concepts are usually ported directly into Disney’s movies and streaming series. Everything from gay and trans X-Men to black Spider-Man, to female gender swaps of popular male characters have become the norm. And, books sales have flatlined in response. Marvel’s market share has plunged from highs of 40%-45% to around 29% today. Direct market US comics make up around 15% of total sales in the medium, while Japanese Manga dominates with 50% of the market. US comics continue to lose ground exactly because no one likes woke superheros.
Only ten years ago the business of superheroes was big. Theater goers could not get enough of the comic book genre. Comic studios from industry titans to indies were scrambling to turn every property they had into a movie deal. Nerd culture went fully mainstream and every kid and suburban wine-mom was geeking out in a way that used to get people beat up in middle school.

Fewer kids and marriages is all men’s fault?

• No Wonder Men Are Opting Out (Bettina Arndt)

A Merlin Strategy poll of young Britons aged 18 to 30 found three times more young women than young men held a negative view of the opposite sex. Only about 50% of women had a positive view of men compared to 72% of men feeling positive about women. For women under 25, it was even starker: only around one-third (35%) reported a positive view of men. This applies particularly to professional and managerial young women of whom just 36% hold a positive view of men, compared with 61% of working-class women.

The contempt for men is hardly surprising – that’s what they have been taught. Mary Harrington, a British journalist and cultural critic who writes on Substack, frequently criticises what she calls the “femosphere” — the online feminist spaces where women bond through shared grievances about men. “The online feminist scene often feels like one long group therapy session for women to compare notes on how awful men are,” she writes, suggesting this makes men the universal scapegoat, where ordinary male behaviour is routinely framed as toxic or oppressive, while women’s collective resentment is rewarded and amplified. “Casual, low-level male-bashing has become the background hum of progressive online culture.”
Not only does this toxic climate encourage women to be wary of men, but growing up in a hate-fuelled online sewer takes a toll on their mental health. Psychologist Jonathan Haidt has long been warning that the toxic world of social media would lead to a rise in mental health problems, particularly in girls and young women. “Since the early 2010s, young people across the developed world are becoming more anxious, depressed and lonely. The increases were even greater in young women,” he said.
Recent large-scale surveys (Ipsos 202-–2026 across 31 countries, Gallup 2025) are showing Gen Z women currently report the highest recorded levels of anxiety, persistent sadness, hopelessness and depression of any female generation at the same age. Not much fun for their partners. Last year Psychology Today had a stark warning for men about these women as marriage prospects.The saying ‘happy wife, happy life’ may have some validity, but the lesser-known saying ‘anxious wife, miserable life’ has research-approved validation. … The more neurotic the spouse is, the less happy the relationship — but women’s neuroticism seems to carry more weight in the overall marital happiness equation.
Then there’s the intriguing issue of married women turning off the tap, leaving sex-starved husbands as the norm. For as long as anyone can remember, men were shamed into showing up economically. Society has absolutely nothing to say to women who stop showing up sexually. One obligation was enforced by church, law and community for centuries. The other is now abrogated on the grounds of bodily autonomy.mSo here we have the portrait of the modern woman as marriage prospect: miserable, anxious, politically radicalised, contemptuous of men, often sexually rejecting and trained to see menace in ordinary male behaviour. And yet the puzzled chorus from commentators, economists and policymakers continues: why won’t men commit? Why won’t they work?
The approved explanations are dutifully trotted out. The economic story: men have been displaced by automation and globalisation. The health story: opioids, disability, mental illness. The educational story: men are falling behind women in universities and therefore in the job market. The cultural story, favoured by progressive commentators: toxic masculinity is preventing men from adapting to a modern service economy. All of these contain a grain of truth. But they do not account for what is really going on. The obvious explanation — the one staring out of every data table — is intentionally ignored.
Marriage was the primary incentive for sustained male economic effort. It has always been — Ehrenreich knew it in 1983, and the economists have now confirmed it. There’s an economic research paper, ‘The Declining Labour Market Prospects of Less-Educated Men, which establishes that the prospect of forming and providing for a family constitutes a critical male labour supply incentive, and that the decline of stable marriage directly removes it. Researchers at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas calculated that declining marriage rates are responsible for roughly half the drop in the hours men work.Remove the marriage and you remove the responsibility. The data have been telling us this for decades.

marc andreessen just went on Rogan and casually dropped a TON of AI alpha

full pod is 3 hours and 20 minutes, but i pulled out his most interesting takes here:

1. AGI is here. he thinks the line was crossed about 3 months ago with the new GPT-5.5, claude 4.6, gemini 3, and grok… pic.twitter.com/IrBAUmxDcA
— Ole Lehmann (@itsolelehmann) May 22, 2026

https://twitter.com/MarioNawfal/status/2057782776192245840?s=20

My statin thread reached over 460,000 people. Thousands of you asked the same question.

"If cholesterol does not cause heart disease, then what does?"

The answer has been published for years. In the largest risk factor study ever conducted. 27,939 women. 21 years. Published in… pic.twitter.com/KbKId3yLVS
— Mark Kaplan (@markkaplan20) May 23, 2026

Aaron Russo was killed just days after doing this interview in 2007. How did Aaron Russo know all of this information in 2007 ? Because one of the Rockefellers told him. pic.twitter.com/0pipWiSppD
— Andrew Bridgen (@ABridgen) May 22, 2026

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

Debt Rattle April 18 2026

Apr 182026

April 18, 2026 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 9:52 am Finance Tagged with: AfD, Hunter Biden, James Carville, John Rubino, Orban, Sergey Shoigu, showdown, Tucker Carlson, Vladimir Palko 68 Responses »

Piet Mondriaan Still Life with Gingerpot I 1911/12

• Trump Is Turning Iran Into An Anti-Globalist Superpower (Rachel Marsden)

• Blockade Successful – Deal Reached – Strait Open – Oil Prices Plummet (CTH)

• Re-enter Death Spiral When Iran War Stops – John Rubino (USAW)

• With Strait Open, Kier Starmer Makes Effort to Remain Relevant (CTH)

• Miami Prosecutor Moved from Brennan Conspiracy Investigation (CTH)

• Judiciary Chair Confirms House Moving To Expunge Trump Impeachment (JTN)

• Showdown (James Howard Kunstler)

• EU Spied On Orban For Years – Former Slovak Minister (RT)

• Russian Security Chief Issues Warning To Four NATO States (RT)

• Does Trump Know Something We Don’t About Potential SCOTUS Vacancies? (Margolis)

• Tucker Carlson’s ‘Did He Really Say That?’ Era Is in Full Swing Now (Spencer)

• Germany: Anti-Immigration AfD Party Jumps To 27%, 4 Points Ahead of CDU (RMX)

• “F**k It…Just Do It”: Carville’s Plan to Add States and Pack the Court (Turley)

• “Mr. Biden Lives Abroad”: Hunter Leaves Country (Turley)

https://twitter.com/Real_RobN/status/2044957624215724224?s=20

"So it all starts to tie together and show this, this real distinct bias they had against President Trump and how they tried to undermine his entire first term" @Jim_Jordan explains how newly revealed impeachment memos show the clear bias of 2019 Ukraine accuser pic.twitter.com/4xCcevLMGZ
— Just the News (@JustTheNews) April 16, 2026

BOMBSHELL EXPOSÉ: Twenty CIA and FBI agents confirmed that Barack Obama and a former CIA director fabricated the Russia Hoax, which was then 'locked away in a CIA vault for almost a decade,' to brainwash voters and discredit Trump's election by manipulating intelligence. pic.twitter.com/F6gPpVgQ9U
— FAN TRUMP ARMY (@TRUMP_ARMY_) April 16, 2026

John Solomon Just Blew My Mind with His Prediction About Deep State Accountability

Solomon says President Trump is about to begin declassifying documents at lightning speed in an operation he is calling “Hypersonic Clarity."

He believes this massive document dump could pave… pic.twitter.com/oABYOmDTPR
— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) April 16, 2026

John Solomon Reveals New John Brennan and James Comey Indictments Could Be Coming VERY Soon

Brennan is accused of lying to Congress in 2023 testimony about the CIA's use of the discredited Steele dossier in intelligence assessments of Russian interference in the 2016 election.… pic.twitter.com/x0iMyKz91Y
— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) April 16, 2026

Hillary Clinton is cooked if the emails and videos from the Weiner laptop are fully released. This will burn the entire corrupt system down and everyone in it. Those emails contained:

– Child trafficking and abuse
– Money laundering
– Epstein ties
– Weiner's "Insurance policy"… pic.twitter.com/9X2u1kSbcu
— The SCIF (@TheSCIF) April 17, 2026

https://twitter.com/VigilantFox/status/2044812878192992698?s=20

The notion of Iranian strength persists. Why? The US will never accept the mullahs with nukes, and US/Israel want Iran to stop stoking up Hezbollah etc. They won’t give up until they have what they want.

• Trump Is Turning Iran Into An Anti-Globalist Superpower (Rachel Marsden)

If Team Trump has dragged itself to the negotiating table with Iran, it’s not because the U.S. is winning this war. One side of these talks features top Iranian brass. The other, two real estate agents (Steve Witkoff and Jared “Gaza Riviera” Kushner), Vice President JD Vance who’s fresh off complaining about meddling in Hungarian elections while over there doing some himself, and a top Pentagon official sufficiently problematic to have escaped recent firings by a war secretary who keeps evoking Holy War.

To even get to the table, Iran demanded a release of billions of U.S.-held funds under sanctions, and for Israel to stop bombing Lebanon under its usual pretext of striking terrorists, who routinely just always happen to be hanging out on land that it’s long wanted to expand into. We’re a long way from Trump’s longstanding whining about how Obama “gave” Iran $6 billion of its own money back that had, in fact, been held under U.S. sanctions in American banks.
“Obama gave them $1.7 billion in cash – green, green cash, took it out of banks from Virginia, DC and Maryland, all the cash they had, flew it by airplanes in an attempt to buy their respect and loyalty but it didn’t work. They laughed at our president,” Trump said in a primetime address earlier this month. Guess they’re laughing even harder now. Not only have any longstanding U.S.-Israeli objectives for Iran been frustrated, but they’ve virtually evaporated. First, there’s everything that Iran has maintained. It still has its enriched uranium, despite what Iran qualified as a failed Pentagon operation to take it while pretending to stage a personnel rescue.
But now it enjoys the added bonus of not being under any official obligation to abide by inspections either, since Trump unilaterally ripped that treaty up.] It’s also under no compulsion to open the Strait of Hormuz and let through oil tankers that fuel the world. A problem that didn’t actually exist until Trump unilaterally created it. But since the opportunity presented for Iran to close it under the pretext that missiles were flying around overhead, why wouldn’t they seize that leverage?
Now, the strait sits at the center of negotiations between the two sides. Not only has the U.S. lacked any leverage to compel Iran to open Hormuz, but they’ll also have to find some additional consideration to get Iran to give up the tolls that it recently imposed on ships passing through. And good luck trying to settle this one quickly, since Iran has also said that, “Oh yeah, by the way, we can’t find some of those land mines that we scattered underwater to prevent trespassing ships.” Guess that’ll conveniently take awhile to resolve, all while they collect tolls at the purported rate of $2 million per ship.
Tehran seems to have no end of weapons to adequately defend its territory from attacks, all while Britain’s Royal United Services Institute think tank reports “a strategically ruinous cost-exchange ratio that the West’s industrial capacity is not prepared to sustain” despite the astronomical cost billed routinely to Western taxpayers in order to avoid such things. So toss the myth of western military omnipotence onto the mounting pile of ripoff schemes that have aged badly. Who knew that an attempt to ruin Iran’s navy and army would result in the demilitarization of the West? Not the brainiacs in charge, apparently.
Iranian governance continuity doesn’t seem to have missed a beat, either, despite Trump’s avowed regime- change attempts. And when Trump issued his Churchillian ultimatum last week for Iran to “Open the F–kin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell,” and threatened that “Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one,” the same Iranians whom Trump had previously promised to liberate before bombing them, flooded Iranian cities to protect their own infrastructure from their self-styled savior.
Meanwhile, under pressure from their own citizens, blowback from U.S. allies is intensifying against Trump and his sidekick, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu. European countries have denied military access to their airspace for the purpose of any attacks. Several European nations, and the European Commission itself, are now talking about suspending the bloc’s economic association agreement with Israel. “Israeli strikes killed hundreds last night, making it hard to argue that such heavy-handed actions fall within self-defence,” said the EU’s chief diplomat, Kaja Kallas, of Tel Aviv’s attacks on Lebanon.
It’s all rapidly shaping up to be a prelude to anti-Israeli sanctions, all while Iran heads in the other direction with negotiation and rapprochement with European nations in exchange for passage through Hormuz. And for Team Trump’s deal with Iran to achieve a peaceful outcome and unscrew the global economy, they’ll have the added bonus of being stuck permanently babysitting loose-cannon Israel. Which is a markedly different relationship from the previous arrangement of backing Israel as a proxy against Iran while shrugging and promoting Tel Aviv’s sovereign right to self-defense.
Back home in the U.S., calls for cracking down on the kind of Israeli foreign interference in American politics that led Trump into this useless but totally counterproductive war are emerging. Hardly surprising when the average American citizen is being fiscally mugged by the consequences of double standards that have long been at play, with Israeli entities not only exempt from registering as foreign agents, but exceptionally blessed to freely interfere in American political life.
At this point, Iran is looking less like a rival to the average Westerner, and more like an ally of the America First anti-globalist movement, successfully dismantling the illusion that exorbitant and self-indulgent Western foreign policy serves anything more than outdated narratives.

Rachel Marsden

“It appears the blockade was successful in finally convincing Iran they had very few options.”

• Blockade Successful – Deal Reached – Strait Open – Oil Prices Plummet (CTH)

In a series of posts on Truth Social, President Trump has announced that a deconfliction deal with Iran has been agreed.

It appears the blockade was successful in finally convincing Iran they had very few options. Additionally, as we all well understand here, the blockade was halting oil shipments to China. It is very likely that Beijing was also putting pressure on Iran to reach a deal.

“THE STRAIT OF HORMUZ IS COMPLETELY OPEN AND READY FOR BUSINESS AND FULL PASSAGE, BUT THE NAVAL BLOCKADE WILL REMAIN IN FULL FORCE AND EFFECT AS IT PERTAINS TO IRAN, ONLY, UNTIL SUCH TIME AS OUR TRANSACTION WITH IRAN IS 100% COMPLETE. THIS PROCESS SHOULD GO VERY QUICKLY IN THAT MOST OF THE POINTS ARE ALREADY NEGOTIATED. THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER!” ~ PRESIDENT DONALD J.TRUMP
“The U.S.A. will get all Nuclear “Dust,” created by our great B2 Bombers – No money will exchange hands in any way, shape, or form. This deal is in no way subject to Lebanon, either, but the USA will, separately, work with Lebanon, and deal with the Hezboolah situation in an appropriate manner. Israel will not be bombing Lebanon any longer. They are PROHIBITED from doing so by the U.S.A. Enough is enough!!! Thank you!” ~ President DJT
“Now that the Hormuz Strait situation is over, I received a call from NATO asking if we would need some help. I TOLD THEM TO STAY AWAY, UNLESS THEY JUST WANT TO LOAD UP THEIR SHIPS WITH OIL. They were useless when needed, a Paper Tiger!” ~ President DJT
“Thank you to Saudi Arabia, UAE, and Qatar for your great bravery and help!” President DONALD J. TRUMP
“Iran, with the help of the U.S.A., has removed, or is removing, all sea mines! Thank you!” President DJT “
Again! This deal is not tied, in any way, to Lebanon, but we will, MAKE LEBANON GREAT AGAIN!”
“Thank you to Pakistan and its Great Prime Minister and Field Marshall, two fantastic people!!!” President DONALD J. TRUMP
“A GREAT AND BRILLIANT DAY FOR THE WORLD!” DJT
“Iran has agreed to never close the Strait of Hormuz again. It will no longer be used as a weapon against the World!” ~President DONALD J. TRUMP
With the fighting ending and the conflict over, suddenly the U.K and France come running to assist.

War makes the world go ’round.

• Re-enter Death Spiral When Iran War Stops – John Rubino (USAW)

Analyst and financial writer John Rubino is still warning of a currency crisis. He thinks the big run up in gold and silver in the past year are sending a message about the quality of fiat currency that governments print at will. Lots of money will be printed to prosecute the Iran war, and there will be a financial price to pay. Rubino says, “War is incredibly expensive. If the US has to add another $1 trillion to the deficit to finish this thing off, that’s another trillion we have to borrow. . .. So, we are eroding the trust that people have in our big systems. . .. The wars that we have seen lately are making the financial crisis coming our way . . much worse and making it come that much sooner.

The more money we borrow right now, the bigger of a deal it is for inflation and currency exchange rate and, ultimately, for gold and silver. Nobody should hope things like this happen, but if you are strictly looking at your own finances and you are a gold bug . . . we are screwing up the financial system that is bad for the fiat currencies and great for real money (gold and silver) and other commodities. . .. There are a lot of reasons to think commodities benefit from this war. I am kind of hesitant to look on the bright side of war . . . but I do think a war time economy is inherently inflationary, and that is inherently good for commodities.”
If the war drags on, Rubino says, “It will make the coming financial crisis worse sooner.” If war finishes soon, can we all breathe a sigh of relief and be out of the woods? Rubino says, “Here’s hoping because that would be awesome. Let’s say it ends tomorrow. Then we go back to what we were doing before, which is bailing out everybody in sight, creating huge amounts of currency and lobbying the Fed to cut interest rates. In other words, we re-enter the death spiral of the world’s fiat currencies.”
Rubino is especially bullish on silver. A year ago, silver was selling in the low $30 per ounce range. Today, even after the big sell-off, it is selling in the low $80 per ounce range. Rubino says you ain’t seen nothing yet. Rubino says, “The silver story is great. More and more industries need it, and fewer and fewer mines are producing it. We have this decision point coming soon where the price is going to have to jump up to reflect the panic buying coming from the shortages.”
Rubino thinks you will be seeing $15,000 per ounce gold and $300 per ounce silver, but he can’t say exactly when. He just knows it will happen because with fiat currencies, history always repeats. Rubino says, “This sounds crazy now, but they are probably going to happen. That is just how currency collapses play out. We have seen hundreds of currencies in human history that have died. Just Google hyperinflation, and you will see a list of name brand countries that destroyed their currency. They rode them down to virtually zero. It’s hyperinflation, and something like that is coming. . .. We should not even think about it in terms of dollars, just buy it (physical gold and silver) to have real money.”

“:.. akin to a Monty Python skit that’s missing the part where a guy comes out and slaps them in the face with a big fish.”

• With Strait Open, Kier Starmer Makes Effort to Remain Relevant (CTH)

British Prime Minister Kier Starmer, French President Emmanuel Macron, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz issue a joint statement on their plan to open the Strait of Hormuz, after President Trump secured and opened the Strait of Hormuz.

Essentially, after holding an international teleconference, leaders from the U.K, France, Italy and Germany gather to express their importance on an issue that has been entirely resolved without them. The result is akin to a Monty Python skit that’s missing the part where a guy comes out and slaps them in the face with a big fish.

They play hard to get: juat move them around. Whack a mole. “… It is completely healthy and normal to change members of legal teams.”

• Miami Prosecutor Moved from Brennan Conspiracy Investigation (CTH)

According to multiple media reports Maria Medetis Long has moved away from the investigative case surrounding John Brennan.CNN was the first to report the move, and the anonymous sourcing indicates the information likely comes from notification sent by the prosecuting attorney to the witnesses and targets of the Florida-based grand jury.

Via CNN-The Justice Department has removed the career Miami federal prosecutor leading the investigation into John Brennan, after she resisted pressure to quickly bring charges against the former CIA director and prominent critic of President Donald Trump, according to people briefed on the matter. Maria Medetis Long on Friday notified attorneys representing people involved in the case that she was no longer handling the investigation, the people familiar with the matter said. She has led the politically sensitive probe for months amid demands from Trump to prosecute Brennan and other critics. The investigation into Brennan is focused on one of the president’s longest standing political grievances the 2017 intelligence assessment that found Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election to help him. (read more)
The fraudulent and politically manipulated Intelligence Community Assessment touches on the Ciaramella information recently released. Ciaramella participated in both the construct of the ICA in early 2017 and then became the anonymous CIA whistleblower in 2019. There is no indication the move of Maria Medetis Long is related to the recent discoveries; however, there is a certain continuity of conspiracy noted in the timeline that connects CIA Director John Brennan and CIA Analyst Eric Ciaramella. We shall wait to see what else surfaces.
(ABC) – Asked about the move, a Justice Department spokesperson said, “as a matter of routine practice, attorneys are moved around on cases so offices can most effectively allocate resources. It is completely healthy and normal to change members of legal teams.” (more)

Again: never happened before. But it seems more likely by the day now.

Congress can do it (too)?

• Judiciary Chair Confirms House Moving To Expunge Trump Impeachment (JTN)

Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, Chairman of the House Committee on the Judiciary, has disclosed to Just The News that the House of Representatives, where President Donald Trump was impeached during his first term over a phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, is moving to expunge that impeachment from the congressional record. “You need a majority vote, we need a bill, and it’s actually something we’re looking at,” Jordan told Just The News.

On Monday, Just The News was first to report on declassified secret memos from the 2019 Ukraine whistle-blower scandal, which revealed that the CIA analyst accuser (identified in media as Eric Ciaramella) admitted having no direct knowledge of Trump’s private comments or communications with Zelenskyy, basing the complaint entirely on hearsay and second- or third-hand accounts. The latest disclosures also document Ciaramella’s potential political bias, including his status as a registered Democrat who worked closely with Vice President Joe Biden on Ukraine policy, including traveling with him and discussing the dismissal of Ukrainian Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko, who was probing Burisma, the corporation that paid Biden’s son Hunter millions of dollars.
Hiding facts from Congress, and the public
The memos also reveal Ciaramella’s dislike for Republicans like former Representative Devin Nunes and Kash Patel, and his prior procedural contact with Rep. Adam Schiff’s, D-Calif., staff, which he initially omitted from the official disclosure form before apologizing. A supporting “Witness 2,” an NSC/NSA official and co-author of the controversial 2016 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) on Russian election interference, linked to Peter Strzok backed the complaint.
This, despite admitting he lacked granular insight, would not have acted on it himself, and was motivated by a “moral and patriotic duty” to help Ciaramella “sleep at night.” The concealed evidence of bias and hearsay was kept classified during Trump’s House impeachment in December 2019 and the subsequent Senate trial. On Monday, Harvard Law Professor Emeritus Alan Dershowitz reacted to the idea of expungement and said, “I don’t see any reason why it couldn’t be done. Impeachment is a quasi-judicial procedure, whether you have to go back to Congress and ask them to expunge it or go to the courts.”
Dershowitz: “They violated the Constitution”
The constitutional law expert continued: “But I have to tell you one thing, history will expunge it already because what you’ve done is you’ve created so much doubt about the credibility of the main accuser that it’s hard for anybody to sit back now and say that was a just impeachment. They violated the Constitution.”
Several members of the U.S. House of Representatives have introduced simple resolutions to expunge Trump’s two impeachments from the congressional record. In June 2023, during the 118th Congress, former GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene introduced a resolution for the 2019 impeachment, while New York Rep. Elise Stefanik introduced one for the 2021 impeachment. Former Speaker of the House, Kevin McCarthy, also publicly supported those resolutions.

“Everything that’s wrong is staring us right in the face, and half this country simply will not join us in fighting and fixing it. It’s infuriating and depressing and maddening.” —James Woods on X

• Showdown (James Howard Kunstler)

The closer this Iran war comes to a favorable resolution, the more garishly negative the puling Lefty-left gets, wishing fervently for the enemy to prevail. Why? Because the Lefty-left is also an enemy of our country. They want the operation to fail so they can reclaim power and resume wrecking and looting the USA. By the way, what exactly would a favorable outcome of this war look like? An Iran that doesn’t threaten nuclear jihad and doesn’t sponsor endless terror operations here, there, and everywhere. It looks like we are going to get to that. Iran’s choice is how deep do they want to take their own economic collapse before capitulating? If they’ll just stop now, they’ll still keep the lights on. They can be a normal, modern, developed nation without a death wish.

Anyway, the paradigm Iran was operating in as a rogue state is dead, especially the malign influence of Britain’s banking and MI6 intel matrix. Britain, proven by its actions to be not a friend of America. . . Britain, a wretched little has-been island empire with bad teeth, overrun by wrathful Islamists, and, alas, soon to be a caliphate. President Donald Trump has rearranged the geopolitical landscape with startling speed and efficacy. Much of Europe, it turns out, are not our friends, either. They would not let us use the NATO bases we pay for to conduct air operations over Iran. Hence, NATO is four dead letters. They can go dangle while they figure out how to live without oil, possibly go back to their centuries-long condition as a nonstop slaughterhouse, besetting each other with stupid, age-old feuds. Not our problem anymore.
China? Their Belt-and-Road isn’t what it was just six months ago. Mr. Trump has kicked them out of South America. Their oil supply is suddenly sketchy. Notice, they didn’t lend a hand helping to clear the Strait of Hormuz. Turned out that the radars and air defenses they gifted Iran didn’t work too well. Uncle Xi Pooh Bear will have to re-think situation.
Mr. Trump says he might travel to Pakistan this weekend if there are papers to sign with Iran. Israel and Lebanon announced a ten-day truce to sort out where things stand. Both of them want Hezbollah expelled for good. Anyway, Hezbollah can no longer enjoy financial support from Iran, meaning no more munitions or salaries for Hezbollah warriors, meaning Hezbollah is out of business — a major regional irritant neutralized. Can you dare to imagine a peaceable Middle East?
So, things have changed-up greatly in this long-volatile corner the world, and that will leave Mr. Trump freer to attend to the discord and animus at home, namely the psychopathic Democratic Party’s non-stop demolition of political norms, with assistance from the bureaucratic Deep State and the NGO underworld. Just at hand this week, we have Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard sending criminal referrals to the DOJ on two key players (both liars) in Trump Impeachment No. 1: former Intel Inspector General Michael Atkinson and CIA agent “whistleblower” Eric Ciaramella — whose name the news media still fears to speak.
That impeachment, over the so-called “Ukraine phone call,” was from start to finish a complete fake, a criminal conspiracy. It involves a much larger cast-of-characters including then House Intel Committee Chair (now senator) Adam Schiff, then Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, CIA Director Gina Haspel, Chief Justice John Roberts, and virtually the whole Kiev US embassy staff at the time. Everybody involved was lying about one thing or another. The case is on Acting AG Todd Blanche’s desk now. Do you suppose it can just sit there?

The Brussels-backed intelligence operation will happen again, Vladimir Palko has warned.

• EU Spied On Orban For Years – Former Slovak Minister (RT)

The EU spy campaign that helped bring down Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban is a lesson to anyone who defies Brussels, former Slovak Interior Minister Vladimir Palko has warned. “What they did to Orban yesterday, they can do to you tomorrow,” he told the outlet ‘Marker’ on Monday. Orban’s Fidesz party suffered a landslide defeat to Peter Magyar’s Tisza on Sunday, with Tisza outperforming even the most one-sided polls to win a 54% to 38% over Fidesz. Magyar’s party now holds 137 of 199 seats in parliament, giving the incoming PM power to rewrite the country’s constitution as he – and his allies in Brussels – see fit.

That the EU wanted this result was obvious. Orban had been a thorn in Brussels’ side for 16 years and was an insurmountable obstacle to the bloc’s plans to approve a €90 billion loan package for Ukraine. Throughout the election, evidence of interference by the EU, Ukraine, and opposition-friendly Hungarian media trickled out of Budapest. With the election over, the full extent of the EU’s intelligence campaign against Orban – and its implications for populists across Europe – is slowly becoming apparent. “The defeat of Viktor Orban after 16 years of rule is not surprising at all,” Palko told Marker. “However, the tragedy is what happened in the election campaign.”
The EU spied on Orban for years
“Orban and his foreign minister were wiretapped by European intelligence for six years,” he continued. “Not Russian, not American. The secret service provided the content of phone calls to some journalists from several EU member states, and the members of the EU establishment used the content against Orban. This was an intervention into Hungarian elections.” Palko, who served as deputy director of Slovakia’s SIS intelligence agency in the 1990s and interior minister between 2002 and 2006, confirmed information that had already surfaced in the runup to the election: namely that opposition journalist Szabolcs Panyi gave Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto’s contact details to an unnamed EU intelligence agency, that then wiretapped Szijjarto and leaked details of six years’ worth of his calls with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov back to Panyi and other pro-opposition reporters. Panyi’s outlet, Direkt36, derives 80% of its project costs from the EU.
spies also fed the Hungarian and international media stories of Russian “election fixers” attempting to swing the election for Orban, and of plots by Russian military intelligence agents to stage an assassination attempt on Orban for publicity. The claims were unfounded, but were seized upon by Magyar, who worked chants of “Russians, go home!” into his campaign rallies. The EU in turn used these reports to justify the activation of its ‘Rapid Response System’ (RRS): a suite of online censorship tools that allowed Brussels’ “fact checkers” to remove supposed “disinformation” from social media platforms in the runup to the vote. In every election in which it has been activated, the RRS “almost exclusively targeted” right-wing and populist candidates like Orban, the US House Judiciary Committee found in an investigation last year.
“Only one thing is shown from the recorded phone calls: The Hungarians were friendly towards the Russians,” Palko noted. “But this already is a mortal sin for the EU establishment. This is the new European Union that is coming.” The EU’s pre-election attempts to influence the campaign offered a glimpse into a campaign that Orban alleges has been underway ever since he took a stance against Brussels on migration policy and support for Ukraine. However, Europe’s few populist leaders have largely stayed silent on the issue.
The Hungarian election ultimately came down to kitchen-table economic issues. Roads, healthcare, public safety, and public transport were the leading issues among voters in all 19 of Hungary’s counties, and the electorate chose Magyar’s promises of cash injections for underfunded public services over Orban’s geopolitics-heavy platform. Magyar will depend on the EU to fund his economic plan to the tune of €20 billion, and as such will be easily leveraged by Brussels, giving further incentive for the bloc to back his campaign.
Yet the role of EU intelligence in the result has been ignored, even by Orban’s ideological allies on the continent. This, Palko reckons, is a mistake. “All those who were not bothered by it should be warned,” he said. “What they did to Orban yesterday, they can do to you tomorrow.”As RT reported, the EU has rolled out its same censorship playbook in Bulgaria, where elections this weekend pit a veteran center-rightist against a populist, Euroskeptic challenger on the left. Robert Fico in Slovakia, a left-wing populist and vocal opponent of the EU’s Ukraine project, will likely face the same treatment when he seeks another term in office next year.

Sergey Shoigu has cautioned Finland and the Baltic states against allowing Kiev to use their airspace for attacks on Russia

• Russian Security Chief Issues Warning To Four NATO States (RT)

Russia would have the right to retaliate if Finland and the Baltic states are deliberately allowing Ukrainian drones to pass through their airspace, Security Council Secretary Sergey Shoigu said on Thursday. “Recently, there has been an increase in Ukrainian drone strikes against Russia via Finland, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia,” Shoigu told journalists. “As a result, civilians are suffering and significant damage is being caused to civilian infrastructure.” Either Western air defenses are proving ineffective, or these four countries “deliberately provide their airspace, thereby becoming open accomplices in aggression against Russia,” he added.

In the latter case, Moscow has the right to self-defense in response to an “armed attack” under Article 51 of the UN Charter, the security chief stressed. In recent weeks, Kiev has intensified drone strikes on Russia in what Moscow has characterized as “terrorist attacks,” with the Russian military regularly reporting hundreds of UAVs downed in a single night. Late last month, Kiev attacked Russia’s Baltic Sea ports of Ust-Luga and Primorsk with swarms of UAVs. The raids resulted in fires in both cities, which house extensive petrochemical infrastructure.
Kremlin aide Nikolay Patrushev said he believed that Finland and the Baltic states were “complicit in these crimes.” The provision of national airspace for Ukrainian drone strikes would “signify direct NATO participation” in attacks on Russia, he said Monday. Multiple Ukrainian drones have also struck the territories of Finland and the three Baltic states since early March. Despite this, all four nations have avoided condemning Kiev outright for violating their airspace.
Moscow has formally warned Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia against allowing Ukraine to send drones via their territory, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said last week. “If the regimes in these countries are smart enough, they will listen. If not, then they will have to deal with the consequences,” she said.

For SCOTUS, Trump is super-prepared.

• Does Trump Know Something We Don’t About Potential SCOTUS Vacancies? (Margolis)

The midterm elections are coming up in November, and Democrats are generally favored to win the House, while the Senate is kind of a coin flip. While it would suck for Democrats to win the House because they’ll almost certainly find some bogus pretext to impeach President Donald Trump, there’s potentially more at stake regarding control of the Senate, including implications for confirming judges and potentially filling any potential Supreme Court vacancies. No retirements have been announced, but speculation is mounting, and I’m starting to wonder if Trump knows vacancies are coming.

In a recent interview with Fox Business’ Maria Bartiromo, Trump confirmed he has a shortlist of potential nominees ready to go — and he’s prepared to fill as many as three seats if the opportunity arises. “In theory, it’s two — you just read the statistics — it could be two, could be three, could be one,” Trump said. “I don’t know. I’m prepared to do it. But when you mention Alito, he is a great justice.”
He added, “He does what’s right for the country. It’s the law, and he goes by it as much as anybody, but he gets to the point.” High praise from a president who has been, let’s say, less enthusiastic about some of his own past nominees. According to Fox News Digital, “Trump’s remarks sharpen the stakes around any potential vacancy, as the president has signaled he is ready to seize the opportunity to deepen the court’s conservative majority. With retirement speculation around Alito and Republicans eyeing the window before the 2026 midterms, the prospect of an opening is already putting fresh focus on succession politics.”
Rumors about Alito, 76, potentially retiring have grown because of his age, his two-decade tenure on the bench and speculation that he may want to make sure a conservative successor is confirmed by the current Republican-led Senate, especially before the upcoming midterm elections in which Republicans are at risk of losing or seeing a diminished majority. The rumors were further fueled when it was revealed Alito was treated last month for dehydration after becoming ill at a Federalist Society dinner. A Supreme Court spokesperson clarified at the time that the justice was “thoroughly checked” and returned to the bench the following Monday.
A source close to Alito insists he is not stepping down this term and is in the process of hiring the rest of his clerks for the next term. So at least for now, it sounds like he’s not going anywhere. Yet, Trump is ready with a shortlist of replacements? Is that a tell that he knows something we don’t? It could be. Or it’s just being prepared. After watching some of his own nominees drift from his expectations on high-profile rulings, you can be certain he’ll be far more deliberate this time around. Whatever seats open up, expect Trump to treat the selection process with a level of scrutiny he may not have applied before.
The bigger picture here is worth appreciating. No president since Ronald Reagan has reshaped the Supreme Court the way Trump has. His first three appointments — Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett — built the current 6-3 conservative majority. Trump may have an opportunity to secure a conservative majority for decades to come.= The question is, does he know that he will?

