The Automatic Earth

Piet Mondriaan The Grey Tree 1912

John Oliver

John Oliver doing exceptional work here to provide a background on Netanyahu and his extremist government, who viewed Hamas as an “asset” to their cause. pic.twitter.com/M0qkHjtSeG

— Cecilia Araneda (@ceciliaaraneda) November 14, 2023

Matrix

Holy Sh*t.
THIS is a must watch! pic.twitter.com/yXKPX5VNbh

— AG 🔥 (@Yolo304741) November 14, 2023

Orwell

This Is Chilling. Dystopian Author of 1984, George Orwell’s Final Warning ⛔️

“But he left one final warning. You once claimed that you have an ability to face unpleasant facts. Is that what you demonstrated in 1984 by drawing an accurate portrait of the future?”

“Something… pic.twitter.com/yp2Lmvcdl0

— Wall Street Apes (@WallStreetApes) November 14, 2023

Dana White

NEW: UFC’s Dana White says he told a big sponsor to “go f*** yourself” after they told him to delete a social media post that he shared of Donald Trump.

Amazing 🔥🔥🔥

“One of our big sponsors called and said, take that down.”

“I said, go f*** yourself. You vote for whoever… pic.twitter.com/Ay9yqmmyXh

— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) November 14, 2023

RFK

👀 Robert F. Kennedy Jr on the Role Woody Harrelson's Father Played in the Assassination of JFK

"Woody Harrelson's dad was involved in the assassination, and he confessed multiple times…He was a professional hit man. He had been recruited out of the military, worked for the… pic.twitter.com/4IFUP8803L

— Chief Nerd (@TheChiefNerd) November 14, 2023

Pepe

“The British press was the most ridiculous in its pronouncements of Russia’s doom. Suddenly, defeated Ukraine is off the headlines.”

• Shift in Focus from Ukraine to Middle East Raises Chances of World War (PCR)

The neoconservative/Netanyahu agenda of reopening the Middle East wars in the interest of Greater Israel has shoved Ukraine off the screen. The possibility of overthrowing Syria and Iran offers a much greater possibility of discomforting Russia. The neocons have wanted revenge on Putin ever since he stopped Obama’s overthrow of Assad, which, with Iraq already overthrown, would leave only Iran in Israel’s way. The shift in focus from Ukraine to the Middle East is made clear by the story planted in the Washington Post, long regarded as a CIA asset, that Ukraine was responsible for blowing up the Nord Sea pipeline. The responsibility is handed to Ukrainian colonel Roman Cherinsky who allegedly led a six-person sabotage team.

Col. Chervinsky denied having any part in the pipeline’s destruction. He said: “All speculations about my involvement in the attack on Nord Stream are being spread by Russian propaganda without any basis.” It is curious that Chervinsky thinks the Washington Post is a Russian asset instead of a CIA/neocon one. The planted story signals Washington’s abandonment of Zelensky. So, again Washington has destroyed a country and its population before moving on to a more promising opportunity. For two years the media was crowded with forecasts of Russia’s imminent defeat in Ukraine. The British press was the most ridiculous in its pronouncements of Russia’s doom. Suddenly, defeated Ukraine is off the headlines.

We await the consequence of the shift in focus. Will Hezbollah and Iran be sucked into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by Israel’s ongoing massacre of Palestinians? If not, will the neoconservatives orchestrate a false flag attack that provides excuse and support for a US/Israeli attack on Syria, Lebanon and Iran? What else is the purpose of the rapidly assembled large US military force in the Middle East? Will Putin stand aside as US/Israeli hegemony is established over the Middle East? Will the Muslim world accept its designation as a dispensable life form and collapse in impotence? Can China afford to be cut off from Iranian oil while Washington makes trouble in Taiwan? Will a third world war breakout? Without proactive responses, things can quickly go too far. The arrogance of neoconservative and Israeli over-confidence, together with Russian, Chinese, and Iranian hesitancy, are ingredients for a world war.

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“It’s chaos in the White House. They are saying the same things over and over. They are doing what they think will get the president re-elected. He is a George the Third. It’s scary, and it is disgraceful.”

• WH ‘Chaos & Power Vacuum’ is Why Israel Snubs US Advice on Gaza – Sy Hersh (Sp.)

Israel has dismissed any advice from the White House regarding its operation in Gaza because “there is a power vacuum in Washington,” Seymour Hersh has cited sources as saying. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has not been listening to the “waffling” of the Biden administration, the US investigative journalist wrote on Substack. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have been intensifying their Gaza operation to eliminate Hamas amid global protests over the spiraling Palestinian civilian death toll. Over 11,000 people, many of them children, have already died in the enclave, according to the Gazan Health Ministry. There have been global marches of protest against what is seen as a disproportionate military response on the part of Israel, with similar demonstrations in the US as well. While the US was quick to announce at the start of Israel’s retaliation for the Hamas October 7 attack that it “had its back,” it launched a feeble attempt at shuttle diplomacy.

