Sep 172025
 


Camille Pissarro Plum Trees in Blossom, Éragny 1894

 

Charlie Kirk’s Challenge to a Generation To Be His Legacy (Victor Davis Hanson)
Charlie Kirk Murder Investigation Expands (Margolis)
News Anchor Resigns After Being Suspended Over On-Air Charlie Kirk Tribute (ET)
Utah Attorney Reveals Why Robinson Killed Kirk in Shooter’s Own Words (Salgado)
Charlie Kirk Shooter Confessed to Murder in Discord Chat Group (CTH)
Biden’s FBI Targeted Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA (Margolis)
Appeals Court Rules Lisa Cook Can Remain On Federal Reserve Board For Now (JTN)
Fed Governor Lisa Cook Used as Tool Against Trump Administration (CTH)
Georgia Supreme Court Rejects Fani Willis’ Bid To Prosecute Trump (JTN)
The American Dilemma (Paul Craig Roberts)
Arab States Call For UN Suspension of Israel (RT)
Israel Guilty of Genocide In Gaza – UN Commission (RT)
Zelensky Is ‘Going To Have To Make A Deal’ With Russia, Trump Urges (ZH)
Kaja Kallas’ Ignorance Betrays The EU’s Bleak Future (Gao Jian)
EU Delays New Russia Sanctions Indefinitely – Politico (RT)
Lindsey Graham Threatens Hungary and Slovakia Over Russian Oil (RT)
Von der Leyen Facing Two No-Confidence Motions – Politico (RT)
Russians Largely Aligned With Americans On Moral Values (RT)

 

 

https://twitter.com/MonBreeden/status/1968020140899045394

https://twitter.com/JesseBWatters/status/1968121351434350616

https://twitter.com/VigilantFox/status/1968108500094955605

https://twitter.com/CharlieKirk4evr/status/1968141785450140145

Cruz

https://twitter.com/VigilantFox/status/1967983048479400253

https://twitter.com/GuntherEagleman/status/1967964208751853918

Bongino
https://twitter.com/TRUMP_ARMY_/status/1967927698887499835

 

 

 

 

“..he was a rare individual. And I don’t think we’re gonna see anybody like him. I can’t think of anybody on the conservative or the Left that has that many skills and that many talents and that much energy..”

Charlie Kirk’s Challenge to a Generation To Be His Legacy (Victor Davis Hanson)

I’d like to comment on the legacy of the late Charlie Kirk and why he is going to be remembered and what he accomplished. There’s been a lot of encomia about him, but I think one of the most unusual things that he did was he changed politics, but he didn’t address political issues first. In other words, he saw politics as a reflection of deeper social, economic, and cultural issues. I talked to him in late August, and what he was intent on was trying to tell a new generation of Americans that they were suffering from prolonged adolescence, and part of that wasn’t their fault. He was arguing that the Republican Party cannot empower people like [New York City mayoral candidate] Zohran Mamdani and the socialist Left, who have no solutions and will make things worse, but they have to address why they are popular.

Some of it, of course, is ignorance, but what he was trying to say is that people who cannot afford a home, they cannot afford energy, they cannot afford gasoline, they can’t afford to buy a car, they prolong their adolescence. They do not get married, or they’ve been indoctrinated in college that the nuclear family is toxic, or they don’t understand the beauty of child raising or raising children. And in a larger sense, these personal decisions they’re making are not only making them unhappy, but they’re hurting the country. In other words, we’re suffering from 1.6 fertility, a radical drop in the last quarter century from 2.0 at the turn of the millennium.

And what he was also trying to say is that there were solutions to these problems in sort of the red state paradigm in places like Florida, in places like Texas, in places like Arizona, in places somewhat like Nevada, where people were moving to—4 million, 6 million people a year—and they felt they could afford insurance, they could buy a car, it was safe, homes were affordable, they could get married at an earlier age, they could rediscover traditional norms of their grandparents. So, he was concentrated, not in those areas, but in the swing states, especially in the 2024 election—Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Minnesota, not Minnesota so much, but Michigan, somewhat Minnesota—and then blue states because he thought the battle had been won. We turned to common sense in half the country, but he was going as an emissary into hostile territory and telling people:

There is a reason why you’re leaving in the millions. There is a reason why you’re not buying houses. We have to look at zoning laws. We have to look at energy production. We have to unleash people’s individual talent to produce more goods and services at an affordable price. We have to champion the idea that a two-parent family is not aberrant. It was the historical norm for 2,500 years. It’s a good thing to have two or three children. It’s a good thing to be a young person and wanna buy a house in your 20s and not in your 40s, or to have a child in your 20s and not in your late 30s. Nothing wrong with the latter, but he was trying to offer a different paradigm that had proved successful.

The second thing, very quickly, about him is his methodology was as varied as his message. In other words, to get that message across that there were cultural, social, economic factors that reflected one’s political view, and if you’re gonna win people over to the conservative politics, you have to explain socially, culturally, and economically why they’re not receptive at first and what can be done about it. But he also was a good orator. He spoke extemporaneously. He had one year of college, and he waded into Oxford and Cambridge and took on people at, supposedly, the most prestigious universities in the English-speaking world. He could write. He created this huge organization, $100 million budget, somebody—we don’t do that in America without an MBA or a B.A. So, he was a multitalented figure.

And then, finally, as Aristotle said, courage is the most important of all virtues. And he was not afraid of his person. He was not afraid of getting into arguments with people. He was not intimidated by Ph.D.s, J.D.s, MBAs. So, he was a rare individual. And I don’t think we’re gonna see anybody like him. I can’t think of anybody on the conservative or the Left that has that many skills and that many talents and that much energy, and more importantly, saw that the problem with America is not whether you’re conservative or liberal per se, not necessarily, but why you are. And people who have some faith and some vision of being economically viable, and they can marry at an age at which they want to, they can have as many children as they please, they can buy a home, they are happier people. And the Republican Party in the past has not always ensured that they have that opportunity, and he was trying to address it.

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“Investigators are now pressed with the job of sorting out which of these messages were bluster and which could represent credible coordination or foreknowledge.”

Charlie Kirk Murder Investigation Expands (Margolis)

The investigation into Charlie Kirk’s murder is expanding, and what’s surfacing should trouble every American who still believes that political violence has no place in this country. The shocking assassination during a Turning Point USA event is now looking more and more like a disturbing level of online chatter may have preceded it, some of it so precise that it pointed to the exact day Kirk was killed. According to a report from the Washington Free Beacon, federal investigators are now digging into at least seven social media accounts that showed apparent advance knowledge of the September 10 shooting. These weren’t vague threats or passing remarks. Some of the archived posts, later deleted, referenced that date more than a month in advance. One account posted, “september 10th will be a very interesting day.”

After Kirk was pronounced dead, the same account mockingly added, “I plead the fifth.” Another user wrote on Sept. 3, “itd be funny if someone like charlie kirk got shot on september 10th LMAO.” And strikingly, within minutes of Kirk’s death, a different account crowed, “WE F*****G DID IT.” These aren’t coincidences. They are signals — ugly, public ones — that suggest that elements of the far-left digital underworld were not only cheering for Kirk’s assassination but potentially knew it was coming. Investigators are now pressed with the job of sorting out which of these messages were bluster and which could represent credible coordination or foreknowledge.

Outside sources preserved screenshots of these posts, which allowed federal agents to review data that might otherwise have been lost. Given how swiftly many of these messages got deleted, the push for platform records, IP logs, and account ID information suddenly matters a great deal. Equally alarming are reports that several of the accounts under scrutiny appear tied to transgender-identifying individuals or figures closely adjacent to that ideology. At least one apparently followed Tyler Robinson’s trans partner on TikTok.

Are we supposed to believe that this is all a coincidence? I can’t buy that. That same circle is believed to have reposted the August 6 “interesting day” prediction before gleefully celebrating Kirk’s death. This raises the uncomfortable but unavoidable question: was this purely one man’s crime, or did the poison brew more widely within extremist circles online and offline? We cannot ignore the larger implications. The FBI is now investigating whether other left-leaning groups in Utah had prior knowledge of or even connections to Robinson’s plans. As authorities dig through the tangled web of leftist online chatter, they’re discovering that Kirk’s assassination isn’t merely the act of a lone shooter on a rooftop. It reflects a culture increasingly willing to tolerate, and at times even celebrate, political violence aimed at conservatives. The harsh reality is that when a bullet silences a right-leaning voice, there are corners of America that respond not with outrage but with applause.

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“..if you do one thing today, make it be with passion, with conviction. Stand up for your friends, stand up for your beliefs, and speak loudly, even if your voice shakes. Your words have meaning, your values have purpose…”

“My resignation is guided by values that are essential to who I am, which I refuse to set aside in order to keep a job. I choose my faith and love of country, and always will.”

News Anchor Resigns After Being Suspended Over On-Air Charlie Kirk Tribute (ET)

A WICS-ABC20 News anchor in Springfield, Illinois, has announced that she is resigning from her position after her employer suspended her for paying tribute to the late Charlie Kirk on air. Beni Harmony paid an impassioned tribute to Kirk, whom she knew personally, during a Sept. 12 segment on ABC20’s Marketplace program. “I want you to know that it’s OK if you feel sadness, it’s OK if you’re grieving,” the host told her TV audience. “Two days ago, I lost a mentor, my first boss, the first person who made me believe in myself, that encouraged me to chase this dream that you’re watching right now, Charlie Kirk. “I want to share with you one of my favourite sayings that Charlie would always tell us at the office, he would yell it from the mountain-tops, so please listen: When conversations stop happening, when individuals become wordless, that’s when violence begins. So, if you do one thing today, make it be with passion, with conviction. Stand up for your friends, stand up for your beliefs, and speak loudly, even if your voice shakes. Your words have meaning, your values have purpose. Never forget that.

“Thank you, CK, you changed my life.”

According to a post Harmony made three days later, she was suspended by her network for the tribute to her former employer, whose assassination on a Utah college campus on Sept. 10 made national headlines. “Many in the mainstream media have been fired or punished for mocking his assassination,” Harmony wrote in a Sept. 15 post on X. “I believe I am the first to be targeted for honoring him on air. “Effective immediately, I have resigned from @WICS_ABC20 after being SUSPENDED for airing a non-partisan tribute to Charlie Kirk this past Friday.” Explaining the reasoning behind her decision to leave the network, Harmony wrote: “My resignation is guided by values that are essential to who I am, which I refuse to set aside in order to keep a job. I choose my faith and love of country, and always will.”

She then thanked her community in the city of Springfield and shared a prayer for the country, Kirk, and his wife and two young children. When asked on X about how people could support her, Harmony said, “While I’m still looking for my next job in media, I recommend everyone support Charlie’s family first.”

Numerous people in leadership positions have lost employment over inappropriate comments in response to the assassination of Kirk. One of the more prominent early cases was the firing of MSNBC analyst Matthew Dowd on Sept. 11, the day after Kirk was fatally shot. Another media commentator, Washington Post columnist Karen Attiah, also said she had been fired over her comments on the assassination of the conservative influencer. Several universities, including Clemson University in South Carolina, and companies, including American Airlines and Delta Air Lines, have terminated employees over their inappropriate comments on Kirk’s murder. Military officials have also said they are looking into disparaging remarks made by service members about the assassination, and that actions that discredit the service will be addressed immediately.

Vice President JD Vance, who was a close friend of Kirk, hosted a special broadcast of “The Charlie Kirk Show” on Sept. 15—a show that Kirk personally hosted every day from October 2020, right up until his death on Sept. 10, 2025. In the special broadcast, Vance called on his fellow Americans to confront the problem of political violence, which he said has “terrible consequences,” such as the attempted assassination of President Donald Trump and the shooting of GOP leader Steve Scalise. “I really do believe we can come together in this country. I believe we must. But unity, real unity, can be found only after climbing the mountain of truth, and there are difficult truths we must confront in our country,” Vance said.

“One truth is that 24 percent of self-described liberals believe it is acceptable to be happy about the death of a political opponent, while only 3 percent of self-described very conservatives agree. Three percent is too many, of course. “Another truth is that 26 percent of young liberals believe political violence is sometimes justified, and only 7 percent of young conservatives say the same—again, too high a number. “The data is clear, people on the left are much likelier to defend and celebrate political violence—this is not a both-sides problem. If both sides have a problem, one side has a much bigger and malignant problem, and that is the truth that must be told.”

His comments come after Kirk’s suspected assassin was identified as Tyler Robinson, who Utah Gov. Spencer Cox said had “clearly a leftist ideology.” FBI Director Kash Patel said on Sept. 13 that Robinson’s father identified his son from footage released during the manhunt for the suspect. Cox also confirmed that investigators are assessing writings, some with anti-fascist content, allegedly left by Robinson, who had a transgender romantic partner. Authorities have not publicly said whether this is relevant as they investigate Robinson’s motive.

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“If I am able to grab my rifle and … I will have left no evidence, I have to retrieve it again. Hopefully they have moved on. I haven’t seen anything about them finding it.’

Utah Attorney Reveals Why Robinson Killed Kirk in Shooter’s Own Words (Salgado)

Hearing a murderer’s reasons for committing an atrocity will always be disturbing, and the new information released by authorities on the messages of Charlie Kirk’s accused shooter, Tyler Robinson, is sickening and insane. Kirk’s young wife is a widow, and his children will grow up without their father. His family, friends, employees, and many fans will never be able to meet or hear him again. All Kirk did was respectfully and charitably debate people, exposing lies without personally attacking the liars. And yet, Robinson proudly murdered Kirk, based on new allegations, and not only boasted about it to his partner, but justified it as laudable because he claimed Kirk was full of hate. Robinson was so blinded by his own hate that he killed a young father for free speech.

Utah County District Attorney Jeff Gray, after announcing charges against Robinson, including aggravated murder, for which he aims to request the death penalty upon conviction, went on to provide more details from the case. Robinson’s parents both thought that the image released of the shooter looked like their son, and also thought they recognized the rifle once it was retrieved. It seems that Robinson had used his grandfather‘s rather distinctive rifle. Family recalled that Robinson had raged against Kirk’s event at Utah Valley University before it occurred and, ironically, accused Kirk of spreading hatred. Robinson‘s mother also knew that her son had been increasingly radicalized by LGBTQ ideology and was dating a man who identified as a woman, much to his more conservative parents’ chagrin.

After some initial refusal to respond, Robinson did communicate with his father and indicated his desire to commit suicide. Instead, the family ended up convincing him to turn himself in. But the most shocking information came from Robinson‘s roommate, the transgender boyfriend who reportedly disclaimed any prior knowledge of the crime and was able to provide text messages to police. On September 10, the day he assassinated Kirk, Robinson texted his roommate, “Drop what you’re doing. Look under my keyboard.” Gray explained: The roommate looked under the keyboard and found a note that stated ‘I had the opportunity to take out Charlie Kirk, and I’m going to take it.’ Police found a photograph of this note, the following … text exchange then took place. After reading the note, the roommate responded, ‘what you’re joking, right?’

Robinson: ‘I am still okay, my love, but I’m stuck in Orem for a little while longer. It shouldn’t be long until I can come home, but I gotta grab my rifle still. To be honest, I had hoped to keep this secret till I died of old age. I am sorry to involve you.’ The apparently stunned roommate pressed, “You are the one who did it, right?” Robinson replied, “I am, I’m sorry.” The roommate asked about the initial report that the shooter was caught, but Robinson stated that the person was a “crazy old dude” and that the second person interrogated by authorities had simply been wearing similar clothes to Robinson. I think what I found most disturbing about the conversation Gray read out is that Robinson did not seem to have the slightest guilt or regret for what he did. His only regret was that he had not gotten rid of all the evidence to his own satisfaction.

In his mind, it seems, he was a hero for murdering a peaceful debater simply because his victim had not agreed that ideology trumps biology. Gray continued to read: [Robinson:] ‘I had planned to grab my rifle from my drop point shortly after, but most of that side of town got locked down. It’s quiet, almost enough to get out, but there’s one vehicle lingering.’ Roommate: ‘why?’ …Robinson: ‘I had enough of his [Kirk’s] hatred. Some hate can’t be negotiated out. If I am able to grab my rifle and … I will have left no evidence, I have to retrieve it again. Hopefully they have moved on. I haven’t seen anything about them finding it.’ Roommate: ‘How long have you been planning this?’ Robinson: ‘A bit over a week. I believe I can get close to [the gun], but there is a squad car parked right by it. I think they already swept that spot, but I don’t want to chance it.’

Robinson again: ‘I’m wishing I had circled back and grabbed it as soon as I got to my vehicle, I’m worried what my old man would do if I didn’t bring back grandpa’s rifle.’ Robinson didn’t believe police could trace the weapon to him just based on the serial number since it was technically not his. He was, however, preoccupied by the thought of fingerprints. “I had to leave it in a bush where I changed outfits. Didn’t have the ability or time to bring it with,” Robinson texted. “I might have to abandon it and hope they don’t find prints.” Still displaying no guilt, Robinson amusedly recounted how he had engraved messages on bullet casings that were “mostly a big meme” and cussed about having to abandon the weapon, smugly saying, “grandpa’s gun does just fine.”

And, ever focused on covering his tracks, Robinson urged the roommate to delete the exchange and worriedly said his father, whom he described as “die hard MAGA,” was asking for pictures of the rifle. Robinson did end up messaging his roommate that he was going to turn himself in, but advised the roommate to “stay silent.” The FBI announced, however, that the roommate was cooperating with the FBI, and police executed a search warrant at the residence, which turned up used target boards and engraved shell casings. All of the Democrats who falsely vilified Kirk and continue to do so have blood on their hands. They are complicit in the radicalization of Tyler Robinson. For example, today’s worst take:

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“It was me at UVU yesterday. im sorry for all of this.”

Charlie Kirk Shooter Confessed to Murder in Discord Chat Group (CTH)

There is a great deal of psychological darkness in the background of the Charlie Kirk murder. I strongly urge readers to stay grounded to faith as you engage review in any aspect of this story. The war between good and evil is taking place in the battle for minds. Originally reported by the Washington Post, apparently Charlie Kirk’s assassin, Tyler Robinson, confessed in a chat room just a few hours before he turned himself in.

WASHINGTON POST – […] The 22-year-old suspect in Charlie Kirk’s killing appears to have confessed to friends in an online chat shortly before turning himself in to law enforcement, according to two people familiar with the chat and screenshots obtained by The Washington Post. “Hey guys, I have bad news for you all,” said a message from an account belonging to the suspect, Tyler Robinson, on the online platform Discord. “It was me at UVU yesterday. im sorry for all of this.” The message was sent Thursday night, about two hours before officials said Robinson was taken into custody. Additionally, as state law enforcement and FBI now say they are expanding their investigation to identify if there was a network working with Tyler Robinson (which seems obvious based on the Discord chat), attention is now being paid to militant transgender groups and NGO’s in the Utah area who seem to connect to Robinson and his transgender boyfriend Lance Twiggs.

All of the research being done is preliminary; however, there does appear to be a Utah network of people within the militant left, connected to both Antifa outlooks and armed transgender activism. The scope of how the networks connect to various funding mechanisms is not yet clear, but radicalization does not happen in a vacuum. “Armed Queers SLC” and a Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) known as “Utah Global Diplomacy,” partly funded by the UN appear to be two groups in the region with connections to the overall militant transgender movement: a preliminary motive being explored by federal investigators. The fact that Tyler Robinson was in a Discord chat group with approximately 30 other individuals, does indicate some network of mutually aligned interests that seem to circle around far-left transgender activism.

[…] Discord provided a copy of the message with the confession to authorities, according to a person familiar with the company’s interaction with law enforcement. The person spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss details of the investigation. The message was sent from Robinson’s account to a small private group of online friends, the person said. Discord is working closely with the FBI and local authorities, providing information about Robinson’s online activities on the platform, the person added. Discord has said that an internal investigation found “no evidence that the suspect planned this incident or promoted violence on Discord.”

[…] The Discord conversation shared with The Post shows members of the group chat reacting to Kirk’s shooting Wednesday — before the news broke that Robinson was allegedly involved. The group included about 30 people, according to the person who provided screenshots. “Charlie Kirk got shot,” one friend wrote Wednesday afternoon, according to an image of the messages. “I just saw the video holy s—,” another user wrote about an hour and a half later, adding of Kirk: “Bro didn’t deserve to go out like that sad.” The only response from Robinson’s account came the next day with the message announcing, “bad news i’m surrendering through a sheriff friend in a few moments,” the message, posted at 7:57 p.m. local time in Utah, continued. “thanks for all the good times and laughs, you’ve all been so amazing, thank you all for everything.”

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“On that political list was one of Charlie Kirk’s groups, Turning Point USA.” [..] Arctic Frost was more than just an anti-Trump operation. It was actually about crippling the Republican political infrastructure.”

Biden’s FBI Targeted Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA (Margolis)

FBI Director Kash Patel faces questions during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing Tuesday morning, during which Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) revealed that whistleblower revelations showed that Joe Biden’s FBI targeted not just Donald Trump, but a wide swath of Republican organizations — including Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA. Grassley reminded Patel of the FBI’s recent history of political weaponization, pointing directly to an operation known as “Arctic Frost.” “At your nomination hearing, I made public records that whistleblowers provide me about Arctic Frost,” Grassley said. “Arctic Frost was the FBI case opened and approved by anti-Trump FBI Agent Thibeau. Arctic Frost then became Jack Smith’s elector case against then-citizen Trump and now-President Trump.”

According to Grassley, newly obtained records show that the Arctic Frost probe was far broader than previously known. “The case was expanded to Republican organizations,” Grassley explained. “Some examples of the group that Wray and FBI sought to place under political investigation included the Republican National Committee, Republican Attorney General’s Association, and various Trump political groups.” The scope was staggering. “In total, 92 Republican targets, including Republican groups and Republican-linked individuals, were placed under investigative scope of Arctic Frost,” Grassley said. “On that political list was one of Charlie Kirk’s groups, Turning Point USA.” Grassley argued that the evidence proves that Arctic Frost was more than just an anti-Trump operation. It was actually about crippling the Republican political infrastructure.

“In other words, Arctic Frost wasn’t just a case to politically investigate Trump,” Grassley declared. “It was the vehicle by which partisan FBI agents and Department of Justice prosecutors could achieve their partisan ends and improperly investigate the entire Republican political apparatus.” “So today, Sen. Johnson and I are making these records public for the entire country to see, and I hope a lot of people are interested in seeing what government can do when various agencies have a political agenda,” Grassley said. Grassley also connected the dots to the politically charged prosecution of former Trump adviser Peter Navarro. “My investigative work has also exposed the political way in which Peter Navarro was investigated and prosecuted,” he said, noting one FBI agent’s reaction to Navarro’s charges: “When FBI Agent Thibeau found out that Biden’s DOJ would prosecute Navarro, he said, ‘Wow, great.’ That’s a quote-unquote.”

The exposed weaponization of the FBI isn’t just a matter for Washington insiders; it’s a direct assault on the very foundation of our republic. Americans must demand full transparency and accountability before our institutions become irreparably politicized. This scandal isn’t some partisan gripe; it’s a glaring threat to the democratic process that affects every voter and every election ahead. And let’s not forget, Biden himself set the tone by labeling Trump supporters as enemies of the state. That rhetoric, coupled with a weaponized FBI, created the toxic political climate that ultimately led to Kirk’s assassination.

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Does she get to keep her cheap mortgage too?

Would murder also not be considered “for cause”?

Appeals Court Rules Lisa Cook Can Remain On Federal Reserve Board For Now (JTN)

A federal appeals court on Monday ruled Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook can remain on the panel while litigation over President Donald Trump’s attempts to fire her plays out. The Trump administration last week appealed a lower court’s ruling that allowed Cook to retain her position on the board of governors. The judge ruled that the allegations of mortgage fraud would likely prove insufficient to justify her dismissal. Cook is accused of mortgage fraud for allegedly listing a secondary residence as a primary residence. Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte filed a criminal referral to the Justice Department to alert them of the issue.

The appeals court sided with the lower court’s ruling in a split 2-1 ruling, according to CNN, ruling that U.S. District Judge Jia Cobb was correct in her assessment that Cook would likely be successful at this stage in two of her claims, including Cook’s claim that the firing violated the Federal Reserve Act’s “for cause” provision. “In this court, the government does not dispute that it failed to provide Cook even minimal process—that is, notice of the allegation against her and a meaningful opportunity to respond—before she was purportedly removed,” Judges Bradley Garcia and Michelle Childs wrote in their opinion.

“The district court issued its preliminary injunction after finding that Cook is likely to succeed on two of her claims: her substantive, statutory claim that she was removed without ‘cause’… and her procedural claim that she did not receive sufficient process prior to her removal in violation of the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment,” they added. Judge Gregory Katsas wrote the dissenting opinion, arguing that Trump did attempt to remove Cook “for cause.” The ruling comes ahead of a two-day meeting where the Federal Reserve Board is expected to consider lowering interest rates. The meeting begins on Tuesday.

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“..the issue around Cook is not as much about her unlawful conduct, as it is the value of what Cook represents in the fight against President Trump.”

Fed Governor Lisa Cook Used as Tool Against Trump Administration (CTH)

We see things for what they are, not what media try to have us believe. Unlike the first term playbook, the Lawfare operation against President Trump is facing a more affirmed attack posture. Instead of Trump (T1) being on constant defense, Trump (T2) is strategically willing to be more confrontational and direct against the use of Lawfare and corrupt courts against Trump’s intended policy changes. T2 Main Justice is still not going to the mattresses as many of us would like, and factually the DOJ and FBI operations are still a weakness in the overall war against the radical left; however, they do appear to recognize that direct aggressive confrontation is needed – despite the shortcomings in their capabilities. In the fight between the executive authority and Federal Reserve board member Lisa Cook, the embattled fed governor is being represented by Norm Eisen. Eisen, together with Mary McCord and other ideological travelers represent Lisa Cook and are using the issue as a point of attack against executive power.

In the latest development, in a 2-1 decision, a federal appeals court has rejected President Donald Trump’s bid to quickly fire Federal Reserve board member Lisa Cook. The two justices who decided to block Trump were appointed by Joe Biden. The justice who sided with the executive authority was appointed by President Trump. Ultimately, this issue is going to the Supreme Court where hopefully the highest court will rule that President Trump can remove Lisa Cook for cause, because Cook falsified federal mortgage loan documents. But in the bigger picture, the issue around Cook is not as much about her unlawful conduct, as it is the value of what Cook represents in the fight against President Trump.

WASHINGTON DC – […] Judges J, Michelle Childs and Bradley Garcia, both Biden appointees, voted to leave Cook in her post, while Judge Gregory Katsas, a Trump appointee, dissented. The Department of Justice declined comment. Last week, U.S. District Judge Jia Cobb rejected Trump’s bid to remove Cook just three years into her 14-year term, saying the president’s justification for the firing — mortgage fraud allegations that have not been adjudicated in any forum — did not meet the legal requirements to overcome laws protecting the independence of the Federal Reserve. While the Supreme Court has repeatedly endorsed Trump’s efforts to remove executive branch officials Congress has sought to insulate from politics, the justices have signaled they view the Federal Reserve as a unique “quasi-private” institution that may put it in a different legal category.

Federal law gives Trump the power to fire members of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors “for cause,” which typically means misconduct or malfeasance on the job. Trump said he had cause to fire Cook due to allegations that she claimed in separate mortgage applications that two different homes were her primary residence, which can entitle a homeowner to lower rates. Cook has denied the allegations. The D.C. Circuit’s majority said there was “no need” at this stage of the case for the appeals court to address whether the allegations against Cook meet the “for cause” standard to fire a Fed member or what that standard would require. Childs and Garcia agreed with Cobb’s finding that Cook’s due process rights appeared to have been violated because she wasn’t properly notified of the accusations against her and given a chance to dispute them.

In his dissent, Katsas grappled directly with the definition of “for cause” firing protections for Federal Reserve board members, concluding that the law gives the president broad power to define the “cause.” “The Board of Governors no doubt is important, but that only heightens the government’s interest in ensuring that its Governors are competent and capable of projecting confidence into markets,” Katsas wrote. “And in empowering the President to remove Governors for cause, Congress has specifically assigned that task to the President.” Delving into the president’s determination of cause, Katsas wrote, “would enable a potentially compromised Governor to engage in significant governmental action — such as voting on whether to adjust interest rates, which Cook says she must do tomorrow.”

The Trump administration’s expected emergency appeal will go to Chief Justice John Roberts, who oversees such appeals out of the D.C. Circuit. He’s all but certain to escalate the issue to the full court, but could issue a temporary order blocking Cook from remaining in her post while the litigation plays out. [..] Norm Eisen is a well-known Lawfare operative, second only to Mary McCord in his high visibility and connections to all of the anti-Trump efforts. Eisen, like McCord, is at the center of the leftist effort to stop the Trump agenda through the manipulation of the courts, ie. ‘Lawfare.’

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“..Georgia’s Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council could appoint a new prosecutor to take the case, that could be a months-long process, leaving the case in limbo.”

Georgia Supreme Court Rejects Fani Willis’ Bid To Prosecute Trump (JTN)

The Georgia Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’ (D) bid to prosecute President Trump over the 2020 presidential election. The court’s 4-3 decision upholds a lower court ruling disqualifying Willis over a “significant appearance of impropriety” because of her romantic relationship with a top prosecutor in the case, The Hill news outlet reported. Willis had attempted to prosecute Trump and his allies in the state on racketeering charges for allegedly attempting to overthrow the 2020 election. While the Georgia’s Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council could appoint a new prosecutor to take the case, that could be a months-long process, leaving the case in limbo.

Trump’s lead attorney in Georgia, Steve Sadow, said in a statement that the state’s high court had “correctly denied review.” “Willis’ misconduct during the investigation and prosecution of President Trump was egregious and she deserved nothing less than disqualification. This proper decision should bring an end to the wrongful political, lawfare persecutions of the President,” Sadow said. Willis’s office had not yet responded to The Hill’s request for comment.

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“The two most powerful vested interests in America are the US military/security complex and the Israel Lobby. As they share the interest in war and its profits in terms of money and territory, peace faces a powerful counterforce..”

The American Dilemma (Paul Craig Roberts)

The problem that ethnic Americans face is that neither Republicans nor Democrats can represent their interest. The Republicans represent Israel’s interest. The reason for this is that Republicans tend to be more conservative, more religious, and more patriotic than Democrats and are often seen by their opponents as jingoistic. The Republican mentality toward Israel comes from the “Judeo-Christian ethic” and the long Cold War against the Soviet Union. The Judeo-Christian ethic is an oxymoron. God in the Old Testament is angry and vengeful. In the New Testament he is loving and forgiving. The “Judeo-Christian ethnic” is a propaganda term that disarms Christians from seeing Zionists for what they are. During the Cold War of the 20th century, there was much focus on the Middle East. Washington was determined to minimize Soviet influence and to control oil flows.

Israel was hyped as our ally, our base in the Arab Middle East against Soviet Communism. Thus, for conservatives, Israel is just part of America. Two consequences are that conservative Americans are blind to Zionist Israel’s genocide of the Palestinians and to the fake “war on terror” which in actual fact was Israel’s use of American lives and money against Israel’s opponents in the Middle East. Washington has spent the first quarter of the 21st century clearing away obstacles to Greater Israel. The Democrats represent the interests of those who are alleged to be “oppressed by prudes and white racists.” Democrats are the defenders of immigrant-invaders who enter our country illegally. They champion “multiculturalism,” which is white replacement and a Tower of Babel.

Democrats are the champions of sexual perverts. It is more important to a progressive, liberal, leftist Democrat that a male who declares himself a female have access to women’s spaces and athletic competitions than for a criminal suspect to have a fair trial. Democrats think that the most important civil right in the world is for biological males who self-declare themselves “transgendered” into females to take a woman’s place on a swim or soccer team and share the showers with the biological female members of the teams. The Democrats have no concern with the rights of the displaced real women to compete in sports. Similarly, Democrats are concerned with the sexual preference rights of “minor-directed persons” (pedophiles), not with the sexual abuse of children.

Have you not noticed how vehement the Democrat progressive liberal left is in defending the rights of sexual perverts? Indeed, you are not even allowed to use such a term as sexual perverts, because sexual perversions have been normalized by the Democrat liberal left. It is entirely possible that the Democrats will criminalize heterosexual sex, because it produces more “aversive racists,” thus perpetuating white racism. Yes, laugh, but the prospect has already been explored in science fiction. The consequence of the two parties’ indoctrinated biases is that it is impossible for either to represent the values and interests of the ethnic base of America. By supporting whatever crime Israel commits, Republicans maintain their pro-Israel base at the expense of the moral values of their base. Even red states such as Texas and Florida will not give you a state contract or job if you criticize or boycott Israel.

The Democrats, committed as they are to white replacement as all whites are aversive racists, refuse to protect American borders from immigrant-invaders. Democrats are committed to emptying citizenship from meaning. What is the result of the inability of either party to represent Americans? If Republicans are in office, it means wars for Israel. If Democrats are in office, it means open borders and wars against the family, wars against real Christianity not the fake Christian Zionist variety created by Israel, wars against normal heterosexuality, wars against merit and, thereby, the destruction of educational standards, and advancement based on skin color and perverse sexuality. For the Biden regime the ideal candidate was a black transgendered. Biden’s black Secretary of Defense announced that there would be no promotion of white heterosexual males until “equity had been attained.”

Elon Musk was correct when he said that America needs a new political party, one independent of economic, foreign, and ideological interests. But Musk did not say who would finance it. It would take Musk’s entire wealth. The combination of the corrupt US Supreme Court ruling that it is legal for corporations to purchase the US government with campaign contributions and the stupidity of the annual subsidy of billions of US dollars to Israel, which is used by Israel to purchase the House of Representatives, the US Senate, the President and the administration, make it abundantly clear that Americans have a government that is totally incapable of representing Americans.

Throughout the Western World it is not democracy that rules. The Western World is ruled by vested interests whose campaign contributions determine policy. When Putin and Lavrov negotiate with Washington officials, they are not negotiating with a government. They are negotiating with representatives of the private interests whose money places Representatives, Senators, and Presidents in office. The two most powerful vested interests in America are the US military/security complex and the Israel Lobby. As they share the interest in war and its profits in terms of money and territory, peace faces a powerful counterforce as peace does not serve the interests of the two most powerful interest groups in the United States.

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“..the Qatari capital had been used as a key venue for peace talks between West Jerusalem and Hamas.”

Arab States Call For UN Suspension of Israel (RT)

Arab and Islamic leaders have called for Israel to be suspended from the United Nations over its alleged violations of the organization’s charter. The demand comes amid Israel’s military campaign in Gaza and after last week’s airstrike on Doha which left six people dead, including a Qatari security officer. On Monday, the leaders of the League of Arab States and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation convened an emergency summit in Doha. In a final statement following the summit, the group called on member nations to “consider the compatibility of Israel’s membership in the UN with its Charter” and coordinate efforts to suspend Israel from the organization.

Israel has said its Doha strike targeted Hamas officials, although Arab and Islamic leaders branded it a “dangerous escalation that exposes the extremist hostility of the Israeli government.” They also accused Israel of undermining the international mediation and peacemaking process, given that the Qatari capital had been used as a key venue for peace talks between West Jerusalem and Hamas. The statement urged all states to review diplomatic and economic relations with Israel and take “legal and effective measures” to stop Israeli actions, including sanctions, suspension of arms, and dual-use exports. The Israeli offensive in Gaza began on October 7, 2023 after Hamas attacked southern Israel, leaving about 1,200 people dead and more than 250 taken hostage. Over 64,000 people, including women and children, have since reportedly been killed in Israel’s military campaign in the Palestinian enclave.

The conflict has drawn international condemnation with many countries accusing Israel of genocide against the Palestinian people. Israel’s attacks on neighboring countries have also been widely criticized, with UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres denouncing the recent Doha strike as a violation of Qatar’s sovereignty. Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani called it “state terrorism.” Russia also said the strike was a blatant violation of international law and the UN Charter. Israel has defended its operations, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insisting the Hamas leadership must be eradicated.

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“It is clear that there is an intent to destroy the Palestinians in Gaza through acts that meet the criteria set forth in the Genocide Convention.”

Israel Guilty of Genocide In Gaza – UN Commission (RT)

Israel has committed genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, a UN commission of inquiry said in a report published on Tuesday. According to the findings, Israel has committed four of the five genocidal acts defined under the 1948 Genocide Convention since the start of its war with Hamas in 2023. These include killing, causing serious bodily or mental harm, deliberately inflicting conditions of life aimed at destroying Palestinians in whole or in part, and imposing measures to prevent births. “The commission finds that Israel is responsible for the commission of genocide in Gaza,” Navi Pillay, chair of the UN body, said at a press conference in Geneva. “It is clear that there is an intent to destroy the Palestinians in Gaza through acts that meet the criteria set forth in the Genocide Convention.”

Pillay blamed “Israeli authorities at the highest echelons” for “these atrocity crimes,” saying they “have orchestrated a genocidal campaign for almost two years now with the specific intent to destroy the Palestinian group in Gaza.” She added that Israeli authorities have also failed to prevent or punish those responsible by not investigating or prosecuting the perpetrators of genocidal acts. The commission said it had analyzed Israeli actions in Gaza, including “imposing starvation and inhumane conditions of life for Palestinians,” concluding that “genocidal intent was the only reasonable inference.” It also cited the “systematic destruction” of healthcare and education, along with “systematic” sexual and gender-based violence against Palestinians. The commission urged Israel to “end the genocide in Gaza” and called on UN member states to halt arms transfers and prosecute individuals or companies complicit in genocide.

The Israeli Foreign Ministry has rejected the commission’s report as “fake,” accusing its authors of being “Hamas proxies” and calling for the “immediate abolition” of the panel. “The report relies entirely on Hamas falsehoods, laundered and repeated by others,” the ministry claimed. “Israel categorically rejects this distorted and false report and calls for the immediate abolition of this commission of inquiry.” The conflict has continued since October 7, 2023, when Hamas militants launched a surprise assault on southern Israel, killing about 1,200 people and taking more than 250 captive. The Palestinian death toll has risen to 64,905 as of Monday, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. On Tuesday, Israel launched a ground offensive in Gaza City – one of the few areas still outside IDF control – after weeks of intensified strikes on alleged Hamas targets. The move followed the Israeli Security Cabinet’s approval of plans to seize the city last month.

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“..So far Trump has not been willing. He could simply cut off the weapons and money flows to the Zelensky government if he wanted to – but he’s not even threatening to at this point.”

Zelensky Is ‘Going To Have To Make A Deal’ With Russia, Trump Urges (ZH)

President Trump told reporters in passing on the White House lawn Tuesday that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky “is going to have to make a deal” with Russia to end the the long-running war. Last month’s historic Alaska Trump-Putin summit failed to produce or lead to anything substantial, other than perhaps an improvement of bilateral relations. Trump acknowledged in the fresh remarks that the Ukrainian and Russian leaders “hate each other,” and said “it looks like I have to sit in the room with them, because they can’t sit in a room together.” “There’s great hatred there. But no, that meeting accomplished a lot,” he said in reference to the Alaska summit. And yet the reality remains that Putin and Zelensky are at this point no closer to actually being in the same room together, much less the same venue, even if other mediators like Trump are there.

Trump also in his comments took the opportunity to apply more pressure on the European Union, saying it must stop all purchases of Russian oil “immediately”. “They’ve got to stop immediately, not fair to us. They’re purchasing Russian oil, and we have to do this,” he said. Ukraine’s Zelensky without doubt wants the next round of EU sanctions to hit Moscow, but has also appeared supportive of Trump calling out Europe’s oil and other energy imports. “I’m sure the US can apply enough sanctions in order to hurt the Russian economy, plus Donald Trump has enough force to make Putin afraid of him,” Zelensky said. Still, Kiev wants to see more and more robust sanctions leveled from Washington’s direction. “Europe has already introduced 18 sanctions packages against Russia. And all that’s lacking now is a strong sanctions package from the US,” Zelensky has said.

As for Trump admitting that Zelensky must make a deal, the big question remains whether Trump is willing to use the significant leverage the United States has over the Ukrainian leader. So far Trump has not been willing. He could simply cut off the weapons and money flows to the Zelensky government if he wanted to – but he’s not even threatening to at this point. Such actions would result in huge pushback from Trump’s own Republicans. So for now, his urging Zelensky to the peace table appears to just be empty words, with no threat of repercussions. Meanwhile: TRUMP ADMINISTRATION CLEARS FIRST UKRAINE ARMS AID PACKAGE PAID FOR BY ALLIES, SOURCES SAY. Currently, there are reports indicating that Trump and Zelensky might meet again next week. At this point, there’s no sign of a Putin-Zelensky meeting being anywhere on the horizon.

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“.. the EU’s politicians have over-consumed its accountability and jeopardize a still possible peace not just for Europe, but for global balance and security.”

Kaja Kallas’ Ignorance Betrays The EU’s Bleak Future (Gao Jian)

China and Russia on the victorious side of World War II? “That is something new.” When EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas questioned whether China and Russia belonged to the victorious side of WWII during a conference organized by the EU Institute for Security Studies earlier this month, she revealed more than just personal historical ignorance. Her remark underscores a troubling detachment from fundamental historical truths that continue to shape today’s geopolitical landscape. While interpretations of WWII may vary across ideological lines, it is widely accepted that the Allied victory was the result of a collective effort involving multiple nations. The Soviet Union, in particular, bore the unimaginable cost of 27 million lives in its struggle against Nazi Germany, effectively dismantling the Wehrmacht on the Eastern Front.

Similarly, China’s resistance against Japanese militarism – lasting 14 years and costing over 35 million casualties – prevented Imperial Japan from expanding its aggression further into Asia and the Pacific. The tremendous sacrifices of both nations played a decisive role in the ultimate triumph of the worldwide anti-fascist war. To ignore these contributions is not merely an oversight; it is a deliberate erosion of historical memory. Yet Kallas is not an outlier in this regard. She represents a broader, though often unspoken, tendency within parts of the European political and media elite to re-frame WWII as a victory primarily achieved by Western powers. This revisionist narrative not only distorts history but also undermines the moral and strategic credibility of the European Union. When those in high office casually dismiss the sacrifices of nations that were vital in defeating fascism, they weaken the EU’s diplomatic standing.

What makes Kallas’ comments particularly damaging is the current social context in the EU and the UK. They are currently navigating multiple overlapping crises: economic stagnation, energy insecurity, military instability in their eastern neighborhood, and a growing loss of confidence in their governance model. At such a critical juncture, the EU cannot afford foreign policy leadership that indulges in historical denialism or rhetorical provocations. Comments by Kallas diminish the EU’s stature and fuel perceptions that it is led by figures who prioritize ideological posturing over strategic thinking. In such a self-righteous manner by merely detaching from history and social realities, the EU’s politicians have over-consumed its accountability and jeopardize a still possible peace not just for Europe, but for global balance and security.

One has sufficient justification to suspect a deeper crisis within EU democratic institutions since Kallas is so bafflingly incompetent. Is the EU still a politically serious entity? If its foreign policy chief behaves so senselessly, what can we expect from the EU as a whole? Can it still secure its supranational ambition under such poor leadership? The requirement for consensus among member states often results in fragmented foreign policies and ambiguous messaging. Nowhere is this more evident than in the EU’s uneven response to the war in Ukraine, fraught with internal divisions over military aid, sanctions, and long-term strategy. Kallas’ remarks – though not representative of all EU members – highlight how individual officials can amplify these contradictions and undercut collective credibility.

If the EU wishes to be taken seriously as a geopolitical power, it must ensure that its representatives embody diplomatic rigor and historical awareness. Kallas is demonstrating the opposite, at the expense of the EU’s democratic resilience and political seriousness. A very natural question would be: Is the EU sliding into being a potential liability for its member states’ interests? The bloc’s institutional design, often a product of political compromise, leads to confusion and inefficiency. When the High Representative for Foreign Affairs appears unaware of basic historical facts that underpin modern global relations, she not only erodes the EU’s ability to act as a reliable international actor but also dwarfs the international images of its member states.

Predictably, the anxiety of the EU’s future will loom larger as it fails to find its orientation in such a tremendously changing world. There is a growing fear that the Union is sliding into being a body hampered by bureaucratic inefficiency, ideological fragmentation, and a lack of strategic vision. Kallas’ absurd remarks are nothing more than empty talk, but they imply a wider governance crisis. For the EU to regain its credibility and influence, it must recommit to historical accuracy, foster diplomatic discipline, and reclaim a sense of strategic purpose. Otherwise, it is little more than a platform for uncoordinated and counterproductive rhetoric – a talking shop that weakens Europe from within rather than empowering it on the global stage.

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They don’t know what to do with Hungary and Slovakia. They’re trying to change the law that says decisions must be unanimous, but for now they still are.

EU Delays New Russia Sanctions Indefinitely – Politico (RT)

The EU has postponed presenting its new package of sanctions against Russia, Politico has reported, citing several EU diplomats. The outlet attributed the delay to pressure from the Trump administration to impose even tougher restrictions on Moscow, which has elicited resistance from Slovakia and Hungary. The proposed 19th package of measures targeting Russian oil exports and the banking sector over the Ukraine conflict was due to be presented on Wednesday. However, it has been dropped from the European Commission’s agenda indefinitely, several EU diplomats told Politico on Tuesday.

According to the report, the suspension comes as Brussels is increasing pressure on Hungary and Slovakia to cut their energy reliance on Moscow in light of a fresh ultimatum to do so from Washington. US President Donald Trump, who has so far refrained from imposing direct sanctions on Russia, reportedly said over the weekend he was ready “to move ahead” if Washington’s European partners halt Russian oil purchases. He has also urged the EU to slap tariffs of up to 100% on China and India – the key buyers of Russian oil since the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in 2022. Russian President Vladimir Putin has warned Western nations against adopting a “colonial” tone toward China and India and trying to “punish” them.

As part of its sanctions’ pressure, Brussels has pledged to phase out Russian fossil fuels entirely by 2027, but several member states – including Hungary and Slovakia – continue to oppose the move, citing risks to their national energy security. The European Commission has recently proposed scrapping unanimous voting on the bloc’s foreign policy decisions to sideline dissenting members. Russia has denounced Western sanctions as “illegal,” stating that they have not only failed to derail the national economy, but have provided an impetus for domestic development. Russian officials maintain they seek a long-term peace, accusing Kiev and its Western backers of undermining the process.

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The War Party is not happy.

Lindsey Graham Threatens Hungary and Slovakia Over Russian Oil (RT)

US Senator Lindsey Graham has threatened Hungary and Slovakia with consequences if they do not halt purchases of Russian oil. The Republican from South Carolina issued the warning after President Donald Trump renewed calls for NATO states to end energy imports from Moscow, in apparent frustration over the pace of peace talks between Moscow and Kiev. The president was “right to demand that Europe stop buying Russian oil,” Graham wrote on X on Monday. He conceded that the EU had largely done so, adding it was “now virtually down to Hungary and Slovakia… to step up to the plate soon.” “If not, consequences should and will follow,” he warned.

The two countries blocked the EU’s 18th sanctions package in June, warning it threatened their energy security. Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said the plan would prevent states from buying “cheap Russian natural gas and cheap Russian oil,” while Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico branded some proposals “economic suicide” without viable alternatives. Brussels has pledged to phase out Russian fossil fuels by 2027, but Hungary and Slovakia remain opposed to immediate restrictions, citing dependence on the Druzhba pipeline. Kiev repeatedly struck the Druzhba pipeline in August, with Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky describing the attacks as “sanctions.”

The EU is currently drafting its 19th sanctions package, expected to target Russian oil exports and the banking sector. The measures, initially planned to be presented this week, have reportedly been delayed as Brussels debates how to respond to demands from Washington regarding Russian energy imports. Russia has denounced Western sanctions as “illegal,” stating that they have not only failed to derail the national economy, but have provided an impetus for domestic development. Russian officials maintain they seek a long-term peace, accusing Kiev and its Western backers of undermining the process.

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“No-confidence motions used to be quite rare at the EU Parliament. Prior to the July vote, such a motion was last tabled against Jean-Claude Juncker in 2014.”

Von der Leyen Facing Two No-Confidence Motions – Politico (RT)

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen is set to face two separate no-confidence votes at the EU Parliament in early October, Politico reported on Tuesday, citing an internal email from the legislature’s president, Roberta Metsola. The motions of censure are scheduled to be debated during the plenary session from October 6 to 9. The motions submitted against von der Leyen, a divisive figure in Brussels, come from both right and left – the Patriots for Europe and The Left parliamentary groups.The Patriots for Europe have accused her of lacking transparency and accountability, particularly in relation to the EU’s trade agreements with the United States and the South American trade bloc Mercosur.

“The EU is weaker today than ever due to the persistent failure of the president of the Commission to cope with the most pressing challenges,” the group stated in its motion, as quoted by Politico. The Left has also criticized von der Leyen’s trade policies but placed greater emphasis on the EU’s handling of the conflict between Israel and Hamas in Gaza. The group argued that the Commission has shown inaction and failed to hold Israel accountable. Both motions were filed at midnight on September 10, which was the earliest opportunity following a previous no-confidence vote in July. Von der Leyen survived that vote, which was initiated by Romanian right-wing MEP Gheorghe Piperea and focused on the so-called Pfizergate scandal.

The controversy stemmed from the disappearance of text messages between von der Leyen and Pfizer’s CEO during negotiations for a major Covid-19 vaccine procurement. Von der Leyen, a former doctor and German defense minister, was accused of a lack of transparency in negotiating the multi-billion-euro deal. She dismissed the allegations against her as “simply a lie” and branded her critics “conspiracy theorists.” The initiative ultimately failed, supported only by 175 MEPs with 360 voting against it. To pass, two-thirds of the 720 MEPs must vote in favor. No-confidence motions used to be quite rare at the EU Parliament. Prior to the July vote, such a motion was last tabled against Jean-Claude Juncker in 2014.

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Of course they are. Both are deeply Christian. Much more than, say, western Europe. Lots in common.

Russians Largely Aligned With Americans On Moral Values (RT)

Russians and Americans share similar views on key aspects of private life, from relationships to having children outside marriage, a poll by the Russian Public Opinion Research Center (VCIOM) has shown. The study, released on Monday, compared moral values in the two countries using Gallup’s July US survey and a parallel poll in Russia. It found broad overlap on personal issues but sharp differences on more sensitive topics such as gender transition and newer social norms. Some 90% of Americans and 82% of Russians said contraception was acceptable. Views on premarital sex were nearly identical, with 68% of Americans and 69% of Russians approving.

Russians were more permissive about children born out of wedlock, with 71% calling it acceptable compared with 67% in the US. Fewer Russians viewed divorce as acceptable – 65% versus 75% of Americans. Sociologists said private life was increasingly seen as a matter of personal choice in both countries. In Russia, researchers pointed to a “shift toward individualization,” where people decide for themselves when to have children and who to live with. On extramarital affairs, 16% of Russians and 8% of Americans said they were acceptable. Polygamy and suicide were judged permissible by 21% of Americans, compared with 11% and 7% of Russians.