I haven’t been following Tucker’s split from Trump etc. closely.

• Tucker Carlson’s ‘Did He Really Say That?’ Era Is in Full Swing Now (Spencer)

Tucker Carlson, theologian, is at it again, giving rise to a new round of questions about what has happened to the man. The former Fox host and patriotic stalwart is now a full-time agitator against Israel and public relations agent for the religion of Islam, and if any religion ever needed a PR makeover, it’s Islam. In his newsletter on Wednesday, Carlson includes an entry with the curious title “Islam Is the Enemy? Are We Sure About That?” It’s an odd title because there isn’t anyone in either the Trump administration or the Israeli government who is saying, “Islam is the enemy.”

Certainly, there are people who point out Islam’s 1,400-year war against any and all non-Muslim entities, and its doctrines calling for warfare against and subjugation of unbelievers, which make it unique among what are called “the world’s great religions.” But such people aren’t in the Trump administration, or in the government of Israel, either. Also, up until now, Tucker has focused his ire upon the Netanyahu government, which is supposedly exercising Svengalian control over the Trump administration. Now, despite the fact that the Israeli government has not been critical of Islam, he is defending the religion of suicide bombings, stonings, amputations, and the rest.
Referring to the fact that his previous assertion that Muslims love Jesus “set off a firestorm,” Carlson claimed that this was “largely because most Americans do not realize the overlap between Christianity and the Muslim faith.” He insinuates darkly that this is because of some sinister conspiracy: “That is no accident.” Carlson continues by making the preposterous assertion that “the forces supporting the Iran War do not want the public to realize that the Quran hails the Christian savior as a prophet and messenger of the Lord.” The idea that there are forces in America today that are deliberately concealing information that might make Americans think better of Islam than they do now is beyond ridiculous.
The reality, in fact, is exactly the opposite. Ever since George W. Bush stood inside a Washington, D.C. mosque on Sept. 17, 2001, and proclaimed that “Islam is peace” and warned Americans not to harass innocent Muslims (which was not happening in the first place), the political and media establishment has done everything it could to ensure that people didn’t think ill of Islam. The media reflex of saying that a jihadi’s motive was “unclear” when nothing under the living sun could have been clearer has been a running joke for years.
Tucker Carlson, however, would have you believe that supporters of the war against the entity where they regularly scream “Death to America” and “Death to Israel” have deliberately obscured the fact that Jesus appears in the Qur’an as a prophet of Islam. I can adduce my own work to show that this isn’t true. In numerous books, including The Complete Infidel’s Guide to the Koran and The Critical Qur’an, both of which were bestsellers, I’ve discussed the Qur’anic and Islamic view of Jesus in tremendous detail.
It’s not quite as wonderful as Carlson suggests. The Jesus of the Qur’an is an Invasion-of-the-Body-Snatchers version of the Biblical figure: he bears the same name, but is an entirely different personality. Even Carlson grants that the Qur’an’s mentions of Jesus do “not mean that Christianity and Islam are aligned. They definitely are not.” But he insists that “an anti-Muslim propaganda campaign” has “consumed our country for decades. Neocons have brainwashed the U.S. public into thinking Middle Eastern terrorists lust for American blood because they are Muslim. But it is not true. They behave as they do because they are evil criminals.”
Well, all right, Tucker, but they’re evil criminals whose holy book tells them to “kill them wherever you find them” (Qur’an 2:191, 4:89, 4:91), and just to make clear who ought to be killed, adds “kill the polytheists wherever you find them (9:5). In the Qur’anic scheme, pretty much everyone who is not a Muslim is a polytheist. The Qur’an also directs Muslims to fight Jews and Christians until they submit to second-class status under the hegemony of Islamic law (9:29).
Muslims are to fight unbelievers until “religion is all for Allah” (8:39), which is an open-ended declaration of war against all non-Islamic religious expression. Evil criminals they are indeed, but even more evil is the fact that when they plunder, rape, and kill, they think they are offering service to God, as the Biblical Jesus said would happen (John 16:2). The fact that Palestinian terrorist murderers are not considered “evil criminals” in Gaza, but great heroes, should give Tucker Carlson pause. But it won’t.

“4 out of 5 citizens also say they are dissatisfied with Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s government, according to YouGov poll..”

• Germany: Anti-Immigration AfD Party Jumps To 27%, 4 Points Ahead of CDU (RMX)

In a new poll from YouGov, the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party jumped to 27 percent, now four points ahead of the rival Christian Democrats (CDU), in a sign that the AfD continues to distance itself as the most popular party in Germany. AfD co-leader Alice Weidel was quick to publish the poll results on X, writing: “4 percentage points ahead of the Union, 4 out of 5 citizens dissatisfied with Merz: We no longer have time for undemocratic firewalls. The political turnaround must happen now.”
4 Prozentpunkte Abstand zur Union, 4 von 5 Bürgern unzufrieden mit Merz: Wir haben keine Zeit mehr für undemokratische Brandmauern. Die politische Wende muß jetzt erfolgen. pic.twitter.com/rWe3sm04RU
— Alice Weidel (@Alice_Weidel) April 15, 2026

The governing parties that make up the federal government are seeing their fortunes quickly fall. The CDU/CSU fell by three percentage points to 23 percent, which was the lowest figure measured by YouGov since December 2021. The SPD figure is at 13 percent, which fell one point from 14 percent. Meanwhile, the Greens and the Left each gained one point, jumping to 14 percent and 10 percent respectively. According to the poll, more and more Germans are dissatisfied, totaling 79 percent, with the work of the federal government led by Friedrich Merz. In comparison, in June 2025, this value was only at 55 percent.
Most threatening for Merz, CDU voters are increasingly turning on his government, with only 34 percent saying they are satisfied, falling from 48 percent in March. Other polls have shown AfD at the top, but with a narrower margin, averaging between 25 and 26 percent of the vote. Despite the AfD leading, the CDU has vowed to never form a coalition with the party. If the AfD’s values hold into the next national election, it may become increasingly difficult to form a coalition without the party’s support.

Democrats think it’s a sure thing they’ll win all upcoming elections. “If the Democrats win the presidency and both houses of Congress ..”

• “F**k It…Just Do It”: Carville’s Plan to Add States and Pack the Court (Turley)

Various Democrats have been openly discussing their plans after retaking power to change the system so they never lose power again. Democratic strategist James Carville has been one of the most vocal and returned to the subject this week in laying out how they will make D.C. and Puerto Rico states and pack the Supreme Court with a liberal majority. On his podcast with Al Hunt, Carville explained, “If the Democrats win the presidency and both houses of Congress, I think on day one, they should make Puerto Rico [and] D.C. a state, and they should expand the Supreme Court to 13. F— it. Eat our dust.”

Notably, this week, New Jersey just elected a radical new member, Analilia Mejia, who ran on packing the Court and other radical agenda items. While some of us have written about the expansion of the Court, these politicians and pundits are pushing for the packing, not just gradual expanding, of the Court. However, Carville (curiously on a national podcast) seriously suggested that Democrats should keep the plan quiet: “Don’t run on it. Don’t talk about it. Just do it.” Call it the Nike School of Constitutional Law. The need of the left to pack the Supreme Court is obvious. Many of the proposals coming from the left are clearly unconstitutional.
You will need a partisan majority to make the political changes that these figures hope will give the Democrats a lock on power for years to come. Years ago, Harvard professor Michael Klarman laid out a radical agenda to change the system to guarantee Republicans “will never win another election.” However, he warned that “the Supreme Court could strike down everything I just described.” Therefore, the court must be packed in advance to allow these changes to occur. Likewise, Carville previously explained how this process of how the pack-to-power plan would work:
“I’m going to tell you what’s going to happen. A Democrat is going to be elected in 2028. You know that. I know that. The Democratic president is going to announce a special transition advisory committee on the reform of the Supreme Court. They’re going to recommend that the number of Supreme Court justices go from nine to 13. That’s going to happen, people.” The push for court packing and war chests on the left remains unchanged despite conservatives on the Court ruling against the Administration on major cases. Carville and others cannot claim that the conservative justices are robotically voting with the Administration, but it does not matter. They want a Court that will consistently uphold the changes being planned by Democratic strategists.
The fact that these changes would come after the 250th anniversary of the most successful democratic system in history is a crushing irony. However, it is notable that the Democrats want Congress and the courts to push through these changes, not the public. The public remains opposed to court packing and making D.C. a state. That is why Carville wants candidates to keep quiet on the plan and run, like Virginia’s Abigail Spanberger, as faux moderates. Then, as in Virginia, they can move to fundamentally change districts and rules to guarantee their hold on power. It is a mentality summed up by NEA President Becky Pringle:

Hard times in the art markets. Dad is AWOL.

• “Mr. Biden Lives Abroad”: Hunter Leaves Country (Turley)

“Mr. Biden lives abroad.” Those four words in a filing from Barry Coburn confirmed what had long been rumored about his client: Hunter Biden has left the country as his former lawyers and creditors seek millions in unpaid debts. He added, “He cannot pay his current lawyers.” As I wrote about years ago, Biden’s art grift would dry up as soon as he could no longer deliver influence and access to power. Reportedly unable to move art, Hunter has moved out of the reach of many creditors. He is rumored to be in South Africa, where his wife, Melissa Cohen, was born and raised.

Hunter is the Blanche DuBois of American politics. He has always relied on the kindness (and greed) of strangers when he could allegedly offer influence or access to his father, Joe Biden. Hunter told a South African podcast in November that “We’re trying to be between Cape Town and the States, go back and forth.” He added, “I’ve fallen madly in love with Cape Town. You guys do not know how good you have it here. It’s the most beautiful city in the world.” It just also happens to be roughly 9000 miles away from creditors in Delaware.
According to his former counsel at Winston & Strawn LLP, Hunter has not paid a “substantial portion” of the fees owed to his legal team. Hunter told the podcast that he is facing “$17 million in debt … as it relates to my legal fees.” His criminal defense did not ultimately protect him. He was found guilty of a variety of crimes, and his father then broke his repeated promise to the public and pardoned his own son in December 2024. I have been a long-time critic of the Bidens, going back to when Joe Biden was still a senator. The family was long accused of influence peddling and corruption. Hunter Biden was hardly subtle in marketing his access and influence. He is now without a law license and any known means of support despite an enabling media that pushed his past books and art.
For those of us who have written about the Bidens for decades, the relocation to South Africa is about as surprising as having his father pop into dinners at Cafe Milano with foreign clients. Hunter Biden is the Enfant terrible created by his father and released upon the world.
I recently wrote that the Swalwell scandal reveals an ironic analogy to Hunter’s signature lifestyle. Swalwell supported Hunter and was by his side as he defied a congressional subpoena. Like Hunter, he has controversial dealings, including using tens of thousands of campaign contributions for child care. He even had the campaign support of Hunter’s “sugar brother” Kevin Morris, who appears to have a proclivity for narcissistic, self-destructive personalities. Swalwell could also face the same financial crunch as Hunter, as his campaign and congressional money run out. If so, there is always South Africa.

Take this very seriously.

Elon Musk: “This is going to sound pretty crazy. I’d say the economy is ten times its current size in ten years

Greater than 10x in roughly ten years is actually a fairly comfortable prediction

Obviously, if there’s World War III or something, that could put a kink in those… pic.twitter.com/puG9NeIU2S
— Mars University (@MarsUniversityX) April 17, 2026

Universal HIGH INCOME via checks issued by the Federal government is the best way to deal with unemployment caused by AI.

AI/robotics will produce goods & services far in excess of the increase in the money supply, so there will not be inflation.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 17, 2026

Elon Musk just weaponized gravity.

The entire trucking industry has a physics leak bleeding billions.

Musk just sealed it.

Most people look at the Tesla Semi and see a cleaner diesel. A truck that swapped a gas tank for a battery.

That is a complete misread of the physics.… pic.twitter.com/QAlAYz27ay
— Dustin (@r0ck3t23) April 17, 2026

BREAKING: President Trump vows to look into the 10 scientists who have gone missing or turned up dead:

"I hope it's random, but we're going to know in the next week and a half."

"I just left a meeting on that subject."

"Pretty serious stuff… Some of them were very important… pic.twitter.com/VMgeZyayXl
— Fox News (@FoxNews) April 16, 2026

HUNGARIAN 5D CHESS THAT MAKES BRUSSELS CRY!

According to information provided by Serbian intelligence sources, the real objective of Orbán's "defeat" is to allow him to become the Trojan horse that Donald Trump wants to place at the heart of the European Union.

The American… pic.twitter.com/u2ZxwZrykT
— Paul White Gold Eagle (@PaulGoldEagle) April 16, 2026

A single bird has completed a journey covering nearly one-third of Earth’s circumference, without stopping to eat, drink, or rest.

A five-month-old Bar-tailed Godwit, set a new record for the longest nonstop flight ever documented in a bird. It traveled from Alaska to Tasmania,… pic.twitter.com/jera80hl6Q
— Science girl (@sciencegirl) April 16, 2026

Imagine being able to make marble look like water.

In 1858, an Italian sculptor did exactly that.

And no one has done it since…

He was commissioned to carve a naiad — a water nymph — for the baths of a palazzo in Brescia, Italy. In Greek mythology, Naiads were the living… pic.twitter.com/T2rkREhtNd
— James Lucas (@JamesLucasIT) April 16, 2026

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

Debt Rattle August 15 2025

Aug 152025

August 15, 2025 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 9:52 am Finance Tagged with: Alaska, Anchorage, Bessent, energetic, Hunter Biden, Melania, peace, Putin, sincere, summit, testicles, Trump, Zelensky 64 Responses »

Joseph Mallord William Turner The Tenth Plague of Egypt 1802

• Without Zelensky, Peace Has A Chance (Tara Reade)

• Kremlin Reveals Details Of Putin-Trump Summit (RT)

• Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent: “Europe Needs to Put Up or Shut Up” (CTH)

• US Efforts To Settle Ukraine Conflict ‘Energetic And Sincere’ – Putin (RT)

• Can Putin Pass the Test? (Paul Craig Roberts)

• Could Trump End War in Ukraine In Meeting With Putin? (Victor Davis Hanson)

• Kiev Tries To Kill As Many Civilians As It Can Right Before Talks (RT)

• Elie Honig Nuked Left’s Talking Points on Trump DC Crime Crackdown (Margolis)

• How Hillary Planned to Reward Schiff for Undermining Trump (Margolis)

• Trump Signs Executive Order To Fill Reserve With Critical Drugs (JTN)

• Treasury Secretary Bessent Calls For Trading Ban In Congress (JTN)

• The Boomer Mirage (Stylman)

• Sen. Kennedy: Democrats Need to ‘Buy Some Testicles’ on Amazon (Margolis)

• Melania Trump Threatens Hunter Biden With $1Bln Lawsuit for Defamation (Sp.)

Good stuff. Props to @POTUS , because Bondi is playing a dangerous game https://t.co/Xi4uflOVu0

— TheLastRefuge (@TheLastRefuge2) August 13, 2025

If you don’t think Washington, D.C. has a crime problem, then try walking around H Street, Columbia Heights, or Navy Yard on a Wednesday night and see for yourself.

The tofu mob should be thanking President Trump for helping instead of having their 19th nervous breakdown. pic.twitter.com/bsmFGGbquc

— John Kennedy (@SenJohnKennedy) August 13, 2025

Orban
https://twitter.com/PM_ViktorOrban/status/1955932465631256973

Hungary held the only migration referendum in Europe: our people expressed a clear NO to a flood of uninvited arrivals! So we built a fence and kept our country safe. Meanwhile, the West traded safety and prosperity for terror, chaos, and crushing costs. Sometimes standing alone… pic.twitter.com/JD4X0ID1Yo

— Orbán Viktor (@PM_ViktorOrban) August 14, 2025

Solomon

John Solomon says tomorrow will bring bombshell documents exposing Clinton Foundation corruption.

They will reveal a detailed timeline of how Obama’s DOJ blocked FBI agents from pursuing an investigation that could have led to Hillary Clinton’s arrest.

He says the trail to… pic.twitter.com/XR6Q07h2hw

— Shadow of Ezra (@ShadowofEzra) August 13, 2025

John Solomon is releasing an email from Obama’s Deputy AG Sally Yates, which was found by Kash Patel, that explicitly told FBI agents who were investigating corruption at the Clinton Foundation to “SHUT IT DOWN.”

So while President Trump was campaigning against Hillary and… pic.twitter.com/Jsv1MxipP5

— TheStormHasArrived (@TheStormRedux) August 13, 2025

We finally have HARD PROOF: Democrats gave “$6 billion to a conglomerate of United Nations agencies and over 200 NGOs” to facilitate the illegal immigration invasion of America

CONFIRMED: It was the United Nations who tried to take down America with the Democrat regime

Mike… pic.twitter.com/oQsCNUYAcT

— Wall Street Apes (@WallStreetApes) August 13, 2025

Kirk

The emergent enemy in the West is wokism/Marxism combining with Islamism to destroy the American way of life. What is that? It's getting married, buying a home, having kids, allowing them to ride their bike until the sun goes down. It's sending them to a good school where they're… pic.twitter.com/9leqlfLJVh

— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) August 13, 2025

Charlie Kirk delivered an absolute masterclass on CNBC this morning, atomizing the Ruling Class and explaining why no young person will ever trust them again due to their rampant dishonesty and corruption:

“We did not receive any apologies from the ruling class that lied to us… pic.twitter.com/ryesJpoyTr

— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) August 13, 2025

Big beautiful trap
https://twitter.com/WesternLensman/status/1955641913815810167

Mere hours before “The Summit”, everyone has an opinion. I just found 2 cents in my own back pocket.

First: these two guys have a lot of respect for each other, that leads everything.

I think both Trump and Putin want the summit to succeed, at least in a preparatory fashion. If it’s a failure, they can blame each other, but no chance it would look good on themselves either. Some claim a lack of preparation on one side or the other, but I bet they both come very well prepared. There may still be differences, they come from very different positions, but it won’t be from lack of preparation.

We can wonder if Trump has fully digested Russia’s view of what happened in the past 10 years, what started the “war” etc., but that, only they know. Trump has the constant clatter and clamor of Lindsey Graham, Zelensky and Europe in his ears telling him what to think and do, but if anything that will just make him eager to shut them down. We may come away surprised, but it’s more likely they pass it all down to the heavy delegations, and meet again in fall.

There’s no chance they will part company only to make more war. That will not happen.

• Without Zelensky, Peace Has A Chance (Tara Reade)

In 1867, the Russian empire sold Alaska to the US for $7.2 million. Perhaps the location of the upcoming summit between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin is a nod and a wink to such a great deal? Maybe Putin will like Alaska so much he will have seller’s remorse? Trump promised America a golden age coming that included ending the US involvement in Ukraine. No more US taxpayer money, no more weapons to Ukraine. No more escalation towards a nuclear war. Finally, that campaign promise looks to be coming to fruition with the upcoming summit to be held between the two superpower presidents, Trump and Putin, in Alaska. Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky publicly dismissed Trump’s peace plans. The last time Zelensky protested a movement towards peace he had European leaders rallying behind him.

This time proves more tricky for the illegitimate president of Ukraine with his people protesting forced conscriptions and the bloody losses of men and women for a war feeding the EU and Washington. Zelensky’s firing of an anti-corruption team triggered the latest uprising as he still will not hold elections. In short, Zelensky’s time is done and he will need to flee, along with his corrupt Ukrainian oligarchs, to the nearest European villa haven or face the possible fate of many unpopular dictators – death. Trump has many reasons for wanting this peace summit with Putin to be a success. First, he is by all accounts, ducking hits by his base about not releasing the Epstein files. The MAGA base is loyal but practical, and if the economy does not improve and foreign wars continue, they will turn their back on the Republican Party, not just Trump.

Also, the Ukraine conflict represents Biden and the old guard. Trump has repeatedly said, “This is NOT my war.” Trump has a certain respect for Putin. However, as time passes and old hawks like senator Lindsay Graham salivate for more blood and death, Trump’s goal of being the ‘peace president’ moves farther out of reach. The American people are over Ukraine, they are sick of American foreign adventures on taxpayer money that have left America’s infrastructure and morale in tatters. Trump is trying to undo decades of lies about wars and domestic policy now revealed to the public. The American distrust in media is at an all-time high due to the years of lies about wars, Covid, and domestic issues. This culminates in collective cynicism while social media allows for examinations of truths.

The cultural divide and frustrations in America are deeply felt but the main concern for Americans is the ability to get access to affordable food, housing, and medical care. All of this has been in crisis especially since the Biden regime drove the US economy into the ground raising the debt ceiling and focusing on endless wars.

The economic allure of Russia and America having positive productive trade is not lost on Trump and his leadership. Russia has risen above sanctions with a strong economy, and BRICS has been growing stronger. The attempts to isolate Russia have failed, while the collective West has remained under the thumb of past US hawks. This has brought the near collapse of some of the Western European economies. Trump at his heart is a businessman interested in economic competition rather than war. His current administration is a mix of old guard neocon hawks and anti-war doves. This curious mixture with strong influences from Israel means Trump’s foreign policy still somewhat aligns with Biden’s and Obama’s – and that is a comparison he wishes to distance himself from.

Both the US and Russia know that Ukraine employs terrorist tactics, killing civilians and targeting journalists, which is problematic to any signed legal agreements. There is also the fact that Moscow does not consider Zelensky a legitimate president since his term ran out and he canceled elections. How legal would any peace agreements signed with him be? Perhaps the answer will come from the US president in the form of guarantees of no more weapons or funding to Ukraine, but these would have to involve binding commitments – unlike earlier empty promises of no eastward NATO expansion.

Ultimately, Zelensky is less than inconsequential to the future of global politics – he is a liability to the West. The real end to this proxy war between the US/NATO and Russia will be decided between Trump and Putin. It will likely start with broad brush strokes of a peace agreement, with details, boundaries and consequences laid out later in bureaucratic form. There will be posturing, but also economic and trade deals made. Perhaps a joint mission in space could be one positive outcome? The lifting of sanctions and putting an end to the Russophobia campaign fueled by Obama and Biden? A more positive approach to disarmament of nuclear weapons? While Putin might not buy back Alaska for Russia, there may be some movement to final peace in regards to Ukraine. If the EU falls into line with the US to drop this proxy war, stop supplying weapons, and not allow Ukraine into NATO, then real peace does have some hope.

The world may even have a chance of having a new golden age, rather than a future of nuclear ash.

“Putin and Trump will not only deliver a short opening statement but also hold a joint press conference after the talks..”

• Kremlin Reveals Details Of Putin-Trump Summit (RT)

The summit between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his US counterpart, Donald Trump, on Friday will focus not only on the Ukraine conflict but on a broader security agenda and involve several top Russian officials, Kremlin aide Yury Ushakov has said. Speaking to reporters on Thursday, Ushakov said that “final preparations” were underway for the meeting on Friday, which will take place at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage, Alaska. Given the short notice for the summit, “everything is being done in an intensive mode,” including tackling several technical issues, including visa-related matters, he added. Ushakov said the summit will begin at approximately 11:30 a.m. local time (19:30 GMT) with a one-on-one conversation between Putin and Trump, accompanied by interpreters.

“Then, there will be negotiations in the format of delegations, and these negotiations will continue over a working lunch,” he said. The Kremlin aide noted the very high level of the Russian delegation, which he said would include Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, Ushakov himself, Defense Minister Andrey Belousov, Finance Minister Anton Siluanov, and Special Presidential Representative for Investment and Economic Cooperation with Foreign Countries Kirill Dmitriev, who has been a key figure in the Ukraine settlement process. “In addition to the presidents, five members from each delegation will participate in the negotiations,” he said, adding that “of course, a group of experts will also be nearby.”

Regarding the agenda, it is “obvious” that the central issue in the talks will be the Ukraine conflict, Ushakov said, adding, though, that “broader objectives of ensuring peace and security will also be addressed, as well as current and most acute international and regional issues.”There will also be an exchange of views “regarding the further development of bilateral cooperation, including in the trade and economic spheres,” Ushakov noted, adding that such ties have “enormous and, unfortunately, still untapped potential.” Ushakov confirmed that Putin and Trump will not only deliver a short opening statement but also hold a joint press conference after the talks. He said the duration of the talks “would depend on how the discussion goes” and confirmed “the delegation will return [to Russia] immediately after the negotiations conclude.”

With more summit details. I understand talks start 30 min earlier than announced.

• Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent: “Europe Needs to Put Up or Shut Up” (CTH)

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent appears with Maria Bartiromo to discuss the upcoming summit between Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President Donald Trump. Bessent notes the backseat demands from EU leaders with their position on the Trump negotiation strategy has worn thin amid their hypocrisy. “It’s time to put up or shut up,” Bessent says, when talking about how the EU is still facilitating the economic purchases of Russian energy products, while simultaneously demanding Trump do this and that.

I am cautiously optimistic for a positive outcome from this summit.
• Date: Friday August 15, 2025
• Venue: Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson near Anchorage, Alaska
• Anchorage is 4 hours behind Eastern Time zone.

DELEGATION:
USA President Donald Trump – Russian Federation, President Vladimir Putin
USA Press Secretary, Karoline Leavitt – Russian Federation, Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov
USA Secretary of State, Marco Rubio – Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov
USA Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth – Russian Defense Minister Andrei Belousov
USA Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent – Russian Finance Minister, Anton Siluanov
USA Envoy Steve Witkoff – Russian Envoy Kirill Dmitriev

President Trump will depart the White House early Friday morning ET. Trump is expected in Anchorage midafternoon Eastern time on Friday. The initial meeting with Putin is expected to take place at 3:30 pm ET (11:30 am local) with just the two leaders and translators. Following the meeting, President Trump and President Putin with hold a lunch with members of delegations from both countries. The two leaders then plan to hold a joint press conference following their meeting, White House and Kremlin officials said Thursday morning.

“She added that the US president would prefer not to impose any new sanctions on Russia but instead resolve the situation through diplomacy.”

• US Efforts To Settle Ukraine Conflict ‘Energetic And Sincere’ – Putin (RT)

The US is making a genuine effort to stop the fighting in Ukraine and reach agreements that would account for the interests of all parties involved, Russian President Vladimir Putin has said. Putin is scheduled to meet with US President Donald Trump on Friday in Anchorage, Alaska, to discuss ways of ending the Ukraine conflict, as well as steps toward normalizing relations between Moscow and Washington. On Thursday, Putin met with top government officials in Moscow to discuss the upcoming summit and “the stage where we are with the current US administration.”

He said that the American leadership is making “quite energetic and sincere efforts to stop the hostilities” and working to “create long-term conditions of peace between our countries and in Europe, and in the world as a whole.” Putin added that this process could be further advanced if Russia and the US reach agreements on strategic offensive weapons control in the next stages of negotiations. Among the officials present at Thursday’s meeting were Defense Minister Andrey Belousov, Finance Minister Anton Siluanov, and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, all of whom will be traveling to Alaska on Friday to take part in the Putin-Trump summit. According to the Kremlin, the event will begin with a one-on-one conversation between the two leaders, followed by a meeting of the Russian and US delegations.

Trump has described the summit as a “feel-out meeting” that will help him determine whether the Ukraine conflict can be resolved. He has said that if the talks go well, he may seek a second round of negotiations involving Putin and Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said on Thursday that Trump will pursue all possible options for a peaceful end to the conflict during his meeting with Putin. She added that the US president would prefer not to impose any new sanctions on Russia but instead resolve the situation through diplomacy.

Not a clue why he says that Putin would ..”agree to such a meeting with zero preparatory work..”

He has every single detail in his head, it’s how he works, no need for paper. And on top of that he has 4 of his top advisors with him. How does that add up to zero?

• Can Putin Pass the Test? (Paul Craig Roberts)

Yesterday President Trump in his public statements validated my conclusion that Trump does not know what the Russian position is and that he is going to the meeting to find out what the “parameters” are and that he sees the meeting as a “feel-out meeting” to see whether the conflict in Ukraine can be ended. In other words, no solution is expected from the meeting for which no preparatory work has been done. So what are the high-blown expectations for the meeting based on? Why build up such expectations when there is no proposal on the table? Where is the “acceptable” offer that Yury Ushakov found in the non-proposal that convinced Putin to go to Alaska? Is the answer that the purpose of the meeting is to put Putin on the spot by creating expectations of success that cannot be achieved?

French President Macron said that Trump told him that he intends to “obtain a ceasefire in Ukraine during the meeting with Putin.” When Putin doesn’t agree to halt Russia’s successful offensive, is the plan to blame Putin for wrecking the chance for peace? Will this help weaken BRICS by Putin being blamed for secondary tariffs imposed on India, China, Brazil, South Africa? (From Bloomberg today: Raising the stakes. Donald Trump warned he would impose “very severe consequences” if Vladimir Putin didn’t agree to a ceasefire agreement, following a call with European leaders ahead of his meeting with the Russian president. But Tass reported that the two will hold a joint press conference after the talks. Meanwhile, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told Europe it’s “put up or shut up time” when it comes to sanctions on nations that buy Russian energy.)

That is what it looks like. The Ukrainian front is collapsing. A ceasefire would halt the Russian advance and give the Ukrainian force time to stabilize and reinforce its positions. This is important to the West, because once Russia completes the task of driving the Ukrainian forces out of all of the territory that has been reincorporated into the Russian Federation, there is no land in Ukrainian hands for Trump to swap with Putin. As I have reported a number of times, a land-swap is not one of the conditions on Putin’s list. What Putin means by “the root cause of the conflict” is Russia’s sense of insecurity with NATO and US nuclear missiles on Russia’s border. When the Soviet Union put nuclear missiles in Cuba as an offset to the nuclear missiles Washington had put in Turkey on the Soviet Union’s border, Washington was intensely upset. Today the US has missiles on Russia’s border and the opportunity to have missile bases on Russia’s borders ranging from Finland to the South Caucus, which is a large multiplication of the one Soviet missile base in Cuba.

So if one base in Cuba made the US uncomfortable, imagine how uncomfortable Russia is with the prospect of nuclear missiles along the border for thousands of kilometers. American and European politicians and policymakers have not acknowledged that the root cause of the conflict is NATO on Russia’s border. The prospect of Ukraine joining NATO and being added to the territory hosting US missile bases was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Trump’s land swap and ceasefire do not address Russia’s security problem. The root cause of the conflict is Russia’s sense of insecurity. That can only be solved by getting NATO off of Russia’s borders. This is the purpose of the mutual security agreement that Putin has been trying to negotiate for a number of years only to be given the cold shoulder as by the Biden regime during December 2021-February 2022.

Ask yourselves if you think Trump is in a sufficiently powerful position to override both the neoconservative doctrine of US hegemony and the interest of the American military/security complex. As long as the Wolfowitz Doctrine holds, and it has not been repudiated by President Trump, the Secretary of State, or Congress, the US is committed to “preventing the rise of any country that can serve as a constraint on American unilateralism.” As this is the stated commitment, how can NATO be removed from Russia’s border? President Eisenhower warned Americans in 1961 that the rise of the Cold War with the Soviet Union prevented the demobilization of the American war machine that normally followed the end of war. Instead, a powerful military/industrial complex has risen with roots in nearly every state, which gives it enormous power in Congress and among state governors.

That was 64 years ago. Since that time the power of the military/security complex has multiplied. Is this institutionalized power willing to take the hit to its budget and power from a mutual security agreement with its principal enemy? The questions I am asking are the determining questions. Nothing else that is said matters. Yet, these essential questions are not a part of the discussion in Washington, in Europe, or in the Kremlin. It is as if none of the participants in a growing conflict that could be terminable for life on Earth have any idea of the consequences of their decisions. Why suddenly did Trump who a couple of days before yesterday said he didn’t want to meet with Putin demand a meeting within the week when Trump doesn’t even know what the “parameters” are? How can a serious meeting be held when a principal participant doesn’t even know what the opponent’s position is?

Why did Putin agree to such a meeting with zero preparatory work that exposes him to tremendous pressure to capitulate? This represents the total failure of Putin’s advisors. It indicates to the West that Russia is a weak defender of its interest. Perhaps more pressure will be all it takes to bring Russia in line with US hegemony. If Trump goes into the meeting with this attitude, Putin’s choice will be to capitulate or to bring down more demonization on him and Russia for blocking peace. It does look like Kirill Demitriev and Steve Witcoff, both globalists, have succeeded in setting up Putin and Russia. What is on test in Alaska is Putin’s mettle.

Repeating the tired notion of Russia losing more people than Ukraine, by now disqualifies you.

• Could Trump End War in Ukraine In Meeting With Putin? (Victor Davis Hanson)

This week there’s a scheduled summit between Russian President Vladimir Putin and President Donald Trump, and it’s scheduled to be held in Anchorage, Alaska. Apparently, this was a place that offered a great deal of security. It’s a smaller, controllable city. It’s in the United States, but on the other hand, it’s one of the closest places, major cities, to Russia itself from the United States. We don’t have a very good history of summits. And many summits—as you remember, in March of 2017, Antony Blinken, the Biden secretary of state, and Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser, met with their Chinese communist counterparts. And they were dressed down and humiliated and really didn’t say anything. And what followed then from that was further Chinese aggression toward Taiwan, the Chinese balloon, etc. So these summits are very important.

One thing that we’re not hearing from the Left and the Never-Trump Right is that Donald Trump is a “Putin asset,” a “Putin puppet.” I’m quoting pretty loosely, but accurately, what former National Intelligence Director James Clapper and former CIA Director John Brennan have been saying for 10 years on social media and on cable news. And the reason they’re not saying that Donald Trump is a Putin puppet and going to be had is that he gave Putin an “Art of the Deal” leeway when he first came into office and he doubled down on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. He basically was saying, “Putin, see, I’m giving you an opportunity.” Putin did not take it. Donald Trump pivoted and found out that he had to use leverage against Putin. And the leverage he’s going to use, or has threatened to use, is far more deleterious to Russia and far more dangerous and far more ambitious than anything imagined by former President Joe Biden, namely, a secondary boycott.

That would be to not trade with countries that trade with Russia. That could include the two largest countries in the world, India and China. India had very close relations with us. We were trying to triangulate India against China. They have their own border disputes and long-standing disagreements. But if we secondary boycott India, that will be a rumination of our relations with India. So, what I’m getting at is Donald Trump’s taking a lot of risk, a lot of risk in using a secondary boycott to pressure Putin. Ninety percent of the issues are already solved. They have been for a year or two. We’re now in a deadlock. Russia claims they’ve only lost 200,000 dead. But they more likely lost a million dead, wounded, missing, taken prisoner. We don’t know the exact ratios of each. And probably Ukraine with their dead, missing, wounded, prisoners around, I don’t know, 400,000 or 500,000. So this is like a Stalingrad or a Somme or a Verdun.

