Jimmy Carter Archives - The Automatic Earth

WATCH: Border Czar Tom Homan Unleashes on Biden Administration for Emboldening Islamist Terrorists | @RealTomHoman

"You can't have national security if you don't have border security."

This needed to be said on behalf of all Americans who have been watching what's been… pic.twitter.com/XH5Hul5ahy

— Overton (@overton_news) January 2, 2025

“..the legacy media completely and willfully failed to cover one of the biggest stories of this decade, that the president of the United States was unfit for office from Day 1 and his entire staff was hiding it..”

• Journos Who Hid Biden’s Decline Should Never Live It Down (NYPost)

President-elect Donald Trump is forcing the Democratic politicians who spent years lying about President Biden’s senility to take their bitter medicine, but we’re more concerned about the toady media who played along. Trump on Monday posted a video showing clip after cringe-worthy clip of Democratic leaders from Rep. Nancy Pelosi to Homeland Security chief Alejandro Mayorkas denying again and again that Biden was mentally and physically deteriorating, claiming he was “sharp,” “on his game,” “focused” and that “his age is an asset.” Every last one deserves scorn, but so do the journalists who not only let these fantastical fibs go unchallenged, but even parroted the lies: Biden was showing no signs of mental decline, they insisted — and it was offensive, ignorant and borderline bigoted to even suggest otherwise.

The entire idea that Biden was anything but healthy — virile, even — was treated as a right-wing, tin-foil-hat talking point. The public wasn’t buying it: Back in February, 86% of Americans thought Biden was too old to serve a second term because they had watched his decline happen in real time, and over the course of several years. Way back in 2022, some 75% of Democratic voters wanted someone other than Biden to run in 2024. But the “Biden is fine” charade continued even after special counsel Robert Hur said a jury would see Biden as an “elderly man with a poor memory,” and Biden himself began repeatedly calling world leaders by the names of their dead predecessors. The White House smeared all video proof of Biden’s decline as “cheap fakes” and edited transcripts to erase signs of his constant memory issues.

And at every turn, spineless, in-the-tank journos obediently did Team Biden’s propagandistic dirty work — right up until the debate, when Biden’s senility became too unmistakable to continue denying. Now they’re acting bashful, but it’s far too late to salvage their shredded credibility. Ex-MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan says he was “embarrassingly wrong” to say “Republicans will regret … helping spread the distorted image of [Biden] as a guy who is totally out of it” leading up to the debate. Progressive journalist Matt Yglesias said he “thought Joe Biden was going to prove his doubters wrong.” Is it better or worse if they actually believed it?

Dem-friendly journalists saw the same evidence as the rest of us that Biden was compromised, and instead of being skeptical, asking questions and putting the White House’s feet to the fire — doing their jobs — they joined the crusade to gaslight America. Incoming Trump press secretary Karoline Leavitt says she intends to change up who gets preferred access to White House briefings — allowing in non-traditional voices like podcasters. Since the legacy media completely and willfully failed to cover one of the biggest stories of this decade, that the president of the United States was unfit for office from Day 1 and his entire staff was hiding it, that seems like a fair shake. No one who perpetuated, concealed or ignored this grotesque scandal should ever live it down.

“The evil knuckleheads picked the wrong vehicle for a terrorist attack.”

• Musk Says Cybertruck That Exploded in Las Vegas Contained Blast (Sp.)

Late on Wednesday, a Tesla Cybertruck exploded near the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas. One person died and seven others were injured in the explosion, the Las Vegas Police Department said, adding that an investigation was underway. US billionaire Elon Musk said on Thursday that the Cybertruck that exploded in Las Vegas was able to contain the explosion and limit the damage. Shortly after the incident was reported late Wednesday, Musk announced that a top Tesla team was investigating the explosion. Tesla’s investigation found that the explosion was caused by “very large fireworks and/or a bomb” stored in the rented vehicle, not a malfunction in the car itself.

“The evil knuckleheads picked the wrong vehicle for a terrorist attack. Cybertruck actually contained the explosion and directed the blast upwards. Not even the glass doors of the lobby were broken,” Musk said on X. During the investigation, Las Vegas police discovered gas tanks and large fireworks mortars in the bed of the Tesla Cybertruck that exploded near the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas, Sheriff Kevin McMahil said later in the day, also thanking Musk for all the information he and his team provided.

This could be Trump’s ticket out of Ukraine. DOGE.

• Ukraine Must Be Held Accountable For ‘Stealing’ US Aid (Durso)

The shame of American military assistance in Iraq and Afghanistan is that while our troops and their local allies were fighting bravely, the leaders of our so-called allies were getting rich. We have seen something even worse in Ukraine: While Ukrainian military personnel and civilians fight valiantly in a fierce contest for independence, Ukrainian leaders have gotten fabulously wealthy. The American shame is that the U.S. heedlessly expanded NATO to the borders of Russia, and then, after Russia pushed back, enabled and funded the cynical maladministration by the Zelensky government, which will go down in history as one of the greatest examples of waste and theft of Western aid. What’s more, Ukraine’s casualties have permanently altered the country’s demography and will limit its prospects for economic recovery, leaving the country “wrecked” and the scene of a future “frozen conflict,” per Professor John Mearsheimer.

The sheer scale of waste and fraud will only be revealed by independent investigations after the war’s end. The Zelensky government uses the war to quash media stories that dare to question Ukrainian spending of our taxpayer dollars. Still, many brave Ukrainian journalists and officers have exposed scandals of overpricing, shoddy equipment and embezzlement at the highest levels of Volodymyr Zelensky’s administration. They have risked being labeled as Russian saboteurs or sent to certain death at the front lines for reporting the truth. The real crime of the Zelensky administration, however, began in late 2023. In a November 2023 article for The Economist, General Valerii Zaluzhnyi, then commander in chief of Ukraine’s Armed Forces, said that without a substantial technological edge, Ukraine would face a stalemate. He said traditional attritional strategies were insufficient to overcome the numerical advantage of the Russian forces.

Zaluzhnyi emphasized several key points: • Stalemate on the front lines: The war had reached a deadlock, with both Ukrainian and Russian forces locked into positions reminiscent of World War I trench warfare. He noted, “There will most likely be no deep and beautiful breakthrough.” • Need for technological advancement: To break this stalemate, Ukraine required significant technological innovations. He highlighted the importance of drones, electronic warfare, anti-artillery capabilities, demining equipment and robotics. Zaluzhnyi stated, “In order for us to break this deadlock, we need something new—like gunpowder once was, which the Chinese invented and which we are still using to kill each other.” • Limitations of attritional strategies: Zaluzhnyi acknowledged Ukraine had miscalculated by assuming that inflicting heavy casualties on Russian forces would stop them. He noted that Russia had suffered at least 150,000 dead yet continued its aggression, indicating that such losses did not deter Russian leadership.

In other words, it was time to focus on diplomacy. But Zelensky had no interest in diplomacy, because ending the war would mean ending the state of emergency, new elections and a change in the structure of international assistance. In his own political interest, he ousted Zaluzhnyi and continued a war he was warned would waste lives and money without result. In the end, Zaluzhnyi was too optimistic; lives and money were indeed wasted, but they did not achieve a stalemate. Russia regrouped and gained territory. Zaluzhnyi was not the only one warning about dynamics on the battlefield. In April 2024, the leadership of Ukraine’s military intelligence participated in a series of roundtable discussions at Washington think tanks and policymakers.

A former American diplomat familiar with the visit told this author, “They expressed their reservations about continuing full scale conventional warfare. They were concerned that Ukraine had lost momentum and would be overwhelmed. They advocated instead for increased asymmetric warfare inside Russia to gain an upper hand in negotiations to end the war.” The result of this engagement was that the chief of military of intelligence, Kyril Budanov, was muzzled by Team Zelensky in a series of media attacks in pro-government websites. His key deputies were fired without his consent, weakening his agency. The waste and corruption only spread from there. Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala championed a European munitions initiative that wasted billions more dollars.

Zelensky and his ambassador to the Czech Republic infamously praised Fiala even as the Czech munitions initiative procured overpriced and faulty shells that resulted in the maiming of Ukrainian soldiers and destruction of battlefield equipment. More scandals arose, involving Ukrainian Defense Minister Rustam Umerov and Ministry of Defense procurement official Oleksii Petrov buying faulty equipment for astronomical prices. These have been extensively reported by Ukrainian media. While Zelensky prevented his military commanders from openly speaking the truth about Ukraine’s chances to break through the stalemate, his loyalists at the Defense Ministry misspent record amounts of money in record time. They also tapped into assistance in kind, another lucrative source of enrichment.

And in a case where corruption has merged with treason, weapons sent to Ukraine for its defense were diverted to Nigeria’s Lake Chad region, “bolstering the strength of terrorist groups.” There are also unconfirmed reports that weapons donated to Ukraine have wound up in the hands of criminal gangs in Sweden. Zelensky and his administration should answer to the Ukrainian people for lives and territory lost because he silenced his military commanders. And they should also be held accountable by the U.S. Congress for the lost billions of American taxpayer dollars. (Total aid from the U.S. and its Western allies totals $260 billion.) It’s past time Washington stopped letting corrupt foreign officials steal American aid.

(James Durso is a regular commentator on foreign policy and national security matters at The Hill. Mr. Durso served in the U.S. Navy for 20 years.)

How did we ever get used to this?

• Ukraine Lost Nearly 600,000 Troops in 2024 (Sp.)

Ukrainian forces have lost around 593,410 troops over 2024, according to Sputnik calculations of the Russian Defense Ministry’s data. The ministry’s weekly briefs over the year indicate that Kiev lost around 4,000 soldiers weekly in early 2024. By March, this figure increased to 7,000, before it experienced a slight decrease. Besides, in March, Ukrainian forces attempted to cross the Russian border in the Belgorod and Kursk regions, which resulted in losing around 3,000 troops more, Sputnik calculated on Wednesday.

After that, Kiev’s combat losses started increasing, reaching over 10,000 people per week in late May, after which the number did not go lower than that. Following the Ukrainian attack on Russia’s Kursk Region in August, the losses further escalated, the calculations revealed. The most significant weekly losses for Kiev’s troops occurred from October 26 to November 1, with approximately 17,000 Ukrainian fighters being lost.

“..described the incident as “the first joke of 2025” and speculated that the video editor responsible might face a harsh punishment, such as being sent to the front line.”

• Zelensky Accused of Lying In New Year’s Address (RT)

Vladimir Zelensky has been accused by several media outlets of presenting South Korean missiles as Ukrainian-made in his New Year’s address for 2025. In the 20-minute speech released on Tuesday, Zelensky touted what he described as the country’s success in developing a variety of weapons, calling them “arguments for a just peace” with Russia. ”Ukraine is once again building its own, its own missiles. And for the first time, it produces over a million drones in a year. Forcing the enemy to learn Ukrainian. Palianytsia, Peklo, Ruta. Making them tremble at the words Neptune and Sapsan. All these are our missiles. Ukrainian.” he said.

As he was naming the types of weapons, his address featured footage of drones and missiles in action, either during testing or combat scenarios. When he mentioned the Sapsan missile, the video showed the projectile launch. However, the Ukrainian outlet Strana, as well as Russian media outlets, pointed out that the clip shown in Zelensky’s address was suspiciously similar to footage of the South Korean military launching a Hyunmoo-2A cruise missile in 2017. In light of this, the Russian Telegram channel ‘Operation Z: War reporters of Russian Spring’ accused Zelensky of “blatant lies.” Another Telegram channel, ‘Voyenny Osvedomitel’, described the incident as “the first joke of 2025” and speculated that the video editor responsible might face a harsh punishment, such as being sent to the front line.

Sapsan has been under development since 2006, but the process has been hampered by delays and funding shortfalls. In 2018, Ukraine unveiled a mock-up of the system during a military parade. The complex is said to have an intended range of 500km, which is more than the ATACMS supplied to Kiev by the US, and Ukrainian experts have touted it as a potential game-changer in the conflict with Russia. However, there are no credible reports that it has ever been used on the battlefield.

“Sikorski should be “locked up in a mental institution” for “celebrating cutting Europe off gas in the middle of winter..”

• Polish FM Slammed For Celebrating Gas Cutoff (RT)

Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski has celebrated Ukraine’s decision to halt the flow of Russian gas to the EU as a victory for the West, despite the cutoff leading to higher prices and shortages in some countries. Russia stopped gas transit through Ukraine early on Wednesday morning, after Kiev refused to extend an agreement under which it collected transit fees to move the gas through its own pipeline network and into Moldova, Romania, Poland, Hungary, and Slovakia, and then on to Austria and Italy. Sikorski took to X to celebrate. “[Russian President Vladimir] Putin spent billions building Nordstream to circumvent Ukraine and blackmail Eastern Europe with the threat of cutting off gas supplies,” he wrote, referring to two pipelines that linked Russia with Germany until they were destroyed in an act of sabotage in 2022.

“Today Ukraine cut off his ability to export gas direct to the EU,” Sikorski continued, hailing the decision as “another victory after the enlargement of NATO by Finland and Sweden.” Kiev’s decision caused EU gas prices to spike to €50 per megawatt hour, a figure unseen since October 2023. Slovakia, which relied heavily on Russian gas imports via Ukraine, will be severely affected, as will EU candidate state Moldova, which used Russian gas to generate much of its electricity. Sikorski should be “locked up in a mental institution” for “celebrating cutting Europe off gas in the middle of winter,” wrote journalist Thomas Fazi responded to Sikorski’s post. “Russia was clearly trying to blackmail Europe by supplying even more gas to them. Thankfully, Ukraine heroically ‘saved’ Europe by cutting off the gas,” another commenter wrote. “The absurdity of this logic is mind-blowing.”

“People like Sikorski who want to destroy European economies by cutting them off from global resources and markets should not be allowed to live in Europe,” another comment read. “Go to the USA where your loyalties lie.” Sikorski was similarly ridiculed back in 2022, when he responded to the destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines by posting – and then deleting – an image of the blast site along with the caption: “Thank you, USA.” While German investigators have reportedly settled on the theory that the pipelines were destroyed by Ukrainian saboteurs, American journalist Seymour Hersh maintains that they were blown up by the CIA and US Navy. The head of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), Sergey Naryshkin, has blamed “professional saboteurs from the Anglo-American security services,” referring to the US and UK.

10 years ago Germany was fine. It went fast. Merkel deserves much of the blame. But she left before the walls started coming down.

• German Energy Official Asks Citizens To Save Gas (RT)

Households and businesses in Germany should save gas to avoid shortages, Die Welt reported on Wednesday, citing the country’s energy regulator, the Federal Network Agency. According to an analysis by the agency, the country has been consuming significantly more gas this heating season than last year. The agency said total gas consumption in Germany rose by 5.8% from October to December 2024 against the same period the previous year, to 246 terawatt-hours (TWh). Industries recorded an increase in consumption of 9.1% compared to 2023, while the increase in households and businesses was more modest at 1.9%, the report noted.

The agency attributed the spike in gas consumption to colder weather. However, the head of the energy regulator, Klaus Muller, told the news outlet that, given the trend, consumers would be wise to be more frugal with gas use to avoid shortages, and consequently, a rise in prices. “It is definitely still worth saving gas and thus easing the burden on your wallet,” he was cited as saying. According to Muller, however, the country’s gas supply is not in jeopardy yet, as storage facilities are still 80% full. “This means we are well prepared for the next three months,” he said, adding that Germany has “come through the first half of the winter well so far.”

When it comes to heating, natural gas is still the most important energy source in Germany, with roughly half of all apartments and single-family homes nationwide heated with gas, Die Welt reports. Germany relied on Russia for more than half of its gas demand before the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in 2022. Deliveries were either significantly curtailed or entirely halted after the EU imposed sanctions on Moscow, and the Nord Stream pipelines delivering Russian gas directly to Germany were destroyed by blasts at the bottom of the Baltic Sea in September 2022. Long considered the EU’s industrial powerhouse, Germany was among the hardest hit by the reduction of Russian energy supplies, with its economy plunging into a recession in 2023.

The German government in October revised down its GDP forecast for this year to a further contraction of 0.2%. The loss of cheap Russian gas and reliance on the far more costly liquefied natural gas (LNG) from the US has also pushed energy prices in Germany beyond what a lot of industrial enterprises can afford, triggering a wave of shutdowns and bankruptcies. Former German Chancellor Angela Merkel recently criticized her successors for abandoning Russian gas. In an interview with France 2 TV released in early December, she said buying gas from Russia “was a win-win situation” for both states, as Berlin was able to obtain the much-needed commodity “at a favorable cost,” while “prices exploded” after Germany abandoned Russian supplies.

How to divert attention away from your failures.

• Scholz Ally Warns US Of Strained Relations Over Musk’s Germany Jabs (RT)

Elon Musk’s verbal attacks on German leaders risk straining relations between Berlin and Washington, Rolf Mutzenich, the head of Germany’s Social Democratic Party (SPD) parliamentary group, has warned. In an interview with Spiegel on Wednesday, Mutzenich blasted the US billionaire over his jabs at German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier and Chancellor Olaf Scholz. Musk had referred to Steinmeier as an “anti-democratic tyrant” and predicted Scholz’s – who he labeled a “fool” and “Oaf Schitz” – election defeat – while also voicing support for Germany’s far-right and anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, calling it “the last spark of hope for this country.”

Mutzenich accused Musk, one of the most prominent allies of US President-elect Donald Trump, of “crossing a line between friendly states” while defending Steinmeier. He argued that Steinmeier is Germany’s head of state under international law, meaning that “the verbal attacks on the Federal President are therefore aimed at all citizens.” Mutzenich went on to urge Berlin to clarify whether Musk’s repeated “disrespect, defamation, and interference” align with the stance of the incoming Trump administration. German officials earlier suggested that Musk’s comments could be a potential attempt to influence Germany’s snap parliamentary elections in February. Scholz’s coalition government recently collapsed due to disagreements over Ukraine aid, economic reforms, and climate policy, leading to a vote of no confidence and parliamentary dissolution in December.

During Trump’s first term, US-German relations were strained over several key issues. Trump criticized Germany’s significant trade surplus with the US while threatening tariffs on German cars. He repeatedly accused Berlin of failing to meet NATO’s 2% GDP defense spending target, calling Germany overly reliant on US military support. Trump also opposed Germany’s Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline project, which was sabotaged in 2022 after the start of the Ukraine conflict, arguing that it would increase the EU’s energy dependence on Moscow.

Johnson’s far from perfect, but “He’s The One That Can Win Right Now”. Trump needs the House.

• Trump Says Mike Johnson Will Secure Enough Votes To Remain Speaker (ZH)

While House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) has a growing coalition of opponents within his own party who are ‘keeping their options open’ when it comes to Friday’s vote to decide his fate, President-elect Donald Trump says he thinks Johnson has enough votes to secure a second term. Speaking with reporters outside Mar-a-Lago on New Year’s Eve, Trump described Johnson as a “good man” and “a wonderful person” who will ultimately gain enough support during this week’s vote. “We are going to have a great time in Washington, I think we are going to get great support,” Trump said, adding that he would call lawmakers personally to drum up support “if necessary.” “He’s the one that can win right now, people like him, almost everybody likes him,” Trump continued.

President-elect Trump on House Speaker Mike Johnson: "He's the one that can win right now. People like him. Almost everybody likes him." pic.twitter.com/j9hCy9T7DU

— CSPAN (@cspan) January 1, 2025

The day before, Trump posted to Truth Social that Johnson was a “good, hard-working, religious man,” who will “do the right thing.” “Mike has my Complete & Total Endorsement. MAGA!!!” Johnson thanked Trump on X, saying that he was “honored and humbled” by the support. “Together, we will quickly deliver on your America First agenda and usher in the new golden age of America,” he wrote, adding “The American people demand and deserve that we waste no time. Let’s get to work!” That said, several House GOP members have suggested they’re no so hot for Johnson – with Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) saying he plans to vote for an alternative, and that Johnson “gave the Democrats the billions of dollars they wanted for Ukraine.”

Meanwhile in a Fox News interview last week, Freedom Caucus Chair Andy Harris (R-MD) said that Republicans “need to consider, if we’re going to advance Trump’s agenda, whether the current leadership is what we need,” while Rep. Scott Perry said last Thursday that he’s “going to keep my options open,” adding “I want to have a conversation with Mike.” Other Republicans who are a “no” for Johnson include Andy Biggs (AZ), Victoria Spartz (IN) and Chip Roy (TX). And while Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) hasn’t publicly commented on how she will vote, she’s previously clashed with Johnson – having unsuccessfully attempted to unseat him in May over his support for a $1.2 trillion minibus spending bill, as well as his passage of a $95 billion foreign aid package which failed to include border provisions.

“We’re going to do fantastic as a country..”

• Trump Rings In 2025 With Vow To Restore Respect For America (JTN)

President-elect Donald Trump rang in the New Year with close friends and family at his Mar-a-Lago resort, promising his return to the White House in 2025 will raise America’s standing across the globe. “We’re going to do fantastic as a country,” a tuxedo-clad Trump told reporters Tuesday night during a brief gaggle. “People aren’t respecting us as much, and they will be.” Trump also addressed matters across a turbulent world, saying he’d wait to see if Hamas would reach a ceasefire with Israel and reiterating his demand that the terrorist group release all remaining hostages.

“I’ll put it this way: They better let the hostages come back soon,” he said. The President-elect also revealed he plans to attend the late Jimmy Carter‘s state funeral in Washington on January 9. Trump hosted a New Year’s Eve bash at his resort in Palm Beach, Florida, that included luminaries like Elon Musk and family members like his wife Melania and daughter Tiffany.

25 years ago Russia was nowhere land.

• Putin’s New Year’s Speech Marks Exactly 25 Years In Power (ZH)

President Vladimir Putin has issued a traditional New Year’s Eve speech on Tuesday, which marks exactly 25 years of the Russian leader in power. There was a brief few year period when he was Prime Minister under President Dmitry Medvedev based on constitutional term limits. He said that Russians should be “proud” of what Russia had done during his quarter century ruling the country. He issued the expected well wishes for the year ahead, but interestingly did not expressly mention the ongoing Ukraine war, which has resulted in far-reaching US and European sanctions on Moscow. “Dear friends, in just a few minutes 2025 will be ushered in, completing the first quarter of the 21st century,” Putin began in the televised remarks.

“Yes, we still have a lot to decide but we can be rightfully proud of what has already been done,” he added, saying his 25 years as president led to the “further development” of the country and its economy and defense. He heaped praise on Russian soldiers defending the nation, at a time that Ukrainian forces still occupy hundreds of square kilometers of the southern border region of Kursk. “On this New Year’s Eve, the thoughts, hopes of relatives and friends, millions of people across Russia are together with our fighters and commanders,” Putin said. “Now, on the threshold of a new year, we are thinking about the future. We are sure that everything will be all right. We will only go forward.” Putin first took power after having been named acting president on New Year’s Eve in 1999 when predecessor Boris Yeltsin unexpectedly resigned amid post-Soviet economic collapse and turmoil.

Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev started the tradition of a New Year’s Eve speech, and is watched by millions of Russian households. It typically involves a summary of major events of the past year, and general well wishes for the year to come. “Now, on the threshold of a new year, we are thinking about the future. We are sure that everything will be all right. We will only go forward,” Putin said. AFP noted that the address “aired on state TV just before midnight in each of Russia’s 11 time zones” – and it was also likely closely watched by analysts at Western intelligence agencies and the Pentagon.

The Trump administration enters the White House in less than three weeks, and all eyes will be on the question of how quickly Trump will push Kiev toward the negotiating table. The Kremlin has been cautiously optimistic, but feels in control of the war in the Donbas. President Zelensky has meanwhile balked at the possibility of ceding territory, though the Crimea question has remained open from the Ukrainians’ perspective. Russia is going to settle on nothing less than total and permanent control over the four territories in the east, and a permanent ban on Ukraine ever joining NATO. Trump is reportedly mulling a minimum 20-year waiting period for Ukraine, however. Moscow says even this long delay is not acceptable.