The sharpest differences emerged on same-sex relations, deemed acceptable by 64% of Americans but only 12% of Russians. Russia has banned LGBT organizations and propaganda since late 2023. Attitudes also diverged on teenage sex: 41% of Americans said it was acceptable versus 14% of Russians, although US opinion was split, with 51% rejecting it. Researchers noted that Russian society was more willing to forgive ‘personal weaknesses’ like infidelity, but far less accepting of practices such as gender transition or same-sex relations.

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London
https://twitter.com/VetaChain/status/1967676147136930028
https://twitter.com/TRobinsonNewEra/status/1967884271126974985

Scott

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Sep 112025
 


Charlie Kirk with his family 2025

 

“Dark Moment For America” – Trump Addresses The Nation (ZH)
Elon Musk Jumps In On Iryna Zarutska Mural Project (Tim O’Brien)
“Art Must Always Tell The Truth” (CTH)
Kremlin Responds To Polish ‘Drone Attack’ Claims (RT)
Trump Against Economic Isolation of Russia – Vance (RT)
‘Russian Strike on Pension Queue’ Claims Debunked (Sp.)
Wondering Why The EU Is So Screwed? Just Look At Its Top Diplomat (Amar)
EU Uses Ukraine Conflict To Create ‘United States Of Europe’ – Orban (TASS)
Brussels Pushing To Silence Dissent Among EU Members (RT)
EU Eyes Russian Assets For Ukraine ‘Reparations Loan’ (RT)
Gulf Cooperation Council to Support Any Action by Qatar After Israeli Attack (Sp.)
We’ll Get Them Next Time – Israeli Envoy Rues Hamas-Qatar Strike Failure (RT)
Unaccountable Israel (Paul Craig Roberts)
BLS Announces 911,000 Fewer Jobs Created April ’24 through March ’25 (CTH)
Joe Biden’s Economy Was So Much Worse Than We Thought (Margolis)
Maduro Suggests Reason Behind Us Military Buildup Around Venezuela (RT)
Melania, Please Talk to Donald About Epstein (Frank Miele)

 

 

Leavitt
https://twitter.com/GuntherEagleman/status/1965471159274672129
https://twitter.com/DerrickEvans4WV/status/1965484112183214339

Walsh

11


Bessent
https://twitter.com/EricLDaugh/status/1965553818399044053

 

 

 

 

America has seen two violent murders in the span of one week, Iryna Zarutska and Charlie Kirk. What appears to tie the two together is the influence of what passes for a leftish world view these days. A view that made it possible for Zarutska’s killer to roam free despite countless arrests, as well as requests for psychological treatment. That guy should never have been on that train, and just about everyone who’s been in contact with him knows why. Woke society decided to set him free.

Charlie Kirk became a victim of his association with Donald Trump. If you can’t get to the boss, look at those around him. It’s very painfully ironic that Charlie lived by the word, not the sword. His favoite terrain was the dialogue, the exchange of ideas, but that’s not everyone’s favorite. Still, he wasn’t a far right wing activist or anything like it.

Violence in America comes from the left, they just about have secured a monopoly on it, while maintaining the illusion that it’s the right that is the real threat. That’s one false idea that needs urgent correction.

We’re going to let it all sink in, and read about it, and have the dialogue that Charlie loved so much, but what remains more than anything right now is the pain. As for Iryna: you’re beautiful. It breaks our hearts that we couldn’t save you.

 

 

“”I don’t know why this is affecting me so personally.” Its because in Charlie you see yourself, the most polite version of yourself, the most articulate, the most charitable to your enemies. And even that wouldn’t be enough to save you from them.”

“Dark Moment For America” – Trump Addresses The Nation (ZH) /span>

Update (2114ET) President Trump addressed the nation from the Oval Office on the senseless political assassination of Charlie Kirk at a Turning Point event at Utah Valley University, calling it a “dark moment for America.” Trump called Kirk a “martyr for truth” and vowed to crack down on the radical left… The president continued:

“My administration will find each and every one of those who contributed to this atrocity and to other political violence, including the organizations that fund it and support it, as well as those who go after our judges, law enforcement officials, and everyone else who brings order to our country. I am filled with grief and anger at the heinous assassination of Charlie Kirk on a college campus in Utah. Charlie inspired millions, tonight all who knew him and loved him are united in shock and horror.

From the attack on my life in Butler, Pennsylvania last year, which killed a husband and father, to the attacks on ICE agents, to the vicious murder of a healthcare executive in the streets of New York, to the shooting of House Majority Leader Steve Scalise and three others. Radical left political violence has hurt too many innocent people and taken too many lives. Tonight, I ask all Americans to commit themselves to the American values for which Charlie Kirk lived and died, the values of free speech, citizenship, the rule of law. His legacy will live on for countless generations to come. Today, because of this heinous act, Charlie’s voice has become bigger and grander than ever before, and it’s not even close. May God bless his memory. May God watch over his family.”

Our takeaway is that the radical left, which has been funding chaos through dark-money NGOs and other groups, is about to get a major wake-up call from the Trump administration. A move to counter these rogue NGOs could be just one executive order away. Stay tuned.

Kirk made a name for himself about winning debates in “proper democratic fashion” …

https://twitter.com/Sargon_of_Akkad/status/1965869904130945521?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1965869904130945521%7Ctwgr%5E9ceb77cf7b8d03814b551d89085043857317275d%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com%2Fpolitical%2Fshots-reportedly-fired-charlie-kirk-event-utah-valley-university

Civil terrorism expert Jason Curtis Anderson of One City Rising states:

“The assassination of Charlie Kirk marks a dangerous escalation in America’s culture war—where the battle of ideas is now escalating into political violence against those who run organizations devoted to debate and civil discourse. Very few people grasp the gravity of this moment . Incidents like this don’t exist in isolation; they risk triggering a chain of events that can further destabilize the country. Whether it’s the anti-ICE movement, pro-Palestinian agitators, anarchist networks, or NGO-backed permanent protest groups like Indivisible, we are watching the rise of something new and deeply alarming. As Tal Fortgang wrote in City Journal, America is entering a new era of civil terrorism—where the goal is no longer peaceful protest, but intimidation, silencing, and destabilization of our democratic order.”

Like us, many are struggling to find the words to discuss this but @Merovingianus offered some useful insight:

“Among all the justifiable outrage over the years, Charlie Kirk has consistently been one the calmest and most polite among us. Someone shot him and the entire scope of the Left is celebrating. If we do not act accordingly we might as well surrender now. I’ve seen several people saying something along the lines of “I don’t know why this is affecting me so personally.” Its because in Charlie you see yourself, the most polite version of yourself, the most articulate, the most charitable to your enemies. And even that wouldn’t be enough to save you from them. It is because you are seeing that the marketplace of ideas you grew up believing as sacred is now a war zone that will get you killed and you’re struggling to reconcile the world you live in with the world you grew up in.

You are struggling to comprehend and incorporate the irrefutable evidence that this political divide isn’t one solved by polite exchange of ideas and that we are in a nation at war with itself.”

RIP Charlie.

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Let’s have 1,000 murals each all over the country for Iryna Zarutska and Charlie Kirk.

Elon Musk Jumps In On Iryna Zarutska Mural Project (Tim O’Brien)

After George Floyd died and in the mayhem over the Black Lives Matter and Antifa riots, a cottage industry of artistic murals erupted, transforming Floyd from a common street thug into a saintly martyr. Within days of his death, a mural was painted on the site where Floyd died at the Cup Foods convenience store at 38th Street and Chicago Avenue. Shortly thereafter, a second mural was painted nearby. This sparked artists across the country and around the world to add to the contrived mythology of Floyd, creating murals in places as far away as Idlib, Syria, Barcelona, Spain, Dublin, and Berlin. The murals were one of the few purely peaceful ways Floyd was honored at the time.

Fast forward to this week, when news of the murder of Iryna Zarutska broke, and conservatives and everyday people were outraged, while the legacy media and the Left remained silent. No riots, no looting from the right, but plenty of anger. That anger, and a respect for Zarutska, appears to have inspired the CEO and founder of Intercom, Eoghan McCabe, to post on X that he’s “offering $500k in $10k grants to paint murals of the face of Iryna Zarutska in prominent US city locations.” He then provided an email address to learn more about this impromptu memorial project.

This morning, Elon Musk posted on X: “I will contribute $1M.” With momentum like this, expect to start seeing the face of Zarutska in a city near you. Who is McCabe? He’s a Berkeley-based entrepreneur who is prominent in the AI customer service sector. Earlier this week, like millions of Americans, he was outraged by the cold-blooded killing of Zarutska. He called for quick consequences for the person convicted of this crime, “I do think that rapid, public executions for crimes like this are a spiritual goal that we should point ourselves towards. I worry about Western society if we can’t react in proportion to how evil this is.” In another post on X, McCabe said, “It’s an objective fact that leftism is responsible for this[.] The leftist politicians who kept this monster free are evil, and must be very severely punished[.]”

Zarutska’s murder has outraged Americans for a number of reasons this week. The killing itself was so sudden and so gruesome on public transportation in a relatively safe city like Charlotte, that anyone who spends any time in public spaces can easily imagine something like this happening to them. The fact that the killing happened on August 22, but it only emerged in the public consciousness over a week later, and only on social media at first, is unsettling. How can such an inhuman act not make national news. Related to this is the reaction on the right. The cultural dilemma for everyone is based on trust in the news media. If the news media willfully ignores or even buries a story like this to advance its narratives, then what good is it?

Matt Margolis detailed how wretched the legacy media behaved once conservatives shamed it into covering the story. A healthy media landscape would shout this news early and often as a warning to America that something needs to be done about crime and the people who commit it. Now. Instead, through its silence and even worse, for blaming conservatives for noticing the murder, the news media has decidedly taken a stance in favor of more crime, more murder, more killings of people like Zarutska at the hands of hardened criminals like Decarlos Brown, Jr.

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A story that tells itself.

“Art Must Always Tell The Truth” (CTH)

Popular artist Banksy created a graffiti mural in London depicting the current state of the UK censorship system using the courts to trample the rights of British citizens:

It did not take long for the authorities to cover the mural and eventually attempt to remove it.

However, what remained of the artwork was the essential core of the truth.

I particularly like the fact the govt turned the CCTV camera, so they can monitor who might visit the scene of the criminal dissent.

Apparently, the British government doesn’t quite see the irony.

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Intriguing take: “..some drones used by Ukrainian and Russian forces for mutual attacks “lost their track as a result of the impact of the parties’ electronic warfare assets.”

Kremlin Responds To Polish ‘Drone Attack’ Claims (RT)

Moscow has dismissed Poland’s latest claim that Russian drones breached the country’s air space. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said no evidence has been provided linking the UAVs to Russia. On Wednesday, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk stated that the country’s military had shot down a “huge number of Russian drones.” Warsaw has described the incident as an “unprecedented violation of Polish airspace” and an “act of aggression.” However, Peskov has dismissed the accusations, pointing out that “The EU and NATO leadership accuse Russia of provocation on a daily basis. Most often, without even trying to provide any arguments.”

He further noted that, to his knowledge, the Kremlin has not yet received any request for contact from the Polish leadership over the incident. Meanwhile, Russia’s charge d’affaires in Warsaw, Andrey Ordash, told RIA Novosti that when he was summoned to the Polish Foreign Ministry on Wednesday, the Polish authorities did not provide any evidence that the downed UAVs belonged to Russia. He noted that the drones had flown into Poland from Ukraine. Tusk has claimed, however, that the aircraft came from Belarus rather than Ukraine, and characterized the incident as a Russian “provocation.” The Belarusian military had previously reported giving Poland early warning that some drones used by Ukrainian and Russian forces for mutual attacks “lost their track as a result of the impact of the parties’ electronic warfare assets.”

After announcing the alleged airspace violation, Tusk formally invoked Article 4 of NATO’s founding treaty, which provides for consultations in case one of the bloc’s members believes its security is threatened. Last week, former Polish President Andzej Duda referenced a November 2022 incident in which a Ukrainian missile landed on Polish territory. Kiev insisted it was an intentional Russian attack and called for NATO-level retaliation. Duda said that Ukrainian authorities were trying to get the US-led bloc into a direct confrontation with Russia, describing such a scenario as a “dream” for Kiev, but unacceptable for Poland.

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“.. once we get this peace settled, we could have a very productive economic relationship with both Russia and Ukraine..”

Trump Against Economic Isolation of Russia – Vance (RT)

US President Donald Trump does not view attempts to isolate Russia economically as a sustainable strategy and believes trilateral cooperation involving Moscow, Kiev, and Washington could ensure lasting peace in Eastern Europe, Vice President J.D. Vance said on Tuesday. In an interview with One America News Network, Vance described joint ventures with Russia as “one of the carrots” the Trump administration is offering in efforts to broker an end to the Ukraine conflict. The approach contrasts with Western European leaders who have sought to dismantle Russian trade ties, arguing that past decades of energy reliance on Moscow were a strategic mistake, but in doing so they have significantly worsened their own economic situation.

“The president’s been very open with both the Europeans and the Russians that he doesn’t see any reason why we should economically isolate Russia except for the continuation of the conflict,” Vance said. He stressed that Russia possessed vast natural resources whether other parties liked it or not, and that “once we get this peace settled, we could have a very productive economic relationship with both Russia and Ukraine.” Shared economic growth, he added, could be “the best guarantee of a long-term peace.”

Vance contrasted Trump’s stance with that of the previous administration, which he said poured American resources into Ukraine without any real exit plan. He was responding to host Matt Gaetz’s claims that behind closed doors Moscow was offering to increase use of the US dollar in energy trade to help ease American domestic prices. Last week, EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas accused Trump of “weakening” allies with trade tariffs and undermining Western unity. Russian officials have highlighted the benefits of renewed cooperation with the US. President Vladimir Putin said Russian businesses had both capital and technology to pursue lucrative joint projects, including gas extraction ventures in Alaska and the Arctic, if Washington is willing to give political approval.

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Like the spring 2022 Bucha false flag before it, the Yarovaya provocation looks like a fresh push to break off the peace process, and blame Russia.”

‘Russian Strike on Pension Queue’ Claims Debunked (Sp.)

Ukrainian officials have accused Russia of killing 24 people on line to collect pensions in the village of Yarovaya in the Ukrainian-occupied area of the Donetsk People’s Republic. Here’s why the claims don’t hold up. “The world must not remain silent,” Zelensky urged after publicizing the incident, demanding a “response” from the US and Europe. There’s just one problem: the incident bears all the hallmarks of a false flag. Here’s evidence. A Russian MoD source told Sputnik that Russian forces did not carry out any attacks in the vicinity of Yarovaya on September 9, with the last strike in the area carried out on the night of September 7, and targeting an area near the neighboring settlement of Novosyolovka on the line of contact. No reports on casualties were issues before Zelensky made his claims.

Info about the ‘Russian strike’ was immediately disseminated by Zelensky-aligned social media and immediately picked up by Ukrainian and Western media. Footage presented by the Ukrainian side shows landmarks that can be easily be determined on satellite maps, including the post office building, a local memorial and trees surrounding both. The destruction in the footage doesn’t even come close to matching the shape and size of a Russian aerial bomb (Russian 100 kg FAB-250 and 200 kg FAB-500 bombs’ destructive radius and power is incomparably greater than that shown in the video). Instead, the destruction looks more like the result of the detonation of an explosive device with the equivalent of just a few kg of TNT.

Yarovaya is one of the increasingly few areas of the DPR still under Ukraine’s control, signifying Kiev’s rejection of Russia’s negotiating position for ending the conflict, which includes full Ukrainian withdrawal from the Donbass. The provocation comes on the heels of last month’s summit meeting between Putin and Trump, during which Trump backed off on US sanctions threats. Like the spring 2022 Bucha false flag before it, the Yarovaya provocation looks like a fresh push to break off the peace process, and blame Russia.

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“..an amateurish and dim top diplomat becomes a disgrace to be ashamed of before the world, even among embarrassed friends.”

The word diplomat is losing its meaning, if it’s not already gone. A diplomat must engage in diplomacy, be diplomatic. Kallas obviously doesn’t fit that notion.

Wondering Why The EU Is So Screwed? Just Look At Its Top Diplomat (Amar)

Kaja Kallas, the European Union’s de facto foreign minister (and former prime minister of Estonia), is unusually, grotesquely incompetent, even for an unelected EU apparatchik. Like former German Foreign Minister Annalena “360 Degrees” Baerbock – now instagraming like an excited upper-class teenager from her ill-begotten UN sinecure in New York – Kallas also displays an enormous capacity for being pleased with herself. She appears never happier than when holding a mic to her own platitudes, presented in a mortifyingly basic form of very labored English, while being obsequiously soft-balled by a fawning interviewer. In both cases, the contrast between the self-image and reality is jarring: Kallas and Baerbock’s obvious, glaring lack of intellectual ability, elementary education, and basic professional know-how should have ended their misguided career ambitions long ago.

Yet, instead, Kallas, like Baerbock, has not only rapidly fallen up the slippery ladder of career and privilege. She has done so in a particularly visible area. High officials responsible for the economy, for instance, can do – and do – enormous damage. But those in charge of foreign policy are no less dangerous, while, literally, publicly representing tens or hundreds of millions of people. A professional and intelligent foreign minister – such as, for instance, China’s Wang Yi, India’s S. Jaishankar, or Russia’s Sergey Lavrov – can enhance respect for a country or bloc even among its critics or opponents. However, an amateurish and dim top diplomat becomes a disgrace to be ashamed of before the world, even among embarrassed friends. They’re perhaps worse: a laughingstock, signaling that whoever chooses to be represented by a fool must be foolish as well.

With Kaja Kallas’s tenure as the EU’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, both cringe and ridicule are abundant. Her recent peak performances have included a truly inane take on the history of the Second World War, silly and rather racist musings on the general abilities of “the Russians” and “the Chinese,” and, of course, a preposterous attempt to blame them – plus Iran and North Korea – for disrupting our brave old world of a rules-bound order that includes the Gaza genocide, compliments of Israel and the West. Regarding what Kallas mistakes for history, the high-flyer from Estonia has opined that she was surprised by claims that Russia and China fought together in and won World War II. Of course, that’s simply a fact: Both countries were and are widely recognized as prominent members of the alliance that defeated global fascism in Europe and Asia.

Indeed, if Kallas were capable of telling an intern to Google the matter or consult the online version of the Encyclopedia Britannica, she’d find out quickly that China and Russia (then the core of the Soviet Union) are counted among the “Big Four” core of the alliance (alongside Great Britain and the US). This place was earned with rivers of blood: China and the Soviet Union were the two most brutally devastated countries in World War Two. China fought massive Japanese forces, and Russia broke the spine of Nazi Germany’s Wehrmacht. Even busy Estonian collaborators could not save the day for the Führer.

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“..using the Ukraine conflict to financially chain its member nations so that it can subjugate them and strip them of their sovereignty..”

EU Uses Ukraine Conflict To Create ‘United States Of Europe’ – Orban (TASS)

The leadership of the European Union is using the Ukraine conflict to financially chain its member nations so that it can subjugate them and strip them of their sovereignty, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban believes. “The Brusselian elite are pushing joint indebtedness to strip nations of their sovereignty and drag us toward a United States of Europe. They want to use the war in Ukraine as the pretext to shackle us all financially. We must look beyond the battlefield to the future of the Union itself: free nations or submission to unelected bureaucrats?” he wrote on the X social network. The Hungarian Prime Minister noted that by doing this, the EU is making a last-ditch effort to preserve itself as currently formulated. Earlier, Orban said that the EU bureaucratic center had ceased to play the role of coordinator of the bloc and has turned into a “Frankenstein pursuing its own interests.”

He stressed that when the EU was created, it was agreed that power would be concentrated in the hands of individual nations, but now Brussels is trying to centralize that power. According to the politician, the leadership of the association is encroaching on the sovereignty of its participants, and failing to resolve any crises along the way. Since the very beginning of the conflict in Ukraine, the Hungarian government has consistently advocated for its peaceful resolution and has called on its allies to resume dialogue with Russia. Hungary also refuses to support Ukraine’s accelerated accession to the EU, warning that this would cause serious damage to the European economy and could lead to a direct military clash with Russia.

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Raw power game.

Brussels Pushing To Silence Dissent Among EU Members (RT)

The European Commission has announced plans to scrap consensus-based decision-making in EU foreign policy, in a step that could sideline member states resisting Brussels’ line. Brussels has long weighed replacing unanimity – a founding principle of EU foreign policy – with majority voting, arguing the change would speed up decisions and stop individual states from blocking measures such as sanctions and military aid for Ukraine. Under the current system, all 27 members must agree for decisions to pass. The proposed reform would require a qualified majority, meaning decisions would be adopted if backed by a set threshold of states. In her ‘state of the union’ address on Wednesday, Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen said it was time to “break free from the shackles of unanimity,” and insisted that the bloc act “faster.”

“I believe that we need to move to qualified majority in some areas, for example in foreign policy,” she stated. The EC chief, who has repeatedly invoked the “Russian threat” to justify military aid to Ukraine, sanctions, and the push for accelerated militarization, was met with opposition from Slovakia and Hungary. Both governments have repeatedly threatened to use their veto powers to block EU actions they view as harmful to their national interests. Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico has warned that removing members’ veto power on foreign policy would spell the end of the bloc and could be “the precursor of a huge military conflict.”

Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orban has dismissed officials in Brussels as “bureaucrats” and argued that abandoning consensus would undermine national sovereignty, as member states could be dragged into wars without their consent. Orban said the EU is on the verge of collapse and will not survive beyond the next decade without a “fundamental structural overhaul” and disentanglement from the Ukraine conflict. Moscow has accused the West of pursuing “uncontrolled militarization” to prepare for war with Russia, while dismissing claims it intends to attack NATO or EU states as “nonsense.” Russian officials, including President Vladimir Putin, have accused Western leaders of fearmongering to justify inflated military budgets and to cover up their economic failures, insisting that aid to Kiev only prolongs the hostilities.

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Hahaha:

“Ukraine will only pay back the loan once Russia pays for the reparations,” she said.”

EU Eyes Russian Assets For Ukraine ‘Reparations Loan’ (RT)

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has proposed leveraging Russian assets illegally frozen in the EU for a “reparations loan” for Ukraine. Delivering a state of the union address to the EU parliament on Wednesday, the former German defense minister did not propose outright confiscation of the Russian assets, reportedly comprising some $300 billion. Moscow has condemned the asset freeze and warned that seizure would amount to “robbery” and violate international law, while also backfiring on the West. Von der Leyen introduced what she said was an urgently needed new mechanism to finance Kiev’s warchest, using Russia’s immobilized funds. Western nations ordered the freezing of the assets – some €200 billion of which is held by privately owned Brussels-based clearinghouse Euroclear – after the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in 2022.

The funds have accrued billions in interest, and the West has explored ways to use the revenue to finance Ukraine. ”With the cash balances associated to these Russian assets, we can provide Ukraine with a reparations loan,” von der Leyen claimed, noting that “the assets themselves will not be touched” and that the risk would have to be “carried collectively.” “Ukraine will only pay back the loan once Russia pays for the reparations,” she said. The money, von der Leyen added, would fund Kiev’s military and ensure the security of the civilian population. Von der Leyen gave no figures, while the G7 last year backed a plan to provide Kiev with $50 billion in loans to be repaid using the profits. The EU pledged $21 billion.

She also announced an initiative aimed at boosting Ukraine’s military, including through a proposed “drone alliance,” explaining that the EU would “frontload” €6 billion. The proposal stops short of confiscation, which most EU states reject due to financial and legal risks. Several countries have also dismissed the idea of a “reparations loan,” warning it could breach international law. Belgium has been especially vocal. Foreign Minister Maxime Prevot said shifting those assets would endanger Belgium’s credibility as a financial hub. “Confiscating those Russian sovereign assets is really not an option,” Prevot said. “It would be a very bad signal to other countries worldwide” and could also “erode confidence and trust in the euro,” according to the minister.

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Did they miss them on purpose? Or do they just have poor aim?

Gulf Cooperation Council to Support Any Action by Qatar After Israeli Attack (Sp.)

The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) stands in solidarity with Qatar and will support any response following the Israeli strikes on Doha, GCC Secretary General Jasem Albudaiwi said. “The Council states express full solidarity with the State of Qatar and support any measures it takes,” GCC Secretary General Jasem Albudaiwi said. On Tuesday, the Israel Defense Forces said it had carried out strikes in Doha targeting senior officials of Palestinian movement Hamas. Eyewitnesses told Sputnik that several explosions occurred in the center of Qatar’s capital. World powers, including the United Kingdom, Germany and India, have condemned the Israeli airstrike on Hamas members in Doha and called for restraint.

“Today’s airstrike by Israel against Hamas leaders in Doha breaches international law and Qatar’s territorial integrity, and risks a further escalation of violence in the region,” the European External Action Service said in a statement. UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer condemned Israel’s strike and called for “immediate ceasefire, the release of hostages, and a huge surge in aid into Gaza.” India is concerned about the Israeli airstrike on Doha and calls for restraint to ensure peace and security in the region are not jeopardized, the Indian Foreign Ministry noted. “The Netherlands condemns the Israeli airstrike in Doha. The sovereignty of states must be respected. Additionally, this step doesn’t bring a much needed ceasefire in the Gaza Strip any closer,” Dutch Foreign Minister David van Weel said on X.

German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul noted that the Israeli attack not only violates Qatar’s territorial sovereignty, “but also jeopardizes our efforts to free the hostages.” Wadeful urged all parties to make every effort to achieve a ceasefire and free the hostages. “Cuba expresses its strongest condemnation of the Israeli attack on the Hamas headquarters in Doha, which constitutes a new extrajudicial execution by Zionism, a flagrant violation of international law and the sovereignty of Qatar, and a serious threat to regional security and stability,” Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez Parrilla said on X.

Venezuelan Foreign Minister Yvan Gil also condemned “the cowardly attack by the [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu regime on the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Qatar,” calling the airstrike “an act of state terrorism, a flagrant violation of international law and a challenge to the principles of peaceful coexistence among nations.” On Tuesday, the Israel Defense Forces said it had carried out strikes in Doha targeting senior officials of Palestinian movement Hamas. Eyewitnesses told RIA Novosti that several explosions occurred in the center of Qatar’s capital.

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An eye for an eye hands the world to the blind.

We’ll Get Them Next Time – Israeli Envoy Rues Hamas-Qatar Strike Failure (RT)

Israel is determined to kill Hamas leaders wherever they reside and will continue its efforts until they are all dead, Israeli Ambassador to the United States Yechiel Leiter told Fox News on Tuesday. Earlier in the day, Israeli airstrikes hit a residential building in Doha, Qatar, targeting senior figures of Hamas’ political wing. The group said its officials survived, while the attack has been criticized by the White House and condemned by Qatar. “If we didn’t get them this time, we’ll get them the next time,” Leiter said. The ambassador described Hamas as “enemies of Western civilization” and argued that Israel’s actions were reshaping the Middle East in ways “moderate” states understood and valued. “Right now, we may be subject to a little bit of criticism. They’ll get over it,” he said of the Arab countries.

US President Donald Trump said that while dismantling Hamas was a legitimate goal, striking a US ally undermined both American and Israeli interests. Leiter noted that Israel had “never had a better friend in the White House” and that Washington and West Jerusalem remained united in seeking the militant group’s destruction. Qatar, which hosts Hamas officials as part of its role as a mediator, said a Qatari security officer was among six people killed in the Israeli strike. Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani has denounced the attack as a “heinous crime” and an “act of aggression,” while Doha’s Foreign Ministry has accused Israel of “state terrorism.”

Israel has vowed to hunt down Hamas leaders, who it blames for the deadly October 2023 attack which was launched from Gaza into southern Israel. The ambassador vowed that those responsible “are not going to survive,” no matter where they are. Israel’s military response has left at least 64,000 dead in Gaza, according to local authorities. Critics have accused West Jerusalem of committing genocide by rendering the blockaded enclave uninhabitable and worsening famine conditions through restrictions on food aid.

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“Get ready for Israel’s next war–Washington’s military attack on Iran. Russia and China, by leaving Iran unprotected, have invited the attack.”

Unaccountable Israel (Paul Craig Roberts)

The Criminal State of Israel continues to initiate acts of war against states that are not at war with Israel. The most recent was an Israeli attack on a residential building in Qatar. Qatar’s Foreign Ministry accused Israel of “state terrorism.” A residential building is a place where people reside. Israel’s criminal action managed to kill six Qatari citizens, but not the Hamas leaders Israel allegedly was targeting. Israel’s ambassador to Washington, Yechiel Leiter, described Israel’s enemies as “enemies of Western civilization,” but Hamas has made no attacks on Western civilization. Leiter dismissed Israel’s critics with “they’ll get over it,” they always do. To calm the troubled waters Leiter played Israel’s US card: “Israel has never had a better friend in the White House and Washington and Israel are united in seeking the destruction of Hamas.”

Leiter summed up: “If we didn’t get them this time, we’ll get them the next time.” Qatar has joined Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, and the United States if you believe those who explain that Israel was involved in the murder of President John F. Kennedy as countries that are victims of Israel’s self-righteous aggression. Yet Israel remains protected by the US, UK, EU, and the rest of the Western world, by most of what little remains of the Arab world, and by Putin. Yet Russia is demonized for protecting Russians in the Russian areas of Ukraine from massacre by neo-Nazis. How have Ukrainian neo-Nazis, financed and supported by Washington and Israel, avoided the demonization applied to Hamas? Hamas is fighting for its own country–Palestine, which has been destroyed by Israel armed with US money, weapons, and diplomatic cover.

Currently Israel and the Zionist neoconservatives who have wormed their way into US foreign policy are pressuring President Trump–“Israel’s greatest friend”–to use nuclear weapons against Iran, a country who has done nothing to the US but nevertheless is under US sanctions and threats imposed at Israel’s insistence. The “powerful American superpower” cannot even control its own foreign policy. The blustering, threatening Trump doesn’t dare threaten Israel. Get ready for Israel’s next war–Washington’s military attack on Iran. Russia and China, by leaving Iran unprotected, have invited the attack.

Let us further compare the West’s treatment of Russia compared to its treatment of Israel. Poland has asked NATO to invoke “Article Four” against Russia for allegedly violating Poland’s air space. No attack was made on Poland. Moreover, the alleged drone incursions came from Belarus, not Russia, and Belarus warned Poland in advance that some drones had “lost their track as a result of the impact of the parties’ electronic warfare assets.” “This allowed the Polish side to respond promptly to the actions of the drones by scrambling their forces on duty,” said General Pavel Muraveiko, the chief of the general staff of Belarus. So, Poland wants Article Four invoked against Russia for a non-event, but it is anti-semitic to complain of Israel’s genocide of Palestine, both the people and the country, and Israel’s military/assassination attacks on other countries. Clearly, the future of freedom does not reside in such a corrupt Western world.

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“This brings the Biden jobs overstatement to a staggering 1.5M.”

BLS Announces 911,000 Fewer Jobs Created April ’24 through March ’25 (CTH)

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent noted, when you add the previous Biden revision of -577,000 to the current revision of -911,000 the Bureau of Labor and Statistics (BLS) had overreported Biden’s job growth by almost 1.5 million jobs. The BLS reports today an annual revision of 911,000 fewer jobs that previously reported. These further puts President Trump’s decision to fire the head of the BLS into context.

Bessent: “Now it’s official: 2024 job gains were exaggerated by nearly 1M workers, and this is on top of an already reported 577K in downward revisions. This brings the Biden jobs overstatement to a staggering 1.5M. The truth: President Trump inherited a far worse economy than reported, and he’s right to say the Fed is choking off growth with high rates.

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“The numbers prove that Biden’s presidency was a failure even on its own terms.”

Joe Biden’s Economy Was So Much Worse Than We Thought (Margolis)

For four years, Joe Biden bragged about presiding over the “strongest economy in history.” He propped up his narrative with the return of jobs after the COVID shutdowns and falsely claimed his policies created them. Even liberal outlets admitted he was padding the numbers, but Biden never stopped repeating the lie. Now the lie has officially collapsed. The Bureau of Labor Statistics just confirmed what President Trump has been saying all along: Biden’s “strong economy” was nothing but smoke and mirrors. On Monday, the BLS issued the largest downward revision in its history, wiping out nearly a million jobs — 911,000 to be exact. That’s not a minor correction; that’s proof Biden’s economic record wasn’t just exaggerated, but was a fraud from the start.

“Today, the BLS released the largest downward revision on record proving that President Trump was right: Biden’s economy was a disaster and the BLS is broken,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement. She continued, “This is exactly why we need new leadership to restore trust and confidence in the BLS’s data on behalf of the financial markets, businesses, policymakers, and families that rely on this data to make major decisions.” She’s exactly right. This revelation comes just over a month after President Donald Trump fired Bureau of Labor Statistics Commissioner Erika McEntarfer, a Biden appointee.

“I was just informed that our Country’s ‘Jobs Numbers’ are being produced by a Biden Appointee, Dr. Erika McEntarfer, the Commissioner of Labor Statistics, who faked the Jobs Numbers before the Election to try and boost Kamala’s chances of Victory,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social last month. “We need accurate Jobs Numbers. I have directed my Team to fire this Biden Political Appointee, IMMEDIATELY. She will be replaced with someone much more competent and qualified.” Many on the left claimed that action was in response to a weaker than expected jobs report, but this revelation should prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the BLS under McEntarfer had clearly become politicized, with grossly inflated jobs numbers designed to boost Biden before the 2024 election.

But the scandal goes much deeper than that. Think about how many Americans made financial choices, how many businesses planned investments, and how many policymakers made decisions based on jobs data that now turns out to have been flat-out wrong. And it’s not just one bad revision. The BLS admitted they had overstated Biden’s “job creation” by about 1.5 million. That’s no small mistake. In fact, that’s not a mistake at all. That’s actively misleading the public, and that’s why firing McEntarfer was the right move, and why Trump’s nominee to replace her, E.J. Antoni, must be confirmed. The numbers prove that Biden’s presidency was a failure even on its own terms. He flooded the labor market with illegal immigrants, pumped out trillions in reckless spending, and handed out subsidies like candy.

Even then, he couldn’t match the jobs growth from Trump’s first term. That is nothing short of humiliating. For years, the media parroted Biden’s talking point that he “created more jobs than any president in history.” Now we know the truth: those jobs were fake, inflated, or outright imaginary. Biden built his presidency on a lie, and now the lie has collapsed. The so-called “historic job growth” was never real—it was a mirage propped up by partisan bureaucrats and repeated endlessly by a complicit media desperate to protect him. Meanwhile, Trump’s warnings about Biden’s phony numbers turned out to be exactly right, just as they were about inflation, gas prices, and the border. The revision is a complete repudiation of Biden’s entire economic narrative.

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Shale. oil and gas. And gold.

Maduro Suggests Reason Behind Us Military Buildup Around Venezuela (RT)

Washington is seeking to gain access to Venezuela’s natural resources, the Latin American nation’s President Nicolas Maduro has told RT in response to the arrival of US warships off the country’s coast in recent weeks. He dismissed Washington’s claims that it had mounted the effort to combat drug traffickers as a ruse. Last month, the US deployed at least eight Navy vessels and an attack submarine to the region, with an estimated 4,000 troops involved in the operation. Appearing on RT Spanish’s ‘Talking with Correa’ show on Tuesday, Maduro claimed that the US operation “is not about drug trafficking… they need oil [and] gas.”

He told the host, former Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa, that “Venezuela has the world’s largest oil reserves… the fourth-largest gas reserves.” He also noted that his country potentially boasts the “world’s largest gold reserves.” He lamented that Washington’s “aggression” against Caracas has surpassed anything seen in the region since the 1962 Cuban missile crisis. According to Maduro, these actions toward Venezuela fit into a broader “war plan,” which is supposedly aimed at subjugating the entire world to the will of the US. “But it is impossible… We already have a multipolar world with new power centers,” such as China, Russia and India, the official argued.

Maduro dismissed US allegations that Venezuela is a major drug-producing and trafficking hub. He insisted that Venezuela has eliminated all major drug-trafficking operations on its soil, and vanquished prominent gangs, including the Tren de Aragua. Relations between the two nations have been tense for years. Washington refused to recognize Maduro’s reelection in 2018, instead backing the Venezuelan opposition and imposing sweeping sanctions on the country. Last week, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova warned that the “situation is… being unacceptably escalated” around Venezuela, with potentially far-reaching ramifications for regional and global security.

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No, Frank and countless others. Trump never called the victims’ testimonnies a hoax, of course he didn’t, he’s neither stupid nor insensitive. He called the way in which the Dems presented the story a hoax.

Melania, Please Talk to Donald About Epstein (Frank Miele)

Last Wednesday, an extraordinary press conference was held in the shadow of the U.S. Capitol by victims of sexual abuser Jeffrey Epstein. Anyone who watched these women pour out their hearts to demand justice for themselves and other victims could not help but be moved. Unfortunately, President Donald Trump did not watch, and then – almost simultaneously – dismissed the women’s heartfelt pleas for a public reckoning of Epstein’s abuse as “a Democrat hoax.” No doubt, Trump is a rhetorical genius who has been able to define issues to his own benefit for years, but this was a low point in his presidency. Much as it is understandable that Trump perceives the attention being given to Epstein’s life and mysterious death in a federal prison as a distraction, that must be weighed against the human toll that Epstein took.

Calling it a hoax belittles the pain and suffering of women who were victims of, at worst, rape and, at best, sexual abuse. And though Trump judged the women before he had even had a chance to hear them speak, they had already rejected his label: “This is not a hoax. It’s not going to go away,” said Marina Lacerda, who was a witness in Epstein’s 2019 indictment that led to his imprisonment and death. Abuse survivor Haley Robson, who introduced herself as a registered Republican, invited the president to meet her “in person so you can understand this is not a hoax. We are real human beings. This is real trauma.” After the president made his dismissive remarks, Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene called Trump to ask him to meet with the women at the Oval Office, but he did not accept – as of yet.

“It’s not a hoax,” Greene explained, “because Jeffrey Epstein is a convicted pedophile. That takes away the whole hoax thing. It’s not a hoax. It’s not a lie.” Greene challenged Trump to get past the political suspicions he has expressed. “I want him to be the hero and champion of this issue. And I want him to fight for these women, because I know him to be a fighter.” Indeed, President Trump has repeatedly shown a capacity for empathy in his capacity as a private individual and as president, most notably when he promised justice for the Angel Moms who had lost children as a result of the actions of illegal aliens. But in this case, Trump has conflated how his political enemies may seize upon the Epstein case as a weapon with the entirely unrelated issue of justice for the victims.

Speaking out about a “Democratic hoax” before he had ever seen the victims’ statements, or heard their perfectly reasonable demands, could prove to be one of the worst mistakes in Trump’s career, political or otherwise. It is not enough to know the names of Epstein and his procurer Ghislaine Maxwell; common decency demands that the names of all those who abetted them in abusing women be revealed. If there were powerful men in finance or politics who exploited these women, their names should be known too. And what about the officials who looked the other way? I don’t believe Trump has any culpability for his friendship with Epstein years ago. At the press conference, the women survivors said none of them knew of any evidence against Trump. But the president’s political opponents will surely seize upon his unwillingness to ensure justice for the Epstein victims, and plant seeds of doubt that could harm him and the nation – just exactly what Trump says he wants to avoid.

In order to avoid that fate, there is perhaps one person – and one person only – who could convince the president not to view the matter through a partisan lens. That, of course, is first lady Melania Trump. Melania’s willingness to lobby for generosity of spirit was recently apparent in the letter she wrote to Russian president Vladimir Putin when he and her husband met in Alaska to discuss the Ukraine war. Although Putin has been intransigent on the possibility of a ceasefire in the war he started, Melania urged him to think about the millions of children impacted by the bloodshed and to “nurture the next generation’s hope.” A simple yet profound concept, Mr. Putin, as I am sure you agree, is that each generation’s descendants begin their lives with a purity – an innocence which stands above geography, government, and ideology. … In protecting the innocence of these children, you will do more than serve Russia alone – you serve humanity itself. Such a bold idea transcends all human division, and you, Mr. Putin, are fit to implement this vision with a stroke of the pen today. It is time.

Just as Melania called upon Putin to protect the innocence of the children of war, so too she could – and should – call on her husband to honor the lost innocence of Epstein’s victims.

She probably doesn’t need to write a letter to Trump, but since they share a residence at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, it would make perfect sense for her to call him aside one night and sit him down for “the discussion.” The short version would go something like this: “Donald, you have enemies. We both know it. But sometimes your worst enemy is yourself. We both know that too. So I’m going to give you some advice. When women are young and pretty, rich and powerful men take advantage of them. That’s not a Democrat hoax. It’s a fact of life. Please watch these women, or better yet, meet with them. Find out what they want, and then help them get it. They don’t deserve shame because of what happened to them. They deserve our thanks for coming forward. They aren’t trying to hurt you; they are trying to help themselves and other women to make sure that powerful men are held accountable. It is time.”

Read more …

 

 

 

 

Autism
https://twitter.com/liz_churchill10/status/1965583932549927385

RFK
https://twitter.com/VigilantFox/status/1965510416836038916


https://twitter.com/MAGAVoice/status/1965498764992676036

Tulsi Obama
https://twitter.com/Real_RobN/status/1965469191563284869

mRNA

Ford
https://twitter.com/NicHulscher/status/1965492776998682759

Insulation

Malone

Siri
https://twitter.com/TheChiefNerd/status/1965543653319004590

Stare off
https://twitter.com/buitengebieden/status/1965496058529939748

Tucker
https://twitter.com/wideawake_media/status/1965801981735502145

https://twitter.com/naturelife_ok/status/1965766187624841307

 

 

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Sep 032025
 
 September 3, 2025  Posted by at 10:06 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,  51 Responses »


Cy Twombly Fifty Days at Iliam: Like a Fire that Consumes All before It 1978

 

‘Western Liberal Dictatorships’ Spreading Hate In The World – Moscow (RT)
Did You Notice The EU Just Lost Its Gas Lifeline? (RT)
The West Has Just Been Given A Rude Awakening (Amar)
Gazprom Chief Reports Progress On ‘World’s Biggest Project’ With China (RT)
Russia, China and North Korea ‘Conspiring’ Against US – Trump (RT)
Are Ukrainian Vigilantes Rising Up Against The Kiev Regime? (Romanenko)
Von der Leyen Is Lying About Russian GPS Interference (MoA)
Why Can’t We End the War on Drugs? (Pinsker)
CNBC Just Spilled the Awful Truth About California (Green)
Trump Epically Trolls Biden Again (Margolis)
This Explosive Revelation Could Bury Lisa Cook (Jeff Charles)
Israel Had ‘Total Control’ Over Congress – Trump (RT)
Democrat Judge Rules Trump Deployment of National Guard To LA Was Illegal (ZH)
Woke Rats Jump Ship As Trump Puts CDC Under A Microscope (ZH)
The Penguin Quits – Fast Action Needed (CTH)
Trump to Give Giuliani Presidential Medal of Freedom (Salgado)

 

 

https://twitter.com/EricLDaugh/status/1962678023959761031

Siberia2

https://twitter.com/mog_russEN/status/1962775725402136920

France
https://twitter.com/Megatron_ron/status/1962810022586466400

AfD

Elon

 

 

Nap Scott

 

 

 

 

i wonder how many Westerners recognize themselves in this.

“Russia is determined to preserve the memory of WWII, as well as defend international law and “the true values that our world is built on.”

‘Western Liberal Dictatorships’ Spreading Hate In The World – Moscow (RT)

Moscow is committed to countering the xenophobia promoted by the West, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told RT. She made the remarks as President Vladimir Putin concluded his four-day visit to China by attending a military parade in Beijing on Wednesday, marking the 80th anniversary of Japan’s defeat in World War II. She argued that efforts by some politicians and media outlets to downplay or “distort” the victory of Russia and China in World War II show that “fascism, Nazism, racism, and xenophobia have not been completely eradicated.”

“These were the views our country fought against 80 years ago, and we are still confronting them on the international stage today,” she said. Zakharova added that Russia is determined to preserve the memory of WWII, as well as defend international law and “the true values that our world is built on.” “They haven’t yet been crippled by the Western liberal dictatorships that try to sway us towards a distorted understanding of people,” she said.

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Europe built its entire existence on this for 50+ years. Now they’ve given it all away, “inspired” by some weird kind of Russophobia, or Putinphobia perhaps. And it’s not coming back, if they have second thoughts. It was sold to China in a binding agreement. They will have to replace it with US LNG at 4-5 times the price.

“Self-deindustrializing” is an apt term. When the current grossly unpopular leaders have been chased out of their plush seats, their successors will be left with a third world continent. You want me to believe this was NOT done intentionally? I find that hard.

Did You Notice The EU Just Lost Its Gas Lifeline? (RT)

The EU’s cheap-gas lifeline just got handed to Beijing instead. With three signatures, Russia, China and Mongolia rerouted half a century of energy history eastward. On Tuesday, the three countries signed a legally binding memorandum for the Power of Siberia 2 pipeline – a roughly 2,600-km line, at an estimated cost of around $13.6 bn, that will carry 50 billion cubic meters (bcm) of natural gas every year through Mongolia into northern China’s industrial heartland. While the pricing structure has yet to be fixed, the signatories have effectively redrawn the European energy map. For decades, this gas was the bedrock of German and Western European industry, piped from Russia’s Yamal fields in the Arctic through Nord Stream 1 directly into Germany. Now, that same supply is being redirected east.

Isn’t there already a pipeline? Yes. Power of Siberia 1, which came online in 2019, snakes east from Yakutia into northeastern China. What makes this deal different? Power of Siberia 2 is different: it will run a more direct route through Mongolia, which will gain access to the gas, tapping the very Yamal fields in western Siberia that once connected to Germany through the Nord Stream and Yamal-Europe pipelines, as well as transit revenues. Unlike POS1, which sources Russia’s Asian-facing fields, POS2 will draw gas from Arctic reserves that once fed Europe’s factories.

In other words, it closes the chapter of Europe as the main customer for Russian gas and hard-wires China as the new anchor market. What’s the timeline? The memorandum is binding but still vague. Key details such as pricing formulas, financing structures, and construction deadlines have not been finalized. One thing is clear though: once the backbone of EU’s growth, the gas will instead be sent into pipelines running east through Mongolia to China. For Brussels and Berlin, it’s not just a loss of supply but a structural break: the age of cheap Siberian gas for Europe is over.

As well as as the Power of Siberia 2 signing, Moscow also pledged to boost flows on existing lines. POS1 volumes will rise from 38 to 44 billion cubic meters a year – roughly a quarter of what the EU once bought from Russia. Russia’s Far Eastern route, piping gas in from the Sakhalin mega-projects, will rise from 10 to 12 billion cubic meters – about a tenth of what Europe used to purchase from Moscow annually. But the big figure is Power of Siberia 2: 50 billion cubic meters annually, slightly less than the Nord Stream 1 pipeline once carried into Germany before it was blown up. Add it all together and China will be importing over 100 billion cubic meters of Russian gas every year – volumes comparable to the flows that for decades underpinned Europe’s industrial base.

For the EU, the symbolism is brutal. The same Arctic molecules that drove the post-war boom and kept German factories competitive are now earmarked for China. The EU attempted to cut itself off from Russian supply after 2022, in a rupture that was allegedly tacitly backed by NATO. Since then, the bloc has been forced to buy US LNG at much higher prices than Russian pipeline gas, triggering an energy price crisis across the bloc and helping drive Germany into recession. With Power of Siberia 2 signed, the option of reversing course and reconnecting Europe to Russian gas has effectively vanished.

Read more …

“..it will amplify and cement a massive shift in the flow of affordable Russian energy, away from lustily self-deindustrializing NATO-EU Europe to dynamic China and Asia.”

The West Has Just Been Given A Rude Awakening (Amar)

Oswald Spengler, eccentric German arch-conservative, brilliant author of “The Decline of the West,” and proud pessimist extraordinaire (“optimism is cowardice”), could also be rather woke: You will find no more disdainful scorn or biting derision for the West’s navel-gazing than his. Skewering the Occident’s “provincial presuppositions,” naïve vanity, and self-crippling narrow-mindedness, Spengler dismissed its compulsive solipsism as producing a “prodigious optical illusion” of self-importance. Today, a little over a hundred years after these observations, Spengler would feel grimly vindicated. The string of international events – on a scale from “remarkable” to “game-changing” – that has just unfolded first at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit in Tianjin, then around Beijing’s massive 80th-anniversary World War II victory parade, should bring home to even the most somnambulant inhabitant of the Western mainstream media bubble two key facts about our world as it really is.

First, a new global order centered on Eurasia (minus a small, odd, and dismal peninsula, compulsively fixated on the Atlantic and masochistically obedient to the US) and the Global South is emerging unstoppably. China’s President Xi Jinping made clear in Tianjin that its custodians will relegate the West’s farcical “rules-based international order,” this ugly aberration that has facilitated the Gaza genocide and other mass crimes, to the rubbish heap of history. And second, the West is missing its chance to play a role in shaping what is coming after its half-delusional and entirely brutal “unipolar moment.” Stuck in self-defeating complacency, as illustrated by US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s bigoted dismissal of the SCO meeting as a “performative” get-together of “bad actors,” current Western establishments are determined to keep self-marginalizing.

In Slovak leader’s Robert Fico’s apt terms, most of the Western leadership will go on playing “frog at the bottom of the well,” all too happy to live without a clue. Maybe that’s all for the better: It is hard to see them make a sincere contribution to a world built on “sovereign equality,” “international rule of law,” and “multilateralism” (Xi Jinping), “valid and unshakable” UN principles (Russia’s Vladimir Putin), and a type of “connectivity” that respects “sovereignty and territorial integrity” (Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi).

In this regard, one of the two most spectacular developments in Beijing has been that China and Russia are now getting close to constructing one of the most ambitious pipeline projects in history: The Power of Siberia 2, connecting Russian gas fields to China via Mongolia, “could,” Bloomberg admits, “redefine the global gas trade,” including, the Financial Times points out, that of the LNG-trading US, Australia, and Qatar. That is an understatement. At a projected capacity of 50 billion cubic meters per year for at least 30 years, Power of Siberia 2 will affect all of the above. In essence, it will amplify and cement a massive shift in the flow of affordable Russian energy, away from lustily self-deindustrializing NATO-EU Europe to dynamic China and Asia.

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“The Power of Siberia 2 project, which transits Mongolia, moved forward after the participants signed a “legally binding memorandum..”

Gazprom Chief Reports Progress On ‘World’s Biggest Project’ With China (RT)

Russia and China have advanced plans for the construction of the Power of Siberia 2 natural gas pipeline, which will transit Russian gas from Siberia to the Asian powerhouse, Gazprom CEO Aleksey Miller said Tuesday. Miller is in China this week as part of a Russian delegation led by President Vladimir Putin, who on Tuesday met with Chinese President Xi Jinping and Mongolian President Ukhnaagiin Khurelsukh for trilateral talks in Beijing. At the meeting Xi highlighted the importance of “hard connectivity” through cross-border infrastructure for shared development. The Power of Siberia 2 project, which transits Mongolia, moved forward after the participants signed a “legally binding memorandum,” Miller told reporters. The project will be the “biggest, largest-scale and capital-intensive project in the world’s gas industry,” Miller said.