We know the general parameters. We’ve discussed them before. Ukraine will not be in NATO. That’s a concession to Putin. But it really isn’t a concession because, privately, a lot of the NATO members did not want Ukraine because they had no intention of going all the way to the Donbas, should Russia invade again, on Article 5 of the NATO doctrine. They were not going to follow that. So they don’t want Ukraine in NATO. Neither do we. I’m not sure Ukraine even does, privately.Secondly, there was no military ability. There’s a moral argument for, but no military ability, to take back Crimea and take back the Donbas. So what we’re discussing now is that the Russian army is about a hundred miles west from the border in Crimea, the Donbas, and then further west. In total, about a hundred miles. That would be the DMZ—in other words, the Demilitarized Zone, where we have a ceasefire, an armistice.

And then we would haggle in a peace conference over exchanges of territory on either side. That’s the outline of peace. The problem is that—there’s two problems. One: Ukraine’s Constitution says no land—no land, not Crimea, not Donbas—nothing can be ceded to a foreign country without a plebiscite. And we don’t know what the Ukrainian people will say. They polled they’re tired of the war. They polled they don’t want to give one inch of their sovereign territory. On the other side, Putin himself knows that he has to report to the oligarchic and military hierarchy. And he doesn’t know whether a hundred miles west, in addition to institutionalizing the possession of Crimea and the Donbas for good, whether that extra hundred miles from the border territory will justify the enormous losses, humiliation that the Russian military has suffered.

So, we’re gonna have this summit. And Trump is going to say to Putin, “You can have no NATO Ukraine. You can have the Crimea. You can have the Donbas. I think I can get Zelenskyy and the Ukrainian people to agree. But we’ve gotta fight over how far west you are and whether you have to go back or will stay in place.”And then he’s going to have to tell Zelenskyy, “We’re supplying you. That’s the only leverage we have against Putin, along with a secondary boycott. But you have to decide whether you’re going to cede the Donbas, Crimea, and some of the territory. Because if you don’t, there’s not going to be peace. And if there’s not going to be peace, we can’t assure you a blank check forever.”

So, that’s what the parameters are. And one thing that we do know, the Never-Trump Right, as I said, and the Left have ceased the “Donald Trump is a puppet,” “Donald Trump is a sellout,” “Donald Trump is a Russian asset” because nobody in the last four years, in the Biden administration, has met with the Russians and especially the last three years since the war started. Nobody made the attempt.= So, at least we have the principles: talking to each other, we know what the outlines of a peace agreement are. And it’s just a matter of what each president has to take back to the powers that be and see if they’ve given too many or not enough concessions.

A tactic, a pattern…

• Kiev Tries To Kill As Many Civilians As It Can Right Before Talks (RT)

On August 14, 2025, Russian officials reported Ukrainian drone strikes on the border cities of Belgorod and Rostov-on-Don, killing and injuring civilians. Rostov saw an apartment building struck, with over a dozen casualties; in Belgorod, three civilians were hurt when a drone hit a car downtown. This came two days after the Russian Ministry of Defence (MoD) alleged that Ukrainian forces were preparing a false-flag provocation in the Kharkov region, complete with pre-positioned journalists – supposedly to shape a narrative blaming Moscow. These incidents are not isolated. They fit into a larger operational and political pattern: each time high-level talks are scheduled Kiev steps up attacks on Russia’s border regions. The results are the same: civilian deaths, destruction of civilian infrastructure, and an attempt to create a cloud over the diplomatic process.

The same happened in late May and early June 2025, just before the second round of Russia–Ukraine talks in Istanbul, when two bridges in Russian territory were blown up. The attacks killed seven civilians and injured over seventy more. In Moscow’s interpretation, the timing was too precise to be coincidence – it was about setting a tone of hostility, perhaps provoking Russia into walking away from the talks entirely. And yet, Moscow did not take the bait. Russian negotiators showed up in Istanbul as planned. For the Kremlin, this has become a point of principle: no matter the provocations, Russia will attend discussions that could bring an end to the conflict – on its own terms.

The upcoming Alaska summit on August 15, 2025, between Presidents Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump, is the latest such opportunity. The alleged Kharkov region provocation and the strikes on Belgorod and Rostov are seen in Moscow as deliberate background noise meant to derail the meeting or at least to sour its atmosphere. But just as in Istanbul, the Kremlin insists it will not be deterred. For Moscow, attending these talks is about more than optics. It underscores a long-held stance: Russia is prepared to end the conflict, but not at the price of what it views as its core national interests. Walking away now, after years of costly military and political investment, would make little sense. Instead, the aim is to secure a resolution that cements Russia’s gains and ends the war on Moscow’s terms – not by fighting “to the last Ukrainian,” but by ensuring that the outcome is final and strategically advantageous.

From the Kremlin’s perspective, Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky’s motives are clear. Accepting a peace that involves territorial concessions would not only be a bitter political defeat – it could spell the end of his political career. More critically, it would remove the emergency powers he has repeatedly invoked since the start of the conflict to cancel elections and prolong his term in office. Those powers have also enabled controversial measures: forced conscriptions, suppression of opposition media, and an intensified crackdown on dissent. These steps have eroded his popularity inside Ukraine, making his hold on power dependent on the continuation of the wartime state of emergency. If the war ends, so does the legal shield of emergency rule – and with it, his immunity. Zelensky therefore has both political and personal incentives to keep the fighting going, even at significant cost to Ukraine’s population.

“I’ve been a 100% unambiguous critic of everything Donald Trump did on January 6th. I believe he should have been charged criminally. I believe the pardons were a disgrace. But why does that mean he can’t do anything now to enforce the law…”

• Elie Honig Nuked Left’s Talking Points on Trump DC Crime Crackdown (Margolis)

CNN’s top legal analyst just shredded one of the Democrats’ favorite talking points about President Trump’s decision to federalize the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department. Appearing on CNN NewsNight Wednesday evening, Elie Honig, who has been an outspoken critic of Trump, flatly rejected the left’s talking points that the move was illegitimate or purely political theater.“I’ve worked extensively with police. And I don’t have a problem tactically with what Donald Trump is doing here,” Honig told the panel. “It doesn’t have to be the most dangerous place on Earth. Something can be improving, but still really bad. If your house is on fire and then a third of the fire goes out, it’s less bad, but it could still be an emergency.” Honig didn’t sugarcoat his assessment of the nation’s capital.

“I work in D.C. It is dangerous there. You cannot deny that,” he said. “A common police tactic is to surge resources. I’ve been part — we call them ‘task forces’ — they’re applauded across the board, across the political board. I’ve done it in New Jersey. I’ve done it in New York. You take the FBI, you team them up with the Newark P.D., what have you, you make a visible presence.” Honig went even further, making clear that his past condemnation of Trump over January 6 doesn’t mean the president can’t act now to enforce the law. “I’ve been a 100% unambiguous critic of everything Donald Trump did on January 6th. I believe he should have been charged criminally. I believe the pardons were a disgrace. But why does that mean he can’t do anything now to enforce the law, to promote public safety?”

That stance drew pushback from Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.), who accused Trump of hypocrisy and labeled the move “political theater.” “None of this is fundamentally address a crime problem in D.C.,” Torres claimed. Honig didn’t flinch. “Would you rather have national security out in D.C. where you work?” The debate intensified when Scott Jennings pointed out that the D.C. police union backed Trump’s move. “The police union came out on this action by the president and said, ‘We wholeheartedly support the president; we need the support.’ Are they right or wrong?” Jennings asked. Torres insisted federal law enforcement wasn’t the right tool for the job, claiming the FBI’s mission is limited to counterterrorism and counterintelligence. Honig immediately corrected him.

“That’s not true. I’ve heard that said a lot. The FBI does street operations. People say the FBI, they’re chasing terrorists — some are,” he said. “I worked with the FBI. The FBI does street reps, they do drug buys, they do gun buys. It’s part of what they do. It’s not a misuse of the FBI.” While CNN anchor Abby Phillip raised questions about federal agents conducting traffic stops and clearing homeless encampments, Honig circled back to a simple point: If D.C.’s leadership truly objected, they could act. “If they thought this was so illegal, unwarranted, inappropriate, why have they not challenged it? They’ve challenged it rhetorically, but they haven’t gone to the board on it.” In the end, Honig’s comments blew a hole in the narrative that Trump’s action was an abuse of power — and they came from someone who has never been shy about criticizing the president.

Imagine that drip as head of the CIA. That’s what we narrowly escaped.

• How Hillary Planned to Reward Schiff for Undermining Trump (Margolis)

As PJ Media previously reported, then-congressman Schiff was the architect behind the deliberate leaking of classified information aimed at smearing Trump and pushing a narrative against him designed to ensure his prosecution. Back in 2017, a veteran career intelligence officer working for Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee warned the FBI that Schiff had not only approved but actively orchestrated the leaking of sensitive classified intelligence. According to whistleblower testimony from 2023 interviews, Schiff convened a staff meeting where he explicitly declared that the group would leak damaging classified information about President Trump. His goal was to use this information to secure an indictment against Trump.

The whistleblower, who was close to Schiff and other intelligence figures on both sides of the aisle, described these actions as “unethical,” “illegal,” and “treasonous.” The implications don’t stop with Schiff. Investigative reporter Catherine Herridge has not only released FBI reports that reveal that Rep. Eric Swalwell, another Democrat on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, was also a habitual leaker of classified information, even receiving warnings from the FBI to be more cautious. The reports also indicate that had Clinton won the 2016 election, she would likely have rewarded Schiff for his efforts by appointing him CIA director, a testament to their deep ties and shared political objectives.

(U) By way of background, circa October 2016, [redacted], a [redacted] Staff Member House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HESCT), was told by various HPSCI staff colleagues if Hillary Clinton were to win the election Representative Adam Schiff (D – California) would be offered the position of the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) – As such, opined Schiff had reasons to support Clinton beyond his political affiliation. At that time normal partisan politics continued at HPSCI but there was no significant problem with regards to leaking classified information.

(U) Things changed after the election. Schiff believed Russia hijacked the election and the United States was in the middle of a constitutional crisis. Classified information began leaking to the media. The Democratic minority leadership of HPSCI was aware of the leaks but was under the impression that leaking the information was one way to topple the administration and fix the constitutional crisis.

This nexus between Clinton, Schiff, and the intelligence apparatus turned the Russia investigation into a political weapon, not an impartial probe. The whistleblower’s account, backed by FBI interviews, exposes a political war that Democrats waged from inside government agencies, using classified intelligence as ammunition in concert with Hillary Clinton’s campaign. These revelations highlight the weaponization of political power against a presidential candidate and later a sitting president, with classified information twisted into a fabricated scandal that consumed the news and crippled Washington.

Schiff’s central role, which aligned with Clinton’s interests, marks a peak in corruption and political gamesmanship. The FBI, DOJ, and Congress have a rare chance to reveal the full scope of this abuse and begin restoring public trust. This isn’t just partisan hardball; it’s a calculated misuse of government authority to topple an administration. The Schiff-Clinton intelligence nexus may have been the engine of the Russiagate hoax, and full exposure is long overdue. Few episodes in modern politics have done more damage to the rule of law and public confidence, and the very institutions meant to protect them orchestrated it all. It’s time to confront that reality head-on.

Bhattacharya appears to be the right man in the right place (NIH). But how did the US ever get a -looming- anti-biotics shortage?

• Trump Signs Executive Order To Fill Reserve With Critical Drugs (JTN)

President Trump has signed an executive order to fill the Strategic Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients Reserve with critical drugs to ensure “a resilient domestic supply chain for essential medicines.” The executive order signed on Tuesday directs the Department of Health and Human Services assistant secretary for Preparedness and Response to create a list of about 26 critical drugs that are deemed “vital to national health and security, and ready the SAPIR repository to receive and maintain the Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients (APIs) used to make these critical drugs,” according to a White House fact sheet. Also, the order charges the official with getting a 6-month supply of the APIs for the critical drugs, “with a preference for obtaining domestically-manufactured APIs if possible, and placing them in the SAPIR.” Trump additionally told the official to make a proposal for a second SAPIR repository.

The executive order comes after National Institutes of Health Director Jay Bhattacharya told Just the News, No Noise TV show last month that the U.S. has a shortage of some drugs, such as antibiotics. “So much of our manufacturing for drugs relies on the Chinese manufacturing, on Indian manufacturing,” Bhattacharya said. “And it leaves the United States in a very vulnerable place, where if you have a crisis, even when you don’t have a crisis, when there’s just normal demands for vital medical items, antibiotics, I already mentioned, normal saline. All of that is just normal demand. “We are in a shortage now of some of those things, because we do not have domestic manufacturing that can respond when there is an increase in demand, as there sometimes is,” he continued.

“Speaker Pelosi does not own any stocks and has no knowledge or subsequent involvement in any transactions.”

• Treasury Secretary Bessent Calls For Trading Ban In Congress (JTN)

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is calling for a single-stock trading ban in Congress. “I am going to start pushing for a single-stock trading ban, because it is the credibility of the House and the Senate, that you look at some of these eye-popping returns – whether it is Rep. Pelosi, Senator Wyden – every hedge fund would be jealous of them. And the American people deserve better than this,” Bessent told Bloomberg TV on Wednesday. Nancy Pelosi, of California, and Ron Wyden, are Democrats. Congressional Republicans including Georgia Rep. Majorie Taylor Greene, has also come under scrutiny. She recently disclosed stock trades made just before President Trump announced a 90-day pause on tariffs, prompting accusations of potential insider trading.

Greene told the Associated Press that she does not manage her own portfolio and that her investments are handled by a financial adviser. She also said all trades are disclosed in compliance with federal transparency requirements. “People shouldn’t come to Washington to get rich, they should come to serve the American people, and it brings down trust in the system because I can tell you that if any private citizen traded this way, the [Securities and Exchange Commission] would be knocking on their door,” he continued. Pelosi has long been criticized for her husband’s highly successful trades, which she is required to report in financial disclosures. Pelosi spokesperson Ian Krager told The Hill news outlet in response to Bessent, “Speaker Pelosi does not own any stocks and has no knowledge or subsequent involvement in any transactions.”

Wyden’s stock portfolio had a 123.8 percent gain last year, according to data from the financial analysis platform Unusual Whales. The Oregon senator posted on X in response to Bessent, “Nobody working for Donald Trump has any business pretending to care about ethics or the stock trading ban I support. If Scott Bessent gave a damn about the public interest, why is he holding a massive farm that puts him in a position to gain from Trump’s trade deals with China?” “Bessent is fuming that I blew the whistle on the fact that he’s hiding a huge Epstein file at the Treasury Department. Thousands of pages worth of Epstein’s bank records with names. Until he releases it, he’s just running interference for Epstein’s pedophile ring,” Wyden added.

Pelosi supports a bill advanced by all Democrats and Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., in the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee last month that would prevent members of Congress, their spouses, and their dependent children from buying and trading stocks, in addition to future presidents and vice presidents. In the House, Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., vowed to start a discharge petition to force a vote on another stock trade ban bill.

I am pushing for a ban on single-stock trading in Congress. The American people deserve better than politicians like @RonWyden and @SpeakerPelosi with hedge-fund level returns. Public service should be about serving the people, not getting rich. pic.twitter.com/yaXFGRfiMz

— Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent (@SecScottBessent) August 13, 2025

This is good. Do read the whole thing. The boomers have taken all the good stuff. But now they’e getting old, and the next generations are taking over financial (slowly) and political (faster) power.

• The Boomer Mirage (Stylman)

One Chart. Three Generations. Total Extraction. I saw this chart making the rounds on Twitter this week, and it stopped me cold. While the specific figures combine data from multiple sources, the trend is undeniable: in 1950, over half of 30-year-olds were married homeowners. By 2025, some analysts project that number as low as 13%.

That’s not a societal transformation. It’s not an economic fluke. It’s the visible outcome of an invisible strategy—one that extracted everything it could from a three-generation arc and left only illusions in its place. They’ll tell you people just choose differently now—that marriage rates fell because of changing values. But people can’t choose what they can’t afford. When the economic foundation for family formation disappears, cultural changes follow inevitably. That chart doesn’t show us changing values or new priorities. It shows systemic breakdown, disguised for decades as freedom. It maps the slow evaporation of the social contract. For one generation, adulthood was a starting point. For the next, a struggle. For the latest, an abstraction—marketed endlessly but almost never attained.

What began as a rite of passage has become a paywalled simulation. The post–World War II boom was never sustainable. In hindsight, this was obvious. It relied on conditions that were always time-limited: cheap energy from newly tapped oil fields, industrial monopolies before globalization kicked in, dollar hegemony that exported inflation globally, and a demographic pyramid with more workers than retirees. It was a golden window, not a golden age. And when the window closed, the illusion had to be maintained—through leverage, narrative, and ever-increasing sacrifice from the generations that followed.

The math quietly stopped working. Boomers bought homes for two or three times their annual income during an era when interest rates would fall for the next four decades—turning their mortgages into wealth-building machines as rates dropped from 15% to near-zero. Today’s buyers face five to six times their income—or more in major cities—while rates can only go up from historic lows. Where Boomers rode a 40-year tailwind of falling borrowing costs that inflated their assets while deflated their debt, current generations face headwinds at every turn. The Federal Reserve data confirms this unprecedented decline, showing rates falling from over 18% in the early 1980s to near 2.6% by 2021.

“They won’t speak up. They don’t stand for anything anymore..” [..] “All they stand for is whatever is against whatever President Trump stands for..”

• Sen. Kennedy: Democrats Need to ‘Buy Some Testicles’ on Amazon (Margolis)

If you don’t think Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) is a national treasure, you’re not paying attention. Kennedy has a rare gift for cutting through Washington’s polished, poll-tested nonsense with a plainspoken Southern wit that lands like a sledgehammer wrapped in velvet. Whether he’s grilling a bureaucrat in a Senate hearing or sparring with a cable news host, Kennedy delivers his critiques with the kind of folksy charm that leaves his targets stunned and his audience in stitches. On Wednesday night’s “Hannity,” Kennedy was in peak form, aiming at Chuck Schumer, Hakeem Jeffries, and the Democratic Party’s timid “mainstream wing” with a blistering, laugh-out-loud takedown that reminded viewers exactly why he’s one of the sharpest and funniest voices in American politics.

Kennedy unleashed his trademark blistering critique of the Democratic Party’s so-called “mainstream wing,” accusing it of being paralyzed by fear of its more radical members. “The mainstream wing of the party is scared to death of the loon wing,” Kennedy said. “They won’t speak up. And they don’t stand for anything anymore. All they stand for is whatever… is against whatever President Trump stands for.” He argued that this fear has led to Democrats adopting positions that Kennedy said are counterproductive, particularly regarding crime in the nation’s capital. “We find ourselves in the extraordinary position of mainstream Democrats have now come out firmly and passionately in favor of crime in Washington, D.C. Why? Because Trump is trying to do something about it,” he said.

When asked about Schumer and Jeffries, Kennedy did not hold back. “No, uh, they could, and I don’t mean any disrespect… I know Senator Schumer very well. So, I say this with respect. Chuck and Hakeem need to go to Amazon, buy some testicles… and stand up to the loon wing of their party,” he said, drawing laughter from the Fox News host Sean Hannity. Kennedy’s critique continued, targeting what he called the Democrats’ unwillingness to confront socialist elements within their own ranks. “Until they’re willing to do that, um, I haven’t heard Senator Schumer say anything bad about Mamdani. I mean, the guy’s a socialist. He’s a whack job,” Kennedy said. Hannity interjected, noting that party leaders are “afraid of the whack job,” to which Kennedy replied, “They’re scared to death in the party… The party is not going to get better until they do.”

https://twitter.com/JasonJournoDC/status/1955971871872090320

The conversation briefly turned to Kennedy’s colorful metaphor, with Hannity joking, “I didn’t know that Amazon sold testicles.” Kennedy responded in kind, saying, “You can buy anything on Amazon, Sean… They’re very cheap.” The back-and-forth underscored Kennedy’s blunt, no-nonsense style and his willingness to use humor to make a political point. Kennedy also believes the Democrats’ hesitancy to confront their more radical members has real-world consequences. “They won’t speak up. They don’t stand for anything anymore,” he said, repeating his core critique. “All they stand for is whatever is against whatever President Trump stands for. That’s why we find ourselves… in the extraordinary position” he described earlier. By the end of the interview, Kennedy summed up his message with his usual bluntness. “The party is not going to get better until they do,” he said.

“The deadline was August 7. The broadcaster reported, citing a source, that Hunter Biden did not comply with Melania Trump’s demand within the established deadline.”

• Melania Trump Threatens Hunter Biden With $1Bln Lawsuit for Defamation (Sp.)

US President Donald Trump’s wife Melania has threatened former President Joe Biden’s son Hunter with a $1 billion lawsuit for allegedly “false” and “defamatory” statements against her related to the case of financier Jeffrey Epstein, a letter from the first lady’s lawyer read. The document published on the Fox News website noted that on August 5, Hunter Biden released a video on YouTube titled “Hunter Biden Returns,” which contained a number of statements that the first lady claims are false. “Here are the false statements in the Video that are defamatory per se: a.‘Epstein introduced Melania to Trump. The connections are, like, so wide and deep.’ b. ‘Jeffrey Epstein introduced Melania, that’s how Melania and the First Lady and the President met,” the letter said.

Hunter responds: “fuck that. That’s not going to happen”https://t.co/0AMuDBqrYA https://t.co/2EubenB0HQ pic.twitter.com/2F986cAv3W

— Alex Thompson (@AlexThomp) August 14, 2025

Melania’s lawyer demanded that Hunter “immediately issue a full and fair retraction of the video and any and all other false, defamatory, disparaging, misleading, and inflammatory statements about Mrs. Trump.” If the ex-president’s son does not comply with the demand, Melania intends to sue him for $1 billion in damages. The deadline was August 7. The broadcaster reported, citing a source, that Hunter Biden did not comply with Melania Trump’s demand within the established deadline.

Fauci
https://twitter.com/TRUMP_ARMY_/status/1955939204229423564

Bhakdi

Prof. Sucharit Bhakdi: "I am no longer optimistic anymore. And the reason is very simple."

"I'm afraid that these [mRNA] vaccines… have already done their job."

"We're seeing… billions of people whose brains are not working anymore."

"They are altered." pic.twitter.com/iCqgrsTgyl

— Wide Awake Media (@wideawake_media) August 14, 2025

Warning: The mRNA "Vaccines" Are Destroying Minds– A Diabolical Crime Against Humanity

Dr. Sucharit Bhakdi, a renowned microbiologist, has issued a chilling warning: the so-called COVID-19 "vaccines" are not just harming bodies—they are erasing minds.

These experimental… pic.twitter.com/BC8EwzU3WM

— Camus (@newstart_2024) August 13, 2025

disease

This is going to absolutely blow your mind

Dr David Morris “You want to know why something isn't covered by insurance that you think might help you or your doctor thinks might help you? — I'm going to read you this, this is Medicare guidelines section 2251.3

I'm quoting this to… pic.twitter.com/FoRvHyn6oM

— Wall Street Apes (@WallStreetApes) August 14, 2025

insects

"There are at least six or seven companies… now using crickets—insects—to make flour."

"Insect-related businesses in the Western world are producing insect proteins for foods, beverages, confectionaries… butters, oils… as well as spice and seasoning."

"So it's most likely… pic.twitter.com/DMIyzlA2v5

— Wide Awake Media (@wideawake_media) August 14, 2025

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Debt Rattle March 19 2025

Mar 192025

March 19, 2025 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 10:35 am Finance Tagged with: Alina Habba, autopen, consensus, energy, Hunter Biden, impeach, infrastructure, Kursk, splashdown, VOA 45 Responses »

Caravaggio The seven works of mercy (Sette opere di Misericordia) 1607

• Trump, Putin Agree On ‘Energy and Infrastructure Ceasefire’ (RT)

• Trump, Putin Reached ‘Consensus’ On Ukraine – Witkoff (RT)

• Kiev Thinks Trump ‘Can’t Stand’ Ukraine – The Economist (RT)

• Hungary Expects Peace In Ukraine In Just Two Weeks (TASS)

• Russian Army ‘Has Gotten Infinitely Smarter’ – Erik Prince (RT)

• Trump Administration Releases JFK Assassination Files (RT)

• Hunter Biden Whistleblowers Promoted By Trump After Biden-era Retaliation (JTN)

• Trump Cancels Hunter Biden’s Costly Secret Service Protection (ZH)

• Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act Could End Up Costing Taxpayers $5 Trillion (JTN)

• Biden’s Autopen Scandal Just Got a Whole Lot Worse (Margolis)

• Is This the Aide Who Abused Joe Biden’s Autopen? (Margolis)

• EU Could Take Over US State-funded Media Outlet – Kallas (RT)

• SCOTUS Chief Justice Roberts Says Impeaching Judge ‘Not Appropriate’ (ZH)

• Obama Judge Rules Against DOGE Shutdown Of USAID (ZH)

• Trump Admin Moves To Reinstate Over 24,000 Federal Workers (ZH)

• Trump Adviser Alina Habba Sounds Alarm on ‘Human Extortion’ (ET)

Elon Musk: There's an 80%-90% chance AI will usher humanity into a phase of extreme prosperity.

“In 10 years, AI can probably do almost anything better than a human cognitively. Based on the current rate of improvement, AI will be smarter than the smartest human.

There will… pic.twitter.com/TuTvP19Qow

— ELON CLIPS (@ElonClipsX) March 18, 2025

https://twitter.com/JackPosobiec/status/1901832507080712314

JUST IN: Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller absolutely unleashes on Andrew Weissmann for defending members of Tren de Aragua who were deported from the U.S.

"Andrew Weissman is an absolute moron. He is a moron and he is a fool and he's a degenerate."

"Andrew Weissman has… pic.twitter.com/kMGxqKC1UJ

— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) March 17, 2025

2,900

UNBELIEVABLE!!!!

Only 49 out of the 2,900 people were showing up to work full time!

What a waste of tax payers money!

Our Director of Federal Housing Bill Pulte is about to clean house.

Thank you @pulte

pic.twitter.com/K8jKmiiGPA

— Terrence K. Williams (@w_terrence) March 18, 2025

small r

No, these people are likely not receiving checks. The cleanup of the Social Security database is about something much more important. It is about establishing a ground truth.

There is a reason that DC is panicking about establishing a truly accurate Social Security database,…

— DataRepublican (small r) (@DataRepublican) March 18, 2025

RPReport

Trump started off like an "America First" freight train.

But in only 2 months, that train is going off the rails.

As usual, with wars.

Pull yourself back from the abyss, President Trump. pic.twitter.com/9Zt5btVBHY

— Ron Paul (@RonPaul) March 18, 2025

Looked like a useless phone call. Don’t think the US side seriously prepared. Subtle difference that came up: were they talking about “energy infrastructure” or about “energy and infrastructure”? Vast difference.

• Trump, Putin Agree On ‘Energy and Infrastructure Ceasefire’ (RT)

US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin have agreed that the first step towards ending the Ukraine conflict should be an “energy and infrastructure ceasefire,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt has revealed. The leaders reached the agreement during a 2.5 hour phone conversation on Tuesday. According to the readout of the phone call published on X by Leavitt on Tuesday, both leaders concur that the conflict must conclude with a lasting peace. They also emphasized the importance of strengthening bilateral relations. “The leaders agreed that the movement to peace will begin with an energy and infrastructure ceasefire, as well as technical negotiations on implementation of a maritime ceasefire in the Black Sea, full ceasefire and permanent peace,” the transcript reads.

The Kremlin has confirmed that Putin supported Trump’s proposal for Russia and Ukraine to halt strikes on energy infrastructure for 30 days, and instructed his military accordingly. According to the readout, Moscow and Washington have agreed to hold relevant negotiations “immediately in the Middle East.” Aside from Ukraine, the two heads of state are said to have discussed the situation in the Middle East as well as potential cooperation with a view to preventing future conflicts in the region. Another topic high on the two leaders’ agenda was the “need to stop proliferation of strategic weapons” globally, according to the White House press secretary. “The two leaders agreed that a future with an improved bilateral relationship between the United States and Russia has huge upside,” including but not limited to “enormous economic deals and geopolitical stability,” the readout concludes.

Witkoff sounds empty. Opportunities missed. There won’t be that many. I don’t see anything that brings Kursk close to a solution.

• Trump, Putin Reached ‘Consensus’ On Ukraine – Witkoff (RT)

The US and Russia have agreed that Moscow and Kiev should pause attacks on each other’s energy infrastructure, President Donald Trump’s Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, has said. Witkoff made his comments following a phone call between Trump and Putin on Tuesday. The diplomat previously had a lengthy conversation with Putin in Moscow on March 13. Witkoff highlighted that Putin had agreed to Trump’s proposal to halt strikes on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure for 30 days and backed a ceasefire in the sea. “Up until recently, we really didn’t have consensus around these two aspects – the energy and infrastructure ceasefire and the Black Sea moratorium on firing – and today we got to that place, and I think it’s a relatively short distance to a full ceasefire from there,” Witkoff told Fox News’ Sean Hannity on Tuesday evening.

“I’m certainly hopeful that the Ukrainians will agree to it. We have some details to work out, of course,” he added. “I would commend President Putin for all he did today on that call to move his country close to a final peace deal,” the envoy said. “And I would give all the credit to President Trump, his election, peace through strength, the perception that there are no alternatives, and the fact that a good peace and lasting peace are important for both sides.” “It was these two great leaders coming together for the betterment of mankind,” Witkoff said. According to the Kremlin’s readout of the call, Putin has “immediately” ordered the Russian troops to halt attacks on Ukraine’s energy sites. The president responded “favorably” to the maritime truce proposal and instructed to begin the talks to “further work out specific details of such an agreement,” the Kremlin said.

Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky told reporters on Tuesday that he supports a maritime ceasefire and a moratorium on strikes on energy facilities in principle but will wait for the American side to provide details about the arrangement. Witkoff told Fox News that the talks will continue in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, on Sunday. According to Reuters, it was unclear whether Ukraine would participate in the meeting.

“In seven weeks, we have switched from being allies to customers, and with largely imagined debts..”

• Kiev Thinks Trump ‘Can’t Stand’ Ukraine – The Economist (RT)

US President Donald Trump “can’t stand” Ukraine, an official in Kiev has reportedly told The Economist, claiming that since the Republican returned to office, Washington has shifted from supporting Ukraine to treating it as a “customer.” The report comes as Ukraine continues to suffer military setbacks, particularly in Russia’s Kursk Region, where Kiev launched an incursion last year. According to Moscow, most of the territory has already been liberated while the remainder of Ukraine’s forces have been encircled by the Russian military. According to The Economist, some Ukrainian officials believe Trump’s recent move to temporarily cut off military aid and intelligence assistance to Kiev may have played a role in the country’s frontline setbacks.

One source told the outlet that Trump may have been deliberately seeking to strip Kiev of bargaining power in future negotiations with Russia. A separate government official claimed it may have been a coincidence, but emphasized that Ukraine’s relationship with Washington has changed. “What is clear is that Trump can’t stand us,” the source said. “In seven weeks, we have switched from being allies to customers, and with largely imagined debts,” the source added, apparently referring to Trump’s demand that Ukraine return several hundred billion dollars that was reportedly provided under the administration of former President Joe Biden.

Since his inauguration in January, Trump has taken a starkly different approach to Ukraine than his predecessor. While the former administration pledged to support Ukraine financially and militarily for “as long as it takes,” Trump has instead been pressuring Kiev towards a ceasefire and peace negotiations with Moscow. In February, Trump had a public dispute with Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky during his visit to the White House, where the latter was accused of “gambling with World War III” by refusing to seek peace. After the heated exchange, Trump temporarily halted military aid and intelligence sharing with Kiev.

However, the decision was reversed last week after the two sides held talks in Saudi Arabia, where Ukraine agreed to a US proposal of a 30-day ceasefire. Since then, Washington has been trying to negotiate the terms of a ceasefire with Moscow. Trump is expected to hold a phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday to discuss the initiative. Moscow has signaled openness to negotiations on a truce, although Putin has stressed that a number of issues must be addressed beforehand, including resolving the situation surrounding Ukrainian forces in Kursk as well as guarantees that Kiev would not use a ceasefire to arm and remobilize.

Be positive!

• Hungary Expects Peace In Ukraine In Just Two Weeks (TASS)

Hungary expects the Russia-US talks on Ukraine to succeed and peace to return to Europe as soon as in two weeks, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said, speaking at the Raisina Dialogue international conference in the Indian capital. “I hope <…> in a couple of weeks, we can celebrate peace returning to Central Europe,” the foreign minister said, speaking about Ukraine ceasefire talks. “We are very happy that these talks have started. We’re happy to see the talks in Saudi Arabia between the US and Russia, between the US and Ukraine. We do attach great hopes to these meetings, and we do hope that a ceasefire can be established as soon as possible, and peace negotiations could be started as soon as possible. Because we want peace to come back to Central Europe,” Szijjarto noted. He recalled that from the very beginning of the conflict, the Hungarian government called for its peaceful settlement and advocated for dialogue with Russia.

“First of all, don’t listen to the idiot politicians that say, yeah, we’ve degraded the Russian army. No, we have chewed up a lot of material..”

• Russian Army ‘Has Gotten Infinitely Smarter’ – Erik Prince (RT)

The Russian military has become “infinitely smarter” in countering the US-supplied weapons being used by Ukraine, according to Erik Prince, the founder and former CEO of the private military company Blackwater. Speaking at Hillsdale College on Saturday, Prince also expressed skepticism over claims that the Russian army has been significantly weakened in the conflict. “The thing that the Russians are very good at is electronic warfare,” Prince stated, emphasizing that advanced American weaponry, such as Javelin missiles, HIMARS, and Copperhead guided artillery shells, often become ineffective within weeks. “It works for a week or two, and the Russians figure how to jam the navigation or the command link, and the stuff goes blind.”

Prince also pushed back against assertions that the Russian forces have been significantly weakened. “First of all, don’t listen to the idiot politicians that say, yeah, we’ve degraded the Russian army. No, we have chewed up a lot of material. The Russian army has gotten infinitely smarter.” He pointed to the rapid improvements in Russian counter-artillery capabilities, contrasting the response time between early 2022 and now. “If you shot at a Russian, with artillery in March or April of 2022, it would take them an hour and a half to shoot back accurately. Now, about two minutes, which means if you shoot at them, you better be in your vehicle and hauling ass because they’re going to get you otherwise.” The Russian Defense Ministry provides regular updates on the destruction of Western-donated equipment such as HIMARS and ATACMS missile launchers in Ukraine.