The US still officially supports the One China policy.

• Xi Uses New Year’s Speech To Call Anew For Reunification With Taiwan (JTN)

Chinese President Xi Jinping used a New Year’s Eve address to call anew for Taiwan to be reunited with his communist country, setting the stage for a tougher era of U.S. diplomatic relations as Donald Trump prepares to return to office. “The people on both sides of the Taiwan Strait are one family,” Xi said Tuesday, hitting the theme for a second straight holiday address broadcast on the state-controlled CCTV. “No one can sever our family bonds, and no one can stop the historical trend of national reunification.” Beijing has ramped up military activity around Taiwan, including large-scale exercises shortly before Christmas. Those menacing operations included Chinese aircraft entering the island nation’s air defense identification zone shortly beore Xi spoke on Tuesday.

In October, Xi told the 20th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party that he preferred a peaceful reunification with Taiwan but added that China “will never promise to give up the use of force and reserve the option to take all necessary measures.” Taiwan’s new president responded Wednesday to Xi’ address, saying his island wishes to have peaceful relations with China but questioning why Beijing has blocked tourism between the two. “Is this really showing goodwill towards Taiwan? Can’t they treat everyone equally?” President President Lai Ching-te told reporters. “But I still want to stress this: Taiwan hopes to have healthy and orderly exchanges with China under the principles of reciprocity and dignity,” Lai added.

As Trump prepares to return to office, Taiwan dispatched two senior members of it National Security Council to meet with his team in the United States. The president-elect has urged Taiwan to spend more on its defense security in the face of Chinese provocation.

Negotiating. It’s still just round 1.

• Russian Rejection Of Trump Proposals Puts Wrinkle In Pursuit For Peace (JTN)

President-elect Donald Trump repeatedly promised while on the campaign trail that he would end the Russia-Ukraine War “within 24 hours”, but Moscow’s recent rejection of terms from the Trump team has suggested that winding down the conflict may be more complicated. Russia invaded Ukraine in February of 2022 after diplomatic talks broke down. It subsequently annexed four provinces in the country’s southern region after holding referendums the international community condemned as fraudulent. At present, it does not fully control any of those four provinces, but Moscow has made modest progress in the Donetsk Oblast this year since the fall of the fortress city of Avdiivka. In a recent interview with Russian state-aligned media outlet TASS, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov addressed leaks of the Trump team’s reported plans and public statements the president-elect has made on the conflict.

Trump’s team has yet to formally release any peace plans and Lavrov confirmed that Moscow had not received “official signals” about an agreement. He did, however, specifically reject delaying Ukraine’s NATO accession by 20 years and deploying European peacekeepers to patrol the ceasefire line. “Judging from numerous leaks and Donald Trump’s interview with Time Magazine on December 12, their idea is to suspend hostilities along the line of contact and transfer responsibility for confrontation with Russia to the Europeans,” he said. “We are not happy, of course, with the proposals made by members of the Trump team to postpone Ukraine’s admission to NATO for 20 years and to station British and European peacekeeping forces in Ukraine.”

Both Trump and Vice President-elect JD Vance have called for shifting the responsibility for Ukraine’s security toward NATO’s European members in light of their geographic proximity. Some nations, such as France, have openly floated the idea of deploying their own troops to help Ukraine stabilize the front. That has not occurred, at least officially. Lavrov, however, noted that “NATO military and mercenaries openly participate in the planning of combat operations and fighting on the side of the Armed Forces of Ukraine”. He categorically denied claims that North Korean troops were fighting on the Russian side.

Russia’s own rejection of Trump’s reported proposals, however, presents only one of the obstacles to a Trump-led peace plan, with Ukraine and Europe presenting two more. After Trump appointed retired Lieutenant-General Keith Kellogg to serve as his special envoy to Ukraine, Lavrov expressed an interest in working with Washington, saying “If the signals that are coming from the new team in Washington to restore the dialogue… are serious, of course, we will respond to them.” Kellogg himself has suggested that “both sides are ready” for negotiations, highlighting the reported death tolls on both sides as motivating a desire for peace. Willingness to negotiate, however, does not indicate a willingness to concede on key points and the distinction could prove the difference between successful dialogue and further escalations.

[..] “We will continue to support Ukraine on its irreversible path to full Euro-Atlantic integration, including NATO membership. We will continue to support Ukraine on its path towards accession to the European Union,” wrote the foreign ministers of France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain, and the United Kingdom in mid-December. “We reiterate our firm support for a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in Ukraine in accordance with international law, including the UN Charter with full respect for Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity,” they continued. Though Germany is slated to face an election in February and the recent ouster of the French prime minister has left the character of Paris somewhat unclear, most of the signatory nations are not expected to face a meaningful realignment in their foreign policy for the foreseeable future.

[..] Lieven highlighted that many points of contention between Russia and Ukraine’s western backers were not matters over which Ukraine would have much say. Among those were proposals for Europe and America to provide security guarantees to an unofficially unaligned Ukraine and promise to intervene as though they were a NATO member should Russia attack again. “However, everything that I have heard from Russians tells me that this is just as unacceptable to Moscow as NATO membership itself and would therefore make agreement impossible,” he added. “Moreover, European countries would agree to send their troops only if they had an ironclad guarantee from Washington that the United States would intervene if they were attacked. This, in effect, punts the decision back to Washington: not Kyiv, and not Brussels, Warsaw or Paris.”

“Politics is a dirty and dangerous business, and it is not the environment in which good people thrive.”

• President Jimmy Carter (Paul Craig Roberts)

President Jimmy Carter departed this world with 2024. He was a good man outfoxed by Washington. A populist, he was not the establishment’s choice for president which set about weakening him by framing his Director of the Office of Management and Budget and then turning on his chief of staff. President Carter intended to continue President Nixon’s policy of defusing tensions with the Soviet Union. He and Soviet leader Brezhnev agreed to limit the buildup of nuclear weapons by signing a second Strategic Arms Limitation agreement, but the US Senate under the influence of the military/security complex refused to ratify the treaty. Carter came under the influence of Zbigniew Brzezinski who had the idea of involving the Soviet Union in a Vietnam of its own in Afghanistan. Thus began Washington’s affair with Muslims which developed into the proxy forces Washington used against Libya and Syria.

Carter’s good intentions often had undesirable consequences. His effort to reduce conflict between Israel and Middle Eastern governments produced with the Camp David Accords Egypt’s official recognition of Israel. This resulted in Israel’s legitimization and strengthened Israel at the expense of the Muslim Middle East. Later in life Carter tried again to restrain Israel with his book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid. Jews turned on Carter, called him an anti-semite, and resigned from the Carter Center. Jimmy Carter, like other genuine peacemakers, was too good of a person to understand the Zionist agenda of Greater Israel. The “Two-State” solution was used for years to cover up Israel’s gradual absorption of Palestine into Israel. Today Palestine is no more and Israel is expanding into Syria and soon Lebanon. Another of Carter’s good intentions that went wrong was the creation of the Department of Education. This completed federal control over education.

President Carter was hurt politically by the failure of his attempted military rescue of US embassy personnel in Iran who were being held hostages by the new revolutionary Islamist government. This dramatic failure of American arms was a boost to Ronald Reagan’s election. I have always wondered if the military accident in the Iranian desert that destroyed the operation was contrived. The military/security complex does not favor men of peace. Carter also hurt himself by turning the Panama Canal over to Panama. Americans saw this as giving away America’s accomplishment as a pointless good will gesture. Today Trump is talking about taking it back. Jimmy Carter’s presidency raises the question of how good a person can be and still be a successful president. Politics is a dirty and dangerous business, and it is not the environment in which good people thrive.

“He worked hard to make America a better place, and for that I give him my highest respect.”

• Trump Says He Is Planning To Attend Jimmy Carter’s Funeral (AP)

President-elect Donald Trump said Tuesday that he’s planning to attend the funeral of former President Jimmy Carter. Asked about it as he walked into a New Year’s Eve party at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida, Trump responded, “I’ll be there.” Pressed on whether he’d spoken to members of Carter’s family, Trump said he’d rather not say. Funeral services honoring Carter, who died Sunday at 100, will be held in Georgia and Washington, beginning Jan. 4 and concluding Jan. 9. Trump was a frequent and fierce critic of Carter on the campaign trail ahead of November’s election, using the rising inflation rates of the 1970s to unfavorably compare President Joe Biden to Carter and his administration. But the president-elect was gracious about the former president in posts on his social media site after Carter’s death Sunday, writing that the nation “owed him a debt of gratitude.”

“While I strongly disagreed with him philosophically and politically, I also realized that he truly loved and respected our Country, and all it stands for,” Trump wrote of Carter. “He worked hard to make America a better place, and for that I give him my highest respect.” Wearing a tuxedo as he entered the festivities, Trump took a few minutes of questions from reporters on various topics. He was asked about the possibility of a ceasefire in Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza, but said only, “We’re going to see what happens.” The president-elect added of hostages seized more than a year ago by Hamas, “I’ll put it this way: They better let the hostages come back soon.”

Trump also said he thought 2025 would be a “great year” and “we’re going to do fantastically well as a country.” “There’s a whole light over the whole world, not just our country. They’re a lot of happy people,” Trump said of recent weeks. Asked about his resolutions for the new year, Trump said, “I just want everybody to be happy, healthy and well.” Trump later took the stage to briefly address the crowd ringing in the new year at Mar-a-Lago and promised “to do a great job as your president.” Biden, for his part, spent New Year’s Eve celebrating the wedding of his niece Missy Owens in Greenville, Delaware, followed by the reception in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania. Biden and first lady Jill Biden cut short their traditional holiday trip to the U.S. Virgin Islands to attend the ceremony.

“..Assad’s denial mindset and the consequent speed of the military dénouement was the surprise. That was the true ‘black swan’.”

• Imperial Hubris -And Its Consequences- In Syria (Alastair Cooke)

The Syria story, it seems, is not so simple as ‘President Assad fell’ and the ‘technocratic Salafists’ rose to power. At one level, the collapse was predictable. Assad was known to have been influenced by Egypt and UAE for some years past. They had been urging him to break with Iran and Russia, and to shift to the West. For some 3-4 years he had been incrementally signalling and implementing such a move. Iran especially faced increasing obstacles over operational matters in which they were co-operating with Syrian forces. His shift was meant as a message to Iran. The financial situation of Syria – after years of U.S. Caesar sanctions, plus the loss of all agricultural and energy revenues seized by the U.S. in occupied north-east Syria – was catastrophic. Syria simply had no economy.

No doubt, reaching out to Israel and Washington was presented to Assad as the only practical exit to his dilemma. ‘Normalisation’ could lead to the lifting of sanctions, they implored him. And Assad, according tothose in touch with him, (even at the eleventh hour before the HTS ‘invasion’) was believing that Arab States close to Washington would have opted for his continued leadership, rather than see Syria fall prey to Salafist zealots. To be clear: Moscow and Tehran had warned Assad that his army (as a whole) was too fragile, too underpaid, and too penetrated and bribed by foreign intelligence services, to be expected to defend the state effectively. Assad also was warned repeatedly about the threat from Idlib jihadists planning to take Aleppo, but the President not only ignored the warnings – he rebutted them.

He was offered a very large external military force not once, but twice, even in ‘the last days’, as Jolani’s militia were advancing. Assad refused. “We are strong”, he told an interlocutor on the first occasion; yet shortly afterwards, on a second occasion, he admitted: “My army is running away”. Assad was not abandoned by his allies. It was by then too late. He had flip-flopped once too often. Two of the principal actors (Russia and Iran) were frustrated and rendered unable to help – absent Assad’s consent. A Syrian who knew the Assad family, and who spoke with the President at some length just prior the Aleppo invasion, had found him surprisingly sanguine and unflustered – assuring his friend that there were forces enough (2,500) in Aleppo to deal with Jolani’s threats, and hinting that President Sissi might be ready to step in with aid for Syria. (Egypt of course feared Muslim Brotherhood Islamists taking power in a former secular Ba’athist state).

Ibrahim Al-Amine, editor of Al-Akhbar, noted a similar perception by Assad: “Assad seemed to have become more confident that Abu Dhabi was capable of resolving his problem with the Americans and some Europeans, and he heard a lot about economic temptations if he agreed to the strategy of exiting the alliance with the resistance forces. One of Assad’s workers, who stayed with him until the last hours before he left Damascus, says that the man was still hoping for something big to happen to stop the armed factions’ attack. He believed that “the Arab and international community” would prefer that he remain in power, rather than Islamists take over the administration of Syria”.

Yet, even as the Jolani forces were on the M5 highway linking to Damascus, the wider Assad family and key officials were making no efforts to prepare for a departure, or to warn close friends to think about such contingencies, the interlocutor said. Even as Assad was heading to Hmeimin en route to Moscow, no advice to ‘get out’ was sent to friends. The latter said that they did not know after Assad’s silent departure to Moscow who exactly, or when, ordered the Syria army to stand down and to prepare for transition. Assad briefly visited Moscow on 28 November – a day after the HTS attacks in Aleppo province and their swift advance south (and a day after the ceasefire in Lebanon). The Russian authorities have said nothing about the content of the President’s meetings in Moscow, and the Assad family said that the President had returned tight-lipped from Russia, too.

Subsequently, Assad departed finally to Moscow (either on 7 December, after despatching a private plane on multiple flights to Dubai, or on 8 December) – again telling virtually nobody in his immediate and family circle that he was departing for good. What caused this out-of-character mindset? No one knows; but family members have speculated that Bashar Al-Assad had been seriously disorientated emotionally by the grave illness of his wife, Asma, to whom he is devoted. Put frankly, whilst the three main players could see clearly the direction events were heading (the fragility of the state was no surprise), nevertheless, Assad’s denial mindset and the consequent speed of the military dénouement was the surprise. That was the true ‘black swan’.

Mass

“The Mass injection of over half the Worlds population with that drug, is the worst thing to ever happen in the history of our species”

Yep – it’s the greatest crime against humanity ever committed – listen. pic.twitter.com/mHdIiMHEWc

— Concerned Citizen (@BGatesIsaPyscho) January 1, 2025

Majestic

I’m not gonna lie this horse just might be the most majestic creature I’ve ever seen pic.twitter.com/PzHSsK0AjM

— Nature is Amazing ☘️ (@AMAZlNGNATURE) January 1, 2025

Cat tricks
https://twitter.com/i/status/1874251694680289513

Dragonfly
https://twitter.com/i/status/1874465854886474021

Cat cage
https://twitter.com/i/status/1874519939748712721

Armadillo

Man picks up a Screaming Hairy Armadillo named Rambo and knows super cool fact about it. pic.twitter.com/5iSHFml15f

— Nature is Amazing ☘️ (@AMAZlNGNATURE) January 1, 2025

Shadows

Every step matters! Thank you for walking with us into 2025, on our mission to save wild lives and secure habitats. Together, we can create a brighter future for wildlife.https://t.co/tjJMQ7z3GJ pic.twitter.com/FMdf5Qr79Y

— Sheldrick Wildlife Trust (@SheldrickTrust) December 31, 2024

Rainstorm

Shenyang, China, recently recorded one of the biggest rainstorms in 73 years.

These are the fish in the river reacting to the event.pic.twitter.com/l1ovrVhHag

— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) January 2, 2025

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

Debt Rattle December 31 2024

Dec 312024

December 31, 2024 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 11:28 am Finance Tagged with: Boeing, Elon Musk, Fico, Jimmy Carter, Liz Cheney, Mike Johnson, POW swap, Starlink, Trump, Zelensky 45 Responses »

Leonardo da Vinci Saint John the Baptist 1513-16

• The Passing and Lessons of Jimmy Carter (Turley)

• Trump Endorses Mike Johnson For House Speaker (RT)

• Deep State Freezes Over: John Brennan Praises Trump Transition Team (ZH)

• Liz Cheney’s Pending Immunity Whiplash (Julie Kelly)

• Trump Beat Harris, Could Bolster Russia-US Ties and May Hasten NATO’s End (Sp.)

• Lavrov: Russia’s ‘Not Satisfied’ With Trump’s Ukraine Proposals (Antiwar)

• Musk To Provide Cellphone Coverage To Ukraine From Space (RT)

• Can Elon Musk Actually ‘Influence’ The German Election? (RMX)

• No, The Truth Is Not Just Another Story (Kunstler)

• Zelensky Is ‘All-time Champion’ of US-Aid Heist – Musk (RT)

• Russia and Ukraine Conduct Massive POW Swap (RT)

• Kiev Announces US Gift of $15bn From Seized Russian Funds (RT)

• Fico Dismisses ‘Nonsense’ Accusations From Zelensky (RT)

• Slovak PM Fico Slams ‘Irrational’ EU (RT)

• South Korea To Inspect Boeing Fleet After Plane Crash Disaster (RT)

• The Disappearance of the Male Role (Paul Craig Roberts)

Jennings

NOW – Scott Jennings on the Battle for House Speaker: 'Johnson's Done a Good Job, The President Trusts Him' | @ScottJenningsKY

Scott Jennings makes an important point: the longer Republicans fight over the speakership, the longer voters will have to wait for the MAGA agenda to… pic.twitter.com/RZJtB2q6hH

— Overton (@overton_news) December 30, 2024

Isolate
https://twitter.com/i/status/1873878819737837844

You can be a great person even if you’re not a great president.

• The Passing and Lessons of Jimmy Carter (Turley)

This morning, the nation is mourning the loss of one of the most genuinely decent men ever to sit in the Oval Office. Even for his critics, Jimmy Carter was a model of empathy and integrity as an American president. After his presidency, he proved an even greater role model, working tirelessly to help those without homes or hope. He gave us 100 years of a life committed to helping others and a lasting lesson on what it means to be truly a public servant. Both President Joe Biden and Donald Trump offered moving tributes to Carter. President Biden noted that Carter showed “what it means to live a life of meaning and purpose, a life of principle, faith and humility.” He added “Some look at Jimmy Carter and see a man of a bygone era with honesty and character. Faith and humility mattered, but I don’t believe it’s a bygone era,” Biden said. “We’d all do well to try to be more like Jimmy Carter.”

President Trump declared “The challenges Jimmy faced as president came at a pivotal time for our country and he did everything in his power to improve the lives of all Americans. For that, we all owe him a debt of gratitude.” Many were surprised when Biden took a jab at Trump after his comments. The media immediately saw the testimonial comments as an opportunity to get a dig on Trump and Biden seemed eager to oblige them. When a reporter asked Biden after his formal remarks what President-elect Trump should take from Carter’s legacy, Biden replied: “Decency, decency, decency. … Can you imagine Jimmy Carter walking by someone who needed something and just keep walking? Can you imagine Jimmy Carter referring to someone by the way they look or the way they talk?” It was a jarring disconnect from the moment of unity by both presidents.

It was also a curious choice of presidents for Biden to make the comparison. There is another thing that Carter would not do: pardon a family member in an influence-peddling scandal. Throughout his presidency, Carter was faced with allegations that Billy Carter took $200,000 from a Libyan dictator as a “loan” and only paid back $1000. There were also allegations of even more money derived from open influence peddling from foreign sources. Sound familiar? Indeed, Biden defenders immediately tried to use Carter to deflect criticism from the President by falsely claiming that he pardoned Billy. Grant Stern, an editor for the advocacy group Occupy Democrats, wrote: “Jimmy Carter pardoned his brother Billy Carter who took over $200,000 from Libya as its foreign agent. George H.W. Bush pardoned his son Neil Bush for his role in the S&L scandals of the 1980s. Nobody thinks those pardons defined either presidency. Joe Biden’s pardon of Hunter Biden won’t either.”

Neither of those pardons “defined either presidency” because neither pardons existed. (ABC The View co-host Ana Navarro even claimed various family pardons as including another president to defend the Hunter Biden pardon: “Woodrow Wilson pardoned his brother-in-law, Hunter deButts…But tell me again how Joe Biden ‘is setting precedent’?” Many immediately told her instead how Wilson did not have a brother-in-law named “Hunter deButts,” let alone pardon him). In reality, despite lingering questions and investigations, Carter refused to pardon his brother. Instead, he told the American people the truth:

“I am deeply concerned that Billy has received funds from Libya and that he may be under obligation to Libya. These facts will govern my relationship with Billy as long as I am president. Billy has had no influence on U.S. policy or actions concerning Libya in the past, and he will have no influence in the future.” Unlike Carter, President Biden lied repeatedly to the voters in denying that (1) Hunter had any dealings with the Chinese, (2) he ever met his son’s clients, (3) he knew of any of these dealings, and (4) he would ever pardon his son. He then pardoned Hunter for any and all crimes committed over the last decade, including potential crimes that many believe implicate the President himself in a multimillion dollar influence-peddling scheme.

The thinking is: Better Johnson than another battle like the one that made him speaker.

• Trump Endorses Mike Johnson For House Speaker (RT)

President-elect Donald Trump has endorsed House Speaker Mike Johnson for another term amid disagreements among Republicans over recent spending legislation. Trump expressed support for the candidacy on Monday on his Truth Social network, stating, “Speaker Mike Johnson is a good, hard working, religious man… Mike has my Complete & Total Endorsement.” Johnson responded by thanking Trump, saying “The American people demand and deserve that we waste no time. Let’s get to work!” The endorsement follows a contentious government funding debate that nearly led to a pre-Christmas shutdown. Johnson, who became Speaker last October, faced criticism from some Republicans for his handling of the bipartisan spending bill.

It failed to pass without significant Democratic support and did not include Trump’s provision to raise the debt limit. It also faced criticism from GOP members for not including significant spending cuts. Some more conservative lawmakers who were opposed to raising the government’s borrowing limit broke from Trump’s directive to back the plan. Meanwhile, Democrats argued that the new bill would fund significant tax cuts for the wealthy, disproportionately burdening working people. The House is scheduled to vote on the Speaker position on January 3. Johnson’s re-election requires near-unanimous support from the Republican majority. Congress cannot conduct any business, including certifying Trump’s electoral victory, until one is chosen. Some GOP members, including Representative Thomas Massie, have expressed reservations about Johnson’s leadership, particularly concerning fiscal policies.

“I’m not persuaded by the ‘hurry up and elect him so we can certify the election on J6’ argument,” Massie said last week in a post to X (formerly Twitter). “A weak legislative branch, beholden to the swamp, will not be able to achieve the mandate voters gave Trump and Congress in November,” he added. The Democrats lost control of the Senate during November elections, with the GOP winning 53 of the 100 seats. Maintaining control of both houses of the legislature will be crucial for crafting legislation aimed at delivering Trump’s agenda on much-debated issues, such as immigration and the economy. Since February 2022, the US Congress has approved more than $174 billion to prop up Ukraine in its ongoing military conflict with Russia. Johnson became Speaker last October, after a group of House Republicans ousted his predecessor Kevin McCarthy, ostensibly because he’d made a secret deal with the White House to send billions in additional aid to Ukraine.

In September, Johnson objected to Vladimir Zelensky’s visit to an ammunition factory in Pennsylvania, calling it “a clearly partisan campaign event” that amounted to “election interference.” He wrote a letter to Zelensky demanding the immediate firing of Ukraine’s ambassador to Washington, Oksana Markarova, for organizing the trip. In October Johnson told media he was increasingly against additional funding for Kiev and expressed hope it won’t be necessary if Trump wins the presidential election. “I don’t have an appetite for further Ukraine funding, and I hope it’s not necessary,” the Louisiana Republican told Punchbowl News. “If President Trump wins, I believe that he actually can bring that conflict to a close. I really do. I think he’ll call [Russian President Vladimir] Putin and tell him that this is enough.”