Power of Siberia 2 is intended to connect gas fields of western Siberia with consumers in western China. The section passing through Mongolia, known as the Soyuz Vostok pipeline, would also allow supplies to be sold to Mongolian buyers. Talks on the pipeline have been underway since at least 2006, with route options and pricing terms repeatedly debated. Officials said the project is expected to deliver 50 billion cubic meters of gas annually for at least 30 years. China has become the leading buyer of Russian pipeline gas after the European Union declared reliance on Russian energy a threat to its member states and moved to cut imports. The EU’s policy shift – promoted as a response to Moscow’s role in the Ukraine conflict – aligned with long-time US efforts to boost American liquefied natural gas exports to Europe.

The Power of Siberia 1 pipeline, which was launched in 2019, has already delivered over 100 billion cubic metres of gas to China from eastern Siberia. Miller said Moscow and Beijing have agreed to significantly increase the supplies. Gas presently being delivered to China – and to Mongolia in the future – is objectively cheaper than supplies previously sent to Europe thanks to shorter transportation routes, Miller noted.

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But I thought Little Rocket Man was your friend?!

Russia, China and North Korea ‘Conspiring’ Against US – Trump (RT)

President Donald Trump has accused China, Russia and North Korea of conspiring against the United States. He made the remarks on his Truth Social platform during a military parade in Beijing on Wednesday marking the victory over Japan in World War II. “Many Americans died in China’s quest for Victory and Glory. I hope they are rightfully honored and remembered for their bravery and sacrifice!” Trump wrote. He also wished Chinese President Xi Jinping “a great and lasting day of celebration.” “Please give my warmest regards to Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un, as you conspire against the United States of America,” he added.

Trump did not attend the celebrations in Beijing, which are said to be the largest in decades. US relations with both China and Russia remain strained by his trade war, sanctions, and the Ukraine conflict. Trump met with Putin in Alaska last month as part of his push to mediate a ceasefire in Ukraine. Although there were no breakthroughs, both sides hailed the summit as a positive step.China and Russia have repeatedly accused the US of trying to impose its will on the global stage and denounced what they call “unilateral” sanctions. At the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit on Monday, Xi renewed his call to end the “Cold War mentality” and to work toward building an “equitable” system of international relations.

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“Far-right politician Andrey Paribuy was killed not by a Russian agent, but by a grieving father desperate for justice..”

Are Ukrainian Vigilantes Rising Up Against The Kiev Regime? (Romanenko)

When the news broke that a suspect had been arrested in the assassination of former Rada speaker, far-right Maidan figure Andrey Parubiy, much of the initial discussion revolved around Russia. Ukrainian authorities are predictably looking for a “Russian footprint.” But the suspect’s own words tell a very different story – a story of a grieving father who turned his despair into violence, and in doing so, revealed a deeper crisis within Ukrainian society itself.The man accused of murdering Parubiy, one Mikhail Stselnikov, is not a shadowy foreign agent, but a Ukrainian whose son went missing in the war against Russia. His confession was blunt: his act was driven by personal revenge against the Ukrainian authorities. He says he chose Parubiy because he lived nearby, and he would’ve chosen former president Petro Poroshenko if that were more convenient.

This choice of target is not random: these are men who, since the 2014 Maidan revolution, took Ukraine down the path the path toward confrontation with Russia, NATO aspirations, and ultimately, a devastating war.For this father, the tragedy is bitterly ironic. His son died fighting the Russians, yet he places blame not on Moscow, but on his own government. His child became a casualty not of “Putin’s aggression,” but of decisions made by Kiev’s political elite a decade earlier. In killing Parubiy, a key figure of the Maidan, he struck at the heart of the establishment that, in his view, had condemned his son to die.,This crime cannot be brushed aside as the madness of one man. It speaks to a growing disillusionment among Ukrainians, who have borne the brunt of the war’s human cost. Forced conscriptions, brutalized bystanders dragged from streets into military vans, families torn apart by mobilization – such practices have deepened anger at the government.

Even more painful is the perception that Kiev drags its feet on prisoner exchanges and the recovery of fallen soldiers’ remains. For parents like Stselnikov, this adds a layer of cruelty to an already unbearable loss. It is not only that their children die; it is that the state remains indifferent to their suffering.Polling data backs up this mood. According to a survey by Rating Group in August 2025, a staggering 82% of Ukrainians now favor negotiations with Russia, while only 11% support continuing the war. Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky commands just 35% support. Ukrainians are exhausted, embittered, and increasingly view their leaders not as protectors but as obstacles to peace.Answering reporters’ questions in the courtroom, Stselnikov said: “I want to be judged quickly, exchanged as a prisoner of war, and go to Russia to look for my son’s body.”

These words should chill anyone who still clings to the narrative of a united Ukraine standing firm against Russia. Here is a man who fought no battles but lost everything – and he trusts Russia, the supposed enemy, more than his own government. He admitted to having been in contact with Russians while searching for his son, but he insisted they did not influence his crime. His grievance was not geopolitical but deeply personal: a loss compounded by his own state’s callousness. In the absence of hard evidence, Ukrainian officials defaulted to the familiar refrain of Russian involvement. Police chief Ivan Vyhivskyi hinted at it, but the very vagueness of the accusation betrays its weakness. If there was any clear indication the Kremlin had orchestrated this assassination, one would expect Ukraine’s leadership to loudly seize upon it. Instead, the rhetoric has been strangely subdued.

This muted response suggests what many Ukrainians already suspect: blaming Russia here is a fig leaf. It deflects attention from the uncomfortable truth that this killing was a homegrown act of despair. The system created by Ukraine’s post-Maidan elites is now cracking from within.The death of Andrey Parubiy at the hands of an ordinary Ukrainian grieving father points to the alienation of the people from their government. The legitimacy of Zelensky’s administration, already battered by polling numbers and public resentment, is further eroded when citizens believe Moscow to be is more trustworthy than Kiev. A regime that forces its sons to die, fails to return their bodies, and silences the grief of their families cannot endure such wounds forever. Ukraine’s leaders would do well to heed this message – before more fathers decide that revenge is the only way left to be heard.

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“GPS navigation is based on receiving radio signals from satellites. There is no way to selectively block or disturb these for just a single receiver..”

Von der Leyen Is Lying About Russian GPS Interference (MoA)


There is reason why the name of the President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen is often mangled into von der Lying. She is notoriously negligent with facts. Here she is caught outright lying to spread fake anti-Russian propaganda. When I read the headline below, first published by the Financial Times, I immediately thought that something was very wrong with it. Ursula von der Leyen’s plane hit by suspected Russian GPS interference (archived) – FT, Sep 1 2025 “A suspected Russian interference attack targeting Ursula von der Leyen disabled GPS navigation services at a Bulgarian airport and forced the European Commission president’s plane to land using paper maps. A jet carrying von der Leyen to Plovdiv on Sunday afternoon was deprived of electronic navigational aids while on approach to the city’s airport, in what three officials briefed on the incident said was being treated as a Russian interference operation.”

GPS navigation is based on receiving radio signals from satellites. There is no way to selectively block or disturb these for just a single receiver. If someone would have manipulated GPS in that area it would effected every GPS receiver in the same geography. But I could not find any reports from Bulgaria that taxi drivers or other people using GPS navigation had any trouble with it. There was not a single tweet on X complaining about it. “The whole airport area GPS went dark,” said one of the officials. After circling the airport for an hour, the plane’s pilot took the decision to land the plane manually using analogue maps, they added. “It was undeniable interference.” The Bulgarian Air Traffic Services Authority confirmed the incident in a statement to the Financial Times. “Since February 2022, there has been a notable increase in [GPS] jamming and recently spoofing occurrences,” it said.

“These interferences disrupt the accurate reception of [GPS] signals, leading to various operational challenges for aircraft and ground systems.” The three anonymous “officials” the FT is quoting (which likely include von der Leyen) are lying. The statement by the Bulgarian Air Traffic Services Authority is just a general one. It does not say anything about the alleged incident. GPS failure does not mean that one has to use “paper maps”. (There are by the way no longer any “paper maps” on professional airliners. Maps are stored digitally.) Modern planes do not depend on GPS. They mainly use their Inertial Reference System. They can also navigate by following ground radar signals. Airports for regular landing of jets have Instrument Landing Systems installed. Short range radio signals from the ground will guide the plane onto the runway. There is no need to wait “for an hour”.

As Simple Flying summarizes:
• The IRS, or Inertial Reference System, is the main navigational system in aircraft, independent of outside signals or input.
• GPS is crucial for navigation in modern aircraft, with other aids like VOR and NDB used for backup.
• Aircraft navigational systems are highly independent, with [Flight Management Systems] processing multiple positional data for precise navigation.

The claims of “paper maps” and “an hour” on hold, just like the whole story, did not make any sense to me.It has now been confirmed that the story is wrong. It is a lie, made up out of whole cloth.

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Was it Michael Moore who said ‘you can’t declare war on a noun’?

Why Can’t We End the War on Drugs? (Pinsker)

After the GOP obliterated President Clinton in the 1994 midterms, his party put the liberal wing to pasture. For the final six years of his presidency, the Clinton administration “triangulated” its way through various legislative, budgetary (and, ahem, “personal”) entanglements. Never again would a leading Democrat dare say, “The era of big government is over.” Today, it’d be utterly unfathomable! Next came eight years of President George W. Bush. His failures in Iraq and the economic crisis gave the radical leftists the opening they coveted. And on Election Day 2008, they took control of everything. Meanwhile, the GOP embraced the banner of conservatism under Sen. Barry Goldwater (R-Ariz.) in the 1960s and President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s. We’ve been operating under these ideals for most of the last 100 years: The Republican Party is the conservative party. We believe in limited government, personal liberty, and rugged individualism.

At this point, it’s hardwired into our DNA. Like many of you, I became a conservative because I believe these values will maximize peace, prosperity, and opportunity for my countrymen — it’s how we safeguard our God-given rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. I firmly, wholeheartedly believe that conservatism is our best defense against tyranny. (Probably our last defense, too.) But as a conservative, I’ve always struggled with the War on Drugs. For purely ideological reasons, I’m troubled by the government banning adults from living how they want or having the freedom to make their own decisions — especially in the privacy of their own homes. We ought to have the right to make our own choices, even if those choices are destructive and unhealthy. Look, if you wanna eat Twinkies, smoke pot, scroll Instagram, and drink Jack Daniels all day, you should have the right. (Just don’t ask the rest of us to subsidize your lifestyle.) Freedom of choice necessarily implies the freedom to make bad decisions, too.

Such is the horror — and the curse — of free will. But do you really have free will if you’re a drug addict? By definition, an addict is addicted, so probably not: Your brain, body, and soul are enslaved in chemical bondage, which makes it absolutely antithetical to free will! And I’m unsure how to reconcile this contradiction. There’s also more pragmatic concerns: The two most heavily abused drugs in America are alcohol and nicotine, and their commonality is obvious: They’re both legal. Seems reasonable to assume that if you make more drugs legal, there’d be more Americans using (and abusing) drugs. We already see this with the pro-marijuana movement: As more states legalized marijuana, its usage skyrocketed. There are now more daily pot-smokers in America than daily alcohol drinkers. By some metrics, the number of cannabis-involved ailments and emergency room visits has jumped by nearly 50%. It’d be stupid to assume that’s purely coincidental.

Should we suspend the War on Drugs, we’d better double down on rehab centers and medical facilities, because the number of U.S. drug users will grow considerably. The social cost will be in the billions. Maybe even trillions! Then again, the Drug War has ALREADY cost taxpayers over a trillion dollars. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. There really aren’t any good options, alas; it’s a choice between what’s bad and what’s (likely) worse.Full disclosure: I used to serve on the board of directors of Drug Free America. Despite my misgivings, I liked ‘em and (mostly) supported their efforts. (I was also very honest about my own background when they recruited me: I’ve done PR for liquor brands, alcohol products, gambling, and other “sins.” They told me that was fine — they needed help with their messaging.)

So if you want to call me a hypocrite, you’d have a point. I’m far more passionate about expanding personal liberty than curtailing it. So, in the immortal words of Axl Rose, “Where do we go? Where do we go now?” What, if anything, should we change about our Drug War? Post-Obama, conservatism and liberalism are both North Stars — ideologies that push their adherents in a specific direction. And because they’re both North Stars, they also share the same weakness: Some ideas work far better as theories than as “real-world” policies, because the social cost is simply too great. And my suspicion is that’s why we can’t end the War on Drugs. Not today, not tomorrow, not next week. Probably not ever. Too many people would be hurt. And, paradoxically, too much freedom would be lost.

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“Gavin Newsom likes to boast that his state is the world’s fourth-largest economy.”

CNBC Just Spilled the Awful Truth About California (Green)

Question: What do you call “key sectors” of the world’s fourth-largest economy when they rely on illegal alien labor working for substandard wages, fewer benefits, and at greater risk of exploitation? I’d call it a crime. But in California, they call it “putting billions of dollars at risk” when President Donald Trump actually enforces the law. You know, like the chief executive takes an oath to do. With California’s $4 trillion gross domestic production, Gov. Gavin Newsom likes to boast that his state is the world’s fourth-largest economy. But a new CNBC report by Kate Rogers reveals more than it meant to about how “Trump’s immigration policy threatens key sectors” of Newsom’s state.One in four Californians is an immigrant, and, according to the Bay Area Economic Institute and the University of California-Merced, one in five of those is here illegally. In other words, California is home to around two million or more illegal aliens.

“As the Trump administration continues to ramp up immigration enforcement, industries key to the state’s $4 trillion economy like agriculture, construction and hospitality could be among those hardest hit by the loss of California’s immigrant workforce,” Rogers reported. “These are the workers that are keeping our economy afloat. They’re keeping businesses open,” Abby Raisz, research director at the Institute, told CNBC. Joe Garcia, president of the California Farmworker Association and CEO of Jaguar Labor Contracting, said in the report, “The lettuce, the strawberries, all the wine we drink on a daily basis, fruit juices– everything that a farmworker picks, packs, pre-harvest– they do the jobs all year round that put food on your table.”

Did he mean to repeat the “Who will pick our cotton?” trope? Regardless, CNBC said that Garcia’s firm “connects farmworkers to growers,” which I guess makes Jaguar Labor a profitable middleman in the market for illegal workers. “Sectors like construction and farming are staring down worker shortages that predate any change to immigration policy. In California, more than sixty percent of construction workers are immigrants and a quarter of them are undocumented,” according to the story. California’s unemployment rate is among the highest in the nation, and according to a Public Policy Institute last June, “about 10% of Californians — almost 2 million — are un- or underemployed as of the last quarter.” Two million illegals. Two million unemployed citizens. Does anybody else see the problem here?

Can anyone else taste the crocodile tears when Los Angeles restaurant owner (and illegal alien employer, apparently) Courtney Kaplan complained, “The biggest challenge for us, aside from the lost revenue and the decrease in business, has been the uncertainty of every day.” Overregulation and overtaxation jack up the price of everything in California, including labor. Now, business and political leaders swear to God the state’s economy can’t function without the underpaid workers they euphemistically call “undocumented.”Could we not use “undocumented,” please? The correct legal term — as in, it’s written into our immigration laws — is “illegal alien.” “Alien” because they’re foreign to this country. “Illegal” because they entered illegally. Here’s the exit question — not for you or me, dear reader, but for California. If your four-trillion-dollar behemoth is built on the backs of illegal aliens, is it really worth that much?

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“By giving Biden’s “portrait” in the Rose Garden to a machine, Trump is doing more than just mocking his former opponent..”

Trump Epically Trolls Biden Again (Margolis)

President Donald Trump has never been one to miss an opportunity for humor at the expense of his political rivals, and his latest idea may be his boldest act of trolling yet. In a conversation with Reagan Reese in the Oval Office, Trump revealed his vision for the redesigned Rose Garden, where presidential portraits will line the walkways in ornate gold frames. But when it came to Joe Biden, Trump had something very different in mind. As he showed Reese the new portraits, she remarked, “I love the frames, I love the gold.” Trump explained, “So that was done for very high-end paintings. I’m looking at frames and saying, ‘what about that one?’” Then, Reese pressed him on whether Biden would also get a spot in the display. Trump paused, then grinned. “Isn’t that an interesting question,” he said. “And I’ll listen to you too, because it’s a decision I have to make. We put up a picture of the autopen.”

The room erupted in laughter. “Oh, that’s hilarious,” Reese told him. Trump didn’t miss a beat. “He didn’t win the race. He lost badly. He was a horrible president.” To prove he was serious, Trump even showed Reese a mock-up of what the so-called “Biden Autopen” portrait would look like hanging in the Rose Garden alongside the greats. “So what do you think?” he asked her. “I think you got to,” Reese responded. “I gotta do it,” Trump said. The autopen has been around since the 1950s, but its constitutional legitimacy has always been questionable. Barack Obama tested the limits in 2013, signing a bill into law from a Hawaiian vacation with cover from a Bush-era legal memo. But the Biden administration took things much further, routinely using the device in ways that raise doubts about whether the president himself even approved pardons or executive orders issued in his name.

https://twitter.com/nicksortor/status/1962668061128863812?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1962668061128863812%7Ctwgr%5Eaa928af76cfb59d98c6436ee59841090050b7320%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fpjmedia.com%2Fmatt-margolis%2F2025%2F09%2F02%2Fthis-might-be-trumps-most-epic-trolling-of-joe-biden-ever-n4943251

No president had ever relied on the autopen so often — or under such a veil of secrecy. The revelation was especially troubling given that it happened during a presidency already clouded by widespread doubts about the commander-in-chief’s mental capacity.In June, it emerged that the Biden administration used the autopen for pardons and executive orders even while Biden was physically present in Washington, a glaring inconsistency that suggests he may not have known, or consented to, what was being done in his name. The crisis deepened in July when the New York Times revealed that Biden had not personally approved every pardon or act of clemency attributed to him.

That exposé left the most chilling question unanswered: during Biden’s presidency, was the constitutional power of the executive branch quietly transferred from the elected president to a machine and to unelected aides who controlled it? By giving Biden’s “portrait” in the Rose Garden to a machine, Trump is doing more than just mocking his former opponent; he’s cementing Biden’s legacy as a president defined by absence, detachment, and failure. Future generations walking through the Rose Garden would see Washington, Lincoln, and Reagan staring proudly from gilded frames and then, in Biden’s place, a cold mechanical autopen.

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She has 3 properties. One listed as secondary residence, that in reality is rented out. Which is illegal -1. The other two are listed as primary residence. You can’t have two. Illegal 2. Moreover, one of those is also rented out. Illegal 3.

This Explosive Revelation Could Bury Lisa Cook (Jeff Charles)

Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook is going to have some ‘splainin’ to do after it was revealed that she is renting out a home she listed as her “primary residence” when filling out mortgage applications. Charlie LeDuff of the Michigan Enjoyer in a post and video on X exposed Cook’s alleged misdeeds, noting that she “has a bank loan on a ‘secondary home in Massachusetts, which the Trump administration alleges she rents out full-time.” “A judge might call that mortgage fraud,” LeDuff added. Cook also owns a condo in Atlanta, which she claims is her primary residence on banking and government documents. The Trump administration alleges there is evidence that she rents that one out too. And that also could be mortgage fraud. But Cook also has a THIRD home in Ann Arbor, which she also lists as her primary residence on banking and government papers.

Lisa must be living in Ann Arbor in the tidy brick house with a columned portico on Jackson Avenue, right? LeDuff, who visited the third home, indicated it was not exactly in tip-top condition. “The glass in the storm door was filthy with neglect,” he wrote. “A metal lockbox—the kind used by realtors—hung on the door knob. From the porch, I could see a figure sitting at the dining room table. When I knocked, the door slightly cracked open, only to reveal a white man partially visible behind the filthy glass.”One of the individuals LeDuff spoke to at the home indicated he was renting the home. The author wrote, It’s hard to believe Cook got confused over her mortgage paperwork” because she “is a financial sophisticate, a member of the board of governors of the world’s most powerful central bank.” Cook allegedly listed two of her properties as primary residences in her 2025 government ethics filings.

Cook is facing allegations of mortgage fraud involving properties she owns in Massachusetts, Georgia, and Michigan. Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte said she misrepresented her properties to obtain more favorable mortgage rates. President Donald Trump fired Cook “for cause” last month after demanding that she resign. Cook responded by filing a lawsuit against the president, the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, and Fed Chair Jerome Powell. The suit alleges that the president does not have the authority to fire her.

This isn’t looking good for Cook. Yes, it is likely that many Americans make these types of mistakes when filling out paperwork. But, as LeDuff pointed out, Cook is definitely not one of those people. A person in her position would know better than to list a rental property as a primary residence. However, it appears many like Cook get away with this because they are in powerful positions. New York Attorney General Letitia James is facing similar allegations, and there are likely plenty more who have done the same. Perhaps at least some of these people might face accountability.

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Is this just trying to make us think things have improved? Because we sure don’t seem to see proof of that.

Israel Had ‘Total Control’ Over Congress – Trump (RT)

Israel previously had “total control” over the US Congress, and it was impossible for someone speaking “badly” of the Jewish state to be in politics, US President Donald Trump has said. Trump said that in an exclusive interview with the Daily Caller published on Monday, repeatedly stating that Israel used to have the “strongest lobby I’ve ever seen” in the US. “If you go back 20 years. I mean, I will tell you, Israel had the strongest lobby in Congress of anything or body, or of any company or corporation or state that I’ve ever seen. Israel was the strongest. Today, it doesn’t have that strong a lobby. It’s amazing,” Trump explained.

There was a time where you couldn’t speak bad, if you wanted to be a politician, you couldn’t speak badly [of Israel]. Times have changed, and US politics now has all sorts of critics of Israel, namely “AOC plus three” and “all these lunatics,” Trump added. The US president referred to the so-called ‘Squad’, an informal progressive left-wing faction of the Democratic Caucus in the US House, originally composed of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley, and Rashida Tlaib, known for their strong anti-Israel stance.

The conflict between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, prompted by a surprise assault on southern Israel mounted by the Palestinian group on October 7, 2023, has further eroded West Jerusalem’s influence in the US, Trump suggested. “They may be winning the war, but they’re not winning the world of public relations, you know, and it is hurting them,” he said. At the same time, Trump praised himself for what he had done for Israel, claiming that “nobody has done more” for the country. The US president said Israel was “amazing” since he has been enjoying “good support” from them in return as well.

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Next, he’ll send them to Chicago and Baltimore. Saying it’s his job as a president to keep people safe. It’ll all end up at SCOTUS.

Democrat Judge Rules Trump Deployment of National Guard To LA Was Illegal (ZH)

A federal judge in California ruled on Tuesday that President Donald Trump violated a 19th century law when he mobilized 4,000 National Guard troops and 700 marines to Los Angeles in June. “The evidence at trial established that Defendants systematically used armed soldiers (whose identity was often obscured by protective armor) and military vehicles to set up protective perimeters and traffic blockades, engage in crowd control, and otherwise demonstrate a military presence in and around Los Angeles,” wrote US District Court Judge Charles Breyer (Clinton) in a 52-page ruling. “In short, Defendants violated the Posse Comitatus Act,” he continued. Breyer’s ruling follows a three-day trial last month, in which lawyers for the state of California argued that Trump had exceeded his authority when he deployed the federal troops to deal with thousands of protesters who took to the streets of downtown LA against his immigration policies.

California asked Breyer to order the Trump administration to return control of the remaining troops to Gov. Gavin Newsom, and to halt the use of the military “to execute or assist in the execution of federal law.” Of note, Breyer’s order is limited to California, and Trump doesn’t have to withdraw the 300 National Guard troops currently on the ground in LA. Those troops can continue to protect federal property under the Posse Comitatus Act – an 1878 law that prevents a president from using the military as a domestic police force without Congressional approval. According to Breyer, Trump “deployed the National Guard and Marines to Los Angeles, ostensibly to quell a rebellion and ensure that federal immigration law was enforced,” adding “There were indeed protests in Los Angeles, and some individuals engaged in violence,” but that “there was no rebellion, nor was civilian law enforcement unable to respond to the protests and enforce the law.”

The Trump administration is now prevented from using military troops in the Golden State “to execute the laws, including but not limited to engaging in arrests, apprehensions, searches, seizures, security patrols, traffic control, crowd control, riot control, evidence collection, interrogation, or acting as informants,” unless the situation falls under the Posse Comitatus Act. And while the order only applies to California, Breyer wrote that Trump’s intention to deploy National Guard troops in other cities would be “creating a national police force with the President as its chief.”

While the judge’s decision may have minimal impact on the ground in California, the case could still have nationwide implications as Trump and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth deploy National Guard members in Washington, D.C., and threaten to do so in other blue cities to address street crime. The Trump administration is likely to appeal Breyer’s decision, which could result in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and even the Supreme Court weighing in on the administration’s unconventional use of the National Guard. -Fox News. Breyer’s decision comes shortly after the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit halted one of his emergency orders issued in June in which he ordered Trump and Hegseth to hand the National Guard back to Newsom.

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What a rathole. How is it possible?

Woke Rats Jump Ship As Trump Puts CDC Under A Microscope (ZH)

The covid pandemic was an exceptional example of the abuse of government power and the classic error of putting blind faith in scientific institutions that are vulnerable to political and corporate manipulation. To put it simply, the hysteria over covid was entirely fabricated and the CDC played a primary role in perpetuating the fear. The CDC knew as early as October of 2020 that the median Infection Fatality Rate (IFR) of covid was a tiny 0.23% (meaning 99.8% of the population was not under threat). The death rate was far below the 3% initially predicted by the World Health Organization. The data also didn’t take into account the fact that the majority of deaths were people with comorbidities – Meaning many of them likely died of a different illness or long term health problems, but covid was officially assumed to be the cause.

The CDC response should have been focused on caring for the older subset of the American population which was at greater risk. Instead, the organization tried to terrorize the public with tales of hospitals “packed to capacity with the unvaccinated” while suffering on respirators (no evidence has ever been produced to support this claim). The CDC joined with Democrats to fear monger over “mass deaths in the streets”. They initially lied about the effectiveness of the shot (it is now well known that the covid vaccine does not prevent transmission). They lied about the effectiveness of natural immunity. They lied about the effectiveness of the masks. They lied about the effectiveness of social distancing. They defended the lockdowns (which were an abject failure). Almost every aspect of the pandemic response ended up being a farce.

The CDC and many of its employees act as a political propaganda mechanism, not as an objective scientific guardian of the public good. The organization functions like a cult that worships far-left bureaucratic leadership instead of adhering to the scientific method. This has become even more apparent in recent months as the agency faces scrutiny. After the firing of CDC Director Susan Monarez for refusing to institute Trump’s policy changes, the rush for the exits has begun. The woke creatures are now slithering out of the weeds to escape RFK Jr’s lawnmower.

A glaring example is the resignation of Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, a CDC director who has attacked Trump’s policies as dangerous and “unscientific”. It is perhaps no coincidence that Daskalakis is a LGBT activist that promotes transgender treatments for children (a highly unscientific practice). This is the kind of person that rises through the ranks at the CDC:

Because of the CDCs behavior during the pandemic as well as the woke agenda of their staff, the American populace has demanded accountability and reform. Trump’s decision to make RFK Jr the Secretary of the Department of Health was widely applauded because of the trespasses of the CDC and affiliated agencies during covid. Only Democrats and Big Pharma are opposed to an audit of CDC policies. It’s no surprise that the agency is facing a wave of mass firings and a wave of mass walkouts. Democrats seem to believe that the Trump Administration has no say in underlying federal operations. After all, the system has functioned this way for generations. Presidents come and go; the real power is among the unelected armies of bureaucrats. The moment these people are faced with actual oversight, they become enraged.

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The entire man looks calcified, not just the brain.

The Penguin Quits – Fast Action Needed (CTH)

New York Representative Jerry “The Penguin” Nadler has announced he is not going to seek reelection in 2026. 78-year-old Nadler was going to face a significant primary threat from the far-left.
NEW YORK – “Watching the Biden thing really said something about the necessity for generational change in the party, and I think I want to respect that,” Mr. Nadler said, adding that a younger successor “can maybe do better, can maybe help us more.” Rep. Jerry Nadler, was the former chair of the House Judiciary Committee who joined forces with Adam Schiff and spearheaded President Donald Trump’s impeachment effort. Nadler and Schiff formed a joint House impeachment committee and then hired Mary McCord as the lead staff for the effort. Mary McCord previously worked as DOJ-National Security Division head with Michael Atkinson as her office lawyer.

When McCord quit the DOJ and went to work for Schiff and Nadler, Atkinson was moved to Intelligence Community Inspector General (ICIG). As the ICIG, Michael Atkinson then changed the rules for whistleblowers within the CIA permitting a false assertion by Eric Ciaramella, who subsequently told a fictional story presented by Alexander Vindman. The fake “Ukraine Impeachment” effort stemmed from this political scheme. Vindman lied, Eric Ciaramella advanced the lie to ICIG Michael Atkinson who then spun the false allegation back to his colleague Mary McCord. That’s the origin of the fraud behind the first impeachment effort.

1/ Who told President Trump to appoint Michael Atkinson as ICIG? The appointment of Michael Atkinson was not a mistake. The impeachment was pre-planned. Find the person who put his name in front of President Trump, and you find one of the internal operatives within the Trump administration specifically working to hurt President Trump in his first term. Is that person around in term #2?

2/ Where is Michael Atkinson’s transcript? ICIG Michael Atkinson testified to the joint House subcommittee on impeachment about why he changed the rules for CIA whistleblowers. Atkinson testified about his activity to the Schiff/Nadler committee, IN FRONT OF MARY McCORD.Adam Schiff promptly classified and sealed the Atkinson deposition transcript in an attempt to forever bury it. The equity stakeholders are: (1) the House of Representatives, and (2) the CIA.NEEDED ACTION – House Speaker Mike Johnson should be able to find that Atkinson transcript, declassify and make it public. However, the CIA is likely also the equity stakeholder. So, give it to Director John Ratcliffe who then declassifies it and gives it to DNI Tulsi Gabbard for release.

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That was one weird accident.

Trump to Give Giuliani Presidential Medal of Freedom (Salgado)

After a car crash hospitalized Rudy Giuliani just after he stopped to help a crime victim, Donald Trump announced he would be giving his long-time ally a very great honor.The Presidential Medal of Freedom is the highest honor that an American civilian can receive, and Giuliani, famous for his successful tenure as New York mayor and his years of providing legal support to Donald Trump, will receive it.Trump posted on Truth Social Monday, “As President of the United States of America, I am pleased to announce that Rudy Giuliani, the greatest Mayor in the history of New York City, and an equally great American Patriot, will receive THE PRESIDENTIAL MEDAL OF FREEDOM, our Country’s highest civilian honor. Details as to time and place to follow. Thank you for your attention to this matter. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!!”

State Department Ambassador and Chief of Protocol Monica Crowley responded to the news, “Congratulations to America’s Mayor and a truly great patriot @RudyGiuliani! This is so well deserved and the best news, my friend.”Article III Project founder Mike Davis celebrated, “Well-deserved recognition for an iconic American leader. Every mayor in America should follow the broken-windows strategy @RudyGiuliani, the greatest mayor ever, developed and deployed to Make New York City Great Again in the 1990s.”Michael Ragusa, head of Giuliani’s security, released a statement on X Sunday, stating, “On the evening of August 30, 2025, in New Hampshire, Mayor Giuliani was involved in a motor vehicle accident. Prior to the incident, he was flagged down by a woman who was the victim of a domestic violence incident. Mayor Giuliani immediately rendered assistance and contacted 911. He remained on scene until responding officers arrived to ensure her safety.”

Then, Giuliani resumed his journey, and “while traveling on the highway, Mayor Giuliani’s vehicle was struck from behind at high speed. He was transported to a nearby trauma center, where he was diagnosed with a fractured thoracic vertebrae, multiple lacerations and contusions, as well as injuries to his left arm and lower leg.” Ragusa said Giuliani was recovering well, but his injuries sound pretty severe.Giuliani’s account subsequently posted an update, reporting that the woman Giuliani tried to help was actually the aggressor in the situation, and her boyfriend was the person who needed aid and medical attention. Also, as of today, Giuliani is still in the trauma center because of the severe injuries he sustained. It is unclear when he will be enough recovered to receive his award from Trump.

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Bloom

Horns

Trees

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Jul 262025
 


Rembrandt van Rijn The Angel Appearing to the Shepherds 1634

 

Absolutely Not – Senators Want Special Counsel to Investigate Obamagate (CTH)
DNI Tulsi Gabbard Reacts to former DNI James Clapper Hiring Lawyers (CTH)
Barack Obama ‘Not Going to Be Indicted’ but There’s Good News (Margolis)
Actually, Obama Can Be Indicted. Here’s Why (Margolis)
Revenge or Justice? (Victor Davis Hanson)
“Baseless?” (James Howard Kunstler)
Zelensky’s Days are Numbered, He’ll Be the Ultimate Loser (Sp.)
Out of Grace: Zelensky Loses US Backing: Larry Johnson (Sp.)
Zelensky Broke The American Controls – and Now Faces The Consequences (RT)
Putin-Zelensky Summit Only Possible To Finalize Peace Deal – Kremlin (RT)
UK Could ‘Easily’ Stab US In The Back – Patrushev (RT)
Trump Makes Alina Habba Acting US Attorney In NJ (ET)
Israel Just Drew A New Map – Without Saying It Out Loud (Blade)

 

 

 

 

Nunes
https://twitter.com/Real_RobN/status/1948415920554324305
Tulsi

Rebate


hack
https://twitter.com/LarryOConnor/status/1947628066974359870

judge
https://twitter.com/RodDMartin/status/1948560536066511060

 

 

 

 

Sundance points out that a special counsel is counterproductive, because it won’t have the cross-agencies (silos) powers that Tulsi has. Guess the fact that Lindsey Graham is the one asking for a special counsel, should alert us.

Absolutely Not – Senators Want Special Counsel to Investigate Obamagate (CTH)

Senator Lindsey Graham (Judiciary Committee) and Senator John Cornyn (SSCI) are requesting Attorney General Pam Bondi to appoint a special counsel to look into the Obama administration’s weaponization of the U.S. Intelligence Community to target Donald Trump with fabricated smears and false evidence using a fraudulent Russia connection. This should be an immediate hard no for a few reasons. Number one, the special counsel process is where investigations go to die intentionally as a design of the legislative branch defense process. Second, the special counsel would not have cross-silo access to exfiltrate information unless it was accompanied by very specific Presidential authority. It just will not work. The intelligence community information that exposes the plot will be found in very distinct ‘silos’, essentially the intelligence agencies that house the information.

Additionally, inside each of the silos there is a formal and informal process to designate that information based on its internally defined national security value. An example of silo retention can be found in the issue of the FBI housing information in “prohibited access” files. These files are not even discoverable by most internal search efforts. Within the Sentinel system there are “Restricted Access” files that are used to control who can view the file information (sources and methods etc.). The FBI or investigative official (think authorized special counsel) can see the file but cannot access the information within it without a higher clearance level. In these files the Special Counsel can request access and then review. However, recently people discovered there are “Prohibited Access” files that makes the file invisible to both outside and inside searches or queries and are exclusively controlled by the FBI Director and FBI Deputy Director.

This is an example of a sub-silo (secret file keeping) within a distinct silo (FBI, Sentinel system). A special counsel would never discover the “prohibited” files, because there’s no way from outside the system to find it. It’s a little complicated but DNI Tulsi Gabbard has been finding, declassifying and releasing these ‘prohibited access’ types of information, because as Director of National Intelligence -her clearance and position- allow her to gain full administrative level access to the entire metadata of IC information. Tulsi can essentially log into all of the 18 intelligence agencies and review everything in the data storage system. A special counsel, regardless of authority, cannot do this. President Trump can demand full administrative access for himself and so can DNI Tulsi Gabbard. The rest of the silo administrators can only see the information inside their silo.

This limited access issue is how the intelligence agencies hide information. They rely on the inability of external reviewers to see the full scope and then cross reference to all other silos using the same terminology, data points and search sequences.

EXAMPLE – Making up an operational name like “Zero Footprint“, when DNI Tulsi Gabbard is looking at that operation, she can see the full scope of information related to Zero Footprint as the information goes from the White House (finding memo) to the CIA, to the State Dept, to the Pentagon, to the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), possibly to the Joint Chiefs and then beyond to international partners (whole or part information shared). DNI Gabbard can see the entire continuum, cross reference each step in the process, see who handled the organization, communication, logistics, assignments and track each process, which enables her to map the inputs and outcomes along with the timeline. She can even see the briefings (or lack therein) to the Gang of Eight or PDB as they are recorded.

A special counsel has nowhere near this capacity. In the example above, the research required to find, extract, cross-reference, organize and then assemble the totality of all information related to such a large intelligence operation (fyi, Zero Footprint was real), takes a lot of time and effort. Tulsi Gabbard is able to designate very specific aides to assist in this process, but the demand on her time is extreme even with help. DNI Gabbard recently told Fox News (video below) she was/is using AI as a tool to do autonomous spider crawls through the various silos looking for information that pertained to specific points, phrases, times, dates and people within the 18-agency silo system. Hundreds of thousands of “return positive” files must then be sifted and reviewed for connection to the participants, and again timelines become the key.

This is a big shift in the use of AI data search engine capability within the national security information space; however, it is exactly what I have been talking about for the past several years as I traveled back and forth to DC. Now, keep in mind what I am describing above is “non-public” information. If you want to really understand the insanity of how the silos operate, you need to accept the same filing and hiding system exists even within public information. The congressional staff don’t even know what the other congressional staff are doing with information from within two different committees, like the Senate Judiciary Committee (FISC oversight) and the Senate Homeland Security Committee (DOJ-NSD), or Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (FBI – Cointel).

In essence, there is little to no information sharing within the silo process, even within the guys on the “same team,” and making matters worse sometimes a research team can gain information that is much more pertinent to the other guys looking at similar issues from within another silo. Discovering this is beyond frustrating; however, it does explain how independent researchers who share on open-source crowd sharing platforms can walk down a research trail much faster. Bottom line, a Special Counsel is an exercise in futility, unless that special counsel has the same review and extraction capability as President Trump and/or DNI Tulsi Gabbard. The best option is a team of investigators within Tulsi Gabbard’s office to continue the digging and connecting the information; then share the discoveries with DOJ officials. Previously, I said a small group within the National Security Council might also be able to deliver a similar outcome. Lastly, a tip-line allowing the private sector crowdsourcing to push puzzle pieces toward the research team might also be a big help.

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“Our representatives were never representing us. The true DC enemy is ‘We The People‘..”

DNI Tulsi Gabbard Reacts to former DNI James Clapper Hiring Lawyers (CTH)

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard appears with Greta Van Susteren to discuss the ongoing release of Intelligence Community documents showing how President Obama intelligence officials conspired to manufacture a false intelligence assessment, frame Donald Trump and begin the Trump-Russia narrative. At the end of this trail of manufactured evidence, we will inevitably end up at the Robert Mueller investigation. The continuum of the Trump-Russia narrative starts with Hillary Clinton (Fusion GPS, Perkins Coie), then transfers to the FBI (James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok); which includes the DOJ National Security Division (AG Lynch, DAG Yates, Mary McCord), then goes through the backdoor to Barack Obama (Susan Rice, Lisa Monaco) and the Legislative Branch (SSCI), and eventually elevates with DNI James Clapper and CIA Director John Brennan manufacturing the 2017 intelligence product.

All of that collective effort, all of the former created inputs, eventually culminates into the Robert Mueller Special Counsel (Andrew Weissmann) and the Lawfare ideologues charged with upholding the manufactured premise. In my opinion, the greatest legal exposure is going to be with the Mueller team because that group intentionally and purposefully knew the information being received was fraudulent – yet they used it anyway. Keep in mind that John Durham laid the Mueller/Weissmann probe naked to their enemies. Unfortunately, Weissmann and Mueller do not have enemies in Washington DC, amid any party {. Our representatives were never representing us. The true DC enemy is ‘We The People‘ – and we choose to fight them. When Robert Mueller (silo 2) appeared before a congressional committee in June 2019 to answer questions about his Russia election interference report, he was asked about the origination of Trump-Russia.

Mueller’s jaw-dropping response was, “That was not in my purview.” Wait, how can your existence be predicated on investigating Trump-Russia, and yet the origin of Trump-Russia is not in your “purview”? See the problem?!

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The Supreme Court created a lot of leeway for what a president does in his official capacity. In what capacity did Obama sonspire against Trump?

Barack Obama ‘Not Going to Be Indicted’ but There’s Good News (Margolis)

Thanks to the evidence already released by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, it’s now clear that Barack Obama engaged in corrupt efforts to sabotage President Trump. And we’re likely just scratching the surface. More damning revelations are almost certainly on the way. Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean Obama will ever see the inside of a courtroom, let alone a jail cell, even if he deserves it. But don’t confuse a lack of prosecution with vindication. During a recent appearance on Real America’s Voice, investigative journalist John Solomon joined Steve Bannon to unpack the formation of a new Department of Justice Strike Force reportedly focused on unraveling the criminal conspiracy behind the Russia collusion hoax and the government’s weaponization against President Trump. And while Obama’s fingerprints are all over the operation, Solomon made it clear that a formal indictment is highly unlikely.

“What the team will do is they’ll bring in all the different skill sets,” Solomon explained. “I think the National Security Division will be brought in. Ironically, that’s the same division that pursued Donald Trump on the classified documents but took a dive on Joe Biden’s.” According to Solomon, this newly formed strike force is modeled after the methods used to break down organized crime families. The process will focus on collecting “overt acts of the conspiracy,” then analyzing the timeline to determine whether the statute of limitations applies or if charges can be brought due to long-hidden evidence. Grand juries, subpoenas, and strategic interviews are all expected. “There’ll be lots of work and then there’ll be grand jury subpoenas. There’ll be significant interviews going on,” Solomon said. “You’ll look for your cooperating witnesses.”

The goal? Reel in the smaller fish first. “One of the things that they do is they roll up people on the low end of the scale early, and then they try to get them to turn on their bosses and get us the truth,” he said. It’s the same strategy that brought down mob bosses and drug kingpins, and now it’s being turned inward, toward the deep state.Names like John Brennan and James Comey are among those believed to be in the DOJ’s crosshairs. But then came the elephant in the room: Barack Obama. “If the ultimate targets are someone like a John Brennan or … James Comey or Barack Obama — who, by the way, is not going to be indicted. Anyone who thinks Barack Obama’s going to be indicted: it’s not going to happen,” Solomon admitted.

That legal shield, ironically, may come courtesy of Donald Trump himself. “President Trump’s immunity victory last year in the Supreme Court’s gonna protect Barack Obama. Barack Obama should send a thank-you card to Donald Trump,” Solomon quipped. But while Obama may avoid prosecution, that doesn’t mean he’s off the hook entirely. “You could imagine a scenario where they lay out a conspiracy, and Barack Obama is named as an unindicted co-conspirator,” Solomon continued. “That would be one hell of a legacy for the 44th president.” Indeed, while Obama will almost certainly avoid legal consequences, the political and historical fallout could be devastating. If he’s officially named as an unindicted co-conspirator in a plot to frame his successor, and the people who carried out that plot end up in prison, his legacy won’t just take a hit; it’ll be permanently disfigured. It’s hard to claim innocence when everyone who did your bidding goes down for the crime.

A scenario like that isn’t something CNN or MSNBC can memory-hole, no matter how hard they try. No, Barack Obama won’t be frog-marched out of his Martha’s Vineyard mansion. But if this investigation follows through, the myth of his “scandal-free” presidency could collapse under the weight of a conspiracy that once masqueraded as patriotism but now reeks of abuse, corruption, and cover-up. Obama may not go to jail, but history may render its own indictment.

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SCOTUS: “The President enjoys no immunity for his unofficial acts, and not everything the President does is official. The President is not above the law.”

Actually, Obama Can Be Indicted. Here’s Why (Margolis)

This week, investigative journalist John Solomon told Steve Bannon that despite all the evidence that has been declassified linking Barack Obama to the Russiagate hoax, Obama won’t and can’t be indicted for his role in the Russian collusion hoax. “Anyone who thinks Barack Obama’s going to be indicted: It’s not going to happen,” Solomon admitted. “President Trump’s immunity victory last year in the Supreme Court’s gonna protect Barack Obama. Barack Obama should send a thank-you card to Donald Trump.” But is Solomon right? The case Solomon is referring to, Trump v. United States (2024), was, of course, extremely consequential, but also widely misunderstood. Democrats branded the ruling as the Supreme Court granting “blanket immunity” for presidents, but that’s not what it does at all.

While the Court recognized a degree of immunity for official acts of the presidency, it drew a sharp line between what a president does in his constitutional role and what he does as a private individual or political actor. From the ruling itself: “It is these enduring principles that guide our decision in this case. The President enjoys no immunity for his unofficial acts, and not everything the President does is official. The President is not above the law.” With that in mind, the ruling does not give presidents the power to break the law with impunity. If a president lies to federal investigators, commits fraud, or abuses power outside the scope of his official duties, he can still face prosecution. The Court explicitly left the door open for criminal charges—even against sitting or former presidents—if the conduct in question was personal, political, or unrelated to the legitimate functions of the presidency.

And, let’s be honest: What Barack Obama did during the Russian collusion hoax wasn’t just political—it was a calculated abuse of power far outside the bounds of his official role. If a president lies to federal investigators, forges documents, or uses the office for personal or political revenge, those are not protected actions. He can be charged under the same criminal statutes as anyone else. For example, 18 U.S.C. § 1001 makes it a crime to lie to federal officials. Wire fraud, under 18 U.S.C. § 1343, covers schemes involving deceit through electronic communication. Other statutes—like aiding and abetting (18 U.S.C. § 2), being an accessory after the fact (18 U.S.C. § 3), or even seditious conspiracy (18 U.S.C.§ 2384)—can all apply if the president helps orchestrate or cover up unlawful acts.

That brings us to the documents released by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, which suggest Barack Obama may have done exactly that. The material is nothing short of explosive. It confirms that Obama’s inner circle—including James Clapper and John Brennan, under Obama’s direction—engineered a political smear campaign disguised as an intelligence assessment. According to the files, a high-level meeting in December 2016, led by Obama’s top national security officials, launched the coordinated leaks to the media about so-called Russian election interference—even though pre-election intelligence assessments found no such evidence.

“The evidence that we have found and that we have released directly point to President Obama leading the manufacturing of this intelligence assessment,” Gabbard stated. So obviously, the evidence suggests Obama is not innocent. The only real question now is whether he’ll ever be held accountable—or if the system will once again protect one of its own. That’s an entirely different question.

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“Obama-era officials and Clinton-campaign activists destroyed President Trump’s own credibility to sustain a workable relationship with a nuclear Russia..”

Revenge or Justice? (Victor Davis Hanson)

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard just released a trove of apparently once-classified documents — with promises of much more to follow. The new material describes the role of the Obama administration’s intelligence and investigatory directors — purportedly along with former President Barack Obama himself — in undermining the 2016 Trump presidential campaign. In addition, their efforts extended to sabotaging the 2016-2017 presidential transition and, by extension, the first three years of the Trump presidency. The released documents add some new details to what over the last decade has become accepted knowledge. Congressional committees, special prosecutors, and the inspectors general had all previously issued reports that largely confirmed the general outlines of the skullduggery that began in 2015-16.

Hillary Clinton’s campaign, later aided by the top echelon of the FBI, CIA, and the Director of National Intelligence, sought — falsely — to seed a narrative that Trump had colluded directly with Russia to win unfairly the 2016 election. When that campaign gambit failed to alter the 2016 results, the Obama administration doubled down during the transition to undermine the incoming Trump presidency. Next, Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s “all-star” legal team found no evidence of direct Trump-Putin collusion to hijack the election. But his investigation did sabotage 22 months of Trump’s first term, marked by constant leaks and hysterical rumors that Trump was soon to be convicted and jailed as a “Russian asset.” By 2020, the frustrated intelligence agencies and former “authorities” now absurdly further lied that Hunter Biden’s incriminating laptop had “all the earmarks” — once again — of Russian interference.

So, what could be new about Gabbard’s latest release? One, after the 2016 election of Donald Trump but before his inauguration, Obama convened a strange meeting with his outgoing intelligence and investigatory heads — CIA Director John Brennan, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, FBI Director James Comey, National Security Advisor Susan Rice, and a few others. Contrary to a four-year Democratic Party narrative that “18 intelligence agencies” had long claimed Russian collusion, the top directors apprised Obama that their expert colleagues had found no such evidence of Trump-Putin collusion. Yet outgoing President Obama allegedly directed them to ignore such an assessment. Instead, they began spreading narratives that President-elect Trump had been colluding with the Russians. Leaks followed. Media hysteria crested. And soon Mueller and his left-wing “dream team” of lawyers targeted President Trump.

Further new information may confirm that Brennan’s CIA — and those he briefed in the Oval Office — had known for some time that the Russians themselves were confused about why they were falsely being accused of colluding with Trump to rig the election. Of course, Russian operatives, like their Chinese counterparts, often seek to cause havoc in American institutions, such as hacking emails or spreading online disinformation. But they may have been nevertheless curious why Hillary Clinton was making such false accusations that they were working directly with Trump, and why the Obama administration was acting upon them. Obama has now claimed these new charges are outrageous and beneath the dignity of the presidency. He did not, however, flatly contradict the new information. He should have issued an unambiguous denial that he had never ordered his intelligence chiefs in December 2016 to ignore their associates’ assessments and instead to assume Trump’s collusion with Putin.

These sustained efforts of the Clinton campaign, Obama appointees, and ex-intelligence chiefs and their media counterparts between 2015 and 2020 severely undermined the 2016 Trump campaign. They bushwhacked the 2017 presidential transition. They hamstrung the Trump presidency. And they may well have hurt Trump’s 2020 election bid. Summed up, here is the damage caused by the Trump-Putin collusion lies: 1. They emboldened “experts” in 2020 to again lie blatantly and shamelessly to the American people that the incriminating Hunter Biden laptop was yet another fake product of Russian interference to help reelect Trump. 2. The media were equally guilty. Journalists partnered with current and ex-Obama appointees by disseminating fake documents like the Steele dossier and working with giants like Twitter and Facebook. During the 2020 campaign, the FBI and social media sought to censor accurate news stories that the laptop was indeed authentic and already verified as such by the FBI.