Since the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in 2022, the US has been Kiev’s largest weapons supplier. After US President Donald Trump took office in January, he has made peace in Ukraine one of his top priorities and criticized the administration of former President Joe Biden for spending billions of American taxpayer dollars supporting Kiev. Trump briefly suspended military aid and intelligence sharing following a public dispute with Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky at the White House in February. However, the assistance was restored after Kiev agreed to support a 30-day ceasefire with Moscow. Moscow has repeatedly warned that Western military aid merely extends the hostilities but will not alter the conflict’s outcome and risks a direct confrontation between Russia and NATO.

“Scholars, historians, and journalists are likely to spend months sifting through the records for new information about Kennedy’s killing, with the newly published files being identified only by record numbers..”

• Trump Administration Releases JFK Assassination Files (RT)

The administration of US President Donald Trump has released thousands of pages of government files related to the assassination of former US President John F. Kennedy (JFK) in Dallas on November 22, 1963. The National Archives uploaded some 63,000 pages of documents on its website in two initial tranches on Tuesday, with more files expected to be publish once they are digitized. “All records previously withheld for classification that are part of the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection are released,” it said. Shortly after taking office on January 20, Trump signed an executive order to declassify government documents related to the assassinations during the 1960s of John F. Kennedy, Senator Robert F. Kennedy, and civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr.

The shooting of JFK has long been the subject of speculation in the US regarding the alleged role of rogue elements within the government. A poll by Gallup in 2023 suggested that 65% of Americans did not believe the findings of the official investigation, which concluded Lee Harvey Oswald, a former US Marine, acted alone in killing the 35th US president. Among those surveyed, 20% said they believed that Oswald conspired with the US government, while another 16% suggested that the CIA had been involved. Trump told reporters on Monday that “people have been waiting decades” for the publication of the JFK assassination files. Approximately 80,000 pages of previously classified records would be made available to the public, he added.

“I said during the campaign that I would do it, and I am a man of my word,” the president insisted. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) said in a statement on Tuesday that the records are being released in fulfillment of Trump’s promise of “maximum transparency and a commitment to rebuild the trust of the American people in the Intelligence Community (IC) and federal agencies.” Scholars, historians, and journalists are likely to spend months sifting through the records for new information about Kennedy’s killing, with the newly published files being identified only by record numbers and having no descriptions.

Lyndon

After hearing this conversation I don't think we even need the JFK files to understand what happened. pic.twitter.com/qymAwasApB

— Freyja™ (@FreyjaTarte) March 17, 2025

“..their bravery, courage, expertise, and integrity are all leadership qualities that should be exemplified within the ranks of the IRS.”

• Hunter Biden Whistleblowers Promoted By Trump After Biden-era Retaliation (JTN)

The two IRS whistleblowers who shed light on failures to properly investigate Hunter Biden — and who were allegedly retaliated against as a result — have now received promotions from the Trump administration. IRS supervisory special agent Gary Shapley and IRS special agent Joseph Ziegler will serve as senior advisers to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Just the News has learned. “Rewarding merit rather than retaliating against whistleblowers is exactly how government ought to work. At long last, I’m happy that’s finally what is happening for Gary and Joe. They earned these promotions through integrity and hard work for the American people,” Jason Foster, the founder of Empower Oversight, which is representing the IRS whistleblowers, told Just the News. The promotions of the Hunter Biden whistleblowers were first reported by the New York Post on Tuesday morning.

“We are enormously grateful to Secretary Bessent, Senator Grassley, and all of the members of Congress for their leadership and trust,” Shapley and Ziegler said in a statement released by Senator Chuck Grassley’s office. “We have been motivated by one singular mantra: do what’s right, and do it the right way. It has not been easy, but having a clear conscience is worth the effort. We appreciate the opportunity Secretary Bessent is giving us to put our experience and firsthand knowledge to good use for the American people to eliminate waste and reform the IRS.” Grassley had sent a private letter to Bessent in late February, telling the new Treasury Department chief that “their bravery, courage, expertise, and integrity are all leadership qualities that should be exemplified within the ranks of the IRS.”

“Gary Shapley and Joe Ziegler put their entire careers on the line to stand up for the truth, and instead of being thanked, the Biden administration treated them like skunks at a picnic. Far too many whistleblowers share a similar experience of retaliation,” Grassley said. “I hope today is the first of many redemption stories for whistleblowers who’ve been mistreated. By taking a stand for whistleblowers, President Trump and his cabinet are ushering in a new era of transparency and accountability.” Lawyers for the whistleblowers have said that Shapley and Ziegler were removed from the Hunter Biden investigation in May 2023, and alleged that their clients have been repeatedly retaliated against since then. The IRS whistleblowers have consistently argued that they did nothing “unlawful” and followed all of the laws and procedures when they blew the whistle about DOJ and IRS stonewalling on the federal case against Hunter Biden.

Grassley had demanded in a 2024 letter that then-IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel end all retaliation against the whistleblowers. The Iowa senator also sent a letter to President Donald Trump in February telling him that Shapley and Ziegler “were illegally issued gag orders and retaliated against by the IRS under the Biden administration” and that “this is unacceptable, and you have the power to put a stop to it today.” Hunter Biden initially reached a plea agreement with then-special counsel David Weiss on federal charges related to tax crimes and the illegal purchase of a handgun in what congressional Republicans dubbed a “sweetheart deal” in June 2023. The deal collapsed under scrutiny by a federal judge the next month, thanks in part to the revelations made by the IRS whistleblowers. And now, Bessent said Tuesday morning that “I am pleased to welcome Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler to the Treasury Department, where they will help us drive much-needed cultural reform within the IRS.”

https://twitter.com/EricLDaugh/status/1901964818216603652

18 agents for a holiday trip in South Africa. For a guy who tells a judge he can’t pay his bills because his paintings no longer sell.

• Trump Cancels Hunter Biden’s Costly Secret Service Protection (ZH)

After Hunter Biden made headlines by vacationing in South Africa with a Secret Service detail on a week he was scheduled to appear for a deposition in a civil trial he initiated, President Trump on Monday night announced that he was canceling Hunter’s federal protection, and his half-sister Ashley’s too. Trump’s announcement came just hours after a reporter asked him about Hunter’s travel and ongoing, taxpayer-funded security. “I just heard about it for the first time…I would say if there are 18 [Secret Service agents] with Hunter Biden… That will be something I look at this afternoon,” he replied amid a tour of the Kennedy Center, where he earlier this year installed himself as chairman of the board. True to his word, at 5pm Monday, Trump took to his Truth Social account to inform Hunter, Ashley and America that the government would no longer provide security protection for Joe Biden’s adult children:

“Hunter Biden has had Secret Service protection for an extended period of time, all paid for by the United States Taxpayer. There are as many as 18 people on this Detail, which is ridiculous! … Please be advised that, effective immediately, Hunter Biden will no longer receive Secret Service protection. Likewise, Ashley Biden who has 13 agents will be taken off the list.” To get some idea of how much the Bidens’ security details were costing Americans, a Daily Mail Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) inquiry determined that the Secret Service spent more than $4.5 million to protect Hunter over an 18-month period between the start of 2021 and June 2022, while Biden lived in Malibu. During that stretch, the service shelled out $30,000 a month just for a villa to house their agents.

Former presidents and their spouses are assured of life-long Secret Serve protection by federal statute. Protection for children over age 16, terminates along with the president’s term in office — officially, but not in practice. Outgoing presidents frequently extend adult children’s coverage for up to six months, as Biden, Trump, Obama and George W. Bush all did. Already during his second term, Trump has canceled elective federal protection for several other individuals, including former NIAID director Anthony Fauci, Trump’s former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and his former national security adviser John Bolton. It’s not clear exactly when Secret Service agents will step away from Biden’s children. “We are aware of the President’s decision to terminate protection for Hunter and Ashley Biden,” said Secret Service spokesperson Anthony Guglielmi in a statement. “The Secret Service will comply and is actively working with the protective details and the White House to ensure compliance as soon as possible.”

At the same time he was in South Africa, Hunter was scheduled to give a deposition pursuant to a lawsuit he filed against former Trump staffer Garrett Ziegler, accusing him of illegally hacking and then circulating 10,000 photos from Hunter’s infamous “Laptop from Hell.” Earlier this month, Hunter told the judge he wanted to drop the case, on the basis that he had millions of dollars in debt and sales of his artwork and memoir were tanking. Hunter was already in Cape Town when the judge agreed to cancel the case on Thursday. “That means he [was] assuming his daddy’s appointee is gonna rubber stamp what he wants,” Ziegler told the New York Post. In an unusual twist, Ziegler had sought to contest Hunter’s dropping of the case. “Hunter wants to cry uncle,” he said. “We are OPPOSING that. We want our attorney’s fees to be paid, for Hunter to cease lying about us and me, and just generally to shut the f**k up.”

Trump’s Monday announcement took aim at Hunter’s current travel destination. “He is currently vacationing in, of all places, South Africa, where the Human Rights of people has [sic] been strenuously questioned,” wrote Trump, who earnestly supports the governments of Israel, Saudi Arabia, and other countries where the human rights of people have been strenuously questioned. Hunter’s wife, Melissa Cohen Biden, is South African, and we’ll watch to see if Trump condemns South African Elon Musk should he decide to visit family in his crumbling native country where whites are in increasing peril.

Green subsidies. A bottomless pit.

• Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act Could End Up Costing Taxpayers $5 Trillion (JTN)

When former President Joe Biden’s signature Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) passed in 2022, it did so along party lines with not a single Republican voting for it. At the time, a Senate one-pager summarized the law as costing taxpayers $369 billion, based on Congressional Budget Review (CBO) estimates. A new study from the Cato Institute finds that the law could cost as much as $4.67 trillion by 2050. That’s roughly 12 times the stated cost. The study also concludes that the subsidies are undermining innovation and driving investments toward subsidy farming rather than satisfying consumer demand. “The government should not have a hold on the economy in such a way that it can truly distort entire markets, and that’s what the Inflation Reduction Act is,” Joshua Loucks, research associate with Cato Institute and co-author of the analysis, said in a video explaining the study.

The Trump administration has been executing a series of reviews of regulations that federal agencies passed during the Biden years. Repealing some agency decisions may require congressional action. Due to the massive costs and market-impacting effects of the IRA, the study’s authors argue Congress should take a hard look at it. The law, they say, should be fully repealed, or Congress should place limitations on the subsidies, which the IRA mostly lacks. Loucks and his co-author Travis Fisher, director of energy and environmental policy studies at the Cato Institute, explained that the impetus for doing the study was the wildly varying estimates of the costs of the IRA that came out since its passage. While the CBO pegged the figure at $369 billion, Goldman Sachs estimated in May 2023 that it would be closer to $1.2 trillion. There were other estimates as well, all coming to different conclusions.

“We decided to go on our own fact-finding endeavor here, and that’s what resulted in this paper,” Loucks said. The subsidies for the IRA come in two forms — production tax credits (PTC), which provide tax credits per unit of energy produced, or investment tax credits, which provide tax credits for various investments in carbon-free energy. Which one developers take depends on the project and their business preferences. With the ITC, the subsidies provide an infusion of cash up front, whereas the PTCs provide payouts over time. Some of these are not capped, and others are only phased out when certain greenhouse gas emission reductions are met.

Using models from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, the study shows there’s little likelihood that these reductions will be met in the next 25 years, meaning the subsidies have no meaningful end date. The authors estimated all the ITCs and PTCs that might come from the various carbon-free eligible projects — whether they be nuclear, wind, solar, geothermal, energy storage, green manufacturing or hydrogen — and using complex models, the authors came to some overall estimates. Over the next 10 years, according to the study, the IRA could cost taxpayers anywhere from $936 billion to $1.97 trillion. By 2050, it will cost between $2.04 trillion and $4.67 trillion.

Everyone was signing everything, with every kind of pen.

• Biden’s Autopen Scandal Just Got a Whole Lot Worse (Margolis)

Earlier this month, we reported that virtually every document bearing Joe Biden’s signature during his presidency was signed by an autopen. The presidential autopen has been in use since the 1950s, with its legality debated for years. In 2013, Barack Obama became the first president to sign a bill into law using an autopen while vacationing in Hawaii, relying on a Bush-era legal memo stating a president’s presence wasn’t required if they had authorized the signature. The key issue with Biden, however, is whether he actually authorized the use of the autopen — or if someone else was running it without his knowledge. The New York Post then uncovered a pattern of potential power abuse within the Biden White House, with insiders suspecting a key aide may have made unilateral decisions on what to sign.

On Sunday night, Trump declared that Biden’s pardons are “VOID, VACANT, AND NO FURTHER FORCE OR EFFECT, because of the fact that they were done by Autopen. In other words, Joe Biden did not sign them but, more importantly, he did not know anything about them!” On Monday, The Oversight Project released a memo exposing 32 instances where the Biden White House used an autopen to sign clemency warrants, granting pardons and commutations to thousands — including preemptive pardons for members of the J6 Committee. The report raises serious concerns about the implications of a presidency governed by autopen rather than by the president himself.

“We analyzed the 51 clemency warrants with President Biden’s signature on them. In those warrants, the Biden Administration granted clemency to 4,245 people—the most of any President,” the memo reads. “We found that the Biden White House used two variations of his signature loaded into an autopen to sign over half of the clemency warrants issued during his Presidency. We identified the two autopen signatures as Autopen A and Autopen B in this Memorandum.” The memo continued, “We calculated that the Biden Administration signed 16 warrants with Autopen A, 16 warrants with Autopen B, and 19 warrants appear to be signed with a wet signature.”

Interestingly enough, the pardon of Hunter Biden appears to have been legitimately signed by Joe Biden, which makes sense. But, here’s where things get really bad: “The warrants we determined to be wet signatures contain significant variations between the signatures. Some warrants spell out the President’s entire first name “Joseph.” Others have only a diagonal line to indicate the letter “J.” Other wet signed warrants have significant variations in the President’s middle initial “R” and “B” in the last name “Biden.” At the time of publication of this Memorandum, the variations of the wet signatures are so severe, that it is unclear whether the same person signed all of the warrants. We are continuing to investigate this issue.”

That’s right: While the Oversight Project hasn’t confirmed it yet, evidence suggests that beyond a rogue staffer using the autopen — possibly without Biden’s authorization — one or more aides may have outright signed his signature on certain pardons and commutations. Could the inconsistencies be a symptom of Biden’s cognitive decline? Perhaps. But the variations in his signature may point to something even more troubling: deliberate forgery. This could be huge because it tells us that staffers were confident Biden was out of it to the extent that they could get away with actual forgery, not just abuse of the autopen. That’s frightening.

Neera Tanden fits the profile to a tee. Not everyone would be referred to as “the boss”.

• Is This the Aide Who Abused Joe Biden’s Autopen? (Margolis)

The latest scandal for the former Biden administration has exploded into the spotlight thanks to Trump’s declaration Sunday night that Biden’s pardons are “VOID, VACANT, AND NO FURTHER FORCE OR EFFECT” because they were signed via autopen, and Biden may not have authorized them. The lingering question, of course, is who may have been using the autopen on Biden’s behalf without his knowledge or consent. An explosive New York Post report revealed a disturbing pattern of potential power abuse within the Biden White House, centered around the controversial use of the presidential autopen. One Biden White House source told The Post they suspect that a key aide to the then-president may have made unilateral determinations on what to auto-sign. The Post is not publishing that staffer’s name due to the lack of concrete evidence and refutations by other colleagues.

The Biden aide, who did not respond to requests for comment, would frequently make mention of what “the boss” wanted, the source said, but compatriots would have “no idea” if it was true because the internal culture was to not ask questions. While the New York Post didn’t name the staffer, speculation is swirling around Neera Tanden. A longtime left-wing operative, Tanden was Biden’s controversial pick to lead the Office of Management and Budget — until her nomination collapsed over a slew of hyper-partisan attacks on Republican lawmakers. She later found a role as White House Staff Secretary. Now, she finds herself at the center of this constitutional crisis. The timeline is damning. On Dec. 30, 2022, while Biden was allegedly golfing in St. Croix, six pardons magically appeared with his signature. Tanden’s response? A desperate attempt at deflection, trying to turn the tables by questioning Trump’s own autopen usage.

https://twitter.com/neeratanden/status/1901593683729772628?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1901593683729772628%7Ctwgr%5E834a907535a976df566b7d17e79689c29ac6fe17%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fpjmedia.com%2Fmatt-margolis%2F2025%2F03%2F18%2Fis-this-the-aide-who-abused-joe-bidens-autopen-n4938019

Nice try, Neera, but there’s a difference between delegated authority and potentially hijacking presidential powers. The Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project, which broke the scandal, called her out specifically.

You were White House Staff Secretary when Biden autopenned pardons from the golf course in USVI.

This you? https://t.co/26z9C6cE7m pic.twitter.com/7btD2RTX0N

— Oversight Project (@OversightPR) March 17, 2025

This isn’t just about pardons or autopenned signatures. It’s about who was actually running our country. Was it Joe Biden? Or was it radical operatives like Tanden, who went from heading a far-left think tank to potentially wielding presidential power without proper authorization? The Biden administration’s deafening silence on social media speaks volumes. They can’t defend the indefensible, so they’re hoping this scandal will just disappear. But Trump’s declaration has ensured this constitutional crisis won’t be swept under the rug. The American people deserve to know who’s really in charge. Was Biden even aware of what was signed in his name? Or did progressive bureaucrats turn the White House into their personal playground, wielding presidential power while the actual president remained blissfully unaware on the golf course? These aren’t just partisan questions; they’re fundamental to our constitutional republic. And the American people deserve answers.

Voice of America. Brought to you by Europe (or the other way around).

• EU Could Take Over US State-funded Media Outlet – Kallas (RT)

The EU will discuss ways to maintain the operation of US state-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), now that President Donald Trump has slashed its budget, the bloc’s top diplomat, Kaja Kallas, has said. RFE/RL was founded during the Cold War to spread pro-Western propaganda in the Eastern Bloc. The organization was initially funded by the CIA and continues to receive US Congressional grants. A reporter asked Kallas following the Foreign Affairs Council meeting in Brussels on Monday whether the EU would offer “temporary protection” to Russian journalists who’d had their contracts terminated. She argued that RFE/RL’s broadcasts during the Cold War were “very valuable.”

“It is sad to hear that the US is withdrawing the funding. Now the question for us is, can we come in with our funding to fill the void?” Kallas said. “The answer to that question is… not automatically because we have a lot of organizations that are coming with the same request.” “But there was really a push from the foreign ministers to discuss this and find a way. So this is the [task of] our side to see what we can do,” she added. The European Commission and officials from EU member states have condemned Trump’s decision to gut the news agency. Czech Foreign Minister Jan Lipavsky wrote on X last week that he would discuss the possibility to “at least partially maintain its broadcasts.” Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski said on Monday that the EU was “brainstorming” how to help RFE/RL, according to The Kyiv Independent.

On March 14, Trump signed an executive order mandating funding and staff cuts at the United States Agency for Global Media, which oversees RFE/RL and other state-funded news organizations, including the Voice of America. The White House said that the move is part of a wider campaign to rid the government of “unnecessary” bureaucracy. Trump has frequently accused media outlets of bias and spreading “fake news” about him and his policies. RFE/RL President and CEO Stephen Capus has described the cuts as “a massive gift to America’s enemies.” In a call with journalists on Monday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov labelled RFE/RL and the Voice of America “purely propagandistic media” and said that the cuts were the domestic affair of the US.

Roberts takes the easy way out. But that invites a flood of lawfare. Which will hamper the administration.

• SCOTUS Chief Justice Roberts Says Impeaching Judge ‘Not Appropriate’ (ZH)

On Tuesday, President Trump said on Truth Social that US District Judge James Boasberg should be impeached for issuing a two-week halt to his efforts to deport criminal illegal aliens – calling Boasberg a “troublemaker and agitator.” Trump’s call to remove Boasberg – the chief judge of the federal district court in Washington DC, marks the first time that he’s asked Congress to seek a judge’s removal. Trump also suggested that “many” of the judges who have ruled against him in other cases should be impeached as well.

Then, hours later, Chief Justice John Roberts pushed back – saying in a rare statement that it would be inappropriate to impeach a judge. “For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision. The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose,” Roberts said Tuesday. Of course, that would be up to Congress – wouldn’t it? As TheLastRefuge notes on X, Roberts and Boasberg go way back… “Yes, Roberts will protect Boasberg, because Boasberg -who Roberts appointed to be presiding judge of the FISC- has major leverage over Roberts. Boasberg has assembled his shields over years, and CTH has outlined every step. The brutally obvious began surfacing when Boasberg appointed *Mary McCord as amicus to the FISC.”

**ahem** Yes, Roberts will protect Boasberg, because Boasberg -who Roberts appointed to be presiding judge of the FISC- has major leverage over Roberts.

Boasberg has assembled his shields over years, and CTH has outlined every step. The brutally obvious began surfacing when… https://t.co/NdMc6VsUr0

— TheLastRefuge (@TheLastRefuge2) March 18, 2025

Law professor Jonathan Turley agrees with Roberts, however, writing on Sunday; “I have criticized Judge Boasberg, who was involved in the controversial FISA surveillance during the first Trump term and made a poor choice of the attorney tasked with investigating that matter. I also criticized him in prior treatment of pro-life litigants in a case reversed by the D.C. Circuit. However, he has also ruled against Trump critics). The response for the Administration should be to seek an expedited appeal. The district court cannot drag out a TRO very long before issuing an order that can be appealed. This country is facing novel issues and the Administration is not surprisingly trying to use novel means to address them. I expect that it will prevail in many of these initial fights while losing others. That is part of the process in a nation committed to the rule of law. The Trump Administration can appeal and leave impeachment out of it.”

The MAGA movement is going to do something that hasn’t been done in decades, if ever

We are going to start impeaching Marxist Federal judges https://t.co/KmCMHuuH7W

— DC_Draino (@DC_Draino) March 18, 2025

“Musk has been ordered to reinstate access to email, payment and other electronic systems for all current USAID employees and personal services contractors [..] after roughly 83% of USAID programs have been officially canceled..”

• Obama Judge Rules Against DOGE Shutdown of USAID (ZH)

In the latest legal turn of events – since the United States is now governed by activist judges, an Obama-appointed federal judge on Tuesday found that Elon Musk and DOGE likely violated the constitution when it shut down deep state slush fund USAID, and has ordered them to restore access for current (remaining) employees. US District Judge Theodore Chuang ruled in favor of more than two dozen unnamed current and former USAID employees and contractors who challenged the Trump administration’s efforts to shutter the organization. In a 68-page decision, Chuang granted in part their request for a preliminary injunction, ruling that DOGE and Musk likely violated the Constitution’s Appointments Clause and separation of powers.

Musk has been ordered to reinstate access to email, payment and other electronic systems for all current USAID employees and personal services contractors, while the Trump administration is now prevented from taking any further actions related to the shutdown of USAID – including placing employees on administrative leave, firing USAID workers, closing buildings, bureaus or offices, and deleting the contents of its websites or collections. Of note – the order does not currently require the reinstatement of fired employees, after roughly 83% of USAID programs have been officially canceled according to Secretary of State Marco Rubio. “After a six-week review, 5200 contracts that are now cancelled spent tens of billions of dollars in ways that did not serve, and even harmed the core national interests of the United States,” he said.

This latest judicial move to block the Trump administration comes days after DC District Court judge James Boasberg (who was in charge of the FISA court when the Obama administration was spying on Trump), issued a two-week halt on deporting illegal immigrant gang members. On Tuesday Trump called for Boasberg’s impeachment, drawing a sharp rebuke from Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, who said it was “not an appropriate response.” The Trump administration is also in the process of reinstating over 24,000 federal workers after a different Obama judge, US District Judge James Bredar, ordered the mass reinstatement of employees at 18 federal agencies last week, determining that the administration’s justification for the firings—poor performance—was not supported by evidence. The ruling follows another decision by a federal judge in San Francisco, who also found terminations at six agencies to be illegal.

This feels upside down. DOGE does not.

• Trump Admin Moves To Reinstate Over 24,000 Federal Workers (ZH)

The Trump administration is taking steps to reinstate thousands of probationary federal workers who were fired in an effort to downsize the government, according to court filings in one of two cases where judges deemed the terminations unlawful. U.S. District Judge James Bredar, an Obama appointee, ordered the mass reinstatement of employees at 18 federal agencies last week, determining that the administration’s justification for the firings—poor performance—was not supported by evidence. The ruling follows another decision by a federal judge in San Francisco, who also found terminations at six agencies to be illegal. According to more than a dozen declarations filed by the government Monday night, the administration has moved to reinstate roughly 24,000 probationary workers.

According to the Monday night filings, many of the reinstated employees have been placed on paid administrative leave, while others have returned to full employment. However, officials warn that the reinstatement process could create confusion and operational challenges, particularly for employees who are reinstated only to potentially face termination again if an appellate court overturns the ruling. Reesha Trznadel, the acting chief human capital officer at the Department of Energy, cautioned in a declaration that reinstating employees “could impose burdens on DOE and cause significant confusion and turmoil for the terminated employees.”

Since taking office, the Trump administration has taken aggressive steps to reshape the federal bureaucracy, including dismissing employees during their probationary periods. The recent ruling represents a legal setback for these efforts, reinforcing protections for federal workers and challenging the administration’s justification for its sweeping dismissals. The legal battle is expected to continue, with the possibility that an appellate ruling could overturn Bredar’s decision. Until then, agencies must navigate the complexities of onboarding and retraining employees who may face further job uncertainty in the months ahead.

Habba is just one among a group of shining young stars around Trump.

• Trump Adviser Alina Habba Sounds Alarm on ‘Human Extortion’ (ET)

The Trump administration is committed to taking decisive action against one of the nation’s most pressing yet overlooked crises: human trafficking. In an exclusive interview with The Epoch Times, Alina Habba, senior advisor to President Donald Trump, shared the administration’s plan and her role in addressing this critical issue. But as Habba sees it, this isn’t just about human trafficking—it’s about “human extortion,” a more encompassing term that includes everything from sex trafficking to cyber activity and forced labor. “I’m focused on human extortion, which includes child trafficking,” she said in an interview with Jan Jekielek, senior editor at The Epoch Times and host of “American Thought Leaders.” Habba emphasized that her efforts focus not only on children who are victims of trafficking but also on any individual, regardless of age, who falls victim to sex trafficking, financial extortion through cyber means, or modern slavery.

Habba, 40, who served as Trump’s defense attorney in recent years, now works as a counselor to the president, collaborating closely with government agencies such as the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the Department of Justice (DOJ), and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). She is currently drafting a series of executive orders aimed at strengthening regulations and protecting the victims of human extortion. In her view, the crisis reflects the widespread abuse of vulnerable individuals who are coerced and exploited, often in ways that the public is barely aware of. Habba pointed to examples like cyber-interactive pornography that encourages people to hurt children, calling it a “sick” and disturbing reality of today’s world. She also noted that the issue worsened during the border crisis under the Biden administration.

Many children were, misleadingly, trafficked over the border, she said. “They were displaced from their families and then found themselves in vulnerable positions where they were sex trafficked and labor trafficked.” Since Trump took office, Habba said she has spent nearly two months fully understanding the scale of the problem. The administration is now focused on bringing these children home, providing them with necessary care, capturing their traffickers, and prosecuting those responsible—particularly pedophiles. A DHS report from August 2024 revealed that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) transferred over 448,000 unaccompanied migrant children to the HHS between fiscal years 2019 and 2023. The Office of Refugee Resettlement, a division within HHS, is responsible for placing these unaccompanied children with sponsor homes in the United States.

However, the report indicated that ICE was unable to track the location and status of all the children who had been released from HHS custody. While Habba declined to provide exact numbers, she stated that the absence of familial DNA testing had led to a surge in child trafficking. In 2023, the Biden administration revoked a Trump-era program that required rapid DNA testing for illegal immigrants crossing the border. Without this measure, she said, individuals were entering the country with alleged relatives—such as parents, aunts, or uncles—without any verification. As a result, it was impossible to determine whether those accompanying the children were associated with cartels or engaged in human trafficking. The Biden administration reportedly did not provide specific reasons for ending the program, only stating that it was not renewing the contract with the private company doing the tests.

Since Trump’s return to office in January, the DNA testing program has been reinstated. However, Habba said there are still other critical issues to address. She mentioned that some migrant children were placed in “fake sponsor homes” by HHS. When officials visited these homes for safety checks, they found that the children were no longer there. “So, effectively, they were being re-trafficked,” Habba said. The administration is now working closely with public and private sector individuals to ensure these children are kept safe, provided with necessary rehabilitation, including therapy and medical care, and placed in secure homes.

Habba addressed the recent controversy surrounding the influencer Tate brothers, who are facing human trafficking and rape allegations. She faced criticism after expressing in a January interview that she was a big fan of Andrew Tate. Habba told Jekielek that her comments had been manipulated and taken out of context. She clarified that her support for Tate was based on his political views and should be viewed separately from the accusations being made against him. “The accusations against the Tate brothers are stomach-churning. They are disturbing,” she said. “There is no part of me that condones at all that behavior,” she said of the reports. The Tate brothers are contesting the allegations being made against them. Habba also provided an update on the long-awaited Epstein files.

She said that Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel are leading the investigation to review the files and thoroughly vet the accusations. “We are committed to transparency,” Habba said, urging Americans to be patient during the process. “We’re not going to be off the cuff. We’re not going to shoot from the hip. We’re going to look at things methodically and take them very seriously. And unfortunately, that takes time.” Habba also discussed her upbringing and family, identifying herself as a Middle Eastern Catholic woman. Her parents, both Chaldean Catholics, emigrated from Iraq to the United States in the early 1980s to escape persecution in their home country.

“My family is religious. They are very involved in the church, and I’m proud of that,” she said. Trump praised Habba when announcing her appointment as counselor to the president, highlighting her dedication and loyalty. “She has been unwavering in her loyalty, and unmatched in her resolve—standing with me through numerous ‘trials,’ battles, and countless days in Court,” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Dec. 8, 2024. “As a first generation American of Middle Eastern Heritage, she has become a role model for women in Law and Politics, most recently being named Chaldean Woman of the Year.”

Puppyducks
https://twitter.com/buitengebieden/status/1901877651179982943

Fin

Fin whale, the second-largest whale species after the blue whale, swimming alongside dolphins in the ocean,

pic.twitter.com/MNvMrRudwk

— Science girl (@gunsnrosesgirl3) March 18, 2025

Stopper
https://twitter.com/buitengebieden/status/1901993392696905813

Kids

Kids are kids pic.twitter.com/OiFKpyt4dx

— Nature is Amazing ☘️ (@AMAZlNGNATURE) March 18, 2025

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Debt Rattle February 9 2025

Feb 092025

February 9, 2025 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 10:45 am Finance Tagged with: Chemonics, DOGE, Hunter Biden, Pentagon, Putin, recycling, RFK jr, Trudeau, Trump, USAID 70 Responses »

René Magritte Personal values 1952

• Trump Reveals He’s Spoken With Putin By Phone (Miranda Devine)

• DOGE To Audit Pentagon (RT)

• Judge Puts Brakes On Trump’s USAID Purge (RT)

• Judge Blocks DOGE’s Access to Sensitive Treasury Records (ET)

• Trump Alone Can Fix It (RCP)

• USAID Funded Massive ‘News’ Platform, ‘Censorship Industrial Complex’ (ZH)

• Now We Know Who was Running the Country for Joe Biden (Margolis)

• Trump Revokes Biden’s Security Clearances, Intel Briefings: “Poor Memory” (ZH)

• USAID or SorosAid? How US Tax Dollars Fund Chaos Worldwide (Sp.)

• How USAID and Its $50 Billion Budget Became a Target for Reform (ET)

• The Rise and Rise of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (ET)

• Trudeau Warns Trump’s Threat To Annex Canada Is ‘Real Thing’ (RT)

• Apple Ordered to Provide UK Gov’t Access to ALL User Data on the Cloud (HUSA)

• Russian News Finds Readers Despite Sanctions, USAID-Funded Competition – FT (RT)

• In Valdai, Confronting The “American Problem” In West Asia (Pepe Escobar)

• NATO Troops Unable To Move Quickly Across EU (RT)

• “Recycling” Makes Plastic Pollution Worse (McGlinchey)

https://twitter.com/i/status/1887952783858393241
DOGE

pic.twitter.com/Ji38M2MK7D

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 8, 2025

Astroturf

pic.twitter.com/5UFbeuoYNn

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 8, 2025

Antonio Gracias: DOGE Happened Just in Time to Stop America from Turning into a Kleptocracy

"When (@DOGE) started, I thought we had a democracy, but it turned into a bureaucracy."

"What I'm afraid of now, is we have a bureaucracy that is about to turn into a kleptocracy."… pic.twitter.com/FfALmMt04p

— The All-In Podcast (@theallinpod) February 8, 2025

Sen. John Kennedy

Sen. John Kennedy: Democrats Critical of DOGE Are Not Talking About What Elon Musk Is ‘Finding’

"A lot of my Democratic colleagues and members of the tofu crowd are very upset and screaming like Musk stole their dog. But they are not talking about what Mr. Musk is finding. Just… pic.twitter.com/GKAChNo4wI

— KanekoaTheGreat (@KanekoaTheGreat) February 7, 2025

Maher
https://twitter.com/i/status/1888080063800705027

Bannon

Steve Bannon: "Bobby's term as HHS will just be the top of the first inning. They will put you in prison. They will break you. They will bankrupt you. They will smear you. Look, they control the most powerful nation in the history of the Earth. They're not prepared just to toss… pic.twitter.com/6Uoarpyl6w

— Camus (@newstart_2024) February 8, 2025

SPower

More USAID Corruption EXPOSED

– Samantha Power was sworn in as Administrator of USAID on May 3, 2021
– Her financial disclosure filed in Jan 2021 showed her assets were estimated at $6.7 million to $16.5 million
– Today, in 2024, her net worth is estimated at up to $30 million… pic.twitter.com/zj5SOVHmEL

— Wall Street Apes (@WallStreetApes) February 8, 2025

McClain

Lisa McClain on Morning Joe: "Listen, I think what President Trump is doing by appointing Elon Musk is absolutely brilliant. We have a spending problem. It is going to take some unconventional thought process, some unconventional wisdom, to get us out of the mess we're in right… pic.twitter.com/lTNsD2bTDm

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) February 7, 2025

“Every day people are dying. Young handsome soldiers are being killed. Young men, like my sons. On both sides. All over the battlefield.”

• Trump Reveals He’s Spoken With Putin By Phone (Miranda Devine)

President Trump has spoken to Russian leader Vladimir Putin on the phone to try to negotiate an end to the Ukraine war, he told The Post in an exclusive interview aboard Air Force One Friday. “I’d better not say,” said Trump when asked how many times the two leaders have spoken. But he believes Putin “does care” about the killing on the battlefield. In an exclusive interview with The Post aboard Air Force One Friday, President Donald Trump spoke with Russian President Vladimir Putin on the phone as he is trying to negotiate with him to end the Ukraine war. “He wants to see people stop dying,” said Trump. “All those dead people. Young, young, beautiful people. They’re like your kids, two million of them – and for no reason.”