Pick your friends..

• Deep State Freezes Over: John Brennan Praises Trump Transition Team (ZH)

If you had Obama-era Deep State operatives praising the man who the establishment has demonized as a “threat to democracy” on your bingo card, come on down to claim your prize. In what is sure to raise eyebrows across the political world, former CIA director John Brennan issued rare kind words for President-Elect Donald Trump’s second transition team, saying it has thus far operated in “more serious and professional fashion than in 2016. “I know that there is engagement between the Biden Department of State and the incoming Trump team,” Brennan told MSNBC’s Alicia Menendez over the weekend. “You want to make sure that the incoming team has as much intelligence and analysis as possible that’s available so that when they take over on day one that they are fully informed about what the situation is,” the former CIA chief added.

“I do think that there are some people in the Trump administration who are coming in and really are trying to do everything they can to be as prepared as possible on January 20th,” Brennan told MSNBC on Saturday. “You have people like Marco Rubio who has been named to be the next secretary of state, who is well steeped in these issues and also takes them very seriously,” he concluded. Brennan’s praise follows a long history of sharp attacks on Trump, who he recently referred to as unqualified to be president, citing his temperate and what he views as a lack of support for Ukraine against its ongoing war with Russia. “According to me, he was not qualified at the time, and he is not qualified today. We could see in particular that he did not understand the importance of the United States’s relations with our foreign allies and partners. He has little recognition for the transatlantic relationship, for NATO,” Brennan told RTBF.

“And that would give Vladimir Putin the green light to try to almost swallow up Ukraine,” Brennan said. “And unfortunately, I think it will encourage Putin to look hungrily toward the rest of Europe.” In 2018, Trump spawned fury and cheers from critics and supporters alike when he revoked Brennan’s security clearance. Trump, in a statement at the time, tied his decision to revoke the security clearance to the Russia investigation, “There’s no silence. If anything, I’m giving him a bigger voice,” Trump told reporters at the time. “Many people don’t even know who he is, and now he has a bigger voice. And that’s OK with me because I like taking on voices like that.”

The then-president also noted that he had received a “tremendous response” for the move. “Security clearances are very important to me, very important,” he stated, adding that he “never respected”the former CIA head. Trump also said Brennan had “recently leveraged his status … to make a series of unfounded and outrageous allegations, wild outbursts on the internet and on television, about this administration.” In a separate statement, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said the decision was motivated by the “risk posed by [Brennan’s] erratic conduct and behavior.”

“..members of Congress are entitled to immunity under the Speech or Debate Clause of the Constitution, which shields lawmakers from criminal liability related to their legislative duties. Cheney’s sycophants are already signaling that is the route she will take..”

• Liz Cheney’s Pending Immunity Whiplash (Julie Kelly)

Few people worked harder over the past few years to put Donald Trump behind bars than Liz Cheney, the former (alleged) Republican congresswoman from Wyoming. Seeking revenge for Trump’s longtime criticism of her father’s “weapons of mass destruction” lie, Cheney sought to settle a family score by imprisoning Trump over the events of January 6. “No one is above the law!,” Cheney, in her grating sanctimonious style, frequently insists. Well, except for her. It now appears Cheney is preparing to fight any federal and/or congressional probe into her demonstrably corrupt role as vice chairman of the January 6 Select Committee. Text messages obtained by Representative Barry Loudermilk (R-Ga), chair of a House subcommittee looking into the J6 committee, prove that Cheney colluded behind the scenes with star witness Cassidy Hutchinson, who dramatically changed her testimony after connecting with Cheney.

The communications could represent witness tampering, subornation of perjury—every former White House official including the driver of the presidential vehicle on January 6 has refuted Hutchinson’s account of Trump’s behavior that day—and obstruction. Based on the results of his ongoing inquiry, Loudermilk determined that “numerous federal laws were likely broken by Liz Cheney” and called for the FBI to investigate her. Cheney immediately responded by playing the victim and, of course, by blaming Donald Trump. But the American people appear uninterested in Cheney’s excuses; a new Rasmussen poll shows strong public support, including three-quarters of Republicans, for an FBI investigation into the bitter and defeated nepobaby.

If Trump’s Department of Justice decides to proceed, Cheney undoubtedly will seek immunity protections in an attempt to keep records away from federal investigators; members of Congress are entitled to immunity under the Speech or Debate Clause of the Constitution, which shields lawmakers from criminal liability related to their legislative duties. Cheney’s sycophants are already signaling that is the route she will take. During recent interviews, Rep. Jamie Raskin, a close pal of Cheney’s and fellow “NO ONE IS ABOVE THE LAW” squawker, warned the clause can prevent the FBI from accessing her communications. Pressed by reporter Hugo Lowell during a recent podcast, Raskin pooh-poohed accusations that Cheney potentially broke the law. “That hardly is a crime in the United States,” Raskin said about Cheney’s secret collaboration with Hutchinson.

“In any event, she’s completely protected by the Speech and (sic) Debate Clause, which protects all of us in our legislative capacities both in terms of our direct legislative action and in doing the investigative research that needs to be done in order to legislate and to act as legislators in a comprehensive way.” Raskin said the same during a separate interview with CBS News. “They’ve been talking about going after Liz Cheney simply for doing her legislative work in a way that is completely covered by the Speech and (sic) Debate Clause. It is not a crime for someone to go out and find witnesses to a violent insurrection.” Now, that is really rich coming from Raskin and potentially from Cheney. As members of the J6 committee, both were instrumental in stripping privilege sought by Trump and his inner circle including his attorneys, which resulted in the production of presidential records to the Trump-hating partisans on the committee and testimony by White House officials who are usually protected by executive privilege.

But Cheney also urged the Supreme Court to act quickly in denying Donald Trump’s claims of presidential immunity from prosecution after Special Counsel Jack Smith indicted Trump in August 2023 on four counts for his alleged role in “conspiring” to overturn the results of the 2020 election, representing the first time in history a former president faced a criminal federal indictment. Despite the unprecedented nature of the question and troubling long term consequences for the country, Cheney acted as if the matter was a no brainer and accused anyone opposed as being, of course, a Kremlin stooge. A few days before the court held oral arguments in Trump v US, the landmark immunity case, Cheney published an op-ed in the New York Times urging justices to move with haste. “If delay prevents this Trump case from being tried this year, the public may never hear critical and historic (sic) evidence developed before the grand jury, and our system may never hold the man most responsible for Jan. 6 to account,” Cheney wrote on April 22, 2024.

She further lamented how Trump tried to “delay” proceedings before her House committee by seeking privilege protections in court. “I know how Mr. Trump’s delay tactics work. Our committee had to spend months litigating his privilege claims…before we could gain access to White House records.” (This is untrue since Joe Biden repeatedly and quickly denied Trump’s privilege requests and Judge Tanya Chutkan, who later presided over Smith’s J6 indictment, also expedited the matter ultimately forcing the national archives to turn over presidential material that usually takes years to litigate.) So, according to Cheney’s logic, any assertion of executive privilege—a legitimate legal argument with decades of recent case law behind it—represents a “delay tactic.” Should be fun to watch Cheney explain her hypocrisy once the privilege tables are turned.

“I think Trump will acknowledge that Russia has achieved what it wants to achieve”..

• Trump Beat Harris, Could Bolster Russia-US Ties and May Hasten NATO’s End (Sp.)

With time already ticking for US President-elect entering office, the world is faced with a whole array of developments, such as military conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza, the rapid growth of BRICS and deep fissures within the Western bloc. The 2024 US presidential race came to a dramatic conclusion when Donald Trump convincingly upset Kamala Harris, a win that took place not least because Democrats “clearly had no policies that the American people wanted”, Michael Maloof, former senior security policy analyst in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, tells Sputnik. When it comes to Democrats’ pre-election efforts, they “always wanted to make this more of an anti-Trump campaign as opposed to coming up with policies that would remedy the higher inflation, the open borders” as well as “the increase in crime and drugs,” Maloof said.

Harris “just spoke in terms of platitudes” as she “sounded more like a cheerleader rather than someone wanting to be president with definitive policies; […] she had no answers for the increasing difficulties,” according to the pundit. The ex-Pentagon analyst suggested that there will be more opportunity to try to resolve Russia-US problems that were in place under the Biden-Harris administration because Trump is more than willing to meet with Mr. Putin, just as Mr. Putin says he’s willing to meet Trump. Both are “very strong leaders” with “healthy respect” toward each other, and they would manage to reach “some accommodation” on pressing issues, especially on Ukraine. “I think Trump will acknowledge that Russia has achieved what it wants to achieve”, Maloof pointed out.

The pundit claimed that under Trump, “you’re going to see perhaps the demise of NATO altogether”. NATO’s four-year aid to Ukraine “actually crippled them [the alliance’s members] economically, and I think that this is the beginning of the end, not only of NATO as a so-called ‘defense’ alliance, but also the EU itself”, Maloof concluded.

Russia will not budge.

• Lavrov: Russia’s ‘Not Satisfied’ With Trump’s Ukraine Proposals (Antiwar)

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Sunday that Moscow was “not satisfied” with reported proposals being discussed by President-elect Donald Trump and his transition team to end the war in Ukraine. Recent media reports have said Trump’s team proposed the idea of Ukraine pledging not to join NATO for at least 20 years as part of a potential peace deal. Another report said Trump wants European troops to deploy to Ukraine to monitor a future ceasefire. “Judging by numerous leaks and Donald Trump’s own interview with Time magazine on December 12, he is talking about ‘freezing’ hostilities along the line of engagement and transferring further responsibility for confronting Russia to the Europeans,” Lavrov said, according to the Russian news agency TASS.

“We are certainly not satisfied with the proposals made by representatives of the president-elect’s team to postpone Ukraine’s membership in NATO for 20 years and to deploy a peacekeeping contingent of ‘UK and European forces’ in Ukraine,” Lavrov added. Trump campaigned on ending the proxy war in Ukraine, but it’s still unclear how he intends to do that. The Financial Times recently reported that Trump assured NATO countries that US military aid would continue to flow to Ukraine after his inauguration.

“In a boost for allies deeply concerned over their ability to support and protect Ukraine without Washington’s backing, Trump now intends to maintain US military supplies to Kyiv after his inauguration,” FT reported. Lavrov said that Russia has not received any official offers from the US and noted that official US policy is still being steered by the Biden administration. “Until January 20 — the date of inauguration — Donald Trump has the status of ‘president-elect,’ and all policy on all fronts is determined by the incumbent president and his administration,” he said.

Test case.

• Musk To Provide Cellphone Coverage To Ukraine From Space (RT)

Ukraine’s largest mobile operator, Kyivstar, has signed a contract with Elon Musk’s Starlink to introduce satellite-powered cellular service, Kyivstar’s parent company, VEON Group, stated on Monday. The service, set to launch in the fourth quarter of 2025, will initially support SMS and over-the-top (OTT) messaging before expanding to voice and data functionalities in later stages. VEON described the agreement as a “game-changing” development to bolster connectivity in Ukraine amid frequent blackouts caused by Russian airstrikes targeting Ukrainian energy infrastructure. The financial details of the agreement have not been made public. Ukraine will be among the first countries to adopt Starlink’s direct-to-cell services, according to Reuters. ”With access to Starlink direct-to-cell technology, Kyivstar customers will benefit from satellite-powered connectivity even when the terrestrial network is unable to service an area,” VEON Group stressed.

Starlink, which is a unit of SpaceX, put its first satellites enabling direct-to-cell service into orbit this January. Last month, the US Federal Communications Commission granted Musk’s firm approval to provide coverage to mobile phones in areas out of reach of land-based networks in partnership with T-Mobile. The government of Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky considered Musk among its backers early in the conflict with Russia, when SpaceX donated $80 million worth of Starlink satellite internet terminals to Ukraine. Kiev’s forces have relied heavily on the system for communications. However, the billionaire was involved in a spat with Ukrainian officials and social media users in October 2022 after he proposed a plan to settle the conflict. Musk suggested that Russia should “redo elections of annexed regions under UN supervision,” while Ukraine would commit to neutrality and drop its claim to Crimea.

Four former Ukrainian regions voted to join Russia in the fall of 2022, while Crimea held a similar referendum in 2014 after a Western-backed coup in Kiev. Zelensky reacted to the idea by launching a social media poll, asking followers “which Elon Musk” they “like more” – the one “who supports Ukraine” or the one “who supports Russia.” Additionally, Andrey Melnik, Ukraine’s former ambassador to Germany, went a step further by telling the billionaire to “f**k off.” A few days later, reports surfaced that the Ukrainian military began experiencing issues with Starlink services. Since then, Musk has repeatedly mocked Zelensky in his posts on X over the Ukrainian leader’s demands for more Western aid and for Kiev to be accepted into NATO. Earlier this year, SpaceX and Tesla CEO insisted that there is “no way in hell” that Russia will suffer defeat in its conflict with Ukraine.

He’s their ideal scapegoat.

• Can Elon Musk Actually ‘Influence’ The German Election? (RMX)

Following Elon Musk’s guest column in Welt am Sontag, there is a huge outpouring of anger from the establishment parties and press over his endorsement of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, including claims that Musk is participating in “election interference” and harming Germany democracy. However, can Musk actually shift the election result, and if the AfD scores a surprisingly good result, how will Germany’s power elite react? Just to get the first point out of the way, it is unlikely that Musk’s endorsement will move the needle all that much. Musk is already demonized across the EU for his takeover of X and shift towards supporting right-leaning candidates. In Germany, there is a constant stream of anti-Musk content produced on a daily basis. Musk writing an op-ed in Welt is hardly going to convince the majority of Germans, who likely already have an unfavorable opinion of Musk.

The AfD is already polling at 19 percent or so, and a poll in November set the party’s voter potential at 25 percent, which means there is a definite ceiling to the party’s support. Could Musk raise that ceiling? As Bild writes, Hermann Binkert from the opinion research institute INSA stated that “Elon Musk’s support for the AfD can help the party with a view to the federal election. Musk enjoys sympathy in Germany… A party that covers a broader spectrum increases its voter potential.” The Bild report also notes that in “In liberal-conservative circles, the successful entrepreneur’s praise could help to normalize the AfD as a party.” There may be some truth to this, but again, Musk’s endorsement can only go so far in Germany,. Musk also supports Donald Trump, but the vast majority of Germans still disapprove of Trump.

The outcome of the election will be made clear on Feb. 23, but if anything, the Christmas market attack in Magdeburg is more likely to shift more people towards the AfD than Musk’s opinion piece. On the high end of the scale, the AfD can expect a result in the range of 23 percent of the vote, but that would be a huge jump from where they currently stand. In all reality, the next upcoming government is likely to be CDU and the Greens or CDU and the SPD ruling once again, but a stronger AfD result could complicate any potential coalition agreement. SPD General Secretary Matthias Miersch told Handelsblatt: “The fact that the Springer publishing house is even offering Elon Musk an official platform to advertise for the AfD is shameful and dangerous.” He said the process shows “how far right-wing networks have now advanced.” Now, the Bavarian SPD parliamentary group has announced it will leave X.

There is plenty of outrage all around, with Teresa Stiens of Handelblatt writing that the Welt am Sonntag allowed itself to be “harnessed to the anti-democratic cart.” Former editor-in-chief of the ARD capital studio Ulrich Deppendorf wrote on X: “Musk’s appeal in the Welt am Sonntag is the low point in the long-standing history of the Springer publishing house.” Konstantin von Notz, the deputy parliamentary group leader of the Greens, wrote on X: “Offering a Western oligarch like Musk a platform to promote these enemies of democracy and those who despise the rule of law is simply an amnesia.” All of this is pretty amazing considering the actual Welt article actively attacks Musk and his AfD support — all in the same piece that Musk wrote! Has there ever been such a ridiculous “guest column” before where the author is attacked in his own piece?

The reality is that foreign billionaires have injected themselves into elections all over the world, and while George Soros remains the classic bogeyman of the right, there are good reasons why he has earned his reputation. Not only has he funded political campaigns, NGOs, and influence operations across the world, but he has also written opinion columns — far more aggressive ones — than Musk’s own guest column. In fact, Soros has even written for Welt, which nobody seemed to have any problem with. Soros has notably waged war against right-wing governments in a variety of op-eds, including this one targeting the Hungarian and Polish governments, and he has been doing all of this for decades. Despite all of his “election interference,” he is hailed as a hero, and more importantly a source of money, for the European establishment.

“The blob transformed the news into an engine for suppressing the facts or spinning them narratively when they could not be suppressed..”

• No, The Truth Is Not Just Another Story (Kunstler)

It must be obvious that the incoming government under Mr. Trump has one primary duty overall: sorting out truth from lies so the nation can reestablish a baseline reality to function upon. America is so punch-drunk from official lying that many intelligent people who ought to know better now proclaim that reality is unknowable, which is just a surrender to nihilism — the rejection of moral principle, a belief that the human project is meaningless. This awful condition has led to the point where you know for sure that “Joe Biden” cannot possibly discharge his duties as chief executive, and yet nobody cares enough to investigate who is running things behind the front he puts up. That would generally be the job of the news media, which is supposed to function as the public’s auditor. Now, of course, you are persuaded that this was never really their job, that it was a sham, but that is just another lie.

The news was not flawless, but neither was it presented as nothing more than opinion. The news existed to register what happened day-to-day. It was not so much concerned with why things happened, which was much more difficult to establish, and usually reserved for the pages labeled “opinion,” so that you knew it was somebody’s conjecture. I know this because I worked as a newspaper reporter in the 1970s. I actually found out what was going on about this-and-that, wrote it up, and saw it in print hours later. The facts. Journalism had some simple rules for reporting the facts about anything — and it’s hilarious that anyone thought it required a graduate degree from some credentialing mill like the Columbia U. School of Journalism.

The news was often meddled-with by interested parties, government and business, but they did not completely overwhelm the ant-like labors of x-thousands of reporters in the field, and the stream of fact they circulated. Not all of it was subject to dispute, meddling, or opinion because it was self-evident: Joe Blow got shot. . . a helicopter crashed in Ohio. . . a volcano erupted in Peru. . . . Only over time, the past thirty years especially, our government grew and grew and one of the things that grew out of it was the nefarious “blob” dedicated to protecting the self-enlarging perquisites and interests of that government. Blobs will absorb things they encounter, and in a predatory way, the US government blob absorbed the US news media. The blob transformed the news into an engine for suppressing the facts or spinning them narratively when they could not be suppressed, in order to maximize the advantage of the government and to protect the operations of the blob itself.

It is also a fact that this blob is aligned mostly with Democratic Party, because that party is most avid for the continuing growth of government, and its members overwhelmingly dominate in the officialdom that dwells inside the DC Beltway. The numbers speak for themselves on the DC voter rolls. So, a new government under Mr. Trump is feared cringingly by the news media. For one thing, the incoming government has tasked itself with reducing government substantially, eliminating many of its perquisites, and surgically excising the nefarious blob that is draining the purpose, meaning, and vitality out of our national life. The news media is terrified of being found-out for having acted as the blob’s chamberlain. We may find out exactly how that worked — how, for example, professional liars such as Joy Reid and Rachel Maddow of MSNBC were paid. What accounted for the amazing coordination of talking-points from day-to-day across all networks and newspapers?

We are about to find out how a whole lot of mystifying things have happened in recent years. For instance, those fantastic vote switcheroos in “Joe Biden’s” favor that occurred visibly right on TV in the wee hours of November 4, 2020? How did William Barr conceal the existence of Hunter Biden’s laptop from Mr. Trump’s defense attorneys in the 2019 impeachment over a phone call to Ukraine? Who really has been making “presidential” decisions behind the false front of “Joe Biden?” Who in White House news reporters’ pool among the Cable News networks, The New York Times, and The Washington Post happened to know which officials were running the White House operation (did they not have sources)?

How did the FBI engineer the Jan. 6, 2021, riot and with how many agents and operatives on-site? Who was in charge of the DNC pipe bomb caper? How has George and Alex Soros’s network of money-dispensing NGOs been allowed to buy law enforcement offices all over country? How did Merrick Garland’s errand boys get to New York Attorney General Letitia James and Fulton County DA Fani Willis? What has been done with the billions of dollars sent to Ukraine? Why is the CDC still advertising and promoting mRNA Covid vaccines that they must know have killed and disabled millions of people? Who thought it was a good idea to fill the ranks of the US military with transexuals? How did the order to throw the US-Mexican border wide open move through the chain-of-command, exactly? Things like that.

“..the Ukrainian leader “has genuinely pulled off one of the greatest money heists of all time.”

• Zelensky Is ‘All-time Champion’ of US-Aid Heist – Musk (RT)

Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has referred to Vladimir Zelensky as an “all-time champ” in a post on social platform X following US President Joe Biden’s announcement on Monday of a $2.5 billion US arms package for Kiev. Musk’s remark came in response to another X user’s comment saying that the Ukrainian leader “has genuinely pulled off one of the greatest money heists of all time.” President Biden’s latest military aid package for Ukraine includes advanced weaponry, ammunition, and armored vehicles, with a total value of $2.5 billion. Biden emphasized the need to support Ukraine in his final weeks in office, specifying that $1.25 billion of the package would be drawn from US stockpiles under the Presidential Drawdown Authority (PDA).

Utah Senator Mike Lee referred to the package as “money laundering,” in another X post on Sunday. There have been bipartisan calls for audits that have questioned the transparency and accountability of the $175 billion in US assistance since the Ukraine conflict began. The Tesla and SpaceX CEO has repeatedly questioned the allocation and oversight of Western resources sent to Kiev. In March, Musk stated that Kiev should give Washington “proper accounting of how it is used and a plan to resolve the conflict.” He has also accused top US officials – most notably former Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland, known for her leading role in the 2014 Maidan coup in Kiev – of “pushing this war.” While SpaceX has provided the Ukrainian military with Starlink internet terminals, Musk has long argued that Kiev cannot hope to defeat Russian forces on the battlefield and that the conflict must end in a negotiated settlement.

During the summer, Musk endorsed White House aspirant Donald Trump, who has vowed to bring a swift end to the fighting. After winning the presidential election Trump pitched Musk and fellow billionaire Vivek Ramaswamy to co-head the new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), a body that will be tasked with reducing government waste and streamlining the federal bureaucracy. The billionaire has also reportedly engaged in direct communications with Zelensky in a phone call between the Ukrainian leader and Trump in November. According to Axios’ sources, Musk promised to continue supporting Ukraine through his Starlink satellites. Last month, Musk mocked Zelensky’s “amazing” sense of humor after the Ukrainian leader claimed in a radio interview that his country is “independent” and cannot be forced to the negotiating table by the US.

Not so massive.

• Russia and Ukraine Conduct Massive POW Swap (RT)

Ukraine has freed 150 Russian soldiers from captivity as part of a major prisoner exchange, the Defense Ministry in Moscow said in a Telegram post on Monday. Kiev received an equal number of its troops as well, it added. The swap deal was mediated by the United Arab Emirates, the ministry stated. All of the freed Russian soldiers were initially transferred to Belarus, where they were provided with the necessary medical and psychological assistance and an opportunity to contact their relatives and loved ones, the statement said. The soldiers are now to be moved to Russia for further treatment and rehabilitation, the ministry added. It is the first such exchange since October, when the two sides exchanged 95 servicemen each. That swap deal was also mediated by the UAE. In November, Moscow and Kiev also exchanged the remains of fallen soldiers, with Ukraine receiving 563 bodies and Russia 37.

Later on Monday, Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky confirmed the exchange, but claimed that almost 200 Ukrainians had been returned. “The return of our people from Russian captivity is always very good news for each of us. And today is one of those days: our team managed to return 189 Ukrainians home,” he wrote on Telegram. Moscow had previously accused Kiev of being reluctant to take back its soldiers from custody. In early December, Russian human rights ombudsman Tatyana Moskalkova released a list of servicemen being held, whom she said the Ukrainian officials refused to consider for a prisoner exchange. “Zelensky does not need 630 Ukrainian citizens who were captured. He abandoned them,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova commented on the publication at that time.

