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Debt Rattle November 9 2026

Nov 092026
 
 November 9, 2026  Posted by at 10:08 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , ,  No Responses »


Pablo Picasso Portrait of the artist’s mother 1896 (Picasso was 15).


• Democrats Plan to Tear Down What Trump Builds (CTH)
• Democrats Move to Nullify Electoral College Before the 2028 Election (Turley)
• DeSantis: GOP Voters Would Renominate Trump If Eligible For Third Term (JTN)
• DeSantis Strongly Denies Report He’s Considering Running For President (JTN)
• President Trump Asks DOJ to Investigate Threats from Congress (CTH)
• Dan Bongino Gives Chilling Warning About Abdul El-Sayed (Margolis)
• Who Really Runs Ukraine? Follow The Men Doing The Recruiting (Poletaev)
• Zelensky’s Nazi-Style ‘Torture Chambers’ Rake In Billions – MP (RT)
• Kiev Charges Top Zelensky Aide For Speaking Russian During Torture Debacle (RT)
• The Incoming Democrat Texas Governor Is Already Going After Elon Musk (ZH)
• Nvidia’s CEO Jensen Huang Requested to Appear in GOP Congress (CTH)
• The Economic Crunch Fueling Youth Protests In Much Of Europe (ZH)
• Multiculturalism Institutionalized by the Midterm Election (Paul Craig Roberts)
• Running Out of Internet Capacity? Elon Musk Has a Solution (CTH)

 

 

 

 


“They’re Planning Impeachment. Trump Is Planning a Moon Base.”

• Democrats Plan to Tear Down What Trump Builds (CTH)

Politically and also in real terms, leftists don’t build anything of value. Instead, their focus is always to tear down the things built by others. From monuments to ideas, leftists are destroyers.


After Tuesday’s midterms, the media says Trumpism is finished. Susan Kokinda looks at the next chapters of the color revolution playbook, and at how President Trump is already positioned to outflank them. In his November 5 message, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth names the “sacred cows” his department tore down, while three impeachment resolutions, including one from Rep. Thomas Massie, target him.

Senate Democrats, led by Ron Wyden, want to repeal the Canada tariffs and take the tariff power away from the President, just as October’s jobs report shows 19,000 new manufacturing jobs. And at the Kennedy Space Center on November 6, President Trump laid out the other revolution: Artemis III, Americans back on the Moon, a nuclear-powered spacecraft for Mars, and a new U.S. Space Academy.


Read more …

“..negating the Electoral College to increase the power of high-population blue states..”

• Democrats Move to Nullify Electoral College Before the 2028 Election (Turley)


New York Electoral College (1888)

After the midterm elections, the Democrats are moving in for the kill.


Liberal politicians and pundits realize that the losses by the Republicans may only represent a fleeting, and indeed predictable, shift in power. While played up by the media, the results this month are consistent with prior administrations. For example, the GOP’s loss of roughly 46 seats is modest compared with other presidents such as Roosevelt (79), Obama (69), Truman (68), and Clinton (54). Thus far, Trump is just making the top ten. Presidents like Obama, who experienced massive losses, came back to win second terms.

The Democrats are not waiting to find out. They are moving to help guarantee they can take the White House and, with control of both houses, implement radical changes to ensure they hold power for years to come. That includes finally negating the Electoral College to increase the power of high-population blue states such as California and New York.

As discussed in my recent book, Rage and the Republic, academics and pundits have been discussing radical changes (including trashing the Constitution) for years. The key is to destroy minority protections by killing the filibuster and create an insurmountable majority by adding new states like the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. The most important initial objective is packing the Court with an immediate liberal majority ot allow for measures that would likely be struck down.

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 make these changes possible. None of this is possible with a Republican in the White House.

The Democrats know that they are unlikely to attain a veto-proof majority. They need to get a president who will help pack the Court, add states, and make fundamental changes to the constitutional system.That goal may now be attainable. With a slew of new Democratic governors, Democrats believe they may have enough states to sign on to a compact to effectively nullify the Electoral College.

The Framers saw the College as a way of protecting small states from being overwhelmed by high-population states. It was designed to get presidents to take the interests of small states seriously and to protect political minority populations.

In my book, I raised the increasing importance of the Electoral College and other protections for small states and minority political groups in our system. I was a late convert, and I previously criticized the College for producing elections in which candidates won the majority vote but lost the electoral vote. I still share those reservations with a majority of Americans, who are polling at 58 percent in favor of electing presidents by popular vote.

I still believe that a president elected by less than a majority of the public is deeply problematic. This is not, however, the time for such a change and, if anything, the push for direct democratic reforms only reaffirms the judgment of the Framers that this is an important limitation for the nation.

Clearly, many people who are calling for this reform are not seeking one-party rule. Likewise, many of us who are now skeptical about the change raised those concerns before recent elections. We should be able to have this debate without personal or political animus.

The direct democratic reforms being pushed by professors and pundits risk dangerously destabilizing our constitutional system. Many on the left want to unleash more direct democratic power, including calls by groups like the Democratic Socialist of America (DSA) to eliminate the Senate, the Supreme Court, and the presidency. The nullification of the College is part of the direct democracy movement.

Witnessing this movement (and the support of establishment figures), I changed my mind about dumping the College as part of a package of reforms that could fundamentally change our Republic. With one-party control in states like Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, the party is ready to get states to join the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. Under the Compact, states agree to give all their electoral votes to the presidential ticket that wins the national popular vote.