3. These operations may have had serious consequences for U.S. foreign policy. Dictatorial Russia is an adversary of the U.S. But by needlessly and falsely claiming that Russia had intervened in two elections directly to partner with Trump, Obama-era officials and Clinton-campaign activists destroyed President Trump’s own credibility to sustain a workable relationship with a nuclear Russia. In addition, the lying and extra-legal operations of the FBI and CIA only further convinced the paranoid Russians that they could not trust the U.S. government — given it had been engaging in the very conspiracy lies that were more akin to its own than America’s. Obama, Brennan, Clapper, Comey, and others will likely never face legal consequences for the damage they’ve done to our institutions and foreign policy. But that does not mean they should be exempt from an ongoing and disinterested effort to find and finally expose the whole truth.

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“If you can arrest a former president named Donald Trump, you can arrest a former president named Barack Obama.” — Peachy Keenan on “X”

“Baseless?” (James Howard Kunstler)

Don’t you think it’s time for The New York Times to stop using the cliché “baseless” when referring to allegations — now, actually, official accusations— of the seditious conspiracy to run President Trump out of office after the 2016 election? Of all the fake “journalistic” blurts emanating from this bastion of degenerate sell-outs, “baseless” is the fakest, as if the word printed in a headline were so magically potent, the sheer assertion of it can make all your problems just — poof! — go away. It’s the thought process of wicked children who fail to develop a sense of true or false, right or wrong, who grow into adults specially licensed, by some new perversion of the social contract, to get away with anything. And those wicked children have become America’s managerial class, the elite who are supposed to do your thinking for you op-ed style, the credentialed experts, such as Tony Fauci, “economist” Paul Krugman, DEI avatar and NPR honcho Katherine Maher, Harvard law prof Lawrence Tribe. . . the list is interminable, but you get the picture.

This class is also the owner / operator of America’s political Deep State, which by 2016 had grown into a colossal racketeering operation, money-laundering gazillions of taxpayer dollars into NGOs dedicated to the country’s cultural and political destruction while it processed campaign donations into fantastic fortunes for people officially earning less than $200-K a year. The racket also managed to pay for the support of multitudes allergic to working for living, as long as they were available for riots and ballot-harvesting drives. It was working at such a high pitch by the end of Barack Obama’s two terms, with the most stupendously privileged creature in the Boomer bestiary ready to take her “turn” in the Oval Office — after amassing a $300-million-plus fortune serving as US senator (salary, $174-K / year) and Secretary of State (salary $199,700 / year, then) — that you must imagine the mighty freak-out at the prospect of one Donald John Trump, outsider vulgarian extraordinaire, promising to step in and drain the whole massive, putrid, necrotic, parasitical nepo-infested quagmire of predatory grifters, leaving them gasping for their lives on the stinking Potomac mudbanks like so many grunions dying on the beach at Redondo.

Barack Obama, apparently, Darth Vadar-ized himself and was handed a light-saber (Hillary’s Steele dossier) by John Brennan, Grand Duke of Planet Intel. . . and the rest should have been history — but instead festered in the US body politic for more than ten years like an inflamed tuberculoma and is now bursting out of the Beltway’s peritoneal cavity in a spectacular spray of ordure, sticking to everyone and everything like a thousand tails pinned on the everlasting Democratic donkey. Alas, Babylon-on-the-Potomac. . . . Also: “baseless,” my ass. . . . The basis for all this mischief is in the process of having proof supplied by the one figure, DNI Gabbard, in a position to retrieve the evidence, in writing, from the various heavily ring-fenced agencies over which she is the ultimate overseer, which has not been done before, especially back in the crucial weeks of late 2020 when John Ratcliffe was in that position. The reason Tulsi succeeded this time where Ratcliffe did not is probably due to newly available A-I systems which make collation of cross-searches much easier through the countless servers of the many intel agencies. And so, now it pours forth day by day.

That’s where things stand and the dust has not even begun to settle, with former President Obama seemingly hoisted on the petard of his own making back in December of 2016. Whether or not all the declassified info can be crafted into prosecutable cases is not yet determined, but you might imagine it will come together soon enough, if at all possible. It may not add up to treason per se, but there are plenty of other serious charges generally proceeding from deprivation of rights under color of law (18 U.S.C. § 242), to seditious conspiracy, i.e., overthrow of the president (18 U.S.C. § 2384) to stuff a number of former officials into orange jumpsuits behind bars.

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“The longer that Zelensky holds on and continues the fight with the encouragement of the West, he’s going to lose more and more..”

Zelensky’s Days are Numbered, He’ll Be the Ultimate Loser (Sp.)

“Russians hold all the cards. Zelensky has no cards. All he can do is play games and placate Trump,” says Michael Maloof, former senior security policy analyst in the US Office of the Secretary of Defense, in an interview with Sputnik. According to Maloof, Zelensky is stalling for time, hoping to paint Russia as an unreliable negotiator and gain favor with Trump. The Kremlin, however, has stated that any Putin-Zelensky talks are premature, as no common ground exists yet. “The longer that Zelensky holds on and continues the fight with the encouragement of the West, he’s going to lose more and more,” Maloof warns.

Zelensky is also facing unrest at home. On July 22, Ukrainians protested his attempt to take control of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO). “I think the internal strife is going to have to be accelerated to the point where [Zelensky] is going to have to focus all of his attention on that if he intends to survive politically. But I think his days are numbered,” says Maloof. He suggests that Ukrainians may soon act to “get what’s left of Ukraine back on a stable footing with proper governance and representation.”

“Right now, the Russian perspective is that Zelensky is not a valid leader because his term had expired as president and he’s operating under martial law,” the analyst points out. Western support is also faltering, particularly after Zelensky’s controversial NABU/SAPO law, which contradicts the 2015 Ukraine–US–EU agreement on governance and foreign oversight. The West still holds financial leverage over Ukraine, while “the ultimate loser in the end will be Zelensky,” Maloof concludes.

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“There is nothing that Zelensky can point to where he can say, hey, I’ve got great support here, and I’m in good favor with Washington..”

Out of Grace: Zelensky Loses US Backing: Larry Johnson (Sp.)

Volodymyr Zelensky is facing his first wave of mass protests since 2022 — and it’s a bad omen for him, veteran ex-CIA and State Department official Larry Johnson tells Sputnik. The trouble has brewed for the past month, according to the pundit. “We had a news article by Seymour Hersh… that indicated that his sources from the CIA and Department of Defense were telling him that Zelensky was on his way out, that they’re going to get rid of him,” Johnson says. Johnson says the first impression is the protests looked staged: Pre-printed signs, some oddly in English, while Ukrainians mostly speak either Ukrainian or Russian.

Protested Zelensky’s power grab over the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO), but not forced conscription, or the failure to return bodies and pay families who have lost loved ones in the war. “The fact that there are rumors circulating that Washington wants to get rid of Zelensky is a sign that the relationship is not what it was two years ago under Biden,” the CIA veteran says. Zelensky tried to appoint his ex-Defense Minister Rustem Umerov as ambassador to the US, but Washington rejected it. Despite promises, Trump has no weapons to send — just deals to sell arms to Europe to pass to Ukraine. Signs show the US has grown tired of Zelensky. “There is nothing that Zelensky can point to where he can say, hey, I’ve got great support here, and I’m in good favor with Washington,” Johnson concludes.

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If anyone wants to get rid of anyone else in Kiev, they just accuse them of corruption and embezzlement. Can’t miss.

Zelensky Broke The American Controls – and Now Faces The Consequences (RT)

On July 22, large-scale demonstrations broke out in major Ukrainian cities – Kiev, Lviv, Kharkov, and Odessa – and continue to this day. The protests erupted after the Verkhovna Rada (the Ukrainian Parliament) approved a law limiting the authority of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO), effectively placing them under the control of the Office of the Attorney General. This legislation came shortly after NABU and SAPO launched an investigation into former Deputy Prime Minister Aleksey Chernyshov, one of Zelensky’s closest allies. Officials in Zelensky’s Office claimed that the reform was necessary to improve coordination among government bodies amid ongoing military operations and to combat Russian influence over anti-corruption institutions.

However, public outrage stemmed not only from the law itself but also from the rapid centralization of power in Ukraine. Protests persisted even after Zelensky restored the independent functioning of NABU and SAPO. Below, RT explores the motives behind the dismantling of these anti-corruption agencies and why the protests pose a threat to Zelensky’s administration. When Vladimir Zelensky took office in 2019, he vowed to support anti-corruption efforts, urging anti-corruption agencies to investigate all cases and hold even high-ranking officials accountable. However, those promises were never fulfilled. On July 22, the Rada passed Bill No. 12414, originally addressing amendments to the Criminal Procedure Code related to disappearances of people during wartime.

However, MPs from Zelensky’s Servant of the People party added amendments that effectively restructured NABU and SAPO, placing them under the control of the Attorney General, who is appointed by the president. Notably, many MPs who voted in favor of the bill and received it with applause are themselves under investigation by these anti-corruption bodies. The official justification for targeting NABU and SAPO was the investigation into Chernyshov, a presidential ally considered a candidate for prime minister, who faced allegations of abuse of power and illicit enrichment. A major corruption scandal in the construction sector emerged, making Chernyshov the highest-ranking official within the president’s team to be embroiled in such an inquiry.

According to the publication Ukrainskaya Pravda, Zelensky ordered the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) to protect Chernyshov from arrest. Despite the allegations, the court did not suspend him from his post; however, he was eventually dismissed, and the ministry disbanded. Another notable case involves NABU’s investigation into Rostislav Shurma, the former deputy head of the President’s Office. After the case was initiated, he fled to Germany. In July, German authorities, in collaboration with NABU, conducted a search of his residence in the suburbs of Munich. NABU was preparing charges against Timur Mindich, a long-time friend of Zelensky and co-owner of Studio Kvartal-95, Ukrainskaya Pravda reported. He is suspected of embezzlement in the energy sector and drone production.

Sources indicate detectives may possess recorded conversations involving Mindich in which Zelensky is mentioned. These cases involving the Ukrainian leader’s close associates triggered the crackdown on the anti-corruption agencies. This narrative has been confirmed by The Times and The Economist. On July 21, the SBU and prosecutors conducted extensive searches related to NABU employees, targeting over 80 locations nationwide. Law enforcement acted aggressively, using armed groups to force people to the ground without presenting search warrants. Later, the agency reported the detention of Ruslan Magomedrasulov, the head of NABU’s regional office. Investigators claim his father is a Russian citizen, and he failed to disclose this before obtaining access to state secrets. Allegedly, he assisted his father in conducting business in Russia, and his mother reportedly receives a pension from the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) and “makes pro-Russian comments” online. He is expected to face charges for “aiding Russia.”

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Putin already has a job. He can’t go sit at a table for endless negotiations.

Putin-Zelensky Summit Only Possible To Finalize Peace Deal – Kremlin (RT)

A summit between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky should only take place to finalize a peace settlement, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said. Zelensky has repeatedly called for a face-to-face meeting with Putin in the past several months. The Ukrainian delegation has also proposed the idea during rounds of bilateral talks in Istanbul, framing such a summit as essential to ending the conflict. While the Kremlin has not ruled out a possible Putin-Zelensky meeting, Russian officials have consistently emphasized that the groundwork must be laid first.

“A summit meeting can and should put a final point in the settlement and record the modalities and agreements that are to be developed in the course of expert work. It is impossible to do the opposite,” Peskov told reporters on Friday. Following the third round of Russia-Ukraine talks in Istanbul this week, the Kremlin spokesman accused Kiev of prematurely pushing for a summit. “They are trying to put the cart before the horse,” Peskov said, stressing that “work needs to be done, and only then can the heads of state be given the opportunity to record the achievements that have been made.” Moscow has consistently pointed to concerns about Zelensky’s legal authority.

While Russia has stated it is open to negotiations with him, officials have warned that any documents signed under Zelensky’s name could face legal challenges in the future. Zelensky’s presidential term expired in May 2024. He has refused to hold new elections, citing the ongoing state of martial law in Ukraine. Russia has argued that his status as head of state is no longer valid and that legal authority in Ukraine now lies with its parliament. Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has suggested that Zelensky’s insistence on meeting both Putin and US President Donald Trump may be aimed at getting “a massive legitimacy boost” and using the meetings as a pretext to further delay elections.

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“The United Kingdom would not hesitate to sabotage a potential thaw in US-Russia relations..”

UK Could ‘Easily’ Stab US In The Back – Patrushev (RT)

The United Kingdom would not hesitate to sabotage a potential thaw in US-Russia relations, a top aide to Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed on Friday. Nikolay Patrushev, a longtime national security official and senior Kremlin adviser, accused London of being prepared to carry out a false flag in order to derail efforts by US President Donald Trump to resolve the conflict in Ukraine and normalize ties with Moscow. “If necessary, London would easily stab Washington in the back. I believe officials in the White House realize what kind of ‘ally’ they are dealing with,” Patrushev told RIA Novosti.

His comments followed a statement last month by Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), which alleged that British intelligence was directly involved in orchestrating covert Ukrainian operations. The SVR claimed the UK had acquired torpedoes of Soviet and Russian design for potential use in a false flag incident – specifically, a staged attack on an American naval vessel in the Baltic Sea. Since Trump’s return to office in January and the departure of Joe Biden’s Democratic administration, Russian officials have frequently pointed to London as the primary force behind the continued conflict in Ukraine. They argue that the British government’s firm support is an obstacle to peace and a strategic effort to block reconciliation between Washington and Moscow.

Moscow has portrayed the Ukraine conflict as a NATO-driven proxy war meant to weaken Russia at the expense of Ukrainian lives. Past reporting by The New York Times and The Times of London has confirmed that both US and British officials have played more active roles in directing Ukrainian military strategy than publicly acknowledged by their governments.

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Why did the U.S. district court judges of New Jersey refuse Habba and pick her assistant? i haven’t seen a single reason. Just because they could?

Trump Makes Alina Habba Acting US Attorney In NJ (ET)

President Donald Trump withdrew his nomination of Alina Habba to serve as New Jersey’s top federal prosecutor, a Justice Department official confirmed on Thursday. The development comes after a federal court declined to retain Habba in the role of U.S. attorney for New Jersey and opted to install Desiree Leigh Grace. On Tuesday, U.S. district court judges of New Jersey selected Grace, who was Habba’s first assistant, to serve as U.S. attorney as Habba’s 120-day term in the office was reaching its end. Attorney General Pam Bondi then fired Grace in response to the judges’ decision. “[Habba] has been doing a great job in making NJ safe again. Nonetheless, politically minded judges refused to allow her to continue in her position, replacing Alina with the First Assistant,” Bondi wrote on X after the decision.

“Accordingly, the First Assistant United States Attorney in New Jersey has just been removed,” she said. “This Department of Justice does not tolerate rogue judges — especially when they threaten the President’s core Article II powers.” A Justice Department official told The Epoch Times that Trump withdrew Habba’s nomination to be New Jersey’s U.S. attorney, and she was appointed first assistant U.S. attorney. This means Habba becomes the acting U.S. attorney, as the position is now vacant after Grace’s firing. “Donald J. Trump is the 47th President. Pam Bondi is the Attorney General. And I am now the Acting United States Attorney for the District of New Jersey,” Habba wrote in a statement posted to X. “I don’t cower to pressure. I don’t answer to politics. This is a fight for justice. And I’m all in.”

Earlier on Thursday, Grace wrote on LinkedIn that she’s honored the judges selected her “on merit” and that she is prepared to follow that order and “begin to serve in accordance with the law.” “I’ve served under both Republican and Democratic administrations. I’ve been promoted four times in the last five years by both—including four months ago by this administration. Politics never impacted my work at the Department. Priorities change, of course, and resources are shifted, but the work and the mission were steady,” Grace said.

However, due to Habba now serving as acting U.S. attorney, Grace likely can no longer assume that office. Habba previously served as Trump’s defense attorney in multiple court cases. Last week, Trump’s pick for U.S. attorney of the Northern District of New York, John Sarcone III, was rejected by judges on that district court. Bondi then appointed Sarcone as a “special attorney” to her, granting him the powers of a U.S. attorney indefinitely.

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“By offering the far right a symbolic prize on annexation, Netanyahu appears to be stalling a government collapse..”

Israel Just Drew A New Map – Without Saying It Out Loud (Blade)

In a significant yet non-binding move, the Israeli legislature has overwhelmingly approved a declaration urging the immediate extension of Israeli sovereignty over Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank and the Jordan Valley. The motion, which passed by a vote of 71 to 13, was backed by right-wing and center-right factions including Likud, Shas, Religious Zionism, Otzma Yehudit, and Yisrael Beiteinu. The text declares that the October 7, 2023 attack by Hamas — referred to in Israeli political discourse as the “Simchat Torah Massacre” — proves that the creation of a Palestinian state poses a mortal danger to Israel’s existence. “The Knesset declares that the State of Israel has the natural, historical, and legal right to all parts of the Land of Israel,” the resolution reads.

“The Knesset calls on the Government of Israel to act without delay to apply sovereignty… over all areas of Jewish settlement in Judea, Samaria, and the Jordan Valley.” Though labeled symbolic, Palestinian experts view the vote as laying the bureaucratic foundation for a permanent Israeli presence and governance in the West Bank, the heartland of a future Palestinian state as envisioned by international consensus. Saad Nimr, professor of political science at Birzeit University in the West Bank, told RT the implications of the Knesset’s move are far-reaching. “This is not symbolic at all,” Nimr said. “It means these settlements are now treated as Israeli cities. They’re no longer ‘occupied’ under military law. This is the legal and bureaucratic infrastructure of annexation.”

He continued: “The Israeli ministries — not the military — will now oversee health, welfare, planning, and infrastructure in these areas. It’s not about theory. It’s about bulldozers, budgets, and expansion.” Dimitri Diliani, a member of the Fatah Revolutionary Council, echoed that sentiment. “To describe the vote as symbolic is dangerously naive,” Diliani warned. “In Israeli politics, symbolism is often a precursor to de facto annexation. While the Knesset motion lacks binding legislative authority, it institutionalizes consensus in both government and opposition to expand the State of Israel’s settler-colonial project with new domestic political legitimacy.” Diliani added that members of the Knesset are already pushing legislation to replace the internationally recognized term “West Bank” with the biblical “Judea and Samaria” — further entrenching a nationalist narrative in Israeli law.

Many analysts see the vote not only as ideological, but also as a tactical political maneuver to preserve Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s fragile governing coalition. “It’s quite clear this was a political exchange,” said Nimr. “[The leader of the National Religious Party–Religious Zionism Bezalel] Smotrich and [the leader of the Otzma Yehudit (“Jewish Power”) party] Ben Gvir threatened to leave the government if negotiations in Doha led to a Gaza ceasefire. This vote is Netanyahu’s way of keeping them on board.” By offering the far right a symbolic prize on annexation, Netanyahu appears to be stalling a government collapse – even as truce talks with Hamas continue under Qatari mediation. Diliani described the move as “opportunistic,” adding: “It’s designed to pre-empt mounting international legal scrutiny, particularly after the International Court of Justice advisory opinion in July 2023, which declared Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory illegal.”

The reaction from the international community was swift but toothless. Jordan condemned the vote as “a blatant violation of international law.” The European Union and the Arab League issued similarly worded rebukes, reaffirming their commitment to a two-state solution. But both Palestinian analysts were unshaken by the lack of meaningful repercussions. “The historical record teaches us that international consensus does not always translate into action,” said Diliani. “Israel’s alignment with key Western powers, particularly the United States, has only grown stronger – even amid documented live-streamed Israeli genocide in Gaza and tremendous war crimes in Jerusalem and the rest of the West Bank.” He cited continued US military support, which amounts to $3.8 billion annually in aid and has reached nearly $20 billion in additional military assistance since the war on Gaza began in October 2023.

“Israel continues to enjoy extensive trade privileges with the EU,” Diliani added. “Over three-quarters of a million illegal colonial Israeli settlers reside in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. Yet the response from the international community remains negligible. Absent deterrent sanctions or accountability mechanisms, Israel interprets this as tacit permission to proceed.” Nimr was equally scathing. “Israel went into this decision with an overwhelming majority in the Knesset. That means they don’t care about the international community’s opinion. The EU witnessed with their own eyes the genocide in Gaza, the use of hunger as a weapon, and still didn’t take any real action.” “If there is no punishment,” Nimr said, “it’s interpreted as agreement. So now, they feel they have a green light.”

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Macron


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Jun 262025
 


Rembrandt van Rijn Self portrait with Saskia 1636

 

Trump Pushes Back On Pentagon Intel, Says Iran Nuclear Sites ‘Destroyed’ (ZH)
Israel, CIA Agree With Trump On ‘Destruction’ Of Iran’s Nuclear Capability (ZH)
Iran’s Stunning Admission That Proves Trump Was Right (Margolis)
Trump Hoping for Comprehensive Peace Agreement With Iran: Witkoff (ET)
NATO Leaders Agree To 5% Hike In Defense Spending (ZH)
NATO Members’ Leaders Snubbing Zelensky At Key Summit – Orban (RT)
‘Ukraine Is Not In NATO, My Job Is To Keep It That Way: Orbán (RMX)
Trump Denies Discussing Ceasefire With Zelensky (RT)
‘Yapping Bitches In Brussels A Direct Threat To Russia’ – Medvedev (RT)
NATO Boss Calls Trump ‘Daddy’ (RT)
‘Ukraine Can Win’ – New NATO Commander (RT)
Peace Dialogue With Kiev On Hold – Moscow (RT)
Escape from New York: Democrats Embrace Socialist for New Mayor (Turley)
Gold: The Only True Asset in A Broken Global System (Piepenburg)

 

 

The 12-day war is over.

NATO
https://twitter.com/sahouraxo/status/1937510323252285840

Bannon

Candace

Tel Aviv

 

 

 

 

We have 4 sources that say the Iran nuke sites are ‘heavily destroyed’: CIA, Trump admin, Israel and Iran. But networks like CNN will have none of it. You be the judge.

Trump Pushes Back On Pentagon Intel, Says Iran Nuclear Sites ‘Destroyed’ (ZH)

There are two apt sayings for this current situation facing the White House in the wake of the Trump-ordered bombings against Iran’s nuclear facilities. First, what’s worse in war-time decision-making than doing the wrong thing? Doing it incompletely. Second, it is always easy to begin a war, but very difficult to stop one. And so here President Trump and his top officials find themselves, defending the ‘limited’ strikes and proclaiming the destruction of Iran’s nuclear program and enrichment capability in the face of a skeptical media. The escalation dialectic – which the mainstream media is so good at – begins… The heat is on an the NATO summit in The Hague, where Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told reporters, “Of course we’re doing a leak investigation with the FBI right now because this information is for internal purposes, battle damage assessments.”

Referencing yesterday’s leaked DIA report which strongly suggests Iran’s nuclear program is “mostly intact” – he continued, “And CNN and others are trying to spin it to make the president look bad when this was an overwhelming success.” And Trump himself said, “They really don’t know.” And in response to the contrary intelligence, “I think Israel is gonna be telling us very soon because [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu] is going to have people Involved in that whole situation.” “This was an unbelievable hit by genius pilots and genius people in the military, and they’re not being given credit for it because we have scum that’s in this room. And not all of you are… CNN is scum. MSDNC is scum. The New York Times is scum. They’re bad people. They’re sick,” Trump said. “And what they’ve done is they’re trying to make this unbelievable victory into something less.”

And here’s Secretary of State Marco Rubio, somewhat hedging: “(Iran’s nuclear) program today has been set behind significantly from where it was a week ago. It is in far worse shape today than it was a week ago because of US actions and because some of the actions Israelis took,” Rubio told Politico. “So, the bottom line is they are much further away from a nuclear weapon today than they were before the president took this bold action,” he said, adding that “very significant, substantial damage” was done to a “variety of different components.”

Iran has meanwhile admitted that nuclear sites are ‘badly damaged’ – perhaps in hopes of giving Trump what he wants in terms of PR to ensure the bombing will stop and ceasefire will hold; however, the Iranians have also vowed to pursue their nuclear energy program without interruption and that it remains a matter of national sovereignty. To review of the leaked DIA assessment, one official had told CNN: “So the (DIA) assessment is that the US set them back maybe a few months, tops.” The White House acknowledged the existence of the report marked top secret but said they disagreed with it. Trump, Rubio, and Hegseth are in Europe proclaiming the ‘overwhelming success’ of the strikes:

https://twitter.com/Ronxyz00/status/1937816872596189379?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1937816872596189379%7Ctwgr%5E6b630d8b117c227f42c47e2d0ea17b89b3921ebd%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com%2Fgeopolitical%2Ftrump-pushes-back-pentagon-intel-insists-iran-nuclear-sites-destroyed

So this appears yet another case of the White House disagreeing with its own intelligence community (IC) – in an ongoing awkward situation which has Iraq war vibes. However, without doubt the IC is still working on an overall consensus, based likely on several different intel threads, and across agencies. One obvious danger from the perspective of Western decision-makers (and Israel): if Iran was not intent on getting a bomb before, they likely are now – given their very existence is under threat.

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“..was Iran’s core nuclear program really destroyed? If everyone can ‘agree’ – at least publicly for the sake of Trump’s narrative – this might mean Iran can simply continue enriching, but truly in secret this time.”

Israel, CIA Agree With Trump On ‘Destruction’ Of Iran’s Nuclear Capability (ZH)

Israel’s military chief of staff as well as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have spoken up following President Trump’s words before Wednesday’s NATO summit which declared Iran’s nuclear program ‘obliterated’.The Israeli military agrees, saying that the program suffered “systemic” damage and was set back years due to both the Israeli warplane attacks, as well as the large-scale US B-2 bomber raids on three main facilities.”According to the assessment of senior officials in the IDF (Israel Defense Forces) Intelligence Directorate, the damage to the nuclear program is not a pinpoint strike but a systemic one – the cumulative achievement allows us to determine that Iran’s nuclear project sustained severe, broad, and deep damage and has been set back by years,” the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir said Wednesday.

The military further declared that IDF’s goal of the “immediate existential threat” from Iran has been met. Trump too said Wednesday, “Last weekend, the United States successfully carried out a massive precision strike on Iran’s nuclear enrichment facilities and it was very, very successful.” Netanyahu has also offered his agreement – at least on the Fordow site: The US’ strike on the Fordow nuclear facility in Iran has eliminated critically important infrastructure and rendered it inoperable, with attacks by the US and Israel setting back Iran’s ability to develop nuclear weapons by many years, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said in a statement on behalf of the Israel Atomic Energy Commission (IAEC).

“The devastating US strike on Fordow destroyed the site’s critical infrastructure and rendered the enrichment facility inoperable. We assess that the American strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities, combined with Israeli strikes on other elements of Iran’s military nuclear program, has set back Iran’s ability to develop nuclear weapons by many years,” the statement reads. It noted that this “achievement can continue indefinitely if Iran does not get access to nuclear material.” Interestingly, the Israeli side is also confirming the use of ground commandos that breached Iran during the 12-day conflict. Commando units, along with the Israeli Air Force, carried out “deception” tactics that helped Israel gain control of Iran’s airspace as well as other strategic goals, the IDF’s Zamir revealed further. “These achievements were made possible, among other things, by the integration and deception carried out by air forces and ground commando units, which operated covertly in the enemy’s depth and granted us operational freedom of action,” he said.

Political cover? War theater? or for real? It’s not just Israel confirming it now. CIA Director John Ratcliffe issued a statement about Intelligence on Iran’s Nuclear Program: “CIA can confirm that a body of credible intelligence indicates Iran’s Nuclear Program has been severely damaged by the recent, targeted strikes.” But all of this again begs the question… was Iran’s core nuclear program really destroyed? If everyone can ‘agree’ – at least publicly for the sake of Trump’s narrative – this might mean Iran can simply continue enriching, but truly in secret this time.

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“The Iranian foreign ministry admitted that their nuclear facilities were ‘badly damaged’ by U.S. strikes over the weekend after reports surfaced about a low-confidence U.S. intelligence assessment suggesting otherwise..”

Iran’s Stunning Admission That Proves Trump Was Right (Margolis)

It’s a telling moment when the world’s leading state sponsor of terror is more honest about American military success than the so-called guardians of truth in our media. Iran’s regime, notorious for its propaganda and defiance, has now publicly conceded that recent U.S. strikes “badly damaged” its nuclear facilities. “The Iranian foreign ministry admitted that their nuclear facilities were ‘badly damaged’ by U.S. strikes over the weekend after reports surfaced about a low-confidence U.S. intelligence assessment suggesting otherwise,” National Review reports. This is no minor admission — this is Tehran waving a white flag, if only for a moment, and acknowledging that American power still matters. Yet the legacy media, so quick to trumpet any narrative that undermines U.S. strength, have bent over backwards to ignore or diminish this reality.

For years, the media have clung to the delusion that Iran’s nuclear ambitions could be tamed through photo-op diplomacy and hollow gestures — or, under Barack Obama and Joe Biden, by handing over pallets of cash and granting Tehran a fast track to the bomb, all while pretending containment was possible. When President Donald Trump flipped the script with a maximum pressure campaign that crippled Iran’s nuclear trajectory, the media called it reckless. And now, after a flawlessly executed U.S. strike that wiped out key nuclear sites and brought an immediate ceasefire, they’re scrambling to downplay the results.

Rather than acknowledge a clear victory, CNN and others rushed to circulate a conveniently “leaked” intelligence report claiming the operation only set Iran back a few months. The report, conveniently classified until it became politically useful, magically appeared in the hands of CNN’s Natasha Bertrand, best known for pushing the phony Hunter Biden laptop “disinformation” narrative. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt wasn’t having it. She torched the report as “flat-out wrong” and slammed CNN for laundering a smear campaign on behalf of the swamp, using an “anonymous, low-level loser” in the intel community as cover.

This isn’t journalism. It’s damage control from a media establishment that still can’t stomach a Trump victory, even when it means stopping Iran from getting the bomb. While traveling in Europe with President Trump, Secretary of State Marco Rubio weighed in on the controversy surrounding the intelligence leak about the Iran airstrikes, calling it one of the most frustrating aspects of Washington. In an interview with Politico, Rubio made it clear that the problem isn’t just the leak itself; it’s how the leaked information gets twisted to serve an agenda.

“Well, I can’t talk to you about intelligence,” Rubio began, but he quickly pointed out how dangerous and misleading these leaks can be. “Intelligence leaks are one of the most frustrating things anywhere,” he said, noting that it’s not just about unauthorized disclosures but the way those disclosures are almost always distorted. “In these leaks, what you typically have is someone who read it and then leaks it to the media, giving it the spin and the angle they want it to have because they’ve got some purpose: embarrass the administration, they were against the action, whatever it may be.”Rubio’s comments reflect growing concerns that the so-called intelligence report CNN ran with wasn’t just a breach; it was a political hit job meant to undercut Trump’s successful strike on Iran’s nuclear program. Iran’s rare admission of damage is a crushing blow to the legacy media, which cares more about downplaying American strength than reporting the truth.

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“..Trump said the war between the U.S. ally and its regional rival “could have gone on for years” and “destroyed the entire Middle East” but that “it didn’t, and never will!”

Trump Hoping for Comprehensive Peace Agreement With Iran: Witkoff (ET)

Talks between the United States and Iran resumed one day after Iran and Israel reached a Washington-brokered cease-fire agreement, Steve Witkoff, U.S. special envoy to the Middle East, said on June 24, describing the discussions as promising. Witkoff made the comments in an interview on Fox News after U.S. President Donald Trump announced on June 23 that a cease-fire deal had been reached to end 12 days of fighting. Trump said on his Truth Social platform that Iran would first stop its attacks for 12 hours, after which Israel would stop its attacks. After 24 hours, there would be an official end to the war, he said. Both Iran and Israel accused each other of violating the truce shortly after it was announced.

Despite those early violations, the cease-fire appeared to be holding as of June 24, and Witkoff told Fox News that the Trump administration is hopeful of a long-term peace deal. “With regard to the Iranians, the president has said unequivocally, that he wants to see and is hopeful for a comprehensive peace agreement that goes beyond even the cease-fire. We are already talking to each other, not just directly but also through interlocutors. I think that the conversations are promising,” Witkoff said. “We are hopeful that we can have a long-term peace agreement that resurrects Iran, that brings it into the league of nations, that creates long-term prosperity for Iran, and most importantly, allows for the [Gulf Cooperation Council] to grow economically,” he said. Iran is not a member of the regional union of countries.

Witkoff said now is the time to sit down with the Iranians and “get to a comprehensive peace agreement,” adding, “I am very confident that we are going to achieve that.” Witkoff’s comments come after Israel launched an air war on June 13, attacking Iranian nuclear facilities and killing top military commanders as part of what it said were efforts to prevent Tehran from developing nuclear weapons. The Iranian government, which has repeatedly said its uranium enrichment program is peaceful, retaliated with barrages of missiles on Israeli military sites and cities. In announcing the cease-fire agreement, Trump said the war between the U.S. ally and its regional rival “could have gone on for years” and “destroyed the entire Middle East” but that “it didn’t, and never will!”

He said both nations had agreed to remain peaceful and respectful during the cease-fire, and that, assuming everything works out as it should, the “12-day war” would come to an end. Witkoff reiterated Trump’s comments to Fox News, declaring the conflict over. “Since this conflict began, we’ve been talking to [Iran] about having some sort of peaceful settlement, and Iran’s one caveat has always been that Israel had to stop its campaign,” Witkoff said. “And once Israel fulfilled its objective, which they did, and once the United States fulfilled its objective, which it did … the president was able to go to both parties and get a cease-fire done. “And by the way, the proof is in the pudding. No one’s shooting at each other. It’s over.”

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https://twitter.com/nicksortor/status/1937881850908684394

For what it’s worth. First, show us the money.

“There is an irreversible path for Ukraine to join NATO—and that remains true today, and will still be true after this summit..”

NATO Leaders Agree To 5% Hike In Defense Spending (ZH)

As expected, NATO members have agreed to new commitment to significantly boost defense spending, aiming to raise military budgets to 5% of GDP over the next decade—more than double the current 2% benchmark—at the ongoing major annual summit being held in The Hague. The Trump-backed decision is being finalized in Netherlands this week, with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte having hailed the proposal as a “quantum leap’ during a press briefing. Trump declared Tuesday that we’re with NATO “all the way”. And on Wednesday he’s expected to give a big address, as all eyes are focused on the Iran bombing and what’s next. Bloomberg notes, also as fully expected and long ago previewed, that the spending target includes 3.5% via core defense and 1.5% in related investment covering infrastructure and cybersecurity.

Rutte and officials gathered in the Netherlands have stressed that all member states must participate, highlighting that Spain’s hesitation over the steep cost—nearly $90 billion annually—will not exempt it from the pledge. “NATO doesn’t allow for opt-outs or side deals,” he has firmly stated. The increased funding is intended to dramatically scale up NATO’s military production, including building thousands of tanks and multiplying air defense systems by five, at a moment the alliance is staring down Russia amid the Ukraine war, where Moscow forces are establishing a huge buffer zone in the north and east, and actually increasing territory beyond Donetsk’s western border.

WikiLeaks meanwhile says the arms companies will continue to be the only real winners…

Rutte has of course identified Russia as NATO’s “most significant and direct threat” and reiterated full support for Ukraine, despite Washington having named China has America’s ‘top pacing threat’ and long-term main miliary and economic rival. Of course, alliance has already funneled hundreds of billions of dollars into a conflict with Russia that has resulted in hundreds of thousands of lives on both sides, and Ukraine losing about 20% of its territory.NATO leaders as of Wednesday have vowed to keep pursuing Ukraine’s path to membership, with Rutte emphasizing that the question of accession was never ruled out, especially not before the war. “There is an irreversible path for Ukraine to join NATO—and that remains true today, and will still be true after this summit,” he has said.

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“Orban being Orban delivered the response the Europeans did not want to hear. Trump is great. Russia is not scary. The biggest threat to the EU is their continued slide away from competitive economics. As to Zelenskyy, NATO has no business in Ukraine.”

NATO Members’ Leaders Snubbing Zelensky At Key Summit – Orban (RT)

Several NATO members, including the US, are deliberately avoiding meeting with Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky at the bloc’s key summit in The Hague, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has claimed. Speaking prior to the gathering on Wednesday, Orban noted that Zelensky would only attend the informal dinner and “will not participate in the NATO summit in any official form,” indicating that “a clear sign that the previous chapter is over.” The Hungarian prime minister went on to explain that this is a drastic change compared to previous years, stating that “the Americans, the Turks, the Slovaks, and we have made it clear that we do not want to sit at the same table with Zelensky when it comes to NATO.” He further stressed Hungary’s continued opposition to Ukraine joining NATO or the EU.

Orban has repeatedly warned that Kiev’s membership in any of the blocs would drag the West into a direct conflict with Russia. Meanwhile, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto noted that the 2025 summit would be the first since 2022 where the focus would be not on stepping up support for Ukraine, but on strengthening the bloc’s collective defense. “With Ukraine’s NATO membership off the agenda, direct confrontation with Russia has been avoided. Rationality has prevailed,” he added. Meanwhile, US President Donald Trump confirmed that he would “probably” meet with Zelensky on the sidelines of the summit. At the same time, he described the Ukrainian leader as being in a “tough situation,” adding that he “should have never been there.”

In another sign of the simmering tensions between Zelensky and Trump, the Washington Post reported that NATO leaders are “tiptoeing around rifts” during the summit, trying to showcase “a veneer of unity”. The paper reported that “NATO officials are trying to keep [Trump and Zelensky] apart as much as possible in public — a recognition of Trump’s occasionally volcanic disdain for the Ukrainian leader.” In this vein, NATO organizers positioned Zelensky far from Trump during the official summit photo-op, according to footage broadcast by C-SPAN.

orban

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“So, he is the man of common sense, which means that the new wars are getting shorter and the old wars are running out of fuel, which is the consequence of his activity.”

‘Ukraine Is Not In NATO, My Job Is To Keep It That Way: Orbán (RMX)

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán voiced skepticism over proposed NATO plans to raise defense spending to 5 percent of member states’ GDP, calling the target unworkable under existing EU budgetary constraints and warning of economic consequences if Brussels doesn’t radically change its fiscal framework. “We are able to do it, it is not easy,” Orbán said at the NATO summit in The Hague on Wednesday. “But the whole calculation of budget regulation of the European Union must be changed. So if we keep the regulations as it is, nobody in the European Union can fulfill 5 percent, whatever they say. We have to recalculate everything in a different method; in that case, we can do it.” Orbán’s comments reflect his broader concern that NATO is drifting into dangerous territory — both financially and geopolitically.

Rather than supporting yet another push toward militarization, the Hungarian leader emphasized that Europe’s real threat is not military in nature but economic. “The real threat is not security-wise, it is economic and losing our competitiveness in global trade,” he said. “That’s our problem.” He also reiterated his long-standing opposition to NATO involvement in Ukraine, restating Hungary’s commitment to keeping the alliance out of the war. “NATO has no business in Ukraine,” Orbán said plainly. “Ukraine is not a member of NATO, nor is Russia. And my job is to keep it as it is.” Orbán has repeatedly argued that escalating military aid and deepening Western involvement risk prolonging the war and damaging European interests. His administration has opposed further sanctions on Russia and has long expressed concern over the possibility of NATO and EU membership for Kyiv in the current climate.

On Tuesday, the Hungarian prime minister hit back at thinly veiled criticism of his administration from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky — an honorary guest at the summit in the Netherlands. Zelensky suggested that it is “unfair when a single party blocks the Union’s decision,” referencing Hungarian opposition to further negotiations with Kyiv on EU membership. In response, Orbán wrote on X, “President, with all due respect: the European Union was founded to bring peace and prosperity to its member states. Accepting a country that is at war with Russia would immediately drag the EU into a direct conflict. It is unfair to expect any member state to take this risk.

”In other remarks in The Hague, Orbán further highlighted his alignment with U.S. President Donald Trump, praising what he called Trump’s “common sense” approach to foreign policy and suggesting that a shift in Washington’s leadership is already having a stabilizing effect on global conflicts. “The international order is more based on common sense,” Orbán said. “And the president of the United States is a man of common sense, as you have seen, just recently, to manage the conflict between Iran and Israel. So, he is the man of common sense, which means that the new wars are getting shorter and the old wars are running out of fuel, which is the consequence of his activity.”

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He may deliver some weaponry. But other than that?

Trump Denies Discussing Ceasefire With Zelensky (RT)

US President Donald Trump has denied discussing a Ukraine ceasefire during his meeting with Vladimir Zelensky on the sidelines of the NATO summit in The Hague, directly contradicting the Ukrainian leader’s earlier remarks. Zelensky had described the meeting as “long and substantive,” claiming the two leaders had discussed ways to “achieve a real peace.” Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, Trump said the topic was not part of the conversation. “No, no, I just… wanted to know how he’s doing,” he said. Trump added that he planned to speak with Russian President Vladimir Putin in hopes of bringing the conflict to an end, though he did not specify when the conversation might take place.

When pressed on his past claim that he could end the war within 24 hours, Trump said the comment had been “sarcastic.” He acknowledged that resolving the conflict would not be easy, describing Putin as “more difficult” than anticipated and admitting he “had some problems with Zelensky” as well. Asked if the US would contribute to the $5 billion in military aid pledged to Ukraine by other NATO countries, Trump reiterated only that the conflict must end.

In another exchange, a BBC Ukraine journalist asked whether the US would sell Patriot missile systems to Ukraine. Trump replied that the systems were “very hard to get” and that the US also needed them. He noted that Washington was supplying Patriots to Israel but would “see if we can make some available.” Since taking office in January, Trump has repeatedly called for a negotiated settlement to the Ukraine conflict. Earlier this week, he said he hoped to reach a “deal with Russia” to stop the fighting. Moscow has maintained that it is willing to hold talks “without preconditions,” but insists that any lasting agreement must reflect the current battlefield realities and Ukraine’s neutrality.

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“Brussels today is Russia’s true enemy,” he wrote. “Slowly but surely, the EU is transforming into a self-sustaining military bloc that will gradually come to compete with NATO…”

‘Yapping Bitches In Brussels A Direct Threat To Russia’ – Medvedev (RT)

The European Union has emerged as a hostile force to Moscow, former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has claimed, accusing the bloc of arming the “neo-Nazi Kiev regime” to attack Russia. In a Telegram post on Wednesday, Medvedev stated that the old EU as an economic union has “essentially ceased to exist,” and in its current “perverted form is no less of a threat” to Russia than NATO. “Brussels today is Russia’s true enemy,” he wrote. “Slowly but surely, the EU is transforming into a self-sustaining military bloc that will gradually come to compete with NATO…” The ex-president accused “Brusselian cockroaches and narrow-minded leaders of EU countries” of advancing their militarization strategy based on an imaginary “Russia threat,” ushering in a new “era of rearmament.”

According to Medvedev, the EU’s goal is to arm the Kiev regime to the point where it becomes invulnerable to Russia, claiming Brussels is ramping up its military-industrial output and building military factories on Ukrainian soil. The EU, he said, is also sending personnel to train Ukrainian militants “so that they can kill our citizens and carry out terrorist attacks.” He also accused Brussels of “brazenly” using profits from Russia’s frozen assets to finance its “vile activities.”

“The EU, stuffed with weapons, rainbow freaks, and yapping bitches in Brussels, constitutes a direct threat to Russia,” Medvedev wrote. “This, of course, should not hinder our bilateral cooperation with individual European states.” Ukraine’s potential EU membership – which Russia had not objected to in the past – would now constitute a “danger” for Moscow. While Kiev’s NATO ambitions were always seen as a red line for Russia, Medvedev indicated the EU had now adopted a similar confrontational posture.

Ukraine made EU and NATO membership official national goals by amending its constitution in 2019. It applied to join the bloc in February 2022 and was granted candidate status later that year. Admission requires unanimous consent from all 27 EU member states. While some members voiced objections, Brussels has backed Kiev’s bid. The European Commission suggested Ukraine could join by 2029 if it made sufficient progress in areas such as political and judicial reforms, as well as in combating organized crime and corruption. In his post, Medvedev proposed two outcomes for Ukraine: “Either the EU itself realizes that it doesn’t need the Kiev quasi-state at all, or, better, there is no state left to join the EU.”

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Rutte has one goal only: war with Russia. He needs Trump for that.

NATO Boss Calls Trump ‘Daddy’ (RT)

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte has rushed to defend US President Donald Trump’s recent expletive-laden rant about Iran and Israel as merely “daddy” using “strong language.” Trump on Tuesday lashed out at both countries for allegedly breaching a Washington-brokered ceasefire, telling reporters before departing for the NATO summit in the Hague that West Jerusalem and Tehran have “been fighting so long and so hard that they do not know what the f**k they are doing.” The outburst came hours after he announced the truce, which was reportedly broken soon after by both Israel and Iran. Asked about the remark during a joint press conference the next day, Trump likened the two nations to “kids (fighting) in a schoolyard.” Rutte, seated beside him, added: “And then daddy has to, sometimes, use strong language.”

When a reporter later brought up the comment, Trump laughed and replied, “Daddy – you’re my daddy,” saying that the NATO chief had meant it “affectionately.” “I think he likes me, if he doesn’t, I’ll come back and hit him hard,” Trump joked. Rutte’s flattery wasn’t limited to the stage. Ahead of the summit, Trump published private text messages in which a fawning Rutte praised the US president’s “decisive action in Iran” as “truly extraordinary” and said it “makes us all safer.” He went on to tell Trump, “You will achieve something NO American president in decades could get done,” and boasted that “Europe is going to pay BIG.” A NATO spokesperson later confirmed the authenticity of the exchange.

Rutte also used the summit itself to back Trump’s controversial push for NATO members to more than double their military spending to 5% of GDP. At Wednesday’s press conference, he called Trump “a good friend” and said he “deserves all the praise” for forcing the issue. Asked by a reporter whether such overt admiration made him look weak, Rutte brushed it off: “I don’t think so. I think it’s a bit of a question of taste.”

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New on the job.

‘Ukraine Can Win’ – New NATO Commander (RT)

Ukraine can still achieve a military victory over Russia, NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Europe and head of the US European Command, Alexus Grynkewich, said during a US Senate hearing on Tuesday. He was confirmed in his new role with the US-led military bloc earlier this month.v“I believe Ukraine can win,” he responded when asked if Kiev could still prevail despite significant casualties and waning financial support. Grynkewich also noted that Ukrainian forces are displaying a level of tenacity that is hard for outsiders to fully comprehend.vHe did not specify what form a Ukrainian victory might take, nor did he provide further detail regarding battlefield prospects.

Top NATO officials have long insisted that Ukraine should aim to defeat Russia militarily. The bloc continues to supply arms and intelligence to Kiev, even as it loses territory to Russian forces. Ukraine’s 2023 counteroffensive failed to achieve any meaningful breakthroughs, and a more recent attempted incursion into Russia’s Kursk Region was repelled. Meanwhile, Russian advances have continued along several sectors of the front line, including in the Donetsk and Kharkov regions. Military analysts and Western officials have increasingly questioned the viability of a Ukrainian victory. Last month, German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul claimed that the military defeat of nuclear-armed Russia had been impossible “from the very beginning.” US President Donald Trump has also repeatedly expressed doubt that Ukraine could secure a military victory over Russia, instead pushing for a negotiated settlement of the conflict.

He has insisted that “Crimea will stay with Russia,” referred to Ukraine as “demolished,” and cautioned that the country may not be able to survive the conflict, even with US support. Moscow has also repeatedly insisted that its victory is inevitable and has criticized continued Western military aid to Ukraine, arguing that it only prolongs hostilities without affecting their outcome. Russian President Vladimir Putin has stressed that the conflict will end only when its “root causes” are resolved and his country’s security interests are taken into account. He has also accused Kiev’s foreign backers of being uninterested in actually ending the conflict and using Ukraine to achieve their own goals.

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“Peskov noted that the exact date of the next round of talks with Kiev would be decided after all previous pledges are fulfilled, referring to prisoner exchanges and the repatriation of slain soldiers.”

Peace Dialogue With Kiev On Hold – Moscow (RT)

Moscow and Kiev are currently working to fully implement the humanitarian portion of their previous agreements, and therefore no negotiations are currently underway on their respective peace roadmaps, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said. Speaking at a regular press briefing on Wednesday, Peskov noted that the exact date of the next round of talks with Kiev would be decided after all previous pledges are fulfilled, referring to prisoner exchanges and the repatriation of slain soldiers. Russia and Ukraine held direct talks in Türkiye last month, resuming a diplomatic process that was paused by Kiev in 2022 after it chose to seek a battlefield victory with Western assistance. During their latest meeting on June 2, the two sides agreed to exchange prisoners and the remains of deceased troops for humanitarian reasons.

Ukraine and Russia also traded draft memorandums outlining their proposed paths to peace. The return of slain soldiers was completed on Monday last week. Russia transferred 6,060 sets of remains to Ukraine and received 78 in exchange. The Russian military says it has more than 3,000 bodies it is willing to hand over. There were also several prisoner swaps, though neither side gave specific figures, unlike during previous swaps. Negotiators had suggested that Moscow and Kiev would not seek parity in numbers when returning seriously injured soldiers from captivity.

While Kiev did resume dialogue with Moscow as urged by the administration of US President Donald Trump, Ukrainian officials have claimed that Russia is not negotiating in good faith because it declined to agree to an unconditional ceasefire. Moscow said Kiev could use such a pause to regroup its military and outlined conditions for a truce in its draft memorandum. Russia said it would suspend hostilities if Ukraine either pulled troops out of Russian territories that Kiev claims, or suspended its conscription campaign and deliveries of Western arms. Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky is presently set to meet Trump on the sidelines of the ongoing NATO leaders summit in The Hague.

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“Real estate in Florida is about to skyrocket.”

Escape from New York: Democrats Embrace Socialist for New Mayor (Turley)

The presumptive selection (pending the results of New York’s ranked-voting system) of Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani as the Democratic nominee has sent shockwaves throughout the business and political establishment. For those calling for the party to move more to the center, New Yorkers just responded with a Bronx cheer by choosing a socialist who wants city-run grocery stores, an eleven-percent city corporate tax rate, free child care, free buses, and other far-left wish list items. Real estate in Florida is about to skyrocket. Mamdani has said that he intends to make New York a “model for the Democratic Party” by moving to the far left and embracing socialist policies. Despite being called anti-Israel, Mamdani crushed Andrew Cuomo with young college-educated voters.

He promised to pay for freezing rents, providing free child care, and other programs by “taxing the rich.” It is a return to the “eat the rich” calls of figures from Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) to former mayor Bill de Blasio. Politicians have long turned to the “Eat the rich!” battle cry when things are not working out politically or economically. When struggling in the 2020 Democratic presidential primaries, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) pledged a wealth tax, declaring that she was coming after “the diamonds, the yachts, and the Rembrandts too.” Then-New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, another Democratic contender at the time, was barely registering in the polls when he promised that “we will tax the hell out of the wealthy.”

The election also reinforces the opposition of many to the move to restore the state and local tax (SALT) deductions, which forces taxpayers in low-tax states to subsidize residents in high-tax states, such as California and New York. By allowing the deductions, politicians can assure New Yorkers that they will receive some of the money back from the rest of the country through deductions, justifying even higher tax hikes. I have long opposed SALT deductions as a uniquely bad idea. The question is whether wealthy individuals and corporations will accelerate the exit from New York in light of continued support for increasing tax burdens and public subsidies. Eric Adams could still prevail over Mamdani as an independent in the general election. Cuomo has also not ruled out an independent run. However, the results of the election show the increasing hold of socialist politics on many New Yorkers.