In mid-December, the Prime Minister of Hungary Viktor Orban suggested mediating a major prisoner exchange between Moscow and Kiev that could involve some 700 soldiers from each side. He later stated that Ukraine had rejected his proposal. An aide to Vladimir Zelensky then called Orban “a meddlesome messenger” of Russian President Vladimir Putin, adding that “no one” who supposedly works for peace needs such people. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that Russia was willing to accept Orban’s proposal and even contacted the Hungarian embassy with some relevant proposals of its own.

“The IMF has warned that seizing these assets without robust legal frameworks could erode global trust in the Western financial system.”

• Kiev Announces US Gift of $15bn From Seized Russian Funds (RT)

The US will provide Kiev with $15 billion, leveraging future revenues from frozen Russian central bank assets, Ukrainian Prime Minister Denis Shmigal announced on Monday. The Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov has previously said about Washington’s purported illegal transfer of Russian funds to Kiev that Moscow may challenge it in court. The American funding is part of a broader $20 billion contribution under the G7’s $50 billion loan framework to Ukraine. The agreement was signed by Ukraine’s Ministry of Finance and the World Bank under the PEACE in Ukraine initiative, Shmigal claimed, in a post on his Telegram channel. The G7, comprising the US, Canada, Japan, the UK, France, Germany, and Italy, initially pledged the $50 billion loan in June 2022, using profits from frozen Russian assets as collateral. Of the estimated $300 billion immobilized, $213 billion is held in the Brussels-based clearinghouse Euroclear.

Euroclear froze the assets of the Russian central bank in late February 2022, shortly after the EU imposed sanctions on Russia in response to the conflict escalation in Ukraine. The frozen funds have already generated billions in interest, with the clearinghouse transferring €1.55 billion ($1.63 billion) to Ukraine in July. Moscow has vehemently criticized the asset seizures. Last Wednesday Dmitry Peskov condemned the measures as theft and warned of legal retaliation. He was reacting to Shmigal’s announcement that the US had already transferred to Ukraine the first installment of the $1 billion from the frozen Moscow central bank funds. Last month, Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said there are plans to mirror the West’s actions, using income from frozen Western assets in Russia.

“We have also frozen the resources of Western investors, Western financial market participants and companies. The income from these assets will also be used,” the official said. The decision to use frozen Russian assets has previously stirred debate among G7 nations. European members of the club such as Germany, France and Italy have raised concerns over financial market stability and about the legal implications of such actions. The IMF has warned that seizing these assets without robust legal frameworks could erode global trust in the Western financial system.

“Our Ukrainian partners should not overlook the fact that Russian gas distributed through their territory brings high and significant revenues to Ukraine, which it greatly needs..”

• Fico Dismisses ‘Nonsense’ Accusations From Zelensky (RT)

Bratislava has strongly dismissed accusations from Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky, who claimed that Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico has opened a “second energy front” against Kiev and colluded with Moscow. The Slovak Foreign Ministry described the remarks as exaggerated and baseless. “We reject any nonsense about opening a second energy front, as baselessly fabricated” by Zelensky, as well as statements about “some invented alliance with [Russian President] Vladimir Putin,” the ministry stated on Sunday. The accusations were initially made by Zelensky in a post on X (formerly Twitter) on Saturday. He claimed Fico’s government was working to undermine Ukraine’s energy security “at the expense of the Slovak people’s interests.”

Fico had earlier warned that his country could cut electricity supplies to Ukraine if Kiev stops facilitating the transit of Russian gas across its territory to EU nations. Slovakia, whose economy heavily relies on Russian gas, receives its supplies through Ukraine via Soviet-era pipelines. Earlier this month, Ukrainian Prime Minister Denis Shmigal declared that from January 1, Kiev will cease transporting Russian gas and will exclusively utilize its pipeline system for delivering the fossil fuel from alternative suppliers. The existing contract with Moscow is set to expire on Tuesday and Ukraine has made it clear that it will not extend the agreement.

The Slovak Foreign Ministry emphasized on Sunday that Bratislava has prioritized energy cooperation with Kiev. “It was this current Slovak government that included the project to strengthen the connection of the energy transmission network as one of the priorities of the roadmap for Slovak-Ukrainian cooperation,” it stressed. The ministry noted that Slovak companies supply electricity to Ukraine on a commercial basis since they cannot be expected to finance the Ukrainian state. Additionally, it highlighted the humanitarian aid provided to Kiev since the escalation of its conflict with Moscow.

The Slovak ministry also pointed out Ukraine’s reliance on Russian gas transiting through its territory, which provides “significant income” for the government in Kiev. “Our Ukrainian partners should not overlook the fact that Russian gas distributed through their territory brings high and significant revenues to Ukraine, which it greatly needs,” the ministry stated. The ministry also criticized Zelensky’s alleged proposal during a European Council meeting to use Russian assets to “buy Slovakia’s consent” for Ukraine’s NATO membership, calling it “absurd” and warning against creating new conflicts. “We fully understand that Ukraine is exposed to a long-term war conflict but, precisely for this reason, they should not create new enemies and fabricate the emergence of some second front,” the statement added.

“The country is reliant on Russia for around 85% of its gas demand, primarily through pipelines transiting Ukraine..”

• Slovak PM Fico Slams ‘Irrational’ EU (RT)

Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico has sent an open letter to European Council President Antonio Costa and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urging immediate action to address Ukraine’s imminent halt of natural gas transit through its territory to the EU. A transit agreement between Russia and Ukraine is set to expire on December 31. Kiev has refused to extend it, citing the conflict with Moscow. In a letter posted on Facebook on Sunday, Fico accused Kiev of failing to consider the potential impact its decision will have on the EU economy. Brussels’ acceptance of the situation is “absolutely irrational and wrong,” he stressed. Gas transit through Ukraine accounts for only 3.5% of EU consumption, the letter states, citing an analysis carried out by Slovakia’s main gas supplier and trader, SPP. Despite the modest share, any halt would disrupt the market, raising gas prices by roughly 30%, the document claims.

Such a price spike would translate to an additional annual cost of € 40-50 billion for European households and infrastructure, Fico argued. “It is in the interest of all EU citizens that European efforts to support Ukraine should be carried out rationally, and not in the form of self-destructive and extremely damaging gestures,” the Slovak prime minister noted. Kiev’s decision will lead to “reciprocal measures,” he warned. Fico also said Russia “will easily place such a small volume of gas in other markets,” thus mitigating its losses. The situation requires urgent attention from EU institutions and member states to mitigate risks of supply shortages, he added.

Landlocked Slovakia’s position within Europe’s energy network makes it highly susceptible to disruptions in natural gas supply. The country is reliant on Russia for around 85% of its gas demand, primarily through pipelines transiting Ukraine. Fico has repeatedly voiced concerns regarding EU energy policy. He has consistently advocated for pragmatic approaches to energy security, often clashing with Brussels on its approach to the Ukraine conflict, namely the issue of military support to Kiev and the issue of economic sanctions against Russia. European Union leaders have repeatedly expressed confidence in the bloc’s ability to manage without Russian gas, accusing Moscow of using energy as a geopolitical weapon. The European Commission and Council have yet to issue formal responses to the Slovak leader’s letter.

Incidents in South Korea with planes the whole world uses, lead to inspections only in South Korea? Explain please.

• South Korea To Inspect Boeing Fleet After Plane Crash Disaster (RT)

South Korea’s Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport is set to conduct a special inspection of all Boeing 737-800 jets operated by the country’s air carriers, Yonhap news agency reported on Monday. Yesterday, a Jeju Air Boeing 737-800, which was carrying 181 people from Bangkok, belly-landed, skidded off the end of the runway, and exploded after slamming into a wall at Muan International Airport, some 290km southwest of Seoul. The cause of the tragedy that claimed the lives of 179 people is currently under investigation, with preliminary findings pointing to a landing gear malfunction. Two crew members survived and are being treated for injuries. Boeing 737-800s are mostly operated by low-cost domestic airlines. Jeju Air currently has 39 of the planes in its fleet, while 62 are operated by T’way Air, Jin Air, Eastar Jet, Air Incheon, and Korean Air.

On Monday, local media reported that another Boeing 737-800 operated by Jeju Air had returned to an airport in South Korea shortly after departure due to the same landing gear issue. Earlier, South Korea’s acting President Choi Sang-mok ordered an emergency safety inspection of the country’s entire airline operation system “to prevent recurrence of aircraft accidents.” “Even before the final results are out, we ask that officials transparently disclose the accident investigation process and promptly inform the bereaved families,” Choi said, explaining that the top priority was to identify the victims, support their families, and treat the two survivors. Local media outlets had previously reported that the authorities believed that the airliner had been hit by a flock of birds, which caused its landing gear to malfunction. However, aviation experts questioned this theory in an interview with Reuters.

“When I was young men were raised to respect women. When a woman entered a room, the men stood. Doors were opened for women and their entrance proceeded the man’s. Car doors were opened for women who were helped in and out. At the dining table men stood until the women were seated.”

• The Disappearance of the Male Role (Paul Craig Roberts)

Over the course of my lifetime I have watched the role of men taken away. The role of the male as provider, defender, and disciplinarian is no more. It was destroyed by feminists. To clarify “feminist”: In the past when I have criticized feminists older women who had careers asked why I thought women shouldn’t have careers. Their idea is that a feminist is a woman who has a career. But women have always had careers as mothers, homemakers, grandmothers, school teachers, nurses, secretaries, writers, artists, musicians, scientists, and even spies such as Eve Gordon who made during World War II 112 parachute jumps into occupied Europe. Even in pre-feminist days, one of my aunts despite being married had a career outside the home. She enjoyed the discipline of getting to work on time, the interaction with other people, and meeting new ones.

By feminist I mean a person with an ideological agenda of obliterating the difference between men and women. When I was young men were raised to respect women. When a woman entered a room, the men stood. Doors were opened for women and their entrance proceeded the man’s. Car doors were opened for women who were helped in and out. At the dining table men stood until the women were seated. In those days men still wore hats. A gentleman passing a lady on the sidewalk was expected to tip his hat in respect. A man who struck a woman or used a four-letter word in a lady’s presence suffered a ruined reputation. Feminists derided the many ways in which respect was shown to women as “placing women on a pedestal.” Showing respect for women was somehow undervaluing them and treating them unequally. Feminists insisted on women being pulled down into the gutter with men.

Big brothers were taught to protect little sisters. It was little brother’s job to learn to protect himself, and fights on the school playground was part of the learning process. Today men are no longer taught to protect women. But it is a natural inclination in men. Studies have concluded that the introduction of women soldiers into conflict causes a loss of cohesion and focus, because men become distracted by concern for the women. Feminists were not happy until they destroyed men’s colleges, male leadership in politics, military, and business, men’s clubs and male organizations such as the Boy Scouts which was forced to take in girls. Even the military has been taken from men. How is there a band of brothers when the commander is female? Men have lost their role. They are no longer the provider. The wife might have, thanks to gender preferences in university admissions, employment, and promotion, the better job bringing in more income.

Studies conclude that boys suffer depression from loss of a role. Reportedly, the suicide rate of boys and young men has been rising. What the feminists have established is a new form of male deference to women. Males must stand aside and give up their role to women. Feminist were not content to only destroy men. They destroyed women also. The idea of a chaste woman was objectionable because it held women to a higher standard than men. Helen Gurley Brown, editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan magazine, used the magazine to encourage women to be harlots. In the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s Cosmopolitan was a fixture in the waiting rooms of doctors and dentists. I often wondered what my mother and grandmothers would have thought of a woman’s magazine, the cover of which heralded articles titled “How to be unfaithful to your husband without being caught,” “how to find a sex partner when on vacation without your boy friend,” “how to manage multiple sex partners.”

Today young women support themselves with their porn sites. Women brag on social media about having had 150 sexual partners, sparking rivals to vow attaining higher levels of wantonness. Female school teachers get themselves pregnant by their under age students. Mothers have 12-year old daughters on birth control pills. School children are sexualized at an early age to get them ready for the legalization of pedophiles, now euphemized as “minor attracted persons.” I often refer to the United States as a Sodom and Gomorrah Tower of Babel, which is what we have become. It will be a big chore for Trump to rescue us from this predicament.

Shell

Box turtles are so-called because they can completely close up their shell, much like a box.

There is a 'hinge' located on the plastron, or the lower part of the shell, that allows for total closure

pic.twitter.com/Itt6KThiIN

— Science girl (@gunsnrosesgirl3) December 30, 2024

2025
https://twitter.com/i/status/1873559764841742642

Rabbit
https://twitter.com/i/status/1873750783319285941

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Debt Rattle December 30 2024

Dec 302024

December 30, 2024 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 11:12 am Finance Tagged with: AfD, Elon Musk, Georgia, H-1B, Jimmy Carter, Russian gas, tariffs, Trump, unions 60 Responses »

René Magritte The key to the fields 1936

• How Trump Reacted to Jimmy Carter’s Passing (TH)

• Trump To Battle Federal Employee Unions As He Seeks To Shrink Government (JTN)

• Trump’s Tariff Threats Cast Shadow Over European Auto Industry (RFGE/RL)

• Lefty Legal Experts Call on Congress to Disqualify Trump (Heine)

• Musk Appears to Soften Pro-Foreign Worker, H-1B Visa Stance (ET)

• Musk’s Big Bet: Could Germans Kick Out Their Liberal Elites? (Romanenko)

• Musk Pens Pro-AfD Op-Ed In Major German Paper; Editor Resigns (ZH)

• Sugar Juice & Fraud Propped Up Failing Biden Economy – Ed Dowd (USAW)

• No Longer Sustained by Education, Western Humanity Is in Death Throes (PCR)

• The Moral Bankruptcy of the West (John Mearsheimer)

• Most, But Not All, Republicans Lining Up To Support Speaker Of The House (JTN)

• New Strategy For DNC: Younger Candidates Launching Bids To Run Party (JTN)

• Ukraine Could Agree To Non-NATO Security Guarantees – Envoy (RT)

• Zelensky Charges Slovakia’s Fico With Opening “Second Energy Front” (ZH)

• EU States Seek To Protect Russian Gas Flow Despite Ukrainian Threat (RT)

• Georgia’s New President ‘Hardline Critic of the West’ (Sp.)

1987

Trump has been the exact same person for 40 years.

On David Letterman 1987. pic.twitter.com/CqwLqnlMas

— Mila Joy (@MilaLovesJoe) December 29, 2024

1992

President Trump has always embodied American Greatness
pic.twitter.com/sQFGnsLO95

— JohnRocker (@itsJohnRocker) December 28, 2024

Andreessen

Marc Andreessen on Whether We Will See a Twitter Files for the Federal Government

“I don't want to in any way speak for the new Administration, but I would not be remotely surprised if that's exactly what happens. And of course being the government, it will be spectacular.”… pic.twitter.com/KMOpTO43hV

— Chief Nerd (@TheChiefNerd) December 29, 2024

https://twitter.com/i/status/1873099800801099847

Dore

pic.twitter.com/rPR1vT7KPC

Here is Trump completely contradicting what Vivek & Elon are currently saying about the need for foreign high-tech workers. Trump was right when he said this.

2 Billionaires are pushing a false narrative that America doesn’t produce enough high tech…

— Jimmy Dore (@jimmy_dore) December 29, 2024

X
https://twitter.com/i/status/1873410603941048825

Munro

"Elon Musk is the greatest person on the planet right now."

一 Sandy Munro

pic.twitter.com/BCIv6ZSPi3

— DogeDesigner (@cb_doge) December 29, 2024

200
https://twitter.com/i/status/1873449375092916283

A full life. The presidency was not his brightest moment.

• How Trump Reacted to Jimmy Carter’s Passing (TH)

Jimmy Carter passed away on Sunday at the age of 100. It was the longest post-presidencies in American history. Carter was also the oldest former president to ever live in American history. A few lived into their 90s; Carter’s predecessor, Gerald R. Ford, died at 93 in 2006. While not a successful presidency, Carter’s philanthropic activities and other forms of civil engagement is his real legacy. He lived a remarkable life (via NYT): “Jimmy Carter, who rose from Georgia farmland to become the 39th president of the United States on a promise of national healing after the wounds of Watergate and Vietnam, then lost the White House in a cauldron of economic turmoil at home and crisis in Iran, died on Sunday at his home in Plains, Ga. He was 100. The Carter Center in Atlanta announced his death, which came nearly three months after Mr. Carter, already the longest-living president in American history, became the first former commander in chief to reach the century mark. Mr. Carter went into hospice care 22 months ago, but held on longer than even his family expected.

Tributes poured in from presidents, world leaders and many everyday people from around the world who admired not only Mr. Carter’s service during four years in the White House but his four decades of efforts since leaving office to fight disease, broker peace and provide for the poor. President Biden ordered a state funeral to be held and was expected to deliver a eulogy. “To all of the young people in this nation and for anyone in search of what it means to live a life of purpose and meaning — the good life — study Jimmy Carter, a man of principle, faith and humility,” Mr. Biden, the first Democratic senator to endorse Mr. Carter’s long-shot 1976 bid for the presidency, said in a statement. “He showed that we are great nation because we are a good people.”

Trump issued two statements on Mr. Carter’s passing: “I just heard of the news about the passing of President Jimmy Carter. Those of us who have been fortunate to have served as President understand this is a very exclusive club, and only we can relate to the enormous responsibility of leading the Greatest Nation in History. The challenges Jimmy faced as President came at a pivotal time for our country and he did everything in his power to improve the lives of all Americans. For that, we all owe him a debt of gratitude. Melania and I are thinking warmly of the Carter Family and their loved ones during this difficult time. We urge everyone to keep them in their hearts and prayers.” And the second:

=y®ﬁ BREAKING: Trump puts out a SECOND statement on Jimmy Carter s passing pic.twitter.com/4PZItI761c

— johnny maga (@_johnnymaga) December 29, 2024

Big fight.

• Trump To Battle Federal Employee Unions As He Seeks To Shrink Government (JTN)

President-elect Donald Trump has pledged to drastically cut government and clean out inefficiencies, but he faces an entrenched power in Washington, D.C. that may throw a wrench in his plans: federal government public employee unions. “For president-elect Trump to succeed at making the federal bureaucracy more efficient and accountable to the American people, he’ll have to once again do battle with federal unions,” Max Nelsen, a labor policy expert at the Freedom Foundation, told The Center Square. Trump has tapped top businessmen Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to lead the new Department of Government Efficiency effort. Musk has claimed he can cut $2 trillion in federal spending. In a November joint editorial in the Wall Street Journal, Musk and Ramaswamy pledged “mass head-count reductions” in the federal government.

Firing federal workers is notoriously rare and difficult, but Ramaswamy has publicly said that mass, indiscriminate firings may allow for circumventing the usual bureaucratic holdups for firing a federal employee. Trump himself recently pledged to cut “hundreds of billions” in federal spending. “Government unions are hands down the single most significant defenders of the administrative state,” Nelsen said. “Their interests are always served by bigger, more expensive, less accountable government, and their partisan allegiance to the radical Left leads them to both overtly and covertly undermine conservative policy changes across the federal government…” The first battle with unions in the DOGE war may be federal work from home policies, where unions have already threatened legal action to protect their pre-arranged deals with the Biden administration.

Trump threatened to fire federal employees who are not willing to report to the office, a clear shot at federal work-from-home policies, something Musk has also blasted in recent weeks. “If people don’t come back to work, come back into the office, they’re going to be dismissed,” Trump told reporters during a news conference at Mar-a-Lago. The largest federal employee union quickly shot back after Trump made the comments and threatened legal action. Trump’s comments are likely at least in part reacting to a Biden administration official negotiating a deal with a union that extends until 2029, after Trump is scheduled to leave office. As The Center Square previously reported, Social Security Administrator Martin O’Malley negotiated a deal with union leaders to codify work-from-home policies, keeping telework in place for his 42,000 employees until 2029.

Everett Kelley, national president of the American Federation of Government Employees, the largest federal employee union, pointed out that these contracts are legally binding. “Collective bargaining agreements entered into by the federal government are binding and enforceable under the law,” Kelley said. “We trust the incoming administration will abide by their obligations to honor lawful union contracts. If they fail to do so, we will be prepared to enforce our rights.” Trump’s backers may have an ace in the hole, though, in the form of new Supreme Court precedent. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled earlier this year in a landmark case to overturn Chevron deference, the longstanding legal practice of giving federal agencies broad power to interpret and practically change and expand federal laws as they deemed fit, citing their expertise.

Now, Musk and Ramaswamy will likely have more leeway in cutting rules from the books and workers from the payroll. Nelsen said Trump should limit the amount of federal dollars that go toward unions, and that he should increase union transparency. “Additionally, President Trump will need a cadre of energetic appointees at the Office of Personnel Management, the Federal Labor Relations Authority, and in labor relations departments government wide to aggressively implement his directives,” Nelsen said. “Finally, to truly have a long-term impact, President Trump will need a successor in four years committed to continuing the fight.”

Make a deal.

• Trump’s Tariff Threats Cast Shadow Over European Auto Industry (RFGE/RL)

As Donald Trump prepares to take office on January 20, Europe’s already battered car industry is bracing for additional headwinds amid the threat of new tariffs from the incoming U.S. president. Trump has pledged to impose steep new tariffs on goods coming from China, Canada, and Mexico in one of his first acts in office, a promise that could ignite trade wars. That is bad news for European automakers who have already seen sales and manufacturing decline in top markets like the United States and China. The potential tariffs would be felt hard not only by leading European car brands like Volkswagen, Volvo, and Stellantis — the conglomerate that produces Fiat, Chrysler, and Citroen — but also for the Central and Eastern European countries whose economies rely heavily on making them.

Toma Savic, a former director at Zastava, a Serbian international car manufacturer that was shuttered in 2008, said the tariffs would be a particularly hard blow for operations in the Balkan country. “This inevitably would lead to the shrinking of production in Europe and mass layoffs,” he said. Zastava later became Fiat Chrysler Automobiles Serbia, which is owned by Stellantis. Based in Kragujevac in central Serbia, Fiat Chrysler Automobiles Serbia has already been struggling to recuperate its foothold in the European auto industry prior to the breakup of Yugoslavia in the early 1990s when it assembled 200,000 cars annually and exported them to 26 countries. Germany’s auto industry is also likely to be highly vulnerable to Trump’s promised tariffs, especially given that Europe’s biggest economy is by far the region’s largest exporter of passenger cars to the United States.

European and American carmakers could lose up to 17 percent of their combined annual core profits if the United States imposes import tariffs on Europe, Mexico, and Canada, according to some estimates. While Europe was not specifically mentioned in Trump’s first tariff announcement in late November, he took aim at the European Union while on the campaign trail earlier this year and accused European partners of unfair trade practices and stealing American manufacturing jobs. “They don’t take our cars, they don’t take our farm products, don’t take anything,” Trump said on the campaign trail in October. “They are going to have to pay a big price.” The U.S. market is the main destination for European passenger cars. Exports amounted to 42.5 billion dollars in 2023, according to Statista, a German online platform that specializes in data gathering and visualization.

In comparison, the value of U.S. vehicles imported to the EU was around 7.8 billion dollars during the same period. Trump said on the campaign trail in September that he wants German automakers to become “American car companies” and “build their plants here.” He added that he was prepared to offer low taxes and energy costs to draw more companies to set up manufacturing inside the United States. In 2016, German carmakers avoided 35 percent tariffs floated by Trump by investing in more production in the United States. But Trump’s new proposed tariffs could make it more costly for European automakers to set up U.S.-based factories. The threat of new tariffs will add to already growing pressures facing the European auto industry as it looks to compete for the future electric vehicle (EV) market that is dominated by Chinese manufacturers.