The constitutionality of the Compact has obviously not been tested. There are compelling arguments that such a constructive amendment of the Constitution is unlawful. The Supreme Court has described the constitutional system as creating a “finely wrought” system of procedures designed to preserve a balancing of powers and avoid both the concentration of power and majoritarian abuse. The compact is designed to avoid the Article V amendment process precisely because the advocates know that they would have a difficult time securing such a change to our Constitution.

Ten years ago, I would have applauded this effort. Now I am deeply concerned.

We are in the midst of a national fever as politicians fuel the rage of citizens, including newly elected members who proudly say that they will happily go to jail if they have the opportunity to assault certain Republicans physically. Yet, the greatest danger is found in those establishment figures encouraging Americans to abandon constitutional values and institutions as “nostalgia” and condemning those who seek only “incremental” changes.

In Rage and the Republic, I explore these changes in both a historical and contemporary context. It is a book about revolutions and how they can consume those who start them. It is a history that resonates more deeply as new far-left members of Congress promise “revolutionary” change, including those supporting the DSA agenda.

Many current proposals from liberal politicians and pundits are strikingly similar to those of the “Jacobin” movement in the French Revolution. Both the American and French revolutions arose during the same period, but one became the world’s oldest and most successful Republic while the other became a blood-soaked tyranny known as “The Reign of Terror.”

The Jacobins (who were composed of radical journalists, writers, and lawyers) pushed for the same unicameral system and direct democratic measures that many are now advocating. Even figures such as Thomas Paine (one of two figures who played a significant role in both revolutions) supported such measures to allow for more direct democracy. He later came to regret some of those views as the French Revolution became the blood bath known as “the Terror.”

The New Jacobins are seeking to pursue the same disastrous reforms. The Framers rejected this approach and warned future generations against adopting such direct democratic measures. Benjamin Rush, a signatory to the Declaration of Independence, referred to it as democracies becoming “mobocracies.”

We are now toying with the very elements that could produce the mobocracy that the Framers sought to avoid. There are good-faith reasons for converting the presidential election to a majority election. However, with the assault on our constitutional values and traditions, citizens cannot afford to ignore a broader agenda unfolding in the wake of the midterm elections.

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“DeSantis: “if we had a primary or caucus tomorrow with Republican voters, they would vote to renominate Trump again if he was eligible. I don’t think it would even be close.”

• DeSantis: GOP Voters Would Renominate Trump If Eligible For Third Term (JTN)

Florida GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis said on Saturday that President Trump would win the GOP presidential nomination if was eligible to run for president again and the party should never go back to a Mitt Romney-type candidate. “I hear these people like going back to Mitt Romney,” he said. “No, that’s not happening.”


He continued by saying that a Trump-like candidate is still the direction the GOP should go in, despite the loss of Congress to the Democrats. “If we had a primary or caucus tomorrow with Republican voters, they would vote to renominate Trump again if he was eligible. I don’t think it would even be close,” he said.

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“The Washington Post used anonymous sources in an article published Friday that claimed the Republican was considering a presidential run in 2028, which would come after he leaves the governor’s mansion in January.”

• DeSantis Strongly Denies Report He’s Considering Running For President (JTN)

Florida GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis strongly rejected a report Friday that he is considering another presidential bid, stating that such reporting was “another pathetic attempt to garner clicks.” The Washington Post used anonymous sources in an article published Friday that claimed the Republican was considering a presidential run in 2028, which would come after he leaves the governor’s mansion in January. GOP Rep. Byron Donalds will be the state’s next governor after winning the election on Tuesday.


“The Washington Post is fabricating this out of whole cloth,” DeSantis insisted in a post on X. “I have not reached out to anybody about running for anything. Just another pathetic attempt to garner clicks. Using anonymous sources, of course!” The article claimed the governor had reached out to at least one national political consultant about working on his campaign so far and that his Super Political Action Committee has sent out texts trying to raise money for a campaign.

The governor previously ran for president in 2024. Potential presidential candidates typically wait until after the midterm elections to formally express interest in a campaign. Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio are considered top contenders for the GOP nomination.

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Raw power clash.

• President Trump Asks DOJ to Investigate Threats from Congress (CTH)

President Trump proactively sends this message out via Truth Social:


One might even ponder if President Trump is requesting an investigation of the matter. Perhaps even a ‘special counsel’ investigation of the matter.

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“The guy is a freaking national security threat. His family ties to the Muslim Brotherhood are beyond disturbing. I’m concerned, and you should be, too.”

• Dan Bongino Gives Chilling Warning About Abdul El-Sayed (Margolis)

On Wednesday, I called Abdul El-Sayed’s victory the hardest result of the midterms, and former FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino just made the case for why that’s true.


Bongino took to his radio show after the election to sound the alarm that Senator-elect Abdul El-Sayed (D-Mich.) is a national security threat. The next day, he carried that warning to Fox News and asked why Democrats keep brushing aside El-Sayed’s troubling associations. Coming from a man who spent his career inside the federal security apparatus, that warning should rattle every American.

“Folks, we have a national security threat in the United States Senate,” Bongino said on The Dan Bongino Show. “If you voted for this guy to teach the Republicans a lesson, you’re about to get a lesson, and good and hard.” Bongino then played audio from El-Sayed’s election night victory speech.

“My name is Abdurrahman Muhammad El-Sayed, and I am so proud and honored to stand here as your Senator-elect from the great state of Michigan,” El-Sayed says. “So Mike [Rogers], enjoy your retirement. JD, habibi, there is this delicious irony in the fact that you’re constitutionally obligated to swear me in January. Donald, look, I know, you struggled with my name, so after JD swears me in January, you can just go on and call me Senator.”

Bongino was not amused.