US President Joe Biden made two trips to Israel, followed by Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s unsuccessful diplomatic push to the region, and CIA Director Bill Burns’ Middle East foray to allegedly “work on the release of hostages,” Sy Hersh underscored. However, “Netanyahu continues to do as he wishes in Gaza,” the journalist added. When asked of the impact of those visits by Biden officials, an informed US source told Hersh: “Bibi to those three blind mice: ‘Shaddup already.’” The US official elaborated: “There is a power vacuum in Washington. No one is running the show… It’s chaos in the White House. They are saying the same things over and over. They are doing what they think will get the president re-elected. He is a George the Third. It’s scary, and it is disgraceful.”

Earlier on Monday, the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) also supported this notion, saying that the United States was calling on Israel to accelerate its operation in the Gaza Strip behind closed doors as it may negatively affect President Joe Biden’s reelection bid in case of prolongation. It should be added that the Biden administration unilaterally blocked calls by dozens of countries at the UN to institute a ceasefire in Gaza last month. President Biden reiterated only last week that there was “no possibility” for a ceasefire in Gaza, while National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said Tel Aviv had agreed to set in place four-hour daily “humanitarian pauses” in Gaza’s northern areas to allow for Palestinians to “get out of harm’s way.”

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“..historian Max Hastings writes that Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s current prime minister, told him in the 1970s that, “In the next war, if we do it right, we’ll have the chance to get all the Arabs out … We can clear the West Bank, sort out Jerusalem.”

• Israel, Then And Now: ‘Kill, Kill Them All’ (Cradle)

On 7 October, the armed Palestinian resistance smashed through the Gaza border fence to carry out an unprecedented surprise assault on Israel, in which some 1,200 civilians and security forces were killed.While Israel attributes its entire death toll to the resistance fighters, in particular Hamas and its military wing, the Al-Qassam Brigades, it has since been suggested that occupation forces may bear responsibility for a significant number of deaths. This discrepancy blows a hole in the narrative pushed by Israeli and western media, which hyperbolically frames the Al-Aqsa Flood operation as the “deadliest single attack on Jews since the Holocaust.” But would Israeli forces willingly kill their own – and why?

The key lies in understanding that the primary goal of the resistance operation was the capture of prisoners of war (POWs)— both soldiers and settlers — to be taken back to Gaza. These captives were intended as leverage to press Israel to meet Hamas’s demands, including ending the 17-year siege on Gaza and releasing thousands of Palestinians held without trial in Israeli prisons. It is equally key to understand that Israel, doctrinally, will go to the most extreme lengths imaginable to prevent the taking of captives – including killing them. In an attempt to thwart Hamas from taking POWs, Israeli forces took drastic measures, including airstrikes on their own military base, firing tank rounds at civilian homes, and using overwhelming firepower to enforce the highly controversial Hannibal Directive.

This infamous military policy – which was altered but not removed in 2016 – allows commanders to sacrifice their own soldiers to prevent them from being captured, aiming to deny the enemy any leverage over the occupation state. A notable case was in 2006, when Hamas captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit on the Gaza border. After holding him captive for five agonizing years, Hamas was able to exchange Shalit for 1,027 Palestinians held prisoner in Israel. The issue of Palestinians targeting Israeli civilians is understandably a controversial talking point, especially in the west. However, Hamas justifies this by claiming all Israelis are settlers living on land stolen from Palestinians in 1948 during what is known as the nakba or “catastrophe.”That year, Zionist militias employed rape and massacre as tools to effect the forcible “transfer” of some 750,000 Palestinians from the land needed to establish Israel.

Future Israeli Prime Minister David Ben Gurion and other Zionist leaders understood that the majority of the indigenous population of British Mandate Palestine, the Christian and Muslim Arabs, needed to be “cleansed” from the land to create a state with a Jewish demographic majority. Today, many Israelis — civilians and politicians alike — are loudly calling for their army to “complete the job,” as Israeli historian Benny Morris described it, by ethnically cleansing and annexing those parts of Palestine they failed to conquer in 1948, namely the entirety of occupied-West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip. In his book, “Going to the Wars,” historian Max Hastings writes that Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s current prime minister, told him in the 1970s that, “In the next war, if we do it right, we’ll have the chance to get all the Arabs out … We can clear the West Bank, sort out Jerusalem.”