Earlier this year, the EU imposed duties of up to 35 percent for EVs from China saying that the “unfairly subsidized” cars have given them a market foothold. Added to this, car sales for EVs across the EU have dipped downward and some governments have repealed subsidies meant to incentivize consumers to buy the cars. The rise of Chinese companies, such as EV-leader BYD, has also seen Western car brands lose market share inside China at a steady rate, with Volkswagen in particular grappling with declining sales. Between tougher competition from China, declining sales at home, and new pressure from Trump, many European automakers are facing a bleak outlook.

You lost. Go away.

• Lefty Legal Experts Call on Congress to Disqualify Trump (Heine)

Two Democrat legal experts are calling on Congress to take immediate action to prevent President-elect Donald Trump from taking office, citing Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. Evan A. Davis, the former editor in chief of the Columbia Law Review and David M. Schulte, the former editor in chief of the Yale Law Journal, called for Trump’s disqualification in an opinion piece for The Hill, citing Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. Davis is a New York City attorney and a former president of the New York City Bar Association. He worked on the U.S. House Judiciary Committee impeachment inquiry staff during the impeachment process against Richard Nixon. Schulte is an investment banker and good friend of Barack Obama. He owns the oceanfront Martha’s Vineyard home where the Obama and his family used to vacation when he was in office.

Section 3 of the 14th Amendment bars individuals who have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or given aid or comfort to its enemies from holding “any office, civil or military.” In a unanimous decision last March, the Supreme Court tossed out a Colorado court decision that barred Donald Trump from appearing on the state’s Republican presidential primary ballot. The lower court had based its decision on 14th Amendment provision. In their 9-0 ruling, the Supremes concluded that “states have no power under the Constitution to enforce Section 3 with respect to federal offices, especially the Presidency.” But Davis and Schulte argue that evidence of Donald Trump engaging in “insurrection” is “overwhelming” and that Congress has the authority to block Trump from being inaugurated under the Constitution and the Electoral Count Act of 2022.

The act, which was intended to prevent another January 6 scenario, added certain procedures for the counting of electoral votes following a presidential election. In January 2021, the then-Democrat controlled House of Representatives impeached Trump for “incitement of insurrection” following the January 6 Capitol riot, but the Senate acquitted him, falling short of the two-thirds majority needed for conviction. The Democrat lawyers argue that the majority (57-43) vote in the Senate supports their case for disqualification under the 14th Amendment. They say that any votes cast for Trump should be deemed “not regularly given” due to his alleged disqualification.

“Democrats need to take a stand against Electoral College votes for a person disqualified by the Constitution from holding office unless and until this disability is removed,” the Davis and Schulte wrote. “No less is required by their oath to support and defend the Constitution.” Most legal experts however agree that the notion of Republican lawmakers supporting a move that could elevate Kamala Harris to the presidency is highly improbable and at the moment, Democrats just don’t have the stomach for such a fight. “Republicans and Democrats seem to agree they’ll give Trump the smooth, drama-free transfer of power he denied Democrats in 2020,” Politico reported Thursday, adding “top Democrats say they have no plans to stand in the way of Trump’s victory — and they’re not even sure their rank-and-file colleagues will make the token objections they’ve lodged in years past.”

None of it sounds terribly smart.

• Musk Appears to Soften Pro-Foreign Worker, H-1B Visa Stance (ET)

Tesla billionaire and X owner Elon Musk appeared to soften his stance on H-1B visas on Saturday night after saying he’d “go to war” for the visas, amid an ongoing online spat over immigration and the tech industry. Tensions erupted between wealthy members of the tech world, including Musk and fellow entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy and their call for what they describe as highly skilled workers in their industry by using H-1B visas, and Trump supporters who have long championed more stringent immigration policies to give priority to American workers. On Saturday night, Musk responded to a mega-thread on social media platform X that criticized how H-1B visas are being used. “Easily fixed by raising the minimum salary significantly and adding a yearly cost for maintaining the H-1B, making it materially more expensive to hire from overseas than domestically,” he wrote.

“I’ve been very clear that the program is broken and needs major reform.” Musk was responding to a remark from investor Robert Sterling, who said that: “America needs to be a destination for the world’s most elite talent. But the H-1B program isn’t the way to do that.” The H-1B visa program allows up to 65,000 highly skilled foreign workers annually, plus 20,000 foreigners who obtained an advanced degree from a U.S. institution, to fill specialized roles in the U.S. workforce. Separately, Musk has been accused of censorship from conservatives after multiple prominent accounts that criticized his views on immigration and H-1B visas lost access to premium features. Laura Loomer, a conservative activist and independent journalist who has long backed President-elect Donald Trump, wrote on X in multiple posts over the weekend that the social platform demonetized her account of more than 1.4 million followers.

Her account appears to now lack a verified blue check mark. Loomer said that it was because she posted comments that were critical of Musk and his allies’ views on immigration as well as H-1B visas. “Why are X users who pay for @premium having their posts listed as ‘probable spam’ on my posts @elonmusk?” she wrote late on Saturday. “This is censorship. I understand you don’t like me, but this is nothing but retaliatory censorship?” Last Tuesday, Loomer criticized tech billionaires for descending “upon Palm Beach” as Trump works on his transition team at Mar-a-Lago. Two days later, Musk responded by saying: “Loomer is trolling for attention. Ignore.” Later that week, she said that her account lost access to premium features.

Others who also said their accounts lost premium access include InfoWars host and Jan. 6 defendant Owen Shroyer, New York Young Republican Club president Gavin Wax, and the ConservativePAC, which all have hundreds of thousands of followers apiece. “My verification badge is now under review. Weird! Didn’t change anything,” wrote Wax, who also spoke out against H-1B visas. As of Sunday, however, Wax appears to have had his verification badge restored. “All of our influencers have now lost verification status, as well as our own page,” the Trump-supporting ConservativePAC wrote. “Our brand did nothing. We spoke out against HB1 visas and it appears that @elonmusk intentionally shut us down? Is this the new status quo from America’s ‘most free’ social media platform?” So far, Musk has not publicly responded to the recent accusations of censorship on X. The Epoch Times contacted the platform for comment but received no response as of Sunday.

Musk and Ramaswamy, who were tapped to head the Trump-backed Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), engaged in X infighting over whether immigrants who come to work at U.S. tech companies on H-1B visas or Americans would be better tech workers. Ramaswamy, in particular, drew ire for a lengthy post the day after Christmas that appeared to criticize a caricature of American culture. “A culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math olympiad champ, or the jock over the valedictorian, will not produce the best engineers,” Ramaswamy wrote. “A culture that venerates Cory from ‘Boy Meets World,’ or Zach & Slater over Screech in ‘Saved by the Bell,’ or ‘Stefan’ over Steve Urkel in ‘Family Matters,’ will not produce the best engineers.”

Musk appeared to echo his sentiments, writing in a post that the “number of people who are super talented engineers AND super motivated in the USA is far too low.” A number of pro-Trump accounts took umbrage with Musk’s and Ramaswamy’s comments. On Saturday, meanwhile, Trump weighed in on the controversy and appeared to back Musk and Ramaswamy, telling the New York Post that he supports the H-1B program. “I have many H-1B visas on my properties. I’ve been a believer in H-1B. I have used it many times. It’s a great program,” said Trump, although the president-elect had restricted access to such visas during his first term in office.

“..the odds of a return to centrist predictability appear slimmer by the day.”

• Musk’s Big Bet: Could Germans Kick Out Their Liberal Elites? (Romanenko)

Donald Trump will soon return to the White House, and Elon Musk – the tech billionaire and serial disruptor – regularly weighs in on European politics from across the Atlantic. Meanwhile, in Germany, public dissatisfaction with the political establishment has reached fever pitch. As Europe’s largest economy grapples with inflation, high energy costs, and a general sense that “liberal elites” have grown out of touch, more radical parties on both the right and left are seizing the moment. The Alternative for Germany (AfD) is gaining ground almost daily, wooing voters who feel abandoned by the mainstream, while Sahra Wagenknecht, a controversial leftist, is forming a new party that could siphon off working-class support from traditional parties. With these developments, Germany – once the epitome of stability – now stands on the verge of a political earthquake whose tremors may be felt throughout the European Union.

A major factor behind this upheaval is Germany’s stuttering economy. After decades of relying on relatively cheap Russian gas to fuel its industries and heat its homes, the sudden cut-off has left the country scrambling. Energy bills have skyrocketed, hitting vulnerable households the hardest, and making everyday life more expensive for everyone. Inflation, partially exacerbated by global trends, has eroded purchasing power and confidence in the traditional parties that were expected to safeguard economic prosperity. As factory orders dip and small businesses struggle to stay afloat, voters are growing frustrated – and the AfD has proven adept at channeling that frustration into votes.

But the AfD is not the only beneficiary of this climate of discontent. Wagenknecht, who made her name in the Left Party (Die Linke) before breaking away, is set on pulling disillusioned voters from across the political spectrum. Fiercely critical of deregulated markets and neoliberal orthodoxies, she accuses Germany’s mainstream leaders of abandoning true social justice in favor of what she sees as global corporate interests. For some on the left, who feel the Social Democrats and the Greens have lost touch with working-class realities, her new party offers a tantalizing alternative. By merging left-populist rhetoric with sharp critiques of rising living costs, Wagenknecht might peel away the very voters that kept the center-left afloat for years.

Friedrich Merz, who leads the center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and is often seen as Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s principal rival, faces headwinds from unexpected quarters. Musk’s criticism of Merz has drawn attention to a rift between conventional conservatism and the disruptive style championed by a new generation of influential voices. Worse for Merz, Trump’s return to the presidency in the United States signals that a more populist brand of politics may gain transatlantic support. During his first term, Trump’s ambassador to Germany, Richard Grenell, made headlines by engaging openly with right-leaning German politicians, including members of the AfD. Now, with a second Trump administration, Washington could well encourage a similar or even more robust alignment with populist forces in Berlin.

This newfound enthusiasm for anti-establishment politics also points to a broader pattern across Europe, where trust in traditional parties has been waning. For years, Germany seemed immune to the populist waves that buffeted Italy, France, and other EU states. No longer. Should the AfD continue its ascent – and if Wagenknecht’s party gains real traction – a once-placid two- or three-party system might fracture, making future coalitions messy at best. Already, local and regional elections have hinted at the extent of voter dissatisfaction. On the national stage, that frustration could crystalize into a governing challenge the likes of which Berlin hasn’t seen in decades.

Nor can any of this be separated from Germany’s broader role in Europe. As the bloc’s central economic engine, Germany largely sets the tone for EU policy. A dramatic rightward shift, or even a strong left-populist surge, would ripple through Brussels. Questions of migration, defense policy, and EU fiscal rules might be renegotiated under a less europhile coalition. Countries that share more conservative or nationalist leanings could feel emboldened, while those favoring greater integration or progressive reforms might be sidelined.

In short, Germany’s political shift is a wake-up call to all of Europe: ignoring the grievances of voters on both ends of the spectrum comes at a price. If mainstream elites continue to champion broad liberal agendas without addressing concrete problems – such as ballooning energy bills and the loss of stable employment—more radical alternatives will claim their slice of the political pie. Whether that slice comes from the right, the left, or a combination of both, the result is likely to be a more fragmented, unpredictable Germany. And with Trump soon to be in the White House again and Musk’s disruptive influence seeping into every corner of public discourse, the odds of a return to centrist predictability appear slimmer by the day.

“The Last Spark Of Hope” For Germany..

“The portrayal of the AfD as rightwing extremist is clearly false, considering that Alice Weidel, the party’s leader, has a same-sex partner from Sri Lanka! Does that sound like Hitler to you?”

• Musk Pens Pro-AfD Op-Ed In Major German Paper; Editor Resigns (ZH)

Amid ongoing efforts by the establishment to ban the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party from the upcoming German elections (in the name of democracy?), Billionaire Elon Musk has waded deeper into the politics of this declining nation, in an effort to protect his “significant investments”. A week after he stated on X that “only the AfD can save Germany”, he has penned a supportive op-ed for the country’s Welt am Sonntag newspaper… prompting the resignation of the paper’s editor. The initial six word post on X was enough to prompt much wailing and gnashing of teeth among Europe’s cognoscenti, but this op-ed appears to have ratcheted up the panic to ’11’. First things first, this is not a direct op-ed as one might comprehend it as it’s title clearly highlights: “Why Elon Musk is betting on the AfD – and why he is wrong”.

Welt editor-in-chief Jan Philipp Burgard is careful to remind readers (multiple times) that: “The AfD is in parts xenophobic and anti-Semitic. That is why it is a danger to Germany.” Musk makes short work of the farcical “far-right extremist” accusation: “The portrayal of the AfD as rightwing extremist is clearly false, considering that Alice Weidel, the party’s leader, has a same-sex partner from Sri Lanka! Does that sound like Hitler to you? Please!” AfD co-leader Alice Weidel SLAMS Angela Merkel and the CDU party, says she destroyed Germany in powerful 13-minute speech. The Tesla CEO is undeterred as he covers a variety of topics that Germany needs to address as it near an “economic and cultural collapse,” adding that he has the “right” to address the country’s political climate as he has “made significant investments” in Germany’s technological and industrial sectors.

In the op-ed, Musk argued that Germany’s economy is handicapped by regulatory overreach and bureaucracy. “The AfD has understood that economic freedom is not just desirable, but necessary. Its approach of reducing government over-regulation, cutting taxes and deregulating the market reflects the principles that made Tesla and SpaceX successful,” Musk wrote, according to a rough translation. “If Germany wants to regain its industrial strength, it needs a party that doesn’t just talk about growth, but also takes policy action to create an environment where companies can thrive without heavy government intervention,” he added. While the globalist elites panic over Musk’s six word X statement (and now the op-ed), he points out this is not some marginalized political party:

“The AfD, even though it is described as far-right, represents a political realism that resonates with many Germans who feel that their concerns are ignored by the establishment. It addresses the problems of the moment – without the political correctness that often obscures the truth,” the tech billionaire continued. Musk also said the AfD was “committed to a controlled immigration policy that gives priority to integration and the preservation of German culture and security. This is not about xenophobia, but about ensuring that Germany does not lose its identity in the pursuit of globalization.” Musk concluded that AfD was the “last spark of hope” for the country.

Following the op-ed’s publication, the paper’s opinion section editor, Eva Marie Kogel, announced her resignation on X. “I always enjoyed heading the opinion section of WELT and WAMS. Today an article by Elon Musk appeared in Welt am Sonntag. I handed in my resignation yesterday after it went to print.” Elections in Germany are set for Feb. 23 following the collapse of Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s government. The AfD is now running second in opinion polls with around 19% support, behind the conservative CDU/CSU alliance with more than 30%. However, Germany’s mainstream parties have all ruled out working with AfD at the national level….all of which rings a very loud bell from what we just witnessed in Paris.

“..everybody’s prices are going up. Health insurance is going to become unaffordable for most people.”

• Sugar Juice & Fraud Propped Up Failing Biden Economy – Ed Dowd (USAW)

Former Wall Street money manager and financial analyst Ed Dowd of phinancetechnologies.com is back with more data on how the Biden Administration propped up a failing economy during the 2024 election year. Dowd contends “crisis level spending” was being administered, along with some bigtime “fraud.” Dowd says, “We had 10% deficit to GDP during the Great Financial Crisis (2008 – 2009) when we actually had a crisis. We had 8% deficit to GDP during this election year. You have to ask yourself, what was the crisis?” “The crisis was to get the Biden Administration (and Kamala) re-elected. So, they went on binge spending. They borrowed from the future to try to ensure they won. They did it two ways: They hired massive amounts of government personnel to float the economy, and they also did illegal immigration.

We are thinking it was 10 million to 15 million illegal immigrants that came in the last four years. The majority of the illegal immigrants came in the last two years. That stimulated the economy and raised the velocity of money as those people were given money. All the NGO’s that facilitated the illegal immigration also got money, and that stimulated the economy. This deficit added $2 trillion, and that was unproductive assets. So, we borrowed from the future to create more government jobs and imported unprecedented amounts of illegal immigrants that don’t add to the economy. That’s what we have, and President Trump’s policies are going to reverse all that sugar juice. There are going to be mass deportations and reduced government spending. That short term juice is going away, and it was not sustainable anyway. The bond markets are revolting, and that could not have gone on much longer.”

But it was not just massive money printing and debt creation that hid how bad the real economy was, it was very crooked data. Dowd says, “We also had bureaucratic incompetence or fraud or whatever you want to call it. They were padding the non-farm payroll numbers to the tune of 1.25 million jobs… If you look at the chart, which we don’t have here, it’s insane. It’s one of the biggest misses between reality and estimates we have ever seen. It’s a seven-sigma event. It’s 1.25 million jobs. It’s already started downward revisions… The 3rd quarter GDP of 3% will be revised down, and when we get . . . the data in February, there will be more GDP economic revisions down. . . . The capital markets made bad decisions on this data. The Fed made bad decisions on this data, and corporations made bad decisions on this data. The price tag is coming due in 2025. Not only that, but we have a slowing economy across the globe…

The amount of foreign assets in our stock market has never been higher, and this is all going to reverse. The price will be paid in 2025. . . .What’s coming is coming. It’s how low do we go, and when do the animal spirits kick in? So, there is pain coming, and it’s up to the Trump Administration to get all their policies enacted. Then we have a hope and a prayer coming out the other side that we will be way better off. The bottom line is there is pain coming regardless. The question is how fast can we restart with Trump’s policies?” Dowd likes gold as part of a portfolio, and he is suggesting people get some cash in hand. Dowd says the war in Syria is going to intensify, and you will be hearing much more negative news from that area in 2025.

Dowd, who wrote the popular book “Cause Unknown: The Epidemic of Sudden Deaths in 2021, 2022 and 2023,” says the epidemic caused by the CV19 injections will be with us for the rest of our lives. Dowd released new data that added 800,000 people to the 4 million disabled we already had since the CV19 mRNA vax began. Dowd says, “The other thing that is going on is the increase in cancers. Science is following up . . . There is cancer causing agents in the mRNA vaccines, and we are seeing cancers on the rise. . . . There are new (medical insurance) claims among young workers, especially cancer claims. . . . Insurance rates are going up across the board. The answer to what is going on is to raise prices. They are not differentiating between the vaxed and unvaxed. So, everybody’s prices are going up. Health insurance is going to become unaffordable for most people.”

Paul Craig Roberts

“The disassembly of our civilization has left a barbaric people who would not be able to understand Shakespeare if they were to read him.”

• No Longer Sustained by Education, Western Humanity Is in Death Throes (PCR)

Universities no longer produce educated people, and educated people are ceasing to exist. It is an interesting question, not to be discussed here, whether the disappearance of educated people is cause or result of the rise in barbarity that is engulfing the world. Wherever one looks one sees degeneration. From Bach, Mozart, Beethoven to four-letter rap. Literature has ceased to be written as well as read. Art has become scribbles attesting to meaningless. Both the inclination and ability to read are declining. Fewer people can use their language. University students’ essays are written by insentient AI. People no longer understand the metaphors and allusions used in language, because they have been denied literature. Great literature explores the human condition and prepares people for an aware life. It protects against naïveté. It teaches the richness and usefulness of language, enhances communication skills, essential skills lost to today’s technical training and “customer service” AI.

Communication today is nonverbal, shorthand text messages. The digital revolution, artificial intelligence, and transhumanism are eliminating human communication. Increasingly humans are forced by “customer service” to communicate with an unthinking programmed voice that cannot recognize any question, an answer for which it has not been programmed. Just think how difficult it is to deal with a service provider. What once was a matter of a three minute telephone call answered by the third ring, can now be a multi-hour and even multi-day enterprise. The lack of Internet security means that even if a human is reached, no decision or solution can be made. It has to go up a level as fewer and fewer employees are trusted to make a judgment. The digital revolution has brought an explosion in crime and scams. Florida, for example, has so many that they don’t want you to report another one.

The digital revolution was sold to businesses as a way to drop cost by replacing customer service representatives with AI. But AI is not sentient and cannot deal with anything for which it is not programmed. The main purpose of AI “customer relations” is to make it too expensive in time to correct an incorrect bill. It is cheaper just to pay the overstated one. There are fewer and fewer service companies where you can contact a human with the ability to correct a problem without an investment of hours of time. My favorite is when the Internet is down and you call the service supplier and are told to contact their chat on their website.

Years ago Shakespeare was accused by the Israel Lobby of being anti-semitic. Shakespeare lived during 1564 and 1616. The term anti-semite did not exist and there was no Israel Lobby. This did not prevent Shakespeare from being labeled an anti-semite in the 20th century and removed from high school and university literature courses. Consequently, the most remarkable use of the English language has been denied to students who have been deprived of understanding portions of their own language because of Jewish objections to Shakespeare. Shakespeare’s literature, of course, is not a literature of anti-semitism. But here and there he says a few things about Jews that everyone then believed and many today still do. In literature the same thing happens to every ethnicity, but it is only Jews who complain.

The World Economic Forum, an evil institution to which Western politicians and corporate executives long to belong, has a transhumanist operative who says that AI has made human life unnecessary and inconvenient. The need to dispose of superfluous humans has led to discussions of a legislated lifetime. I predicted many years ago that abortion would lead to enforced euthanasia. Ask yourself whose hand is driving geeks to make humans superfluous. Why is it more important to have AI answer a phone than a human? If humans are to be disposed of, who is to purchase the products of robots? Don’t you think it is extraordinary that the AI advocates have never asked themselves this question? How does it advance humanity to forever find new ways to transfer the human function to a robot? How did it come to be that the main agenda of science is to make humans irrelevant?

Over the course of my life I have watched a dark age gradually engulf the world. Trump says he is going to make America great again, but how is he going to do that when the building materials no longer exist? What is Trump’s definition of great? The disassembly of our civilization has left a barbaric people who would not be able to understand Shakespeare if they were to read him.

“One wonders what people in the West who have either supported Israel’s genocide or remained silent tell themselves to justify their behavior and sleep at night. History will not treat them kindly.“

• The Moral Bankruptcy of the West (John Mearsheimer)

On 19 December 2024, Human Rights Watch issued a 179-page report detailing Israel’s genocide in Gaza. On 5 December 2024, Amnesty International issued a 296-page report detailing Israel’s genocide in Gaza. On 21 November 2024, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for crimes against humanity and war crimes. On 26 January 2024, the International Court of Justice found that a plausible case can be made that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. Given the West’s presumed commitment to human rights and especially to preventing genocide, one would have expected countries like the United States, Britain, and Germany, to have stopped the Israeli genocide in its tracks.

Instead, the governments in those three countries, especially the United States, have supported Israel’s unimaginable behavior in Gaza at every turn. Indeed, those three countries are complicit in this genocide. Moreover, almost all of the many human rights advocates in those countries, and in the West more generally, have stayed silent while Israel executed its genocide. The mainstream media has made hardly any effort to expose and challenge what Israel is doing to the Palestinians. Indeed some key outlets have staunchly supported Israel’s actions. One wonders what people in the West who have either supported Israel’s genocide or remained silent tell themselves to justify their behavior and sleep at night. History will not treat them kindly.

“Mike Johnson, Speaker of the House, is doing an extraordinary job. I tell everybody, I was a pretty effective Speaker. I could never do his job. He has no margins. Any two or three members can rebel at any moment..”