“What a classless piece of human waste this guy is,” Bongino said. “The guy is a freaking national security threat. His family ties to the Muslim Brotherhood are beyond disturbing. I’m concerned, and you should be, too. I didn’t spend decades in the government, you know, trying to protect both Democrats and Republicans, to have a guy like this getting classified national security briefings. Sorry, you’re not teaching anyone a lesson with this guy.”


The Muslim Brotherhood is an Islamist terrorist organization founded in Egypt, the country El-Sayed’s family comes from. El-Sayed likes to play the islamophobia card whenever this is brought up, but his faith is beside the point. The concern comes from the disturbing connections to the group and the fact that El-Sayed has never been willing to condemn it. A man in that position will soon sit in a chamber that gets access to some of the most sensitive intelligence this country has, and that should scare you.

On Thursday, Bongino joined Laura Ingraham on The Ingraham Angle. He drew a line between the left’s socialist economic pitch and its willingness to shrug off serious security concerns about El-Sayed.

“You know, I get and understand — I don’t believe in it, obviously — but why people would fall for the socialism hoax,” Bongino told Ingraham. “You know, great! Free stuff! I mean, you hear ‘free stuff,’ and it just, it sounds good, right? Free healthcare, the government’s going to run it, you don’t have to do anything, wow, this is all good, we’re going to tax the rich, we don’t have to pay for anything. I get why people get suckered by that over and over again, and then, like, the Gulags happen later.”

Then he turned to Michigan’s new senator. “What I don’t get is a national security threat, like I believe this guy to be, given his prior associations and his family associations and the people he pals around with,” he continued. “I don’t get why they don’t understand that. Did we not properly explain, like, who the Muslim Brotherhood is? This is a known terror group that would kill the infidel, i.e., you, in a minute. I mean, this is not like some fringe group of terrorists, like a couple local yokels who got together in a bar. This is a known terror group for decades. And this guy has very questionable allegiances to them. And how did this guy get through? I don’t understand.”


Voters had every warning in front of them, and the Democrat Party made sure they tuned it out. El-Sayed defeated former Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.), who was making his second run for the Senate with support from pro-Israel groups like AIPAC and from Elon Musk’s America PAC. When Rogers and President Donald Trump raised the alarm in the closing weeks of the race, the left falsely smeared their message as “Islamophobia.” That label worked exactly as intended. It shut down a legitimate debate about national security before voters could have it.

And El-Sayed is gloating about it.

Read more …

“The Azov detention scandal raises questions about forced recruitment and the limits of Kiev’s authority..”

“This creates a shadow fund in each brigade, which is then used to buy people on the slave market – sourced from the basements of neighboring brigades..”.

• Who Really Runs Ukraine? Follow The Men Doing The Recruiting (Poletaev)

Clashes outside a secret prison in Petropavlovskaya Borshchagovka, a suburb of Kiev, revealed the dark side of modern Ukraine: its well-established system of abduction, torture, and human trafficking. This system is beyond the control of the Kiev authorities and of law enforcement; it has become a self-sustaining sector of the economy. While everyone is aware of its existence, many choose to remain silent, fearing they might become its next victims.


What happened?
Let’s briefly recap the events. On the evening of November 1, reports appeared on social media that people were being illegally held in the basement of a private house in Petropavlovskaya Borshchagovka, near Kiev. Apparently, a few local youths managed to climb over the fence and deliver a phone into the basement, allowing the captives to record a message. The message revealed that there were dozens of people in the basement (various reports mentioned from 17 to 40 people) with four in critical condition, and one with a broken spine.

The following day, November 2, a crowd of relatives and concerned citizens gathered outside the house. An ambulance arrived, and the nurse demanded to be allowed inside. Meanwhile, the police present at the site did nothing. This detail is crucial, so keep it in mind. In addition to the police, Commander of the National Guard of Ukraine Aleksandr Pivnenko arrived at the site. However, he was unable to enter the house and was eventually chased away by the crowd. Soon thereafter, Kirill Budanov, Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine, arrived.

Budanov entered the house with one of the protesters and emerged with a beaten 14-year-old boy, one of the captives. How the boy ended up inside remains unclear. Then, four severely wounded men were brought out of the basement, followed by the remaining captives. These were told to get into a bus, and were about to be transported to an unknown location. However, the crowd intervened, and the people got out of the bus and dispersed.

Later that night, after Budanov had left, so-called ‘titushky’ (masked thugs) arrived on the scene. They wielded clubs, fired shots into the air to disperse the crowd, and resorted to violence. A reporter from the Ukrainian Independent Information Agency (UNIAN) sustained abdominal injuries during the clashes.

The dragon bares its teeth
While addressing the crowd (in Russian, by the way), Budanov made several statements, which can be summarized as follows: we know there are many basements like this across the country; we’re going to address the problem; today we did a lot, we saved lives; thank you all.

Let’s pause for a moment – these are the official remarks from one of the highest-ranking officials in Ukraine, an influential security forces figure and former head of Ukraine’s Main Intelligence Directorate.Whom did he save the people from? Who are these enemies that are torturing people while both the police and the government are powerless to intervene?

To understand the situation, we need to go back two years. By 2024, the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) were facing serious challenges in recruitment: even with increased pay rates, there was a shortage of personnel. The old Soviet-era draft system wasn’t able to recruit the necessary number of people.

Starting on October 1, 2024, at the initiative of the General Staff of the AFU, the Ukrainian Cabinet of Ministers allowed commanders to enlist volunteers directly into military units without going through Territorial Centers of Recruitment. On November 25, then-Commander-in-Chief of the AFU Aleksandr Syrsky signed a directive mandating that each brigade establish its own recruitment unit.