The three-year-old war “never would have happened” if he had been president in 2022, Trump asserted. “I always had a good relationship with Putin,” he said, unlike his predecessor. “Biden was an embarrassment to our nation. A complete embarrassment.” Trump said he has a concrete plan to end the war. “I hope it’s fast. Every day people are dying. This war is so bad in Ukraine. I want to end this damn thing.” Addressing National Security Advisor Mike Waltz, who joined him in his study aboard Air Force One Friday night, the president said: “Let’s get these meetings going. They want to meet. Every day people are dying. Young handsome soldiers are being killed. Young men, like my sons. On both sides. All over the battlefield.”

Vice President Vance will meet Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky at the Munich Security Conference next week. Trump has said he wants to strike a $500 million deal with Zelensky to access rare-earth minerals and gas in Ukraine in exchange for security guarantees in any potential peace settlement. On Iran, Trump told The Post: “I would like a deal done with Iran on non-nuclear. I would prefer that to bombing the hell out of it. . . . They don’t want to die. Nobody wants to die.” “If we made the deal, Israel wouldn’t bomb them.” But he would not reveal details of any potential negotiations with Iran: “In a way, I don’t like telling you what I’m going to tell them. You know, it’s not nice.” “I could tell what I have to tell them, and I hope they decide that they’re not going to do what they’re currently thinking of doing. And I think they’ll really be happy.” “I’d tell them I’d make a deal.” As for what he would offer Iran in return, he said, “I can’t say that because it’s too nasty. I won’t bomb them.”

Fire and brimstone. We’re getting serious. It should result in an audit, which is long overdue. But that won’t come easy.

• DOGE To Audit Pentagon (RT)

Elon Musk, as head of the new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), has been tasked with revising federal spending, and has set his sights on the Pentagon and the Department of Education, US President Donald Trump has confirmed. The newly authorized audits come in line with a broad push to slash public expenses. Musk, CEO of SpaceX and Tesla and owner of X (formerly Twitter), has been appointed as a “special government employee” to lead the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) under Trump’s administration, and is currently among the president’s key advisers. Despite its name, the agency is not a permanent federal executive department, but a temporary body dedicated to reducing government spending. Its primary goal is to cut up to $2 trillion in federal expenditures by July 2026.

Speaking at the press conference with Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba on Friday, Trump said that Musk will go through “just about everything” while reviewing the budgets of the departments. “I’ve instructed him to go check out education to check out the Pentagon, which is the military, and sadly you’ll find some things that are pretty bad, but I don’t think proportionately, you’re going to see anything like we just saw,” Trump said, highlighting that the DOGE would find “a lot,” taking into account how “bad” it was “with what we just went.” Earlier this week, Trump stated that billions of dollars have been stolen by the US Agency for International Development (USAID), highlighting that the lion’s share of the funds were used to pay for positive media coverage of Democrats.

Trump’s administration is currently focused on shutting down the agency, which operates as Washington’s primary means for funding political issues abroad. On the first day of his presidency, Trump ordered a 90-day freeze on almost all foreign aid. The president has also pushed against diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs within the federal government since assuming office on January 20. After being sworn in, Trump signed a series of orders rolling back protections for transgender individuals and terminating DEI initiatives. Last week, DOGE claimed that it had managed to save over $1 billion thanks to the elimination of contracts related to DEI. Prior to that, the agency had stated that it had slashed federal spending by approximately $1 billion per day as of January 29, due to an effective halt to “the hiring of people into unnecessary positions, the deletion of DEI, and stopping improper payments to foreign organizations.”

https://twitter.com/i/status/1888008418914382254

BREAKING: Pete Hegseth just told Pentagon personnel that a massive audit is coming.

"We are going to focus heavily to ensure that at a bare minimum, by the end of four years, the Pentagon passes a clean audit."

"I believe we are accountable for every dollar we spend and every… pic.twitter.com/TlDECg2jQn

— George (@BehizyTweets) February 7, 2025

Two federal judges separately(?!) getting involved. The first one says USAID cannot mass-fire employees…

• Judge Puts Brakes On Trump’s USAID Purge (RT)

A federal judge has temporarily barred the US Agency for International Development (USAID), Washington’s primary vehicle for funding political projects abroad, from putting thousands of employees on paid leave. The order was in response to a lawsuit filed by two labor unions representing federal workers. A “limited,” temporary restraining order issued by Judge Carl Nichols in the US District Court in Washington, DC, on Friday, banned the US government from placing around 2,200 USAID workers on administrative leave or evacuating them from their host countries before the end of the day on February 14. The ruling also reinstates some 500 employees who had already been furloughed.

“All USAID employees currently on administrative leave shall be reinstated until that date, and shall be given complete access to email, payment, and security notification systems until that date, and no additional employees shall be placed on administrative leave before that date,” the order reads. A request for a longer-term pause will be considered at a hearing on Wednesday, according to the ruling. Earlier on Friday, Democracy Forward and Public Citizen Litigation Group filed suit on behalf of two labor unions representing federal workers. The two unions are the 800,000-member American Federation of Government Employees and the American Foreign Service Association, which represents thousands of foreign service officers working for USAID.

US President Donald Trump suspended all US foreign aid, pending a three-month review, in one of his first executive orders after taking office on January 20. The decision is part of a broader plan to significantly reduce government spending. Subsequently, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio suspended a number of projects assigned to USAID. Earlier this week, Trump claimed that the agency had funneled billions of taxpayer money into media companies to foster positive media coverage of Democrats. Meanwhile, Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, leading the new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which is evaluating federal agencies’ spending, has branded USAID a “criminal organization” and claimed it funded bioweapon research.

…the second one says DOGE can’t access “personal financial data of millions of Americans”. Both cases run until Feb 14.

That DOGE would increase “Cybersecurity Risk” sounds fake. They’re too good for that. And as soon as something leaks, their project is over. But yeah, you can make the claim, no matter how empty…

• Judge Blocks DOGE’s Access to Sensitive Treasury Records (ET)

A federal judge has temporarily barred the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), run by Elon Musk, from accessing the personal financial data of millions of Americans kept at the Treasury Department. The late-night order, issued Saturday by U.S. District Judge Paul Engelmayer in Manhattan, blocks most Trump administration officials—including Musk and members of his cost-cutting initiative—from accessing sensitive Treasury records for at least a week while the case proceeds in the New York court. The injunction specifically prohibits President Donald Trump and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent from granting access to records containing personally identifiable or confidential financial information to political appointees, special government employees, or any other employees from outside of the department. The White House has designated Musk a special government employee.

Under the order, only those working at the Bureau of Fiscal Services and have passed background checks may access those records in order to do their job. The judge further ordered any person among those whom he restricted to “immediately destroy any and all copies of material downloaded from the Treasury Department’s records and systems, if any.” A hearing on the matter is scheduled for Feb. 14. The decision was made after 19 state attorneys general sued the Trump and Bessent after DOGE was given access to the Treasury records. DOGE is an advisory body tasked to identify ways to reduce government spending.

The attorneys general argued that Musk and DOGE, which is not an official government department, should not have access to such highly sensitive financial data. They claimed that the move violates federal law and presents a massive cybersecurity and privacy risk. “Defendants’ new expanded access policy poses huge cybersecurity risks” that put “vast amounts of funding for the States and their residents in peril and endangers the [personally identifiable information] of States’ residents whose information is stored on the payment systems,” reads the complaint, which was filed late Feb. 7 in U.S. District Court in Manhattan. Engelmayer agreed with the state’s argument that they “will face irreparable harm in the absence of injunctive relief.”

“That is both because of the risk that the new policy presents of the disclosure of sensitive and confidential information and the heightened risk that the systems in question will be more vulnerable than before to hacking,” Engelmayer wrote. There was no immediate comment from the White House or Musk. The decision is the latest in a series of judicial interventions blocking the Trump administration’s rapidly unfolding actions to overhaul the federal bureaucracy. Just hours before Engelmayer’s order, another federal judge in Washington halted a Musk-led initiative to dismantle USAID, the agency responsible for administering foreign aid programs. In recent weeks, judges have also intervened to block Trump’s early executive actions ending automatic citizenship for children born on U.S. soil, pausing federal grants and loans, offering buyout to federal workers, and sending male inmates who identify as transgender women back to men’s prisons.

Eventually published as “Welcome to the Executive Presidency”. This was the working title.

• Trump Alone Can Fix It (RCP)

“I would support you to be spokesperson for the Pentagon,” Connecticut Sen. Richard Blumenthal acidly told Pete Hegseth during his hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee. The insult was a poke in Pete’s eye for his career at Fox News. Blumenthal, who once fibbed that he had served in Vietnam as a Marine (he never left the States), thought Hegseth lacked the record of “leadership” to head an organization as large and complex as the Department of Defense. Evidently, it never crossed Blumenthal’s mind that this appointment was a first step toward making the department less large and complex. On paper, former Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin had such “leadership” experience, as did Jim Mattis, Bob Gates, Leon Panetta, Donald Rumsfeld, and most other department secretaries over the last 25 years.

Pete, on the other hand, led a platoon in Iraq before smiling his way through Saturday morning news shows. Once, during a bit on “Fox and Friends,” Hegseth tossed an ax that sailed over its target and struck a man standing nearby. Pete grimaced, the man was unhurt, and the show went on. Despite Blumenthal’s putdown, Hegseth’s nomination passed out of committee and cleared a floor vote on his way to becoming the youngest secretary of defense since Donald Rumsfeld was first confirmed 50 years ago. Hegseth wasn’t the traditional nominee, and that’s the point. Blumenthal and others like him looked at Hegseth through distorted, outdated glasses. They fail to understand that Donald Trump is remaking the executive branch of the federal government, and it starts with choosing communicators.

Any effective network of strategic communication must be organized as a hierarchy – if there is no one “at the top” who determines the messaging, there will be as many messages as there are nodes in the network. The executive’s ability to achieve his goals is fundamentally dependent on high-fidelity, rapid information transferal, where the message is relayed broadly, quickly, and without significant distortion. That’s what effective communication is – and it explains why Trump’s first term was less effective than it could have been. When Trump took office eight years ago, the left resisted him through the mainstream media, Hollywood, and corporate America, but the spearhead of “The Resistance” was his own government. The bureaucrats of the vast “administrative state” did not see Trump as a legitimate occupant of his office. Thus, they didn’t merely distort the communication that came from the top.

They tried to subordinate his agenda by refusing to transfer the information. More than that, they actively disseminated information that ran counter to the president’s stated aims. Accomplished people like Jim Mattis and Rex Tillerson were seasoned executives with deep managerial experience, but their priorities were misplaced: Rather than advance the president’s initiatives, they focused on protecting themselves and their legacies.In his 1938 classic “The Functions of the Executive,” author Chester Barnard explains that an executive’s first task is to create a “definite system of communication.” Barnard wasn’t talking about the technical means of communication – whether that be telephone, memo, or computer – but the communicators themselves. These new modes of transferring information sometimes obscure the human interaction that remains the most effective form of information transfer.

“Communication,” Barnard writes, “will be accomplished only through the agency of persons,” meaning the appointment of the right people. Controlling an enterprise, he tells us, hinges on the executive’s choice of who will repeat and amplify the executive’s message. During the Biden interregnum, it seems that Trump absorbed these insights, almost as if by osmosis. Consider the inauguration. There were Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg front and center. Yes, they are among the world’s wealthiest men, but they also happen to be the owners of national and global media organizations. Trump spent the entire first day of his second term on camera, narrating his executive actions. “Here, David, that’s for you,” Trump said, passing his trademark, Trump-embossed marker to an aide, then holding up an executive order before the cameras like a newborn baby.

Never before had a president so merrily occupied the stage of the Oval Office, hosting audiences of millions online and on television, as he signed documents, bantered with reporters and staff, and generally went about his business. Trump knew his daylong, unscripted availability would contrast sharply with his predecessor’s behavior. Joe Biden’s increasing withdrawal from the public and his inability to deliver spontaneous remarks hid his declining mental health, and the fact that he really wasn’t in charge.

They didn’t just influence the news, they made it too (4,291 media outlets).

• USAID Funded Massive ‘News’ Platform, ‘Censorship Industrial Complex’ (ZH)

In addition to propping up far-left corporate media outlets like Politico and the BBC with taxpayer funds, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has funneled half a billion dollars to a secretive non-governmental organization operating a global news propaganda matrix. WikiLeaks published the bombshell report in the overnight hours that shows the massive taxpayer-funded state propaganda network – operating as a shady NGO – called “Internews Network”: “USAID has pushed nearly half a billion dollars ($472.6m) through a secretive US government financed NGO, “Internews Network” (IN), which has “worked with” 4,291 media outlets, producing in one year 4,799 hours of broadcasts reaching up to 778 million people and “training” over 9000 journalists (2023 figures). IN has also supported social media censorship initiatives.

The operation claims “offices” in over 30 countries, including main offices in US, London, Paris and regional HQs in Kiev, Bangkok and Nairobi. It is headed up by Jeanne Bourgault, who pays herself $451k a year. Bourgault worked out of the US embassy in Moscow during the early 1990s, where she was in charge of a $250m budget, and in other revolts or conflicts at critical times, before formally rotating out of six years at USAID to IN. Bourgault’s IN bio and those of its other key people and board members have been recently scrubbed from its website but remain accessible at http://archive.org. Records show the board being co-chaired by Democrat securocrat Richard J. Kessler and Simone Otus Coxe, wife of NVIDIA billionaire Trench Coxe, both major Democratic donors. In 2023, supported by Hillary Clinton, Bourgault launched a $10m IN fund at the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI). The IN page showing a picture of Bourgault at the CGI has also been deleted.

IN has at least six captive subsidiaries under unrelated names including one based out of the Cayman Islands. Since 2008, when electronic records begin, more than 95% of IN’s budget has been supplied by the US government.

USAID has pushed nearly half a billion dollars ($472.6m) through a secretive US government financed NGO, "Internews Network" (IN), which has “worked with” 4,291 media outlets, producing in one year 4,799 hours of broadcasts reaching up to 778 million people and "training” over…

— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) February 8, 2025

“We had a former cocaine addict sitting in on the most sensitive meetings of the most consequential and most important government in world history. Does that sit right with you?”

• Now We Know Who was Running the Country for Joe Biden (Margolis)

Have you noticed how leftists are losing their minds over Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency to expose rampant waste and corruption? As Musk uncovers shocking levels of mismanagement and even actions aiding America’s enemies, critics have launched coordinated attacks on him, implying that he’s the one who is actually running the White House. “No one voted for Elon Musk!” they say. Time Magazine’s latest issue has joined the fray, featuring Musk seated confidently at the Resolute Desk—a symbolic jab suggesting he’s really the one in charge. The outrage is ironic, considering the same voices now wailing about Musk’s alleged control were silent while Joe Biden spent four years clearly not running the White House. Why does this matter? Well, we now have fresh allegations from Lindy Li, a former Democratic National Committee (DNC) insider, about who was running the White House for Joe Biden.

And it’s quite terrifying. Once a proud fundraiser for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, Li has turned into an insider spilling the Democratic Party’s most closely held secrets—and, boy, does she have stories. Her revelations pull back the curtain on what has been described as a chaotic and delusional 2024 campaign for the Democrats, which spectacularly collapsed under the weight of its own hubris. Li has revealed intriguing insider details about how Joe Biden was ultimately ousted, and what Pelosi and Obama really think of Kamala. Back in December, she revealed new dirt on Joe Biden’s mental decline. “The president has not been cognitively fit to assume the duties of the Oval Office for a number of years now,” she told Fox News. “And it breaks my heart because I know President Biden and I love the man, but he is in no shape or form able to carry out the duties that the Commander in Chief requires, and it’s just devastating.”

But it’s her revelations about what happened in the White House in the aftermath of Biden’s devastating performance in his June debate on CNN with Trump that are truly jaw-dropping. According to Li, Joe Biden, already staggering from public scrutiny, effectively lost control of the White House after that fateful debate. The event reportedly prompted an audacious power shuffle at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue—one spearheaded by none other than Hunter Biden. Li alleges that, following Biden’s disastrous debate drubbing, Hunter essentially took over White House operations. Speaking with podcaster Shawn Ryan, she painted a picture of dysfunction at the highest levels of government: “After the [CNN] debate, Hunter basically commandeered the White House. He sat in on all of the White House top-level meetings. We had a former cocaine addict sitting in on the most sensitive meetings of the most consequential and most important government in world history. Does that sit right with you?”

Ryan’s immediate reaction—“No”—reflected what many are surely thinking. “Without security clearance mind you,” Li added. The idea that Hunter Biden, with no security clearance, was allegedly dictating the flow of information to his father is a much bigger deal than Elon Musk going after government waste, don’t you think? “That’s who was basically running the show. So Hunter basically battened down the hatches after the debate to make sure his father would only receive intel he pre-approved.” The media’s and the Democrats’ hypocrisy is glaring. They attack Elon Musk for exposing waste, accusing him of having too much power without having been elected, while their lack of scrutiny during the Biden presidency allowed for an unelected crack addict to run the country.

“The Hur Report revealed that Biden suffers from ‘poor memory’ and, even in his ‘prime,’ could not be trusted with sensitive information.”

• Trump Revokes Biden’s Security Clearances, Intel Briefings: “Poor Memory” (ZH)

President Trump revoked former President Biden’s security clearance and terminated his daily intelligence briefings, stating that, given his “poor memory,” there was no reason for Biden to continue receiving classified government information. “There is no need for Joe Biden to continue receiving access to classified information. Therefore, we are immediately revoking Joe Biden’s Security Clearances, and stopping his daily Intelligence Briefings,” Trump wrote on Truth Social late Friday evening. Trump said the decision was based on the precedent of Biden’s 2021 decision to end his access to the secret information. He also pointed to the special counsel report last year: “The Hur Report revealed that Biden suffers from ‘poor memory’ and, even in his ‘prime,’ could not be trusted with sensitive information.”

Biden in 2021…

JUST IN: President Trump revokes Joe Biden's security clearances, tells Biden, "YOU'RE FIRED!"

Biden revoked Trump's intelligence briefings in 2021, something that was historically provided to former presidents.

During an interview with CBS in 2021, Biden said that Trump… pic.twitter.com/iEzeFj3DYb

— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) February 7, 2025

Trump concluded the post with: “I will always protect our National Security — JOE, YOU’RE FIRED. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!” Steven Cheung, the president’s communications director, shared Trump’s Truth Social post on X and said: “Hit the road Jack and don’t you come back no more!” Trump’s team made a smart move given the investigations into various Biden family members—including Hunter Biden, who has been at the center of a probe into influence peddling schemes. Federal investigators have also recently become concerned about the Biden family’s close ties to China. Speaking with The Hill last month, House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chair James Comer (R-KY.) said the pardons “validated” the investigations into Biden family members. Perhaps the actual reason the Trump team revoked Biden’s security clearance is over the family’s close ties with the Chinese.

“USAID and Soros allegedly spent $27 million on anti-Trump prosecutions, claims journalist Mike Benz.”

• USAID or SorosAid? How US Tax Dollars Fund Chaos Worldwide (Sp.)

Soros’ vast NGO network has spent over $20 billion since 2000 on radical liberal causes across the world. Tens of millions or even billions of US taxpayer dollars were funneled through USAID, observers suspect. The Soros-linked East-West Management Institute received over $260 million from USAID to influence foreign affairs in Georgia, Uganda, Albania, and Serbia. Ukraine’s Anti-Corruption Action Center, backed by Soros, began receiving USAID grants in 2014 – the same year the US-backed Euromaidan coup ousted elected President Viktor Yanukovych with neo-Nazi support. Over $1 million has been funneled by USAID to the center.

In August 2024, a coup against Bangladeshi PM Sheikh Hasina was allegedly fomented by USAID, IRI, and Soros-linked groups. Her successor, Muhammad Yunus, is a known Clinton and Soros ally. According to The Grayzone, US taxpayer money funded rappers, transgender activists, and LGBT* initiatives to create a “power shift.” Soros and USAID have long sought to unseat Hungarian PM Viktor Orbán, who has actively opposed the globalist billionaire since 2017. During the 2022 elections, the Soros-linked NGO Action for Democracy funneled $7.6 million to his opposition.

Soros-linked groups, backed by USAID, led resistance efforts against Donald Trump during his presidency, influenced the 2020 election through Black Lives Matter protests, and worked to flip battleground states in 2020–2021. Soros funded the Electoral Justice Project, Black Lives Matter’s voter mobilization effort, and gave $22 million to Tides Advocacy, which supported the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation’s pre-election nationwide protests aimed against Trump in 2020. USAID and Soros allegedly spent $27 million on anti-Trump prosecutions, claims journalist Mike Benz. Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg was also accused of being “bought” by Soros.

“..an agency gone rogue, wasting millions of taxpayer dollars on inane programs, refusing to answer basic questions from congressional committees, and actively undermining the foreign policy goals of the United States.”

• How USAID and Its $50 Billion Budget Became a Target for Reform (ET)

The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) was a little-noticed federal agency until it suddenly became the object of a fierce political battle over the limits of presidential power and the accountability of government bureaucracies. When the Trump administration closed the agency’s offices on Feb. 3 and later placed most employees on administrative leave, USAID took center stage in a drama unfolding at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue. On one side is the Trump administration’s ongoing effort to make all parts of the executive branch comply with the president’s agenda. On the other side are congressional Democrats, who are warning that the action is a dangerous abuse of executive power and are vowing to fight it. Meanwhile, many observers fear that USAID’s true purpose—to advance U.S. interests through the use of soft power—may be overlooked.

On Feb. 3, President Donald Trump appointed Secretary of State Marco Rubio as acting director of USAID. The next day, the president indicated that the agency may be shuttered and its functions permanently transferred to the State Department. Here is why critics want to abolish or reform the agency, supporters want to save it, and what may happen next. USAID was established by an executive order of President John F. Kennedy in 1961 to advance U.S. foreign policy by offering developing nations technical assistance, help with education and health care, and disaster relief. The idea was that turning poor countries into stable world citizens would benefit U.S. citizens, too. A stable, prosperous nation makes a good ally, the theory went. Champions of USAID continue to see it as both an essential tool for foreign policy and a tangible expression of the goodness and generosity of the U.S. people.

Most observers agree that the agency does some good. Relatively small by Washington’s standards, USAID employs about 10,000 people and controls an annual budget of about $50 billion. In 2023, USAID poured $10.5 billion into humanitarian aid and $10.5 billion into health programs in countries around the world, according to the Congressional Research Service. One program that is often touted as a shining success story is the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, a USAID program that has provided more than $110 billion for controlling the spread of HIV/AIDS in more than 50 countries. “Most estimates are that somewhere in the vicinity of 27 million people are alive today because President Bush initiated and Congress supported that program,” Scott Pegg, acting director of the Global and International Studies program and chair of political science at Indiana University–Indianapolis, told The Epoch Times.

President Donald Trump said in remarks to reporters on Feb. 4 that “some of the money is well spent.” Yet the agency’s halo dims on closer inspection. Critics tell the story of an agency gone rogue, wasting millions of taxpayer dollars on inane programs, refusing to answer basic questions from congressional committees, and actively undermining the foreign policy goals of the United States. The White House on Feb. 3. produced a list of projects funded by USAID that it characterized as examples of waste and abuse. The projects include $1.5 million to “advance diversity equity and inclusion in Serbia’s workplaces and business communities,” another $47,000 for a “transgender opera” in Colombia, and $2.5 million for electric vehicles in Vietnam.

Rep. Wesley Hunt (R-Texas) listed further examples on social media platform X on Feb. 3, including $56 million to boost tourism in Egypt and Tunisia and $27 million for “reintegration gift bags” for deported Central Americans. Hunt said the agency was behaving “like a child with YOUR credit card.” Some USAID grant recipients include terrorist-controlled organizations, according to a study by the Middle East Forum released on Feb. 1. The study found that $122 million has gone to groups aligned with designated terrorist organizations, including millions of dollars for organizations directly controlled by the Hamas terrorist group. A July 2024 report from the U.S. Office of Inspector General noted deficiencies and vulnerabilities in USAID’s vetting process, which is supposed to prevent the diversion of U.S. funds to terrorist organizations.

In one case of apparent abuse, USAID partnered with Chemonics, an international consulting firm, to spend $9.5 billion to improve health supply chains. Chemonics allegedly overbilled the agency by up to $270 million and failed to meet its objectives, and the project led to 31 indictments for the illegal resale of USAID-funded materials, according to Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), who has called for an independent analysis of USAID grant recipients. Ernst said USAID also provided nearly $1 million in funding to China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology, which the CIA has said was the most likely source of the virus that causes COVID-19. USAID has resisted congressional oversight for decades, some lawmakers say, resulting in a culture of defiance. “The agency has engaged in a demonstrated pattern of obstructionism,” Ernst wrote in a letter to Rubio on Feb. 4.

False claims were made that certain documents were classified to delay review by congressional staffers and to mislead Congress on the indirect cost of programs, Ernst wrote, adding that in some cases, this amounted to more than 25 percent of the grant total. The agency refused to provide data on administrative costs, Ernst said. The agency later said that providing the data to Congress would violate federal law and that it had no obligation to respond because Ernst did not present a formal request from a “committee of jurisdiction.” “Washington insiders are more upset at DOGE for trying to stop wasteful spending than USAID for misusing tax dollars,” Ernst told The Epoch Times. “The agency has stonewalled me and used every trick in the book to hide what they are doing from the American people. It has lied, misled, and deceived taxpayers, but I will not be deterred in fighting for and uncovering the truth.” Rubio leveled his own criticism at the agency on Feb. 3, after being appointed its interim caretaker.

“They have basically evolved into an agency that believes that they’re not even a U.S. government agency, that … they’re a global charity,” Rubio said in an interview on Fox News. Worse, the agency frequently works at cross purposes with the interests of the United States, the secretary of state said. “One of the most common complaints you will get … from State Department officials and ambassadors and the like, is: ‘USAID is not only not cooperative, they undermine the work that we’re doing in that country,’” sometimes advancing programs that the host government finds objectionable, Rubio said. Speaking about USAID at the U.S. Embassy in El Salvador on Feb. 4, he said: “It’s been 20 or 30 years where people have tried to reform it, and it refuses to reform. When we were in Congress, we couldn’t even get answers to basic questions about programs. That will not continue.”

Chemonics – revealing

This research from @IanCarrollShow on USAID funding is INSANE:

Ian says roughly 93% of USAID funding is estimated to be fraud

– Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton and their friends appear to be the top money laundering recipients
– The majority of sub awards being given out by USAID… pic.twitter.com/4OqEQ101lt

— Wall Street Apes (@WallStreetApes) February 7, 2025

“..the best symbolic indication that the old partisan and ideological divides in the country that date back three-quarters of a century find themselves fully scrambled into a wholly new alliance.”

• The Rise and Rise of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (ET)

There is much to learn about the way the world works today by watching the confirmation vote on Trump’s pick of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to head the Department of Health and Human Services. In so many ways, this is a remarkable development with a dramatic story arc, one that speaks presciently to events over the past five years and where they stand in public consciousness. In November 2021, a major book blasted onto the scene that hardly anyone had expected. It was “The Real Anthony Fauci” by Kennedy. The author had already emerged as the world’s leading critic of the policy response to COVID-19, which included locking down societies across the globe to prepare the population for a vaccine that was already on record as failing to protect against both infection and transmission.

This book was not just a criticism of the way that the “nation’s leading infectious disease doctor” had been the dominant voice for shutdowns, closures, distancing, and masking. It dug through the deep history of the U.S. bioweapons program to highlight the role of dangerous research with a military angle. Fauci was not merely the guy telling you how to stay well; he had become a powerful figure in the bioweapons industry, which had a deep relationship with pharmaceutical companies. The book was beyond mind-blowing, and its many hundreds of footnotes provide an incredible documentary source for readers to check. I dug through them to discover features of the pandemic response I never knew existed. The depth of research here was simply astounding.

As the book became a bestseller, Amazon itself faced pressure to censor it. It acquiesced for a time simply because the powers that be were so awesome and aggressive. Still, the book made inroads in any case. At that time, the political constellation in the country was shifting wildly, and no one knew where it would wind up. The Biden administration had doubled down on coercive pandemic policies and added vaccine and mask mandates while issuing wild warnings of mass death for noncompliance. Resistance on the right and left were growing, but no one knew for sure where all of this would end up. As Trump clinched the Republican nomination, there was a brief moment when it seemed that the Democrats would be open to replacing Biden on the ticket.

A lifelong Democrat and the inheritor of the mantles of both his father and uncle, Kennedy seemed like an obvious choice to take the nomination in an open primary. He started an ad campaign that revived his uncle’s early efforts. But there would be no primary, thus forcing him into an independent bid for the presidency. Third-party attempts in the United States always run into the same problem: The whole system is geared toward two parties, and voting logic usually ends up reinforcing that as well. As that reality gradually dawned on Kennedy, there was a growing sense within the large movement that backed him that he needed another option. As events unfolded, Trump was subjected to a close assassination attempt on July 13, 2024. That was the moment when the two camps came together.

After several days of talking, there was a sudden realization on both sides that they were fighting the same corporatist enemies from two different fronts, one focused on immigration and trade and the other focused on food and pharma power. There was general agreement that many things in America needed to change. The sudden emergence of the unity effort of Trump and Kennedy together disoriented both sides, simply because the coalition brought together factions that had long seemed opposed. Kennedy was a long-time environmental lawyer, and Trump was generally an anti-environmentalist. They would agree to disagree on oil and energy but concentrate on the economic and physical health of America, which came to be embodied in the MAGA/MAHA coalition.

The shock in both camps was high, but the urgency of the moment—and the deep desire for change in Washington—impressed upon the grassroots the need to shake off their squeamishness and get to work together. How much did Kennedy’s involvement help the Trump campaign? Enormously. Was it decisive in the sweeping victory? Very likely. As a thank you for joining forces or perhaps a quid pro quo that was nonetheless highly merited, Kennedy gained nomination to the position of secretary of health and human services, which oversees many other agencies in the realm of food, health, pharmaceuticals, and much more.

The real challenge then began after Trump’s victory because of a peculiar feature of the American system: Cabinet picks have to be confirmed by the Senate. In normal years, and with most appointees of the past never really presenting that much of a challenge to the status quo, a president’s picks sail through with bipartisan support. Trump’s picks would be different, particularly the Kennedy choice since his stance on pharma and pandemic planning was well known. A choice for him would represent a repudiation of the past five years of policy, a prospect nearly all of Washington dreaded.

In the course of events, an incredible irony emerged. In committee—and likely too in the larger Senate—the vote fell along party lines, but not in the way one would expect. This lifelong Democrat and scion of the great Democrat family was opposed by every Democrat and supported (so far) by every Republican. Not only that, but the Republican-friendly press opposed him tooth and nail. The Wall Street Journal, National Review, and the New York Post all published bitter editorials that called the nominee a crank and conspiracy theorist.

Largely because of a huge push from the grassroots—and because of support from Trump—the Republicans voted for him in any case, while the Democrats simply could not and did not, despite the manner in which Kennedy, in many ways, represented causes long important to many people generally considered to be on the left. Thus does the expected confirmation of Kennedy—his rise and rise for fully five years—embody the best symbolic indication that the old partisan and ideological divides in the country that date back three-quarters of a century find themselves fully scrambled into a wholly new alliance. If you attend any events that bring together MAGA and MAHA, you know exactly what I mean. They are exciting scenes of people who have never been in the same room together, gradually discovering points of agreement and feeling very optimistic about the future.

Trudy is nervous.

• Trudeau Warns Trump’s Threat To Annex Canada Is ‘Real Thing’ (RT)

Outgoing Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has been caught on a hot mike telling businessmen that US President Donald Trump is not joking when he talks about absorbing Canada, the Toronto Star newspaper has reported. Trump reiterated his desire to make Canada “our 51st state” when he spoke to journalists in the Oval Office earlier this week. “I would love to see that. Some people say that would be a long shot. If people wanted to play the game right, it would be 100% certain that they would become a state,” he claimed. The US president and the Canadian PM discussed the hiccups in their relations during two phone calls on Monday. On Thursday, Trudeau revealed some of the details of those conversations to businessmen and union leaders ahead of a closed-door meeting as part of the Canada-US Economic Summit in Toronto.

The prime minister thought he was speaking confidentially, but it turned out that his microphone had not been turned off promptly and he was overheard by journalists. “I suggest that not only does the Trump administration know how many critical minerals we have but that may be even why they keep talking about absorbing us and making us the 51st state,” Trudeau said as cited by the Toronto Star. The US wants to “benefit” from Canada’s natural resources and “Trump has it in mind that one of the easiest ways of doing that is absorbing our country, and it is a real thing,” he warned. When Trump first raised the possibility of making Canada part of the US in December, Trudeau insisted that there was “not a snowball’s chance in hell” of it happening.

Last week, the US president argued that Canada would struggle to remain viable if it stopped getting “hundreds of billions of dollars” in subsidies from Washington. The solution would be joining the US, which would result in “much lower taxes, and far better military protection for the people of Canada – and no tariffs!” In early February, Trump imposed 25% tariffs on imports from Canada and Mexico and 10% on imports from China – citing concerns over illegal immigration and drug trafficking. Ottawa vowed to retaliate by slapping equivalent duties on US goods. However, Trump decided to postpone the introduction of tariffs on the two neighboring countries for 30 days in return for promises by both governments to strengthen border security.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1887994885967380517

“The Post noted that the access sought by the UK “has no known precedent in major democracies.”

• Apple Ordered to Provide UK Gov’t Access to ALL User Data on the Cloud (HUSA)

The Washington Post reported Friday that the United Kingdom’s deep state has demanded that Apple create a back door for them to retrieve all the content any Apple user worldwide has uploaded to the cloud—what would be an unprecedented erosion of online privacy and civil liberties. Citing anonymous sources, the Post reported that the British government’s undisclosed order was issued last month. It reportedly requires Apple to give officials blanket capability to view fully encrypted material. Typically, Apple has assisted authorities on a case-by-case basis—such as helping the FBI access a terrorist’s phone, for example. The Post noted that the access sought by the UK “has no known precedent in major democracies.” According to the Post, the UK’s order was made pursuant to the sweeping U.K. Investigatory Powers Act of 2016, which authorizes law enforcement to compel assistance from companies to access user data.

“The law, known by critics as the Snoopers’ Charter, makes it a criminal offense to reveal that the government has even made such a demand,” the Post reported. “Apple can appeal the U.K. capability notice to a secret technical panel, which would consider arguments about the expense of the requirement, and to a judge who would weigh whether the request was in proportion to the government’s needs. But the law does not permit Apple to delay complying during an appeal.” An Apple spokesman reportedly declined to comment. The Post reported that Apple is likely to stop offering encrypted storage in the UK. “Yet that concession would not fulfill the U.K. demand for backdoor access to the service in other countries, including the United States,” the newspaper added.