In contrast, the Palestinians, the indigenous population, have done their utmost to resist the Zionist colonial project and defend their lands, their homes, and their existence as a people. The expectation that they would resist the Zionist occupation is recognized by Israel’s first prime minister David Ben Gurion, himself an immigrant to Palestine from Poland: “Let us not ignore the truth among ourselves … politically we are the aggressors and they defend themselves… The country is theirs, because they inhabit it, whereas we want to come here and settle down, and in their view we want to take away from them their country … Behind the terrorism [by the Arabs] is a movement, which though primitive is not devoid of idealism and self-sacrifice.”

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I though that was Zelensky’s line…

• Netanyahu Warns America: “You’re Next” If IDF Doesn’t Decimate Hamas (ZH)

Israel has been ramping up its global messaging campaign at a moment it faces increased isolation from Global South countries, and amid growing criticism from large powers like China, Russia, and major Latin American countries such as Brazil. But there have been signs of dissent even within the Biden administration as well, with pushback especially coming from the State Department of late, as US officials want to see the White House become more publicly critical of alleged Israeli war crimes, given also the immense death toll, at over 11,200 Gazans killed – with some half of these believed to be women and children. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is now taking his message to the American public, in a Monday night appearance on Fox News’ Sean Hannity, warning that the US will be “next” if his military doesn’t decimate Hamas.

“We have to win not only for our sake, but for the sake of the Middle East, for the sake of our Arab neighbors. You know what, for the sake of Gazans who’ve been held by this dark tyranny that has brutalized and brought them nothing but bloodshed and poverty and misery,” Netanyahu introduced. “We have to win to protect Israel. We have to win to safeguard the Middle East. We have to win for the sake of the civilized world. That’s the battle we’re fighting, and it’s being waged right now. There is no substitute for that victory.” And that’s when he emphasized the potential dire repercussions for the West if Israel fails in its objectives. “If we don’t win now, then Europe is next and you’re next. And we have to win,” he added.

Netanyahu’s words carried a theme of a war between ‘barbarians’ and ‘civilization’, with an intent to make Americans believe what’s happening in the Middle East is “your fight” as well. According to Fox: Netanyahu stressed that “our fight is your fight” and that there is “no substitute for victory.” “We have to have the forces of civilization beat these barbarians because otherwise this barbarism will spread and will endanger the entire world,” Netanyahu said. “Every American, every civilized country will be under peril. We have to win. There is no substitute for victory. Total victory.”

Such messaging filled with a ‘good vs. evil’ motif was also heavily relied upon by the Bush administration and neocons in selling the Iraq War in 2003. Netanyahu has in past years also painted such simple contrasts when speaking about Iran and its supposed ‘nuclear threat’ as well. Netanyahu may have been responding to rare words of restraint issued by President Biden on the same day. “I have not been reluctant in expressing my concerns about what’s going on and it’s my hope and expectation that it will be less intrusive action relative to the hospital,” Biden said Monday regarding the worsening humanitarian crisis at al-Shifa hospital in the center of Gaza City.

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“Medvedev always relishes upping the ante: “The West must admit that not only Donbass and Crimea are not Ukraine, but also Odessa, Nikolaev, Kiev and practically everything else.”

• Ain’t No ‘Stalemate’: Ukrainian Frontline Breakdown, Revisited (Pepe Escobar)

Facts on the ground point to the Russian Armed Forces (RAF) taking the initiative all along the SMO frontlines. This is recognized even by Polish and Estonian intel. Main battles are being fought on the Avdeevka-Marinka line in the DPR and the Kupyansk-Svatovo line in the LPR. RAF has enough manpower and weapons to keep the Ukrainians under a 24/7 state of despair. Objectives remain the same: to capture the whole of DPR and LPR within their administrative borders. In parallel, the ever-unplugged Dmitri Medvedev, Deputy Chairman of the Russian Security Council, has announced a massive increase in the production of weapons and military equipment. Medvedev constantly stresses that the capabilities of the Russian defense industry have reached an unprecedented level – and much faster than expected.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov, for his part, echoes what Foreign Minister Lavrov has been detailing for months now: Kiev – and its NATO handlers – better realize they cannot and won’t “win” in the battlefield. Medvedev always relishes upping the ante: “The West must admit that not only Donbass and Crimea are not Ukraine, but also Odessa, Nikolaev, Kiev and practically everything else.” That was a sharp response to former NATO Secretary- General Anders “Fogh of War” Rasmussen, who said that Kiev could be accepted into NATO “without lost territories,” referring to Crimea and Donbass. That set Medvedev on a roll: “What then should we admit to NATO, you ask? Well, we can accept the city of Lemberg with its surroundings [the Lviv region] if they really insist there.”