At the time, Ukrainian propaganda hailed this as a progressive move: out with bureaucracy! Units would compete for recruits by offering better conditions and higher pay, effectively eliminating forced conscription. Reality painted a different picture, however. In effect, the state handed over the power of coercive mobilization to private entities. Some commanders adapted quickly and began collaborating with local authorities. The situation was profitable for both sides: city officials met their recruitment quotas, while “recruiters” in unmarked buses snatched people off the streets, gaining unlimited control over human resources without any oversight.

Human trafficking
Have you ever wondered what happens to the Ukrainian men who are grabbed off the streets and ‘busified’, i.e. forcefully conscripted? One might think they’re taken to a government facility, registered, perhaps handed an official summons, and then sent to a centralized training camp where they receive basic combat training and a military specialty. In reality, private ‘busification’ units have no real ties to the state and operate without any government oversight.

The unfortunate people caught on the streets end up in basements like the one stormed on Tuesday. There, they fall completely under the control of ‘recruiters’: they can be dispatched to the front, sold to a similar neighboring ‘unit’ (a market estimated to involve tens of thousands of people annually), or held captive for ransom. The latter practice is alarmingly common, with ransoms typically ranging from $5,000 to $20,000.

All of this occurs with the state’s approval, as the aforementioned directive from Syrsky allows direct recruitment into brigades. This is happening in the rear, and civilian police have no authority over military operations. This explains the inaction of law enforcement during the incident in Borshchagovka.

Estimates suggest that in some regions of Ukraine, up to 80% of recruitment targets are met outside of government Territorial Centers for Recruitment and Social Support. The pattern is simple: abduction on the street – captivity in basements – storming or ransom. Another problem is deserters. Typically, local police don’t pursue deserters; if someone runs away from the front and manages to get home, local police generally don’t bother to catch him.

However, they could turn such a person over to local brigade recruiters, who would track him down, imprison him in a basement, and subject him to punishment as a warning to others. Many of those held captive in the Borshchagovka basement were captured deserters.

Backbone of the economy
This system involves massive amounts of money. Every recruit is entitled to government payments: up to 300,000 hryvnias as a one-time payment and up to 100,000 hryvnias per month while on the front. The personnel lists are poorly monitored; mobilized individuals have their bank cards confiscated, and their access to bank accounts is restricted, so the people caught on the streets never see the money. This creates a shadow fund in each brigade, which is then used to buy people on the slave market – sourced from the basements of neighboring brigades.

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“Thousands of people are held in secret facilities across the country and forced to pay up to $15,000 for their release, Ukrainian lawmaker Aleksandr Dubinsky has claimed..”

• Zelensky’s Nazi-Style ‘Torture Chambers’ Rake In Billions – MP (RT)

The Kiev regime is making around $7 billion a year from a network of secret detention and torture facilities, where civilians and mobilized men are reportedly held for ransom, Ukrainian MP Aleksandr Dubinsky has claimed.


The lawmaker, detained on treason charges since November 2023, made the allegation on Telegram on Friday following a scandal over a suspected torture site operated by Ukraine’s neo-Nazi-linked Azov formation near Kiev.

Citing figures from a joint briefing by Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU), State Bureau of Investigation (SBI) and National Police, Dubinsky claimed that more than 1,000 such facilities operate across Ukraine, each holding 30 to 40 people. With an estimated 40,000 detainees and an alleged average ransom of $15,000, he calculated that the network could generate $600 million a month, or $7.2 billion annually, assuming the same number of people paid for release each month.

“$7.2 billion a year – that’s the math behind the profits of [Vladimir] Zelensky’s torture chambers and concentration camps. Just like the Nazis, whose concentration camps were also designed to generate profits,” he wrote.

The MP has spent nearly three years in pretrial detention following his arrest in November 2023 on suspicion of treason and cooperation with Russian military intelligence. He denies the accusations, claiming he is being persecuted for criticizing Zelensky’s government.

Secret detention scandal
Dubinsky’s allegations follow a confrontation on Monday outside a private house in Petropavlovskaya Borshchagovka, near Kiev, where Ukrainian media reported that armed men were holding dozens of people in a basement. Relatives and residents gathered outside, chanting “Shame!” and demanding access for medical personnel. Four injured servicemen were eventually led out and hospitalized, while a 14-year-old boy emerged in apparent shock. Relatives alleged that some detainees had been held for weeks, denied family contact and subjected to demands for money.

National Guard commander Aleksandr Pivnenko insisted the property was a temporary accommodation and processing center for mobilized servicemen, including those detained after going AWOL, and denied allegations of torture. Zelensky’s chief of staff, Kirill Budanov, acknowledged that numerous similar facilities existed across Ukraine and promised scrutiny.

Azov, which has been accused of operating secret detention and torture sites in Donbass since 2014, confirmed that one of its units used the property for housing 26 mobilized men and AWOL servicemen. It acknowledged four injuries but denied systematic abuse.

Ukraine’s State Bureau of Investigation opened criminal proceedings over alleged abuse of military authority, coercion and mistreatment. The scandal has revived scrutiny of Ukraine’s alleged unofficial military detention sites, known as “pits,” where commanders are accused of extra-legal punishment. Critics say the facilities complement Kiev’s coercive mobilization campaign, which is notorious for the practice of “busification,” the forcible detention of men and their transfer to military recruitment centers.