Western countries, including the U.S., have been pushing for total access to online user data for years. In March 2021, for example, former FBI Director Chris Wray told the Senate Judiciary Committee that encryption was stifling his agents from investigating domestic extremism. According to Wray and other law enforcers, tech companies should be able to build “backdoors” into their encryption that preserves privacy, while allowing for access when necessary. That, they say, strikes the proper balance between data security and national security.

However, numerous tech experts, civil libertarians, and others say that it’s impossible to build a backdoor that can’t be exploited by hackers. They also say that by banning encryption, the United States would be following in the footsteps of authoritarian countries such as China, which blocked the encrypted messaging app Signal. “It is important to understand that any kind of back door (or front door) access for the ‘good guys’ can also be exploited by the ’bad guys,’” the pro-industry Information Technology & Innovation Foundation stated in a July 2020 report. “For example, key escrow systems would introduce new attack vectors that could allow attackers to gain access to encrypted information, such as by compromising the system that maintains copies of the keys.”

“..this is not an agency for aid, assistance and development..” [..]“This is a machine for interference in internal affairs, a mechanism for changing regimes, political systems, and state structures..”

• Russian News Finds Readers Despite Sanctions, USAID-Funded Competition – FT (RT)

RIA Novosti and Russia Today have been spreading their message despite competition from media outlets funded by USAID and Western sanctions pressure, the Financial Times has said. In an article published on Thursday, the British daily outlined the hit various media outlets would face from President Donald Trump’s crackdown on the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), Washington’s primary means for funding political causes abroad. A number of USAID projects were focused on “countering” major Russia media outlets such as RIA Novosti and Russia Today, whose news coverage was “spreading on social media despite Western sanctions,” the newspaper said.

According to FT, the agency spent around $100 million on funding programs in Russia in 2023. Programs in Moldova received $309 million while around $1.7 billion was spent on Ukraine. The US president froze most US foreign aid for a 90-day review shortly after his inauguration. USAID has subsequently seen a number of its projects suspended, and Trump has said he wants the agency shut down. Without funding from the agency, many NGO media outlets around the world are struggling to stay afloat, FT wrote. According to French NGO Reporters Without Borders (RFS), 9 out of 10 media outlets in Ukraine relied on donations and USAID as their primary donor, with many already announcing that they’ll have to shut down.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova noted that Trump’s crackdown on the agency vindicated Moscow’s 2012 ban on its activity in the country. “We said that this is not an agency for aid, assistance and development,” the spokeswoman stressed in a press briefing on Thursday. “This is a machine for interference in internal affairs, a mechanism for changing regimes, political systems, and state structures,” she said, adding that the agency had acted outside the realm of Russian and international law.

“..it’s the embarrassingly passe “there are no Palestinians” trope on steroids.”

• In Valdai, Confronting The “American Problem” In West Asia (Pepe Escobar)

The 14th Middle East Conference of the Valdai Club in Moscow was hit by a geopolitical bunker buster bomb right in the middle of the proceedings: the announcement, by US President Donald Trump himself, of some sort of future Trump Gaza Riviera Resort and Casino in Palestine. Even before international outrage started to overspill, from the BRICS front to ASEAN to the Arab world (which sees it as Nakba 2.0), reaching even Trump-friendly Saudi Arabia and major US allies in Europe, perplexity set in at Valdai among most scholars and academics. Two glaring exceptions were professor at the University of Tehran Mohammad Marandi and former British diplomat Alastair Crooke – always delicately nuanced analysts of West Asia.

Both have long argued that as the US empire is being forced to retreat, it will become much more ruthless and take greater risks. Marandi qualifies Trump as “a gift” to American global decline. Crooke, for his part, wonders whether Israel’s far-right Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu really trapped Trump in a quagmire – when it may be the other way around. Trump now seems to have Netanyahu – which he basically despises – exactly where he wants him: owing favors. Trump made a lot of bombastic promises, which Netanyahu can sell as a major success to the Tel Aviv warmongers who compose his government. So his coalition will hold – for now. Yet, in return, Israel will still have to follow the next steps of the despised ceasefire project.

And that would lead, in theory, to the end of the war. Netanyahu wants an Infinite War, with unlimited Eretz Israel expansion and annexation. That is not a done deal – by far. As it stands, at face value, in one fell swoop, Trump normalized genocide, ethnic cleansing, and the reduction of the Gaza tragedy to a tawdry real estate deal in a “phenomenal location.” The accumulated effect of “the US will take over the Gaza strip,” “we will own it,” and “… level the site” not only opens the US to a shockingly illegal foreign annexation, but it’s the embarrassingly passe “there are no Palestinians” trope on steroids.

But this is far from “sheer lunacy,” as defined by US think tanks everywhere. It’s a natural extension of trying to buy Greenland, trying to annex Canada (in both cases, an increase to the US resource base), grabbing the Panama Canal, and rechristening the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America. It’s about changing the subject and the predominant narrative instead of addressing the real threat to the Empire: the Russia–China strategic partnership. In this case, the new Gaza Riviera built on a pyramid of skulls is not only endorsed but already envisioned by the genocidals in Tel Aviv in tandem with Trump’s billionaire donors, a key part of Israel’s lobby in the US.

Trump’s vision, according to New York insiders, came from his son-in-law Jared Kushner, who less than a year ago was already talking about the real estate gold represented by the Gaza seashore. Kushner is even more dangerous now that he’s acting behind the curtains in Trump’s second term: he’s the main influencer on POTUS when it comes to a possible, future US-sanctioned occupation of Gaza. For the moment, we have a Deporting-Building-Selling reality show ethos applied to the most insoluble problem in West Asia. Marandi calls it the “US–Israel problem.” Taha Ozhan at the Ankara Institute qualifies it as “the Israeli-centered order” as well as “the American problem.”

That’s just one little problem. Try this:

Name me one European country where people are fine with German troops on their land.

• NATO Troops Unable To Move Quickly Across EU (RT)

The EU would be unable to move a major military force within the bloc’s territory in case of need, a recent report by its financial watchdog stated this week. Bureaucratic hurdles and chaotic logistical planning would prevent a swift deployment, the European Court of Auditors (ECA) concluded in the document. Brussels has already spent all of its budget allocated for improving military logistics between 2021 and 2027 without achieving the stated goal of “moving military staff, equipment, and supplies swiftly and seamlessly,” the ECA said in a statement accompanying the report. Funding worth €1.7 billion ($1.76 billion) was spent in just two years and no money was “left in the pot by the end of 2023,” the report said, adding that organizing military movements within the bloc could still face “significant delays.”

Member states still need to file a notification of cross-border movement 45 days in advance in order to get authorization, according to the paper. One nation’s tanks can also be outright banned from crossing into the territory of a neighboring EU member simply because they are heavier than allowed by the neighbor’s road traffic regulations, the report said. Military logistics directions can also include infrastructure like bridges that are not suitable for heavy equipment, requiring armor to take a major detour, it added. The ECA blamed the chaotic planning and management structure for the setbacks. “Governance arrangements for military mobility in the EU are complex and fragmented, without a single point of contact, which makes it difficult to know who does what,” it said.

With the allocated military mobility budget spent, there will be “a significant gap of over four years” before any more funds will be available, it warned. “Projects were funded mainly in the east of the EU, but the bloc hardly funded any projects at all on the southern route towards Ukraine” the watchdog said. The ECA – an independent auditing body with a college consisting of individual members assigned by each EU member state – has been critical of Brussels’ defense policy initiatives over the past several years.

In 2024, it warned that the European Defense Industry Program could fail to reach its goals despite a €1.5 billion budget due to a poor balance between policy objectives, funding, and the timeline for implementation. The program could result in resources “spread across a wide array of projects that may not have a measurable impact at EU level,” it said. In 2023, it stated that the EU was lacking a long-time strategy on defense spending, while also warning later the same year that financial assistance to Kiev could add tens of billions of euros to the bloc’s debt due to Ukraine potentially being unable to repay its loans.

The function of plastics recycling is to make people feel less guilty, so they will use more plastics.

• “Recycling” Makes Plastic Pollution Worse (McGlinchey)

If you’re like many people, you’ve always thought a numbered-triangle symbol on the bottom of a plastic container tells you it’s recyclable — giving you peace of mind that when you toss it into a blue bin, it will be turned into something else. That’s not true. Those symbols are Resin Identification Codes (RICs). Numbered 1 through 7, they only identify the kind of plastic an item is made of. Far from giving a sweeping assurance that RIC-stamped items are recyclable, the symbol frequently indicates a particular item absolutely cannot be recycled. Reluctant to burden citizens with figuring out which plastics are recyclable — a chore that could dampen participation and cause confusion as recyclability of various plastics changes over time — many municipal recycling programs simply encourage people to toss all their RIC-stamped plastics in the bin and let the recyclers sort it out.

Which ones do recyclers actually want? The most-recycled plastic in America is stamped with a “1,” identifying the item as polyethylene terephthalate (PET). You’ll find it on beverage bottles, cooking oil containers, and many other liquid-containing bottles. A “2” tells you it’s high-density polyethylene (HDPE). Another generally recycling-suitable plastic, it’s used for milk jugs and laundry detergent jugs, and spray-cleaner bottles. It’s all downhill from there. Chances are your bin has plenty of #5 — polypropylene (PP) — which is frequently used for single-serve coffee-maker pods; yogurt, butter, prescription pill and soft tofu containers; and the lids on paperboard raisin cartons. Unfortunately, while there’s been a modest recent uptick in recyclers’ interest, polypropylene generally isn’t being recycled in the United States.

As for the rest of the RIC spectrum, feel free to make pointed inquiries with your city government, but chances are extremely slim that any #3, #4, #6 or #7 items you throw in your curbside blue bin will be made into anything else. That heap includes lots of packaging, such as non-cardboard egg cartons, fast-food clamshells, styrofoam cups and to-go containers, flexible 6-pack rings and bread bags. Feeling a little demoralized? Brace yourself: This blue-bin buzzkill is just getting started.

Let’s circle back to recyclers’ favorite: #1 PET. Even for this most-favored plastic, much of what’s placed in blue bins isn’t recycled. It’s a question of configuration: Recyclers love clear PET bottles, but most of them don’t want PET when it’s in the form of clamshell containers, cups and tubs. In these formats, PET reacts differently to the heat of recycling. For example, if they’re combined with bottles, those PET tubs used to package your blueberries and strawberries create ash that contaminates the whole batch. “This is a perfect example of why we don’t go by plastic numbers,” explains Millenium Recycling. “A #1 clamshell container is NOT the same as a #1 bottle and they cannot be recycled the same way.”

Size matters too. No matter the type of plastic, if it’s smaller than three inches, most recycling processors don’t want it cluttering up their works. Given that, the Washington Post recently advised simply throwing away any plastic that doesn’t fit in the palm of your hand. Thinness is another liability — which means your plastic forks, spoons and straws are also a no-go. Then there’s color discrimination — any kind of black plastic is pretty much guaranteed not to be recycled, because infrared scanners in automated sorting machines aren’t able to “see” most black plastic. And while clear #1 PET bottles are at the top of the recyclability list, colored PET bottles are less favored.

Cooked
https://twitter.com/i/status/1887888796261216690

Helmet

NEW: The Prime Minister of Japan gave President Trump a super special gift called the "Eternal Helmet," a golden samurai helmet created by a company in the Prime Minister's hometown

"The Japanese government’s order came with two specific requests: (1) The helmet had to be… pic.twitter.com/lH11t9D9X8

— George (@BehizyTweets) February 8, 2025

Mums baby

A 107-year-old Chinese grandmother pulls out a sweet from her pocket and gives it to her 84-year-old daughter,

You’re always mums baby no matter how old
pic.twitter.com/0Zx3VHeOEE

— Science girl (@gunsnrosesgirl3) February 8, 2025

Tigerboar
https://twitter.com/i/status/1888172830749003908

Cat

It approached the dog with polite and calmed it down. pic.twitter.com/6MY6grUPcI

— The Figen (@TheFigen_) February 7, 2025

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Debt Rattle December 3 2024

Dec 032024

December 3, 2024 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 10:06 am Finance Tagged with: blob, currency reserves, Elon Musk, Hunter Biden, Kallas, NATO, OpenAI, Orwell, pardon, Syria, Trump 64 Responses »

Johannes Vermeer The astronomer c1668

• Trump And Musk Are Ready To Shake Up America (Ryumshin)

• Delaware Judge Rejects (Again) Musk’s $56 Billion Pay-Package (ZH)

• Musk Again Asks To Block OpenAI’s “Illegal” Conversion To For-Profit Model (CT)

• Special Counsel Rejects Hunter Biden’s Pardon (ZH)

• The Pardon (Paul Craig Roberts)

• The Blob Has a Migraine (Kunstler)

• The Democratic Diaspora (Turley)

• West Won’t Return Russia’s Currency Reserves – Top Banker (RT)

• The Long War To Reaffirm Western And Israeli Primacy (Alastair Crooke)

• Moscow and Tehran Discuss Syria – Kremlin (RT)

• China Vows Support For Syria (RT)

• EU Has Turned Into ‘War Union’ – Russian Senator (RT)

• Putin’s Global Influence Increasing – Kallas (RT)

• Zelensky Willing To Cede Territory in Exchange for NATO Protection (Antiwar)

• Ukrainians Could Disappear (RT)

• Shall We Celebrate, the World Being as It Is? (Patrick Lawrence)

• Orwell’s Forecast of a Tyrannical Britain Proven Correct (Paul Craig Roberts)

• Sturgess Inquiry Ends In Foreign Office Whimper, Bang Of Novichok Lies (Helmer)

https://twitter.com/i/status/1863370201581941005

Pardon
https://twitter.com/i/status/1863598068039655604

Mike Davis

WATCH: Legal titan Mike Davis breaks down Hunter pardon; "It's a stunning pardon because as you said, it goes back more than a decade and it covers ANY potential federal crime that Hunter Biden may have committed, including foreign bribery & corruption." pic.twitter.com/5g9WZWbZ4h

— Overton (@overton_news) December 2, 2024

Kindness

Kindness is priceless … pic.twitter.com/PyL8ENcaYV

— Figen (@TheFigen_) December 1, 2024

View from Russia.

“What can we expect from the ‘bromance’ of the two billionaires?”

• Trump And Musk Are Ready To Shake Up America (Ryumshin)

It’s often said that a king is shaped by his entourage. This saying may be as old as time itself, but it applies perfectly to US President-elect Donald Trump. Right now, however, there’s only one person truly pulling the king’s strings – Elon Musk. Since the November 6 election, the Tesla tycoon has become the most influential figure in America – and perhaps even the world. Musk’s road to power took four long years. Before 2022, Trump and the South African billionaire were rivals (in 2020, the Space-X founder even supported Biden). But when Musk bought Twitter, rebranded it as X, and gradually leaned into the Republican fold, the winds shifted. By early 2024, Musk had met Trump, publicly endorsed him in July, and begun campaigning. By the end of the year, the two had become inseparable. Now, Musk is basically joined at the hip with Trump. They attend MMA fights together, watch space launches, and share McDonald’s burgers.

Musk is now a fixture at the Mar-a-Lago estate, advising the future president on appointments, and even apparently speaking to foreign leaders on his behalf – he was allegedly present when Trump spoke to Vladimir Zelensky and is reported to have secretly met the Iranian ambassador. Trump’s old advisers are getting nervous. On November 18, Axios reported that Musk had clashed with Boris Epshteyn, a longtime Trump ally, over Matt Gaetz’s nomination for US Attorney General. After the dispute, Gaetz’s nomination was pulled and CNN claimed that Trump’s team have asked that Epshteyn be investigated for alleged fraud – over alleged bribes to lobby for positions within the new administration. Musk’s influence is undeniable, and the media has already dubbed him the “co-president of the United States” or more cheekily, the “broligarch.” Musk himself embraces the title of “first buddy” (a nod to the first lady).

This isn’t without controversy. Musk’s ruthless business tactics are legendary, and he has Trump’s full trust. The billionaire has promised to audit the entire US government, aiming to cut up to $2 trillion in spending. God only knows what he’ll come up with next. It’s fascinating to watch the American political establishment panic. And let’s be honest – this drama could work to Russia’s advantage. The more chaos in Washington, the better for Moscow. But don’t get too excited just yet. There are differing views on Trump’s leadership. Some see him as a weak head man, easily swayed by flattery, while others view him as a potential autocrat, quick to toss aside anyone who crosses him. The truth, as always, lies somewhere in between. Trump runs his inner circle like a boss, with some figures holding much more sway than others.

Musk certainly falls into this inner circle. But he’s not alone. Trump’s family – especially Donald Trump Jr. – is also a key influence. Trump Jr. has been instrumental in connecting his father with allies like JD Vance, Robert Kennedy Jr., and Tulsi Gabbard, and he’s helping to handpick cabinet members. His influence is on par with Musk’s, even if it’s quieter. The Wall Street tycoons Trump has befriended also play a major role. In fact, for them, Trump has compromised on his conservative values, even proposing Scott Bessent, a former George Soros manager, for treasury secretary. Musk lobbied for Howard Lutnick to join the administration, but he eventually landed at the Commerce Department. These examples show that while Musk’s influence on Trump is substantial, it’s not all-encompassing –his power doesn’t extend beyond Trump’s inner circle.

There are also questions about how long the Trump-Musk partnership will last. Both are unpredictable, volatile personalities. Trump has a history of falling out with his favorites (just look at his rocky relationship with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis). Musk and Trump have plenty of potential points of conflict – from electric cars (Trump’s not a fan) to more serious matters like government spending cuts. But that’s a problem for the future. For now, let’s sit back, grab some popcorn, and watch this unfolding spectacle.

In 2018, when it was first agreed, the pay package was worth $2.6 billion. In January 2024, when the judge first rejected it, it had risen to $56 billion. Today, it is $101 billion.

Why the increase? Well, Elon Musk.

• Delaware Judge Rejects (Again) Musk’s $56 Billion Pay-Package (ZH)

Delaware Judge Kathaleen McCormick has once again sided against Elon Musk… After ruling against the billionaire in July 2022 when he tried to break his $44 billion contract to buy Twitter, and again in January 2024 when she initially rescinded Musk’s record (but “deeply flawed” according to her) $56 billion performance-based compensation package (determining that Tesla deceived shareholders when the all stock compensation was approved in 2018), she has once again ruled [against] that pay package. Musk’s legal team argued that McCormick should reverse her earlier decision because Tesla had conducted a shareholder vote to “ratify” the 2018 pay plan at the company’s annual shareholder meeting in June, per CNBC.

In fact, 72% of Tesla shareholders voted in June to approve the company’s CEO’s pay package. The judge said Musk’s attorneys made an argument with multiple “fatal flaws,” including their argument that the shareholder vote was enough to validate the pay package after the fact. “The large and talented group of defense firms got creative with the ratification argument, but their unprecedented theories go against multiple strains of settled law,” McCormick said in her ruling. McCormick ruled that the vote on the payment package did not have a “ratifying effect” on the current case, because shareholders had not ratified the payment plan prior to her ruling.

“Were the court to condone the practice of allowing defeated parties to create new facts for the purpose of revising judgments, lawsuits would become interminable,” she wrote. In addition to rejecting the revisions, Quartz reports that Monday’s decision granted $345 million in attorney fees to the lawyers who successfully challenged Musk’s pay plan on behalf of Tesla shareholders. The court deemed this amount an “appropriate sum to reward a total victory.” Tesla has the option to pay this fee in either cash or by issuing stock that can be sold on the open market. While Musk could appeal the decision to the Delaware Supreme Court, this ruling could have broader implications for how companies structure executive compensation and the role of shareholder votes in such decisions.

Finally, the judge has some interesting ‘friends’… “Before becoming the head of the Delaware Chancery Court, McCormick worked at a Delaware law firm called Young Conaway. This firm and its employees have been major donors to President Joe Biden for decades. In 2016, Hunter Biden hosted a gubernatorial campaign event for Congressman John Carney, with then-Vice President Joe Biden as the guest speaker. This event took place at the Law Offices of Young Conaway in Wilmington, Delaware. Carney, a close friend of Joe Biden for the last four decades, later became governor and nominated Kathaleen McCormick, a partner at Young Conaway, to her position on the Delaware Chancery Court.

In a March 2018 email, Hunter Biden claimed to personally know every judge on the Delaware Chancery Court while threatening legal action against his Chinese business partners. “I will bring the suit in the Chancery court in Delaware – which as you know is my home state and I am privileged to have worked with and know every judge on the chancery court…. another clear example of the Biden administration and its allies weaponizing the American legal system against their political opponents.”Tesla issued a statement on X shortly after the decision, confirming that it will appeal her decision…. There is also the fact that Musk’s move to relocate his business to Texas (after telling people on X after the original ruling that “companies should get the hell out of Delaware”) which could change things, but it is is unclear how this will proceed for now.

“No objective observer can look at OpenAI today and say it bears any resemblance whatsoever to what it promised to be..”

• Musk Again Asks To Block OpenAI’s “Illegal” Conversion To For-Profit Model (CT)

Elon Musk filed another motion to block ChatGPT-creator OpenAI from converting to a for-profit enterprise, while also alleging that it has been engaging in anti-competitive practices. Musk accused OpenAI, its CEO Sam Altman, president Greg Brockman and stakeholder Microsoft of violating terms of Musk’s “foundational contributions to the charity,” according to his motion for a preliminary injunction filed on Nov. 30. Musk co-founded OpenAI in 2015 and was an early board member until he left the company in 2018. He has since launched xAI — the firm behind AI chatbot Grok — which he said is falling victim to OpenAI’s anti-competitive practices. “OpenAI’s path from a non-profit to for-profit behemoth is replete with per se anticompetitive practices, flagrant breaches of its charitable mission, and rampant self-dealing,” Musk’s lawyers wrote.

Through a “series of exclusive arrangements” with Microsoft, the two companies have engaged in “predatory practices,” enabling them to seize control of almost 70% of the generative AI market, lawyers for Musk said, adding: “Microsoft and OpenAI now seek to cement this dominance by cutting off competitors’ access to investment capital, while continuing to benefit from years’ worth of shared competitively sensitive information during generative AI’s formative years.” Allowing this to continue will hurt xAI and the public, which has become increasingly concerned about “rushed” and “unsafe” AI products, they added. California law allows a nonprofit to convert to a for-profit stock corporation, but not to a limited liability company.

OpenAI said it remains nonprofit at its core but has established a for-profit subsidiary capable of issuing equity to raise capital and hire world-class talent. Still, those tasks would be administered at the direction of the nonprofit. An injunction to preserve what is left of OpenAI’s nonprofit character is the only “appropriate remedy,” Musk’s lawyers said. “No objective observer can look at OpenAI today and say it bears any resemblance whatsoever to what it promised to be. Enough is enough.” An OpenAI spokesperson slammed Musk’s latest attempt in a note to Cointelegraph: “Elon’s fourth attempt, which again recycles the same baseless complaints, continues to be utterly without merit.”

In March, OpenAI leaked emails from Musk in 2015 showing support for the firm to find over $1 billion in funding to compete with the likes of Google and Facebook (now Meta). OpenAI claimed Musk was harassing the firm in a related October filing. “Since launching a competing artificial intelligence company, xAI, Musk has been trying to leverage the judicial system for an edge. The effort should fail; Musk’s complaint does not state a claim and should be dismissed,” OpenAI added. In June, Musk threatened to ban Apple devices at his companies when Apple touted integrating OpenAI’s ChatGPT into its iPhone, iPad and Mac operating systems. Later, Apple launched Apple Intelligence on Oct. 28.

“No court has agreed with the defendant on these baseless claims, and his request to dismiss the indictment finds no support in the law or the practice of this district.”

• Special Counsel Rejects Hunter Biden’s Pardon (ZH)

Last night Hunter Biden’s lawyers filed a motion to dismiss his California tax fraud case after Joe Biden issued a blanket pardon absolving him of all crimes committed over a 10 year period.”The President’s pardon moots Mr. Biden’s pending and yet to occur sentencing and entry of judgment in this case and requires an automatic dismissal of the Indictment with prejudice,” wrote Hunter’s lawyer Abbe Lowell in the filing, adding that “this Court must dismiss the Indictment against Mr. Biden with prejudice and adjourn all future proceedings in this matter. “Special Counsel David Weiss isn’t having it. In a Monday response in opposition, Weiss argued that “The defendant’s motion should be denied since there is no binding authority on this Court which requires dismissal.”

“As a matter of past-practice in this district, courts do not dismiss indictments when pardons are granted,” Weiss wrote – citing cases involving Steve Bannon, Michael Flynn, Joe Arpaio and Ollie North, Above the Law reports. “Instead, it has been the practice of this court that once an Executive Grant of Clemency has been filed on the docket, the docket is marked closed, the disposition entry is updated to reflect the executive grant of clemency, and no further action is taken by the Court.” “Although Weiss purported not to have seen the pardon itself (which Lowell inexplicably failed to docket), he took particular umbrage at the suggestion that the prosecution was politically motivated, huffing that “The court similarly found [Biden’s] vindictive prosecution claims unmoored from any evidence or even a coherent theory as to vindictiveness.”

Judge Mark Scarsi of the Central District of California has taken no action, thus far. But in Delaware, Judge Maryellen Noreika said in a minute order that she intends to terminate the proceedings, and instructing the government to say by tomorrow if it objects to termination by dismissal. Presumably it does, although no objection has hit the docket as of this writing.” -Above the Law. Hunter pleaded guilty to the tax charges earlier this year, after a Delaware jury found him guilty of lying about his drug use on a background check form used to purchase a firearm.

In Weiss’ new filing, he writes: “The defendant did not docket the pardon nor has the government seen it. If media reports are accurate, the Government does not challenge that the defendant has been the recipient of an act of mercy. But that does not mean the grand jury’s decision to charge him, based on a finding of probable cause, should be wiped away as if it never occurred. It also does not mean that his charges should be wiped away because the defendant falsely claimed that the charges were the result of some improper motive. No court has agreed with the defendant on these baseless claims, and his request to dismiss the indictment finds no support in the law or the practice of this district.”

“You can see the pardon as a conservative act as protection of the family is the basis of society. But in our society so is equal standing under the law..”

• The Pardon (Paul Craig Roberts)

Joe Biden said he would not pardon his son, but he did. Pardons reside with presidents and governors and are supposed to be used to correct an injustice or when a service has been done by the pardoned person that offsets the harm of the offense that is pardoned. But pardons are often used for non-legitimate reasons, such as Bill Clinton’s pardon of Marc Rich and Clinton’s half brother, Roger Clinton. Bill did not pardon Roger until after Roger had served his sentence. Rich, however, an international fugitive on the FBI’s ten most wanted list, was apparently pardoned in exchange for political donations and donations to the Clinton library. Donations continued for 15 years after the pardon. In other words, the pardon was purchased. Biden’s pardon of his son occurred prior to Hunter’s sentence and before a day was served. No doubt that many a mother and father wish they had the power to grant their son or daughter a pardon.

It is disturbing that Biden pretends that the charges against Hunter were politically motivated and designed to hurt President Biden, as if the FBI and DOJ committed to Biden’s protection would act against him. The charges were protective of Biden and were brought in order to get the focus off the more dangerous information in the laptop. The politically motivated charges were the ones brought against Trump. But I don’t really blame Biden from using his power to save his son from prison. In a way it shows Joe Biden more committed to his son than to his reputation. You can see the pardon as a conservative act as protection of the family is the basis of society. But in our society so is equal standing under the law, which took a hit from the pardon. What we should find more upsetting than the pardon is the protection that the FBI and Department of Justice provided for President Biden and his son from the evidence in Hunter’s laptop.

The FBI put out the story, quickly accepted by the presstitutes, that the laptop was a Russian attempt to discredit the US president. The prosecutions that Hunter has faced are limited to his false statement on his gun purchase application and to failure to pay income taxes on the profits from his and President Biden’s influence peddling ventures to which the FBI and Department of Justice (sic) have turned a blind eye–the same FBI and DOJ that gave Biden clearance on the documents charge for which Trump was indicted and prosecuted. In other words, under the Democrats justice in America was totally corrupted and still 45% of American voters voted for Democrats in the last election.

This tells us that close to half of the voting population either is too insouciant or ignorant to know what is going on, or is indifferent or unconcerned whether law serves justice or political, ideological, and personal agendas. The damning conclusion is that close to half of the American population accepts law as a political weapon. That the personnel in the FBI and DOJ do not resign in protest at the perversion of law and prosecution indicates that they, too, accept the abuse of law by their superiors. Can the transformation of law from a shield of the people into a weapon in the hands of the state be reversed when the entire federal law enforcement system is corrupt to the core? Can such a giant task be accomplished when Trump is simultaneously attempting to restore integrity to all other aspects of government? Is this a bridge too far?

“It’s a beautiful thing to watch the Biden family destroy the Democrat Party.” — @Mazemoore on “X”

• The Blob Has a Migraine (Kunstler)

You can be sure the blobists have seen this coming from years away. The boys and girls in the agencies have behaved more than just a little badly, and they know it. They committed serious crimes against our country and its citizens under color-of-law since 2015, ranging from seditious conspiracy clear up to treason (say, just for instance, the case of Col. Alexander Vindman using his Ukraine connections to lever Mr. Trump out of the Oval Office in the 2019 impeachment scam.)

You have whole C-suites of agencies teed-up on RussiaGate for felonies, misprision of felonies, abuse of power, deprivation of rights, lying under oath, conspiracy to commit fraud, and much more. You have Judge James Boasberg playing games in the FISA Court he presided over; Robert Mueller and Andrew Weissmann running a two-and-a-half-year Chinese fire drill to cover-up years preceding of FBI / DOJ misconduct; John Brennan, James Clapper, and Gina Haspel abusing the “Five Eyes” intel arrangements to turn the CIA on innocent citizens at home; the fifty-one current and former intel agents colluding to bury Hunter’s Laptop to sway the 2020 election; the antics of Judge Emmet Sullivan in the Flynn case. . . .

And then on to a whole new round of frolics under “Joe Biden” including the malicious prosecutions of J-6 protesters; the pipe-bomb caper at the DNC; the use of several agencies to censor speech and manage the news media; the treasonous negligence of Alejandro Mayorkas on the nation’s borders; the DOJ-coordinated lawfare hounding of Mr. Trump and his adjacent lawyers; the Ukraine War project ginned up by the State Department’s Victoria Nuland and cohorts; and the sinkhole of greed, malice, and medical homicide that was the Covid-19 operation, millions killed and disabled, and likely more of that yet to come from the vaccines, trillions in wealth purloined or just plain lost, and businesses destroyed in lockdowns. It’s not a mere “swamp,” it’s a whole forbidden planet of turpitude.

Then there are the floaters and freelancers who move from one blob venue to the next, like lawfare artists Mary McCord, Norm Eisen, Marc Elias, David J. Kramer, or the girl-band of Lisa Monaco, Fiona Hill, Kathryn Ruemmler, Susan Rice, Samantha Power, Nellie Ohr. And finally, there are the real big fishes: Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Bill Gates, Anthony Fauci, Chris Wray, Merrick Garland, General Milley, and “Joe Biden.”

Add William Barr to that list for failing to reveal that he was in possession of Hunter’s laptop as early as the fall of 2019. Of course, it was crammed with exculpatory evidence that could have ended impeachment No. 1 on day one of the initial hearings, yet he never alerted President’s lawyers to its existence. Weird, a little bit. And also, for the effrontery of allowing Jeffrey Epstein to be killed in his Manhattan jail, and never offering the public a coherent account of how the cameras on the cellblock failed, or why the guards who fell asleep on-duty were disciplined with only 100 hours of “community service.”

My Gawd, they must be eating Xanax like tic-tacs in their drawing rooms and boudoirs as the name Kash Patel floats across their social media screens. Kash Patel, a real-live exterminating angel, will finally step in to the FBI Director’s office and turn the investigative powers of the FBI on. . . the FBI! And its parent, the DOJ. The poetic justice is sublime. You must wonder: how does Mr. Patel get through the RINO-infested Senate confirmation process? Start with: what have they got on him? Answer: probably not a goshdarn thing, not a hair out of place. More to the point: what has Mr. Patel got on them? (Especially Messers Thune, Barrasso, Cornyn, and let’s just throw in the Democrat Mark Warner, VA, who was up to his eyeballs in RussiaGate as chair of the Senate Intel Committee.)

And were Mr. Patel to land in the FBI Director’s office 49 days from now, what additional info might he uncover about years of weaponized government with assistance from John Ratcliffe at the CIA and Tulsi Gabbard as DNI — who will access a pipeline to the vast national security server farm out in Bluffdale, Utah. So, in case you think that the document-shredding party currently underway in DC will conceal all that criminality, consider what lives forever in the alternate universe of cyberspace.

“They are unlikely to improve themselves by receding further into that safe space to rave about the “f—ing morons” who make up the majority of America..”

• The Democratic Diaspora (Turley)

Democrats who campaigned on the need for “joy” and “saving democracy” are strikingly unjoyful about the results of the democratic process in 2024. Before the election, slips like the one of President Joe Biden calling Trump supporters “garbage” were immediately denied or deflected. But once voters had given the Republicans control of both houses of Congress, the popular vote and the White House, leading Democratic figures and celebrities dropped all pretense of civility. They are now being open about their contempt for voters, calling them “f—-ing morons” and “arrogant, ignorant” adolescents. After calling for Americans to come together for Kamala Harris, MSNBC’s Joy Reid sent out a heart-warming holiday message to those who voted for the GOP to “make your own dinner, MAGA. Make your own sandwiches, wipe your own tears.”

Those not wallowing in Reid’s anger are increasingly voicing themes of isolation, insurrection and secession. For years, the contempt for Trump voters has been open and obvious in much of the media. The “Let’s Go Brandon” movement captured the lunacy of the press and politicians simply denying what citizens could see, hear and experience for themselves. When asked for answers on issues like the economy and immigration, Harris paraded an army of celebrities to tell the public how to vote — shiny objects that they thought would be enough for shallow American voters. They were wrong. Now that the public has made its choice, leading figures are condemning the majority of voters as a mix of misogynists, self-haters and fascists. Whoopi Goldberg, 69, even joined the “4B” sex strike against men. Others seem to be morphing into exactly what they said Trump would become as president: isolationist and insurrectionist.

Some have responded to the losses by retreating further into echo chambers protected from opposing views. Many dumped X in favor of BlueSky, a new social media safe space for liberals who fear being triggered by opposing views. Notably, censorship advocates such as Nina Jankowisz have fled to BlueSky. The site is portrayed as a return to the good old days when liberals controlled all of the social media and maintained a massive censorship and blacklisting system over political discourse. New York Times tech reporter Kevin Roose wrote a column last week that offered the familiar “I can breathe again” account: “After an hour or so of scrolling through Bluesky the other night, I felt something I haven’t felt on social media in a long time: free.” It is the ultimate irony. This election shocked many on the left precisely because they were writing and commenting on each other within their hardened media and political silos.