• Most, But Not All, Republicans Lining Up To Support Speaker Of The House (JTN)

Weekend talk shows have featured considerable discussion about the vote in the House on Friday, January 3, for speaker, a position currently held by Rep. Mike Johnson of Louisiana. The potential for chaos is very real. As Republicans face an uncertain and precarious series of critical deadlines, party members are weighing in on what they believe should happen. The key dates in January are the 3rd, the 6th and the 20th. January 3rd is the day Congress reconvenes, at noon ET. At a little after 1 p.m. ET is when the vote to elect the Speaker of the House commences, according to Fox News. No other business can occur until that happens, and the number in the Republican conference is what has Republicans nervous. January 6 is supposed to be the counting of the electoral votes for president. January 20 is supposed to be President-elect Donald Trump’s Inauguration Day.

Neither of those can happen, at least theoretically, until the House chooses a speaker. This is the breakdown when the new Congress starts: 219 Republicans to 215 Democrats. While the number is usually 435, this time it is 434, as Matt Gaetz resigned after winning reelection in November, then being nominated for Attorney General, from which he later withdrew. He then resigned from Congress thinking that would end the House Ethics Committee’s plans to release their report on him, which it didn’t. Two other recently reelected Republicans have been nominated or named by Trump for key posts in his administration, but they remain in the House for now. Those two are Rep. Michael Waltz of Florida, picked as Trump’s national security adviser, and Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York, nominated as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

To become speaker, the candidate “must win an outright majority of all members casting ballots for someone by name.” Needing 218 votes, there is little room for losing members. So far there is only one member who has said he will not be voting for Speaker Johnson, and that is Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky. At least four others have refused to commit to vote for Johnson. If he loses one more, he does not get to the necessary 218 votes. Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich spoke out, praising Johnson for the job he has done in his role as top Republican in the House. “Mike Johnson, Speaker of the House, is doing an extraordinary job. I tell everybody, I was a pretty effective Speaker. I could never do his job. He has no margins. Any two or three members can rebel at any moment,” Gingrich told John Catsimatidis on his show “Cats Roundtable” on WABC 770 AM, according to The Hill.

Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., was on “Sunday Morning Futures” on Fox News. He called on President-elect Trump to call all of the members who have not yet committed to support Johnson and urge them to do so. The party and country could be moving into uncharted water if the vote for speaker drags on. Last time, two years ago, it took 15 rounds of votes over five days to get there, when then-Speaker Kevin McCarthy failed to get a majority. Rep. Mike Lawler, R-N.Y., was on ABC’s “This Week.” When asked by host Jonathan Karl whether Johnson would and should be reelected as Speaker, “Yes, and yes,” he replied. “The fact is that Mike Johnson inherited a disaster.”

The old guard is still there, the people who gave you Biden and Kamala. This will take a long time.

• New Strategy For DNC: Younger Candidates Launching Bids To Run Party (JTN)

Following the Democrats’ 2024 sweeping election loss, younger candidates are stepping up to run for Democratic National Convention leadership positions as the midterm elections approach. Some of the candidates that have thrown their hat in the ring include gun control activist David Hogg, 24, who is running for DNC vice chairman and New York State Sen. James Skoufis, 37, who is running for chairman. “Moving forward, we must have a renewed focus on our youth outreach in all states and territories to rebuild our coalition after the massive shift to the right among young voters this election,” Hogg said in a statement, according to NBC News. Skoufis said last month that the Democratic Party needs to have a “fresh” perspective for the future and getting new voters. “I think I bring a healthy mix of a track record of knowing how to win over the past 12 years but also being that younger, fresher perspective,” he said.

The Democratic National Committee is scheduled to hold its election for chairperson on Feb. 1, 2025. Current DNC Chairman Jamie Harrison, who has had the position since 2021, announced he wouldn’t run again after his party this past election cycle lost the White House and Senate. “The DNC is committed to running a transparent, equitable, and impartial election for the next generation of leadership to guide the party forward,” he said. Others running for DNC chairman include former Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley, DNC vice chair Ken Martin, Ambassador to Japan and former mayor of Chicago, Rahm Emanuel, and Wisconsin Democratic Party Chair Ben Wikler, according to The Hill. New Age author and former presidential candidate Marianne Williamson announced Thursday she’s running to lead the Democratic National Committee, according to CNN.

“This year, the party faces a more critical problem than we have ever faced before,” Williamson wrote on her Substack. “The MAGA phenomenon now challenges the very way that politics are done in America, and the traditional tool kit of party organizing will not be enough to meet the moment.” During the 2024 election, both Vice President Kamala Harris and President-elect Donald Trump made efforts to get younger voters through influencers and podcasts. During the campaign, Trump went on “The Joe Rogan Experience,” comedian Theo Von’s podcast and popular podcaster and scientist Lex Fridman’s podcast, each of which have male-dominated audiences. Rogan’s podcast has 14.5 million listeners and is the most popular podcast in the world.

Harris went on a popular podcast called “Call Her Daddy,” had celebrity endorsements of Beyonce and Oprah Winfrey and had singer Gracie Abrams sing at one of her campaign rallies. The Harris campaign paid Winfrey’s production company more than $1 million to stage the endorsement event, and paid Beyoncé’s production company $165,000 for her appearance. However, with the Democrats’ most recent loss, the party is looking to re-strategize with how to win over voters in the 2026 midterm elections and the 2028 presidential election. Hogg, a who gained fame as a survivor of the Parkland school shooting in Florida, had come out prior to the election and said the Democratic Party had to do a better job about reaching the male demographic.

According to The Trace, he co-founded Leaders We Deserve, a political action committee formed in 2023 that has raised nearly $8.5 million in the past year to elect Gen Z and millennial progressives to state and national office. “I hope I’m wrong but if we lose in November I think the main reason why will be the number of young men of all races that are no longer Democrats,” Hogg wrote on X in a September post. “There’s been a taboo about talking about this because we understandably are hesitant to make men a main point of conversation (given we have been for thousands of years) but we have a real problem to deal with.” “Long-term, we have a lot of work to do to provide positive examples of what actual masculinity looks like that is not defined by putting down women or other people, but by lifting others up and being a true leader,” his post concluded. The Democrats have two years to come up with a winning strategy for 2026 with the midterm elections and less than two months to elect leadership to execute their plan.

“The envoy infamously branded Chancellor Olaf Scholz an “offended liver sausage” over his unwillingness to travel to Kiev personally.”

• Ukraine Could Agree To Non-NATO Security Guarantees – Envoy (RT)

Kiev’s main goal at present is to obtain meaningful security guarantees, which are not necessarily tied to the country’s NATO membership, Ukraine’s newly-appointed ambassador to the UN Andrey Melnik has said. The diplomat made the remarks in an interview published by Germany’s Berliner Morgenpost on Friday. Since the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in February 2022, the leadership in Kiev has consistently named accession to the US-led military bloc as one of its top priorities. Russia has, in turn, singled out the threat of NATO military infrastructure appearing on its Western border as one of the reasons it initiated its special operation against the neighboring nation. “NATO membership remains on the table for Ukraine,” Melnik said. He went on to clarify that “nevertheless, the question of security guarantees as an interim solution is central to us.”

The diplomat stressed that any such arrangements must go beyond mere political pledges akin to the ones given to Kiev under the 1994 Budapest Memorandum. Under the accord, Ukraine gave up its nuclear arsenal in exchange for security guarantees provided by the US, the UK and Russia. The Ukrainian ambassador noted that “our partners must meticulously write down what military assistance they would rush to the rescue to defend Ukraine, should it be attacked by Russia again.” Melnik told the newspaper that both bilateral and multilateral agreements could be considered, as long as they are binding under international law. “These could also be part of a potential large peace treaty with Russia,” the Ukrainian diplomat added.

He also brushed aside predictions that US President-elect Donald Trump could drastically reduce or terminate Washington’s aid to Kiev altogether. Melnik concurred with the Republican, however, that European NATO member states should come to the fore in terms of their own defense and military assistance to Ukraine. The ambassador expressed hope that the leader of Germany’s Christian Democratic Union party, Friedrich Merz, billed by many observers as the future chancellor, would heed Trump’s advice. The Ukrainian diplomat insisted that European NATO member states are affluent enough, and can afford to spend a lot more on defense.

Speaking of Germany, where he served as Ukraine’s ambassador between 2014 and 2022, Melnik expressed indignation at the fact that funds allocated for defense aid to Kiev in the budget of the Federal Republic for next year had been slashed from eight to four billion euros. He also reiterated his country’s demands for German long-range Taurus missiles and expressed hope that Berlin’s new coalition government would “put military aid to Ukraine on a stable basis.” German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier ordered the dissolution of the federal parliament on Friday, following the collapse of the country’s ruling coalition, with a snap election scheduled for February 23. During his time as Ukrainian ambassador to Germany, Melnik repeatedly used undiplomatic language when speaking about the country’s leadership. The envoy infamously branded Chancellor Olaf Scholz an “offended liver sausage” over his unwillingness to travel to Kiev personally.

Speaking of Germany, where he served as Ukraine’s ambassador between 2014 and 2022, Melnik expressed indignation at the fact that funds allocated for defense aid to Kiev in the budget of the Federal Republic for next year had been slashed from eight to four billion euros. He also reiterated his country’s demands for German long-range Taurus missiles and expressed hope that Berlin’s new coalition government would “put military aid to Ukraine on a stable basis.” German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier ordered the dissolution of the federal parliament on Friday, following the collapse of the country’s ruling coalition, with a snap election scheduled for February 23. During his time as Ukrainian ambassador to Germany, Melnik repeatedly used undiplomatic language when speaking about the country’s leadership. The envoy infamously branded Chancellor Olaf Scholz an “offended liver sausage” over his unwillingness to travel to Kiev personally.

“But who cares about Slovakia, right, Mr. Zelenskyy? But when you need something to keep you from freezing in the winter, you scream in frustration..”

• Zelensky Charges Slovakia’s Fico With Opening “Second Energy Front” (ZH)

Slovakia has threatened to cut off electricity to Ukraine if the Russian gas transit route halts at the end of the year, as we detailed earlier. Slovakia is greatly dependent on Russian gas, and Ukraine is not expected to renew a major energy transit contract with Russian state suppliers. With just a few days away from the start of the new year, Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico escalated the standoff by saying he can leverage electricity supplies to Ukraine. “After Jan. 1, we will consider the situation and the possibility of reciprocal measures against Ukraine,” Fico said in a video released Friday. “If it is unavoidable, we will stop the supply of electricity, which Ukraine urgently needs in the event of grid failures,” he said. The war of words and threats is ratcheting by the day. Given that Fico just controversially met with Putin in Moscow, the electricity threat is going to add insult to injury at a moment Russian aerial forces have been pummeling Ukraine’s power grid this past week.

Fico lashed out in the most charged statement directed at Kiev to date: “But who cares about Slovakia, right, Mr. Zelenskyy? But when you need something to keep you from freezing in the winter, you scream in frustration,” Fico said. Zelensky responded Saturday by accusing Slovakia, which is a NATO and EU member state, of opening a “second energy front” against Ukraine on orders from Moscow. “It appears that Putin gave Fico the order to open the second energy front against Ukraine at the expense of the Slovak people’s interests,” Zelensky wrote on X. “Fico’s threats to cut off Ukraine’s emergency power supply this winter while Russia attacks our power plants and energy grid can only be explained by this,” he emphasized. He charged that Putin is “dragging Slovakia into Russia’s attempts to cause more suffering for Ukrainians.”

As Russia’s aerial assaults on Ukraine’s energy grid have grown worse, Ukraine has relied more and more on electricity imports from neighboring and outside countries to survive. Zelensky has indicated the Slovakia accounts for 19% of Ukraine’s power imports, which is a significant portion, and outsized given Slovakia’s small geographic size. Clearly, Fico does have serious leverage at his disposal. “Slovakia is part of the single European energy market and Fico must respect common European rules,” the Ukrainian leader further said Saturday. Fico has long been target of vitriol from Kiev officials, given he has consistently and loudly opposed Ukraine’s entry into NATO, in common with Hungary’s Viktor Orban. “As long as I am the prime minister of the Slovak Republic, as long as I lead the deputies, whom I, as the party chairman, have under political control, I will never agree to Ukraine’s membership in NATO,” Fico declared this past October.

Sure, cut off the gas in the middle of winter…

• EU States Seek To Protect Russian Gas Flow Despite Ukrainian Threat (RT)

Countries in central and southern Europe are exploring solutions to ensure the continued flow of Russian natural gas, as a key transit agreement between Russia and Ukraine is set to expire on December 31, Bloomberg has reported, citing sources. Kiev has refused to extend the agreement, citing ongoing tensions and unresolved disputes with Moscow. Slovakia, Hungary, Austria and Italy are reportedly pursuing alternative strategies to avoid disruptions to their gas supplies. Among the options considered is a commercial agreement that bypasses the need for a renewed intergovernmental deal between Kiev and Moscow, Bloomberg wrote in a report on Saturday. This could involve Slovakia and other Central European countries striking direct contracts with Russian energy giant Gazprom, ensuring uninterrupted gas flows despite Ukraine’s objections.

Slovakia’s state gas utility, SPP, is also in discussions with Azerbaijan’s state-owned oil company SOCAR. According to reports, one potential solution could involve a gas swap between SOCAR and Gazprom, where the Azeri company would purchase equivalent volumes of Russian gas to supply European buyers. Azerbaijan’s gas exports already reach several EU countries through the Southern Gas Corridor, an infrastructure project designed to reduce dependence on Russian gas. The strategy was adopted by the EU following the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in 2022.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has also proposed moving the location of Russian gas sales to the physical border between Russia and Ukraine, which would transfer gas ownership to European buyers and oblige Kiev to ensure transit under its free-trade agreement with the EU, Bloomberg wrote, citing persons familiar with the matter. Last week, Russian President Vladimir Putin acknowledged that various proposals have been discussed, involving Hungary, Slovakia, Türkiye, or Azerbaijan. He noted, however, that any such arrangement would be difficult to enact because of Gazprom’s long-term contracts. Ukraine is punishing Europe by banning the transit of Russian gas, which will become more expensive, the Russian leader argued. Moscow has also insisted that it’s ready to continue supplying natural gas to the EU.

Although only about 5% of the EU’s total gas supply now transits through Ukraine, the route remains vital for landlocked countries in Central and Eastern Europe. Since the start of the Ukraine conflict in 2022, the EU has sought to reduce its reliance on Russian gas, shifting toward alternatives such as liquefied natural gas (LNG) and increased imports from Azerbaijan via the Southern Gas Corridor. Before February 2022, Russia was the bloc’s top gas supplier, accounting for more than 40% of its imports. Last year, Russian gas made up around 8% of EU imports.

EU loses big.

• Georgia’s New President ‘Hardline Critic of the West’ (Sp.)

Mikheil Kavelashvili took his oath on the Bible and the Georgian constitution, swearing to serve the country’s national interests amid a political standoff. On December 29, Mikheil Kavelashvili was sworn in as Georgia’s new president in an inauguration at parliament that was attended by members of the ruling Georgian Dream party and its founder Bidzina Ivanishvili. Who is Georgia’s new president and how does the US meddle in internal affairs of the former Soviet republic? A former Dinamo Tbilisi and Manchester City football player, Kavelashvili was appointed president by the parliament during the December 14 elections, in which 224 out of 225 members of Georgia’s electoral college voted for the only candidate on the ballot.

The 53-year-old is a founder of the People’s Power party, allied with the Georgian Dream and known for being the main voice for anti-Western sentiments in Georgia. The Guardian recently called him “a pro-Russia, hardline critic of the West.” Kavelashvili has repeatedly said that Western intelligence agencies are seeking to drive Georgia into war with Russia. He accused opposition parties of acting as a “fifth column” directed from abroad, slamming outgoing President Salome Zourabichvili as a “chief agent”. The new president accused her of violating the constitution and declared that he would “restore the presidency to its constitutional framework.” The footballer-turned-politician insisted that Georgian society is divided,” and that “radicalization and polarization” in the country are being fueled from abroad. He pledged to do his best to unite the society “around the idea of Georgia’s identity and independence.”

Earlier this week, the US did not think twice before sanctioning Georgian Dream party’s founder Bidzina Ivanishvili for allegedly “undermining the democratic and Euro-Atlantic future of Georgia for the benefit of the Russian Federation,” according to Secretary of State Antony Blinken. In September, the US cited the aforementioned allegations as it slapped sanctions on Zviad Kharazishvili, head of the Department for Special Assignments of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and his deputy Mileri Lagazauri. Georgian Dream spokesman Givi Mikanadze denounced the sanctions as “interference in the pre-election processes and an attempt to influence the will of voters.”

The Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), in turn, said in a statement in July that Moscow has data that indicates Washington’s determination to seek a change of power in Georgia following the results of the parliamentary elections in the small Caucasian nation on October 26, which was finally won by the Georgian Dream. According to the SVR, the US instructors have already given the command to the opposition forces in Georgia to start planning protests in the country timed to coincide with the elections. The October 26 elections saw Georgian Dream obtain 54.2% of the votes, with the four opposition parties together gaining 37.33%. The remaining political forces failed to overcome the 5% ceiling needed to make it to the parliament.

Back at it

pic.twitter.com/qi4KxGzeVP

— Doglover (@puppiesDoglover) December 29, 2024

Husky

This kills me every winter. This husky is looking over like “finally some NORMAL weather. please shut that door, man. you’re bringing the warm air out here” pic.twitter.com/viK12ByWkJ

— Roy Drones Jr (@chiweethedog) December 29, 2024

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Debt Rattle July 22 2019

Jul 222019

July 22, 2019 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 8:56 am Finance Tagged with: Assange, backstop, Boris, Brexit, Hong Kong, Japan, Jimmy Carter, Mueller, Nadler, populism, Puerto Rico, Trump 7 Responses »

Claude Monet Impression, sunrise 1872

• Nadler: Mueller Has Evidence Of Trump High Crimes And Misdemeanours (G.)

• Trump Has Nothing To Fear From Mueller (Hill)

• Boris Johnson’s Brexit Plans Under Threat From Ministers’ Resignations (G.)

• Incoming Prime Minister Poses A Brexit Puzzle For Brussels (G.)

• From Hammond on to Johnson – Where Next For Fiscal Policy? (PE)

• Abe Fails To Get Enough Votes To Change Japan’s Pacifist Constitution (AT)

• Armed Mob Violence On Protesters Leaves Hong Kong In Shock (BBC)

• Puerto Rico’s Week Of Massive Protests, Explained (Vox)

• The Secret Sources of Populism (Bruno Maçães)

• Latest Secret Government File Reveals UK Middle East Policy (TP)

• Kicked Off the Land (New Yorker)

• Losing My Religion For Equality (Jimmy Carter)

Curious to see what that evidence is, and curious to know why iot has remained hidden to date.

• Nadler: Mueller Has Evidence Of Trump High Crimes And Misdemeanours (G.)

The eyes of America will be trained on Capitol Hill on Wednesday, as Robert Mueller testifies before two House committees about his report on Russian election interference, links between the Trump campaign and Moscow and potential obstruction of justice by the president. On Sunday, the chairman of the judiciary committee indicated the stakes when he said the 448-page report contained “very substantial evidence that the president is guilty of high crimes and misdemeanours” – the benchmark for impeachment. “It’s important that we not have a lawless administration and a lawless president,” the New York Democrat Jerrold Nadler told Fox News Sunday.

“And it’s important that people see what we’re doing and what we’re dealing with.” Nadler’s committee would initiate impeachment proceedings. Mueller, a former director of the FBI, will also appear before the intelligence panel. “The report presents very substantial evidence that the president is guilty of high crimes and misdemeanours,” he said, “and we have to present, or let Mueller present those facts to the American people and then see where we go from there because the administration must be held accountable and no president can be above the law.”

Surprise: not everyone agrees with Nadler. Is everybody citing from the same report? Bradley A. Blakeman was a deputy assistant to President George W. Bush from 2001 to 2004.

• Trump Has Nothing To Fear From Mueller (Hill)

The president has nothing to fear from the testimony from Robert Mueller because nothing Mueller could possibly say will change the result of the report he delivered. He conclusively found that there was no collusion with the Russians by the Trump 2016 campaign, and he did not bring any indictments for obstruction of justice against the President or even a referral. What Mueller left open with regard to obstruction — if at all — was conclusively dealt with by the Justice Department through the Attorney General and Deputy Attorney General who found that there was no probable cause to bring criminal charges against the president.

Congress is not bound by the Mueller investigation or its findings. Congress on its own could bring on impeachment proceedings in the House based on the report — if there was evidence contained therein to warrant such actions. Mueller’s testimony will add nothing other than to further politicize an investigation that was supposed to be apolitical. Mueller reminds me of the patient who decides not to be resuscitated only to find that doctors did so against his wishes. At best, Mueller is a reluctant witness and at worst — for Democrats — a hostile witness. He made it clear in his press conference months ago that he would like the report to speak for itself and that he would not go beyond his own reporting. Congress now runs the risk of further being seen as conducting a witch-hunt against the president by calling a witness who clearly has nothing further to add.

Quite a few could walk, starting today, but most on Wednesday, when he takes over.

• Boris Johnson’s Brexit Plans Under Threat From Ministers’ Resignations (G.)

Boris Johnson’s hoped-for triumphant march into Downing Street this week is set to be dampened by a carefully timed series of resignations by senior ministers, who will retreat to the backbenches with a vow to thwart any moves towards a no-deal Brexit. The announcements by Philip Hammond and David Gauke that they will step down on Wednesday, immediately before Johnson is likely to head to Buckingham Palace, highlight the perilous political climate for Theresa May’s expected successor. It comes amid predictions that the Conservatives’ already wafer-thin working Commons majority of three could entirely disappear by the time MPs return from their summer recess, with mooted defections to the Lib Dems coming on top of a predicted byelection defeat.

Barring a hugely unexpected twist, Johnson is expected to be announced on Tuesday as the victor over Jeremy Hunt in the vote of Conservative members, formally taking over the next day, after May holds a valedictory prime minister’s questions. However, some of the gloss will be removed with the promised resignations of Hammond, the chancellor, and Gauke, the justice secretary, with predictions that other ministers and junior ministers opposed to no deal, such as the international development secretary, Rory Stewart, could follow.

Headline is just wrong. The EU has seen Boris coming from miles away. They know he will put the blame with Brussels. They know he wants to ditch the backstop, and they won’t let him. Then Boris will be known as the man who broke the Good Friday Agreement.

• Incoming Prime Minister Poses A Brexit Puzzle For Brussels (G.)

While Westminster has been gripped by the Conservative leadership race, Brussels has been on a Brexit break. That respite will soon be over. And despite rumours of Brussels compromises in the works, the EU has no off-the-shelf Brexit plan for the new prime minister, who is expected to be announced on Tuesday. “It wouldn’t make any sense to start working on this now,” one senior EU source said. “Because we really need to know [what he wants]. The only thing we have seen are his public statements.” EU negotiators have had no contact with the teams of Boris Johnson – the widely presumed winner – or his rival, Jeremy Hunt. Danuta Hübner, a Polish centre-right member of the European parliament’s Brexit steering group, said there was a “worrying” lack of time to find a compromise before Britain’s departure day on 31 October.

She could not imagine the EU putting anything new on the table, but said it remained open to renegotiating the political declaration on future relations. “We cannot change the major red lines on our side, that there is no possibility of renegotiating the agreement, including the backstop.” Johnson and Hunt have vowed to tear up the backstop, the fallback plan to prevent a hard border on the island of Ireland, which both men have voted for at least once. Recent reports have suggested the EU is ready to offer a five-year transition to break the deadlock over the backstop. But three EU sources said this was a rehash of debates from the negotiation period, rather than fresh ideas. “It’s all quite ancient” and “not something that we are considering at all”, an official said.

Ann Pettifor: “Hammond has quietly overseen the dismantling through austerity of a decent society…..”