Moscow blasts Kiev over secret prison scandal
Russian officials have long accused Kiev of operating secret detention facilities, including in Kiev and the Kharkov, Dnepropetrovsk and Sumy regions. Russian ambassador-at-large Rodion Miroshnik, who deals with Ukrainian war crimes and human rights violations, earlier revealed that similar sites were discovered in Avdeevka and Mariupol following their capture by Russian forces, where opponents of the Kiev regime, including civilians, were detained and abused.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova condemned the latest scandal on Thursday, accusing Kiev of systematically brutalizing its own population. “This is not merely repression against dissenters. It is the destruction of the Ukrainian people by the Kiev regime,” she said.

Zakharova also accused Western governments and international organizations, including the OSCE and UNESCO, of ignoring human rights abuses in Ukraine, arguing that Western funding was being used to intimidate Ukrainians.

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This headline is an entire story in itself.

• Kiev Charges Top Zelensky Aide For Speaking Russian During Torture Debacle (RT)

Kirill Budanov, Vladimir Zelensky’s chief of staff and former military intelligence chief, attends the forum Ukraine 2024, in Kiev, February 25, 2024. © AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky’s top aide, Kirill Budanov, will be fined after admitting that he spoke Russian during protests in front of an alleged black site where neo-Nazi Azov militants purportedly tortured dozens of soldiers, language ombudsman Elena Ivanovskaya has said.


In a Facebook post on Saturday, Ivanovskaya said the violation was recorded during Budanov’s visit to Petropavlovskaya Borshchagovka outside Kiev earlier this week, where a protest erupted around a temporary National Guard facility linked to the 1st Azov Corps. Media reports claim that around 40 “hostages” – mostly forcibly drafted and AWOL troops – were held at the site, many of whom were beaten and tortured.

Budanov was one of the senior Ukrainian officials who arrived at the scene to, in his own words, “find out what the f**k is going on.” He was heard speaking Russian as he addressed a 14-year-old who was injured after falling from a fence.

Rather than addressing the torture allegations, however, Ivanovskaya focused on Budanov’s use of Russian, portraying the issue as part of her “daily inner compass” and claiming that the “language law exists to work, not to divide society or become a cause of endless hate storms.”

Ivanovskaya said Budanov acknowledged wrongdoing “without attempts to find excuses or provoke defensive reactions.” She added that he agreed to pay a fine, which ranges from 3,400 to 6,800 hryvnia ($75-$150).

Ukraine has for years sought to suppress Russian in all walks of life, including media and education. A 2019 law requires senior officials to use Ukrainian while performing official duties. Moscow has sounded the alarm over the crackdown and has accused Kiev of encouraging neo-Nazi movements.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova mocked the episode before the fine was announced, asking Ukraine’s “Sprechfuhrer” how much Budanov, the teenager he addressed in Russian, and the media carrying the footage would be fined.

Ukrainian officials have repeatedly grappled with scandals involving officials speaking Russian. In September, Ivanovskaya demanded explanations from the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) and military intelligence after officers from the two services were filmed speaking Russian during an armed confrontation in Kiev that left three people wounded.

In January, Ivanovskaya’s office said Ukrainian soldiers periodically complain about commanders who only communicate in Russian.

Despite attempts by the authorities to suppress Russian, Ivanovskaya warned last autumn of a linguistic “rollback,” after many people switched to Ukrainian following the escalation of the conflict with Russia. “Part of society is gradually returning to old linguistic practices. This is a dangerous trend,” she said.

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She finds herself important.

• The Incoming Democrat Texas Governor Is Already Going After Elon Musk (ZH)


Gina Hinojosa

Texas Gov.-elect Gina Hinojosa (D-TX) has asked the state’s parks department to hold off on a proposed sale of state land to SpaceX until she takes office, contacting the department’s executive director before she is sworn in this January. The move puts part of Elon Musk’s expansion plans in South Texas on hold.


Hinojosa won the governorship this week as Democrats swept the statewide races in Texas, a result that put the state’s relationship with Musk and his companies in question. Musk relocated several of his businesses to Texas in recent years, and he has close ties to President Donald Trump and outgoing Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX).

Investors reacted the morning after the vote. Tesla and SpaceX each fell nearly 6% in premarket trading on Wednesday. Musk had spent heavily to prevent that outcome. The billionaire, one of the Republican Party’s largest donors, had given more than $445 million to Republican candidates and causes this cycle and urged his followers on X to vote against Democrats. About $190 million of it went into Ken Paxton’s (R-TX) race for the U.S. Senate, most of it through the Senate Leadership Fund, the super PAC aligned with Senate Republican leaders.

The sale under discussion covers about 1,300 acres of public land in Cameron County, including Boca Chica State Park, which covers about 1,055 acres and sits next to SpaceX’s Starbase rocket facility. Acquiring the land would allow SpaceX to expand its operations at the site, which serves as the company’s main launch and production hub for its Starship program.


SpaceX’s Starbase facility, located near the South Texas town of Boca Chica


A draft agenda for the Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission’s Thursday meeting included the sale, according to the Texas Tribune. The item came off the agenda at Hinojosa’s request, she said, though the department had already said in October that the commission was not considering the sale at its November meeting. Hinojosa did not say whether the department agreed to wait until she takes office, and the commission did not announce a new date for the discussion. Texas Monthly first reported the proposed deal last month, and environmental groups opposed it after the news became public.

Hinojosa tied her intervention to her personal connection to the area. The park lies in the Rio Grande Valley, where she grew up. “It’s such an important resource,” Hinojosa said of the park. “The Valley is so important to me as the place I am from, and I will never forget it.”