They are unlikely to improve themselves by receding further into that safe space to rave about the “f—ing morons” who make up the majority of America. Other Democratic politicians have moved beyond the chest-pounding of leaders like Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D) to pledges of more direct obstruction or inflammatory rhetoric. Denver mayor Mike Johnson (D) declared that he was preparing the Mile-High City for its “Tiananmen Square moment” to fight the federal government in any attempt to deport unlawful migrants. Johnson warned that he would have not only Denver police “stationed at the county line to keep [ICE] out” but also “50,000 Denverites.” Not long ago, Democrats were calling similar protests an “insurrection.” Johnson later walked back his remarks but insisted that his city would fight federal efforts to enforce the immigration laws. Rather than such trench warfare, most Democratic governors and mayors are simply pledging not to cooperate with federal authorities, which is a lawful choice. The concern, however, is how others will react to the overheated rhetoric for months that this will be “our last election” and that Trump is the new Hitler.
.

Both sides hold frozen assets. Equal amount. An exercise in futility.

• West Won’t Return Russia’s Currency Reserves – Top Banker (RT)

The West will not return any of the Russian sovereign assets frozen as part of sanctions over the Ukraine conflict, the CEO of major Russian lender VTB, Andrey Kostin, has predicted, as cited by Reuters. The US and its allies have immobilized around $300 billion of assets belonging to the Russian central bank since 2022 as part of Ukraine-related sanctions. The funds deposited in Brussels-based clearing house Euroclear have generated billions in interest, which the EU has decided to use to finance Kiev. “In the West, they say, let’s pay for the reconstruction of Ukraine from the reserves. And they will draw up such a bill that even the reserves will not be enough,” Kostin, the CEO of Russia’s second-largest lender, told Reuters in an interview published on Monday.

The new president of the European Council, Antonio Costa, said on Sunday that the EU will continue to provide economic and military aid to Ukraine in the coming year, using the interest accrued on frozen Russian money. “Starting next month, we plan to provide, for a full year, every month, €1.5 billion [$1.58 billion] of assistance. This money comes from the proceeds of Russia’s frozen assets and can also be used for military purposes,” Costa said during a visit to Kiev on day one of his mandate. Earlier this year, the EU decided to give Ukraine a chunk of the interest generated by Russian assets. In July, the European Commission announced it would allocate €1.5 billion to Kiev, mainly for weapons, as the first tranche of aid. The second tranche, expected to amount to €1.9 billion, could reportedly be disbursed next spring. In October, the European Parliament also approved a loan of up to €35 billion to Ukraine to be repaid with future revenues from frozen Russian assets.

The loan is the EU’s part of a package the Group of Seven (G7) agreed in June to provide Kiev with up to $50 billion in financial support. Approximately €210 billion in assets belonging to the Russian central bank is being held in the EU. The US has not yet made public the amount of funds it holds. According to Reuters’s calculations, at the start of 2022, Russia had $67 billion in US dollar assets. Russia has repeatedly accused the West of “stealing” its money. Finance Minister Anton Siluanov warned in October that Moscow would respond in kind to the West’s use of the income generated by its frozen central bank reserves. Last month, he said Russia would use income from the frozen assets of Western investors. While the finance minister did not elaborate on the amount of Western assets currently held in Russia, previous calculations by RIA Novosti put the figure at roughly equal to the size of the Russian funds frozen abroad.

“Kennan’s thesis from 1946 was that the United States needed to work patiently and resolutely to thwart the Soviet threat, and to enhance and aggravate the internal fissures in the Soviet system..”

• The Long War To Reaffirm Western And Israeli Primacy (Alastair Crooke)

The long war to reaffirm western and Israeli primacy is undergoing a shape-shift. On one front, the calculus in respect to Russia and the Ukraine war has shifted. And in the Middle East, the locus and shape of the war is shifting in a distinct way. Georges Kennan’s famed Soviet doctrine has long formed the baseline to U.S. policy, firstly directed toward the Soviet Union, and latterly, towards Russia. Kennan’s thesis from 1946 was that the United States needed to work patiently and resolutely to thwart the Soviet threat, and to enhance and aggravate the internal fissures in the Soviet system, until its contradictions triggered the collapse from within. More recently, the Atlantic Council has drawn on the Kennan doctrine to suggest that his broad outline should serve as the basis of U.S. policy towards Iran.

“The threat that Iran poses to the U.S. resembles the one faced from the Soviet Union after World War II. In this regard, the policy that George Kennan outlined for dealing with the Soviet Union has some applications for Iran”, the Atlantic report states. Over the years, that doctrine has ossified into an entire network of security understandings, based on the archetypal conviction that America is strong, and that Russia was weak. Russia must ‘know that’, and thus, it was argued, there could be no logic for Russian strategists to imagine they had any other option but to submit to the overmatch represented by the combined military strength of NATO versus a ‘weak’ Russia. And should Russian strategists unwisely persevere with challenging the West, it was said, the inherent contrariety simply would cause Russia to fracture. American neocons and western intelligence have not listened to any other view, because they were (and largely still are) convinced by Kennan’s formulation.

The American foreign policy class simply could not accept the possibility that such a core thesis was wrong. The entire approach reflected more a deep-seated culture, rather than any rational analysis – even when visible facts on the ground pointed them to a different reality. So, America has piled the pressure on Russia through the incremental delivery of additional weapons systems to Ukraine; through stationing intermediate range nuclear-capable missiles ever-closer to Russia’s borders; and most recently, by shooting ATACMS into ‘old Russia’. The aim has been to pressure Russia into a situation where it would feel obliged to make concessions to Ukraine, such as a to accept a freezing of the conflict, and to be obliged to negotiate against Ukrainian bargaining ‘cards’ devised to yield a solution acceptable to the U.S. Or, alternatively, for Russia to be cornered into the ‘nuclear corner’.

American strategy ultimately rests on the conviction that the U.S. could engage in a nuclear war with Russia – and prevail; that Russia understands that were it to go nuclear, it would ‘lose the world’. Or, pressured by NATO, the anger amongst Russians likely would sweep Putin from office were he to make significant concessions to Ukraine. It was a ‘win-win’ outcome – from the U.S. perspective. Unexpectedly however, a new weapon appeared on the scene which precisely unshackles President Putin from the ‘all-or-nothing’ choice of having to concede a bargaining ‘hand’ to Ukraine, or resort to nuclear deterrence. Instead, the war can be settled by facts on the ground. Effectively, the George Kennan ‘trap’ imploded.

The Oreshnik missile (that was used to attack the Yuzhmash complex at Dnietropetrovsk) provides Russia with a weapon, such as never before witnessed: An intermediate range missile system that effectively checkmates the western nuclear threat. Russia can now manage western escalation with a credible threat of retaliation that is both hugely destructive – yet conventional. It inverts the paradigm. It is now the West’s escalation that either has to go nuclear, or be limited to providing Ukraine with weapons such as ATACMS or Storm Shadow that will not alter the course of the war. Were NATO to escalate further, it risks an Oreshnik strike in retaliation, either in Ukraine or on some target in Europe, leaving the West with the dilemma of what to do next.

“They expressed “unconditional support” for steps taken by Damascus “to restore constitutional order and territorial integrity of the country.”

Russia has started bombing the “Islamist militants”, whoever they are or who supports them. If Iran follows suit, who knows what happens?

• Moscow and Tehran Discuss Syria – Kremlin (RT)

Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke with his Iranian counterpart Masoud Pezeshkian on Monday, according to a statement issued by the Kremlin. The main focus of the conversation was on the “escalating situation” in the Syria, the statement outlined. The ongoing large-scale attack by Islamist militants around Syria’s second largest city, Aleppo, is aimed at undermining the sovereignty, political and socio-economic stability of the Middle Eastern nation, the two leaders concluded. They expressed “unconditional support” for steps taken by Damascus “to restore constitutional order and territorial integrity of the country.” Putin and Pezeshkian also stressed the importance of coordinating efforts within the framework of the ‘Astana format’ with the participation of Türkiye.

Assorted Syrian ‘rebels’ and terrorists, including Hayat Tahrir-al-Sham (HTS), staged a large-scale attack on government forces in northwest Syria last week. Formerly known as Jabhat al-Nusra, HTS is considered a terrorist organization by Syria, Russia, Iran, the US, and several other countries. The militants claim to have captured considerable chunks of the provinces of Aleppo and Idlib, with some units reaching as far as the center of the city of Aleppo. Damascus has reportedly succeeded in halting the insurgents near the city of Hama in central Syria after receiving reinforcements. Syrian President Bashar Assad has pledged to “eliminate terrorists” and to punish their “sponsors and supporters.” The Syrian military acknowledged that dozens of its troops had been killed during the offensive while estimating terrorist losses at around 1,000.

Government forces were also backed by waves of Russian airstrikes which also targeted terrorist headquarters, weapons, and ammunition depots. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed on Monday that Russian warplanes stationed in Syria had conducted strikes on militant forces in recent days. Peskov reiterated Russia’s support for the Syrian government, stating that Moscow and Damascus had been in contact and were analyzing ongoing developments. Russia intervened in the Syrian conflict in 2015, helping to inflict heavy defeats on numerous terrorist groups, most notably al-Nusra and the Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS). Russia maintains a significant military presence in the country and has bases in Hmeimim and Tartus. Last week’s Islamist attack was the first major clash between Syrian rebels and government forces since March 2020, when Russia and Türkiye brokered a ceasefire in the country.

Russia, Iran and China.

“As Syria’s friend, China is willing to make an active effort to avoid further deterioration of the situation in Syria..”

• China Vows Support For Syria (RT)

China is “deeply concerned” about developments in Syria, where jihadist militants launched a surprise offensive last week, Foreign Ministry spokesman Lin Jian said on Monday. As Damascus’ “friend,” Beijing is prepared to take steps to prevent a further deterioration of the situation, he said. The Hayat Tahrir-al-Sham (HTS) terrorist group, formerly known as Jabhat al-Nusra, and allied militias launched a large-scale attack on government-controlled territory in northern Syria last Wednesday. The militants took over a number of towns and villages in the Aleppo, Idlib and Hama provinces. Syrian government forces, backed by Russian fighter jets, launched a counteroffensive on Thursday and successfully liberated several settlements over the weekend, reportedly eliminating hundreds of militants and thwarting their advance into central Syria.

However, dozens of Syrian army service members were lost amid the heavy fighting, the Syrian General Command said in an earlier statement. “China is deeply concerned over the situation in northwestern Syria, and supports its effort to uphold national security and stability,” Lin told a press briefing on Monday. “As Syria’s friend, China is willing to make an active effort to avoid further deterioration of the situation in Syria,” the official said. The Chinese embassy in Syria “is closely following the local situation” and has issued a security alert for Chinese citizens residing in the country, advising them to take extra security precautions and, if possible, move to safer areas, Lin said. China’s ties with Syria have been growing closer in recent years.

Last September, Chinese President Xi Jinping and his Syrian counterpart Bashar Assad inked a “strategic partnership” deal, pledging to work together in order to “jointly safeguard international fairness and justice” in the face of the “unstable and uncertain international situation.” Xi told Assad at the time that Beijing supported Syria in “opposing foreign interference and unilateral bullying, safeguarding national independence, sovereignty, and territorial integrity.” A number of other nations, including Russia, Iran, Iraq and Egypt, have expressed support for Damascus over the past few days, commending it for fighting against terrorism. Moscow has slammed the militants’ offensive as a “direct violation of Syria’s sovereignty,” and mobilized air force units stationed in the country to aid the Syrian army. Tehran has urged Islamic countries to unite in helping Syria defeat the militants, placing the blame for the escalation on Israel and the US.

“The contemporary European Union is the main factor in dividing Europe and provoking conflicts. [It’s] a union of war..”

• EU Has Turned Into ‘War Union’ – Russian Senator (RT)

The European Union has morphed into an “aggressive political bloc” and a “war union,” the Vice Speaker of the Russian parliament’s upper chamber, Konstantin Kosachev, has said. The senator criticized the EU in a Telegram post on Tuesday, pointing to the bloc’s support for the ongoing turmoil in Georgia, which has been hit by mass anti-government, pro-EU protests. The unrest has been going on since Thursday, when Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze announced that he would freeze accession talks with the bloc until 2028. He accused Brussels of persistent “blackmail and manipulation” of Georgia’s internal affairs in justifying the decision.

“The first Molotov cocktails were thrown by protesters at Georgian police immediately after the new EU foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, publicly called the crowd’s protests legitimate and the response of the authorities – illegal,” Kosachev wrote. The vice speaker was apparently referring to remarks made by Kallas during her visit to Kiev, where she threatened Georgia with “consequences” and openly took the protesters’ side. “It is clear that using violence against peaceful protesters is not acceptable, and the Georgian government should respect the will of the Georgian people,” she stated.

Members of the bloc’s foreign service are acting as “instigators” of the unrest, according to the Russian lawmaker. Kosachev recalled the 2020 Capitol Hill rioting in the US, stating that the EU kept silent on it at the time and did not mention any “citizens’ right to protest.” The bloc has grown out of its original economic cooperation framework into an “aggressive political bloc with military inclinations,” acting as the main divisive force in Europe, Kosachev said. “The contemporary European Union is the main factor in dividing Europe and provoking conflicts. [It’s] a union of war,” he stressed.

Kallas is as bad as Ursula. They’re like evil twins. Where do they find these specimens?

• Putin’s Global Influence Increasing – Kallas (RT)

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s influence in global affairs is growing, new EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas has said. Speaking to reporters in Kiev during her first official visit on Sunday, Kallas, who stepped down as Estonia’s prime minister to take the EU post, reiterated that the European Union “wants Ukraine to win this war.” She doubled down on support for military aid to Ukraine, insisting that providing the country more weapons is not “charitable aid,” but an investment in the security of the EU, since Russian President Vladimir Putin “shows no signs of abandoning his goals.” Kallas has advocated tougher sanctions on Russia and is known for her strident stance against Moscow. She also stated Sunday that supporting Ukraine is in the interests of the US.

“If America is worried about China, it should be worried about Russia first,” Kallas claimed, according to the outlet Suspilne, adding that Russia, Iran, North Korea and China are working together. She also admitted that despite Western efforts to isolate Russia and its leader, Vladimir Putin’s political influence has been amplified. “And we also see what Putin is doing in other countries, really increasing his influence. So, if the United States wants to be the strongest state in the world, they will eventually have to deal with the Russian Federation. And the easiest way to deal with this is to support Ukraine so that it wins the war,” the diplomat concluded. Kallas also did not rule out sending Western troops to Ukraine.

“So far, the discussion has centered on which countries are ready to send soldiers to Ukraine and which are not,” she told reporters. “I believe that nothing can be ruled out.” The remarks come as the UK and France have revived debates about sending forces to Ukraine, according to a recent report in Le Monde. In February, French President Emmanuel Macron caused controversy by refusing to rule out sending ground troops “to prevent Russia from winning this war.” The statement was quickly disavowed by NATO officials, while German Chancellor Olaf Scholz told reporters that Ukraine’s Western backers were “unanimous” in their opposition to the idea. Russia has long claimed that Western special forces personnel are already active in Ukraine as military advisors and mercenaries. Putin maintains that NATO troop deployments in Ukraine cannot not change the situation on the battlefield.

Ukraine can’t become a NATO member. So they want NATO to occupy the country.

• Zelensky Willing To Cede Territory in Exchange for NATO Protection (Antiwar)

On Friday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said he was willing to temporarily cede territory to Russia to bring an end to the war in exchange for NATO protection over Ukraine. “If we want to stop the hot stage of the war, we should take under [the] NATO umbrella the territory of Ukraine that we have under our control,” Zelensky told Sky News. “That’s what we need to do fast, and then Ukraine can get back the other part of its territory diplomatically.” Zelensky’s suggestion is almost certainly a non-starter for Russia since the invasion was launched to keep Ukraine out of NATO, but it does reflect a shift in his position. Zelensky previously maintained that his war goals included driving Russia out of all of the territory it has captured since February 2022, as well as Crimea.

In a recent conversation with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Russian President Vladimir Putin pointed to a speech he made earlier this year that outlines his conditions for peace, which include a Ukrainian withdrawal from all territory Russia has annexed, Ukrainian neutrality, and the lifting of all Western sanctions on Russia. Ukrainian neutrality was Russia’s main demand during short-lived negotiations that took place in the early days of the invasion. Ukrainian and Russian officials held talks in March and April of 2022, but the negotiations were discouraged by the US and its allies.

In the interview with Sky News, Zelensky said Ukraine wouldn’t agree to a ceasefire without guarantees of NATO protection. “We need [NATO protection] very much, otherwise [Putin] will come back. Otherwise, how are we going to go to a ceasefire? So for us, it’s very dangerous,” he said. While Zelensky and Putin’s terms are extremely far apart, the Ukrainian side could be forced to make more concessions if President-elect Donald Trump follows through with his campaign promise to end the war and pressures Zelensky to negotiate.

“With just such a birth rate and mortality, the Ukrainian nation will be reduced to nothing in 180 years..”

• Ukrainians Could Disappear (RT)

The Ukrainian ethnos could be extinct in less than two centuries, Olga Bogomolets, a renowned Ukrainian medical expert, warned this week. Extremely low birth rates and high mortality could lead to the nationality’s demise in about 180 years, she said. Bogomolets holds a post-doctoral degree in medicine, as well as the title ‘distinguished physician of Ukraine’. According to the expert, the nation is facing an “insane, catastrophic” rise in mortality rates combined with a continued decline in the number of newborns. “If this model persists, without even taking into account the war-associated losses and emigration… With just such a birth rate and mortality, the Ukrainian nation will be reduced to nothing in 180 years,” Bogomolets told the Vechir.Live show, which aired on YouTube.

The country has only six generations’ time to reverse the trend, the health professional warned. Otherwise, “zero [Ukrainians] will remain,” she said, adding that the territory of Ukraine would be inhabited by some other people “who will no longer be Ukrainians.” The conflict with Moscow has taken a heavy toll. Ukrainian military losses alone have amounted to more than half a million since February 2022, according to the Russian Defense Ministry. Around 6.6 million people had fled the country as of July 2024, according to German data aggregator Statista. The Ukrainian media has reported that the country’s population could have fallen by a whopping 10 million over almost three years of fighting, considering both conflict-linked losses and emigration. A quarter of Ukrainians who fled abroad also have no interest in going back, the news outlets said.

The World Health Organization (WHO) currently estimates Ukraine’s population at just over 37.7 million people as of 2023, down from 44.3 million in 2021 and almost 50 million in 2000. The international body says that number was in steady decline even before the conflict with Russia, and is projected to fall further to less than 32 million by 2050. In October, Florence Bauer, the Regional Director for Eastern Europe and Central Asia of the UN Population Fund (UNFPA), described the situation in Ukraine as a “demographic crisis,” explaining that “the birth rate plummeted to one child per woman – the lowest fertility rate in Europe and one of the lowest in the world.” She added that the nation’s population had declined by over 10 million since the start of the 2014 crisis following the Maidan coup in Kiev.

“There are moments when you understand your thoughts only when you speak them to others.”

• Shall We Celebrate, the World Being as It Is? (Patrick Lawrence)

Is it all right to be happy over a holiday that has “Happy” in its name? The genocide of a long-suffering people to which our purported leaders have made us accomplices, a senile president who leaves us living with the danger of a nuclear conflict, fear and want and disorder everywhere you look: Can we allow ourselves happiness? Can we permit ourselves merriment in a few short weeks? And the most pressing query of all: What are we supposed to do? We must act, but how? As another holiday season begins, I merely repeat questions many millions among us have asked for more than a year now. I know this because I recently conducted an extensive survey indicating that the world as we have made it leaves us, we Americans and other dwellers in the Western post-democracies, a chronically troubled people.

I made sure the poll covered a wide geographic spread: I surveyed my household; the respondents were two, including myself. So let us not argue: The results are unambiguously representative. I found frustration at a record level, and there must be a record somewhere. I found suggestions of anger and despair. I found that the questions just noted were posed not quite incessantly, but nearly. The survey’s margin of error is zero. We are a perplexed people apart from everything else we are. And our questions are the very most right questions a troubled and perplexed people ought to ask as 2024 draws to a close and year-end holidays are upon us. In mid–December a year ago, we were guests in the home of one of my kindly editors.

This was in the village of South Egremont, at the southern end of the Berkshire Hills in western Massachusetts. There was a tree at the foot of the stairs, the fire was lit, there were drinks on the coffee table. The kindly editor, the KE, stood before the tree with a glass ornament in her hand. We were about to begin the decorate-the-tree ritual. Then the KE paused and turned. “Should we be doing this?” she asked. I vividly recall the unsettled look on her face. “Should we be celebrating?” Israel was then several months into its sadistic barbarism in Gaza, and the government that is supposed to represent us but no longer does was profligately sustaining the Zionist regime’s terrorizing troops. There was no misunderstanding the KE’s question. “Yes!” I replied with alacrity and not much reflection. There are moments when you understand your thoughts only when you speak them to others.

And so I continued, “We must insist on honoring the feasts that matter to us. Celebration: We can’t surrender it. We owe it to ourselves to refuse the temptation of learned helplessness and despair.” I paused. Then: “But that’s not the most important thing. We owe it most of all to the people of Palestine. It is for them we must demonstrate that the human spirit lives despite all, and that humanity’s shared capacity for joy is not extinguished.” The KE nodded. I seem to have brought her around. The KE’s son, a 30–something with a lightning wit and a quick, acute intelligence, considered the point carefully. His name is Stephen. After a moment Stephen said, “Yes, but a conscious ‘Happy’ and ‘Merry.’ A knowing ‘Happy’ and ‘Merry,’ a ‘Happy’ and ‘Merry’ that are fully aware—that refuse to avert their eyes, refuse to lose sight of anything.”

It was the best thing anyone said that evening. We decorated the tree just as these things always and wonderfully go: Put that silver bulb here. No, up a little. Now to the left. The pine cones should be in the front. The big red one goes on that side…. Stephen’s thought has stayed with me ever since. In a certain way I have lived by it.

“Once a civilization becomes amoral, it succumbs to evil. When a civilization succumbs to evil it becomes impossible to defend.”

• Orwell’s Forecast of a Tyrannical Britain Proven Correct (Paul Craig Roberts)

When George Orwell’s 1984 was published in 1949 everyone believed the dystopia he described was Soviet communism. Orwell said it was a description of Britain in the future. It took 75 years instead of the 35 years that Orwell estimated judging by his book’s title, but tyranny as great as he imagined now has Britain in is grip. If you doubt this, read this very short report–https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/international-news/great-reset/silent-prayer-prohibited-in-the-uk/— and watch the short video in which two policemen confront an Englishman who is silently praying in public. The police, both white and British, tell him that he is in violation of an ordinance that protects abortion clinics from anyone praying within 150 feet of the premises. The man says he is praying for his deceased son. It is not revealed whether his son was aborted by the mother or whether the death and prayer are unrelated to abortion.

What strikes me is that two white British policemen think they need to confront a person over a tyrannical ordinance that in the US is unconstitutional as it violates the 14th Amendment by creating special legal privileges for abortion clinics that are denied other service providers. The ordinance violates the requirement of equal protection of law. If Christianity or the right to protest still existed in Britain, the tyrannical ordinance would simply be ignored by police. Indeed, if Christianity existed in Britain the ordinance could not have been introduced, much less passed. Christianity is one of the foundations of Western civilization. Its demise indicates the demise of Western civilization.

In Britain where laws and police take it very easy on criminals as long as they are dark-skinned immigrant-invaders, a white British citizen can get in more trouble for praying silently within a proscribed distance of where abortions, that is, murders, are performed than an immigrant-invader faces for rape, robbery, and assault. Notice that a majority of British Members of Parliament thought that abortion clinics needed protection from prayer. By passing the ordinance the MPs shielded abortionists from ethical and moral protest. What crime will the MPs next shield? It is extraordinary, isn’t it, that the British are willing to take the entire world to nuclear war by firing missiles into Russia and find the danger instead in a person praying outside an abortion clinic. This tells us that the Western world no longer exists in a moral context. Once a civilization becomes amoral, it succumbs to evil. When a civilization succumbs to evil it becomes impossible to defend.

“All we are left with is an assumption covered up and concealed in secret. The scientific name for that is a lie.”

• Sturgess Inquiry Ends In Foreign Office Whimper, Bang Of Novichok Lies (Helmer)

The Novichok show trial ended its public hearings last week in London with the revelation that it will not name the chemical constituents of the poison used in the attempted killing of Sergei and Yulia Skripal on March 4, 2018, and in the cause of death of Dawn Sturgess on June 30, 2018. By doing this, by keeping the chemical formula combination of the poison a state secret, independent British toxicologists say there is no evidence that a Russian-made Novichok was used; and that, instead, a British or US-made Novichok was readily available in 2018, and this was as likely to have been the killer weapon. Revealed earlier in the hearings by a doctor at Yulia Skripal’s bedside four days after the attack, Skripal believed she and her father had been hit by a poison spray as they ate lunch at a restaurant just before they collapsed outside.

Skripal’s evidence pointed to a British operation to assassinate Sergei Skripal before he escaped back to Moscow, and then cover up by planting fabricated Russian clues at the crime scenes, and in the blood test reports of the victims. Weapon, crime scene, victim pathology, killer identification, motive – all faked. The toxicology experts point out that in 2018 scientists working on this type of organophosphate poison had revealed synthesis, production, testing and stocking of A232 and A234 Novichok in the US Army’s chemical warfare centre, known by its location as the Edgewood Arsenal; and at its British counterpart and partner, the UK Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL), known as Porton Down. The Iranian military establishment had also done the same by 2016. After the Skripal case in 2018, military chemists in South Korea and the Czech Republic revealed how they had produced and tested their own formulas for Novichok.

By openly publishing their Novichok chemistry, the Americans, Iranians, South Koreans, and Czechs have proved that making, detecting and naming Novichok is a transparent process, not difficult to verify forensically in a criminal investigation or court. This, British scientists now say, means that the refusal of government officials and the Sturgess Inquiry judge, Anthony Hughes, to name the Novichok alleged to have been the Russian murder weapon, is evidence of a scheme of British fabrication and coverup. Mark Allen of the UK Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) was the last witness to testify before Hughes at the Inquiry’s public hearings. As head of defence and intelligence, he was also the official in charge of coordinating the intelligence and military units involved in the attack on the Skripals; and then in the police and media coverup employed to pin the crime on the Russian military intelligence agency GRU, and on President Vladimir Putin.

Allen’s testimony on November 28 identified as his direct superior Sir Mark Sedwill, the national security advisor reporting to then-Prime Minister Theresa May and then-Foreign Minister Boris Johnson. “As SRO [Senior Responsible Owner] for Russia,” Allen said, “when we’re dealing with Russia strategy, the Government strategy towards Russia, I bring together all government departments, including representatives of the agencies as well, to ensure that we’re all essentially using all of our levers, all of our information, all of our understanding is pointing in the same direction and we’re being coherent. Then where there are situations where something unexpected arises, what you might call a crisis of some sort, then I will also chair that sort of grouping to work out what our collective response should be.”

“I act, not as the Foreign Office’s DG [director-general], but as the government’s senior official. Page 17 Asked to substantiate public statements at the time by May, Johnson and Sedwill that only Russia could have made and used the Novichok weapon, Allen was unable. “… it is safe to say that any modern chemical laboratory is capable of synthesising Novichok. In contrast to what you have said about it being a state — really only something that can be done at the state level. Is there anything that you can add to this debate, Mr Allen? A. I don’t think that is a view that is shared in the scientific community, or in the OPCW.” Page 41. This was a lie; Hughes let it go unchallenged. “LORD HUGHES: As far as you know, is it something which has been asserted either by Mr Mirzayanov or by the other publications of American, Czech, Italian, et cetera, researchers?

“A [Allen]: I haven’t read those in detail, sir, so I couldn’t say.“LORD HUGHES: All right, thank you.” Page 41. “What’s in a name like Novichok? Why the coverup?” responds an independent British chemist and expert on organophosphates. “If the full molecular readout was exposed publicly from the blood sampling of the Skripals and Sturgess — also later of [Alexei] Navalny — then it would be obvious that some constituents are missing. And because they are missing from the name or the reported chemical formula, then identification of Novichok cannot be made. All we are left with is an assumption covered up and concealed in secret. The scientific name for that is a lie.”

Masterpiece

all i have to say about this is masterpiece pic.twitter.com/PN7KyxDxyr

— non aesthetic things (@PicturesFoIder) December 1, 2024

Dog ball
https://twitter.com/i/status/1863627051221000445

Happy husband
https://twitter.com/i/status/1863284451158999371

Elephants
https://twitter.com/i/status/1863382783952883864

Motorcycle
https://twitter.com/i/status/1863242158439878695

Trap
https://twitter.com/i/status/1863387612053897620

Crab-rice

Have you heard of Crab-Rice Symbiosis

The Chinese are doing amazing things with Agriculture

The knowledge is too much it's harder to keep up with it pic.twitter.com/NfsvVSp1iU

— NaijaFarmer (@Nig_Farmer) December 2, 2024

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

Debt Rattle December 2 2024

Dec 022024

December 2, 2024 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 9:35 am Finance Tagged with: arctic warfare, Assange, COP29, desertions, FCC, Gorka, Hunter Biden, Kash Patel, Netanyahu, pardon, Trudeau, Trump 57 Responses »

Rembrandt van Rijn Man with a falcon on his wrist (possibly St. Bavo) 1661

• Joe Biden Pardons His Son Hunter (RT)

• Trump Slams ‘Shocking’ Pardon of Hunter Biden (RT)

• US Reps Urge Biden For Full Pardon Of Julian Assange (Antiwar)

• Who is Kash Patel, Trump’s Pick to Head the FBI? (Sp.)

• Kash Patel’s Prescription For Ailing FBI: Accountability, House Cleaning (JTN)

• Ukraine’s Military Dead ‘Have Already Won’ – Zelensky (RT)

• Ukrainian Military Desertions Skyrocket – FT (RT)

• Norway To Open New Arctic Warfare Base (RT)

• ‘Netanyahu Needs War’, Can’t Be Trusted to Stick to Lebanon Ceasefire (Sp.)

• The Return of Status-based Law (Paul Craig Roberts)

• Trudeau Bends The Knee To Trump At Mar-a-Lago (MN)

• Sebastian Gorka: British Intelligence Asset? (Grayzone)

• Incoming FCC Chairman Brendan Carr Prepares For Censorship Battle (ZH)

• Why Does The West Believe It Occupies The High Moral Ground? (Diesen)

• The Failure of COP29: Does the “Green Agenda” Have A Future? (Machado)

Gingrich

Newt Gingrich: They got together for Thanksgiving and played YMCA and danced to it in terms of Trump and instead of saying young man they were singing Trump man. Now this is the kind of cultural change that you see maybe twice in a century
pic.twitter.com/OES4pXKzwm

— Republicans against Trump (@RpsAgainstTrump) December 1, 2024

Lawler

WATCH: Rep. Mike Lawler Schools CNN on Kash Patel’s Stellar Resume for FBI Director |

“Donald Trump campaigned on reforming the FBI and the Department of Justice. So I don't know why any of this is, frankly, surprising to people.”

It wasn’t the response CNN’s Kasie Hunt was… pic.twitter.com/bBkiaEFDoH

— Overton (@overton_news) December 1, 2024

Kash J6
https://twitter.com/i/status/1863208821637722339

Pipe bomber

FLASHBACK: Trump’s FBI Director Kash Patel blasts corrupt DOJ for burying J6 pipe bomber evidence:

“Are we to believe the FBI couldn’t track this guy down?… There is a reason that the government gangsters are hiding this information.”

pic.twitter.com/3nXJ8SzUbM

— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) December 1, 2024

Galloway

Senator Lindsey Graham claimed Shia has a 'command' to kill all Jews. The largest Jewish community outside the US and Israel is in Shia Iran, George acidly points out

Follow @MOATStv #MOATS 399 #Shia #Lindsey #Graham #Iran pic.twitter.com/8PnSg5jwUM

— The Mother of All Talk Shows with George Galloway (@MoatsTV) November 30, 2024

Gideon Levy

Israeli journalist Gideon Levy exposes the myth of the “Liberal Left” in Israel who are also backing the brutal ethnic cleansing & genocide of the native Palestinian population… pic.twitter.com/O2s7LJQE3Q

— Patrick Henningsen (@21WIRE) December 1, 2024

“Hunter Biden’s lawyer has moved to dismiss his indictment based on his pardon…”

Without a indictment, there’s no need for a pardon.

The pardon covers all crimes, including possible murder.

• Joe Biden Pardons His Son Hunter (RT)

Outgoing US President Joe Biden has gone back on his word and pardoned his son Hunter Biden, who was convicted earlier this year of breaking federal gun and tax laws. In June, the younger Biden was convicted of three felony charges related to the purchase of a revolver in 2018. According to the prosecutors, he lied on his gun-purchase paperwork that he was not addicted to or using illegal drugs. In a separate case, Hunter pleaded guilty to three felony tax offenses and six misdemeanor tax offenses in September. The sentencing for both convictions was supposed to happen this month. In a statement issued on Sunday evening, the president said the “full and unconditional pardon” covers offenses which his son “has committed or may have committed or taken part in during the period from January 1, 2014 through December 1, 2024, including but not limited to all offenses charged or prosecuted.”

The president argued that his son was prosecuted “selectively and unfairly” because of his familial ties. He claimed that “people are almost never brought to trial on felony charges solely for how they filled out a gun form.” “It is clear that Hunter was treated differently,” he said. The president went on to state that the charges against his son were brought “only after several of my political opponents in Congress instigated them to attack me and oppose my election.” He accused Republicans of sabotaging “a carefully negotiated plea deal” that would have been a “reasonable resolution of Hunter’s cases.” “No reasonable person who looks at the facts of Hunter’s cases can reach any other conclusion than Hunter was singled out only because he is my son – and that is wrong,” the president said. “In trying to break Hunter, they’ve tried to break me – and there’s no reason to believe it will stop here. Enough is enough.”

The decision is a reversal of Biden’s previous position, as he and his team repeatedly said in the past that he would accept the jury verdict and would not pardon his son. Asked by ABC News in June if he would accept the outcome of the trial and if he would rule out pardoning his son, the president replied “yes” to both questions. In his statement on Sunday, Biden confirmed that his opinion on the matter has changed. “I believe in the justice system, but as I have wrestled with this, I also believe raw politics has infected this process and it led to a miscarriage of justice,” he claimed. Hunter Biden released his own statement shortly after the pardon was announced. “I have admitted and taken responsibility for my mistakes during the darkest days of my addiction – mistakes that have been exploited to publicly humiliate and shame me and my family for political sport,” he said.