• From Hammond on to Johnson – Where Next For Fiscal Policy? (PE)

As Mr Johnson takes over as Leader of the Conservative Hard Brexit Cult, and by virtue thereof as Prime Minister, it is timely to take a quick look at what his economic and fiscal policy options are – at least in the lead up to DD-Day (Do or Die) on 31st October. It’s equally important to take stock of Mr Hammond’s record as he quietly fades away after three years as Chancellor of the Exchequer. Johnson proposes tax cuts for corporates (reduction in corporate tax rate, already one of the lowest of major economies), and praises President Trump’s example: “He has been very clever in allowing businesses to offset capital investment in tax, with capital allowances. I think we should think about that sort of thing for start-ups, in addition to cutting corporation tax, which would also be effective.” (Via Tom Newton Dunn, The Sun)

Johnson also promises significant tax cuts for the rich and well-to-do, notably by a big rise in the 40% income tax threshhold to £80,000 and by raising the starting-level of earnings for national insurance contribution (NIC) purposes. On the higher tax threshold, Paul Johnson of the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) says this “costs about £9 billion and benefits the 4 million or so income taxpayers with the highest incomes. Most of the gain goes to those in the top 10% of the income distribution would gain an average of nearly £2,500 a year.” On the NIC issue, he calculates this costs £3 billion for every £1,000 the starting level is raised. All these measures will reduce the immediate tax take for government, probably by £20 to 30 billion per year initially, which is 1-1.5% of GDP.

Messrs Johnson & Hammond, circa 1910

“The provisions, imposed by the United States after World War II, are popular with the public at large, but reviled by nationalists like Abe..”

• Abe Fails To Get Enough Votes To Change Japan’s Pacifist Constitution (AT)

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe claimed victory Sunday for his ruling coalition in the upper house election, but appeared to fail to secure a “super majority” in the chamber in support of his dream to amend the nation’s pacifist constitution. With the results, the 64-year-old Abe, who is on course to become Japan’s longest-serving prime minister, aims to shore up his mandate ahead of a crucial consumption tax hike later this year, along with trade negotiations with Washington. “The ruling parties were given a majority … as people decided to urge us to firmly push for policies under the stable political base,” Abe told public broadcaster NHK.

“I want to meet their expectations soundly,” he said at the headquarters of his Liberal Democratic Party. Abe’s LDP and its coalition partner Komeito are forecast to take at least 69 of the 124 seats – about half the chamber – up for election on Sunday, with six seats still undecided, according to NHK. The two parties control 70 seats in the half of the 245-seat chamber that is not being contested, putting them on track to maintain their overall majority. [..] Local media did predict that forces in favor of revising the constitution, led by Abe’s LDP, were certain to fail to reach 85 of the seats up for grabs, which would have given them a two-thirds “super majority” in the chamber.

Following the vote, however, Abe said he would continue trying to expand support for the revision even if the pro-revision group eventually misses the target, necessary for proposing a constitutional amendment. Abe has pledged to “clearly stipulate the role of the Self-Defence Forces in the constitution,” which prohibits Japan from waging war and maintaining a military. The provisions, imposed by the United States after World War II, are popular with the public at large, but reviled by nationalists like Abe, who see them as outdated and punitive.

Crazy. But Chinese.

• Armed Mob Violence On Protesters Leaves Hong Kong In Shock (BBC)

Hong Kong has been left in shock after a night of violence on Sunday which saw dozens of masked men storm a train station. The men – dressed in white shirts and suspected to be triad gangsters – assaulted pro-democracy protesters and passers-by in the Yuen Long area. This is the first time this kind of violence has been seen in the ongoing anti-extradition demonstrations. Several lawmakers questioned why police were slow to arrive at the scene. Footage posted on social media showed dozens of men attacking people with batons inside the station. Forty-five people were injured, with one person in critical condition.

Lawmaker Lam Cheuk-ting said police had taken more than an hour to arrive. “Hong Kong has one of the world’s highest cop to population ratio,” said another pro-democracy lawmaker Ray Chan in a tweet. “Where were [they?]” Police on Monday said they had not made any arrests but were still carrying out investigations. The mob attack followed a pro-democracy rally on Sunday in the centre of Hong Kong, where riot police had fired tear gas and rubber bullets at protesters. The masked men stormed Yuen Long MTR station at about 22:30 local time (14:30 GMT), attacking passengers and people making their way back from the protest.

“Protesters gave an ultimatum to the Governor after his address. “You have until 11:59pm to leave. If you refuse, we will make this country unmanageable“

• Puerto Rico’s Week Of Massive Protests, Explained (Vox)

Thousands of protesters demonstrated in the streets of San Juan, Puerto Rico Saturday, marking the eighth straight day of rallies calling for the resignation of the island’s governor. The crowds show no sign of ebbing, and analysts say that the protests are quickly becoming the biggest political demonstration in the US territory’s modern history. The protests arose in response to the leak of Telegram app messages in which Gov. Ricardo Rosselló and his inner circle make light of the casualties caused by Hurricane Maria and disparage political opponents using vulgar, homophobic, and sexist language.

The text message leak came days after another scandal: The FBI arrested two former top officials in Rosselló’s government as part of a corruption probe over their handling of $15.5 million in contracts. The officials, former Education Secretary Julia Keleher and Ángela Ávila-Marrero (former chief of Puerto Rico’s Health Insurance Administration), are accused of funneling the contracts to businesses they had personal ties to, regardless of those companies’ relevant experience or ability. The incidents have galvanized a public that feels neglected and exploited by political and economic elites, and one that has endured great suffering in the wake of Hurricane Maria in 2017 and a seemingly unresolvable debt crisis.

Calls for Rosselló’s resignation were growing following the corruption scandal; they exploded after the group chat scandal. Two cabinet officials have resigned in the wake of the scandals, but so far Rosselló has said that he plans to stay in office. Pressure on the governor is rising, however. The protests have garnered international attention, and a number of Puerto Rican celebrities like singer Ricky Martin (who was mocked in the leaked texts), Hamilton creator Lin-Manuel Miranda, and reggaeton star Bad Bunny have backed the demonstrations. “They mocked our dead, they mocked women, they mocked the LGBT community, they made fun of people with physical and mental disabilities, they made fun of obesity. It’s enough. This cannot be,” Martin said in a video on Twitter.

Many politicians from the US mainland have started to weigh in on the issue as well. President Donald Trump — who has called Puerto Rican officials “incompetent or corrupt” and who has opposed increased Hurricane Maria aid to the territory — was critical of Rosselló on Twitter. “The Governor is under siege, the Mayor of San Juan is a despicable and incompetent person who I wouldn’t trust under any circumstance, and the United States Congress foolishly gave 92 Billion Dollars for hurricane relief, much of which was squandered away or wasted, never to be seen again,” Trump tweeted on Thursday.

Populism as a result of decaying power.

“As European affairs minister in Portugal, I had quickly become used to thinking of Poland as the EU’s fourth power, ahead of Spain and Italy”

• The Secret Sources of Populism (Bruno Maçães)

Populism is a direct result of significant shifts in the global distribution of power. Namely, it is a reaction to the loss of power by a formerly hegemonic West. The populist parties competing for power in many European countries are reminiscent of the nationalist movements of the 1800s and 1900s in developing countries, which won support from people tired of feeling dependent on Europe and the United States. In particular, they sensed that their ancient civilizations had come to abandon their way of life for Western ideas. They lamented that their countries had been so deeply Westernized that only the sense of emptiness remained. “Our country resembles a hospital,” the Turkish writer Kazim Nami wrote in Turkish Country, a journal published between 1911 and 1931, “deprived of medicine, doctors and care.”

In Russia, a Europeanized aristocracy existed in an entirely different world from the peasantry. They spoke French, listened to different music and songs, ate different food, and had a radically different view of religion and the ends of life. It was as two countries rather than as two classes that they looked at each other, plotting a final and decisive struggle over Russia’s soul. Even in France, England, Germany, and the United States, a creeping sense of alienation was slowly developing between the classes, but it was of a different sort. Because these were the world’s ruling nations, elites assumed the responsibility of managing the affairs of foreign countries. Their outlook was more universal in character, although rooted in colonialism, and that created an inevitable distance with their compatriots.

Of course, as long as Western hegemony persisted, the spoils of empire flowed to the lower classes and reconciled them with those in power. But as the balance of power shifted, cosmopolitan elites appeared in a different light. It was implausible for them to dictate to the rest of the world from a position of growing weakness, and some had learned too well to incorporate the interests of the rest of humanity when formulating their positions. Today, many voters in Europe and the United States are starting to regard the elites as profoundly disconnected from what they see as the national interest. Distrust and alienation will keep growing.

Divide and rule. Long read. Here’s one of its stories.

• Latest Secret Government File Reveals UK Middle East Policy (TP)

In April 1941, nationalist army officers known as the Golden Square staged a coup in Iraq, overthrowing the pro-British regime, and signalled they were prepared to work with German and Italian intelligence. In response, the British embarked on a military campaign and eventually crushed the coup leaders two months later. But Suarez discovered in the files that the British were already wanting such a “military occupation of Iraq” by November 1940 – well before the Golden Square coup gave them a pretext for doing so. The reason was that Britain wanted to end “the mufti’s intrigues with the Italians”. One file notes: “We may be able to clip the mufti’s wings when we can get a new government in Iraq. FO [Foreign Office] are working on this.”

Suarez notes that a prominent thread in the British archive is: “How to effect a British coup without further alienating ‘the Arab world’ in the midst of the war, beyond what the empowering of Zionism had already done.” As British troops closed in on Baghdad, a violent anti-Jewish pogrom rocked the city, killing more than 180 Jewish Iraqis and destroying the homes of hundreds of members of the Jewish community who had lived in Iraq for centuries. The Farhud (violent dispossession) has been described as the Iraqi Jews’ Kristallnacht, the brutal pogrom against Jews carried out in Nazi Germany three years earlier.

There have long been claims that these riots were condoned or even orchestrated by the British to blacken the nationalist regime and justify Britain’s return to power in Baghdad and ongoing military occupation of Iraq. Historian Tony Rocca noted: “To Britain’s shame, the army was stood down. Sir Kinahan Cornwallis, Britain’s ambassador in Baghdad, for reasons of his own, held our forces at bay in direct insubordination to express orders from Winston Churchill that they should take the city and secure its safety. Instead, Sir Kinahan went back to his residence, had a candlelight dinner and played a game of bridge.” Could this be the reason that UK government censors want the file to remain secret after all these years? It would neither be the first, nor the last time that British planners used or created pretexts to justify their military interventions.

“Between 1910 and 1997, African-Americans lost about ninety per cent of their farmland. This problem is a major contributor to America’s racial wealth gap; the median wealth among black families is about a tenth that of white families.”

• Kicked Off the Land (New Yorker)

In the spring of 2011, the brothers Melvin Davis and Licurtis Reels were the talk of Carteret County, on the central coast of North Carolina. Some people said that the brothers were righteous; others thought that they had lost their minds. That March, Melvin and Licurtis stood in court and refused to leave the land that they had lived on all their lives, a portion of which had, without their knowledge or consent, been sold to developers years before. The brothers were among dozens of Reels family members who considered the land theirs, but Melvin and Licurtis had a particular stake in it. Melvin, who was sixty-four, with loose black curls combed into a ponytail, ran a club there and lived in an apartment above it. He’d established a career shrimping in the river that bordered the land, and his sense of self was tied to the water. Licurtis, who was fifty-three, had spent years building a house near the river’s edge, just steps from his mother’s.

Their great-grandfather had bought the land a hundred years earlier, when he was a generation removed from slavery. The property—sixty-five marshy acres that ran along Silver Dollar Road, from the woods to the river’s sandy shore—was racked by storms. Some called it the bottom, or the end of the world. Melvin and Licurtis’s grandfather Mitchell Reels was a deacon; he farmed watermelons, beets, and peas, and raised chickens and hogs. Churches held tent revivals on the waterfront, and kids played in the river, a prime spot for catching red-tailed shrimp and crabs bigger than shoes. During the later years of racial-segregation laws, the land was home to the only beach in the county that welcomed black families. “It’s our own little black country club,” Melvin and Licurtis’s sister Mamie liked to say.

In 1970, when Mitchell died, he had one final wish. “Whatever you do,” he told his family on the night that he passed away, “don’t let the white man have the land.” Mitchell didn’t trust the courts, so he didn’t leave a will. Instead, he let the land become heirs’ property, a form of ownership in which descendants inherit an interest, like holding stock in a company. The practice began during Reconstruction, when many African-Americans didn’t have access to the legal system, and it continued through the Jim Crow era, when black communities were suspicious of white Southern courts. In the United States today, seventy-six per cent of African-Americans do not have a will, more than twice the percentage of white Americans.

Many assume that not having a will keeps land in the family. In reality, it jeopardizes ownership. David Dietrich, a former co-chair of the American Bar Association’s Property Preservation Task Force, has called heirs’ property “the worst problem you never heard of.” The U.S. Department of Agriculture has recognized it as “the leading cause of Black involuntary land loss.” Heirs’ property is estimated to make up more than a third of Southern black-owned land—3.5 million acres, worth more than twenty-eight billion dollars. These landowners are vulnerable to laws and loopholes that allow speculators and developers to acquire their property. Black families watch as their land is auctioned on courthouse steps or forced into a sale against their will.

Carter leaves the Southern Baptist Convention after 60 years.

• Losing My Religion For Equality (Jimmy Carter)

I have been a practising Christian all my life and a deacon and Bible teacher for many years. My faith is a source of strength and comfort to me, as religious beliefs are to hundreds of millions of people around the world. So my decision to sever my ties with the Southern Baptist Convention, after six decades, was painful and difficult. It was, however, an unavoidable decision when the convention’s leaders, quoting a few carefully selected Bible verses and claiming that Eve was created second to Adam and was responsible for original sin, ordained that women must be “subservient” to their husbands and prohibited from serving as deacons, pastors or chaplains in the military service.

This view that women are somehow inferior to men is not restricted to one religion or belief. Women are prevented from playing a full and equal role in many faiths. Nor, tragically, does its influence stop at the walls of the church, mosque, synagogue or temple. This discrimination, unjustifiably attributed to a Higher Authority, has provided a reason or excuse for the deprivation of women’s equal rights across the world for centuries. At its most repugnant, the belief that women must be subjugated to the wishes of men excuses slavery, violence, forced prostitution, genital mutilation and national laws that omit rape as a crime. But it also costs many millions of girls and women control over their own bodies and lives, and continues to deny them fair access to education, health, employment and influence within their own communities.

The impact of these religious beliefs touches every aspect of our lives. They help explain why in many countries boys are educated before girls; why girls are told when and whom they must marry; and why many face enormous and unacceptable risks in pregnancy and childbirth because their basic health needs are not met.

Debt Rattle April 20 2019

Apr 202019

April 20, 2019 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 9:59 am Finance Tagged with: Arctic ice, Assange, bees, blue ocean, Brexit, Butina, ecosystems, Extinction Rebellion, impeachment, Jimmy Carter, Warren 8 Responses »

Tintoretto The crucifixion of Christ 1568

• UK Home Secretary: “Full Force Of The Law” Against Extinction Rebellion (G.)

• Warren 1st Democratic Presidential Candidate To Call For Impeachment (CBS)

• Admitted Russian Agent Butina Asks US Court To Be Lenient (R.)

• Debunking All The Assange Smears (CJ)

• An Empire of Bullshit (Jim Kunstler)

• China Has Not Wasted A Single Penny On War (NW)

• Juncker: There Is Still A Risk Of A Car Crash Brexit Despite Delay (R.)

• 60 Doctors, Other Medical Workers Charged In Federal Opioid Sting (NPR)

• Protecting Marine Life Could Be Key In Fighting Climate Change (DM)

• The Blue Ocean Event and Collapsing Ecosystems (Hunziker)

• A Climate Reckoning Is Coming To Our Political Hothouse (SMH)

• Hundreds Of Thousands Of Bees Survive Notre Dame Fire (G.)

• Wild Bee Species Collapse By As Much As 90% In New England (AP)

Yeah, that’s surely the best answer. Ask the French if you can borrow some rubber bullets.

And I kid you not, this 100% doofus dreams of being the next PM.

His problem here is the police say they can’t do much, because the protest are strictly peaceful. And because people just sit or lie down in strategic spots, it takes 4 cops to remove 1 protester.

• UK Home Secretary: “Full Force Of The Law” Against Extinction Rebellion (G.)

Sajid Javid has called on police to use the “full force of the law” against Extinction Rebellion protesters causing disruption in London to draw attention to the issue of climate change. The home secretary, who is positioning himself for a run at the Conservative party leadership, made a series of tweets condemning “any protesters who are stepping outside the boundaries of the law”. He called on the police to “take a firm stance” against protesters who were “significantly disrupting the lives of others”. “Over recent days, commuters trying to earn a living have been unable to travel to work and businesses have been disrupted,” he said, following a meeting with Met police chiefs.

“Emergency vehicles have faced difficulties navigating the road networks and the demonstrations have put added pressure on police officers whose job it is to solve crimes and protect the public. “Let me be clear: I totally condemn any protesters who are stepping outside the boundaries of the law. They have no right to cause misery for the millions of people who are trying to lead their daily lives. Unlawful behaviour will not be tolerated.” Hundreds have been arrested and more than 1,000 officers deployed to police the protests, which entered their fourth day on Thursday. Scotland Yard took the rare step of releasing a detailed statement setting out the difficulties they have faced keeping control of the protests, while avoiding infringing on the activists’ rights to demonstrate.

It’s hard not to ask what exactly “would inflict great and lasting damage on this country”. My guess would be they shy away from this.

• Warren 1st Democratic Presidential Candidate To Call For Impeachment (CBS)

Elizabeth Warren became the first Democratic presidential candidate to call for Congress to begin impeachment proceedings against President Trump Friday afternoon, citing the “severity” of “misconduct” detailed in the report by Special Counsel Robert Mueller. “The severity of this misconduct demands that elected officials in both parties set aside political considerations and do their constitutional duty. That means the House should initiate impeachment proceedings against the President of the United States,” the Massachusetts senator wrote on Twitter. In an earlier tweet, Warren said that the report proved that Russia had interfered in the 2016 election with the goal of helping Mr. Trump, and showed that the president “obstructed the investigation into that attack.”

Mueller did not come to a conclusion as to whether Mr. Trump obstructed justice. Warren cited a segment of the report where Mueller wrote that “Congress has authority to prohibit a President’s corrupt use of his authority in order to protect the integrity of the administration of justice.” “To ignore a President’s repeated efforts to obstruct an investigation into his own disloyal behavior would inflict great and lasting damage on this country, and it would suggest that both the current and future Presidents would be free to abuse their power in similar ways,” Warren wrote on Twitter. [..] Other Democrats in Congress, as well as the party’s 2020 candidates, have avoided saying whether they believe Mr. Trump should be impeached. Many have instead called on Mueller to testify before Congress, and for the release of the full, un-redacted report.

She’s been in solitary confinement (classified as torture) and ‘confessed’ to infiltrating both the GOP and the NRA at the ripe old age of 22-23.

Butina is being used as a propaganda tool. Like Assange.

• Admitted Russian Agent Butina Asks US Court To Be Lenient (R.)

Maria Butina, who has admitted to working as a Russian agent to infiltrate an influential U.S. gun rights group and make inroads with conservative activists and Republicans, asked the court to sentence her to time served ahead of her April 26 sentencing, according to court documents. Butina, 30, a former graduate student at American University who publicly advocated for gun rights, pleaded guilty in December to one count of conspiring to act as a foreign agent for Russia. She has remained in custody since her arrest in July 2018. “Although Maria has committed a serious offense, just punishment does not require additional incarceration,” her attorneys argue in a sentencing memo filed on Friday.

Butina, a Russian citizen, expects to be sent back to her native country after being released from jail, her attorney said. “She has been separated from her family, in a foreign country, for over nine months. She has languished for three of those months in administrative segregation – solitary confinement by another name — where she was enclosed in a small cell for 22 hours a day,” the filing states. Butina has admitted to conspiring with a Russian official and two Americans from 2015 until her arrest to infiltrate the National Rifle Association and create unofficial lines of communication to try to make Washington’s policy toward Moscow more friendly. The NRA is closely aligned with U.S. conservatives and Republican politicians including President Donald Trump.

U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan in February delayed sentencing at the request of prosecutors, who said Butina was cooperating in their ongoing investigation. Butina’s attorney, Robert Driscoll, said at the time his client was ready for sentencing. Russia in December accused the United States of forcing Butina to falsely confess to what it described as the “absolutely ridiculous charges” of her being a Russian agent.

Caitlin wrote an entire book. It’s crazy that this would be necessary. But how likely is it that those who believe the smears will read all of this?

• Debunking All The Assange Smears (CJ)

Here’s a numbered list of each subject I’ll be covering in this article for ease of reference:

0. How to argue against Assange smears.

“He’s not a journalist.”

“He’s a rapist.”

“He was hiding from rape charges in the embassy.”

“He’s a Russian agent.”

“He’s being prosecuted for hacking crimes, not journalism.”

“He should just go to America and face the music. If he’s innocent he’s got nothing to fear.”

“Well he jumped bail! Of course the UK had to arrest him.”

“He’s a narcissist/megalomaniac/jerk.”

“He’s a horrible awful monster for reasons X, Y and Z… but I don’t think he should be extradited.”

“Trump is going to rescue him and they’ll work together to end the Deep State. Relax and wait and see.”

“He put poop on the walls. Poop poop poopie.”

“He’s stinky.”

“He was a bad houseguest.”

“He conspired with Don Jr.”

“He only publishes leaks about America.”

“He’s an antisemite.”

“He’s a fascist.”

“He was a Trump supporter.”

“I used to like him until he ruined the 2016 election” / “I used to hate him until he saved the 2016 election.”

“He’s got blood on his hands.”

“He published the details of millions of Turkish women voters.”

“He supported right-wing political parties in Australia.”

“He endangered the lives of gay Saudis.”

“He’s a CIA agent/limited hangout.”

“He mistreated his cat.”

“He’s a pedophile.”

“He lied about Seth Rich.”

Wow! That’s a lot! Looking at that list you can only see two possibilities:

Julian Assange, who published many inconvenient facts about the powerful and provoked the wrath of opaque and unaccountable government agencies, is literally the worst person in the whole entire world, OR

Julian Assange, who published many inconvenient facts about the powerful and provoked the wrath of opaque and unaccountable government agencies, is the target of a massive, deliberate disinformation campaign designed to kill the public’s trust in him.

“Mr. Mueller himself, even in his majestic granitic silence, will be liable for failing to inform his boss, the Attorney General, that the predicate document for his witch hunt was known to be a fraud back in 2016..”

• An Empire of Bullshit (Jim Kunstler)

The Special Prosecutor’s main bit of mischief, of course, was his refusal to reach a conclusion on the obstruction of justice charge. What the media refuses to accept and make clear is that a prosecutor’s failure to reach a conclusion is exactly the same thing as an inability to make a case, and it was a breach of Mr. Mueller’s duty to dishonestly present that failure as anything but that in his report — and possibly an act of criminal prosecutorial misconduct. Like any tantrum, the media’s frenzy will run out of steam (and credibility) and now they will be whipped like dogs for betraying their public trust. There is a counter-narrative to the “Resistance” narrative, and it is a true crime story.

That suppressed story is finally going to roll out in the implacable workings of actual (not fake) justice and it is going to crush a lot of people who concocted this epic political hoax, including some members of the press who knowingly and dishonestly abetted it. Many criminal referrals have already been made on the likes of James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, and Bruce Ohr, and a big net has been cast to pull in the figures who have been hiding in the thickets lo these two-and-a-half-years of smoke and gaslight: Loretta Lynch, Sally Yates, John Brennan, James Clapper, Nellie Ohr, Samantha Power, Bill Priestap, Jim Rybicki, James Baker, Mike Kortan, John Carlin, Mary McCord, Josh Campbell and more.