The Boca Chica pause is the first concrete action Hinojosa has taken against Musk, one of Texas’s largest employers, and it arrives before she holds any formal authority over state agencies. Abbott remains governor until January, and the Parks and Wildlife Commission’s members serve under his appointments.

Musk’s companies came to Texas largely on the strength of the state’s business climate. He moved the headquarters of Tesla, SpaceX, X, and The Boring Company to the state, citing in part his opposition to Democratic policies in California. Tesla relocated its headquarters to Austin in 2021, and Musk announced in 2024 that SpaceX and X would follow after California enacted a law he publicly opposed. Starbase incorporated as its own city in 2025.

Hinojosa’s election also raises questions beyond Musk’s holdings. During the campaign, she promised a temporary moratorium on data centers in Texas, a pledge that bears on the artificial intelligence infrastructure buildout the Trump administration has promoted as part of its push to reindustrialize the American economy. Texas has become one of the country’s leading destinations for large-scale data center construction.

CNN’s Jake Tapper pressed Hinojosa on that issue in an interview on Thursday. “Your victory, in particular, is one that we’re told AI investors are worried about, given your promises of a temporary data center moratorium,” Tapper said. Hinojosa said she intends to change the terms on which Texas deals with major companies. n “We have always been a pro-business state in Texas, but what changes now with me as governor is it has to be a partnership that benefits Texans,” she said.

Tapper also asked about Boca Chica, and whether Musk might move his companies out of Texas. “Selling our beach to Elon Musk is just something that is almost unimaginable. It’s unacceptable,” Hinojosa said. “Our beaches are enshrined in our Texas Constitution as being free and open to the people of Texas.” Hinojosa claims she remains open to working with Musk, though she placed conditions on that relationship.

“We can have a strong working relationship with Elon Musk and his companies, but it has to be on our terms,” Hinojosa told Tapper. “It cannot be just running over the people of Texas, and that’s what changes now that I will be governor.”


Hinojosa did not say in the interview what terms she would require of Musk’s companies. On data centers, she said Texas needs to “stop what we are doing with data centers until we have those protections,” new state laws she did not spell out.

Hinojosa takes office in January, and the fate of the Boca Chica land sale, and the working relationship between Musk’s companies and the state of Texas, now rests with her administration.

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Is it because Jensen has enemies?

• Nvidia’s CEO Jensen Huang Requested to Appear in GOP Congress (CTH)


Alice Huang and Jensen Huang

In the modern world of AI and subsequent datacenter buildouts, the number one priority surrounds the singular term “compute.” A massive, seemingly unquenchable, need for expanded computing power. In order to attain these levels of compute, hardware containing large numbers of data-processing microchips are needed. That’s where Nvidia and Jensen Huang come into the picture, providing the chips.


The US intelligence community discovered that Taiwanese-American Jensen Huang, CEO of one of the largest companies in the world, was involved in a romantic relationship with Alice Huang, a suspected Chinese spy and an executive at Megaspeed, a Singapore-based AI/cloud infrastructure company. According to media and federal investigations, Megaspeed is likely a Chinese cutout, helping Chinese companies locate and access AI chips and circumvent U.S. export controls. (NYT and Bloomberg)

The US intelligence community concluded that Alice Huang’s goal was to convince Jensen to lobby the U.S. government to loosen export controls on advanced AI chips. According to the Financial Times, the intelligence community relayed this information to “a small group of top US government officials” earlier this year.

Over the last year, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has lobbied the U.S. government to loosen export controls on advanced chips via the U.S. Dept of Commerce, Bureau of industry and Security (BIS). The BIS has permitted the export of H200 chips to China and has not enforced stronger export controls that would have required a license for exports of the most advanced Blackwell chips to Megaspeed and Southeast Asia.

Although the Commerce Dept leadership (Howard Lutnik?) was presumably briefed on this relationship by the U.S. intelligence community, The Bureau of Industry and Security has seemingly taken no actions to tighten controls on Megaspeed or Southeast Asia. Megaspeed remains a preferred cloud partner of Nvidia and continues to receive Nvidia Blackwell chips despite employing an alleged Chinese spy, Alice Huang, who is reportedly romantically engaged with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang.

Tens of billions of dollars’ worth of AI chips have been exported to Southeast Asia, and both Malaysia and Singapore represent two of the four largest importers of AI chips in the world. All of that said, it may be worthwhile pausing for a moment to overlay the fact that trillions are at stake in this AI race, and both foreign and domestic stakeholders want to see the U.S. AI advancement and Datacenters paused to allow China, Europe and the U.K to catch up.

Is this a significantly real background story and concern, or is this concern being boosted and influenced by stakeholders against the American AI leadership position and Datacenters overall? We don’t really know yet. Congress is now asking for information from Jensen Huang about this issue. Three committees have asked him to come to Congress for a ‘closed’ (non-public) briefing on the matter.

(VIA NYT) – The Republican leaders of three influential House committees on Thursday asked Jensen Huang, the chief executive of Nvidia, to voluntarily appear for a closed-door briefing on his interactions with an executive at a Singapore-based company, who American officials determined was funneling information to Chinese intelligence.

The request came from Representatives Brian Mast of Florida, chairman of the Committee on Foreign Affairs; John Moolenaar of Michigan, who leads the Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party; and Rick Crawford of Arkansas, who leads the Select Committee on Intelligence.

The New York Times reported last week that Mr. Huang had a close relationship with Alice Huang, a top executive at Megaspeed, a company that the U.S. government suspected of helping China evade U.S. prohibitions and gain access to Nvidia’s artificial intelligence chips. The House leaders asked Mr. Huang to appear on Nov. 18 and discuss his interactions with Ms. Huang as well as Nvidia’s security policies for guarding against espionage by a foreign adversary.