This analysis focuses on “what the Russians are doing with their ongoing ‘mud season offensive’ in Ukraine, really a collection of local attacks across the length of the front line” – with the exception of Kherson. Strategically, Russia has committed none of its own massive reserves while the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) are pressured all along the frontlines – and the Russians silently prepare a surprise knockout blow elsewhere. A Perfect Storm of dwindling financing, weaponizing and Western “support” has darkened Kiev’s horizon, while serial Ukrainian disasters on the ground are so obvious they are even being picked up by Western mainstream media.

This ain’t no “stalemate”. The previous analysis is only one among many that matches the breakdown of Ukrainian brigades across the frontlines – consisting “largely of units already mauled in their disastrous Hundred Days Offensive.” The Hundred Days Offensive should rather be qualified as NATO’s Hundred Days Debacle. The debacle is the key reason why the “Biden combo” administration is now desperately trying to impose a ceasefire: a face-saving gambit as crucial as throwing the sweaty sweatshirt in Kiev under a double-decker bus.

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“The counteroffensive has been a bloody failure and the White House is shifting its resources and backing to Israel, which is much more important to policy makers in Washington..”

• New Nord Stream Spin Pushed as US ‘Acutely Aware’ Ukraine Can’t Win (Sp.)

“Washington and some Europeans are becoming acutely aware that the war against Russia cannot be won by Ukraine even with more open support from NATO,” Philip Giraldi, former military intelligence and CIA operations officer with experience in Europe and the Middle East, told Sputnik. This explains the timing of The Washington Post’s new spin on a Ukrainian colonel’s alleged role in the Nord Stream sabotage, the pundit suggested. “The counteroffensive has been a bloody failure and the White House is shifting its resources and backing to Israel, which is much more important to policy makers in Washington,” Giraldi stressed. A Ukrainian colonel by the name of Roman Chervinsky allegedly played a key “coordinating” role in the attack on the Nord Stream gas pipelines last year, The Washington Post reported on Saturday, citing Ukrainian and European officials, as well as other people familiar with details of the operation.

According to the outlet, Chervinsky, currently on trial in Kiev over alleged abuse of power, is a senior Ukrainian military officer with close ties to the country’s intelligence. The outlet added that Chervinsky did not act alone, and, furthermore, had received orders from some senior officials. The latter, in turn, reported to Ukraine’s top general, Valery Zaluzhny, the newspaper wrote, citing people familiar with how the attack was carried out. As for Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky, he purportedly had no knowledge of the attack plans. It should be noted that in an article published earlier this year, sources cited by WaPo stated that Zaluzhny denied any connection to the Nord Stream pipeline blasts. Weighing in on the The WaPo story, Russia claimed the US and NATO were trying to find a scapegoat for the Nord Stream sabotage.

“This is an attempt, several moves ahead, to dismiss any trace of culpability for this terrorist act. Of course, Ukrainian services, obviously intelligence, were involved… But it would have been impossible to pull this [attack] off without American and NATO forces’ involvement,” said Russia’s State Duma lawmaker Alexey Chepa. Accusations leveled against the disgraced senior Ukrainian officer in The Washington Post report published over the weekend come against the backdrop of the Kiev regime’s botched counteroffensive. Adding further backdrop to the story is the recent spat between Zaluzhny and President Volodymyr Zelensky over the commander’s comments earlier. Zaluzhny drew flak for saying that Ukraine’s counteroffensive had reached a “stalemate.”

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“It should not be in any way tied to Israel. These should be separate votes to show our districts exactly where we stand..”

• US Desire to Pay Ukraine’s Way Hits New Low (Sp.)

Congress allocated over $113 billion in military, economic, and humanitarian funding to Ukraine in 2022, with more than $46 billion of that constituting arms assistance. Last month, President Joe Biden asked for a new round of supplemental funding to the tune of $61.4 billion. Conservative Republicans have threatened to reject the request. Ukraine is “running out of money and time” and “could get left behind” by Congress as US lawmakers shift their priorities and focus to staving off an imminent government shutdown, and to ramping up funding for Israel and the southern border with Mexico. That’s according to a fresh US media report assessing the mood in Washington at the moment.

“Ukraine funding, I believe, if it’s worth doing, needs to stand on its own,” Republican Representative Mark Alford of Missouri said, addressing recently elected House Speaker Mike Johnson’s commitment to keep funding bills separate to prevent the bundling of a large number of unrelated priorities into a single piece of legislation. “It should not be in any way tied to Israel. These should be separate votes to show our districts exactly where we stand,” Alford said. House Republicans passed a $14 billion aid package for Israel earlier this month, with the money coming from cuts in spending for the Internal Revenue Service. Senate Democrats and many Senate Republicans have rejected the legislation, with President Biden vowing to veto it, demanding that any support for Israel also include money for Ukraine and other spending, including on the border and America’s geostrategic competition with China.