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“At these debt levels, no one leader, ideology or policy can resolve the deficit and debt cancers spreading globally..”

Gold: The Only True Asset in A Broken Global System (Piepenburg)

Matthew Piepenburg, Partner at VON GREYERZ, joins VRIC Media founder, Jay Martin, in a compelling conversation about the revolutionary shifts happening in the global financial system—the ramifications of which all point toward gold’s increasingly central role as THE strategic reserve asset of the present and future. Piepenburg opens with a simple theme. Namely, the risks and wide-ranging ramifications of sickening global debt levels can not be overstated enough. Everything from risk assets, currency destruction, geopolitics and social unrest to the gold price is a derivative of one simple theme: DEBT. We are also seeing revolutionary shifts from globalism to neo-mercantilism/protectionism, but as Piepenburg warns, such shifts are not surrendered easily, and that messiness in the interim is inevitable. Part of this “mess” includes rising social unrest as a direct result of the inflation and currency debasement, which failed monetary policies have directly created.

Looking ahead, as old systems, ideologies, and policies fail and new ideologies and protectionist systems rise, the transition will not be easy or smooth. Piepenburg foresees less international cooperation going forward, which means more messy wars, trade alliances and social fracturing. When asked if recent attempts to cut spending in the USA are a glimmer of hope, Piepenburg bluntly says we are way past easy solutions. At these debt levels, no one leader, ideology or policy can resolve the deficit and debt cancers spreading globally. Martin and Piepenburg also discuss the long-sighted policies of China vs. the short-sighted policies of the US to determine which nation has the most realistic options in the years ahead, while also recognising the severe challenges facing both of these economic powers. Ultimately, more cooperation would favor both nations and the world, but the chances of such policies are slim and getting slimer in this pre-Iran war recording.

In this increasingly splintered global backdrop, the conversation turns toward gold and increasingly obvious central bank demand for the same. Piepenburg certainly enjoys gold’s price action but reminds that gold, which has outperformed the S&P for more than 20 years, is nevertheless far more than a speculation asset or even a volatility hedge. Instead, gold is emerging as THE central global strategic reserve asset, as evidenced by moves taken by even the BIS, the IMF or the COMEX outflows. This is not a fable but a fact. Gold is now clearly a superior store of value than fiat currencies and sovereign IOUs of all stripes.

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Statins


Doors

Chimp
https://twitter.com/Yoda4ever/status/1937914182709686736

Strandbeest

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jun 232025
 


Rembrandt van Rijn The three trees 1643

 

Medvedev: Countries Now Ready To Supply Iran With Nuclear Warheads (ZH)
US Intervened Because Israel Was on Brink of Defeat – Iranian Ex-Ambassador (Sp.)
Top Iranian Diplomat Expects ‘Critical’ Talks With Putin (RT)
US Strikes on Iran Reckless Breach of Sovereignty – Russian FM (Sp.)
Moscow Blasts US Redo Of ‘Iraqi Weapons Of Mass Destruction’ Stunt (RT)
America Again Crawls on Its Belly for Israel (Paul Craig Roberts)
Democrats Denounce Iranian Attack as Unconstitutional (Turley)
Vance, Rubio Call For Peace With Iran, Say Regime Change Is Not The Goal (ZH)
The EU’s Favorite War: The One Israel Starts (Marsden)
What Russian Experts And Politicians Are Saying About The US Strikes (RT)
Major US Cities on Alert After US Airstrikes on Iranian Nuclear Facilities (ET)
Zelensky Makes New Threats Against Russia (RT)
The European Garden On The Brink Of Ruin (SCF)
Western Use of Interest From Russia’s Frozen Assets Is Theft – Top Banker (RT)

 

 

ritter

 

 

s

 

 


https://twitter.com/imetatronink/status/1936799415148347406

bannon

hormuz
https://twitter.com/DI313_/status/1936695758691950752
https://twitter.com/Rainmaker1973/status/1936787865704276247

flag

 

 

 

 

Yesterday, I said: “If the situation pans out the way it’s presented today, much of the criticism [..] will subside..” Well, it hasn’t and it won’t. Scott Ritter’s must-see talk with Judge Nap makes that very clear. He claims the US bombs only literally pounded sand, and reality differs greatly from the narrative. If Trump can say today that there’s no Iranian nuclear threat, that’s because there wasn’t one before. They bombed two abandoned desert sites, and one-Fordow- that they couldn’t hit. Q: what’s the next move?

 

 

 

 

Great example of the role Medvedev plays: he gets to say what Putin can’t, for reasons of statesmanship and diplomacy.

Medvedev: Countries Now Ready To Supply Iran With Nuclear Warheads (ZH)

On Sunday morning Russia’s former president and current deputy chairman of the country’s Security Council Dmitry Medvedev issued his reaction to the major US overnight strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities, giving what’s essentially the view of where things stand from the Kremlin. Medvedev in a ten-point list of reactions characterized the attacks as ultimately ineffective, and that it will blow back on America and Israel in a way opposite than intended, especially as Tehran will now only push harder for a nuke, and allied countries might now simply be willing to supply them to the Iranians, he described.

Interestingly, Medvedev has also echoed Moscow’s stance on nuclear warheads in the Middle East, and has written over the weekend on his VKontakte page, “Does Iran have nuclear weapons? We don’t know, but we know that Israel has a secret nuclear program. Well, let them both renounce such programs under the supervision of the UN Security Council and the IAEA.” As for the ten-point critique of the brazen US heavy bombing of the Islamic Republic, Medvedev wrote on X as follows… “What have the Americans accomplished with their nighttime strikes on three nuclear sites in Iran?” he first posed, before listing:

1. Critical infrastructure of the nuclear fuel cycle appears to have been unaffected or sustained only minor damage.
2. The enrichment of nuclear material — and, now we can say it outright, the future production of nuclear weapons — will continue.
3. A number of countries are ready to directly supply Iran with their own nuclear warheads.
4. Israel is under attack, explosions are rocking the country, and people are panicking.
5. The US is now entangled in a new conflict, with prospects of a ground operation looming on the horizon.
6. Iran’s political regime has survived — and in all likelihood, has come out even stronger.
7. The people are rallying around the country’s spiritual leadership, including those who were previously indifferent or opposed to it.
8. Donald Trump, once hailed as ‘president of peace,’ has now pushed the US into another war.
9. The vast majority of countries around the world oppose the actions of Israel and the United States.
10. At this rate, Trump can forget about the Nobel Peace Prize — not even with how rigged it has become.

Medvedev actually finished his point #10 with a sarcastic dig at the US leader, writing “What a way to kick things off, Mr. President. Congratulations!” This certainly complicates things in terms of Russia’s military operation in Ukraine. Moscow has long received its major supply of Shahed ‘Kamikaze’ drones from Iran, and has ongoing defense contracts and agreements, including possibly to receive mid-range missiles. Washington is ‘flexing’ in Moscow’s direction with this major long-range B-2 bomber military operation on the other side of the world.

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Interesting viewpoint.

“..Former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan Craig Murray told RIA Novosti that Iran had shown incredible patience and peacefulness over the past few years..”

US Intervened Because Israel Was on Brink of Defeat – Iranian Ex-Ambassador (Sp.)

The United States would not have intervened in the Middle East conflict if Israel had not been on the brink of defeat, former Iranian Ambassador to Germany Seyed Hossein Mousavian told RIA Novosti. “Israel not only failed in its ten-day military operation against Iran but was on the verge of defeat. Had Israel not been in a crisis, the U.S. would not have intervened,” Mousavian said. He pointed out that while Iran has suffered irreparable damage, the negative consequences of the US attack against it will also harm the United States and jeopardize regional peace and security. “US President Donald Trump’s national security team either failed to properly assess the consequences of a U.S. military attack on Iran, or they were unable to dissuade the President—or perhaps the majority of them actually supported the decision. In any case, this event has further revealed the extent of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s influence over the White House,” he added.

The United States struck three Iranian nuclear sites in Natanz, Fordow and Isfahan on Sunday night. US President Donald Trump said that the strike aimed at crippling Iran’s nuclear capabilities. He said Tehran must agree to “end this war” or face far more serious consequences. Iran denies the military component of its nuclear project. As IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi said on June 18, the agency’s inspectors have not seen concrete evidence that Iran was pursuing a nuclear weapons program. The US intelligence community, contrary to statements by President Donald Trump and Israel, believed that Iran was not seeking to create nuclear weapons, as reported by CNN. Former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan Craig Murray told RIA Novosti that Iran had shown incredible patience and peacefulness over the past few years, despite Israel’s actions.

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“..drastically increased the likelihood of a larger conflict in the Middle East.”

Top Iranian Diplomat Expects ‘Critical’ Talks With Putin (RT)

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi is expecting to hold a “crucial” meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin during his pre-arranged visit to Moscow, which coincided with US strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities over the weekend. Israel launched an attack on Iran last week, claiming Tehran was on the brink of developing a nuclear weapon. Iranian officials rejected the accusation and responded with retaliatory strikes. On Sunday, the United States followed with what it described as “massive precision strikes” on nuclear facilities in Fordow, Natanz, and Esfahan. The attacks were widely condemned as violations of international law. International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Rafael Grossi said the strikes caused “a sharp degradation in nuclear safety and security.”

Speaking to reporters after arriving in Moscow early Monday, Araghchi said the situation demanded urgent coordination. “Given the current exceptional circumstances in the region, it is essential that Iran and Russia engage in closer, more precise, and more serious consultations,” he stated. Naturally, our talks this time will be more serious and cover broader dimensions. We will have important and serious discussions with President Putin, and I am confident that the outcomes will benefit both countries. The Kremlin has yet to confirm a meeting between Putin and Araghchi. Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly stated that Iran has the right to use nuclear technology for peaceful purposes. In media appearances during the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF) last week, he emphasized that resolving the conflict should include mutual security guarantees – protecting both Iran’s right to peaceful nuclear development and Israel’s right to security.

Araghchi described Russia as a strategic ally and said the two countries have maintained regular dialogue on regional issues. He also noted that during recent nuclear negotiations with the US, Tehran “continuously consulted with our Russian friends, sharing every step of the progress with them.” Russia has strongly condemned the US strikes on Iran’s nuclear sites, calling them a flagrant breach of international law. In a statement on Saturday, the Russian Foreign Ministry described the attacks as “a reckless decision” and “a blatant violation of the UN Charter and relevant Security Council resolutions.” It warned that the strikes – carried out by a permanent member of the Security Council – could have caused a nuclear disaster and had “drastically increased the likelihood of a larger conflict in the Middle East.”

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“..runs counter to international law, the UN Charter, the UN Security Council Resolution..”

US Strikes on Iran Reckless Breach of Sovereignty – Russian FM (Sp.)

The Russian Foreign Ministry condemned the US bombing of Iranian nuclear sites as a reckless move that violates the Islamic Republic’s sovereignty, international law and the UN Charter. “The reckless decision to bomb the territory of a sovereign state, whatever the arguments, runs counter to international law, the UN Charter, the UN Security Council Resolution,” the ministry said. It is of particular concern that the attack was carried out by a permanent member of the UN Security Council, the ministry said, adding that the UN’s core body had to interfere.

“The UN Security Council should naturally take action. Confrontational behavior of the US and Israel has to be rejected collectively,” the statement read. “We call for an end of aggression and urge efforts that will create conditions for a return to a political and diplomatic path,” the statement said. The ministry also called on Rafael Grossi, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, to report impartially on the Iran attacks at the UN atomic agency’s board of governors’ meeting on Monday.

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“Many today feel a strong sense of déjà vu,” he said. “The current situation is essentially no different: we are once again being urged to believe in fairy tales in order to once again bring suffering to millions of people living in the Middle East.”

Moscow Blasts US Redo Of ‘Iraqi Weapons Of Mass Destruction’ Stunt (RT)

Russia has sharply condemned the United States for its airstrikes on Iranian nuclear facilities, calling the attacks “irresponsible, provocative and dangerous,” and warning they risk pushing the Middle East toward a large-scale war with potentially catastrophic nuclear consequences. Speaking at an emergency session of the UN Security Council on Sunday, Russian Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia accused Washington of violating the UN Charter, international law and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). “The United States has opened a Pandora’s box, and no one knows what consequences may follow,” Nebenzia said, noting that by targeting IAEA-supervised nuclear sites, Washington has “once again demonstrated total disregard for the position of the international community.”

Nebenzia drew a pointed comparison to the lead-up to the 2003 Iraq War, when then-US Secretary of State Colin Powell presented false evidence to “justify the invasion of another sovereign state, only to plunge its people into chaos for decades and not find any weapons of mass destruction.” “Many today feel a strong sense of déjà vu,” he said. “The current situation is essentially no different: we are once again being urged to believe in fairy tales in order to once again bring suffering to millions of people living in the Middle East.” Russia argued that Tehran has not been proven to be pursuing a nuclear weapon, echoing earlier assessments by US intelligence that were dismissed by President Donald Trump as “wrong.” Nebenzia accused Washington of fabricating a narrative to justify the use of force and of undermining the decades-long diplomatic framework built around Iran’s peaceful nuclear program.

The Russian envoy also criticized what he described as the hypocrisy of Western nations that had for days called for “restraint” in the same Security Council chamber, yet failed to condemn Washington for joining Israeli strikes – and even blamed Iran for the escalation. “We are witnessing an astonishing example of double standards,” he said. “Iran has been and remains one of the most thoroughly inspected states under the NPT, but instead of encouraging such an attitude, it receives bombardments of its territory and civilians by a state that refuses, in principle, to sign the NPT.” Nebenzia warned that the US strikes undermine the authority of the IAEA and the global non-proliferation regime, and that continued escalation could return the world to an era of uncontrolled nuclear risk.

“This is an outrageous and cynical situation, and it is very strange that the Director General of the IAEA did not say a word about it. Neither has he ever called on Israel to join the NPT,” Nebenzia added. Calling for urgent action, Russia – joined by China and Pakistan – submitted a draft Security Council resolution demanding an immediate and unconditional ceasefire and a return to diplomatic talks on Iran’s nuclear program.

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“The Horsemen of the Apocalypse.”

America Again Crawls on Its Belly for Israel (Paul Craig Roberts)

The recklessness increases. President Trump committed an act of war for Israel. This comes on top of some fool green-lighting an attack on the Russian strategic triad, an attack that was played down even by Putin himself. What will Washington’s next reckless act be? Why did Putin green-light the attack on Iran by conveniently announcing that Russia’s treaty with Iran did not include military support, a claim that John Helmer says is disproved by secret provisions in the treaty? Russia and China could have prevented the attack, but did nothing. Peace in the Middle East could have been established with a Russian-Iranian-Chinese mutual security treaty. Why do Russia and China prefer war to peace in the Middle East? Where was Iran’s air defense? Why is Iran always a sitting duck devoid of initiative? Why are Muslims happy fighting one another instead of their real enemies?

Israel and Israel’s Western puppets have turned war into an ongoing activity that does not need declaration. For Israel’s reasons, not for America’s, President trump has militarily attacked a regional military power without Congress’ declaration of war as required by the US Constitution. Clearly, war has prevailed over the Constitution. This began with Bill Clinton’s presidency, and expanded with subsequent presidents. Israel has obtained the power where Israel can send America to war and we hapless Americans can do nothing about it.

Israel has undeclared nuclear weapons but can have Trump attack Iran’s peaceful use of atomic power. Israel can exterminate Palestinians and obliterate Gaza, without effective protest from any country. But Iran is evil and against America if Iran stands up for itself. Thanks to the US media and Israel’s bought-and-paid-for US Congress, many years of Israeli propaganda against Iran has been driven into the heads of the American public, which will simply accept another of their country’s acts of aggression against “Muslim terrorists” and “weapons of mass destruction.”

Perhaps the saddest part of this is it demonstrates once again that elections cannot change anything. America cannot be made great again without a new political party led by people independent of Israel and the corrupt American Establishment. These people would have to avoid being assassinated or arrested and prosecuted by the American Establishment. This would require militant supporters willing and able to use violence. Who is there to lead such a movement? The American Establishment will not permit any such force to appear. The American Establishment would not even permit Americans to protest a stolen presidential election.

Conspiracy theorists will see in Russia and China’s inaction their involvement in a globalist plot against any form of independence. How do we know they are not right? What else explains the world sitting on its butt while Israel commits genocide of Palestine, and Washington, without a declaration of war, overthrows 5 countries, and is now working on a sixth, for Israel. The seventh on the list is Saudi Arabia, and Netanyahu recently added Pakistan as the eighth. Turkey will be the ninth. The extraordinary aggression that Washington and Israel have unleashed on the world seems never ending. Putin and Xi seem to think that Russia and China can sit them out, but Russia and China are the two main targets. While Russia and China sit on their butts, they are being isolated from allies such as Iran and from one another.

Trump had just given Iran two weeks to come to terms with his demands, and then launched a surprise attack in advance of the two weeks. After such treachery, how can Putin possibly return to “peace negotiations?” As Putin is so averse to acknowledging reality that he dismisses Washington’s attack on Russia’s nuclear triad as “an act of terrorism, not of war,” what will Washington’s next attack on Russia be? What is Xi going to do when he finds he cannot wait out his adversary?

“And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat upon him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with the sword, and with hunger” — Revelation 6:8

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“..the calls for impeachment are absurd given the prior actions of presidents in using this very authority. Once again, some Democrats appear intent on applying a different set of rules for impeaching Trump than any of his predecessors.”

Democrats Denounce Iranian Attack as Unconstitutional (Turley)

Yesterday, I wrote a column in the Hill discussing how Trump is unlikely to go to Congress in launching an attack on Iran and how he has history on his side in acting unilaterally. The column noted that many Democratic politicians and pundits who were supportive of such unilateral actions by Democratic presidents such as Bill Clinton and Barack Obama are suddenly opposed to Trump using the same power. It is the Claude Rains School of Constitutional Law where politicians are “shocked, shocked” that Trump is using the authority that they accepted in Democratic predecessors. Democratic members are calling for impeachment, while others are declaring the attacks unconstitutional. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is particularly shocked that Trump took the action and is calling for a vote under the War Powers Act.

Schumer insisted that “no president should be allowed to unilaterally march this nation into something as consequential as war with erratic threats and no strategy.” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries has issued a similar statement. Schumer is the same politician who was silent or supportive in earlier unilateral attacks by Democratic presidents. In 2011, Obama approved a massive military campaign against Libya. I represented a bipartisan group of members of Congress challenging that action. We were unsuccessful, as were such prior challenges. I have long criticized the abandonment of the clear language of the Constitution on the declaration of wars. Only eleven such declarations have been made in our history. That has not happened since World War II in 1942. Over 125 military campaigns have spanned from Korea to Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq. It is not a rule honored solely in the breach.

Democrats were supportive when Clinton launched cruise missile attacks under Operation Infinite Reach on two continents on August 20, 1998. He ordered attacks in locations in Khartoum, Sudan, and Khost Province, Afghanistan. The War Powers Act has always been controversial and largely ineffectual. Presidents have long asserted the inherent powers to conduct such attacks under their Article II authority as the designated Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces. The WPA requires the President to inform Congress within 48 hours in a written notice to the Speaker of the House of Representatives and the President pro tempore of the Senate of the action.

The WPA further bars the use of armed forces in such a conflict for more than 60 days without congressional authorization for use of military force (AUMF) or a declaration of war by the United States. There is a further 30-day withdrawal period. President Trump reportedly did immediately notify Congress after the attack under the WPA . Presidents have routinely ignored the WPA when it limited their ability to conduct foreign military operations. In 1999, Clinton ignored the 60-day deadline and continued to bomb forces in Kosovo. His actions were also challenged, but the court in Campbell v. Clinton just shrugged off the violation and said it was a non-justiciable political question.

In responding to the current demands, Trump could look to a curious ally: Hillary Clinton. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pushed for unilateral attacks during the Obama Administration. She dismissed the need to consult, let alone secure authorization, from Congress. In March 2011, Clinton testified that there was no need for such consultation and declared that the Administration would ignore a 60-day limit on unauthorized military actions. Obama also defied the War Powers resolution on Syria. He actually did ask for congressional authorization to take military action in that country in 2013, but Congress refused to approve it. He did it anyway. Despite Congress expressly denying”authorization for the introduction of United States Armed Forces,” both Obama and Trump did precisely that.

Trump was wise to notify Congress. However, what occurs after that is anyone’s guess. The WPA and the AUMF have been paper tigers for decades and most in Congress wanted it that way. Politicians long ago abandoned their responsibilities to declare war. What remains has been little more than political theater. Even under the WPA, Trump would have 60 days to prosecute this war and another 30 days to draw down forces without congressional approval. The court, in Campbell v. Clinton, noted that even if Clinton violated the WPA by continuing operations after the 60-day period, he was technically in compliance by withdrawing forces before the end of the 90-day period. Trump could likely prosecute this campaign in 90 days. Indeed, if it goes beyond 90 days, we will likely be facing a potential global war with retaliatory strikes on both sides. In such an environment, it is very unlikely that Congress would withhold support for our ongoing operations.

In the meantime, the calls for impeachment are absurd given the prior actions of presidents in using this very authority. Once again, some Democrats appear intent on applying a different set of rules for impeaching Trump than any of his predecessors. Trump can cite both history and case law in allowing presidents to take such actions. At most, the line over war powers is murky. The Framers wanted impeachments to be based on bright-line rules in establishing high crimes and misdemeanors. This is all part of the Claude Rains School of Constitutional Law. Members will once again express their shock and disgust in the use of the same authority that they once accepted in prior presidents. Trump has a great number of a risks in this action from global military and economic consequences. The War Powers Act is not one of them if history is any measure.

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They all own it.

Vance, Rubio Call For Peace With Iran, Say Regime Change Is Not The Goal (ZH)

Update (11:37ET): Following President Trump’s new foreign entanglement – bombing Iranian nuclear facilities (which may or may not have taken them out while causing a deep divide amongst MAGA), Vice President JD Vance says he believes their nuclear program has been set back “many years,” and that he feels “very confident that we’ve substantially delayed [Iran’s] development of a nuclear weapon,” adding that it was US intelligence, not Israeli intelligence assessments, that led to Trump’s decision. When asked if the United States is at war with Iran, he claimed “No, Kristen, we’re not at war with Iran. We’re at war with Iran’s nuclear program,” and called on Iranians to “give peace a chance”. “They can go down the path of peace, or they can go down the path of this ridiculous brinksmanship of funding terrorism, of trying to build a nuclear weapon – and that’s just not something the United States can accept.”

When asked if the US would support an Israeli assassination of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Vance said that it would be “up to the Israelis,” and that the US position is “we don’t want a regime change.” US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, meanwhile insisted to Fox News that “This is not a war against Iran,” adding “Not a shot was fired against us. They didn’t even know what had happened. By the time we left, the planes were out of their airspace before they finally started realizing they’d been hit. So it would be a terrible mistake if Iran retaliates. So but that’s not our goal.” He also warned against Iranian retaliation, saying: “If Iran retaliates, it will be the WORST mistake they’ve ever made.” Rubio then warned Iran not to close the strait of Hormuz after Iran’s parliament backed its closure, saying “If Iran closes the Strait of Hormuz, it will be another terrible mistake. It’s economic suicide for them if they do it and we retain options to deal with that.”

Everyone got the script? Iran, meanwhile in a statement through spox Esmail Baghaei, accused the Trump administration of sabotaging diplomatic efforts – saying “They cannot talk about diplomacy, they betrayed diplomacy,” adding that “diplomacy never ends.” Regarding the escalating conflict, Baghaei warned “No one knows what will happen next, but what is sure is that the responsibility of the consequences of this war must be borne by the United States and Israel.” The Iranian foreign ministry declined to elaborate on Tehran’s likely response to the attacks, or to detail the extent of the damage – only saying in a statement to CNN that Iran “is entitled … to exercise its right of self-defense,” adding “And we will do that for sure.”

* * *
In a Sunday morning press briefing, Trump’s Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth declared that “Iran’s nuclear ambitions have been obliterated” – but also asserted that the attack did not target the Iranian people or civilians. He hailed the “incredible and overwhelming success” – following President Trump last night saying the same thing. “It’s worth noting the operation did not target Iranian troops or the Iranian people.” Hegseth said this is part of the commitment of this administration’s vision of “peace through strength”. He continued, “Many presidents have dreamed of delivering the final blow to Iran’s nuclear program, and none could, until President Trump.”

For the “bold and brilliant” operation, there was weeks of preparation and precision logistics and “misdirection” at the highest level, involving B-2 bombers going to hit, Hegseth described. “No other country on planet earth” could have conducted this operation. He also underscored that the Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP) was used for the first time in US combat history – also that it was the longest bomber mission of its kind since 2001. “Just like [IRGC Quds Force General Qasem] Solemani found out in the first term, Iran found out when POTUS says ’60 days’ – that when he seeks peace and negotiation – he means 60 days of peace and negotiation, otherwise that nuclear program will not exist. He meant it.” Hegseth then read aloud Trump’s post to Truth Social last night, soon after the three nuclear sites were struck:

“Any retaliation by Iran against the United States of America will be met with force far greater than what was witnessed tonight.” That’s when the US Defense Secretary then warned, “Iran would be smart to heed those words. He said it before and he means it.” He tried to stress the ‘limited’ scope of the attack and urged the Iranians to come back to the negotiating table: There are both public and private messages being delivered to the Iranians in multiple channels, giving them every opportunity to come to the negotiation table, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth says at a Pentagon press briefing. Scope of operation on Iran was “intentionally limited” Hegseth says he believes the US attack will have a clear psychological impact on how Iran views the future US strikes against Iran’s nuclear enrichment site at Fordow are believed to have destroyed capabilities there…

To review the details of what happened last night, the US deployed six B-2 bombers to drop 12 GBU-57 “bunker-buster” bombs on Iran’s heavily fortified Fordow nuclear site, marking the first time these massive 30,000-pound bombs were used in combat. The enrichment sites at Natanz and Isfahan were also attacked. The mission lasted about 37 hours with multiple refueling missions. While the White House is now claiming Iran’s nuclear facilities were “completely and totally obliterated,” officials say it’s too early to confirm the full extent of the damage. Iran, along with international nuclear agencies, reported no radiation leaks, prompting skepticism about the strike’s effectiveness—particularly at Fordow, which is buried deep underground. Iranian officials said damage was minimal and mostly above ground. Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization vowed to continue its nuclear program, referring to assassinated nuclear scientists as “martyrs.”

Some degree of political backlash has quickly emerged over the lack of Congressional approval for the strikes. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, despite previously mocking Trump’s diplomatic efforts with Iran, called for a War Powers vote, criticizing the president’s unilateral military action without a clear strategy.

Read more …

“So after Israel unilaterally launched its hundred-target missile tantrum across Tehran – complete with residential hits and assassinations – maybe some strong words against that kind of thing are in order?”

The EU’s Favorite War: The One Israel Starts (Marsden)

Israel flew over to Iran with fighter jets and has since gone totally ballistic — literally and figuratively. So what does the European Union’s insane clown posse have to say about it? Get yourself some popcorn. The Eurojokers are doing their best stand-up comedy again without even realizing it. First up: French President Emmanuel Macron, who took to social media to declare that “peace and security for all in the region must remain our guiding principle.” Aww, how sweet. Calling for peace while holding your buddy’s coat as he storms into the bar to punch someone on the face. So after Israel unilaterally launched its hundred-target missile tantrum across Tehran – complete with residential hits and assassinations – maybe some strong words against that kind of thing are in order?

“France has repeatedly condemned Iran’s ongoing nuclear program and has taken all appropriate diplomatic measures in response. In this context, France reaffirms Israel’s right to defend itself and ensure its security,” Macron posted as the conflict kicked off. Classic French parenting: ignore the kid setting the house on fire and scold the one who looked at him funny. Next up, Germany. Surely the new chancellor, Friedrich Merz, can inject some sober logic into the conversation about who just broke the fragile regional peace everyone’s pretending to care about. “Iran has subsequently threatened to accelerate uranium enrichment again. This nuclear programme violates the provisions of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and poses a serious threat to the entire region, especially to the State of Israel. We reaffirm that Israel has the right to defend its existence and the security of its citizens. We call on both sides to refrain from steps that could lead to further escalation and destabilise the entire region,” wrote Merz.

Oh, so now that Israel has attacked Iran, it’s time for restraint? Not before. Not during. After. Like a guy who throws the first punch in a bar fight and then shouts, “Hey! Let’s all calm down!” Both Macron and Merz say that Iran brought this on itself by enriching uranium. That’s like this: you’ve got a neighbor who lifts weights in his home gym. You see him through the window with a squat rack, bench press, treadmill – getting jacked. And you’re like, “Wow, he’s getting so ripped I’m afraid he might beat me up someday. So I better go over there now and beat him up while I still can.” That’s basically what Israel did with its “preemptive” strike. And Macron and Merz are cheering it on like, “Totally! That guy was getting too buff. Definitely deserved a missile to the face.”

Then Merz added from the G7 summit in Canada: “This is the dirty work that Israel is doing for all of us. We are also victims of this regime.” Oh, sorry – didn’t realize the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) had hired Israel as a global bouncer. And remind us, Friedrich: where exactly did Iran touch Germany on the map? Because Europe is far more likely to be “victimized” by waves of immigration facilitated by its own lax policies, and sparked by its own support for regime change wars – like this one is shaping up to be – than by any distant centrifuge. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, the EU’s de facto queen, is now cosplaying as global playground monitor, sending all the boys to their corners. “Europe urges all parties to exercise maximum restraint, de-escalate immediately and refrain from retaliation. A diplomatic resolution is now more urgent than ever, for the sake of the region’s stability and global security,” she wrote.

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“This is more than hypocrisy; it’s a catastrophic failure of US policy. Trump’s administration has made a colossal mistake.”

What Russian Experts And Politicians Are Saying About The US Strikes (RT)

Fyodor Lukyanov, editor-in-chief of Russia in Global Affairs: The trap awaiting Trump is simple – but highly effective. If Iran responds by targeting American assets, the US will be pulled deeper into a military confrontation almost by default. If on the other hand, Tehran holds back or offers only a token response, Israel’s leadership – backed by its neoconservative allies in Washington – will seize the moment to pressure the White House: now is the time to finish off a weakened regime and force a convenient replacement. Until that happens, they’ll argue the job isn’t done. Whether Trump is willing – or even able – to resist that pressure remains uncertain.

Most likely, Iran will avoid hitting US targets directly in an effort to prevent a point-of-no-return escalation with American forces. Instead, it will likely intensify its strikes on Israel. Netanyahu, in turn, will double down on his efforts to convince Washington that regime change in Tehran is the only viable path forward – something Trump, at least for now, remains instinctively opposed to. Still, the momentum of military entanglement has a logic of its own, and it’s rarely easy to resist.

Tigran Meloyan, analyst at the Center for Strategic Research, Higher School of Economics: If Iran does nothing, it risks appearing weak – both at home and abroad. That makes a carefully calibrated response almost inevitable: one designed not to escalate the conflict, but to preserve domestic legitimacy and project resolve. Tehran is unlikely to go much further than that. Meanwhile, by continuing to build up its military presence, Washington sends a clear deterrent message – signaling both readiness and resolve in case Tehran miscalculates.

Another option for Iran could be a dramatic symbolic move: withdrawing from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Such a step would be Tehran’s way of declaring that Trump, by striking nuclear infrastructure, has effectively dismantled the global nonproliferation regime. The NPT was supposed to guarantee Iran’s security; instead, it has delivered the opposite. Still, if Iran goes down that path, it risks damaging ties with Moscow and Beijing – neither of which wants to see a challenge to the existing nuclear order.

The bigger question now is whether Iran will even consider returning to talks with Washington after this attack. Why negotiate when American promises no longer mean anything? Tehran urgently needs a mediator who can restrain Trump from further escalation – and right now, the only credible candidate is Moscow. Iran’s foreign minister, [Abbas] Araghchi, is set to meet with President Putin on June 23. It’s hard to imagine that a potential NPT withdrawal won’t be on the table. If in the past an Iranian bomb was considered an existential threat to Israel, the calculus has now reversed: for Iran, nuclear capability is quickly becoming a question of survival.

Konstantin Kosachev, vice speaker of the Federation Council: Let’s state the obvious: Iraq, Libya – and now Iran – were bombed because they couldn’t hit back. They either didn’t have weapons of mass destruction or hadn’t yet developed them. In some cases, they never even intended to. Meanwhile, the West doesn’t touch the four countries that remain outside the Non-Proliferation Treaty: India, Pakistan, North Korea, and Israel. Why? Because unlike Iraq, Libya, and Iran, these states actually possess nuclear weapons. The message to so-called ‘threshold’ nations couldn’t be clearer: if you don’t want to be bombed by the West, arm yourself. Build deterrence. Go all the way – even to the point of developing weapons of mass destruction.

That’s the grim conclusion many countries will draw. It’s a dangerous lesson, and one that flies in the face of global security and the very idea of a rules-based international order. Yet it’s the West that keeps driving this logic. Iraq was invaded over a vial of powder. Libya gave up its nuclear program and was torn apart. Iran joined the NPT, worked with the IAEA, and didn’t attack Israel – unlike Israel, which just struck Iran while staying outside the NPT and refusing to cooperate with nuclear watchdogs. This is more than hypocrisy; it’s a catastrophic failure of US policy. Trump’s administration has made a colossal mistake. The pursuit of a Nobel Peace Prize has taken on grotesque and dangerous proportions.

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Iran will not target LA. Why on earth should they?

Major US Cities on Alert After US Airstrikes on Iranian Nuclear Facilities (ET)

Three major U.S. cities indicated that they’re on heightened alert following U.S. military airstrikes targeting Iranian nuclear facilities on June 21. In an announcement on the night of June 21, President Donald Trump confirmed that the U.S. military carried out bombing missions targeting three facilities, prompting threats from Iranian officials. “We’re tracking the situation unfolding in Iran,” the New York City Police Department stated in a post on X on the evening of June 21. “Out of an abundance of caution, we’re deploying additional resources to religious, cultural, and diplomatic sites across NYC [New York City] and coordinating with our federal partners. We’ll continue to monitor for any potential impact to NYC.”

Soon after that, the Metropolitan Police Department in Washington issued a similar statement about the Iran–U.S. situation and stated that it would increase police presence at religious institutions. The law enforcement agency noted that there are no known threats to the nation’s capital city. Also on June 22, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass wrote on X that her city is “monitoring any threats to public safety” that may arise. “There are no known credible threats at this time and out of an abundance of caution, LAPD is stepping up patrols near places of worship, community gathering spaces and other sensitive sites,” Bass wrote in a June 21 statement, referring to the Los Angeles Police Department. “We will remain vigilant in protecting our communities.”

Outside the United States, the State Department has ordered nonessential personnel and the families of staff at the U.S. Embassy in Lebanon to leave as concerns mount about Iranian retaliation. In a notice issued on June 22, the department stated that it had taken the step “due to the volatile and unpredictable security situation in the region.” The notice makes no mention of any potential evacuation flights or other assistance for private Americans wanting to leave Lebanon but states that they should try to use existing commercial services to depart. The United States has already organized several evacuations of American citizens from Israel and is advising American citizens in Iran on how to leave the country. After the U.S. airstrike that killed Iranian commander Qassem Soleimani in 2020, Iran launched multiple barrages of missiles at U.S. bases in the Middle East, doing minor damage and causing minor injuries to American troops.

Hours after the June 21 bombing, Trump administration officials signaled a willingness to renew talks with Iran and avoid a prolonged war in the Middle East. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told reporters late on June 21 that the United States isn’t seeking regime change in Iran, while Vice President JD Vance said during a June 22 interview that the Trump administration doesn’t want “boots on the ground” in Iran. Before the U.S. bombing mission, Iran and Israel had engaged in a weeklong aerial conflict, with both sides firing missiles at one another, after Israel struck a host of military and strategic sites in Iran a day after a 60-day negotiating period set in April by Trump expired. Israel has stated that it is seeking to dismantle Iran’s nuclear program, which both U.S. and Israeli officials say was intended to produce nuclear weapons.

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”The equipment in question… was not destroyed, but damaged. It will be restored,”

Zelensky Makes New Threats Against Russia (RT)

Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky has suggested that Kiev’s forces will conduct more long-range strikes targeting facilities deep inside Russian territory. Ukraine has significantly escalated drone attacks deep into Russia in recent weeks, despite ongoing diplomatic efforts to end the conflict. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has described the actions as an attempt to derail the peace process. In a post on his Telegram channel on Sunday, Zelensky wrote that he had held a meeting with the head of Ukraine’s military intelligence, Kirill Budanov, claiming that Kiev was keeping tabs on Russia’s “main pain points.” He pledged to “strike appropriate blows” with a view to “significantly reducing” Moscow’s military potential.

Zelensky also stated that Kiev was sharing its intelligence on Russia with its Western backers, with which it is “preparing joint defense solutions.” Speaking to reporters also on Sunday, Ukraine’s commander-in-chief, Aleksandr Syrsky, similarly said that Kiev “will increase the scale and depth” of its strikes on Russian military facilities deep inside the country. On June 1, Ukrainian intelligence conducted a coordinated attack on several Russian airbases across five regions, from Murmansk in the Arctic, to Irkutsk in Siberia. Ukrainian media later reported that the operation codenamed ‘Spiderweb’ involved dozens of first-person view (PFV) kamikaze drones. At least some of them were reportedly launched in close proximity to the targets, from commercial trucks that had been covertly brought into Russia.

The strikes were said to have been prepared for more than a year and a half and focused on Russia’s “strategic aviation.” The Defense Ministry in Moscow said that a number of aircraft in Murmansk and Irkutsk regions had caught fire as a result of the attack. Kiev claimed that the strikes had damaged or destroyed approximately 40 Russian military aircraft, including Tu-95 and Tu-22 long-range bombers. Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov later dismissed these estimates as incorrect. ”The equipment in question… was not destroyed, but damaged. It will be restored,” the diplomat told TASS in early June. Around the same time, Keith Kellogg, US President Donald Trump’s special envoy, cautioned that “when you attack an opponent’s part of their national survival system, which is their nuclear triad… that means your risk level goes up because you don’t know what the other side’s going to do.”

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The garden becomes the jungle.

The European Garden On The Brink Of Ruin (SCF)

The war in Ukraine is entering a critical stage—not only for Kiev, but also for a Europe that, deluded by meaningless slogans and unrealistic promises, finds itself standing at a geopolitical precipice. Ignoring the clear signs of Ukraine’s military and societal exhaustion, European leaders persist in a suicidal escalation of militarization that, far from preventing Ukraine’s collapse, is dragging the continent into an economic, political, and strategic spiral of decline. The impasse worsened once the U.S. began to show signs of fatigue and a desire to end the conflict. Washington now pushes for a negotiated solution, while Brussels insists on keeping Zelensky afloat, offering not real solutions but false hope in the form of temporary ceasefires and new arms shipments. The goal is obvious: to buy time in hopes of rekindling Washington’s old appetite for war. It’s a dangerous—and fundamentally unrealistic—calculation.

The truth is that Ukraine has no strategic breath left. Since the failed counteroffensive of 2023, the country has plunged into a deep crisis of morale, cohesion, and combat capacity. The situation now resembles that of the Spanish Second Republic after its defeat at the Ebro in 1938: the end is in sight, and the continuation of war serves only to prolong suffering. Zelensky himself, now a deeply unpopular leader, would be politically defeated in any free election—consistently trailing behind military figures like Valeriy Zaluzhniy in every poll. An abrupt internal collapse, whether due to political rifts, military mutinies, or civil unrest, is a very plausible outcome. Such a scenario would not only seal Ukraine’s defeat but also trigger a catastrophic shift in the European balance of power.

Moscow could advance to Odessa, annex vast areas of Ukrainian territory, and reach the European Union’s borders. The consequences would be devastating: NATO demoralized, Brussels’ strategic credibility shattered, and the region permanently destabilized. Even so, the European continent seems unable to acknowledge its military impotence. Leaders like Macron, Starmer, and Kallas continue proposing unworkable peace plans based on illusions of European power—ignoring the fact that France and the UK can barely maintain even minimal operational forces. While Russia mobilizes thousands of tanks, Britain has only a few dozens. Germany, mired in political crisis, can’t even produce enough ammunition at scale. European rhetoric speaks of rearmament, but national budgets tell another story: ballooning deficits, public debt over 100% of GDP, and increasingly hostile populations unwilling to accept social cuts in the name of a war with no future.

The militarization of Europe, sold as a solution, is in fact a symptom of collapse. Lacking an industrial base, political capital, or social support, any attempt to rebuild a significant military force will result either in prolonged recession or the dismantling of the welfare state—two paths that will lead the so-called “European garden” to ruin. In this context, the war in Ukraine is not only the grave of the Atlanticist project, but the tombstone of a Europe that traded its stability for fantasies of power.

Ukraine’s collapse, therefore, will not be an isolated event. It will mirror Europe’s strategic collapse. The refusal to face reality – that a negotiated solution with concessions to Russia is better than total destruction—not only threatens the existence of the Ukrainian state but also drags Europe into an existential crisis. The continent that once saw itself as guardian of the liberal international order is transforming, before our very eyes, into a graveyard of its own illusions.

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“In the West, they say, let’s pay for the reconstruction of Ukraine from the reserves. And they will draw up such a bill that even the reserves will not be enough,”

Western Use of Interest From Russia’s Frozen Assets Is Theft – Top Banker (RT)

The use of the interest generated by Russian assets frozen in the West amounts to theft, Andrey Kostin, the CEO of major Russian lender VTB, told RT on Saturday on the sidelines of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum. Kostin condemned the actions of the West, the EU in particular, in regard to Russian assets as “dangerous” games that could eventually be used by others against them. Western countries froze an estimated $300 billion worth of Russian sovereign funds following the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in February 2022. Some $213 billion of the assets are held by the Belgium-based settlement house Euroclear. “It is a very dangerous thing to play such games. You start against one – tomorrow someone will use it against you,” Kostin warned.

The use of proceeds from the assets, which have been repeatedly funneled for procurement of military aid for Ukraine, is grossly illegal and amounts to theft, Kostin noted. While various parties in the West have repeatedly mulled the possibility of seizing the assets themselves, they have failed to find a legal mechanism to do so because there is none, he added. “This is theft. They are using interest now, but interest is the same money of the owner as the principal debt,” he stressed. Moscow has repeatedly condemned the freezing of its assets and has hinted at possible retaliatory measures against Western investments and property in Russia.

Last October, Finance Minister Anton Siluanov warned that Moscow would retaliate in kind and start using the interest generated by the assets of “unfriendly” countries and organizations held in Russia for its own needs. Kostin has long been skeptical about the prospects of Russia ever seeing its frozen assets again. Late last year, he suggested that the funds will never be returned under the pretext of Ukraine’s purported “reconstruction.” “In the West, they say, let’s pay for the reconstruction of Ukraine from the reserves. And they will draw up such a bill that even the reserves will not be enough,” Kostin said at the time.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

urso

1925
https://twitter.com/calvinfroedge/status/1936521743696535656

solar
https://twitter.com/onionweigher/status/1936630237208469898

goats

bob
https://twitter.com/FreewheelinMY/status/1936641632406794631

 

 

 

 

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Jun 202025
 


Eugène Delacroix Liberty Leading the People 1830

 

White House Says Trump To Decide On Attacking Iran ‘Within Next 2 Weeks’ (ZH)
Trump Has Reportedly Approved Iran Attack Plans, Withholds Final Order (ZH)
Tulsi, Hegseth et al Sidelined From Iran-Israel Discussions (RT)
Larry Johnson Reveals What’s Really at Stake as Trump Mulls Iran Attack (Sp.)
US Intel Has No Evidence Iran Building Nuclear Weapon – Top Democrat (RT)
No Proof Iran Is Working On A Nuclear Bomb – UN Watchdog (RT)
Israeli Nuclear Sites To Face ‘Crushing Blows’ – Iranian Source (RT)
The End of Israeli Exceptionalism (Bordachev)
A Dangerous Moment – The Targeting of Tulsi Gabbard (CTH)
Putin Aligns With Israel and Finds A New Way To Deny Reality (Paul Craig Roberts)
Is Trump’s Constituency Netanyahu or MAGA-America? (Paul Craig Roberts)
Supreme Court Delivers a Crushing Blow to Trans Agenda (Margolis)
Germany’s 5% of GDP Defense Spending Goal Will Ruin Economy (Sp.)
Spanish PM Rejects NATO Call to Raise Defense Spending to 5% of GDP (Sp.)
Putin Reveals Pitfalls Of Potential Meeting With Zelensky (RT)

 

 

June 20

Candace

export

Gaetz

 

 

 

 

We get the impression that Trump is having, let’s say, some second thoughts. On Tuesday, he said “The next week is going to be very big, maybe less than a week.” On Thursday, it was “Amid speculation regarding negotiations with Iran, I will make my decision whether or not to go within the next 2 weeks.”

Why the second thoughts? Is it because of new facts, is it the -broad- resistance against direct US involvement among his supporters and voters, or is it because he realizes it’s doubtful that US bunker busters could hit the desired underground Iran targets?

White House Says Trump To Decide On Attacking Iran ‘Within Next 2 Weeks’ (ZH)

Summary: The White House held a high stakes presser Thursday afternoon, as President Donald Trump also again convened his top national security officials in the situation room to hear intelligence officials and make key decisions on the Israel-Iran war, just prior. Of course, the biggest question that remains is: will the US directly enter the war against Iran?

White House quoting Trump: Amid speculation regarding negotiations with Iran, I will make my decision whether or not to go within the next 2 weeks.
• Leavitt: Trump thinks ‘substantial chance’ of Iran negotiations
• Leavitt: Witkoff has been in touch with Iran
• Leavitt: Trump always interested in diplomatic solutions
• Leavitt: it’s the US belief that Iran has never been closer to a nuclear weapon
• Leavitt: Iran can and should make a deal or face consequences
• Leavitt: Trump remains in contact with Netanyahu
• Leavitt: Iran is in a weakened position and we have sent a deal
• Leavitt: Iran has all that it needs to achieve a nuclear weapon, it just needs a ‘decision’
Oil slides on the “two weeks” announcement, as the can gets kicked down the road:

Israel-Iran Conflict Continues, Trump Weighs Options

The most pressing issues at stake:
• Last ditch diplomacy working? Reuters reports in a breaking development that Iran held direct talks with US over de-escalation and potentially restarting nuclear negotiations.
• The Guardian reports that Trump only wants to strike Iran only if the US can destroy the Fordow enrichment facility.
• Destruction of Fordow would at least require the 30k pound bunker buster bomb, but still may not be effective in ending Iran’s enrichment capacity.
• Netanyahu says that while regime change in Tehran is not the current goal, the option is on the table.
• Tactical nuke on the table?

• Will the Iranians close the Strait of Hormuz, choking off global oil shipping?
• Reports of US bases in the region taking protective and defensive measures
• Israeli intelligence official says ‘imminent collapse’ of Iranian government is “far from the truth” – NBC reports
• Iran is warning that a “third party intervention” would spark an immediate military response
• Netanyahu has said the US has been “helping a lot” – without defining specifics

Read more …

“The next week is going to be very big, maybe less than a week.”

Trump Has Reportedly Approved Iran Attack Plans, Withholds Final Order (ZH)

As President Trump convenes a White House situation room meeting this Tuesday early evening, and following Ayatollah Khamenei’s earlier televised speech vowing ‘we will not surrender’ – The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Trump has made the decision: “President Trump told senior aides late Tuesday that he approved of attack plans for Iran, but was holding off to see if Tehran would abandon its nuclear program, people familiar with the deliberations said. Iran’s well-defended Fordow enrichment facility is a possible U.S. target. Israel has yet to attack the facility, which is buried under a mountain and is generally considered by military experts to be out of reach of all but the most powerful bombs. Asked earlier if he had decided whether to strike at Iran’s nuclear facilities, Trump said, “I may do it, I may not do it.” And he repeated his insistence of Iran’s unconditional surrender: “The next week is going to be very big, maybe less than a week.”

Is this yet another last ditch effort to strong arm Tehran to the negotiating table, where Trump’s hope is that it will declare zero enrichment? Has the US Commander-in-Chief painted himself into a corner, and now it’s all zero sum? The Iranians remain under heavy Israeli bombing, and with leadership likely in deep bunkers, are unlikely to negotiate the end of their own ‘regime’. Trump may have finally pulled the trigger here. Where’s Congress? Meanwhile, elements of the Right and elements of the Left are uniting around this simple and very reasonable observation…

* * *
Update(1302ET): Things are quickly going from bad to worse for Iran, amid ongoing Israeli airstrikes, and given Iran’s air defenses in its western portion of the country appear completely destroyed and disabled. Iran is now in a ‘near-total national internet blackout’ – according to monitoring from a UK-based watchdog: Vital civic infrastructure in Tehran, including some sewage system and water networks, have also been hit.

* * *
President Donald Trump on Wednesday fielded reporters’ questions on the Iran crisis, but refused to answer whether the US military will directly enter the war, amid Israeli requests that the Pentagon assist in striking Iran’s nuclear facilities. “There’s a big difference between now and a week ago,” Trump told reporters outside the White House, and added curiously: “Nobody knows what I’m going to do.” He indicated that the Iranians had reached out but he feels “it’s very late to be talking.” But he also threw out the possibility: “We may meet. It’s, I don’t know, there’s a big difference between now and a week ago,” he said on the White House lawn. “I can tell you this, that Iran’s got a lot of trouble and they want to negotiate. And I say, ‘Why didn’t you negotiate with me before all this death and destruction?'” And more: “For 40 years they’ve been saying death to America, death to Israel, death to anybody else that they didn’t like,” he said. “They were bullies. They were schoolyard bullies. And now they’re not bullies anymore. But we’ll see what happens. “I wouldn’t say that we won anything yet. I would say that we sure as hell made a lot of progress.”

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“Trump is now said to be relying on a smaller, more experienced ‘Tier One’ advisory group..”

Tulsi, Hegseth et al Sidelined From Iran-Israel Discussions (RT)

US President Donald Trump has excluded Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard from high-level discussions on the ongoing Iran-Israel conflict, NBC News and the Washington Post have reported, citing senior administration officials. Gabbard’s sidelining, according to NBC, reportedly stems from her public and internal pushback against the official US and Israeli narrative that Tehran is on the verge of acquiring nuclear weapons. Hegseth has also been edged out of operational discussions, with the Washington Post reporting that two four-star generals overseeing the deployment of additional US military assets in the Middle East have taken the lead.

Trump is now said to be relying on a smaller, more experienced ‘Tier One’ advisory group – comprising Vice President J.D. Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, and Joint Chiefs Vice Chair General Dan Caine – which is now reportedly shaping US policy on Iran, rather than the traditional civilian defense and intelligence leadership. Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell has denied the reports, insisting that Hegseth is “speaking with the President multiple times a day each day and has been with the President in the Situation Room this week.” Gabbard also told reporters that she and the president are “on the same page.”