“It is vital Congress determines the extent to which U.S. national security has been placed at risk,” they wrote.John Rizzo, a spokesman for Nvidia, declined to comment on whether Mr. Huang would appear. “Our chief executive has an outstanding security team that accompanies him where needed,” Mr. Rizzo said in a statement.

The request represented a shift for Republican congressional leaders, who have largely followed President Trump’s lead in taking a hands-off approach to the technology industry. Mr. Huang has developed a close relationship with Mr. Trump over the last two years, and the two often speak about technology issues.

Suspicious Cat remains, well, suspicious of all the interests that attach themselves to this story.

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Just the beginning. Europe is bankrupt. Start with France.

• The Economic Crunch Fueling Youth Protests In Much Of Europe (ZH)

Protests that began in France have spread across much of Europe, drawing young people into the streets in growing numbers and unsettling investors watching for signs of political instability.


What started as demonstrations over the cost of living, housing, and cuts to education and social services has broadened into a wider expression of frustration over Europe’s sluggish economy and the limited prospects for a better life facing younger generations. In several cities, rallies have turned violent, with images of looted shops and burning streets topping media headlines and contributing to a flight from European bonds into perceived havens such as U.S. Treasuries.

The grievances vary by country. In Paris and Brussels, protesters have focused on inflation, education cuts, and pressure on social services. In Madrid and Frankfurt, housing affordability has been central. In Italy, demonstrators have pointed to weak wage growth and limited career opportunities. In Albania and Serbia, anger has centered on corruption.

The unrest has since expanded beyond young people. Older demonstrators have joined rallies against income inequality, pollution, increases in the retirement age in France, and proposed military-service requirements in Germany. “Europe remains among the world’s most prosperous regions, with strong welfare institutions,” Grigoris Nikitas, an Athens-based political analyst, told The Epoch Times.

“Yet thousands are taking to the streets because they feel that prosperity is no longer translating into economic opportunity.” For many young Europeans, he said, the fear is that they will be worse off than their parents.

Growth Gap
Europe remains wealthy compared with many regions of the world. Still, its growth has lagged behind the United States, limiting job creation and the fiscal resources governments need to sustain welfare programs.

The eurozone’s real gross domestic product (GDP) grew 1.4 percent in 2025, compared with 2.2 percent in the United States, according to World Bank data. France’s economy contracted in the first quarter of 2026, while Germany and Italy posted only marginal growth, Eurostat reported.

The weakness is reflected in youth employment. Unemployment among people under 25 stands at 15.4 percent in the eurozone and 15.5 percent across the European Union, according to Eurostat. In the United States, the comparable rate is 9.9 percent, according to Federal Reserve data.

Slow growth is also straining public finances. Governments are under pressure to fund pensions, healthcare, education, and housing while managing large debt burdens. France’s debt-to-GDP ratio stands at 115.7 percent, while Italy’s is 136.7 percent, according to Eurostat. Those fiscal limits have helped turn economic grievances into political ones. Many young Europeans face fewer services, higher living expenses, and diminished expectations compared with previous generations.

Europe’s Affordability Squeeze
Another factor behind younger Europeans’ diminished expectations is an affordability squeeze. Direct comparisons between Europe and the United States are complicated. Americans often face higher out-of-pocket costs for healthcare, university tuition, and housing. Europeans, by contrast, generally benefit from generous public services and subsidized education and health systems.

But for young workers, the right metric of affordability isn’t just headlining consumer prices. It is how much discretionary income is left after rent, taxes, energy bills, transportation, and food. By that metric, many European cities have become too difficult to live in.

Energy prices are a major burden, with both households and businesses facing higher electricity and natural-gas prices than those in the United States, a gap that expanded after the cut of cheap Russian gas supplies, the adoption of less reliable renewable sources of energy, and tighter environmental regulations.

High consumption taxes collected by the EU also add to the cost of living. Value-added taxes (VAT), which are embedded in consumer prices, commonly exceed 20 percent in many European countries. The United States has no federal VAT, and state and local sales taxes lag behind the European VAT rates.

Industrial Strains
Europe’s economic stagnation has been worsened by the hollowing out of its industrial base, the relocation of production overseas, and regulations that have raised costs for domestic manufacturers.

The auto industry has become a symbol of that pressure. European Union mandates to speed the transition to cleaner vehicles helped accelerate demand for electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles. But Chinese makers of new-energy vehicles – which include battery-electric, plug-in hybrid, and fuel-cell vehicles – have gained ground in European markets, forcing domestic producers to race to catch up.

Living at Home Longer
The economic squeeze is visible in household patterns. In 2025, young people in the EU left their parents’ homes at an average age of 26.3, up slightly from 26.2 in 2024, according to Eurostat. The figure has hovered around 26 since 2002.

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PCR’s view of things:

“I gave it to you straight. Trump and the Republicans sold out MAGA Americans for Israel’s hegemony over the Muslim Middle East.”

• Multiculturalism Institutionalized by the Midterm Election (Paul Craig Roberts)

Every group is blaming the Republican’s loss on their pet peeve. For free market economists Trump’s tariffs lost the election. Multiculturalists blamed Trump’s closing of the border and ICE deportations. The woke liberal-left blamed Trump’s hostility to DEI. And so on.