Some Senate Republicans, including lawmakers traditionally known for their hawkish positions on Russia, have joined with their conservative colleagues in the House in questioning further Ukraine assistance. “I want to be frank with you about our problem,” Republican Senator Marco Rubio of Florida told Biden administration officials at a hearing last week. “People come up to me and say the following: ‘We have five, six thousand people a day crossing our border; we’ve got all these other needs…Why is Ukraine important in that context?’ I hear that constantly,” the senator said. “One of the dangers we face in these three challenges [Ukraine, Israel, the border, ed.] is the trade-offs that are going to have to happen. We’re gonna have to make policy decisions, because one of the risks we run is being overextended,” Rubio added.

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Wishes British intelligence.

• West Sees Ukraine Conflict Lasting Five More Years – Media (RT)

More and more Western leaders have reportedly conceded that the Russia-Ukraine conflict may drag on for another five years in a “stalemate” that neither side is capable of shattering. Neither Russia nor Ukraine is prepared to “give in,” and there is no sign that the conflict will end anytime soon, The Economist reported on Monday. The crisis has already strained the West’s military capacity amid struggles to produce enough artillery shells, the magazine said, and the Israel-Hamas war creates further stress. “As time goes on, there will be trade-offs as certain key systems are diverted to Israel,” Mark Cancian, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, wrote last month. “A few systems that Ukraine needs for its counteroffensive may not be available in the numbers that Ukraine would like.” Ukraine’s top general, Valery Zaluzhny, raised eyebrows when he told The Economist earlier this month that the conflict with Russia had reached a stalemate.

Although officials in US President Joe Biden’s administration were troubled by Zaluzhny’s candor, they agreed with his assessment, the New York Times reported last week. The Ukraine crisis has revealed how “meager” Western armories are, The Economist said. Even as the US ramps up its output of 155mm artillery shells, its production in 2025 will be lower than Russia’s in 2024, the magazine added. If the overlapping conflicts in Ukraine and Israel both drag on, Washington and its allies would be hard-pressed to cope with another crisis. “If the war in Ukraine stays an open sore in Europe and the Middle East remains ablaze, the West will struggle gravely should another serious crisis erupt,” the outlet warned. “One risk is that adversaries simply capitalize on chaos elsewhere for their own ends. If America were bogged down in a Pacific war, for instance, Iran would surely feel more confident of getting away with a dash for nuclear weapons.”

The magazine called the situation a “new world disorder” and suggested that Russia and China see “opportunities” in the growing threats. “Even more worrying is the prospect of active collusion. European military planners give weight to the possibility that Russia might conduct menacing maneuvers during a crisis over Taiwan in order to divert American attention and tie down its allies, preventing them from lending a hand in Asia.” Concentrations of crises have occurred in past eras, The Economist said, “but America and its allies cannot intervene as easily or cheaply as they once did.” That’s partly because the Ukraine crisis has “cemented” the partnership between Russia and China, and the two countries are working more closely together, according to the magazine.

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Sore loser.

• Russia and Ukraine May Never Sign Peace Treaty – Kiev (RT)

Russia and Ukraine may never sign a formal peace treaty ending the current conflict, Kirill Budanov, the head of Ukraine’s military intelligence, wrote in an op-ed, excerpts from which were published on Monday. He pointed to Russia and Japan, which never signed a comprehensive peace treaty after World War II due to Tokyo’s claims on several of Russia’s Kuril Islands. “There are cases in history when old wars between the states have not been legally concluded. An obvious example is Russia and Japan. They did not sign a peace agreement after 1945 due to [the dispute] over the Northern Islands, also known as the Kuril Islands in Russia. This territorial problem is now more than 70 years old,” Budanov wrote in an op-ed for NV magazine,

“This is why such a scenario is highly likely in our case, considering that Russia has significant territorial appetite when it comes to Ukraine, and not only pertaining to Crimea.” Budanov’s assessment comes as Kiev’s long-anticipated counteroffensive, launched in the summer, has largely petered out without achieving any significant victories on the ground. Ukrainian troops struggled to break through fortified defense lines and cross thick minefields, losing many NATO-supplied tanks and other armored vehicles in the process. Speaking to the Economist this month, Valery Zaluzhny, Ukraine’s top general, described the situation on the battlefield as “a stalemate.”

The prospects of a peace treaty between Moscow and Kiev remain bleak as both countries ruled out compromising with one another. President Vladimir Zelensky and other top-ranking Ukrainian officials ruled out negotiations unless Russia surrenders its recently acquired territories. Moscow repeatedly said that it would be impossible. Crimea voted to leave Ukraine and join Russia in 2014, following a Western-backed coup in Kiev that year. Four other former Ukrainian territories – the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, as well as the regions of Kherson and Zaporozhye – did the same after holding referendums on the matter in September 2022. At the same time, President Vladimir Putin argued last month that Moscow was aiming not to acquire new lands, but to protect the people of Donbass and maintain its own security. He said that the Ukrainian delegation was close to signing a neutrality pact in March 2022, but has since discarded preliminary agreements.