Israel launched a large-scale bombing campaign against Iran last week, claiming Tehran was close to producing a nuclear weapon. Trump will decide whether to join the Israeli campaign “within the next two weeks,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said on Thursday. However, US intelligence still assesses that Iran, while it has stockpiled enriched uranium, has not taken concrete steps toward developing nuclear weapons, according to Senator Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee. This view has remained unchanged since March, when Gabbard told Congress that the US intelligence community “does not believe Iran is building a nuclear weapon.” Trump contradicted this assessment on Tuesday, stating that Iran is “weeks away” from obtaining nuclear weapons and dismissing Gabbard’s remarks by saying, “I don’t care what she said.”

A former Democratic congresswoman and Iraq War veteran, Gabbard has long been critical of the US intelligence community, which she now oversees, and she was known for supporting NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. Her release of a video warning about the horrors of nuclear war following a visit to Hiroshima reportedly annoyed Trump’s advisers. Her absence from a key June 8 meeting at Camp David on Iran policy has fueled speculation about her diminished influence, with multiple sources telling NBC that she has not taken part in recent strategic discussions.

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“..it’s an “extremely dangerous, extremely volatile situation,” and one that clearly has “nothing to do with nuclear weapons..”

Larry Johnson Reveals What’s Really at Stake as Trump Mulls Iran Attack (Sp.)

With Tehran refusing to fold in the face of US ultimatums and threats, Donald Trump is considering joining Israel’s campaign of aggression. Sputnik asked veteran ex-CIA and State Department insider Larry Johnson to make sense of the administration’s calculations, including what could be holding Trump back. President Trump is vacillating on whether or not to move forward with the attack because he knows it would tank his ratings, including among Republicans, Johnson, a former CIA officer and State official, explained. “There are public opinion polls showing that 53% of Republicans are against any attack on Iran. Overall, 61% of Americans are against any attack on Iran. There have been several individuals who were prominent supporters of Donald Trump in the election that have come out condemning him,” he noted.

“I think the political realities are starting to catch up to Trump, which is why he’s now backing away from that,” Johnson said, pointing out that conservative voices sounding the alarm bell include Trump’s most prominent pre-election supporters, from political commentators Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens to comedian Dave Smith. On top of that are the logistical uncertainties, like whether a US bunker buster bombing of the Fordow nuclear site would even work, and whether the B-2 bombers based in Diego Garcia used for such an operation would be safe if Russia were to supply Iran with systems capable of detecting and downing the stealth bomber. Overall, it’s an “extremely dangerous, extremely volatile situation,” and one that clearly has “nothing to do with nuclear weapons,” Johnson stressed. Instead, it’s about “regime change” – an attempt “to install a government that’s going to be a lackey of the West and that will not cooperate or be friendly with Russia.”

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“..you’ve got the president basically dismissing all of the intelligence.”

US Intel Has No Evidence Iran Building Nuclear Weapon – Top Democrat (RT)

US intelligence still assesses that Iran, despite stockpiling enriched uranium, has not taken steps to develop nuclear weapons – a view which has remained unchanged since March, according to the Senate Intelligence Committee’s top Democrat. US President Donald Trump claimed on Tuesday, however, that he believes Tehran was “very close” to obtaining nuclear weapons at the time of Israel’s recent military strikes. His statement contradicts earlier remarks by his own director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, who told lawmakers that Iran “is not building” one. The Iranian authorities insist that their nuclear program is purely peaceful and that they have every right to pursue it. In an interview with MSNBC on Wednesday, the vice chairman of the Intelligence Committee, Democratic Senator Mark Warner, said senators were briefed this week – following the Israeli strikes – that US spy agencies still find no evidence that Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons.

He criticized Trump’s remarks as “foreign policy by tweet,” calling them irresponsible and perplexing, given that they contradict the intelligence briefings lawmakers have received. Warner noted that in March, Gabbard stated that Iran had “taken no steps toward building a bomb.” “And we got reconfirmed… Monday of this week, that the intelligence hasn’t changed,” he added. At the time, she said the US intelligence community “continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has not authorized the nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003.” When Trump was reminded of this by journalists on Tuesday, he replied: “I do not care what she said.”

Responding to Trump’s remark, Warner said, “you’ve got the president basically dismissing all of the intelligence.” He added that even as vice chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, he is unclear on the current US strategy, asking: “If I don’t have the foggiest idea, what do the American people know?” Trump said he has not yet decided whether to support Israel’s military action against Iran, but echoed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s claim that Iran was “weeks away” from developing a nuclear weapon.

Since launching its campaign against Iran last week, Israel has targeted uranium enrichment infrastructure, bombing centrifuge facilities – including a site at Natanz, south of Tehran – and laboratories used to convert uranium gas into metal, according to Israeli officials and the IAEA. Trump has called for Iran’s “unconditional surrender,” claiming that the US now controls its airspace. He also said killing Khamenei would be “easy.” Media reports suggest he may soon join Israel’s military campaign. Tehran has vowed not to yield to pressure and warned it will retaliate if attacked.

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“..A day before Israel’s initial attack on Iran, the IAEA passed a resolution declaring that Tehran was not complying with its obligations concerning nuclear non-proliferation..”

No Proof Iran Is Working On A Nuclear Bomb – UN Watchdog (RT)

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has found no evidence that Iran is making a “systematic effort” to produce a nuclear weapon, according to the agency’s chief, Rafael Grossi. Israel began bombing Iran on Friday, asserting that the country was on the brink of developing a nuclear bomb. The sides have been exchanging retaliatory strikes ever since. US President Donald Trump said on Tuesday that he believes Tehran was “very close” to obtaining the nuclear weapon, contradicting early statements from his director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, who stated that Iran “is not building” one. Iranian authorities insist that their nuclear program is purely peaceful and that they have every right to pursue it. I

n an interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour on Tuesday, Grossi said that, currently, “there is this competition about who is wrong or right about the time that would be needed” for Iran to produce a nuclear bomb. “Certainly, it was not for tomorrow, maybe not a matter of years,” he noted. The Iranians may have enough enriched uranium, but in order to turn it into a nuclear weapon, technology and extensive testing is also required, the IAEA chief explained. Despite inspecting Iran’s nuclear sites for more than two decades, the UN watchdog “did not have… any proof of a systematic effort to move into a nuclear weapon” on the part of Iran, he said. “What we are telling you is what we have been able to prove. The material is there. There have been, in the past, some activities related to the development of nuclear weapons, but we did not have, at this point, these elements,” Grossi stressed.

A day before Israel’s initial attack on Iran, the IAEA passed a resolution declaring that Tehran was not complying with its obligations concerning nuclear non-proliferation. Among other things, the agency noted that Iran had “repeatedly” been unable to prove that its nuclear material was not being diverted for further enrichment for military use. Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi said last weekend that Tehran will limit its cooperation with IAEA due to the agency’s reluctance to condemn Israel’s attacks on the country’s nuclear sites. The UN watchdog’s conduct “makes no sense,” he stated.

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“The Zionist regime’s claim that Iran attacked one of the hospitals in the occupied territories is completely false..”

Israeli Nuclear Sites To Face ‘Crushing Blows’ – Iranian Source (RT)

Iran intends to continue its military response against Israel and could target its nuclear infrastructure, a senior Iranian security official has told RT. In an exclusive statement to the head of RT’s Tehran bureau, the official, who chose to remain anonymous, said that Iranian armed forces will maintain missile and drone operations throughout the day, specifically targeting “the occupied territories and Israeli garrisons.” nThe official said Iran’s response follows “the Quranic advice on retaliation,” and warned that Iranian forces would respond “to any extent and wherever the regime attacks Iranian soil.” He noted, however, that based on “Iran’s moral principles,” there would be no attacks on hospitals. “The Zionist regime’s claim that Iran attacked one of the hospitals in the occupied territories is completely false,” the official stressed, referring to reports of the Soroka hospital being struck in the city of Be’er Sheva in southern Israel.

He also stated that Tehran’s response will be escalated in light of the Israeli strikes on Iranian nuclear sites. “Since the [Israeli] regime has attacked our nuclear facilities, our armed forces will subject their nuclear facilities to crushing blows,” the official said. Since launching its assault last week, Israel has hit several Iranian nuclear facilities, including sites in Natanz, Isfahan, Fordow and near Tehran. Between nine and 14 nuclear researchers have been reported killed in the attacks. Without naming the US directly, the Iranian official also warned that “if another country directly enters into war with us, it will provide much more accessible targets for the Iranian armed forces to destroy.”

US President Donald Trump has hailed Israel’s attacks on Iran as “excellent” and has urged Tehran to surrender unconditionally. He has also warned that the US could become directly involved in the conflict if any American targets are hit by Iran. Last Friday, Israeli forces began carrying out strikes on Iran, claiming Tehran is nearing the completion of a nuclear bomb. Iran dismissed the accusations and retaliated with waves of drone and missile strikes on the Jewish state. The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Rafael Grossi, has since also refuted Israel’s claims, stating that the watchdog has found no evidence that Iran has been making a “systematic effort” to produce a nuclear weapon.

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“Some in West Jerusalem may dream of “reformatting” the Middle East – reshaping the region through force and fear. If successful, it could buy Israel a few decades of security and breathing room. But such outcomes are far from guaranteed.”

The End of Israeli Exceptionalism (Bordachev)

Israel has now been at war with its neighbours for nearly two years. The latest round began with the Hamas-led terrorist attack on 7 October 2023. In response, West Jerusalem launched an aggressive military campaign that has since expanded to touch nearly every country in the region. The escalation has placed the Jewish state at the centre of Middle Eastern geopolitics once again – this time, dragging in Iran, a state that had long avoided direct confrontation through strategic caution. Now, even Tehran finds itself under fire, with US backing making the stakes far higher. Iran is left facing a grim choice between the bad and the very bad. But this isn’t about Iran. It’s about Israel, a country that has for decades functioned as the West’s forward operating base in the Middle East.

Since the mid-20th century, Israel has enjoyed a privileged position – a bridgehead of Western power in a volatile region, while also deeply enmeshed in its politics and rivalries. Its success has rested on two pillars: the unshakable support of the United States, and its own internal capacity for innovation, military strength, and a unique social model. That second pillar, however, has weakened. The clearest sign is in demographics: Israel is facing rising negative migration. In 2024, some 82,700 people are expected to leave the country – a 50% increase from the year before. It is not the unskilled or disengaged who are leaving, but the young and educated. The people who are needed to sustain a modern state are choosing to go.

Of course, Israel’s troubles are not unique. Like many developed nations, it is struggling under the weight of a decaying neoliberal economic system. The pandemic made things worse, exposing the fragility of the model and encouraging a shift toward a “mobilisation” mode of governance – rule through emergency and constant readiness for conflict. In the West more broadly, war and geopolitical confrontation have become a way to delay or disguise necessary systemic reform. In this regard, Israel has become a laboratory for the West’s emerging logic: permanent war as a method of governance. In the autumn of 2023, the Israeli establishment embraced this fully. Conflict became not just a tactic, but a way of life. Its leaders no longer see peace as the goal, but war as the mechanism for national unity and political survival.

In this, Israel mirrors the broader Western embrace of conflict with Russia and China – proxy wars chosen when actual reform is off the table. At the global level, nuclear deterrence limits how far such wars can go. But in the Middle East, where Israel wages war directly, those constraints don’t apply. This allows war to serve as a pressure valve – politically useful, even as it becomes self-destructive. But even war has limits. It cannot indefinitely mask economic decay or social unrest. And while conflict tends to cement elite power – even among incompetent leadership – it also drains national strength. Israel is now consuming more and more of its own resources to sustain this permanent state of war. Its social cohesion is fraying. Its once-vaunted model of technological and civic progress is no longer functioning as it did.

Some in West Jerusalem may dream of “reformatting” the Middle East – reshaping the region through force and fear. If successful, it could buy Israel a few decades of security and breathing room. But such outcomes are far from guaranteed. Crushing a neighbour doesn’t eliminate the threat; it merely brings distant enemies closer. Most importantly, Israel’s deepest problems aren’t external – they are internal, rooted in its political and social structures. War can define a state, yes. But such states – Sparta, North Korea – tend to be “peculiar,” to put it mildly. And even for them, war cannot substitute for real diplomacy, policy, or growth. So has Israel, always at war, truly developed? Or has it simply been sustained – politically, militarily, and financially – as a subdivision of American foreign policy? If it continues down this path of permanent conflict and right-wing nationalism, it risks losing even that status. It may cease to be the West’s bridge in the Middle East – and become something else entirely: a militarised garrison state, isolated, brittle, and increasingly alone.

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“..what I am confident about is that if Tulsi Gabbard is removed, she will not be replaced, and that’s as good as a win for the bad actors trying to target and survive Trump.”

A Dangerous Moment – The Targeting of Tulsi Gabbard (CTH)

For the sake of urgency I’m going to talk in direct and bold terms about the targeting of Tulsi Gabbard. The IC system is attempting to remove her as a disruptive influence by using Iran as a wedge to get her out, but the issue they have with her has nothing to do with Iran. CTH approaches this after being very concerned about Tulsi Gabbard’s ability. Not because of intent, but rather because we doubted she understood the scope of the IC opposition aligned against the office of the Director of National Intelligence. She started out with these weaknesses, but she learned quickly – grasped the opposition– and has become a transformative force within the Intelligence Community. Director Gabbard’s recent efforts within the Intelligence Community Inspector General office is another feather in her cap of competence. Gabbard is now a threat.

If President Trump allows or supports the removal of DNI Gabbard, he is opening up the backplate of his armor, and making himself vulnerable. The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Chairman Tom Cotton, the disassembled National Intelligence Council and a host of Intelligence Community embeds would like to see Gabbard removed. DC wants to see her removed because the traditional role of the DNI has been a willful tool of the Intelligence Community; Gabbard is not that. As DNI Mrs Tulsi Gabbard has chased down intelligence community leakers, released the JFK files, released Joe Biden’s domestic terrorism surveillance plan, intercepted an NIC plot to impeach President Trump (confirmed by Rubio), taken control of the Presidential Daily Briefing, and begun to confront the corruption within the IC Inspector General organization. These are actions, not words, and those actions speak boldly. Suffice to say, her effectiveness has placed a target on her back.

In the past few weeks, ever since she began intercepting the ICIG issues and using her own personnel to monitor the IC network, she has been targeted with several direct smear campaigns. It is obvious the targeting is coming from inside the intelligence apparatus, and perhaps even the orbit around/under CIA Director John Ratcliffe. She did make a strange video about nuclear weapons contrast against the horrific outcomes in Japan, but that seemed to be more of a personal video entry expressing a deep concern about nuclear weapons from her own perspectives. I said it was weird when I saw it, but I put that into the context of ‘surfboard Tulsi‘, the DNI peacenik. No biggie. However, with the Israel -v- Iran conflict encompassing the White House, there is a transparent objective to weaponize Tulsi Gabbard’s activity as a contrast against President Trump supporting military conflict in Iran.

This contrast is being stimulated by the same elements who want to see her removed for the reasons noted above. The latest narrative du jour in the files includes: “WASHINGTON DC – […] Trump has increasingly mused about nixing Gabbard’s office completely, an idea he floated when he gave her the job. In the White House there have been discussions about folding its mandate into the CIA or another agency, according to one of the people familiar with his response to the video and two others familiar with the matter — though it’s unclear what that would mean for Gabbard. The Director of National Intelligence serves as the president’s principal intelligence adviser and oversees the sprawling U.S. spy community.

First, “nixing Gabbard’s office completely” is exactly what the bad elements of the Intelligence Community would love to see. Second, “folding its mandate into the CIA” is like a dream come true for the darkest elements of the IC and Senate enablers. And Third, “serves as the president’s principal intelligence adviser” is false. That’s the job of the National Security Advisor, Marco Rubio. If there is one hope amid this looming and increasing drumbeat to remove her, it is that Marco Rubio likely can see exactly what the motives and intentions are from his former colleagues. The elements targeting DNI Gabbard all come from SSCI Chairman Marco Rubio’s old tribe. SoS/NSA Rubio might save her, as too may Vice President JD Vance. Both of them are at the perfect distance to see the assembled drumbeat against Gabbard for what it is. At least that is my hope.

I am not confident they will succeed removing her. However, what I am confident about is that if Tulsi Gabbard is removed, she will not be replaced, and that’s as good as a win for the bad actors trying to target and survive Trump. President Trump has no more juice or influence in the Senate. That time is over. Trump has exhausted all of the political capital he held in the upper chamber. Every Republican Senator will now smile, nod and do whatever the heck they want regardless of how it impacts President Trump. This is especially true for the SSCI who would control confirmation of a DNI replacement. They don’t have to pretend any longer, Trump’s juice is gone. If President Trump allows the Brutus crew in his orbit to isolate, ridicule and marginalize Tulsi Gabbard, he will be putting a significant part of his administration at risk. This is the Six Ways from Sunday crowd.

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“..Putin does not understand that the problem is Greater Israel. Iran is the last Muslim country with the capability of resisting the Israelization of the Middle East.”

Putin Aligns With Israel and Finds A New Way To Deny Reality (Paul Craig Roberts)

John Helmer reports that Putin said he supports the “unconditional security of Israel” and that the Russian-Iranian treaty “did not envisage military cooperation.” Is this Putin’s green light for a US/Israeli strike on Iran? Why does Putin support the security of Israel but not of Iran? Israel is the aggressor, not Iran. Iran is a buffer for Russia. Israel is a threat. Putin offered his ideas to Netanyahu and Trump on how to resolve the “problem.” Putin said, “In my opinion, in general, such a solution can be found.” Putin does not understand that the problem is Greater Israel. Iran is the last Muslim country with the capability of resisting the Israelization of the Middle East. Israel has had a target on Iran for many years, and the American whore media has succeeded in demonizing Iran in the hearts and minds of the American people.

Putin’s foolish statements putting distance between Russia and Iran removes the only real constraint on a US/Israeli war with Iran. Such a war could soon begin. Gilbert Doctorow and the Washington Post report that Israel’s supply of missiles for its air defense are being rapidly depleted by sustained Iranian attacks. Israel faces the possible humiliation of having to sue for peace in about a week to ten days or use its nuclear weapons. This prospect is a huge incentive for Netanyahu to get Trump into the war and for Trump to oblige him.

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“Why do you regard the risk of a nuclear war as less of a threat than a mutual security agreement with Russia?”

Is Trump’s Constituency Netanyahu or MAGA-America? (Paul Craig Roberts)

President Trump is supposed to be America’s President, different from Biden who was the immigrant-invaders’ president, the president for DEI, the president for Zelensky in his conflict with Russia, the president for misunderstood criminals and sexual perverts. So why is Trump behaving as if he is President for Netanyahu? Iran has done nothing to America. It has not attacked us, sanctioned us, frozen our bank reserves, forbidden trade with us, assassinated any of our leaders. These are things that Washington has done to Iran. Why? Because Netanyahu told us to. Having failed to destroy Iran’s uranium enrichment facilities used to produce fuel for nuclear power and for medical purposes, Netanyahu has turned the task over to Trump, “Israel’s best friend.” Why does Trump want to be best friend with a government that for 21 months bombed and staffed Palestinian civilians, green-lighted Israeli soldiers to shoot babies and children in the head, and is now relying on starvation and disease to finish off the Palestinian population, forcefully preventing food, water, and medicine from entering Gaza?

Would you want to be friends with Netanyahu? Can you respect a president who not only wants to be friends with a genocidal maniac like Netanyahu, but is ready to take America to war for Netanyahu? I cannot. It seems that Trump is going to do good for Netanyahu by harming America and forfeiting American lives in yet another war for Israel. Hey Trump, what happens to the domestic agenda if taking on Iran is a bigger job than Netanyahu told you? Are you going to end up expanding Israel’s borders instead of protecting America’s borders? What happened to your plan to use Gaza as the anchor for your development of an American Middle East colony in place of Greater Israel? You declared Gaza an American possession and the first stage in the development plan. Has Netanyahu straightened you out about Greater Israel?

What happened to peace in Ukraine in 24 hours? You never sat down with Putin, understood the Russian concerns about NATO on Russia’s borders, and understood that the obvious solution was a mutual security agreement. That is all it takes to solve the problem before another fool green lights another attack on Russian strategic forces. Why do you regard the risk of a nuclear war as less of a threat than a mutual security agreement with Russia? What’s wrong with a mutual security agreement? Is the answer that the US military/security complex won’t allow you to take away the enemy that justifies their budget and power? America’s last industry seems to be weapons. Can we survive without it?

Hey Trump, considering all your problems at home with the judiciary blocking your deportation efforts and your ability to exercise executive branch powers to control the federal government’s policies and spending, with state and local Democrat officials working against your effort to control the border, with NGOs and foundations financing anti-deportation riots, why are you diverting your limited time and energy to foreign wars? After Netanyahu gets you into a war with Iran, are you going to start one with China? When the dumbshits in Europe get into a war with Russia, are you rushing Americans to the rescue?

Trump, you were supposed to be an American President, not President of the World. Our own country is drowning in problems. Why are you getting involved in other countries’ problems? Your dumbshit predecessors–Dubya/Cheney, Obama, Biden–have already destroyed five countries for Israel. If you make it six with Iran, Netanyahu will hand you number 7–Saudi Arabia–and then numbers 8–Pakistan, a larger problem as Pakistan has nukes. Will number 8 be Turkey? Are you going to be the president who created Greater Israel for the genocidal Netanyahu? Do you think that this is something to be proud of?

That is not why you were elected. You had better pay attention to your base. When the American Establishment concludes that you have been given enough rope, the RINOs will join the Democrats in impeaching you, and your disappointed public base will not come to your rescue. You will be impeached and convicted and so will be your supporters. Privileges for DEI will reappear along with open borders as white heterosexuals become accustomed to their second class status in a country that the Democrats have created in their image–a Sodom and Gomorrah Tower of Babel. The Camp of the Saints will advance, and you, Donald Trump, will have opened the last door to the replacement of the white ethnicities.

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“Wednesday’s ruling is a crucial step toward restoring sanity to American healthcare and protecting our most vulnerable citizens from ideologically driven medical abuse.”

Supreme Court Delivers a Crushing Blow to Trans Agenda (Margolis)

In a resounding victory for parental rights and child protection, the Supreme Court delivered a 6-3 decision Wednesday that upholds Tennessee’s ban on so-called “gender-affirming care” for minors. This landmark ruling represents a triumph of common sense over radical gender ideology that has been targeting America’s children for far too long. nAs you could have guessed, Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor, and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented, while the conservative majority on the court correctly recognized what Tennessee and 24 other states have already figured out: Children deserve protection from irreversible medical experiments masquerading as healthcare. The ACLU and its allies tried to dress up this radical agenda in constitutional language, claiming that banning these dangerous treatments for gender dysphoria while allowing the same medications for legitimate medical conditions somehow violated “equal protection.”

What a joke. There’s nothing “equal” about subjecting confused children to experimental treatments that could sterilize them and cause lifelong health problems. And thankfully, a majority of the court disagreed with the ACLU. Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts said that such policy decisions are best left to voters and their elected officials, not the courts. In her dissent, Sotomayor accused the court of retreating “from meaningful judicial review exactly where it matters most,” and “abandon[ing] transgender children and their families to political whims.” The medical establishment’s endorsement of these treatments is hardly the slam-dunk argument the left thinks it is. The same organizations pushing puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones have been captured by woke ideology and are more interested in political correctness than protecting children.

Meanwhile, as we’ve previously reported here at PJ Media, European countries that have been dealing with this gender madness longer than we have are now pulling back because they’re finally acknowledging what many of us have been saying all along: the risks far outweigh any supposed benefits. Various studies have supported this conclusion. This Supreme Court decision is a massive win for the 25 states that have had the courage to stand up to the transgender lobby and put children’s welfare first. It’s a vindication of basic common sense in an age when saying that boys are boys and girls are girls can get you labeled a bigot.

Of course, the fight isn’t over. The radical left won’t give up its crusade to confuse and mutilate America’s children just because the Supreme Court dealt them a major blow. There are still battles to fight in schools, sports, and countless other institutions that this gender ideology has infected. The Court has yet to address the broader questions of parental rights and the scope of state authority to protect children from harmful medical interventions. But Wednesday’s ruling is a crucial step toward restoring sanity to American healthcare and protecting our most vulnerable citizens from ideologically driven medical abuse.

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Imagine bankrupting yourself over a fantasy threat.

Germany’s 5% of GDP Defense Spending Goal Will Ruin Economy (Sp.)

Germany would “ruin” its economy by agreeing to a blitzing raise in its defense spending, particularly the NATO-proposed target of 3.5% to 5% of GDP, Ralf Dickel, an independent German energy expert specializing in international energy trade, told Sputnik on Thursday.In early May, media reported that NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte had proposed that NATO states increase their defense spending to 3.5% of GDP and allocate another 1.5% of GDP to additional defense needs to meet US President Donald Trump’s demand for a 5% target. The minimum requirements are expected to be agreed upon at the NATO summit in The Hague from June 24-25. “First of all, again, this 3.5 percent, 5 percent is completely ridiculous. We will ruin our economy for nothing,” Dickel said on the sidelines of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF). The expert expressed his concern over the prevailing mindset in the West where the emphasis on military readiness is seen as a solution to global tensions.

“What worries me is that in the West, we have a lot of people who say, ‘okay, this must spend much more on defense,’ on being war-ready, actually. Not on defense, but war-ready. That is very stupid on several accounts,” Dickel said. He argued that true defense should not be measured solely by the percentage of GDP allocated to military spending but should be informed by a careful analysis of potential threats. “I mean, first of all, it’s fair to be able to defend yourself, but that is something you would not usually link to a scale of your GDP, but you would rather analyze what is a scale of potential military actions against your country, and then you should be sure to meet them. But in parallel to that, we should also make an offer to negotiate. And to negotiate eventually some new architecture, some new security architecture,” he stated. The expert concluded by stressing that sustainable security for any state could not solely be achieved through military means but must also involve dialogue and cooperation.

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Will NATO survive this?

Spanish PM Rejects NATO Call to Raise Defense Spending to 5% of GDP (Sp.)

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez told NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte that Madrid would not support the proposal to increase the alliance’s defense spending to 5% of gross domestic product (GDP) by 2032, according to a letter published by El Pais newspaper on Thursday. “For Spain, committing to a 5% target would not only be unreasonable, but also counterproductive; it would move Spain away from optimal spending and would hinder the EU’s efforts to strengthen its security and defense ecosystem,” the letter read.

Sources at the Spanish government told the newspaper that while they do not rule out Europe reaching 5% defense spending, they believe it is too early to set that target. Earlier in June, Rutte called on NATO member states to increase their defense spending from the current 2% to 3.5% of their respective GDPs, and spend another 1.5% on infrastructure development, military industry and other security-related investments. US President Donald Trump previously demanded that NATO allies spend 5% of GDP on defense.

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”If the Ukrainian state entrusts someone to negotiate on its behalf, suit yourself, let it be Zelensky,” Putin said. “The question is, who will sign the document?”

Putin Reveals Pitfalls Of Potential Meeting With Zelensky (RT)

Russian President Vladimir Putin has said he could meet with Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky to conduct peace talks between the two countries, but expressed doubt regarding Zelensky’s authority to sign a treaty. Zelensky has repeatedly called for a meeting with Putin, claiming that he alone can resolve key bilateral issues, including territorial disputes.nSpeaking late Wednesday with international media at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, the Russian president reiterated Moscow’s concerns about Zelensky’s legitimacy. ”If the Ukrainian state entrusts someone to negotiate on its behalf, suit yourself, let it be Zelensky,” Putin said. “The question is, who will sign the document?”

Zelensky’s presidential term expired last year, and no successor has been elected due to martial law. Zelensky insists that he has the right to remain in office, even though the Ukrainian Constitution calls for the transfer of presidential powers to the speaker of the parliament. ”Propagandistically, one can say anything about the legitimacy of the current authorities, but we care about legal aspects and not propaganda when dealing with serious issues,” Putin said.

He added that since Ukrainian officials are appointed by the president, Zelensky’s questionable legitimacy calls into question the authority of those serving under him. We don’t care who conducts negotiations, even if it is the head of the regime. I am even willing to meet with him for some final phase, where we won’t be spending endless amounts of time divvying things but would just put a stop to it all. ”But the signature must come from legitimate authorities,” Putin stressed. “Otherwise, whoever comes after him will toss it to the dumpster. That’s not a way to conduct serious business.”

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Cancer
https://twitter.com/Rainmaker1973/status/1935346765256863947

Heart

 

 

 

 

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May 302025
 
 May 30, 2025  Posted by at 10:31 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , ,  45 Responses »


Pablo Picasso Self portrait 1940

 

 

A lot goes wrong, a few things are alright. Day by day,

 

 

https://twitter.com/OCOCReport/status/1928224845516460226

 

 

Yes no no yes no yes no yes.

US Court Blocks Trump’s Tariffs (RT)

The US Court of International Trade has ruled that President Donald Trump has no right to impose sweeping tariffs on imports under the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA). By invoking the legislation, the White House bypassed the need for congressional approval that would otherwise have been required to take such steps. In early April, the US president slapped a baseline 10% tariff on all imported goods, with higher rates for China, Mexico, Canada and the EU member states, citing trade imbalances. Trump has since suspended some of those measures amid ongoing negotiations. On Wednesday, the New York-based court sided with a number of small businesses that had filed lawsuits against Trump, arguing that he had overstepped his authority.

According to a statement issued by the court and quoted by US media, “the Worldwide and Retaliatory Tariff Orders exceed any authority granted to the President by IEEPA to regulate importation by means of tariffs.” However, the ruling does not affect any tariffs that Trump has imposed under different legislation, namely, Section 232 powers from the Trade Expansion Act of 1962. This means that his 25% tariff on imported autos and parts as well as on all foreign-made steel and aluminum will remain in place. The court ruling has noted that the US president could still slap a 15% tariff on countries with which Washington has a substantial trade deficit for 150 days, with Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974 granting Trump the right to do so.

The White House has filed an appeal, with US media suggesting that the US Supreme Court will likely be asked to settle the matter. In a post on X on Thursday, Stephen Miller, who serves as the White House deputy chief of staff for policy and as homeland security advisor, described the court’s decision as a “judicial coup” that has gotten “out of control.” There is a total of at least seven lawsuits, which argue that the IEEPA legislation does not authorize the use of tariffs, and that the trade deficit cited by Trump does not constitute an emergency as the US has run it for 49 consecutive years. Multiple states led by Oregon have filed similar lawsuits.

Trump has repeatedly claimed that the global trade system in its current form has left the US “looted, pillaged, raped and plundered” by other nations. The Republican has also insisted that sweeping tariffs will help to bring manufacturing jobs back to the US.

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Yes.

Court Allows Trump’s Tariffs to Stay in Place

A federal appeals court has overruled an activist decision from earlier this week to allow President Donald Trump’s tariffs to stay in place — at least for now. Only yesterday, the U.S. Court of International Trade ruled unanimously that Donald Trump‘s tariffs on dozens of countries had to be lifted. But that ruling has already been negated by a new court decision, fortunately. Isn’t it amazing how Trump‘s policies aimed at benefiting America are constantly being attacked by judges who didn’t give a hoot when the Biden administration repeatedly and egregiously violated the Constitution and other laws? At least this new decision makes sense. The Trump White House said in comments to Fox Business that the new ruling is definitely a win for Americans. “The Federal Circuit Court’s administrative stay on the Court of International Trade’s ruling is a positive development for America’s industries and workers,” stated White House spokesperson Kush Desai.

He added, “The Trump administration remains committed to addressing our country’s national emergencies of drug trafficking and historic trade deficits with every legal authority conferred to the President in the Constitution and by Congress. Regardless of the developments of this litigation, the President will continue to use all tools at his disposal to advance trade policy that works for all Americans.”For Our VIPs: The Education Department, Intellectual Silliness, and the Demise of Our Schooling. Fox Business provided more details, clarifying that the new decision delays rather than permanently overrules the previous decision:

In its decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit granted an immediate administrative state to the extent that permanent injunctions entered by the Court of International Trade on Wednesday are temporarily stayed until at least June 9. After June 9, the court can issue an order of enforcement. The decision states: “The plaintiffs-appellees are directed to respond to the United States’s motions for a stay no later than June 5, 2025. The United States may file a single, consolidated reply in support no later than June 9, 2025.” Hopefully, another court will step in before June 9 to ensure the tariffs can stay in place.

What should be happening right now is that Congress should be working to ensure lots of spending cuts while the tariffs bring in more money to help cover the remaining costs that have already created over $36 trillion in national debt. But unfortunately, much of the judiciary seems hell-bent on helping Democrats destroy our republic.

The previous decision, now temporarily blocked, asserted that the executive has no power to impose tariffs. “The court holds for the foregoing reasons that IEEPA does not authorize any of the Worldwide, Retaliatory, or Trafficking Tariff Orders. The Worldwide and Retaliatory Tariff Orders exceed any authority granted to the President by IEEPA to regulate importation by means of tariffs,” the judges’ panel wrote. “The Trafficking Tariffs fail because they do not deal with the threats set forth in those orders.” Since Congress has delegated certain tariff powers to the executive branch, the court was being deceptive when it claimed that Trump did not have legal power to impose the tariffs. But a weaponized judiciary doesn’t care about legal reality; it cares about political ideology.

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Merz has himself to prove.

How to start a war with Russia in these easy steps: Just ask Merz’s Germany (RT)

If in a dark hole, dig deeper, especially even deeper than feckless German ex-chancellor Olaf Scholz. That seems to be Berlin’s new motto. Under Friedrich Merz’s new mis-management, the German government is clearly setting out to worsen its current abysmal non-relationship with Russia. That is a sadly ambitious aim, because things are already more dire than they’ve been at any point since 1945. But Merz and his team, it seems, are not satisfied with playing a key role in fighting a proxy war against Russia that has been a ruinous fiasco; not for the Russian economy, but for Germany’s. Even by February 2023, German mainstream media reported that the war had sliced 2.5 percent off GDP.

That, by the way, is a large figure in and of itself, but consider that between 2022 and 2024 Germany’s annual GDP growth (or, really, reduction) rate has varied between -0.3 percent (2023) and +1.4 percent, and it looks even worse.

And yet, instead of sincerely – and finally – trying to use diplomacy to end this war against Russia via Ukraine, Merz’s Berlin is now taking the risk of escalating the current mess into the nightmare of a direct military clash between Russia and Germany (and, hence, presumably NATO – though not necessarily including the US any longer). Such a confrontation would be devastating in a manner that Germans have not experienced for a long time, as even a recent German TV documentary had to admit, despite its obvious purpose to boost the country’s current re-militarization-on-steroids.

The single most obvious symbol of Berlin’s new, industrial-strength recklessness is the Taurus cruise missile, a sophisticated, very expensive weapon (at €1-3 million each) with a full name you will want to forget (Target Adaptive Unitary and Dispenser Robotic Ubiquity System) and, crucially, a maximum range of about 500 kilometers.

The government under Scholz, breathtakingly incompetent and shamelessly submissive to the US as it was, never agreed to let Ukraine have this weapon. For, in essence, two reasons: The Taurus, once in Ukraine, could fire deep into Russia, even as far as Moscow, and it is undeniable that it can only be operated with direct German help, which would bring about a state of war between Moscow and Berlin. Merz, however, has created a vague yet substantial impression that delivering the Taurus to Kiev is an option again.

Throughout this war – and its prehistory, too – Russia has been sending clear warnings about what such a war might entail: According to Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov, for instance, Germany is “already directly engaging” in the Ukraine War. But clearly, he, too, sees room for things to get much worse again, with, in his words, Germany “sliding down the same slippery slope it has already treaded a couple of times just this past century – down to its collapse.”

Dmitry Peskov, spokesman of President Vladimir Putin, has underlined that Merz’s statements, muddled as they were, pointed to a “serious escalation.” Less diplomatically, the head of Russia’s RT, Margarita Simonyan, has explained that German-Ukrainian Taurus strikes on Russian cities could provoke a Russian missile strike on Berlin. An important Russian military expert, meanwhile, has mentioned the possibility of a strike against Taurus production facilities in Germany.

Are these warnings any help? Of course, German politicians would not openly admit to being successfully deterred by Moscow, but it is a fact that Merz has abstained from following through on his implied threat of transferring the Taurus to Ukraine.

If he had wanted to do so, the visit of Ukraine’s leader Vladimir Zelensky in Berlin would have provided an excellent opportunity to close the deal. Yet, instead of the hotly desired cruise missiles, Zelensky has received something else: a demonstrative use of the German informal you (“du”), plenty of money (again), and a promise that Germany will help build long-range weapons in Ukraine. Considering that Moscow has just demonstrated its ability to strike such production facilities anywhere in Ukraine, that promise is the equivalent of a cop-out. For now at least.

That is a good thing. It avoids an immediate, extremely dangerous escalation. Yet Merz and his experts are naïve if they believe that there will be no Russian response to their declared intention to transfer German know-how to Ukraine so that long-range weapons can be made there.

For one thing, Moscow has just demonstrated its ability to strike Ukraine’s military industry. At the same time, even the Taurus is by no means off the table. Neither are Russian warnings about the catastrophic consequences of its use. The Russian Defense Ministry is confident that its air defenses could stop Taurus strikes, but also emphasizes that its special ability to fly far into Russia constitutes a problem in a class all by itself.

What is the new Berlin even trying to do here? Negotiations to end the war are ongoing, even if Merz claims the opposite. Russia is not, as he repeats, merely “playing for time.” In reality, the second round of the Istanbul 2.0 talks is now scheduled to go ahead, at least as far as Moscow is concerned.

The real problem for Western politicians like Merz is that Moscow is not willing to abandon its own interests or comply with unilateral demands backed up by threats.

Indeed, if a plausible Reuters report based on leaks is correct, Putin has outlined Russia’s conditions for a realistic settlement once again: unsurprisingly, they include a complete stop to NATO expansion, an at least partial end to sanctions against Russia and to attempts to fully seize frozen Russian sovereign assets, the genuine neutrality of Ukraine, and protection for its Russian-speakers.

Against this background, Merz’s recent sallies are only more puzzling: Russia is not weak but winning this war. A summer offensive may be close and make Ukraine’s situation even more untenable. But there also is a genuine opportunity to exploit negotiations that have been restarted so as to finally limit the losses to both Ukraine and the West.

Meanwhile, the reluctance of the US to reliably back up a hard course against Russia could permit the NATO-EU Europeans to explore constructive alternatives to the ongoing proxy war. Indeed, it should be their worst nightmare to be left alone with this conflict if Moscow and Washington should break through to a full détente.

The German economy will not thrive – even with a hail-Mary boost of debt-based military Keynesianism, as now launched by Merz – unless its relationship with Russia is reframed. Last but not least, Ukraine will not be rebuilt before there is a durable peace.

And Berlin’s response to all of the above? More of the same, but worse. Now, with the Taurus back on the options menu and open announcements to help Ukraine build, in essence, its own version of it, presumably under intense German coaching and packed with German technology, Kiev’s chances are not better and Germany’s position is more precarious. The probability of an escalation into a direct Russian-German war remains even higher than before Merz’s new initiative, and the probability of peace has been reduced. Call it a lose-lose.

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US Court Blocks Trump’s Tariffs (RT)

The US Court of International Trade has ruled that President Donald Trump has no right to impose sweeping tariffs on imports under the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA). By invoking the legislation, the White House bypassed the need for congressional approval that would otherwise have been required to take such steps.

In early April, the US president slapped a baseline 10% tariff on all imported goods, with higher rates for China, Mexico, Canada and the EU member states, citing trade imbalances. Trump has since suspended some of those measures amid ongoing negotiations. On Wednesday, the New York-based court sided with a number of small businesses that had filed lawsuits against Trump, arguing that he had overstepped his authority. According to a statement issued by the court and quoted by US media, “the Worldwide and Retaliatory Tariff Orders exceed any authority granted to the President by IEEPA to regulate importation by means of tariffs.”

However, the ruling does not affect any tariffs that Trump has imposed under different legislation, namely, Section 232 powers from the Trade Expansion Act of 1962. This means that his 25% tariff on imported autos and parts as well as on all foreign-made steel and aluminum will remain in place.The court ruling has noted that the US president could still slap a 15% tariff on countries with which Washington has a substantial trade deficit for 150 days, with Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974 granting Trump the right to do so.The White House has filed an appeal, with US media suggesting that the US Supreme Court will likely be asked to settle the matter.In a post on X on Thursday, Stephen Miller, who serves as the White House deputy chief of staff for policy and as homeland security advisor, described the court’s decision as a “judicial coup” that has gotten “out of control.”

There is a total of at least seven lawsuits, which argue that the IEEPA legislation does not authorize the use of tariffs, and that the trade deficit cited by Trump does not constitute an emergency as the US has run it for 49 consecutive years. Multiple states led by Oregon have filed similar lawsuits. Trump has repeatedly claimed that the global trade system in its current form has left the US “looted, pillaged, raped and plundered” by other nations. The Republican has also insisted that sweeping tariffs will help to bring manufacturing jobs back to the US.”>

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Ukraine Needed Western Help To Target Putin’s Helicopter – Scott Ritter (RT)

Ukraine must have relied on assistance from the West if it did in fact target a helicopter carrying Russian President Vladimir Putin last week, former US Marine Corps intelligence officer and UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter has told RT. Russian air defense division commander Yury Dashkin told the Russia 1 channel last week that Putin’s helicopter had been caught in the “epicenter” of a massive Ukrainian drone attack during a visit to Kursk Region on May 20. The intensity of aerial incursions “increased significantly” when the president was in the air, with 46 incoming fixed-wing UAVs being shot down in the area, he said. In an interview with RT on Wednesday, Ritter stressed that “if the Ukrainians drones actually targeted the Russian president, they did not do so in a vacuum… there would have been assistance provided by the West, which means that the West is targeting the Russian president.”

“If you read the Russian nuclear doctrine, this is a trigger for Russian nuclear retaliation or preemptive strikes. So, who is playing with fire here? It is not Vladimir Putin who is playing with fire. It is Ukraine and the West that are playing with fire,” he added. The former US Marine Corps major was referring to a comment by US President Donald Trump, who claimed earlier this week that Putin was “playing with fire.”The statement by Trump followed large-scale Russian strikes against Ukrainian military infrastructure, which Moscow said were retaliation for the intensification of drone attacks by Kiev on civilian targets inside Russia. According to the Defense Ministry in Moscow, more than 2,300 Ukrainian UAVs have been intercepted over the past week above Russian territory, mostly away from the front line.

Ritter expressed concern that there is a split in the US administration between opponents of Russia and those who are in favor of improving ties with Moscow. But at the same time, representatives of both camps and Trump himself are no experts on Russia, he added. The US president “is a victim of basically the last words whispered into his ear before he goes to bed at night or the first words whispered into his ear when he wakes up in the morning… Trump is not well briefed [on Russia]. Look, this is a very dangerous situation,” Ritter warned.

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And the beat goes on.

Elon Musk Leaves White House But Says Doge Will Continue (BBC)

Elon Musk has said he is leaving the Trump administration after helping lead a tumultuous drive to shrink the size of US government that saw thousands of federal jobs axed. In a post on his social media platform X, the world’s richest man thanked Trump for the opportunity to help run the Department of Government Efficiency, known as Doge.The White House began “offboarding” Musk as a special government employee on Wednesday night, the BBC understands. His role was temporary and his exit is not unexpected, but it comes a day after Musk criticised the legislative centrepiece of Trump’s agenda. “As my scheduled time as a Special Government Employee comes to an end, I would like to thank President @realDonaldTrump for the opportunity to reduce wasteful spending,” Musk wrote on X.

“The @DOGE mission will only strengthen over time as it becomes a way of life throughout the government.” The South African-born tech tycoon had been designated as a “special government employee” – allowing him to work a federal job for 130 days each year. Measured from Trump’s inauguration on 20 January, he would hit that limit towards the end of May. But his departure comes a day after he said he was “disappointed” with Trump’s budget bill, which proposes multi-trillion dollar tax breaks and a boost to defence spending. The SpaceX and Tesla boss said in an interview with BBC’s US partner CBS that the “big, beautiful bill”, as Trump calls it, would increase the federal deficit. Musk also said he thought it “undermines the work” of Doge.

“I think a bill can be big or it could be beautiful,” Musk said. “But I don’t know if it could be both.” Musk, who had clashed in private with some Trump cabinet-level officials, initially pledged to cut “at least $2 trillion” from the federal government budget, before halving this target, then reducing it to $150bn. An estimated 260,000 out of the 2.3 million-strong federal civilian workforce have had their jobs cut or accepted redundancy deals as a result of Doge. In some cases, federal judges blocked the mass firings and ordered terminated employees to be reinstated. The rapid-fire approach to cutting the federal workforce occasionally led to some workers mistakenly being let go, including staff at the US nuclear programme. Musk announced in late April that he would step back to run his companies again after becoming a lightning rod for criticism of Trump’s efforts to shake up Washington.

“Doge is just becoming the whipping boy for everything,” Musk told the Washington Post in Texas on Tuesday ahead of a Space X launch. “Something bad would happen anywhere, and we would get blamed for it even if we had nothing to do with it.” Musk’s time in government overlapped with a significant decline in sales at his electric car company. Tesla sales dropped by 13% in the first three months of this year, the largest drop in deliveries in its history. The company’s stock price also tumbled by as much as 45%, but has mostly rebounded and is only down 10%. Tesla recently warned investors that the financial pain could continue, declining to offer a growth forecast while saying “changing political sentiment” could meaningfully hurt demand for the vehicles.

Musk told investors on an earnings call last month that the time he allocates to Doge “will drop significantly” and that he would be “allocating far more of my time to Tesla”. Activists have called for Tesla boycotts, staging protests outside Tesla dealerships, and vandalising the vehicles and charging stations. The Tesla blowback became so violent and widespread that US Attorney General Pam Bondi warned her office would treat acts of vandalism as “domestic terrorism”. Speaking at an economic forum in Doha, Qatar, on Tuesday, Musk said he was committed to being the leader of Tesla for the next five years. He said earlier this month he would cut back his political donations after spending nearly $300m to back Trump’s presidential campaign and other Republicans last year.

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They will agree because they want to.

A Bill Can Be Big Or It Could Be Beautiful (ZH)

The trade negotiations between the US and China have “stalled” and may necessitate the intervention of the countries’ leaders, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has said. In April, US President Donald Trump raised duties on Chinese goods to as high as 145%, citing what he described as an unfair trade imbalance. Beijing responded by hiking its own tariffs to 125%. Earlier this month, the two countries agreed to roll back or suspend most of the new duties for 90 days, pending further negotiations. Asked by Fox News’ Bret Baier on Thursday to describe the current state of the talks, Bessent said, “I would say that they are a bit stalled.”

The treasury secretary added that more negotiations were scheduled for the coming weeks and that Trump could possibly speak by phone with Chinese President Xi Jinping in the near future. “Given the magnitude and complexity of the talks, this is going to require both leaders to weigh in with each other. They have a very good relationship. I am confident that the Chinese will come to the table,” Bessent said.

On Thursday, the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit overruled the suspension of tariffs ordered a day earlier by the Court of International Trade. The tariffs will remain in place until at least June 9. Bessent argued that it was “highly inappropriate” for the courts to interfere with the tariffs, given that the US Senate had declined to block Trump’s trade policies. “The president absolutely has the right to set the trade agenda for the US,” Bessent said. “Anything that the courts do to get in the way harms the American people – both in terms of trade and lost tariff revenue.”

China has condemned Trump’s tariffs as a tool to “advance US hegemonic ambitions at the cost of the legitimate interests of all countries.” “Tariff wars and trade wars have no winners. Protectionism harms the interests of all parties and is ultimately unpopular,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning said on Thursday.

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“This is the end of the common European project. This is a departure from democracy. This is the precursor of a huge military conflict,”

Fico Warns EU’s ‘Mandatory Political Opinion’ Spells Ends European Project (RMX)

Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico delivered a stark warning to fellow European leaders during his speech at CPAC Hungary in Budapest on Thursday, declaring that the European Union’s attempt to impose a “mandatory political opinion” on its member states signals the collapse of the European project and a departure from democratic values.“The imposition of a mandatory political opinion, the abolition of the veto, the punishment of the sovereign and the brave, the new Iron Curtain, the preference for war over peace. This is the end of the common European project. This is a departure from democracy. This is the precursor of a huge military conflict,” he warned.Fico’s remarks came as he revealed both he and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán had received threats from “a particularly nervous new German chancellor,” who warned them that if they did not fall in line with Brussels’ uniform view on military support for Ukraine and sanctioning Russia, “‘You will be punished.’”

“No one in a peaceful and democratic project should have the right to treat other EU member states in this way, regardless of their size and economic strength,” he said. Fico, a veteran of Slovak politics who survived an assassination attempt last year, framed his overall remarks as a defense of national sovereignty in the face of what he described as increasing aggression from Brussels and major EU powers. “I do not want to see our sovereignty and the national identity melt away in the generalist supranational, international structures, especially those in Brussels,” he said.While acknowledging his left-wing roots, Fico distanced himself from what he called the “Brussels kind” of social democracy, instead describing himself as a “rural socialist” focused on defending Slovakia’s traditions, Christian heritage, and national interests. “As a strong leftist, I have no problem spending the night with the people on the production line to support higher night shift allowances or wage increases,” he said.

Fico’s appearance at CPAC Hungary — and his warm praise for host Viktor Orbán — highlighted the growing alignment between parts of Europe’s left-wing populism and the nationalist right in opposition to Brussels orthodoxy. The Slovak prime minister repeatedly returned to the idea that the EU is moving away from its founding principles. He warned against abolishing the veto rights of member states and moving toward qualified majority voting on key issues such as foreign policy and defense, which he said would further erode national sovereignty.“We may have to expect unprecedented decisions such as, for example, the abolition of the right of veto of EU member states,” he said. “The time may indeed come when there will be punishments for having a sovereign opinion.”

On Ukraine, Fico reiterated his government’s refusal to send military aid, criticizing the European Commission’s strategy of isolating Russia as economically self-defeating and geopolitically reckless. “If they have no realistic response to the war in Ukraine today… they cannot continue in their nervousness by suppressing the sovereignty of individual member states on legitimate issues.” He ended his speech with a call to preserve diversity and sovereign decision-making within the EU. “Let our diversity, sovereignty, and national identity be our strength and not weakness,” he said.

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It can wait a few weeks.

US-Chinese Trade Talks ‘Stalled’ – Treasury Secretary (RT)

The trade negotiations between the US and China have “stalled” and may necessitate the intervention of the countries’ leaders, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has said. In April, US President Donald Trump raised duties on Chinese goods to as high as 145%, citing what he described as an unfair trade imbalance. Beijing responded by hiking its own tariffs to 125%. Earlier this month, the two countries agreed to roll back or suspend most of the new duties for 90 days, pending further negotiations. Asked by Fox News’ Bret Baier on Thursday to describe the current state of the talks, Bessent said, “I would say that they are a bit stalled.” The treasury secretary added that more negotiations were scheduled for the coming weeks and that Trump could possibly speak by phone with Chinese President Xi Jinping in the near future.