“I will never take the clemency I have been given today for granted and will devote the life I have rebuilt to helping those who are still sick and suffering.” Hunter Biden has been the subject of much scrutiny during his father’s term in office, as Republicans have claimed that he acted as the president’s ‘bagman’ in allegedly corrupt dealings with countries such as Ukraine and China. The president has denied the corruption allegations and publicly backed his son, describing him as “the smartest guy I know.”

https://twitter.com/i/status/1863407436306014431

“Does the pardon given by Joe to Hunter include the J-6 hostages, who have now been imprisoned for years?”

“This pardon is Joe Biden’s admission that Hunter is a criminal..”

• Trump Slams ‘Shocking’ Pardon of Hunter Biden (RT)

US President-elect Donald Trump and congressional Republicans have blasted outgoing President Joe Biden for pardoning his son, Hunter Biden, who was convicted of illegally purchasing a gun and tax evasion. The sentencing in both cases was scheduled for this month. Despite saying publicly that he would not interfere in his son’s cases, the president went back on his word and announced the pardon on Sunday evening. He labelled the convictions “a miscarriage of justice,” arguing that Hunter Biden has been “singled out” because of his ties to the president. According to the statement from the White House, the pardon applies to all offenses that were or may have been committed between January 1, 2014 and December 1, 2024.

This period covers accusations by Republicans that Hunter Biden acted as “a bagman” on behalf of his father during allegedly illicit business dealings in China and Ukraine. The president and his son have denied these allegations. The Republicans, who have long accused the Biden administration of politically motivated prosecutions, condemned the pardon. “The failed witch hunts against President Trump have proven that the Democrat-controlled DOJ and other radical prosecutors are guilty of weaponizing the justice system,” Trump’s spokesman, Steven Cheung, said in a statement. “That system of justice must be fixed and due process must be restored for all Americans, which is exactly what President Trump will do as he returns to the White House with an overwhelming mandate from the American people,” he added.

Trump compared the treatment of the president’s son to the prosecution of his own supporters who stormed the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, hoping to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. “Does the pardon given by Joe to Hunter include the J-6 hostages, who have now been imprisoned for years? Such an abuse and miscarriage of justice!” he wrote on Truth Social. Many top Republicans in Congress were appalled, with Senator Chuck Grassley saying that he was “shocked” by Biden’s decision. “This pardon is Joe Biden’s admission that Hunter is a criminal,” Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene wrote on X. Congressman Andy Biggs wrote that “Joe Biden will go down as one of the most corrupt presidents in American history.”

“This is an outrageous abuse of the rule of law – all to protect the Biden family business of selling access and influence,” Senator Josh Hawley wrote on X. The Republican-controlled House Committee on Oversight and Accountability released a statement, saying “Joe Biden’s unprecedented abuse of power has been a stain on the honor of the US presidency.”

https://twitter.com/i/status/1863407192063283560

Letter sent a day or two before the Hunter pardon.

• US Reps Urge Biden For Full Pardon Of Julian Assange (Antiwar)

House Reps. Thomas Massie (R-KY) and James McGovern (D-MA) have sent a letter to President Biden urging him to pardon WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to send a message that Biden will “not target or investigate journalists and media outlets simply for doing their jobs.” “We write, first, to express our appreciation for your administration’s decision last spring to facilitate a resolution of the criminal case against publisher Julian Assange and to withdraw the related extradition request that had been pending in the United Kingdom,” Massie and McGovern wrote in the letter dated November 1, which was first made public earlier this past week. Assange was freed in a plea deal earlier this year after spending more than five years in London’s Belmarsh Prison while battling a US extradition request.

He was indicted by the Trump administration in 2019 for exposing US war crimes by publishing classified documents leaked to WikiLeaks by former Army Private Bradley (now Chelsea) Manning in 2010. Under the indictment, Assange could have faced up to 175 years in prison in the US for publishing the documents, a standard journalistic practice. While the plea deal set him free, it required him to plead guilty to violating the Espionage Act. “The terms of Mr. Assange’s plea agreement have now set a precedent that greatly deepens our concern,” Massie and McGovern said. “A review of prosecutions under the Espionage Act makes clear that Mr. Assange’s case is the first time the Act has been deployed against a publisher.”

The lawmakers pointed to comments from Jodie Ginsberg, the CEO of the Committee to Protect Journalists, who said, “While we welcome the end of his detention, the US’s pursuit of Assange has set a harmful legal precedent by opening the way for journalists to be tried under the Espionage Act if they receive classified material from whistleblowers.” Massie and McGovern concluded the letter by saying, “We therefore urge you to consider issuing a pardon for Mr. Assange. A pardon would remove the precedent set by the plea and send a clear message that the US government under your leadership will not target or investigate journalists and media outlets simply for doing their jobs.” According to Fox News, Assange’s brother, Gabriel Shipton, is heading to Washington in January to push for a pardon before Biden leaves office.

“..accused “the deep state” of being “the most dangerous threat to our democracy.” He applied the term to political leaders, Big Tech tycoons, media, and “members of the unelected bureaucracy.”

• Who is Kash Patel, Trump’s Pick to Head the FBI? (Sp.)

Donald Trump has repeatedly derided the FBI as a “badly broken” agency over the years, saying it had “lost the confidence of America.” Current FBI chief Christopher A. Wray was also the target of Trump’s criticism. President-elect Donald Trump has tapped Kash Patel for the position of director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). As the current chief of the FBI, Christopher A. Wray, still has three years of his 10-year term left, he will either have to resign or Trump will have to fire him for the nomination to happen. Kashyap Patel, a former public defender and federal prosecutor, was a national security aide during Trump’s first term. Patel “played a pivotal role in uncovering the Russia, Russia, Russia Hoax, standing as an advocate for truth, accountability, and the Constitution,” Trump wrote on Saturday in a social media post.

Since 2016, Democratic Party officials have accused Donald Trump of illegally colluding with the Russian government as part of the discredited “Russiagate” narrative. The Trump-Russia probe turned out as a complete fiasco with no evidence being found to back the allegations. He is an ardent advocate of “housecleaning” in the Justice Department and FBI. The Bureau’s headquarters in Washington, DC, should be dismantled and turned into a “museum of the deep state,” he said in a podcast interview in September. Patel denounced the FBI for its 2022 search warrant of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida, which resulted in charges being brought against the former president for retaining classified documents. Kash Patel has accused “the deep state” of being “the most dangerous threat to our democracy.” He applied the term to political leaders, Big Tech tycoons, media, and “members of the unelected bureaucracy.”

Appearing on the “War Room” podcast hosted by Steve Bannon last year, Patel vowed to “go out and find the conspirators not just in government, but in the media” who “helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections” in 2020. Kash Patel’s appointment would be subject to Senate confirmation. The announced pick has already sparked mixed reactions from lawmakers. Patel “needs to prove to the Senate Judiciary Committee that he has the right qualifications and […] will put our nation’s public safety over a political agenda focused on retribution,” Democratic Sen. Chris Coons wrote on X. “He’s been on side against some of the worst abuses of the FISA [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act] system. Kash Patel can help clean up all the things that we’ve seen that are wrong,” ex-Congressman Matt Gaetz said in a video message on X, adding that “Kash has guts!”

“..the people at the very top are usually the most immoral, unethical people in the entire agency.”

• Kash Patel’s Prescription For Ailing FBI: Accountability, House Cleaning (JTN)

President-elect Donald Trump’s new pick to lead the FBI, Kash Patel, subscribes to a similar prescription for the nation’s premier law enforcement agency, which has lost significant trust from the American people over a decade of scandal and failure. From his time as chief investigative counsel at the House Intelligence Committee, where he unraveled the FBI’s bogus Russia collusion narrative, to his best-selling book “Government Gangsters” where he chronicled the weaponization of law enforcement against Trump and conservatives, Patel has laid out clear plans on how to re-focus the bureau on its core missions of law enforcement and intelligence gathering and away from politics. That job, he insists, begins by cleaning house throughout the FBI’s several layers of leadership that became infected with ideologies like Diversity, Equity and Inclusion and created a culture where parents and traditional Catholics were viewed as extremist threats and support for Trump and the Second Amendment were deemed reasons to review an employee’s security clearance.

In his book “Government Gangsters: The Deep State, the Truth, and the Battle for Our Democracy,” Patel argues that a thorough “house cleaning” of FBI leadership is the key to resetting the agency and unleashing the skills of its rank-and-file agents. “I regularly used to tell people that the fastest way to move up in the government is to just screw up, and the bigger the screwup, the bigger the promotion,” he wrote. “Every person implicated in your mistakes has an interest in covering up what they did, so they will promote you. That means the people at the very top are usually the most immoral, unethical people in the entire agency.” But he also has made clear that his disdain for the bureau’s current leadership is matched by a similar respect for the capabilities and patriotism of rank-and-file agents, recently shouting them out recently for uncovering an Afghan national’s plot to commit a terror attack on Election Day.

“That’s to the credit of the everyday men and women of the FBI, DOD and DOJ, not the leadership that has corrupted those institutions,” he said in October. Over the last two years in interviews with Just the News, Patel has laid out several ideas for fixing the FBI, including:
• Canceling plans for an expensive new FBI headquarters and turning the current headquarters into a “museum for the Deep State.”
• Moving leaders out of Washington and into the field closer to the people they serve
• Shrinking components of the FBI that have little public benefit; and
• Holding accountable those officials responsible for the politicization of prior investigations, including termination and prosecutions.

“The folks in power at the FBI and the IC (intelligence community) making these leadership decisions are terrified that their corruption. not the Bidens, and certainly not Donald Trump, but their corruption in government in senior positions will be exposed and subject to law enforcement,” he told Just the News earlier this year. Patel’s book and his ideas for ending politicized law enforcement were a major factor in Trump’s decision to name him his the next FBI director. Currently, the job is held by Christopher Wray, whom Trump appointed in 2017, and it includes a 10-year-old term. But it is widely expected Trump will either fire Wray or he will resign. “Kash is a brilliant lawyer, investigator, and America First fighter who has spent his career exposing corruption, defending Justice, and protecting the American People,” the president-elect said in a statement on TruthSocial announcing Patel as the next FBI director. “He played a pivotal role in uncovering the Russia, Russia, Russia Hoax, standing as an advocate for truth, accountability, and the Constitution.”

Conservatives hailed Patel’s pick. “Kash was INSTRUMENTAL in President Trump’s first term and will be EVEN GREATER in his second!” Rep. Ronnie Jackson, R-Texas, a former White House physician, wrote on X. “Time to clean this place up, and Kash is the man to do it!!! MAGA!” Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, who presided over the now-discredited Russia collusion probe and later was fired, expressed doom for his former agency and said Patel’s selection was “a plan to disrupt, to dismantle, to distract the FBI.” Many legacy media suggested Patel got the nomination because he was a “loyalist” to Trump. But the 44-year-old son of Indian immigrants has an extensive government resume, including working on both sides of the judicial system as a federal public defender and a national security prosecutor before he joined the House Intelligence Committee.

In the first Trump administration, Patel served as a counterterrorism official on the National Security Council where he helped oversee the drone strike against an Iranian general accused of decades of terrorism and then as chief of staff to the Acting Secretary of the Pentagon.

How cynical does it get?

“[Our] most important weapon is our people,” Zelensky said..”

• Ukraine’s Military Dead ‘Have Already Won’ – Zelensky (RT)

Ukrainians who have died in the conflict between Moscow and Kiev “have already won,” Vladimir Zelensky claimed in an interview with Sky News released this week. Those sacrifices enabled Kiev to secure aid from its Western backers and eventually prevent Moscow from achieving its goals, according to the Ukrainian leader. When asked by Sky News chief correspondent Stuart Ramsay if he believed that those Ukrainians who had died throughout the conflict had given their lives for nothing, Zelensky said “it was wrong” to think so. “They are already winners,” he added. “Our people did not give their lives for nothing,” the Ukrainian leader said, adding that they “performed not only their personal but also constitutional duty to defend their country.”

He then went on to claim that “had Ukrainians not … sacrificed their lives and their comfort” back in February 2022, when Russia launched its military campaign against Ukraine, the country would have quickly yielded to Russia. “No one would have helped us then,” he said, apparently referring to Kiev’s Western backers. The Ukrainian leader also admitted that if Kiev loses the support of the US and its allies, it “will lose everything.” “[Our] most important weapon is our people,” Zelensky said. The Ukrainian leader also slammed those world leaders who are willing to talk to Moscow. He claimed they were only doing it for international fame as they “want to get on the front pages in the media.” Zelensky compared talking to Russian President Vladimir Putin to “opening Pandora’s box,” which could undermine the Western unity behind Kiev’s cause.

According to Zelensky, some world leaders are “afraid” of Putin. “When they are afraid, they start to communicate with their societies and divide their societies,” he said. The Ukrainian leader referred to Russia’s president as “an animal without any human values that we share.” He also claimed that Ukraine should be “at the same level” with Russia in terms of power or even “stronger” for peace talks to start in earnest. Zelensky then also demanded that Kiev’s backers adopt a “one voice policy” spearheaded by Ukraine when it comes to the conflict.

Zelensky also said that Kiev could agree to “end the hot phase of the war” without trying to take back former territories that officially joined Russia following a series of referendums in the fall of 2022. He still maintained that this would only be possible if the territories still under Kiev’s control are “invited” to join NATO and the US-led bloc recognizes Kiev’s territorial claims. Moscow has repeatedly stated throughout the conflict that it is ready for peace talks and would like to resolve all differences diplomatically. It has also consistently warned that it would never agree to Ukraine joining NATO and named the US-led bloc’s expansion eastward as among the root causes of the conflict.

“..these draftees include the blind, the deaf, and the mentally handicapped..”

• Ukrainian Military Desertions Skyrocket – FT (RT)

More than twice as many Ukrainian soldiers have been charged with desertion this year than in 2022 and 2023 combined, the Financial Times has reported. The spike in desertions has hampered Kiev’s ability to replenish its thinned-out ranks. Ukrainian prosecutors opened 60,000 cases against deserters between January and October of this year, the British newspaper reported on Saturday, noting that those convicted face prison terms of up to 12 years. For some of these men, desertion is seen as the only way of getting off the front lines to rest. Ukrainian lawmakers dropped a provision from a bill earlier this year that would have allowed the country’s longest-serving conscripts to be demobilized in the coming months, and service members told the Financial Times that the Ukrainian Armed Forces (UAF) lacks the manpower to give troops shorter four-week rotations off the front lines for rest and retraining.

”They’re just killing them, instead of letting them rehabilitate and rest,” one officer told the newspaper. Those killed are replaced by ill-trained and unfit draftees. In an earlier article, Ukrainian commanders told the Financial Times that on some busy sectors of the front, 50 to 70% of these new conscripts are killed or wounded within days of starting their first rotation. Those who survive often go AWOL as soon as they can, the newspaper reported. Some choose to desert while at training camps in NATO countries. An anonymous Polish security source told the Financial Times that around 12 Ukrainian men abscond from training centers in Poland every month. Earlier this week, a Ukrainian MP told the Associated Press that as many as 200,000 soldiers may have deserted since the conflict with Russia escalated in 2022.

There are around 350,000 active-duty soldiers in the UAF, although heavy losses – more than half a million since February 2022, according to the Russian Defense Ministry – have seen the country’s longest-serving soldiers replaced first by almost a dozen NATO-trained divisions, and then, after these divisions were chewed up during last year’s disastrous counteroffensive, by unwilling conscripts. Press-ganged off the streets and dragged out of nightclubs to serve, these draftees include the blind, the deaf, and the mentally handicapped, according to recent media reports and testimony from Ukrainian lawmakers.

”Men who are the right age for the military draft are scared to walk freely in the street,” one draft-dodger told The Telegraph earlier this week. A recruiter concurred, telling the newspaper that approaching a potential conscript is often “like dealing with a cornered rat.” The UAF is seeking to recruit around 160,000 new soldiers in the coming months. To reach this target, the US has begun pushing the Ukrainian government to lower the minimum draft age to 18, down from 25, the Associated Press reported on Wednesday.

On Russia’s doorstep.

• Norway To Open New Arctic Warfare Base (RT)

Norway plans to establish a new NATO Arctic and amphibious warfare center where US, British, and Dutch marines will be trained amid heightened tensions with Russia, the Defense Ministry in Oslo announced on Friday. The new hub will be created in the municipality of Sorreisa north of Lofoten in Norway’s Arctic, some several hundred kilometers, as the crow flies, from Russia’s strategic port of Murmansk, which is a key military and naval base. The NATO member’s facility will house several hundred soldiers and is expected to become fully operational in 2026. “We must train together to be able to defend Norway, the Nordic countries and NATO in crisis and war,” Defense Minister Bjorn Arild Gram said, adding that his country is now “in a more serious security policy situation.”

“We want an increased allied presence in Norway. More training and practice is good for Norwegian security. We need allies to be familiar with the Norwegian climate and weather conditions. We also need to practice together in case the need arises. So this is a desirable development,” he stated. The new center will have close links with several nearby military facilities, which the minister claimed will be extremely useful for NATO. The announcement comes after the Norwegian government presented a plan this spring for a historic increase in defense spending, with the aim of spending $54 billion on the military from 2024 to 2036.

As part of the package, Oslo also wants to acquire its first long-range air defense system and expand the army from one to three brigades, while boosting the size of the Home Guard to 45,000 troops. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov signaled this September that Moscow will check NATO’s expansionist ambitions in the region. “We see how NATO is stepping up exercises related to possible crises in the Arctic. Our country is fully prepared to defend its interests in military, political and military-technical terms,” he said at the time.

“..then again, there are people in the Biden regime who dislike Netanyahu personally and may want to see him weakened..”

• ‘Netanyahu Needs War’, Can’t Be Trusted to Stick to Lebanon Ceasefire (Sp.)

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced this week that he’s ordered the military to prepare for the resumption of an “intensive war” in Lebanon if Hezbollah violated the freshly-reached ceasefire deal. Sputnik asked one of the Middle East’s most prolific international affairs observers what this could mean for the region. “Netanyahu needs war, and he only accepted a ceasefire under a great deal of pressure. So no one has faith in the Israelis. The Israelis have always violated commitments,” political analyst and Tehran University Professor Seyed Mohammad Marandi told Sputnik, commenting on the Israeli PM’s threats to resume the Lebanon conflict. “After all, [Israel] is carrying out a holocaust in Gaza, a regime that carries out the holocaust and continues to do so in front of the eyes of the world after 14 months is not a regime that can be trusted for anything,” Marandi said.

Linking the Lebanon ceasefire to the crisis in neighboring Syria, where jihadist militants attacked the strategic city of Aleppo this week, Marandi characterized Netanyahu’s threats, combined with the terrorist advance, as attempts to pressure the Iranian-led Axis of Resistance anti-US, anti-Israel alliance, but assured that in the end the terrorists will be pushed back in the north and Israel kept at bay in the south. It’s highly likely that the regional forces looking to destabilize Syria “would like to see a breakdown of the ceasefire so that [their] al-Qaeda*-affiliated terrorists in the north could have a better chance of making progress,” Marandi suggested.

“It is a complicated situation and we’ll have to see how things play out. The United States is in a transition period. The Biden regime is escalating in Ukraine obviously, there are definitely elements within the Biden regime that would like to see escalation on the Lebanese border. But then again, there are people in the Biden regime who dislike Netanyahu personally and may want to see him weakened. And Trump himself also wants to see the fighting stopped before he comes to power. So we’ll have to see how things play out,” the veteran observer summed up.

“We are ruled by the interest groups that purchase the government. Until the money is taken out of politics, American democracy will remain a sham, and the Constitution will die the death of a thousand cuts.”

• The Return of Status-based Law (Paul Craig Roberts)

In this episode of On Target, Larry Sparano and I discuss the assault on the Constitution by the Speaker of the House, Majority Leader of the Senate, and president-elect Donald Trump. The assault weapon is the Antisemitism Awareness Act, which has already passed the Republican House. Senator Schumer is attempting to avoid a stand alone vote on the Act by attaching it to the defense appropriations bill. That way the senators can say they voted for the defense bill and not against the First and Fourteenth Amendments. The Antisemitism Awareness Act is the Israel Lobby’s response to the university protests against Israel’s slaughter of the Palestinians. The bill conflates Israel with Jews, defines Jews as “protected persons,” and removes accreditation and federal financial support from universities that fail to prevent student protests against Israel and Jews in general.

In effect it prohibits criticism of Jews. Criticism is undefined. In practice it will include anything to which Jews object. The Act is a violation of the 14th Amendment which requires equal protection of the law. The Antisemitism Awareness Act creates status-based privileges for a specific group that are denied to others. The Act also violates the 1st Amendment’s protection of free speech. So, why did the Republican Speaker of the House have the House of Representatives vote against the US Constitution? Why is the Democrat Senate Majority Leader trying to have the Act passed by attaching it to a defense bill? Why did Trump say that universities that permit protests of Israel’s murderous behavior should lose their accreditation and federal aid? Why is preventing criticism of Jews more important than the US Constitution?

The supporters of the Act have not said why only Jews among the many diverse peoples of the world are to be given the special privilege of immunity from criticism. It will be OK to criticize, Americans, Europeans, Asians, Arabs, Africans, Hispanics, but not Jews. In addition to the obvious unconstitutional content of the Act, there is an unacknowledged problem. What about Jews who criticize Israel? There are many of them. There are Israelis who protest the murderous policies of Netanyahu. Also, many US university presidents are Jews. How can they be punished by an Act that prohibits criticism of Jews? Punishment itself is an act of criticism. What happens when it is Jewish students and faculty who protest against Israel?

The House of Representatives’ vote against the US Constitution demonstrates the power of campaign donations. A member of Congress has to give the Israel Lobby what it wants or the money goes to one’s opponent. The same is true in the case of many other interest groups. Go against the military/security complex, Big Pharma, the financial lobby, and so forth, and the campaign money goes to your opponent. The realities of political campaign finance is the reason the people’s elected representatives cannot represent the people. They have to represent the interest groups that provide the funds that get them elected. American democracy is a sham. We are ruled by the interest groups that purchase the government. Until the money is taken out of politics, American democracy will remain a sham, and the Constitution will die the death of a thousand cuts.

Trump owns Trudy.

• Trudeau Bends The Knee To Trump At Mar-a-Lago (MN)

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau Was pictured meeting with president-elect Trump and his team at Mar-a-Lago over Thanksgiving, as it emerged that he has made an agreement to crack down on drug trafficking. The meeting came following Trump’s announcement of a 25% tariff on all products coming from Mexico and Canada until they agree to secure their borders. In a Truth Social post earlier this week, Trump wrote “On January 20th, as one of my many first Executive Orders, I will sign all necessary documents to charge Mexico and Canada a 25% Tariff on ALL products coming into the United States, and its ridiculous Open Borders.” “This Tariff will remain in effect until such time as Drugs, in particular Fentanyl, and all Illegal Aliens stop this Invasion of our Country!” Trump added.

He continued, “Both Mexico and Canada have the absolute right and power to easily solve this long simmering problem. We hereby demand that they use this power, and until such time that they do, it is time for them to pay a very big price!” Fast forward four days and Trudeau was seen sitting with Trump, Elon Musk, and the rest of his team. In a further post after the meeting, Trump explained, “I just had a very productive meeting with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada, where we discussed many important topics that will require both Countries to work together to address, like the Fentanyl and Drug Crisis that has decimated so many lives as a result of Illegal Immigration, Fair Trade Deals that do not jeopardize American Workers, and the massive Trade Deficit the U.S. has with Canada.”

“I made it very clear that the United States will no longer sit idly by as our Citizens become victims to the scourge of this Drug Epidemic, caused mainly by the Drug Cartels, and Fentanyl pouring in from China. Too much death and hardship!” Trump continued. “Prime Minister Trudeau has made a commitment to work with us to end this terrible devastation of U.S. Families,” Trump further added, noting “We also spoke about many other important topics like Energy, Trade, and the Arctic. All are vital issues that I will be addressing on my first days back in Office, and before.”

Certainly looks that way.

• Sebastian Gorka: British Intelligence Asset? (Grayzone)

Sebastian Gorka’s involvement with British intelligence cost him a security clearance in Hungary. His longtime mentor is a UK spook currently engaged in covert operations against Russia. Is the Ukraine hawk and Trump counter-terror appointee operating on London time. After years in the wilderness of right-wing radio, where he flamboyantly proclaimed his loyalty to president-elect Donald Trump for years, Sebastian Gorka has finally found his way back into Trump’s inner circle, earning an appointment as incoming White House counter-terror advisor. Gorka served as Trump’s deputy assistant advisor on national security issues for eight months in 2017, storming out of his job with a petulant resignation letter that blamed “forces” within the administration that did not support Trump’s “MAGA promise.”

During his brief tenure in the White House, Gorka, a London-born immigrant, was credited with masterminding the President’s so-called “Muslim ban,” which refused admission to the US for citizens of countries identified as national security threats. While Democrats have hammered Gorka as “a far-right extremist” and MAGA sycophant, he has stood out as a voice of Biden foreign policy continuity within Trumpworld, pledging further aggression against Russia and even greater military aid to Kiev. During a November 23 interview, for example, Gorka promised that “the aid that we have given to Ukraine thus far will look like peanuts” if “the murderous KGB colonel” Vladimir Putin does not obey Trump’s dictates. Gorka’s full origin story explains why his views on the Ukraine proxy war track more closely with those of the anti-Trump turncoat John Bolton than incoming Vice President J.D. Vance, who has vowed to negotiate an end to the conflict.

As this investigation will demonstrate, the mindset of the Transatlantic policy operative was molded primarily through his intimate involvement in British intelligence circles—not his role within the America First movement. The son of an anti-communist Hungarian exile, Gorka joined a British Army intelligence unit while still in university. When he entered the world of national security studies, he learned at the knee of a notoriously conniving British military intelligence officer named Chris Donnelly, who has dedicated his career to instigating conflict with Russia, and was exposed by The Grayzone as an architect of the notorious Kerch Bridge bombing. Donnelly personally endorsed Gorka’s PhD thesis, granting him the imprimatur of a top intelligence officer in the British Ministry of Defence. The relationship fueled Gorka’s career within the burgeoning Atlanticist military infrastructure, yet ultimately cost him security clearance in his family’s native Hungary, where the country’s National Security Office suspected him of being a UK spy.

Soon after Gorka resigned from the first Trump administration, leaked documents exposed Donnelly as the founder of a secret, UK state-funded influence operation called the Integrity Initiative, which was aimed at drumming up war with Russia through a covert international propaganda network. A 2017 funding proposal submitted by the Integrity Initiative to the British Ministry of Defence promised to deliver a “tougher stance on Russia” by arranging for “more information published in the media on the threat of Russian active measures.” When Donnelly visited Washington in 2018 to expand his secret initiative, the first item on his agenda was breakfast with Gorka. To this day, Gorka refuses to discuss the meeting, or any aspect of his relationship with Donnelly, erupting with rage at reporters who have dared to inquire about the long friendship.

“..Section 230 only confers benefits on Big Tech companies when they operate, in the words of the statute, “in good faith.” “The censorship cartel must be dismantled..”

• Incoming FCC Chairman Brendan Carr Prepares For Censorship Battle (ZH)

Until the internet came along, pumping government propaganda into American homes was like shooting fish in a barrel. As a constellation of alternative media websites such as ZeroHedge emerged, however, the ability to shape narratives and steer the national dialogue quickly eroded. In order to regain control – particularly in the Trump-era, the government has been colluding with Big Tech, partisan ‘fact checkers,’ and an aptly named ‘advertising cartel’ to censor, de-monetize, and otherwise silence divergent opinions – particularly those which shed light on things like government malfeasance, bullshit wars, and cronyism. Incoming FCC Chairman Brendan Carr is getting ready to level the playing field.

Carr, a veteran Republican regulator who has echoed President-elect Trump’s promises to punish political bias within the national media complex, has argued that the agency should also regulate Big Tech – including Apple, Meta, Google and Microsoft. And in a Sunday interview with Fox News, Carr outlined the road ahead… “Combatting tech censorship is going to be one of the top priorities for me,” said Carr, adding “We need to restore Americans’ right to free speech… you mentioned Facebook and other companies. They’ve been part of a censorship cartel that has worked with advertisers, they’ve worked with government officials, to censor the free speech rights of everyday Americans. That’s gotta end.” “America is a country of founders, people who have pushed frontiers. When you silence speech, you silence ideas. Instead, we need to unleash prosperity, again.”

Incoming FCC Chairman @BrendanCarrFCC: "Combatting tech censorship is going to be one of the top priorities for me."

"America is a country of founders, people who have pushed frontiers. When you silence speech, you silence ideas. Instead, we need to unleash prosperity, again." pic.twitter.com/wsXboFEMly

— CAPITAL (@capitalnewshq) December 1, 2024

In a November letter, Carr accused several Big Tech companies of having “participated in a censorship cartel that included not only technology and social media companies but advertising, marketing, and so-called “fact-checking” organizations as well as the Biden-Harris Administration itself.” “The relevant conduct extended from removing or blocking social media posts to suppress their information and viewpoints, including through efforts to delist them, lower their rankings, or harm their profitability.” Carr then suggested that their protection from liability under Section 230 may be on the line. “As you know, Big Tech’s prized liability shield, Section 230, is codified in the Communications Act, which the FCC administers. As relevant here, Section 230 only confers benefits on Big Tech companies when they operate, in the words of the statute, “in good faith.” “The censorship cartel must be dismantled,” Carr said in a November post on X.

“We want to see Russia weakened to the degree that it can’t do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine.”

• Why Does The West Believe It Occupies The High Moral Ground? (Diesen)

For almost three years, NATO countries have boycotted diplomatic contact with Russia, even as hundreds of thousands of men die on the Ukraine conflict’s battlefield. The decision to reject diplomacy is morally repugnant. Diplomacy could have reduced violence, prevented escalation, and even opened a path to peace. Instead, political and media elites skillfully presented this rejection as a sign of moral righteousness, labeling dialogue as treason and war as virtuous. To exhaust Russia in a long war, the goal was to ensure that the Russians and Ukrainians kill each other for as long as possible. US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin outlined the US objective in the Ukraine War as weakening its strategic adversary: “We want to see Russia weakened to the degree that it can’t do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine.”

In late March 2022, Vladimir Zelensky revealed in an interview with The Economist: “There are those in the West who don’t mind a long war because it would mean exhausting Russia, even if this means the demise of Ukraine and comes at the cost of Ukrainian lives.” The aim has been to exhaust Russia in a protracted conflict, ensuring that Russians and Ukrainians continue killing each other for as long as possible. US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin outlined the objective: “We want to see Russia weakened to the degree that it can’t do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine.”

Israeli and Turkish mediators confirmed that Russia and Ukraine had agreed to a peace deal in Istanbul, where Russia would withdraw and Ukraine would restore its neutrality. Yet the West rejected this. The goal wasn’t peace — it was to bleed Russia through its proxy army in Ukraine. Both Germany and France have admitted that the Minsk Peace Agreement was never meant to be implemented, but used as a vehicle to build up Ukraine’s military. The Turkish Foreign Minister and former Israeli Prime Minister have both acknowledged that NATO states actively wanted the war to continue. Former NATO figures, such as retired General Harald Kujat, have said the war was deliberately provoked by NATO, with the US and UK blocking peace efforts to weaken Russia politically, economically, and militarily.

US lawmakers, such as Lindsey Graham, have been openly supportive of fighting Russia “to the last Ukrainian.” They argue that assisting Ukraine without risking American lives is a smart investment in weakening Russia. Meanwhile, Mitch McConnell called it an investment in America’s national security, and Mitt Romney called financing the war “the best defense spending ever.” These statements underscore the growing sentiment in the West that the war is a proxy battle where Ukraine is expendable, serving merely as a tool to diminish Russia. NATO’s leadership, including Jens Stoltenberg, has stated that a “victory” for Ukraine would result in a battle-hardened Ukrainian army on the West’s side, with a weakened Russia.

No.

• The Failure of COP29: Does the “Green Agenda” Have A Future? (Machado)

Following the conclusion of the multilateral climate conference COP29, held in Baku, Azerbaijan, the atmosphere is one of defeat. Nearly an entire week of speeches and endless meetings did not suffice to reach a reasonable consensus on a series of practical measures that had been anticipated. Specifically, the debate on funding climate policies sank. The so-called “developing countries” had expected an annual grant policy exceeding $1 trillion for energy transition and climate change mitigation policies, but only $300 billion per year will be allocated—optimistically. Moreover, this sum will not necessarily be in the form of grants but may include loans and other financing mechanisms that bring interest and debt. India denounced the final result of COP29, supported by Bolivia, Cuba, and Nigeria, as a farce and an insult from developed countries to developing nations.

This financing debate will now be deferred to COP30, scheduled to take place in Brazil in 2025. However, the chances of COP30 succeeding where COP29 failed seem very slim. While climate alarmism and eco-globalism are now part of Brazil’s official ideology, in the rest of the world, these postmodern beliefs are losing momentum. Take, for example, the reasons why expanding funding for the “Green Agenda” has been impossible in “developed countries.” Observing European governments’ behavior since the beginning of Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine, one can see increasing difficulty in advancing energy transition and net-zero carbon policies. Germany, for instance, was once one of the main drivers of climate alarmism worldwide, even closing its nuclear power plants “for the environment” (despite nuclear plants being far less polluting than most other energy sources).

Yet today, facing an energy crisis caused by the NordStream’s destruction, Germany is reopening its coal-fired power plants. Sweden, long a leader in international climate activism, has reversed many of its previous environmental measures. The Ministry of the Environment has been dismantled, and the government now prioritizes ensuring cheap fuel. Meanwhile, in the United Kingdom, the previous administration of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak suspended the ban on diesel car sales and decided to stop promoting the replacement of gas heaters. Similar examples can be found in several other countries. Clearly, sanctions and the NordStream’s destruction have made Europe’s energy situation difficult enough to raise living costs, convincing European governments to roll back at least some environmental measures and dampen their enthusiasm for promoting global climate alarmism.

This retreat by European nations will be compounded by the fact that, starting in 2025, the United States will likely be governed by Donald Trump, who holds a critical stance toward climate alarmism and promises to intensify fracking for hydrocarbon extraction in the country. This is corroborated by the nominations of Chris Wright as Secretary of Energy and Lee Zeldin to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Plimer

Geologist Prof. Ian Plimer: The UN's COP climate conferences "are aimed at destroying Western civilisation".

"We cannot change the way the Sun operates, and the Earth orbits, and those are the two factors driving climate. No legislation will change that."

"We are… destroying… pic.twitter.com/wXZmZbzA7q

— Wide Awake Media (@wideawake_media) December 1, 2024

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