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“The way [the EU] wants to deal with Ukraine, which is really huge and is a battlefield, is beyond my understanding..”

• EU Approach To Ukraine ‘Surreal’ – ex-Austrian Foreign Minister (RT)

The European Union is making a mistake by insisting on the accession of Ukraine while the country remains locked in a military conflict with Russia, former Austrian foreign minister Karin Kneissl has said. She expressed dismay at the fact that key member states seem to agree with Brussels’ expansion plans, despite the risks. Kneissl’s comments came in response to the European Commission’s decision last week to recommend launching accession talks with Kiev. Its president, Ursula von der Leyen, praised Ukraine for making considerable headway but stopped short of giving a definitive timeline for the country’s admission to the bloc. In an interview with journalist Flavio von Witzleben published on his YouTube channel on Sunday, Kneissl said the “European Union is importing conflicts” by establishing closer ties with the likes of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, and Ukraine.

“The way [the EU] wants to deal with Ukraine, which is really huge and is a battlefield, is beyond my understanding,” the former Austrian minister added. Kneissl said she could not help but think to herself “It’s all just surreal” when watching excerpts of von der Leyen’s address last week. She lamented that von der Leyen is not alone in promoting Ukraine’s membership, with no visible opposition among other officials working in Brussels. She noted that Germany is actively advocating for the cause, too. The former diplomat cited a report by Die Welt last Monday, which quoted Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba as saying that his German counterpart, Annalena Baerbock, had promised him that Kiev would be admitted to the bloc.

In a statement last Wednesday, von der Leyen described Brussels’ endorsement of accession talks with Ukraine as “historic.” She said Kiev had already completed “well over 90% of the necessary steps” for membership set out by the bloc last year. Kneissl, who criticized the European Commission’s stance, served as Austria’s foreign minister between 2017 and 2019. She later went on to work at Russian oil giant Rosneft and was a contributor for RT. The former diplomat, however, had to resign from the board of the Russian oil giant amid sanctions imposed by the EU on Moscow over the Ukraine conflict. Last year, she left her homeland, claiming to have received death threats. Kneissl has since lived in several countries, including Russia, where she was spotted at a festival in August.

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“..T2 will win by a landslide and they will even dominate in the Purple/Border/Swing States. Fair Elections Matter.

• A Trump-Tucker T2 Ticket? (Coy)

A Trump Tucker ticket for the presidency in 2024. Just imagine it. Wow. Oh my goodness. Praise the Lord. Fantastic. Our prayers are answered. Could it actual happen? The dream ticket is not as far-fetched as previously thought. A Trump Tucker (T2) presidential ticket is beginning to look like a real possibility. A T2 ticket would be putting the Make America Great Again movement and the America First alliance on steroids. As opposed to being a “balanced ticket,” it would be a “double down” on an American exceptionalism ticket. A Trump-Tucker ticket would certainly electrify and energize a base already loaded for bear. A T2 ticket would tell the American citizen, and put the globalist elites, and the Deep State hooligans on notice, that we are right, we are unashamed, we will not be intimated, and we will not apologize.

A Trump-Tucker ticket might possibly be the ticket that saves our democratic republic. A T2 ticket might be the platform that holds off the communists/deep state/globalist elites. A T2 presidency might be the answer to putting the BLM and Antifa criminals in jail. A Trump-Tucker administration might be the only hope for securing the First and Second amendments. An unashamed and without apology Trump-Tucker ticket might just be the political platform and personalities that save the American empire from the dustpan of history. Now, if there is election interference and voter fraud like there was in 2020, it will not matter. If in the toss-up states, they stop counting the votes at 11:30 p.m. and after everyone goes home, start up again at 2:30 in the morning, it won’t matter. If Fulton County, Georgia counts Biden votes multiple times, it won’t matter.

If the upper Midwest states use Zuckerbucks again, it won’t matter. If the management and upper echelons at Fox News appear to be willing participants, it won’t matter. If state election officials in Pennsylvania are once again allowed to purposely ignore their very own state legislated election laws, it won’t matter. If 2024 election tabulations are counted just as they were in the Purple States in 2020, it won’t matter. But, but, but, if the election is run fair and square in the swing states, without cheating, without the Deep State “brownshirts” putting their thumb on the scale; it will matter. Without the FBI/CIA/NSA running cover for the Biden/Harris ticket; Donald Trump and running mate Tucker Carlson will win the 2024 election for the presidency. If only legitimate and legal votes are counted, and they are counted only once, T2 will win by a landslide and they will even dominate in the Purple/Border/Swing States. Fair Elections Matter.