“Given the magnitude and complexity of the talks, this is going to require both leaders to weigh in with each other. They have a very good relationship. I am confident that the Chinese will come to the table,” Bessent said. On Thursday, the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit overruled the suspension of tariffs ordered a day earlier by the Court of International Trade. The tariffs will remain in place until at least June 9. Bessent argued that it was “highly inappropriate” for the courts to interfere with the tariffs, given that the US Senate had declined to block Trump’s trade policies. “The president absolutely has the right to set the trade agenda for the US,” Bessent said. “Anything that the courts do to get in the way harms the American people – both in terms of trade and lost tariff revenue.”

China has condemned Trump’s tariffs as a tool to “advance US hegemonic ambitions at the cost of the legitimate interests of all countries.” “Tariff wars and trade wars have no winners. Protectionism harms the interests of all parties and is ultimately unpopular,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning said on Thursday.

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Witkoff.

Israel and Hamas Agree To Gaza Ceasefire Proposal (RT)

Israel and Hamas have agreed to accept the latest ceasefire proposal put forward by the US, several media outlets reported on Thursday sraeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has signaled his readiness to accept a roadmap presented by US special envoy Steve Witkoff during a meeting with the relatives of hostages still in Hamas captivity in Gaza. Arab media later reported that Hamas had also accepted the deal to release the remaining Israeli hostages held in the enclave in exchange for a temporary truce. Haaretz newspaper quoted an anonymous Israeli official as saying that Washington’s proposal envisages the release of the remaining 10 living hostages and the return of 18 bodies held in Gaza by Hamas over the course of a week. In exchange, Netanyahu’s government would reportedly agree to a 60-day cease-fire.

The Jerusalem Post cited an unnamed source as saying that Hamas has reservations regarding Washington’s plan, and sees it as favoring Israel. The Islamist militant group is reportedly wary of the fact that the US would not provide a guarantee that the temporary 60-day ceasefire would be extended to become permanent. The latest developments have come amid an intensified Israeli assault on Gaza in recent days, including a fresh wave of airstrikes and a major ground offensive codenamed ‘Operation Gideon’s Chariots.’Netanyahu has repeatedly insisted that the military action will not cease until Hamas has been totally vanquished.

Mediated by Qatar, Egypt, and the US, negotiations between the two belligerents have been going on for some time in Doha, albeit producing little progress so far.The current escalation began in October 2023, when Hamas launched a surprise attack on Israel, killing around 1,200 people and abducting 250 more. According to Palestinian authorities, the ensuing IDF military campaign has claimed the lives of more than 50,000 residents of the densely populated enclave.

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Apr 182025
 
 April 18, 2025  Posted by at 10:03 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , , ,  33 Responses »


Salvador Dali The knight of death 1934

 

China Is In Much Deeper Trouble Than Most Realize (Strom)
US Expects Ukraine Ceasefire Within Weeks – Bloomberg (RT)
Europe Seeking ‘Direct Line’ With Trump – NYT (RT)
Meloni’s White House Trip Paves Way For European Union Rapprochement (JTN)
US Will Pull EU to Pieces Before Letting It Partner Up With China (Sp.)
Trump Admin Fights Back Against Rogue Judge’s Contempt Warning (Margolis)
Convicted FBI Lawyer Clinesmith Was Spared From Prison By Boasberg (JTN)
REPORT: President Trump Opposed Israeli Strikes on Iran Nuclear Sites (CTH)
Pam Bondi Outlines Timeline and History of MS13 Illegal Alien (CTH)
Bondi Announces Lawsuit Against Maine Over Boys in Girls’ Sports (ET)
Rubio Shuts Down Censorship Program Biden Admin Claimed was Ended (Turley)
A Chihuahua That Thinks It’s A Lion: The Decline of Britain (Bordachev)
China Replacing US Oil With Canadian – Bloomberg (RT)
Trump Tariffs Could Cost EU $1.25 Trillion (RT)
German Anti-Russia Propaganda Is Reaching Nazi-era Levels (Amar)
Court Rules Google Illegally Holds “Monopoly Power” In Online Ad Tech (ZH)
Trump to Make an Epic Move at the IRS (Margolis)
Climate Myths (John Stossel)

 

 

 

 

Trust

Ritter

Poso
https://twitter.com/JackPosobiec/status/1912573038303863007

What is China’s messsage here? That you might as well make it at home?No wait, that’s Trump’s message.
https://twitter.com/acnewsitics/status/1912841340968395205

 

 

Pepe

 

 

 

 

Contentious topic.

“[Xi] has counted on making the US economy dependent on China to keep us cowed. Trump is turning that logic on its head.”

China Is In Much Deeper Trouble Than Most Realize (Strom)

In the tariff war between China and the United States, a lot of chatter in the Pravda Media is about Xi Jinping’s defiance, his outreach to European countries and other less important but collectively significant developing countries, and his retaliatory moves against America. They make it sound like China has a lot of cards to play in the trade war with America. Collectively, these stories tell a tale: Donald Trump may have bitten off more than he can chew in his economic war with China. Trump’s moves will hollow out the American middle class! Europe will choose China over the United States! We are doomed! The Chinese are putting up a very brave front, until recently matching Trump’s blow for blow and pointing to Chinese willingness to endure everything up to eating grass for a year to defeat their adversaries. The Chinese plan for the long term! Yeah, well, not so much.

It all sounds impressive, and some pissed-off ally countries have even hinted at turning Chinaward as a response to what they consider a stab in the back from President Trump. Except…Reality. Our ticked-off allies are acting like 6-year-old children angry at their parents, threatening to run away. As much as they resent the United States, they are utterly dependent upon us and chose to be so. They are militarily weak and have sputtering economies that rely on the US as an export market. The United States, not themselves, defends its sea lines of communication, and they all know that China is a predatory power and not a reliable economic partner. The US not only represents 25% of the world economy, which is quite impressive in itself. But it has about 40% of the world’s consumer spending. No manufacturer of consumer products can afford to turn their backs on the US.

China may be an attractive market, but it is not sufficiently large enough to make a dent in their losses should the US close our markets to them. Which brings us to China itself. All that bluster sounds good, but it hides a stark reality: their economy is utterly dependent on US consumption. As much power as they have over us–they can cause us temporary pain as we adjust to finding new suppliers–we have infinitely more over them. Even their holdings in US debt are a double-edged sword. The US has relied on China to purchase government bonds, but as the old saying goes–If you owe the bank a billion dollars, you have power over them. The tariffs on China have been DEVASTATING. Not will be devastating. They are already devastating. China’s economy is reeling from the impact of tariffs, and public discontent is growing.

On Douyin, China’s version of TikTok, videos show citizens openly criticizing the government’s rigid stance on tariffs, with some even taking to the streets in protest. Chinese authorities are cracking down, forcibly dispersing crowds and suppressing evidence of unrest, but these efforts can only hold for so long. As joblessness and food shortages deepen, desperation is setting in, pushing people to the brink. China’s heavy reliance on the U.S. market gives America the upper hand—we can outlast them until they yield or face internal upheaval, potentially threatening President Xi’s leadership. China’s government is and appears quite strong because it is. But something can be both very strong and very brittle–meaning that it performs well until the moment it shatters. Think ceramics or glass, both of which can be very strong until the moment they shatter. They don’t bend and spring back–they are good until the breaking point, and then boom.

China’s government is not loved, but it is tolerated because it is strong and because it generally delivers on its major promise: economic growth, pulling a billion people out of poverty as quickly as possible. Tariffs aren’t just a threat to that strategy. If Trump really pushes, Xi Jinping’s government is in real trouble, and not the kind of trouble that means a midterm loss or failure to get reelected. This is regime-threatening. Xi, who looked to be in the catbird seat, could be facing a collapse of his legitimacy as leader of China. The Trump administration plans to use ongoing tariff negotiations to pressure U.S. trading partners to limit their dealings with China, according to people with knowledge of the conversations. The idea is to extract commitments from U.S. trading partners to isolate China’s economy in exchange for reductions in trade and tariff barriers imposed by the White House.

U.S. officials plan to use negotiations with more than 70 nations to ask them to disallow China from shipping goods through their countries, prevent Chinese firms from locating in their territories to avoid U.S. tariffs, and not absorb China’s cheap industrial goods into their economies. These measures are meant to put a dent in China’s already rickety economy and force Beijing to the negotiating table with less leverage ahead of potential talks between Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping. The exact demands could vary widely by nation, given their degree of involvement with the Chinese economy. China’s strategy of growing its economic power and influence depends on a river of money with its headwaters in the United States. And its ability to make deals in countries not hostile to the United States is only possible because the US tolerates its moves and is committed to using only modest soft power to oppose the moves.

Donald Trump is not in a mood to tolerate expanding Chinese influence. Look at the Panama Canal port deals. Trump’s goal is not so much to own the canal as to deny China influence in the region. China, not Panama, is the target. In fact, most of Trump’s seemingly bizarre foreign policy moves–Canada as the 51st state and annexing Greenland are about trying to change the political geography to keep China from gaining influence in the Arctic. The flow of information out of China on economic performance since the tariffs hit is sparse, but I have been checking in on the social media chatter coming out of China, and the news is bleak. Consumer spending is down, export products are being sold at firesale prices, and business owners are locking doors and leaving employees unpaid. This is all chatter right now, but also likely true.

Trade wars suck for everybody involved, and when the cost of Chinese-made products go up there will be some pain here in the United States, whatever Trump and his people say. But none of this pain will be an existential threat to Trump, the country, or the Republican Party. There will be a price to pay, but it will be modest in the longer term. Not so for China. Their regime is under threat because their hand is much, much weaker. Weaker than Trump’s and weaker than people think. Of course, if China were a normal country, what Trump is doing would be a horrible policy. Generally speaking, destroying a trading partner’s economy is both morally questionable and terrible for business. Normally you would cut a deal. But China and the United States are heading for a war, and a big one at that. Xi Jinping has made that abundantly clear, and he has counted on making the US economy dependent on China to keep us cowed. Trump is turning that logic on its head.

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I don’t think they do. Looks more like they’re getting ready to pull out.

US Expects Ukraine Ceasefire Within Weeks – Bloomberg (RT)

Senior US officials have told European allies that Washington anticipates a comprehensive ceasefire in the Ukraine conflict within weeks, Bloomberg has reported. US presidential envoy Steve Witkoff and Secretary of State Marco Rubio outlined the timeline during a series of meetings in Paris on Thursday, hosted by French President Emmanuel Macron, Bloomberg reported the same day, citing anonymous sources. The European side sought to persuade the Americans that President Donald Trump should “harden its position toward Moscow,” the report said, describing the discussions as “the latest attempt by Europe to influence the outcome” of US talks with Russia.

Last week, Witkoff traveled to St. Petersburg for talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin, which he has characterized as “compelling.” Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky has criticized Trump’s envoy, accusing him of echoing “Russian narratives.” Russian officials have expressed skepticism about the feasibility of a ceasefire with Ukraine, asserting that Kiev’s backers in Europe are undermining US efforts. Speaking to journalists on Thursday, Moscow’s UN representative, Vassily Nebenzia, highlighted that Kiev has failed to adhere to a US-mediated moratorium on strikes against energy infrastructure.

The diplomat said that the West’s record of using purported peace deals to build up the Ukrainian military means that expectations for a full ceasefire are “simply unrealistic at this stage.” “I cannot speak on behalf of President Trump,” Nebenzia said. “Perhaps, he knows better what I don’t know.” The 30-day energy ceasefire announced on March 18 is set to expire this week. When asked on Wednesday whether Russia would alter its military strategy, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov stated that Putin had issued no new directives on the matter.

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What Europe? Do you mean Von der Leyen, who has no links to any European, or Macron, who’s despised by those he does have a link to? Who would Trump talk to, and why?

Europe Seeking ‘Direct Line’ With Trump – NYT (RT)

European officials are seeking to establish a “direct line” of communication with US President Donald Trump, unsure whether his team can make any real decisions or is willing to cooperate at all, the New York Times reported on Thursday, citing sources. The report, based on interviews with numerous unnamed European officials, describes the US president as “the ultimate decision maker” who is often difficult to predict, making the goal of getting Trump’s ear a priority for the Europeans. Many top-level negotiators in European NATO countries have found traditional diplomatic channels – such as the State Department and embassies – ineffective, the report said. The confusion is compounded by the fact that the most effective interlocutors on the US side are not career diplomats but rather trusted special envoys and advisers, such as Elon Musk and Steve Witkoff, the article said.

The officials also told the NYT that their US counterparts are primarily focused on fulfilling the president’s wishes, showing limited interest in the perspectives of America’s allies. The Trump administration is “not terribly interested in what the Europeans have to say,” a NYT source said. “It’s all about unilateralism and they don’t consult much. After all, if they don’t consider us allies to that extent, why would they?” While senior Trump officials have held “cordial” talks with their European counterparts on a number of issues, “it is never clear to allies” whether they have “real power over foreign policy or trade,” the article said. ”Everyone in D.C. says you have to talk to Trump directly,” a senior European official told the NYT.

However, this has proved difficult even for the highest-ranking EU officials, as Trump “despises the collective power of the European Union and sees many NATO allies as freeloaders,” the paper said, adding that leaders such as European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen are struggling to get on Trump’s calendar. The communication breakdown comes at a time of tenuous US-EU relations, marred by Washington’s decision to slap the bloc with tariffs and its push to make European NATO members pay more for their defense. Differences over the Ukraine conflict have also come into play, with Trump pursuing active diplomacy with Russia to end the conflict while the EU insists on supporting Kiev for “as long as it takes.”

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Yes, Meloni might be the EU contact for Trump. But Brussels would not give her any voice of her own.

Meloni’s White House Trip Paves Way For European Union Rapprochement (JTN)

President Donald Trump’s meeting with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni on Thursday at the Oval Office came amid the ongoing trade dispute between the European Union and Washington and appeared to pave the way for a presidential visit to the continent to address the matter with its leaders. “I want to thank President Trump for having accepted an invitation to pay an official visit to Rome in the near future and consider the possibility in that occasion to meet also with Europe,” Meloni told reporters in the Oval Office. “The goal for me is to make the West great again, and I think we can do it together. We can and we will keep [working] on that.” The Italian leader generally ranks among those European figures with the strongest relationships with Trump himself.

A stalwart conservative and opponent of illegal immigration, Meloni shares many of Trump’s own positions, putting her on solid footing with her counterpart in the Oval Office. She further acknowledged those points in the meeting, saying “I know that we share lots of things on tackling illegal migration, on fighting against synthetic drugs.” Meloni was the only European Union leader to attend Trump’s 2024 inauguration and was among the first to congratulate him on his reelection. The pair have generally enjoyed a strong relationship and Trump himself called her a “great prime minister” during the meeting. Ahead of her trip to Washington, Meloni had been widely regarded as the European leader best suited to negotiating with Trump.

Italy is the 25th most populous nation globally with more than 59 million residents, according to data from the U.N. Dept. of Economic and Social Affairs, and a Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of $2.3 trillion (USD). In January 2025, the United States exported $2.82 billion to and imported $6.11 billion from Italy, resulting in a negative trade balance of $3.29 billion. The Observatory of Economic Complexity reported that in January 2025, the top exports of the United States to Italy were Hormones ($580M), Petroleum Gas ($249M), and Crude Petroleum ($211M). In the same month, the main imports to the United States from Italy were packaged medicines ($634M), vaccines, blood, antisera, toxins and cultures ($436M), and commodities not specified otherwise ($268M).

In early April, Trump declared “Liberation Day” and announced the imposition of sweeping “reciprocal” tariffs on most foreign nations. He later paused some of the largest tariffs, though he maintained a 10% baseline on most countries and left in place large-scale tariffs on China. Shortly after Liberation Day, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced a “zero for zero” tariff offer to the United States, though Washington has yet to agree to any permanent arrangement. Trump initially imposed 20% tariffs on most European goods, but he has since brought Brussels down to the 10% rate for a 90-day period and Meloni was expected to pursue a resolution to the issue. Ahead of the meeting, the White House was optimistic that it would be able to secure agreements with many nations eager to reach lasting agreements. “We’ve got 90 deals in 90 days possibly pending here,” White House advisor Peter Navarro said.

Multiple White House officials have shared that sentiment publicly, though it is not clear which nations have expressed interest in negotiating trade deals. Meloni’s visit was decidedly more jovial than that of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, which resulted in his removal from the White House after a tempestuous press conference. By contrast, the Oval Office meeting with Meloni saw many laughs as the pair exchanged compliments and pronounced the productiveness of their talks. “We have been talking about many bilateral topics and things that we can do together, about defense, about economic [sic], about economy, about space, about energy, Italy will have to increase its LNG imports and also nuclear that we are trying to develop,” Meloni said. “I think there can be ways to work together.” She further highlighted the commitment of Italian firms to American investment, but did not speak to the prospect of an individual trade deal between the United States and Italy.

“And the Italian enterprises will invest, as they’ve been doing for many years, as you know, in the next years, I think around $10 billions,” she added [sic]. “That shows how interconnected our economies are.” Meloni did not arrive officially as an envoy for the EU, though she did emphasize the importance of America’s relationship with the continent. During the Oval Office meeting, she pointed primarily to the economic relationships between Italy and the United States, but used the American relationship with her country as a segue to discuss the continental issue. “Mr. President, it’s not only about Italy, it’s about the entire Europe. The exchange between us is a very big one, investments, trade,” she said. “So I think even if we have some problems okay between the two shores of the Atlantic, it is the time that we try to sit down and find solutions.” “I know that when I speak about the West mainly, I don’t speak about a geographical space. I speak about [the] civilization, and I want to make that civilization stronger,” she added.

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“In the US’s ‘grand geopolitical chessboard’, the EU remains “one of the big, most important parts..”

US Will Pull EU to Pieces Before Letting It Partner Up With China (Sp.)

Trump’s global trade rampage has left the European Union and China seeking improved trade and investment relations. But that’s not a realistic prospect, says veteran Hong Kong-based Italian financial analyst Angelo Giuliano. For starters, “you need to keep in mind that the EU leaders were pre-selected by the Bilderberg Group and the US. Basically…the EU is actually a US project to destroy nation states,” Giuliano told Sputnik. Much of the bloc’s former and current top leadership (including European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, Economy Commissioner Paolo Gentiloni, Chancellor Friedrich Merz of Germany, France’s Emmanuel Macron and NATO chief Mark Rutte) are members of the Atlanticist club or have spoken at its meetings.

Second, the EU doesn’t decide its own fate, a reality demonstrated by Washington’s success in decoupling the bloc from Russia’s cheap, plentiful energy resources, and forcing it to import much more costly US LNG, Giuliano said. This left the EU’s industrial output uncompetitive globally and triggered widespread deindustrialization as hundreds of companies downsized, stopped production and shifted production abroad, including to the US. Washington can and will do the same vis-à-vis Europe and China as it consolidates alliances against the emerging, BRICS-led multipolar world order, Giuliano believes. “There’s going to be some backfiring from the business community, but ultimately [Europe’s] leaders are going to side with the US as they see Russia and China as the enemies,” the observer emphasized.

Besides US vassalage, closer EU-China ties are stymied by other factors, like:
• China’s warm relations with Russia, a sharp contrast to active EU support for the anti-Russia proxy war in Ukraine.
• The acrimonious relationship with Russia means new infrastructure like the Northern Sea Route, the North-South Transport Corridor and overland transit via Russia remain closed to the EU. Instead, Europe-China trade relies on transit via the Red Sea, hindered by Houthi ops against the US and Israel.
• Fears of China’s sophisticated and cost-competitive automotive and green tech, which along with consumer goods, chemicals and steel could further deindustrialize the EU, especially as China enjoys access to discounted Russian energy while the bloc is stuck with pricey American gas deliveries.
• Unresolved industrial subsidies, agricultural dumping, IP and tech-related bitterness.

Ultimately, enhanced EU-China would be possible, and advantageous, Giuliano says, but only if Brussels “had a more neutral stance” in international affairs, “siding a little bit with BRICS and also the Belt and Road Initiative. “But again, there are a lot of obstacles for that, and the US would not allow it to happen, because they want to have a sphere of influence between North and South America and the EU. They want to control those blocs. And they fight with the multipolar world and this transition to a multipolar world,” the observer noted. In the US’s ‘grand geopolitical chessboard’, the EU remains “one of the big, most important parts,” Giuliano summed up.

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“A single Obama-appointed district judge is trying to hamstring the entire executive branch’s ability to enforce immigration law.”

Trump Admin Fights Back Against Rogue Judge’s Contempt Warning (Margolis)

The Trump administration has just shown exactly how to handle judicial activism: by fighting back with everything it has. In a bold move that’s sure to have the Democratic establishment sputtering with rage, Trump’s legal team filed an immediate appeal Wednesday evening against Judge James Boasberg’s outrageous contempt threat. The judge’s unprecedented power grab attempted to block crucial deportation flights, and he’s learning the hard way that the Trump administration isn’t taking his judicial overreach sitting down. The administration’s legal response was swift and devastating. Its appeal systematically dismantled Boasberg’s ruling, pointing out how it represents a “massive, unauthorized imposition on the Executive’s authority” and directly contradicts recent Supreme Court precedent.

The Trump administration’s brief appeal to the D.C. Circuit Court does not include any new details, as the facts of the case have already been heard by the district and appellate court. The appellate court last month ruled 2-1 to uphold Boasberg’s temporary restraining order. The Supreme Court, however, ruled 5-4 last month that the Trump administration could resume its deportation flights under the Alien Enemies Act, so long as individuals subject to removal under the law were given due process protections, and the opportunity to pursue habeas relief – or the ability to have their case heard by a U.S. court prior to their removal. Boasberg said Wednesday that the court found that the Trump administration had demonstrated a “willful disregard” for his March 15 emergency order, which temporarily halted all deportation flights to El Salvador under the Alien Enemies Act, a 1798 statute providing for such deportations during “a declared war between the United States and any foreign nation or government, or any invasion or predatory incursion” by a foreign nation.

What makes this pushback so satisfying is how it exposes the left’s double standard. When Trump follows the law and exercises his constitutional authority to protect Americans, leftists cry “contempt.” But when Democratic appointees like Boasberg ignore Supreme Court rulings they don’t like? Crickets from the mainstream media. Team Trump’s legal filing didn’t pull any punches. It meticulously detailed how Boasberg’s ruling attempts to usurp executive authority that the Supreme Court explicitly confirmed just last month. The 5-4 decision authorized these deportation flights, but apparently, left-wing district court judges think they can override the Supreme Court because “Orange man bad.” The administration’s response demonstrates exactly why Trump’s approach to the judiciary is so necessary.

While previous Republican administrations might have meekly complied with such judicial overreach, Trump’s team recognizes these tactics for what they are — an attempt to legislate from the bench. A single Obama-appointed district judge is trying to hamstring the entire executive branch’s ability to enforce immigration law. The Trump administration isn’t just fighting back against one bad ruling; it’s defending the fundamental separation of powers. This appeal systematically addresses every aspect of Boasberg’s flawed and blatantly partisan reasoning while simultaneously highlighting the urgent national security implications of these deportation flights. Of course, the left is not used to an administration that actually fights back against judicial activism. It expected Trump to roll over like so many Republicans before him. Instead, it’s getting a masterclass in constitutional governance.

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“Knee-deep in the mud..”

Trump’s present day nemesis judge fulfilled that role also during the Russiagate years. When Clinesmith falsified a FISA application.

Convicted FBI Lawyer Clinesmith Was Spared From Prison By Boasberg (JTN)

Convicted FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith — whom Judge James Boasberg gave a slap on the wrist for his crimes years before becoming a public foe of President Donald Trump’s deportation policies — was more deeply involved in the deeply flawed Crossfire Hurricane investigation than previously known. Clinesmith, who worked on both the FBI’s Hillary Clinton email investigation and on the Trump-Russia collusion inquiry, pleaded guilty to falsifying a document during the bureau’s efforts to renew FISA authority to wiretap Carter Page, who was an adviser to Trump’s 2016 campaign. Newly-declassified details about Clinesmith’s involvement include a wide swath of information about his role in the case. He was a key go-to for former FBI lawyer Lisa Page and fired FBI special agent Peter Strzok throughout the debunked collusion saga and a main driver in obtaining a FISA warrant against Page based on the infamous Steele dossier.

Clinesmith also granted his seal of approval on a document describing the FBI’s pretextual briefing of then-candidate Trump, was deeply involved in the investigation into retired Lt. Gen. Mike Flynn, played a role in going after former Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos, and more. He also helped the FBI push its “Cross Wind” investigation, which Just the News can confirm related to the targeting of security expert Walid Phares, which resulted in no accusations of wrongdoing and no charges. Clinesmith confessed in August 2020 that he had manipulated a CIA email in 2017 to state that Carter Page was “not a source” for the CIA when that agency had actually told the bureau on multiple occasions that Page was in fact an “operational contact” for the CIA.

Boasberg, the federal judge who is blocking Trump’s efforts to deport Venezuelan gang members, also played a key and controversial role in the aftermath of the Trump-Russia collusion saga as the leader of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. The judge, nominated to the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia by then-President Barack Obama in 2011, is currently engaged in an all-out legal battle with the Trump Justice Department. But in his role as the head of the FISA Court he made a number of divisive decisions, including a slap on the wrist for a member of the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane team, the appointment of officials who had defended the FBI’s actions during the Russiagate saga, the renewal of the FBI’s FISA powers, and more. Boasberg ruled this week that “probable cause exists” to hold Trump administration officials in criminal contempt after they violated his orders by continuing deportation flights. But his ruling follows the Supreme Court holding that Boasberg’s court was in an improper venue for the case altogether.

Boasberg, in his role as a federal judge, denied the Justice Department’s efforts to seek up to six months behind bars for Clinesmith, who pleaded guilty in Special Counsel John Durham’s Trump-Russia investigation — instead giving Clinesmith a year of probation, 400 hours of community service, and no fine. Durham argued that Clinesmith’s “deceptive conduct” related to the FISA application fabrication “was antithetical to the duty of candor and eroded the FISA’s confidence in the accuracy of all previous FISA applications worked on by the defendant,” and said his deception “fueled public distrust of the FBI and of the entire FISA program itself.” But Boasberg seemed to defend Clinesmith’s deceptive FISA-related actions during his January 2021 sentencing.

“Mr. Clinesmith likely believed that what he said was true,” Boasberg wrote, adding, “I do not believe he was attempting to achieve an end he knew was wrong.” The judge claimed that “it is not clear to me that the fourth FISA warrant would not have been signed but for this error. … Even if Mr. Clinesmith had been accurate about Mr. Page’s relationship with the other government agency, the warrant may well have been signed and the surveillance authorized.” Durham had argued that Clinesmith’s deception “fueled public distrust of the FBI and of the entire FISA program itself.” Anthony Scarpelli, then a top prosecutor on Durham’s team, also argued that “the defendant’s criminal conduct tarnished the integrity of the FISA program” and that “the resulting harm is immeasurable.”

Clinesmith told the court that “I am deeply remorseful for any effect my actions may have had” on the FISA process even as he claimed that “I never intended to mislead my colleagues about the status of Dr. Page.” But Boasberg lamented that Clinesmith had been “abused” and “vilified” on a “national scale” when the judge handed down his sentence, though he did acknowledge that the FISA court’s reputation “has suffered” from the ex-FBI attorney’s actions. DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz in 2019 found huge flaws with the FBI’s Russia collusion investigation, finding at least 17 “significant errors and omissions” related to the FISA warrants against former Trump campaign associate Carter Page. He also criticized the “central and essential” role of British ex-spy Christopher Steele’s debunked dossier in the FBI’s politicized FISA surveillance. Clinesmith reportedly circulated the dossier to other law enforcement staff.

FBI notes of a January 2017 interview with Steele source Igor Danchenko showed he told the bureau he “did not know the origins” of some of Steele’s claims and “did not recall” other dossier information. Danchenko also noted much of what he gave to Steele was “word of mouth and hearsay,” some of which stemmed from a “conversation that [he] had with friends over beers,” and the most salacious allegations may have been made in “jest.” The special counsel assessed that “the FBI ignored the fact that at no time before, during, or after Crossfire Hurricane were investigators able to corroborate a single substantive allegation in the Steele dossier reporting.” The new revelations about Clinesmith come partly through further declassified text messages sent by Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, and others involved in the Crossfire Hurricane investigation.

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“We keep watching….”

REPORT: President Trump Opposed Israeli Strikes on Iran Nuclear Sites (CTH)

The report comes as a result of leaks to the New York Times. Which, given the nature of the subject matter and administration officials involved, indicates the sourcing is from the domestic IC side of things. Specifically, the greatest likelihood is from someone in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) talking to media. Keep that in mind. According to leaked information to the New York Times, President Trump did not agree with an Israeli proposal to launch military strikes against Iran. According to the narrative as advanced, President Trump, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth were in agreement to attempt diplomatic solutions instead of bombing Iran. Israel could not conduct the attack without U.S. support, which President Trump decided not to give. Instead, Trump wanted a more forceful push toward engagement and diplomacy with Iran surrounding the ongoing contentious issue of nuclear development.

NEW YORK TIMES – “Israel had planned to strike Iranian nuclear sites as soon as next month but was waved off by President Trump in recent weeks in favor of negotiating a deal with Tehran to limit its nuclear program, according to administration officials and others briefed on the discussions. Mr. Trump made his decision after months of internal debate over whether to pursue diplomacy or support Israel in seeking to set back Iran’s ability to build a bomb, at a time when Iran has been weakened militarily and economically. The debate highlighted fault lines between historically hawkish American cabinet officials and other aides more skeptical that a military assault on Iran could destroy the country’s nuclear ambitions and avoid a larger war. It resulted in a rough consensus, for now, against military action, with Iran signaling a willingness to negotiate.

Israeli officials had recently developed plans to attack Iranian nuclear sites in May. They were prepared to carry them out, and at times were optimistic that the United States would sign off. The goal of the proposals, according to officials briefed on them, was to set back Tehran’s ability to develop a nuclear weapon by a year or more. Almost all of the plans would have required U.S. help not just to defend Israel from Iranian retaliation, but also to ensure that an Israeli attack was successful, making the United States a central part of the attack itself. For now, Mr. Trump has chosen diplomacy over military action.”

This is where we need to insert the element that all media generally refuse to associate, Russia.” Iran has reengaged with officials from President Trump’s administration following a letter Trump wrote to the leadership in Iran. President Trump wants Mideast peace; he also wants to avoid the issue of Iran having a nuclear weapon. President Trump views military action as the last possible resort for failed diplomatic and geopolitical efforts. Israel wants to attack Iran. President Trump wants to support Israel but doesn’t want expanded military conflict that pulls the USA into more Mideast war. As we see in the continued issues within Ukraine, the CIA supports expanded conflict in both Ukraine and Iran. Israel and the CIA are in alignment. Hence, in our ongoing restaurant analogy, the CIA is the kitchen, and Israel has a table there. Russian President Vladimir Putin could be an influential geopolitical partner with President Trump, if Trump can get the issues of Ukraine and Russia solved and then pivot to Iran.

Unfortunately, the CIA does not want the issues within Ukraine solved, doesn’t want Trump and Putin coordinating and certainly doesn’t want Trump and Putin to work out a new strategic global map that does not contain useful conflict. Again, Israel and the CIA are in alignment. If President Trump builds a new bridge to Putin the bypass will significantly hurt traffic around the restaurant. The congressional zoning commission (House) is sympathetic to the long-term contract held by the chef, and the Israeli chamber of commerce are paying the county commissioners (senators) ‘indulgency fees’ to maintain the current ingress and egress. With the January change in shingle, Secretary of State Marco Rubio is now the maître d at the front of the house. Secretary Rubio is not using the menu options created by the kitchen team.

The kitchen is not happy (drones into Moscow). DNI Gabbard in place as the IC hostess, is trying to keep the restaurant operation seamless so the customers generally don’t notice. Unfortunately, the kitchen isn’t soundproof, and we can hear plates crashing (NYT leaks). Around the neighborhood, the locals are worried the kitchen staff might start spitting in their food if they are seen enjoying the new service and menu options. A few of the regulars have told the maître d and hostess about the rumors. The issue is being discussed as part of a pre-planned remodel. The interior architect (Trump) and interior designer (Musk) are proposing to remove the walls so the customers can see the kitchen operation as part of a new and modern decor, style and ambiance [transparency]. However, the guys who eat in the kitchen aren’t going to be happy if they are exposed to the riffraff and forced to eat at ordinary tables.

We keep watching….

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“Pam Bondi: Every American should be thanking Trump tonight..”

“..it was a stealth DOJ Lawfare operative who purposefully wrote in a court filing that Garcia’s deportation was a “mistake.”

Pam Bondi Outlines Timeline and History of MS13 Illegal Alien (CTH)

Not since the Sandra Fluke election operation have the intel democrats coordinated so heavily with their media allies to organize support for a random person within the political/social narrative space, as they have with Kilmar Abrego Garcia. Apparently, the controlled U.S. media and their leftist politicians in office are choosing to use Garcia as a 2026 midterm election cry, similar to 2020’s George Floyd. The professional democrat party, their social media warriors/foot soldiers and the aligned propaganda media are all-in to use Kilmar Abrego Garcia as the face of their politics.

Attempting to counter the false narratives that surround the deportation of Garcia, Attorney General Pam Bondi makes her 77th appearance on Fox News to push back. Sean Hannity provides the Fox venue du jour. The responsibility is accurately applied to Bondi’s effort, considering it was a stealth DOJ Lawfare operative who purposefully wrote in a court filing that Garcia’s deportation was a “mistake.” The failure of Main Justice to catch the Lawfare operation within their ranks, has triggered these media events.

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“Maine Democrats have doubled down on their far-left agenda, and now our students and families stand poised to lose hundreds of millions in federal funding..”

Maine claims that keeping guys out of girls’ private rooms is “politically motivated”. Huh?

Bondi Announces Lawsuit Against Maine Over Boys in Girls’ Sports (ET)

The Department of Justice is seeking a federal court injunction requiring Pine Tree State schools to immediately stop transgender boys from competing in girls’ sports and return all athletic records and titles to their rightful female owners. The federal agency will also consider retroactively pulling funding from school districts that have not complied with Title IX regulations in the past, Attorney General Pam Bondi said during an April 16 news conference in Washington. “Pretty basic stuff,” she said. “This is about women’s sports. This is also about young women’s personal safety.” Bondi was flanked by Education Secretary Linda McMahon and Maine Assemblywoman Laurel Libby, who was censured by her state’s Democrat-led state legislature for posting photos and the identity of a male transgender athlete from Greely High School who won an indoor track state pole vaulting title this year.

Maine high school athletes who competed against transgender males also appeared on stage, along with Riley Gaines, a former NCAA swimmer who brought this debate to the national stage after losing the championship to a transgender male who had competed in the men’s division until his senior year. Bondi said a Maine transgender male also won a cross-country state title last fall in the girls’ division and placed at state-level skiing competitions this past winter. “That took away a spot from young women in women’s sports,” Bondi said. “Shame on him.” Bondi did not disclose where this federal lawsuit was filed. In a separate court case related to the same debate, a judge ordered the federal government to unfreeze Department of Agriculture funding to schools.

President Donald Trump previously issued executive orders clarifying Title IX and prohibiting males from competing in women’s sports. The NCAA has already complied, and Republican House members are working on a bill to codify that regulation. Maine’s attorney general has already informed Bondi that his state has no intention of complying with the order. School district superintendents told their communities that until directed otherwise, they are expected to comply with state laws that are contrary to Trump’s executive order. Trump publicly sparred with Maine Gov. Janet Mills at a governor’s workshop on Capitol Hill in February, warning her that he would pull funding if she continued to defy his executive order. At the state level, the Greely High School community has shown public support for all transgender athletes, including their state champion pole vaulter, criticizing Trump and the NCAA for its compliance. But Libby has also received plenty of support via her social media presence and continues to state that most Mainers do not support men competing as women in their state.

“Maine Democrats have doubled down on their far-left agenda, and now our students and families stand poised to lose hundreds of millions in federal funding,” Libby said in a statement provided to The Epoch Times. “Their radical gender ideology is endangering the continued existence of women’s sports and penalizing Maine students against the will of Maine citizens.” Mills issued a statement after Bondi’s news conference, saying that Trump and the Department of Justice’s actions are politically motivated. “As I have said previously, this is not just about who can compete on the athletic field, this is about whether a President can force compliance with his will, without regard for the rule of law that governs our nation. I believe he cannot,” the governor said.

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They would simply rename a office and say they shut it down.

Rubio Shuts Down Censorship Program Biden Admin Claimed was Ended (Turley)

For years, I have written about the Global Engagement Center (GEC) in columns and my book, The Indispensable Right. It was one of the hubs of the censorship network under the Biden Administration, which claimed it was shut down after Congress cut off funding. However, Secretary of State Marco Rubio just announced that he has terminated the office, which was operating under a different name (a familiar tactic by the anti-free speech movement). Secretary Rubio announced the closure of the State Department’s Counter Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference office, which was previously known as the Global Engagement Center (GEC): “Over the last decade, Americans have been slandered, fired, charged, and even jailed for simply voicing their opinions. That ends today…

When Republicans in Congress sunset GEC’s funding at the end of last year, the Biden State Department slapped on a new name. The GEC became the Counter Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference (R-FIMI) office, with the same roster of employees. With this new name, they hoped to survive the transition to the new administration. Today, we are putting that to an end. Whatever name it goes by, GEC is dead. It will not return.” Bravo, Mr. Secretary, Bravo. We previously saw this dishonest practice in the Biden Administration when they claimed to shut down a censorship office only to shift work to other offices.

As we celebrated the demise of the infamous Disinformation Governing Board, the Biden administration never disclosed a larger censorship effort. That includes a recently disclosed back channel to Twitter where dozens of FBI agents tagged citizens for censorship. I have testified on that evidence of evasion and censorship. The new move will remove 50 full-time staff positions at the Counter Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference office. Rubio discussed his decision in an op-ed for The Federalist. The GEC was part of the Election Integrity Partnership, which we have also discussed as a consortium of nonprofits, social media platforms, and government agencies that were key to the censorship system.

The Biden Administration created censorship offices throughout the government while sending massive amounts of federal funding to groups and universities to help target individuals and groups.Rooting out these offices and grants will take a prolonged effort, but great progress has already occurred under the Trump Administration. Of course, this will add to the ranks of censorious Ronins looking for new sponsors. Many will find homes in academia and in Europe. Yet, there is reason to take heart even as we fight to regain the ground lost under Biden. As Winston Churchill said in 1942, “This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”

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A Chihuahua rules the waves…

A Chihuahua That Thinks It’s A Lion: The Decline of Britain (Bordachev)

There are only two countries in the world that have exercised full autonomy over major political decisions for more than 500 years: Russia and Britain. No others come close. That alone makes Moscow and London natural rivals. But now, we can say with confidence that our historical adversary is no longer what it once was. Britain is losing its foreign policy clout and has been reduced to what we might call “Singapore on the Atlantic”: an island trading power, out of sync with the broader trajectory of world affairs. The fall from global relevance is not without irony. For centuries, Britain caused nothing but harm to the international system. It played France and Germany off one another, betrayed its own allies in Eastern Europe, and exploited its colonies to exhaustion. Even within the European Union, from 1972 until Brexit in 2020, the UK worked tirelessly to undermine the project of integration – first from within, and now from without, with backing from Washington.

Today, the British foreign policy establishment still attempts to sabotage European cohesion, acting as an American proxy. The late historian Edward Carr once mocked the British worldview with a fictional headline: “Fog in Channel – Continent Cut Off.” This egoism, common to island nations, is especially pronounced in Britain, which has always existed beside continental civilization. It borrowed freely from Europe’s culture and political ideas, yet always feared them. That fear was not unfounded. Britain has long understood that true unification of Europe – especially involving Germany and Russia – would leave it sidelined. Thus, the primary goal of British policy has always been to prevent cooperation between the major continental powers. Even now, no country is more eager than Britain to see the militarization of Germany. The idea of a stable Russia-Germany alliance has always been a nightmare scenario for London.

Whenever peace between Moscow and Berlin looked possible, Britain would intervene to sabotage it. The British approach to international relations mirrors its domestic political thought: atomized, competitive, distrustful of solidarity. While continental Europe produced theories of political community and mutual obligation, Britain gave the world Thomas Hobbes and his “Leviathan,” a grim vision of life without justice between the state and its citizens. That same combative logic extends to foreign policy. Britain doesn’t cooperate; it divides. It has always preferred enmity among others over engagement with them. But the tools of that strategy are disappearing. Britain today is a power in steep decline, reduced to shouting from the sidelines. Its internal political life is a carousel of increasingly unqualified prime ministers. This is not simply a result of difficult times. It reflects a deeper problem: the absence of serious political leadership in London.

Even the United States, Britain’s closest ally, is now a threat to its autonomy. The Anglosphere no longer needs two powers that speak English and operate under the same oligarchic political order. For a time, Britain found comfort in the Biden administration, which tolerated its role as transatlantic intermediary. London leveraged its anti-Russian stance to stay relevant and inserted itself into US-EU relations. But that space is narrowing. Today’s American leaders are uninterested in mediators. During a recent trip to Washington, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer could barely answer direct questions on foreign policy. His deference reflected a new reality: even the illusion of independence is fading. Meanwhile, France’s Emmanuel Macron, for all his posturing, at least leads a country that actually controls its nuclear arsenal.

Britain claims to have authority over its nuclear submarines, but many doubt it. In ten years, experts believe it may lose even the technical capacity to manage its nuclear weapons without US support. At that point, London will face a choice: full subservience to Washington or exposure to EU pressures, especially from France. Recent talk in London of sending “European peacekeepers” to Ukraine is a case in point. Despite the unrealistic nature of such proposals, British and French officials spent weeks debating operational details. Some reports suggest the plan stalled due to lack of funds. The real motive was likely to project relevance and show the world that Britain still has a role to play. But neither the media spin nor the political theater can change the facts. Britain’s global standing has diminished. It is no longer capable of independent action and has little influence even as a junior partner. Its leaders are consumed by domestic dysfunction and foreign policy fantasy.

In practical terms, Britain remains dangerous to Russia in two ways. First, by supplying weapons and mercenaries to Ukraine, it increases our costs and casualties. Second, in a moment of desperation, it might try to manufacture a small nuclear crisis. If that happens, one hopes the Americans would take the necessary steps to neutralize the threat – even if that means sinking a British submarine.There is nothing positive for Russia, or the world, in the continued existence of Britain as a foreign policy actor. Its legacy is one of division, sabotage, and imperial plunder. Now, it lives off the crumbs of a bygone empire, barking from the Atlantic like a chihuahua with memories of being a lion. The world moves on. Britain does not.

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Trump will have tariffs for that.

China Replacing US Oil With Canadian – Bloomberg (RT)

China has been importing record amounts of crude oil from Canada and drastically reducing supplies from the US in light of the trade war with Washington, Bloomberg reported on Wednesday. Washington and Beijing have implemented a series of reciprocal tariff hikes over the past two months in light of which the latter has slashed purchases of US oil by roughly 90%, according to the outlet. China previously indicated that it would not implement more tariff hikes against US goods but would rather employ alternative ways to retaliate. Chinese crude imports from a port near Vancouver on Canada’s Pacific coast soared to a record 7.3 million barrels in March and may exceed the figure this month, Bloomberg reported, citing data from London-based global oil and gas cargo tracking firm Vortexa Ltd.

Chinese imports of US oil, meanwhile, have fallen to 3 million barrels per month from a peak of 29 million last June, it added. China’s direct imports of Canadian crude oil had historically been minimal, primarily due to infrastructure constraints. Chinese refineries have mainly sourced crude from the Middle East and Russia. Roughly 1.7% of China’s total crude imports came from the US last year, according to Chinese customs data, down from 2.5% in 2023. Nearly all of Canada’s oil is shipped to the US to be processed there or re-exported to Asia. However, the completion last May of the Trans Mountain Expansion pipeline, which takes crude to Canada’s Pacific coast, provided the country with an alternative route to export more volumes directly, primarily to Asia, thus reducing its reliance on the US.

“Given the trade war, it’s unlikely for China to import more US oil,” Bloomberg quoted Wenran Jiang, president of the Canada-China Energy & Environment Forum, as saying. “They are not going to bank on Russian alone or Middle Eastern alone. Anything from Canada will be welcome news.” China accounted for roughly 5% of US crude oil exports last year, according to ship-tracking data from Kpler. Russia remains China’s largest supplier of crude oil. Russian shipments to China reached the highest level on record in 2024. The increase in recent years is largely attributable to the discounts being offered on Russian crude. China’s imports of oil from Saudi Arabia, its second-largest supplier, declined by 9% year-on-year in 2024.

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EU will buy US LNG. Lots of it.

Trump Tariffs Could Cost EU $1.25 Trillion (RT)

A trade war with the US could cost the EU up to €1.1 trillion ($1.25 trillion) over the next four years if Donald Trump proceeds with proposed tariffs, according to a study by the German Economic Institute (IW). Earlier this month, the Trump administration announced a sweeping 20% tariff on all EU goods and a 25% tariff on all car imports in a bid to eliminate what Washington sees as a large trade deficit with the bloc. Brussels was set to introduce 25% retaliatory tariffs on US imports before Trump announced a 90-day pause on most tariffs to allow for negotiations. If an agreement is not reached and US tariffs are imposed, the EU’s cumulative costs are estimated to range between €780 billion ($886.5 billion) and €1.1 trillion ($1.25 trillion) from 2025 to 2028, depending on the scenario, the study released on Thursday said.

The institute also projects that Germany’s GDP could slump by 1.2% annually during the same period under tariffs. If trading partners respond with similar measures, the costs for Berlin could rise to 1.6%, according to the report. Germany’s economy, already facing challenges, is expected to grow by only 0.1% in 2025 after two consecutive years of contraction. The IW forecasts a total economic output loss of €180 billion (around $205 billion) by 2028 for Germany, primarily due to export losses and declining investments. The US was Germany’s largest trading partner in 2024, with bilateral trade totaling €253 billion ($287.5 billion). A trade conflict could significantly impact key sectors, including automotive and pharmaceuticals, experts have warned.

The IW also pointed out that although the tariffs have been suspended for 90 days, uncertainty remains high, hitting global investment planning.European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen earlier proposed a “zero-for-zero” tariff agreement to eliminate duties on industrial goods between the EU and the US. However, Trump rejected the offer, stating it was insufficient and demanded that the EU commit to purchasing $350 billion worth of American energy to receive tariff relief. Trump has criticized the EU’s trade practices, asserting that the bloc is “very bad to us” and highlighting the US trade deficit as justification for his stance. Officials from Washington and Brussels met for trade talks earlier this week, but made little headway in resolving their differences. US officials signaled that most tariffs on EU goods are likely to remain in place, according to Bloomberg.

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“The current iteration of traditional German the-Russians-are-coming..”

German Anti-Russia Propaganda Is Reaching Nazi-era Levels (Amar)

Like people almost everywhere in NATO-EU Europe, Germans are currently being subjected to a relentless barrage of shameless, often astonishingly crude propaganda. That’s because their political elites and mainstream media are desperately trying to prepare them for war against Russia. And this time, not by proxy, that is, by way of a devastated Ukraine and dead Ukrainians, but directly. As a former, very evil but in his prime all-too-popular German master of mass manipulation – who also happened to love war with Russia more than was good for him (or Germany) – explained a century ago, effective propaganda keeps the world very, very simple. Or, to add a little detail, propaganda’s sometimes literally stunning success is built on two primitive yet powerful – and very old – tricks: the broken-record principle and the litany effect.

Their meaning, too, is elementary: In essence, if your image of reality is delusional, you don’t have sound arguments, and your case is absurd, do not despair. Instead, ceaselessly drum in a few very basic and bogus ideas until the audience is dizzy with repetition (the broken-record principle), while also eliciting frequent consent from it (the litany effect). In short: Keep shouting the same nonsense at them and make them bleat back “yes” regularly. You know, like a ritual, really. In the case of the manufacturing of the current iteration of traditional German the-Russians-are-coming hysteria as well, it is easy to identify its handful of specious, daft, and childishly simplistic key motifs: Russia and Russia alone is to blame for the war in Ukraine; Russia intends to attack Europe (if not the world) – and soon; and Russia is incredibly devious and scheming, so you cannot find a reasonable compromise with it.

Yet what about the nuts and bolts of this propaganda campaign? Even a simple story needs detail, and, if told and retold almost without letup, that detail at least needs to vary: Same old story but different flavor. That’s where things get tricky. For one thing, if you pick the wrong flavor, your propaganda may start looking as silly as it actually is. A current example in Germany – as well as the EU parliament – would be the recent hysteria over the global hit Sigma Boy from Russia. Its brilliantly catchy tune is a piece of art, like it or not. But its lyrics are about as profound as a margarine commercial.

Yet that won’t stop Germany’s radical-Centrist elite from exploring the song’s ominous depths as a weapon of nefarious Russian cultural warfare. Because Sigma Boy, one EU parliamentarian from Hamburg has noticed – with a little help from Ukraine – is really “a viral Russian trope used on social media that communicates patriarchal and pro-Russian worldviews” as well as “only one example of Russian infiltration of popular discourse through social media.” Also, you see, Sigma Boy is really just code for – scary sound effect – PUTIN!

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Google is huge, it has many branches and companies, spends a fortune. Still, 77.4% of its revenue came from online ads in 2023. Break it up fast. It’s a threat to a million small companies.

Court Rules Google Illegally Holds “Monopoly Power” In Online Ad Tech (ZH)

A U.S. federal court ruled that Google had illegally monopolized key digital advertising markets, including publisher ad servers, ad exchanges, and advertiser ad networks. This ruling could deal a major blow to Google’s core business pillar: advertising revenue (advertising accounted for about 77.4% of Google’s total revenue in 2023). U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema found on Thursday morning that Google had violated antitrust law by “willfully acquiring and maintaining monopoly power in the open-web display publisher ad server market and the open-web display ad exchange market.”

Here are the key findings in the landmark antitrust case (U.S. v. Google, 23-cv-00108, U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Virginia (Alexandria):
Google violated Section 2 of the Sherman Act by willfully acquiring and maintaining monopoly power in:
• The open-web display publisher ad server market, and
• The open-web display ad exchange market Google also violated Sections 1 and 2 by unlawfully tying its publisher ad server (DoubleClick for Publishers/DFP) to its ad exchange (AdX). The court did not find that

Google held monopoly power in the third alleged market: advertiser ad networks.
Legal and Procedural Notes:
• The DOJ and 17 states originally brought the suit, accusing Google of monopolizing three key ad tech markets.
• Google had earlier tried to dismiss the case and transfer it to New York but failed.
• The court conducted a three-week bench trial and reviewed extensive expert testimony and evidence.