I gave it to you straight. Trump and the Republicans sold out MAGA Americans for Israel’s hegemony over the Muslim Middle East. Imagine the stupidity of starting a war that will push up energy costs while simultaneously supporting the construction of data centers that drive up electricity costs just before an election. It shows extraordinary lack of consideration for Americans who can barely pay their bills and cannot afford health insurance. America is the only rich country in which the citizens cannot afford medical care and are stressed to pay the coming months’ bills. Trump’s war for Israel’s expansion in the Middle East is spreading the inability to pay household expenses throughout the world.

Marjorie Taylor Green gave a straight answer. Trump preferred serving Netanyahu to serving America. Vice president J.D. Vance almost gave a straight answer. He said the Republicans lost because of the war started by Trump’s attacks on Iran. By blaming the war on Trump and not on Israel, Vance avoided the charge, still lethal for Republicans, of being an anti-semite. Democrats who won big, such as Melat Kiros and Abdul El-Sayed, seem unbothered by charges of anti-semitism. Their attitude is that those who hold Israel accountable are the good guys, not the bad ones.

Ethiopian born Melat is one of others, such as Chicago alderman and New York’s mayor, who are transforming the Democrat Party into the Democratic Socialists of America Party, and the growing problems of cities are helping them. She and others like her, not the old line Democrat Establishment, is where Democrat leadership is coming from. She defeated her Republican opponent in Colorado with 78% of the vote. This is a woman who gave up her position at one of America’s most prestigious law firms in order to be free to speak her mind. Her confidence and determination will enter Congress with her. How many Republicans can we say this about?

Similarly, Abdul El-Sayed strikes me, given the information that I have, as a person who was elected to the US Senate without having to be a whore for monied interests. Like Melat Kiros, he is a competent person. A University of Michigan graduate. A Columbia University medical school M.D., a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford who also excelled on the athletic field as captain of Oxford University’s lacrosse team. It is disturbing when the best and the brightest see revolution, not reform, as the salvation of America’s future.

Thanks to the dishonesty and mendaciousness of the American liberal-left, especially the NY Times, Washington Post, CNN, and NPR, the Trump phenomena was misrepresented as ignorant “Trump deplorables.” Closing the border and deporting millions of illegals welcomed into America by the Obama and Biden regimes and by US corporations seeking to replace US workers with lower paid illegals was intentionally misrepresented as white racism in action, not what it is, which is protest against new burdens while experiencing declining American living standards, no health insurance, wars for foreign interest, no career prospects, no prospects for children.

What gives the lie to the white racism thesis is the elections of Melat to the House from Colorado, Abdul to the Senate from Michigan, the first black governor of Florida, Byron Donalds, the first black governor of Georgia, Keisha Lance Bottoms, the first Hispanic governor of Texas, Gina Hinojosa, the first Hispanic governor of California, Xavier Becerra. These people were elected with Democrat and Republican votes. With both Republicans and Democrats failing to deal with Americans’ concerns, voters turned elsewhere to socialists and to “oppressed ethnicities” for leadership. Some insist elections were stolen. On the other hand it is a natural progression for Keisha from mayor of Atlanta to governor of Georgia. If the elections are stolen, it shows where the power resides.

Conservatives, Republicans, and older Americans do not understand that years of education at all levels of schooling amounting to indoctrination of students that all white people are racists who oppress peoples of color has acquired status as the truth enshrined in the New York Times 1619 Project. Born into a system that is in the process of transforming itself, acceptance of multiculturalism is understood as appropriate restitution and the way to go forward. Everything reflects acceptance that multiculturalism is the future–corporate advertising in which the white family has disappeared, school lessons, the multicultural emphasis of university alumni magazines, DEI’s replacement of merit, movies that turn white historical characters, both real and fictional, into blacks, studies that conclude the original Swedish people were black, that Mozart stole musical position from a more capable black, and so on.

I have pointed out, not because I oppose “people of color,” that a multicultural society is problematic because how does it arrive at a unifying mores that unifies disparate cultural, religious, and historical interests? Which ethnicities give up their mores and assimilate to the mores of other ethnicities? The more likely outcome is unresolved disparate interests, or violence. Enoch Powell, Jean Raspail, Wilmont Robertson have explained why the Western World will come to a violent racial ending. No one has explained a preferential ending. Targeting white people who cannot pay their bills as providers of restitution to peoples of color is more likely to provoke violence than peace.

A nation must consist of common interests or it is not a nation. It is merely a geographical boundary, and it might be that its borders are open, leaving the country undefined. A nation is a people united by ethnic identity–the French, the Germans–and by assimilation as Americans once were and as Russians seem to be. A collection of racial ethnicities, each with its own mores, is a Tower of Babel, not a nation. Without common mores, there is no society or political entity.

This problem that is bequeathed to the unprepared young insouciant American and Western youth, who have no sense of what has been lost as what they know as normal is what they are born into, is how do white ethnic peoples survive when they are denied their own nations and demonized as racist oppressors. To emphasize that there is a problem, I have suggested that they will survive as exhibits in zoos of the evil that once afflicted the world. I am open to a better prognosis, but a bright future is not something that awaits insouciant Western youths.

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Pretty much a must see video.

1,000x more machine than human.

• Running Out of Internet Capacity? Elon Musk Has a Solution (CTH)

This is a really interesting video of cause, consequence and the anticipated solution. As you watch it, keep in mind this is 100% American. No other nation on the planet is working on this problem, let alone being capable of delivering the solution in the actual logistics that Elon Musk , SpaceX and Starlink are capable of.


We are familiar with the terms “soft power” and “hard power.” However, what do you call the power carried by America when the world becomes dependent on the United States for the operation of their AI agents? When you have the time, watch this. The video includes Musk and Ron Baron’s own remarks, including the qualifications around their forecasts. It is a very interesting 33 minutes:

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