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“President Biden’s plan hands the Administrative State effective control of all Internet services and infrastructure in the country.”

• FCC Commissioner Sounds Alarms About Coming Biden ‘Takeover’ of Internet (PB)

While Americans have been fixated on the Swift-Kelce romance and wondering what really happened to Matthew Perry, the Biden administration has quietly made an audacious move to take over the Internet as we know it and regulate it in the name “Equity.” That’s right: The fate of the Internet as we know it hangs in the balance. And it’s set to come to a vote at the Federal Communications Commission on November 15. FCC Commissioner Brandon Carr earlier lambasted the Biden administration for its attempted Internet “takeover” in a memorandum on the Wednesday meeting.

“So last month, President Biden gave the FCC its marching orders,” Carr said. “The President called on the FCC to implement a one-page section of the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (Infrastructure Act) by adopting new rules of breathtaking scope, all in the name of ‘digital equity.’ For the first time ever, those rules would give the federal government a roving mandate to micromanage nearly every aspect of how the Internet functions—from how ISPs allocate capital and where they build, to the services that consumers can purchase; from the profits that ISPs can realize and how they market and advertise services, to the discounts and promotions that consumers can receive. Talk about central planning.”

“Needless to say, Congress never contemplated the sweeping regulatory regime that President Biden asked the FCC to adopt—let alone authorized the agency to implement it,” he added. “Nonetheless, the Commission will vote next week, on November 15th, to put President Biden’s plan in place. A draft of the FCC order implementing President Biden’s plan is available here. I oppose the plan for several reasons.” The FCC Commissioner then laid out the reasons he opposes the Biden Internet takeover, namely, “President Biden’s plan hands the Administrative State effective control of all Internet services and infrastructure in the country.”

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“a disgusting, totally corrupt traitor, mass murdering, psychopath and war criminal.”

Blair: “He’s even more corrupt and more of a psychopath than Cameron,” Shilling stressed. “He’s absolutely terrible. Should’ve been locked up years ago.”

• Rehabilitated Former UK PM Cameron is ‘Psychopath and War Criminal’ (Tweedie)

David Cameron is still unfit to hold office seven years after he resigned as British prime minister, says a political pundit. Current PM Rishi Sunak surprised the nation when he resurrected Cameron’s failed career as part of his cabinet reshuffle on Monday, which began with the sacking of outspoken home secretary Suella Braverman. Cameron was made Foreign Secretary as James Cleverly moved to the Home Office. Cameron must now be granted a peerage in the House of Lords by King Charles III so he can qualify to serve as a minister. That prompted a protest from House of Commons speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle that Cameron would not be answerable to fellow MPs in the elected lower house of Parliament.

Geopolitical analyst Ian Shilling told Sputnik that Cameron was “a disgusting, totally corrupt traitor, mass murdering, psychopath and war criminal.” “He helped Obama and Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden, all of them Al Qaida supporting terrorists in Libya to overthrow Gadhafi and also help them to try and overthrow Assad in Syria, use the same Al Qaida type terrorists,” Shilling charged. “And then they created ISIS* in about 2013 to change the regime in Iraq.” “This is the root cause of all these illegal immigrants crossing the channel into the UK and millions of people crossing into Italy from Libya and into France,” he continued. The commentator said that, outside of the European Union, British foreign policy was a “laughing stock” — as was the US under President Joe Biden.

“What they’re doing is completely contrary to national interest because they turn away third world countries, neutral countries in Africa and Asia, South America they turn them away from the West and then turn them towards China,” Shilling said. “the billions in the rest of the world know what a farce it is, and certainly all the Arabs in the Middle East know that the UK and the US support terrorists.” In another blast from the British political past, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is reportedly considering his former British counterpart Tony Blair as his “humanitarian coordinator” for the besieged Palestinian enclave of the Gaza Strip — once the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) have finished demolishing it in their latest attempt to destroy the Hamas movement.Blair embroiled the UK in former US president George W Bush’s invasions and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq. “He’s even more corrupt and more of a psychopath than Cameron,” Shilling stressed. “He’s absolutely terrible. Should’ve been locked up years ago.”

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“..everybody can go home, we can come back, reset, we’re gonna get our group together, we’re gonna map out that plan to fight for those principles.”

• House Funding Bill Passes Thanks To Democrats, Averting Gov’t Shutdown (ZH)

Democrats stepped in to save the day on Tuesday, helping House Speaker Mike Johnson avert a government shutdown despite opposition from Republicans in the Freedom Caucus who opposed the bill due to a lack of offsetting spending cuts. According to Punchbowl News’ Jake Sherman, more Democrats voted for it than Republicans.