This case is one of several antitrust actions pending against Google. In a separate lawsuit, the Justice Department seeks to force Alphabet to divest its Chrome browser following a landmark ruling that found the company had monopolized the online search market. “Google will be drastically reshaped by court decrees in the next year or two,” The Information said, adding, “Google will likely be forced, as a result of today’s decision, to dismantle much of its ad tech business which dominates both how advertisers buy ads on independent websites, and how web publishers sell their ad space.”

Here are the next steps for Google, and it appears the court will be deciding on potential remedies:
• Google was found liable on Counts I, II, and IV, violating Sections 1 and 2 of the Sherman Act. Count III was dismissed.
• The court will set a schedule for briefing and hearings to determine remedies, potentially including divestiture of DFP and AdX, injunctions against anticompetitive practices, and other measures to restore competition.
• The ruling highlights Google’s decade-long strategy of tying products and imposing exclusionary policies to maintain dominance in digital advertising, harming publishers, competition, and consumers.

Market response: Alphabet shares fell as much as 3.2% after the ruling. Competitor The Trade Desk’s stock jumped nearly 8%, reflecting investor optimism about improved competition in the ad tech space.

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He put the whistleblowers in charge.

Trump to Make an Epic Move at the IRS (Margolis)

Tax Day was Tuesday, and it goes without saying that we’d all love to see the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) disappear into the dustbin of history. But just as it is certain that we’re all going to die, we’re going to have to pay taxes. There have been some welcome changes at the IRS. As PJ Media previously reported, the IRS is now sharing illegal aliens’ tax information with ICE to help facilitate deportations. Trump has been pushing to turn every federal agency into an effective tool for catching and deporting illegal immigrants. And wouldn’t you know it, acting IRS Commissioner Melanie Krause couldn’t handle doing the right thing and resigned. And guess who’s likely to take her place? Gary Shapley, the IRS whistleblower who blew the lid off the Hunter Biden tax probe. He testified under oath that he faced retaliation simply for doing his job and cooperating with congressional investigators looking into the shady business dealings of the president’s son.

Now, according to the Associated Press, Shapley is expected to be promoted to acting commissioner of the IRS. Shapley and fellow IRS investigator Joseph Ziegler were sidelined from the Hunter Biden probe in December 2022 after raising serious concerns with their superiors. According to their testimony, the Justice Department under then-U.S. Attorney David Weiss repeatedly “slow-walked investigative steps” and stalled enforcement actions in the critical months leading up to the 2020 election. The saga over Hunter Biden’s taxes ended when Joe Biden gave Hunter a blanket pardon for any and all crimes he may have committed for a nearly ten-year period. Hunter had been facing trial in California for failing to pay at least $1.4 million in taxes but abruptly agreed to plead guilty just as jury selection was about to begin.

Despite that unfortunate ending to the story, the promotion of Shapley is welcome news. It’s a classic Trump-style move — putting truth-tellers in positions of power and pushing out the bureaucrats who’ve been protecting the swamp. In March, Shapley was promoted to Deputy Chief of IRS Criminal Investigations, and another IRS investigator who testified about Biden’s taxes, Joseph Ziegler, was assigned to the Treasury Secretary’s office as a senior adviser for IRS reform. Now, the tax collection agency is planning to name Shapley to one of the highest-ranking roles at the agency — in an interim role — as former Missouri congressman Billy Long awaits a confirmation hearing to lead the agency permanently, the people say. They were not authorized to speak publicly about the plan.

President Donald Trump nominated Long, who worked as an auctioneer before serving six terms in the House of Representatives, to serve as the next commissioner of the IRS. “Gary is a long-tenured civil servant who has dedicated the last 15 years of his professional life to the IRS,” a Treasury spokesperson told the Associated Press. “Gary has proven his honesty and devotion to enforcing the law without fear or favor, even at great cost to his own career. He’ll be a great asset to the IRS as we rethink and reform this crucial organization.” Shapley may only serve temporarily, but you can’t ignore the symbolism behind the move.

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“The era of global boiling has arrived!”

Climate Myths (John Stossel)

I guess United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres didn’t think his hyping global warming risks brought him enough attention, so now he says, “The era of global boiling has arrived!” Global boiling? Give me a break. Yes, the climate is warming. We can deal with that. What annoys me is politicians, activists and media pushing hysterical myths.

Myth 1: The Arctic will soon be ice-free. It “could already be ice-free by the summer of 2030!” shrieks a DW report. “‘Doomsday Glacier’ is melting faster than scientists thought,” adds the BBC. “Earth’s biggest cities are at risk!” Nonsense. “It’s not happening at nearly the catastrophic pace that they claim,” says Heartland Institute fellow Linnea Lueken in my new video. But the media show dramatic images of melting and missing ice. “No ice! There’s all these walruses laying out on a stony beach. … It’s because it’s the summertime! In the winter, it all comes right back!”

As far as ice disappearing in winter, too, “Compared to the amount of ice that’s in the Arctic,” says Lueken, it “is like a grain of sand … so minuscule compared to the amount of ice that’s there, it doesn’t even show up on a trend chart when you plot it.” But zealots push hysteria. In 2009, Al Gore, while collecting a Nobel prize, said there was “a 75% chance that the entire north polar ice cap … during some of the summer months, could be completely ice-free within five to seven years!” In just five to seven years! Oh, no! Wait … seven years have passed. In fact, 16 years passed. The ice cap has plenty of ice, even in summer. Yet nobody calls him on it. “They absolutely should be calling him on it,” says Lueken.

Myth 2: Polar bears are going extinct. Polar bears look cute, so environmental groups use them in ads to sucker you into donating money. But Polar bear populations have increased! In the 1960s, 17,000-19,000 was the highest of three scientific estimates of polar bear population. Today, there are about 26,000 polar bears. Yet the Environmental Defense Fund collected almost a quarter-billion dollars from gullible donors running ads that say: “Your support can help Environmental Defense Fund save the polar bears!” The EDF hasn’t agreed to my interview requests. I understand why. I would call their advertising sleazy. “Absolutely,” agrees Lueken, “the data is right there. It’s not hard to find out that polar bears are fine.” OK, maybe polar bears aren’t going extinct, but we might starve!

That’s Myth 3. MSNBC shrieks, “Climate change could create a massive global food shortage.” President Barack Obama said, “Our changing climate is already making it more difficult to produce food!” “There is no claim less true.” sighs Lueken. “Food production has skyrocketed.” She’s right, and the data is there for everyone to see. Agriculture output sets record highs year after year. In fact, the extra carbon dioxide in greenhouse gasses probably increases food production. “We inject CO2 into greenhouses for a reason,” Lueken points out. “It helps to fertilize plants for faster and better growth.” As the climate has warmed, the world experienced the biggest drop in hunger and malnutrition ever.

Still, when food prices rise, media idiots still blame climate change. The New York Times claimed “devastation that climate change had wrought” caused a rise in coffee prices.But global coffee production has increased by 82% since the 1990s.The Times story focused on a brief decline in coffee production in Honduras. But since the ’90s, coffee production there rose more than 200%. “They never apologize,” I note. “They never say, ‘Oh, we got this wrong.'” “No,” replies Lueken. “Even if they did have a retraction, the damage is already done.” Alarmist media and environmental groups never apologize. When doom doesn’t happen, they just move on to the next scare. I’ll cover four more myths about climate change next week..

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IVM

 

 

Alarma

 

 

K2-18b

 

 

Cartoon

 

 

Egret

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Oct 152024
 


Andrea Pozzo Ceiling Fresco, Church of St. Ignazio, Rome (entire ceiling is flat) 1685-94

 

Lawfare is Jihad Against Our Country (James Howard Kunstler)
‘Something Very Wrong’ With Kamala Harris – Trump (RT)
Kamala Harris Has A Major Problem With Male Voters (ZH)
Trump Plans To Expand Border Patrol By 10,000, Reward Existing Agents (JTN)
Liberals Are Losing their Minds over Elon Musk (Turley)
Whoever Wins This Pennsylvania County Is Expected To Win The White House (ET)
Military Intervention in US Domestic Affairs? (Paul Craig Roberts)
Young Men in US Are Shifting Right, as Many Feel ‘Left Behind’ (Manley)
Speaker Johnson Says FEMA Spent Just 2% Of $20 Billion In Disaster Aid (JTN)
US Emergency Workers ‘Hunted By Militia’ – WaPo (RT)
US Sets Stage for Direct Participation in Middle East War (Miles)
Imperial Israel (Miles)
Israel Does What It Does; It Was Always Planned This Way (Alastair Crooke)
Germany Is Committing ‘Economic Suicide’ – Who’s To Blame? (Amar)
UK Police Officers Resigning in Droves as Country Roiled by Protest (Miles)
Ukraine’s Battlefield Situation ‘Critical’ – ex-NATO Official (RT)

 

 

 

 

SNL
https://twitter.com/i/status/1845321115780120975

 

 

Bill ad
https://twitter.com/i/status/1845880958769053735

Jennings

Kamala

O’Reilly
https://twitter.com/i/status/1845673700462592106

Cost cutting

Orban

Kash Patel
https://twitter.com/i/status/1845476000596971736

60m

Jan 6

3rd attempt

 

 

 

 

Jim in fine form. “It’s a tragic turn of fate for our country that the law, and language with it, have been turned into weapons for national suicide.”

Lawfare is Jihad Against Our Country (James Howard Kunstler)

Marc Elias was the original expeditor of the RussiaGate hoax in 2016 from his perch at Perkins Coie, then Hillary Clinton’s campaign law firm, which laundered payments to Christopher Steele, front-man for Glenn Simpson’s Fusion GPS political PR shop, which concocted the fraudulent “dossier,” and set in motion a train of DC intel blob legal shenanigans aimed at defenestrating Donald Trump from the White House — the Mueller Investigation, impeachment, etc. While all that was going on through the Trump term, and with the Covid-19 Op providing cover, Mr. Elias engineered the 2020 changes in many states’ election laws and bylaws to permit large-scale mail-in voting, organized ballot-harvesting activities, and the use of drop-boxes for receiving bundled votes. He and his George Soros-financed staff lawyers sued states that attempted to require voter-identification, and provided legal protection for Mark Zuckerberg’s $419-million-dollar assault on election precinct staffing in swing states.

When the 2020 election concluded suspiciously, Mr. Elias and his gang joined lawsuits in every case where the balloting was contested and got more than sixty of them dismissed on the basis of “standing,” without the merits of the cases being heard. This is Lawfare. This time around, 2024, Mr. Elias has done everything possible to ensure that millions of illegal aliens stuffed into swing states will have their putative identities attached to harvested mail-in ballots from addresses such as Walmart parking lots and storage units, and has filed lawsuits wherever a state threatens to require proof of citizenship for voting. He has also filed sixty peremptory lawsuits to obstruct attempts to audit any election count after November 5 — as if it is an affront to democracy to even ask questions about official misconduct. A parallel Lawfare scam underway is the Democratic Party-sponsored 65 Project that seeks to disbar Trump-adjacent lawyers who attempt to challenge any voting irregularities in this year’s election. It’s mission statement reads:

“The 65 Project is a bipartisan effort to protect democracy from these once-and-future abuses by holding accountable Big Lie Lawyers who bring fraudulent and malicious lawsuits to overturn legitimate election results, and by working with bar associations to deter future abuses by establishing clear standards for conduct that punish lies about the conduct or results of elections.” Notice the term “Big Lie” to foreclose any inquiry at all into election fraud. That half the people in this country accept such an Orwellian con tells you the vital role played by the perversion of language in the Democratic Party’s war against the citizens of this land. Exactly who is to say, in advance of the event, that any objection to a vote count is fraudulent and malicious? Answer: the people who have maliciously committed fraud. The Democrats have been grooming the public for years with that phrase, the Big Lie, in exactly the same way that pedos groom innocent pubescents who accept the authority of any grown-up, no matter what debauchery they are subjected to.

It’s a tragic turn of fate for our country that the law, and language with it, have been turned into weapons for national suicide. The net result is a nation that can’t think straight anymore and cannot construct any coherent set of rules to live by. So we find ourselves in a society where stealing is no longer a crime, where border-jumping has been downgraded to a clerical error (“undocumented”), where little children are allowed to decide whether they are male or female, where speech that disagrees with the authorities agenda is “misinformation” subject to censorship and prosecution, where candidates for the highest office get selected “democratically” without any votes cast, and where you can be run-over and ruined financially in court by the bottomless legal resources of the Deep State for just speaking your mind.

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Am I allowed to find this funny?

”Joe Biden became mentally impaired. Kamala was born that way..”

‘Something Very Wrong’ With Kamala Harris – Trump (RT)

Former US President Donald Trump has called on Vice President Kamala Harris to take a cognitive test, calling her “slow and lethargic.” Harris urged Trump to release his medical records over the weekend, questioning “whether he is fit to be president of the United States.” In a post on his Truth Social platform on Monday, Trump declared that “it is very important that Kamala Harris pass a test on cognitive stamina and agility.” “Her actions have led many to believe that there could be something very wrong with her,” he continued. “Even 60 Minutes and CBS, in order to protect Lyin’ Kamala, illegally and unscrupulously replaced an answer she had given, which was totally ‘bonkers’, with another answer that had nothing to do with the question asked.” “Also, she is slow and lethargic in answering even the easiest of questions,” Trump continued. “We just went through almost four years of that, we shouldn’t have to do it again!”

Last week, CBS News broadcast an interview with Harris that had been heavily edited, with the vice president’s lengthy and rambling answers – seen in a preview released before the final broadcast – cut and replaced with completely different responses. Trump initially focused his anger on CBS, declaring that the network should be shut down and sold “to the highest bidder.” However, his latest attack on Harris came after the Democratic candidate questioned his physical and mental fitness. After releasing a statement from her doctor describing her health as “excellent,” Harris called on Trump to follow suit, claiming that his unwillingness to do so demonstrates that he does “not want the American people to see what he is doing and whether he is fit to be President of the United States.” At 78, Trump is 19 years Harris’ senior, and is currently the oldest nominee for president by a major party in US history. Trump released a letter from his doctor last November which stated that his “overall health is excellent” and that his “cognitive exams were exceptional.”

Dr. Bruce Aronwald, Trump’s personal physician since 2021, said his cancer screening tests were all negative, cardiovascular tests were normal, and he had reduced his weight through daily physical activity and an “improved diet.” Trump repeatedly attacked President Joe Biden over his mental and physical fortitude until July, when Biden suspended his reelection campaign after appearing confused during a debate with the former president. With Harris replacing Biden atop the Democratic ticket, Trump repurposed his repertoire of insults and jibes to fit his new opponent. ”Joe Biden became mentally impaired. Kamala was born that way,” Trump said at a campaign rally last month. “She was born that way. And if you think about it, only a mentally disabled person could have allowed this to happen to our country,” he continued, going after Harris for her lax border security performance.

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Less popular among men than Trump is among women. Wow.

Kamala Harris Has A Major Problem With Male Voters (ZH)

It’s no secret that men aren’t fans of Kamala Harris – and the Democrat party is in full panic mode over it. Look no further than their recent cringe-fest commercials, Tim Walz awkwardly trying to load a shotgun with his balls, and Barack Obama lecturing black men for their lack of support. They’ve even resorted to oversampling women in polls to achieve the desired result. And who could forget Hillary Clinton suggesting that women who voted for Trump only did so because their husbands pressured them.

This weekend, New York Times opinion podcaster Lulu Garcia-Navarro’s reaction to JD Vance encapsulated the situation. When asked whether expelling illegal immigrants would exacerbate the housing crisis due to a lack of construction labor, Vance suggested that “You could re-engage men to enter the labor market.” Garcia-Navarro was taken aback – clearly unable to grasp the notion that modern men would want to fill those positions.

Breaking it down in a viral post on X is John Konrad, CEO of maritime news website gCaptain. “Listen to her shock—her disbelief. She doesn’t get it. She thinks men wouldn’t want to work in construction, that we’d rather sit in cushy office jobs, sipping $6 lattes in front of Zoom calls,” Konrad says of Garcia-Navarro. He then lays out one of the major problems with men building things in America – red tape, which Democrats apply liberally to anything they can’t directly control. Why not build ships here? Because our shipyards are buried in OSHA regulations, HR policies, union rules—everything moves at a snail’s pace. I don’t want to build slowly with tons of paperwork and red tape—I want to BUILD. They don’t get it. They don’t see how hard it is to build in this country while making progress, earning a decent living, and having freedom. In South Korea, I had all three, but it wasn’t home.

I could get a shipyard job here but I’d make half what I made in South Korea with four times the paperwork and it would take years to build one ship. No thanks. Lulu is shocked I’d give up my “thinking job.” For construction. Sure, I LOVE my job now—but I’d throw it all away to build again. To construct. It’s like the movie Office Space. My wife said it’s a “guy movie,” and she’s right. Most people think it’s just an office comedy – or think the stapler guy “won” because he’s now rich. But to guys – real men- it’s a hero’s story. The main character leaves it all behind… and ends up working construction! That’s the happy ending. Listen to her voice. Hear the contempt: “They’d work construction?” YES, I WOULD, LULU. And I wouldn’t just build condos. Turn us loose, and we’d build grand ships, towering bridges, and homes with character and strength.

American men are the best builders in the world. But we’re shackled by HR, red tape, DEI, lawyers and endless regulations. All the bullshit the NYTimes constantly advocates for. We are sick of it. We are sick of the Times. We are sick of you Lulu. Sick of you telling us what we want. We want to build… and not build for ourselves but build great things for YOU. Yes YOU Lulu. Great things for women and men and children of all colors and religions and backgrounds. Big great things that advance all of us together. That’s why we look up to @elonmusk —he’s out there building rockets and robots. – ROCKETSHIPS AND ROBOTS!

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“..a 10% raise for all agents, and a $10,000 dollar each retention and signing bonus..”

Trump Plans To Expand Border Patrol By 10,000, Reward Existing Agents (JTN)

Visiting an Arizona border front exhausted by the Biden-Harris migrant crisis, former President Donald Trump on Sunday unveiled a plan to expand the U.S. Border Patrol by 10,000 employees and reward existing agents with raises and bonuses if he is elected. “I will always stand with the incredible men and women of Border Patrol,” Trump told a rally in Prescott, Ariz., where he was surrounded by frontline Customs and Border Patrol employees. The union representing the 16,000 border agents also endorsed Trump at the event before he laid out his plan.

The former president said Border Patrol agents were suffering from a morale crisis because of the policies of the Biden-Harris administration had let millions slide across the border, and because false accusations earlier in the administration that agents had mistreated migrants. “They have a tremendous shortage because they haven’t been treated right. They want to do their jobs. You know, they consider it bad treatment when you’re not allowed to do your jobs,” Trump said. “I will be asking Congress to approve immediately a 10% raise for all agents, and a $10,000 dollar each retention and signing bonus,” he added.

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“The intense hatred for Musk is due to the fact that he was the immovable object in the path of their formerly unstoppable force.”

Liberals Are Losing their Minds over Elon Musk (Turley)

This week, Elton John publicly renounced the Rocket Man — no, not the 1972 song, but Elon Musk, whom he called an “a**hole” in an awards ceremony. Sir Elton, 77, is only the latest among celebrities and pundits to denounce Musk for his support of former president Donald Trump and his opposition to censorship. Musk-mania is so overwhelming that some are calling for his arrest, deportation and debarment from federal contracts. This week, the California Coastal Commission rejected a request from the Air Force for additional launches from Vandenberg Air Force Base. It is not because the military agency did not need the launches. It was not because the nation and the community would not benefit from them. Rather, it was reportedly because, according to one commissioner, Musk has “aggressively injected himself into the presidential race.” By a 6-4 vote, the California Coastal Commission rejected the military’s plan to let SpaceX launch up to 50 rockets per year from the base in Santa Barbara County.

Musk’s SpaceX is becoming a critical part of national security programs. It will even be launching a rescue mission for two astronauts stranded in space. The advances of SpaceX under Musk are legendary. The Air Force wanted to waive the requirement for separate permits for SpaceX in carrying out these critical missions. To the disappointment of many, SpaceX is now valued at over $200 billion and just signed a new $1 billion contract with NASA. Yet neither the national security value nor the demands for SpaceX services appear to hold much interest for officials like Commissioner Gretchen Newsom (no relation to California’s governor, Gavin Newsom): “Elon Musk is hopping about the country, spewing and tweeting political falsehoods and attacking FEMA while claiming his desire to help the hurricane victims with free Starlink access to the internet.”

Newsom is the former political director for the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) Local 569. It did not seem to matter to her that increased launches meant more work for electrical workers and others. Rather, it’s all about politics. Commission Chair Caryl Hart added “here we’re dealing with a company, the head of which has aggressively injected himself into the presidential race and he’s managed a company in a way that was just described by Commissioner Newsom that I find to be very disturbing.” In my book “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage,” I discuss how Musk became persona non grata when he bought Twitter and announced that he was dismantling the company’s massive censorship apparatus. He then outraged many on the left by releasing the Twitter Files, showing the extensive coordination of the company with the government in a censorship system described by a federal court as “Orwellian.”

After the purchase, former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton called upon Europeans to force Musk to censor her fellow Americans under the notorious Digital Services Act. Clinton has even suggested the arrest of those responsible for views that she considers disinformation. Silicon Valley investor Roger McNamee called for Musk’s arrest and said that, as a condition of getting government contracts, officials should “require him to moderate his speech in the interest of national security.” Former Clinton Secretary of Labor Robert Reich wants Musk arrested for simply refusing to censor other people. Former MSNBC host Keith Olbermann called for Musk to be deported and all federal contracts cancelled with this company. As with many in the “Save Democracy” movement, Olbermann was unconcerned with the denial of free speech or constitutional protections. “If we can’t do that by conventional means, President Biden, you have presidential immunity. Get Elon Musk the F out of our country and do it now.”

Of course, none of these figures are even slightly bothered about other business leaders with political opinions, so long as, like McNamee, they are supporting Harris or at least denouncing Trump. Musk has failed to yield to a movement infamous for cancel campaigns and coercion. The usual alliance of media, academia, government and corporate forces hit Musk, his companies and even advertisers on X. Other corporate officials collapsed like a house of cards to demands for censorship — see, for example, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg. Musk, in contrast, responded by courageously releasing the Twitter Files and exposing the largest censorship system in our history. That is why I describe Musk as arguably the single most important figure in this generation in defense of free speech. The intense hatred for Musk is due to the fact that he was the immovable object in the path of their formerly unstoppable force.

Turley

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Long article. These are just the juiciest bits.

Whoever Wins This Pennsylvania County Is Expected To Win The White House (ET)

It’s not just the Erie County Republican Party that’s hard at work trying to flip the county back to Trump’s camp. Leo Williard, a small business owner, has set up what he calls “Trump factories” in two auto dealerships owned by his friend and located just outside downtown Erie. While still managing his own business, Williard told The Epoch Times that he spends hours every week talking to and converting Democratic voters to Trump’s side. Williard said he was inspired to do so by the city of Erie’s Democratic leanings: While the rural and suburban areas are more evenly divided, the city itself votes overwhelmingly for Democrats. Many of those who come into the dealership are from the city, he said. “And we started talking to those people, and I have a table set up in the corner of his office up there that I call the ‘Trump corner.’ I call this whole process the ‘Trump factory,’” Williard said, adding that he was bringing as many as five to 15 Democrats a day over to Trump’s side.

“You can’t believe the people we are turning from Democrat to Trump.” For many, financial concerns—particularly inflation—are the most pressing issue, Williard said, agreeing that inflation could be described as “the No. 1 issue” in the county right now. The modest income of many residents makes the hit harder than it might be in more affluent areas, Williard said. Williard said that Democrats’ decision to nominate Vice President Kamala Harris did energize the Democratic base in the city, but he is confident. “I still think that Erie County, based on the work I see being done and the enthusiasm I see, will go red. I think it will turn the state red,” Williard said. Republicans have seen strong signs for optimism—but recent Democratic victories in the county still undercut any sort of certainty.

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The Biden Regime Has Just Issued a Very Suspicious Directive Permitting Military Intervention in US Domestic Affairs

Military Intervention in US Domestic Affairs? (Paul Craig Roberts)

The Department of Homeland Security has flagged individuals questioning COVID-19 origins, vaccine efficacy, and election integrity as potential domestic terrorism threats. Is a coup being set in place? A new Department of Defense directive 5240.01 issued September 27, 2024, just prior to the November presidential election allows the US military to use lethal force against American citizens in assisting police authorities in domestic disturbances. A report on this development lists these civil liberties concerns:

Right to protest: There are fears that expanded authority could suppress legitimate protests. Privacy rights: Increased military involvement in domestic intelligence gathering could infringe on privacy. Due process: The military’s role in law enforcement could bypass standard due process protections. Freedom of speech: The broad definition of “national security threats” could target individuals for their political beliefs. Civilian control: The expanded military role could erode civilian oversight of the military.

Unless Trump cuts a deal with Democrats not to hold them accountable and also a deal with the Ruling Elite not to interfere with their control, I can see no way that either will permit Trump to be President. The Biden regime and the Trump Justice (sic) Department and FBI are criminal operations. I can see indictments and arrests for those who have weaponized law enforcement. The Ruling Elite and leading Democrats such as Hillary Clinton and John Kerry can all be arrested, honestly unlike Trump and his supporters, for insurrection as they have openly called for the overthrow of the United States by demanding the overthrow of the First Amendment of the US Constitution. No fooling, this is treason. The US is the Constitution. Advocating the overthrow of the Constitution is advocating the overthrow of the United States. This is a major issue of our time, and it is not mentioned — which displays the control the elite have over what can be an issue subject to notice and discussion.

That one month prior to the presidential election the corrupt Biden regime issued a directive that permits the US military, purged of its patriotic officers, to use lethal force against American citizens is an indication that something is afoot. Why is such a directive suddenly needed, a directive that goes against all previous policy? Here is a possible scenario: If despite the whore media’s assault on Trump and the in-place legalized election theft procedures in the swing states, the Democrats and Ruling Elite conclude that the election can neither be won nor stolen, an orchestrated false flag insurrection is staged that activates Department of Defense directive 5240.01 issued September 27, 2024. Trump, his supporters, the Republican Party, probably sparing the RINOs as a fake opposition party will be needed to carry on the illusion of democracy under one-party rule, will be arrested as insurrectionists. The courts will be helpless as they have no enforcement powers, and any intervention against the coup will be misrepresented as “siding with insurrectionists.”

Absurd! Extreme! Nutcase! No, I am none of these. Just think of all the violations of US law and international law by Democrat officials. They are subject to arrest nationally and internationally. Trump, unless he cuts the deals I mentioned, is a threat to the Ruling Establishment as he can put most of them in prison. How can the Democrats and the Ruling Elite let a man and a movement this dangerous to them become President? They cannot. Unless Trump sells out, he is in a fight to the death. Elon Musk knows it. Musk wondered on Tucker Carlson how long his prison sentence would be if Trump loses the election. Most Americans, however, are too insouciant to realize that if Trump loses the election, or it is stolen from him, or prevented from happening, there will never again be an election in the United States of America. A Stalin type election, perhaps, where 99.9% of the votes are taken by the ruling personage.

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“..financially dependent on their parents with about 30% of those aged 18 to 25 continuing to live at home with a parent..”

Young Men in US Are Shifting Right, as Many Feel ‘Left Behind’ (Manley)

According to data from the Pew Research Institute, young men in the US without college degrees are making less money than previous generations and are less likely to be working full time. Fearful of inflation, the housing crisis, and poor job prospects, more young men in the US are switching to the Republican party. Less than two decades ago, young men could be seen as solidly Democratic, a report from NBC News explained citing pollsters and social scientists. But due to fear of a poor economy and a lack of investment in social issues, more young men are turning to the right. “The economic and employment picture for younger men without college degrees is significantly worse than previous generations,” said Dan Cox, director of the Survey Center on American Life at the American Enterprise Institute.

“These sort of traditional norms around masculinity and what it means to be a man and a husband are wrapped up in economic success, and that makes it really, really challenging when their economic outlook is not as bright.”
Richard Reeves, the president of the American Institute for Boys and Men, adds that there is a “cultural dislocation among men”. And that they feel as though they don’t really know whether they are going to be “needed” or feel as if they are “failing against the standard that was set 50 years ago about the position of men and women in the labor market.” Overall, a majority of both young men and young women allegedly prefer Vice President Kamala Harris to former President Donald Trump as their next presidential pick. However, 33% of young men identify as being part of the Democratic Party, compared to a previous 42% in 2020, a poll of 18 to 29-year-old by the Harvard Institute of Politics found.

In 2008, for example, former President Barack Obama won the votes of 66% of young men. While Trump has been campaigning on the Biden administration’s “failed” economy, he has also pledged to bring back manufacturing jobs by placing 20% tariffs on imports which economists have warned will trigger widespread inflation and supply chain disruptions. But the economy looks different to young men compared to other Americans, the report adds. Young men are less likely to worry about the costs of prescription drugs, child care or mortgage interest rates. Instead, their income goes rent, dining out and entertainment along with student loan debt.

Rent cost is also the biggest point of economic pain for young people’s wallets. Rent in the US has increased around 20% since 2020, and about two-thirds of young adults said they spend more than 30% of their monthly income on housing while a quarter said more than half of their income goes to housing, the report said citing data from the Bank of America. “You look at what our parents were able to buy for $10,000 back in the day,” said Derek, a focus group participant from Wisconsin who is thinking of voting for Trump. “I just went through trying to buy a house two years ago, and the struggles that you come through. You’ve got to be making $150,000 just to get your standard three-bed, two-bath house nowadays.” As a result, young American men are now more likely to be financially dependent on their parents with about 30% of those aged 18 to 25 continuing to live at home with a parent. As a result, young men are also waiting longer to get married as well as to have children.

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And then they say they’re underfunded.

Speaker Johnson Says FEMA Spent Just 2% Of $20 Billion In Disaster Aid (JTN)

House Speaker Mike Johnson said over the weekend that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has distributed only 2% of the billions of dollars to disaster relief provided by Congress. “FEMA has distributed 2% of the over $20 billion in disaster relief funding Congress provided,” Johnson said Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” “They need to do their job and get this assistance to the people in need. Once the total calculations are completed, Congress will address any additional needs,” he continued. Hurricane Helene hit Florida two weeks ago as a Category Four storm, and caused disastrous damage in Georgia, North and South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia. Hurricane Milton also hit Florida this week as a Category Three storm.

FEMA has gotten backlash for not spending money properly in the wake of these storms as Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told reporters earlier this month that the organization does not have adequate funds to manage disaster relief for the rest of hurricane season. FEMA has previously spent approximately $650 million on grants to nonprofits and local authorities that resettle and aid illegal immigrants, and has sent employees down to the border to help address the increase in unaccompanied minors that began in 2021, Fox News reported. This has been part of an ongoing controversy over whether FEMA being involved in issues related to aid to illegal immigrants at the southern border is affecting their ability, both financially and in terms of manpower, to carry out their emergency work on natural disasters and other emergencies.

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Appalachia.

US Emergency Workers ‘Hunted By Militia’ – WaPo (RT)

Federal employees responding to Hurricane Helene in Rutherford County, North Carolina, were threatened last week by militias and had to temporarily pull out, the Washington Post reported on Sunday. An email sent on Saturday by an official with the US Forest Service, which assists the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), advised federal responders to “stand down and evacuate the county immediately,” the newspaper said. The warning came after members of the National Guard claimed to have come across what they called “trucks of armed militia saying there [sic] were out hunting FEMA.” The Post said two federal officials confirmed to it that the message was authentic. The newspaper stressed that it was not clear how serious the threat was assessed to be.

One of the sources said employees were moved to a “safe area,” which resulted in recovery work being put on hold in the area. Personnel were back in place by Sunday afternoon, the officials, who spoke to the newspaper on condition of anonymity, added. Journalist Brianna Sacks, who bylined the story, later published on her X account a message claiming that a firefighter crew had been instructed to avoid certain areas on the border between North Carolina and Tennessee “due to communities being governed by armed militias” there. The Post described the incident in Rutherford County as the latest example of security issues in western North Carolina. In the two weeks since Hurricane Helene ravaged parts of the state, “misinformation and rumors have made the recovery more difficult,” the reports stated, claiming that some locals were refusing to cooperate with federal officials.

“It’s terrible because a lot of these folks who need assistance are refusing it because they believe the stuff people are saying about FEMA and the government,” Riva Duncan, a former Forest Service official, told the news outlet. “And it’s sad because they are probably the ones who need the help the most.” The Appalachian region of the US, which includes western North Carolina, tends to be less affluent and has come to be seen by many as having been left behind by the coastal political elites. It also has a long history of anti-federal sentiment. On Friday, President Joe Biden denounced “reckless, irresponsible, and relentless disinformation and outright lies” for the death threats allegedly received by emergency response workers in remarks about the government’s hurricane response efforts.

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“The arch Zionist and likely intelligence asset’s approval rating as prime minister now stands at only 26%..”

US Sets Stage for Direct Participation in Middle East War (Miles)

The US and its European client states are doubling down on their support for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the waning days of the Biden administration, setting the stage for Western militaries to directly participate in Israeli atrocities or even a broader regional conflagration. A series of events in recent days has demonstrated NATO countries’ deepening commitment to Israel as new UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer leads the way. “US special forces flights to Israel from a British airbase have doubled in frequency since Keir Starmer took over from Rishi Sunak as prime minister,” reported the website Declassified UK recently. “It has… previously been revealed that the US is using Akrotiri to deliver weapons to Israel,” the investigative reporting outlet continued, referring to the UK’s large airbase in Cyprus. “The UK government has long refused to give any details of US use of British territory to support the Israeli assault on Gaza.”

Starmer has been heavily criticized for alleged weaponization of claims of antisemitism during his tenure as leader of the UK Labour Party. After previously signaling cooperation with former leader Jeremy Corbyn and his supporters, Starmer ultimately expelled Corbyn from Labour and purged pro-Corbyn candidates and party members. A damning report released in 2022 revealed that a manufactured antisemitism crisis within the party was used to undermine Corbyn, who is a prominent anti-imperialist and supporter of the Palestinian cause. The former Czechoslovak government concluded Starmer was a likely Western intelligence asset in an internal report written in the 1980s. Former Central Intelligence Agency director Mike Pompeo suggested in 2019 that the United States would work to prevent Corbyn’s election as British prime minister, paving the way for Starmer to fill the role instead. The arch Zionist and likely intelligence asset’s approval rating as prime minister now stands at only 26% according to recent polling.

“In November 2023, a US military official revealed that American special forces were stationed in Israel and actively helping the Israelis,’” noted journalist Matt Kennard. While US military personnel have assisted Israel’s operation in the Gaza Strip over the last year, the Biden administration signaled an open commitment of US troops in the country today in a statement released by the Pentagon. “At the direction of the President, [US Defense] Secretary [Lloyd] Austin authorized the deployment of a Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) battery and associated crew of U.S. military personnel to Israel to help bolster Israel’s air defenses,” said press secretary Maj. Gen. Patrick S. Ryder, claiming the move was intended to safeguard the country’s military installations after Iran’s retaliatory attack earlier this month. It is thought that some 100 US troops would be dispatched to Israel to operate the THAAD system.

Observers warn the open commitment of personnel could serve as a casus belli to send troops to fight with Israel if a US service member is injured or killed in a strike on an Israeli military target. The official death toll in Gaza stands at almost 43,000, but a study in the respected British medical journal The Lancet claimed it will ultimately approach 200,000 as Palestinians cope with mass hunger, malnutrition and lack of medical care. The International Criminal Court (ICC) has sought the arrest of Netanyahu and Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes, while the International Court of Justice (ICJ) is investigating Israel on claims of a “plausible” genocide in the Gaza Strip. The possibility of accountability for Israel’s conduct in the Palestinian territory raises the prospect of Western leaders like Starmer and US President Joe Biden being held criminally liable for their enthusiastic support for Israel, which has included the provision of arms, assistance in military planning and diplomatic cover in venues such as the United Nations.

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“UNIFIL has opposed the ultimatum, with Irish peacekeepers vocally rejecting Israeli demands to abandon their observation post..”

Imperial Israel (Miles)

Relations between Israel and the United Nations have reached a nadir as Tel Aviv has urged UNIFIL to “relocate” some of its 10,000 peacekeepers in southern Lebanon. Emboldened by the uncritical backing of the United States, Israel is ramping up its military operation in southern Lebanon – bringing it into confrontation with United Nations peacekeeping forces. Tel Aviv once again came into confrontation with the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, known as UNIFIL, on Friday, striking the organization’s headquarters and injuring two peacekeepers during a morning attack. Israeli forces struck the same installation the day before, also injuring two. “You will have seen that the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) issued a statement this morning saying that two of its peacekeepers were injured after an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Merkava tank fired its weapon toward an observation tower at UNIFIL’s headquarters in Naqoura, directly hitting it and causing them to fall,” stated the spokesperson for UN Secretary General António Guterres after the first attack Thursday.

“The injuries are fortunately – this time – not serious, but the peacekeepers remain in the hospital.” The comments came before a briefing by Representative of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) Nestor Owomuhangi on the impact of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza on women and girls. The attacks drew condemnation in the form of a statement released by France, Italy and Spain – which have become increasingly critical of Israeli actions in recent months – as well as unsympathetic coverage in conservative-leaning news outlets like the UK-based Daily Mail. The joint statement expressed “outrage” over Israel’s “unjustified attack,” accusing the country of failure to uphold its obligations under international law by striking UN peacekeeping forces. The three countries called for a ceasefire.

Relations between Israel and the United Nations have reached a nadir as Tel Aviv has urged UNFIL to “relocate” some of its 10,000 peacekeepers in southern Lebanon. UNFIL has opposed the ultimatum, with Irish peacekeepers vocally rejecting Israeli demands to abandon their observation post as Israel attempts to press forward with their invasion. The incident led to violent rhetoric from Israelis and their apologists on social media, with former White House advisor Matthew RJ Brodsky calling on Tel Aviv to “drop napalm” on the nonviolent Irish peacekeeping force. The comments led to a rare suspension of a pro-Israel account on the X social media platform and forced Brodsky to resign his current position advising a Republican congressional candidate. Ireland has long been one of the most stalwart defenders of the Palestinian cause in Europe, with activists and politicians in the country frequently comparing the plight of the displaced people to that of Irish resistance fighters during the country’s occupation by the UK.

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“..every two sentences, Uzi would interrupt: “No, no, we’ve got to kill them all”. And other people, members of the Institute, were also just talking continually about killing Arabs..”

Israel Does What It Does; It Was Always Planned This Way (Alastair Crooke)

With the assassination of Sayed Hassan Nasrallah and a number of the Hizbullah senior leadership in Beirut – expressly without prior warning being given to the Pentagon – Netanyahu fired the start gun on an implicit Israeli widening of war to – using Israel’s term – the ‘octopus’ tentacles’: Hizbullah in Lebanon; Ansarullah in Yemen; the Syrian government and the Iraqi Hash’ad A-Shaabi forces. Well, after the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh and part of Hizbullah’s leadership cadre (including a senior Iranian general), Iran – demonised as the ‘octopus head’ – entered the conflict with a volley of missiles that targeted airfields, military bases and the Mossad HQ – but intentionally caused no deaths. Israel thus made the U.S. (and most of Europe) partners or accomplices to a war now definitively cast as neo-imperialism versus the whole of the non-West. Palestinians – the global icons of the aspiration for national liberation – were to be annihilated from historic Palestine.

Further, the bombing in Beirut, and Iran’s riposte to it, now ranges Israel backed and materially supported by the U.S. vs Iran, backed and materially supported by Russia. Israel, the military correspondent of Yedioth Ahronoth warns, ‘must go crazy and strike Iran – because striking Iran “will end the current war”’. Plainly, it marks the end to ‘playing nice’ – of incrementally escalating, one calculated step after another – as if playing chess with an opponent who calculates similarly. Both now threaten to take a hammer to the chess board. ‘Chess is over’. It seems that Moscow too, understands that ‘chess’ simply cannot be played when the opponent is no ‘adult’, but a reckless sociopath ready to sweep away the board – to gamble all on an ephemeral ‘great victory’ move. Looked at dispassionately, either the Israelis are inviting their own demise by over-extending across seven fronts. Or their hope lies with invoking the threat of their demise as the means to bring in the United States.

As with Zelensky in Ukraine, there is ‘no hope’ unless the U.S. adds its fire-power decisively – both Netanyahu and Zelensky assume. So, in West Asia the U.S. is now supporting, no less, than a war against humanity per se, and against the world. This clearly cannot be in America’s self-interest. Do its power-broker Panjandrums realise the possible consequences for it to stand against the World in an act of gross immorality? Netanyahu is betting his house – and now the West’s – on the outcome of his roulette table ‘bet’. Is there a sense amongst the Panjandrums that the U.S. is betting on the wrong horse? Whilst it seems there are some contrarians placed at a high level in the U.S. military who do have reservations – as in every ‘war game’ the U.S. loses in the Near East – their voices are few. The wider political class clamours for revenge on Iran.

The dilemma of why there are so few opposing voices in Washington has been addressed and explained by Professor Michael Hudson. Hudson explains that matters are not so simple; that context is missing. “Everything that’s happened today was planned out just 50 years ago, back in 1974 and 1973. “I worked at the Hudson Institute for about five years, 1972 to ‘76. I sat in on meetings with Uzi Arad, who became Netanyahu’s chief military advisor after heading Mossad. I worked very closely with Uzi there … I want to describe how the whole strategy that led to the United States today, not wanting peace, but wanting Israel to take over the whole Near East, took shape gradually. “On one occasion, I brought my mentor, Terrence McCarthy, to the Hudson Institute, to talk about the Islamic worldview, and every two sentences, Uzi would interrupt: “No, no, we’ve got to kill them all”. And other people, members of the Institute, were also just talking continually about killing Arabs”.

The strategy of using Israel as the regional battering ram to achieve U.S. (imperial) objectives was worked out essentially in the 1960s by Senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson. Jackson was nicknamed ‘the Senator from Boeing’ for his support for the military-industrial complex. And the military-industrial complex backed him to become chair of the Democratic National Committee. He was too twice an unsuccessful candidate for the Democratic nomination for the 1972 and 1976 Presidential elections. Well, he was backed by Herman Kahn too, who became the key strategist for U.S. hegemony in the Hudson Institute.

Initially, Israel didn’t really play a role in the U.S. plan; Jackson (of Norwegian descent) simply hated communism, he hated the Russians, and had a lot of support within the Democratic Party. But when all of this strategy was being put together, Herman Khan’s great achievement was to convince the U.S. Empire builders that the key to achieving their control in the Middle East was to rely on Israel as its foreign legion. And that arms-length arrangement enabled the U.S. to play the role, Hudson says, of the ‘good cop’, whilst designating Israel to play its role as ruthless proxy. And that’s why the State Department turned over management of U.S. diplomacy to Zionists – to separate and distinguish Israeli behaviour from the claimed probity of U.S. imperialism.

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That can only be Russia..

Germany Is Committing ‘Economic Suicide’ – Who’s To Blame? (Amar)

Robert Habeck, Germany’s Green minister of the economy, has just had to lower his growth prognosis for 2024 as a whole. So much, in fact, that, instead of the minuscule increase of 0.3% – yes, you read that right: that’s what’s considered good news now in Germany, if it happens, which it does not – the country is looking at a minus of 0.2%. Germany’s economy is not merely stagnant, it is shrinking. When Berlin was still dreaming about that lavish 0.3% growth that is not actually happening, government representatives were speaking of a turning point. Well, there has been a turn alright, another one for the worse. What makes this much worse is that it is not an outlier event or a temporary phenomenon but the new, miserable German normal. Or, as German economists put it, their country is stuck in a “deep structural crisis.” Even the staunchly NATO-philic and Russophobic Economist came to the same conclusions last summer already. Asking (rhetorically) if Germany was “the sick man of Europe,” the journal found that, since 2018, Berlin has been presiding over an economic “laggard.” Before that, Germany was doing quite well.

After the mid-2000s, its economy had grown – cumulatively – by 24%, while Britain added 22% and France only 18%. But, as of last year, the IMF predicted German cumulative growth of only 8% for the period of 2019 to 2029, while it forecast 15% for the Netherlands and 17% for the US. And the way things are going, the IMF may well have been too optimistic. Germany’s deep economic crisis has many causes. They include an aging population; weak digitalization; a surfeit of bureaucracy (but then that has always been the case); corporate taxes that some consider too high (but then someone will always complain about taxes); the country’s failure to overcome the Covid shock more quickly; the massively deteriorating relationship with China, a key market for Germany in general and an indispensable factor in the making of the “good times” before 2018; Germany’s dependency on global supply chains and markets beyond China, which means it is hard hit by the current fracturing of the globalized economy; the insane decision to abandon nuclear energy and, linked to that, the failure of a perfectly messed-up “green transition.”

Yet only the lazy assemble a grab-bag of causal factors and end their analysis with a simple “all of the above.” To do better requires, as a minimum, identifying the most crucial factors. There can be no doubt that two of them are geopolitical: the disruption of the relationship with China and the fact that energy is too expensive, that is more expensive than in many competitor economies. As German experts are acknowledging, this makes producing in Germany “persistently less attractive” than other locations. Put simply, it does not pay any longer to make stuff in Germany. And the reason for that economically lethal state of affairs is well known, even if German politicians and mainstream media won’t admit it: Berlin has cut its economy off from inexpensive Russian gas and oil. And we need to stress the word “inexpensive” because Germans do, of course, still use both. Only they buy them from intermediaries, so they are now expensive.

None of this had to happen. As late as at the beginning of 2022, Berlin could have chosen to promote a reasonable compromise between Russia and the West, which was what was really at stake in the crisis over Ukraine. Back then, especially together with France, Germany could still have charted a course sufficiently independent of the hardliners in the US, with their warmongering camp followers in Eastern Europe and Britain. Berlin could have stopped the insane drive to all-out proxy war in the delusional pursuit of a “strategic defeat” for Russia. If Germany had done so, Ukraine would be much better off, and so would the whole of the EU and Germany as well. All that, however, is water under the bridge. The question now is whether things can be repaired again. There is no reason, unfortunately, for optimism, at least not before fundamental changes in German politics. Under the current government, in any case, it is certain that things will only get worse, because its members display zero interest in even understanding, far less in correcting their mistakes.

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“The UK is suffering the worst decline in living standards of any G7 country..”

UK Police Officers Resigning in Droves as Country Roiled by Protest (Miles)

Two months after massive anti-immigrant protests made global headlines, new data reveals UK police officers are leaving the profession in record numbers. The Police Federation of England and Wales, a labor organization representing British public security officers, sounded the alarm Sunday, airing its concerns in The Daily Telegraph. “Labour’s plans to put more bobbies on the beat are set to fail because record numbers of officers are quitting or planning to leave,” the newspaper reported, questioning whether new UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer would be able to fulfill a key plank of his party’s most recent platform. “Home Office figures show that police officers voluntarily leaving the service has hit a record high of more than 5,000, or 3.4 per cent of the workforce,” the broadsheet continued. “This is more than double the rate four years ago. The federation’s survey of its 145,000 members found that one in five said they were planning to leave the service within the next two years or as soon as possible.”

Starmer’s promise to expand policing comes as rates of crime have risen in the country in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. Recent data revealed shoplifting has increased by 30% over the last year, continuing a trend observed after stringent lockdowns in the country in 2020. High-profile incidents of “antisocial behavior” such as harassment and vandalism have also made headlines. In late July and early August, the UK was rocked by major anti-immigration demonstrations, culminating in one instance in rioters setting fire to a hotel believed to be housing migrants. The incident resulted in massive counter-demonstrations soon after, in which some confrontations between protesters on both sides of the issue were observed. UK officials baselessly accused Moscow of fomenting the demonstrations via the propagation of “fake news” online, a claim rejected by Russian officials.

Tiff Lynch, the Police Federation’s deputy national chair, blamed meager pay increases for officers’ decision to leave the profession. Police officers’ pay recently received an increase of only 4.75%, Lynch noted, while other public workers received an increase of 5 to 6 percent. Police have endured a pay cut of almost 20% in real terms since 2010, she claimed. The UK has enforced harsh austerity measures since then, which observers have claimed led to a significant decline in living standards. One study asserted that British citizens have lost a half year in life expectancy as a result of the decrease in social spending.

“The UK is suffering the worst decline in living standards of any G7 country,” the British Trades Union Congress claimed recently. “Contraction in UK household budgets is going to get worse – despite falling inflation. The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) forecasts that real house disposable income per head in Britain will fall by an additional 3.4% by the end of the first quarter of 2024. The UK seems set for ongoing political turmoil as well, despite electing a new leader only three months ago. Recent polling reveals new Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s approval rating stands at only 26%. The new head of state has made military assistance to Israel and Ukraine a priority, despite opposition from growing segments of the British public.

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“If there is no political agreement… there Ukraine will suffer a military defeat..”

Ukraine’s Battlefield Situation ‘Critical’ – ex-NATO Official (RT)

Ukraine will soon have to abandon the key Donbass city of Pokrovsk as its defenses slowly crumble under Russian attacks, General Harald Kujat, a former chief of staff of the German armed forces and chairman of the NATO Military Committee, believes. In an interview with journalist and podcaster Flavio von Witzleben on Sunday, Kujat, who chaired the NATO Military Committee between 2002 and 2005, suggested that Ukraine’s plan to divert Russian units away from Donbass via its Kursk incursion has failed because Russia has not had to curtail its offensive in the region. “Ukraine originally intended… that the Russians would pull combat troops back [to Kursk Region], but this has now turned out to be to its own detriment because the Russians are now tying up the urgently needed Ukrainian reserves that are now missing in Donbass,” he said, describing the Kursk offensive as an “all-in action.”

As a result, Russia is slowly advancing in Donbass at a pace consistent with the desire to minimize losses, Kujat believes. Russia has made gains near Pokrovsk, Kujat noted, describing the city, located some 50km northwest of Donetsk, as “of crucial importance” due to its logistical significance. “Ukraine is still holding its position but it is only a matter of time before this city falls… The situation of the Ukrainian armed forces is critical and it is becoming more and more critical day by day and this is despite the massive material and financial support from the West,” he said. In light of this, the conflict is on a “downward trend” for Ukraine, Kujat said, adding that this trajectory has clearly accelerated. “If there is no political agreement… there Ukraine will suffer a military defeat,” the general projected.

As fighting rages on the outskirts of Pokrovsk, Ukrainian officials have repeatedly described the situation there as “difficult.” Several Western media outlets have also warned that the loss of Pokrovsk will not only hamper the Ukrainian military’s logistics in Donbass, but will also deal a severe blow to the country’s economy, as the area serves as a key source of coal for its steel and iron industries. The Russian military has been making gains in Donbass in recent weeks, liberating dozens of settlements, including the key stronghold of Ugledar in the southern section of the front. Both Donetsk and Lugansk Regions in Donbass overwhelmingly voted to join Russia in referendums in the autumn of 2022, along with two other former Ukrainian territories.

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