The legislation now heads to the Senate, where both Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Mitch McConnell (R-KY) gave it their full-throated support as noted earlier. According to a Tuesday statement by Schumer, the Senate will work to pass it “as soon as possible,” after which it will head to President Joe Biden’s desk for a signature. Along the lines of what Sherman said;

“Passage of the legislation marks an early legislative achievement for Johnson, who was elected to the Speakership less than a month ago after three weeks of standstill in the House following former Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s (R-Calif.) removal from the role. That ouster was caused in large part by McCarthy’s decision to put a “clean” continuing resolution on the floor and pass it with help from Democrats — similar to Johnson’s course of action this week. But hardline conservatives said they would give Johnson some breathing room this time around — despite opposing his stopgap bill — citing his nascent Speakership. “He’s had two weeks to pass it; his predecessor had since January and then he jammed us up against the Sept. 30 deadline,” said Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.), one of the eight Republicans who voted to oust McCarthy. Trouble, nonetheless, looms for Johnson and his fractious House GOP conference as they stare down two funding deadlines and try to pass their remaining five appropriations bills, which have run into trouble on the floor and in committee.”

Johnson plans to tackle Ukraine funding next, which has become a contentious issue among Republicans. “I’ve been drinking from Niagara Falls for the last three weeks,” Johnson said on Tuesday. “This will allow everybody to go home for a couple of days for Thanksgiving, everybody cool off — members have been here for, as Leader Scalise said, for 10 weeks, this place is a pressure cooker. And so I think everybody can go home, we can come back, reset, we’re gonna get our group together, we’re gonna map out that plan to fight for those principles.” Good luck with that.

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“The collapse of the AMOC was behind the arrival of a new ice age in the 2004 Hollywood sci-fi blockbuster The Day After Tomorrow. It has been a firm favourite of climate alarmists ever since.”

• Gulf Stream Collapse Scare Debunked by Royal Society (DS)

One of the more unforgivable climate scares foisted on the public by green fanatics is the suggestion that the Gulf Stream is about to break down, plunging the northern hemisphere into a new ice age. Last July, both the Guardian and the BBC reported that the Gulf Stream could collapse by 2025, bringing catastrophic climate impacts. All of this fearmongering relies on models, and these have also led the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to forecast it is “very likely” that the entire system of North Atlantic currents will weaken in the near future. Needless to say, these models have an impressively poor track record, and this has been revealed in a recent paper published by the Royal Society. “If these models cannot reproduce past variation, why should we be so confident about their ability to predict the future,” ask the scientific authors.

The Gulf Stream is part of a wider system of currents known as the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC). By bringing warmer waters from the south, it is estimated to increase coastal area temperatures in parts of the northern hemisphere by up to 5°C. The collapse of the AMOC was behind the arrival of a new ice age in the 2004 Hollywood sci-fi blockbuster The Day After Tomorrow. It has been a firm favourite of climate alarmists ever since. Of course, the political push towards the collectivist Net Zero project is behind much of the copy. Writing his Gulf Stream collapse nonsense last July, Guardian Environment Editor Damian Carrington said the prospect of an AMOC collapse was extremely concerning, “and should spur rapid cuts in carbon emissions”.

The Royal Society authors find that the climate models that are stuck with an assumption that humans can and do control the AMOC have been wrong for decades. Neither past nor current models are successful in representing actual AMOC observational data. They go on to add: “If it is not possible to reconcile climate models and observations of the AMOC in the historical period, then we believe the statement about future confidence about AMOC evolution should be revised. Low confidence in the past should mean lower confidence in the future.” Many of the scare tactics employed by mainstream media and green activists are given weight by the IPCC’s suggestion that the AMOC will weaken in future as “very likely”.

But the authors note the models cannot reproduce past variations, causing them rightly to ask why we should be confident about their ability to predict the future. The challenge for the AMOC community is either to reconcile the differences between climate models and observations or to better understand the reasons for deviation. “We believe that progress needs to be made in understanding why models do not reproduce past AMOC variability and that this is the key to having confidence in the future evolution of this key climate variable,” they state. Fine words, but in the meantime we are stuck with climate models that are patently unfit for purpose, except, of course, for the vital political work of scaring populations into widespread Net Zero economic and societal compliance.

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Turtle

A massive sleepy sea turtle sleeping on sponge

[📹 Creative Scuba Images]pic.twitter.com/cwR1DN2IEu

— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) November 14, 2023

Kummakivi, situated in Ruokolahti, Finland, is a remarkable geological formation where a massive rock weighing approximately 75 tons or 68,000 kg has delicately balanced on top of another rock for thousands of years.

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