Some of these are going to jail and some have already flipped. The fetchings should reach the Obama White House. Mr. Mueller himself, even in his majestic granitic silence, will be liable for failing to inform his boss, the Attorney General, that the predicate document for his witch hunt was known to be a fraud back in 2016, and was used anyway to spy on a presidential candidate. Let congress put on a carnival of its own now. It will be greeted like a TV commercial for a hemorrhoid remedy while the real national psychodrama plays out in grand juries and courtrooms, demonstrating what a grievous injury was done to this republic by its own vested authorities.

We can never have enough Jimmy Carter, America’s greatest statesman of the 20th century and another 19 years of the 21st.

• China Has Not Wasted A Single Penny On War (NW)

Former President Jimmy Carter told a church congregation this weekend that he had spoken with President Donald Trump about China on Saturday, and said the commander in chief was worried that Beijing had outpaced its global rivals. According to Emma Hurt, a reporter for NPR affiliate WABE, Carter spoke of the call during his regular Sunday School lesson at Maranatha Baptist Church in his hometown of Plains, Georgia. Carter, 94, said Trump was worried that “China is getting ahead of us,” and suggested the president was right to be concerned. He told the congregation that Trump feared China’s growing economic strength. Economic modeling indicated that China would overtake the U.S. as the world’s strongest economy by 2030, and many experts have said that we were already living in what has been dubbed the “Chinese Century.”

Carter said he did not “really fear that time, but it bothers President Trump and I don’t know why. I’m not criticizing him this morning,” he added, to laughs from fellow churchgoers. Carter—who normalized diplomatic relations between Washington and Beijing in 1979—suggested that China’s breakneck growth had been facilitated by sensible investment and buoyed by peace. “Since 1979, do you know how many times China has been at war with anybody?” Carter asked. “None. And we have stayed at war.” The U.S., he noted, has only enjoyed 16 years of peace in its 242-year history, making the country “the most warlike nation in the history of the world,” Carter said. This is, he said, because of America’s tendency to force other nations to “adopt our American principles.”

See? Car Crash Brexit sounds much better than No-Deal Brexit.

• Juncker: There Is Still A Risk Of A Car Crash Brexit Despite Delay (R.)

There is a still a concern that Britain may leave the European Union without a deal to smooth the way, the bloc’s chief executive said on Saturday, urging Britain to take advantage of a six-month delay to work out the details of its departure. European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker made the comments in an interview with German newspaper FUNKE Mediengruppe, a week after EU leaders gave Britain six months more to exit the EU. “Nobody knows how Brexit will end. This is creating great uncertainty. There is still a fear that there will be a hard Brexit without any withdrawal treaty arrangements,” Juncker said, citing the long-term negative impact on Europe’s economy.

Even though the extension to Oct. 31 offers little clarity on when, how or even if Brexit will happen, Britain should use the time wisely, he said. “I hope that the British will make use of this time and not waste it again. We cannot keep on putting off the withdrawal date indefinitely. The best solution would be for the British to adopt the Withdrawal Agreement during the extra time that has been agreed,” Juncker said. The withdrawal deal negotiated by Prime Minister Theresa May with the EU has been rejected three times by the British parliament. Juncker, who is scheduled to meet U.S. President Donald Trump at the G20 meeting in Osaka in June, predicted a “lively discussion” ahead. “The last discussion lasted 6 hours and it is good that you were not there,” Juncker said, referring to raised voices at his last talks with Trump.

“The cases involve more than 350,000 prescriptions for controlled substances and more than 32 million pills..”

• 60 Doctors, Other Medical Workers Charged In Federal Opioid Sting (NPR)

Federal prosecutors are charging 60 doctors, pharmacists, medical professionals and others in connection with alleged opioid pushing and health care fraud, the Justice Department said Wednesday. The charges came less than four months after the Justice Department dispatched experienced fraud prosecutors across hard-hit regions in Appalachia. The cases involve more than 350,000 prescriptions for controlled substances and more than 32 million pills — the equivalent of a dose of opioids for “every man, woman and child,” across Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama and West Virginia, said Assistant Attorney General Brian Benczkowski.

“You can rest assured, when medical professionals behave like drug dealers, the Department of Justice is going to treat them like drug dealers,” added Benczkowski, who runs the DOJ’s criminal division. Those charged include 31 doctors, seven pharmacists, eight nurse practitioners and seven other licensed medical professionals, the Justice Department said. The idea for the department’s Appalachian Regional Prescription Opioid Strike Force was formed last autumn to assist areas suffering from high numbers of opioid overdoses and deaths. Justice Department leaders ultimately approved sending 14 health care fraud prosecutors to several different federal districts to help build cases. They started in January, sifting through data analysis to find the biggest outliers.

At some point we may figure out that all pieces of the system are interconnected. Probably when it’s too late and the sytem has fallen apart.

• Protecting Marine Life Could Be Key In Fighting Climate Change (DM)

As the prospect of catastrophic effects from climate change becomes increasingly likely, a search is on for innovative ways to reduce the risks. One potentially powerful and low-cost strategy is to recognize and protect natural carbon sinks – places and processes that store carbon, keeping it out of Earth’s atmosphere. Forests and wetlands can capture and store large quantities of carbon. These ecosystems are included in climate change adaptation and mitigation strategies that 28 countries have pledged to adopt to fulfill the Paris Climate Agreement. So far, however, no such policy has been created to protect carbon storage in the ocean, which is Earth’s largest carbon sink and a central element of our planet’s climate cycle.

[..]Marine animals can sequester carbon through a range of natural processes that include storing carbon in their bodies, excreting carbon-rich waste products that sink into the deep sea, and fertilizing or protecting marine plants. In particular, scientists are beginning to recognize that vertebrates, such as fish, seabirds and marine mammals, have the potential to help lock away carbon from the atmosphere.

Scientists have identified nine mechanisms through which marine vertebrates play roles in the oceanic carbon cycle

Blue ocean in the Arctic is not good.

• The Blue Ocean Event and Collapsing Ecosystems (Hunziker)

Sometime in the near future it is highly probable that the Arctic will no longer have sea ice, meaning zero ice for the first time in eons, aka: the Blue Ocean Event. Surely, the world is not prepared for the consequences of such an historic event, which likely turns the world topsy-turvy, negatively impacting agriculture with gonzo weather patterns, thus forcing people to either starve or fight. But, the problem may be even bigger than shortages of food, as shall be discussed. Still and all, it’s somewhat consoling to know that the Blue Ocean Event is quite controversial within the scientific community. There are climate scientists that believe Arctic ice will be there beyond this century. One can only hope they are right because an ice-free Arctic will indubitably create havoc for life on the planet.

However, disturbingly, the prospects for enduring sea ice don’t look good. [..] Over the past 40 years the loss of Arctic sea ice has rapidly progressed, e.g., from 1976-87 Arctic sea ice thickness decreased by 15%… during the 1990s, thickness decreased by 43% … and today 75% of the sea ice is gone… resulting in an impairment of sea ice albedo, which reflects solar radiation back into outer space by 80-90% with sea ice, but conversely, without sea ice, it absorbs 80-90% of solar radiation into the dark background of iceless water where crucial untold dangers lurk.

Two problems: climate and ISIL. Reaction to the first: we’re powerless. The second: let’s spend billions on weapons.

• A Climate Reckoning Is Coming To Our Political Hothouse (SMH)

When Tony Abbott was prime minister, he ordered more Australian strike aircraft and troops into Iraq. Not because Australia was big enough to turn the tide of battle against the barbarians of Daesh, so-called Islamic State or ISIL. But because he believed in the fight. m”It’s absolutely vital that the world sees and sees quickly that the ISIL death cult can be beaten,” he said in 2014. Australia’s commitment ultimately made up less than 1 per cent of the combined effort against the terrorist thugs but it was early and firm. Abbott described it as “an important global concern” and he was right. And, with more than 60 countries co-operating, it was a success. When it came to another important global concern, Abbott argued a very different case.

He and like-minded Coalition conservatives have long maintained that Australian action against climate change was futile: “Even if carbon dioxide, a naturally occurring trace gas that’s necessary for life, really is the main climate change villain, Australia’s contribution to mankind’s emissions is scarcely more than 1 per cent,” Abbott said last year. On terrorism, Abbott argued for Australian leadership. On climate change, he argued for wilful helplessness. Australia is a 1 per cent contributor in both cases. In one case, it used its 1 per cent to show leadership and effective action. On the other, it used its 1 per cent as an excuse for inaction. The defining difference, of course, is will. Specifically, political will. Australia is at another decision point on climate change as it heads to the May 18 election.

It’s a miracle!

• Hundreds Of Thousands Of Bees Survive Notre Dame Fire (G.)

Following the tragedy of Monday’s fire at the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, news came on Friday of a miracle as sweet as honey. The hundreds of thousands of bees that lived in hives inside Notre Dame’s roof are alive and well, according to the beekeeper, or apiculteur, that oversees them. “Thank goodness the flames didn’t touch them,” Nicolas Géant, the hives’ 51-year-old beekeeper, told CNN. “It’s a miracle.” Three hives that are home to an estimated 60,000 bees each – 180,000 bees in total – are located on a lower roof atop the cathedral’s first floor.

The flames of Monday’s fire – which investigators say was probably caused by an electrical short circuit – took down the cathedral’s spire and a large portion of its roof. For a few days after the fire, Géant was worried about his beloved bees, and the French police and firefighters wouldn’t let him go up on the roof to check on them. Hopes that the bees survived rested on aerial photos of the cathedral’s roof, which showed the hives still intact. “You see that everything is burnt, there are holes in the roof, but you can still see the three beehives,” Géant told NBC News on Wednesday.

Maybe those Paris bees can move to New Hampshire.

• Wild Bee Species Collapse By As Much As 90% In New England (AP)

More than a dozen wild bee species critical to pollinating everything from blueberries to apples in New England are on the decline, according to a new study. Researchers from the University of New Hampshire wanted to understand if the documented declines hitting honeybees and bumblebees were also taking a toll on the lesser studied bee species in New Hampshire. So they examined 119 species in the state from a museum collection at the college dating back 125 years. Writing in the peer-reviewed journal Insect and Conservation Diversity this month, Sandra Rehan and Minna Mathiasson concluded 14 species found across New England were on the decline by as much as 90 percent. Several of them are leafcutter and mining bees, which, unlike honeybees, nest in the ground.

“We know that wild bees are greatly at risk and not doing well worldwide,” Rehan, assistant professor of biological sciences and the senior author on the study, said in a prepared statement. “This status assessment of wild bees shines a light on the exact species in decline, beside the well-documented bumble bees. Because these species are major players in crop pollination, it raises concerns about compromising the production of key crops and the food supply in general.” The study noticed that half of those wild bees on the decline were located in higher elevation regions like the White Mountains than in the state’s coastal areas. The study said as the wild bees shift northward, some of the species don’t have the same kind of flowers and plants to pollinate.

“They have nowhere else to go,” Rehan said. “That is the biggest concern.” Rehan warned as wild bee populations collapse so will crop yields, which could produce food shortages across the country. She says wild bees are facing similar threats that have also caused honeybee populations to plunge – including the overuse of pesticides and herbicides, a lack of seasonal wild plant diversity and volatile weather.

Debt Rattle August 19 2018

Aug 192018

August 19, 2018 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 8:36 am Finance Tagged with: Brexit, coup, dollar, Ecuador, Erdogan, FBI, Jimmy Carter, liquidity, Mueller, Putin, Steele, Syria, Trump 3 Responses »

Pablo Picasso Portrait of Ambroise Vollard 1910

• Anatomy of a Crisis: A Strong Dollar and Disappearing Liquidity (Palisade)

• Speculators Will Make Hay From Great Australian Economic Crash (Steve Keen)

• Judge Rules FBI Must Address Measures Taken To Verify Steele Dossier (ZH)

• White House Counsel “Cooperating Extensively” With Obstruction Probe (ZH)

• Erdogan Says US Has Launched ‘Attempted Economic Coup’ (Ind.)

• No-Deal Brexit May Force Rethink Of Vote – Ex-Civil Service Head (PA)

• Putin Urges Europe To Help Rebuild Syria So Refugees Can Return (AFP)

• Ecuador Slams Door On Venezuelans (BBC)

• The Un-Celebrity President (WaPo)

• Britain Has One Last Chance To Save Endangered Species (G.)

When liquidity vanishes the dollar rises.

• Anatomy of a Crisis: A Strong Dollar and Disappearing Liquidity (Palisade)

Since March – the dollar’s rallied over 7%. And it’s caused the Emerging Markets to implode. But the bigger problem is what lies ahead. And that’s a global dollar shortage – which the mainstream continues to ignore. . . I’ve touched on this a couple months back. Wondering when the mainstream would start to realize that the stronger the dollar gets – the more pressure global economies will feel. I wrote. . . “This is going to cause an evaporation of dollar liquidity – making the markets extremely fragile. Putting it simply – the soaring U.S. deficit requires an even greater amount dollars from foreigners to fund the U.S. Treasury. But if the Fed is shrinking their balance sheet, that means the bonds they’re selling to banks are sucking dollars out of the economy (the reverse of Quantitative Easing which was injecting dollars into the economy). This is creating a shortage of U.S. dollars – the world’s reserve currency – therefore affecting every global economy.”

Since then, things have only gotten worse. . . First: Jerome Powell – the Fed Chairman – issued a statement at the end of June that they would actually increase the amount of rate hikes over the next two years. This means they’re tightening even faster. Second: the U.S. Treasury increased their debt-borrowing needs to the highest since the financial crisis – which was over a decade ago. Therefore, they will need even more dollars to fund their spending. “The department expects to issue $329 billion in net marketable debt from July through September, the fourth-largest total for that quarter on record and higher than the $273 billion estimated in April [a 17% increase], the Treasury said in a report Monday. The department’s forecast for the October-December quarter is $440 billion, bringing the second-half borrowing estimate to $769 billion, the highest since $1.1 trillion in July-December 2008…”

And third: China’s growth is slowing down. Meanwhile the Emerging Markets are draining their U.S. dollar reserves even faster because of the strengthening dollar. So, in summary: as global dollar liquidity continues drying up, there will be a wave of ‘risky’ positions being dumped and ‘dollar disease’ (selling assets to raise dollars to pay back debts) worldwide. . . What we know is true from Economics-101 is that the lower the supply and the greater the demand equals a higher price. And as the pool of USD keeps drying up – then the price of the dollars must rise. This translates into higher offshore dollar funding (higher interest rates). Which is killing dollar indebted countries and corporations – like Turkey today.

[..] I think future financial historians will scratch their heads wondering why markets today continued discounting this serious dollar-shortage problem. The easy money years post-2008 fueled a massive debt bubble – causing asset prices all over to rise. But the market isn’t expecting the tight money years today to cause asset prices to fall. It’s like they think that drinking alcohol today will make them feel good – but don’t believe they’ll be hungover tomorrow. So, what’s next? I believe the U.S. dollar will continue rallying because of all that I mentioned above. As Hedge Funds, institutions, and investors continue unloading their Emerging Market positions – things will only get worse.

Housing bubble vs stock market bubble. Pick your fave toxin.

• Speculators Will Make Hay From Great Australian Economic Crash (Steve Keen)

For years, Australia has been seen as the goose which laid the golden egg for workers, migrants and investors. Ironically, as America’s casino closes, it will eventually end up as a speculator’s paradise.\ The performance of the Australian stock market relative to its American equivalent since the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) shows the difference between a country where Quantitative Easing (QE) – the buying of bonds by the central bank to drive bond prices up and interest rates down, and thus encourage firms to invest and financial institutions to buy shares – was practiced and one where it was not. It’s both a warning about what could happen when the Fed starts to unwind QE, and a perverse opportunity to profit when Australia’s central bank, the RBA (Reserve Bank of Australia) inevitably starts its own QE program.

Since Australia avoided the GFC, and its rate of economic growth has been twice as fast as America’s post-crisis (an average 2.7 percent per year, versus 1.3 percent for the US), you might expect Australia’s stock market to have done better than America’s. In fact, it’s performed much worse: the main Australian index, the ASX, still hasn’t returned to its mid-2000s peak, while the US S&P500 has more than doubled its pre-crash level, and it’s almost four times as high as it was in the deepest depths of 2009. The timing of the US stock market recovery is instructive: it began in February 2009, just three months after the Federal Reserve began “QE1” (the first of three episodes of Quantitative Easing), when it promised to net buy bonds from the financial sector to the tune of $1 trillion per year ($80 billion per month).

With the Fed buying a trillion bucks worth of bonds every year, thus giving the financial sector one trillion in cash per year in place of its interest-earning bonds, the only place the financial sector could stash that dough in search of a return was the stock market. This was the intention of the policy of course: to drive share prices higher in order to stimulate the economy. Aside from the fact it’s made the wealthier even wealthier as a direct effect of government policy, and cost far more than a direct boost to the poor would have done, it’s worked a treat: according to Robert Shiller’s “Cyclically Adjusted Price to Earnings Ratio,” it’s driven America’s stock market to its second-highest peak in history, higher than the 1929 bubble, second only to the DotCom maximum in 2000, and more than twice its long-term average.

Can’t hide behind declassified docs.

• Judge Rules FBI Must Address Measures Taken To Verify Steele Dossier (ZH)

The FBI has been dealt a major blow after a Washington DC judge ruled that the agency must respond to a FOIA request for documents concerning the bureau’s efforts to verify the controversial Steele Dossier, before it was used as the foundation of a FISA surveillance warrant application and subsequent renewals. US District Court Judge Amit Mehta – who in January sided with the FBI’s decision to ignore the FOIA request, said that President Trump’s release of two House Intelligence Committee documents (the “Nunes” and “Schiff” memos) changed everything.

Considering that the FBI offered Steele $50,000 to verify the Dossier’s claims yet never paid him, BuzzFeed has unsuccessfully tried to do the same to defend themselves in a dossier-related lawsuit, and a $50 million Soros-funded investigation to continue the hunt have turned up nothing that we know of – whatever documents the FBI may be forced to cough up regarding their attempts to verify the Dossier could prove highly embarrassing for the agency. “[I]f Mr. Steele could get solid corroboration of his reports, the F.B.I. would pay him $50,000 for his efforts, according to two people familiar with the offer. Ultimately, he was not paid.” -NYT

What’s more, forcing the FBI to prove they had an empty hand will likely embolden calls to disband the special counsel investigation – as the agency’s mercenary and politicized approach to “investigations” will be laid all the more bare for the world to see. Then again, who knows – maybe the FBI verified everything in the dossier and it simply hasn’t leaked. That said, while the FBI will likely be forced to acknowledge the documents thanks to the Thursday ruling, the agency will still be able to try and convince the judge that there are other grounds to withhold the records.

In January, Mehta blessed the FBI’s decision not to disclose the existence of any records containing the agency’s efforts to verify the dossier – ruling that Trump’s tweets about the dossier didn’t require the FBI and other intelligence agencies to act on records requests. “But then the ground shifted,” writes Mehta of Trump declassifying the House memos. “As a result of the Nunes and Schiff Memos, there is now in the public domain meaningful information about how the FBI acquired the Dossier and how the agency used it to investigate Russian meddling.” [..] “It remains no longer logical nor plausible for the FBI to maintain that it cannot confirm nor deny the existence of documents,” Mehta wrote.

Doesn’t feel like McGahn has tons of dirt.

• White House Counsel “Cooperating Extensively” With Obstruction Probe (ZH)

Update: Trump has commented on the story, saying he allowed McGahn “and all other requested members of the White House Staff” to fully cooperate with the Special Counsel. He also notes that the White House has given over one million pages of documents adding “No Collusion, No Obstruction. Witch Hunt!”

White House counsel Donald McGahn II, has been quietly cooperating “extensively” with special counsel Robert Mueller in his probe of possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, according to an explosive New York Times report published Saturday afternoon. Sources told the Times that McGahn has had at least three voluntary interviews with Mueller’s team totaling 30 hours, in which he discussed accounts of multiple episodes at the center of Mueller’s probe into whether President Trump obstructed justice, as well as the president’s furor toward the Russia investigation and the ways in which he urged McGahn to respond to it. For a lawyer to share so much with investigators scrutinizing his client is unusual.

Lawyers are rarely so open with investigators, not only because they are advocating on behalf of their clients but also because their conversations with clients are potentially shielded by attorney-client privilege, and in the case of presidents, executive privilege. Among the episodes McGahn reprotedly discussed with investigators is Trump’s firing last year of former FBI Director James Comey and the president’s repeated urging of Attorney General Jeff Sessions to claim oversight of the special counsel despite his recusal from Russia probes. McGahn was also centrally involved in Trump’s attempts to fire the special counsel, Robert Mueller, himself which investigators might not have discovered without him.

Downgrades add to the downfall.

• Erdogan Says US Has Launched ‘Attempted Economic Coup’ (Ind.)

Turkey’s president has accused America of launching an “attempted economic coup” as the country’s currency continues to reel following US economic sanctions. Recep Tayyip Erdogan told thousands of supporters in Ankara: “Today some people are trying to threaten us through the economy, through interest rates, foreign exchange, investment and inflation. “We are telling them: we’ve seen your games, and we are challenging you.” And, in a clear swipe at US president Donald Trump he added: “We did not and will not surrender to those who act like a strategic partner but make us a strategic target.”

[..] As the two countries have clashed, the lira’s value has plummeted: it has now dropped 38 per cent against the dollar since the beginning of the year. On Friday, ratings agencies Standard & Poor and Moody’s downgraded Turkey’s credit rating closer to “junk” status, pointing to currency fluctuations and concerns over central bank independence. A spokesman for Standard & Poor said: “The downgrade reflects our expectation that the extreme volatility of the Turkish lira and the resulting projected sharp balance of payments adjustment will undermine Turkey’s economy. We forecast a recession next year.” He added the agency was predicting that the country’s inflation will hit a potential 22 per cent over the next four months.

When temperatures start dropping, reality will loom.

• No-Deal Brexit May Force Rethink Of Vote – Ex-Civil Service Head (PA)

Britain may have to rethink the decision to leave the EU if the government is unable to strike a Brexit deal with Brussels, a former head of the civil service has said. Bob Kerslake said the consequences of a no-deal exit would be so serious that the UK parliament would have to consider whether it could allow it to go ahead. Lord Kerslake, who has been advising Labour on preparing for government, said that at the very least the article 50 process – under which the UK is set to leave the bloc on 29 March next year – would have to be paused. In those circumstances, the European commission would almost certainly insist on some “re-examination” of the original decision to leave, he said.

His comments came as the government prepares to publish a series of technical notes on preparations for a no-deal Brexit across dozens of areas of British life, from farming to financial services. Kerslake said the measures were “too little, too late” and that the government had not allowed itself enough time to prepare for such an outcome. He told the the BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “The consequences of a no deal would be so serious as I think parliament would have to seriously consider whether it could contemplate this. “The question people need to ask themselves is, is this a risk that they think we should be taking?

“If the government can negotiate a good deal, then so be it. But if they can’t and we end up in this position, then we have to reopen the question of whether we go forward with Brexit at all. It is not too late to do that. “A pause to reflect would certainly be necessary. I think that is a pretty high probability now. “But I think that pause would need to include – and I suspect this would be insisted on by the commission – some re-examination of the decision itself.”

The only thing that makes sense.

• Putin Urges Europe To Help Rebuild Syria So Refugees Can Return (AFP)

Russian president Vladimir Putin has called on Europe to contribute to the reconstruction of Syria to allow millions of refugees to return home. “We need to strengthen the humanitarian effort in the Syrian conflict,” he said on Saturday, ahead of a meeting with his German counterpart Angela Merkel at the government retreat of Meseberg Palace, north of Berlin. “By that, I mean above all humanitarian aid to the Syrian people, and help the regions where refugees living abroad can return to.” There were 1 million refugees in Jordan, the same number in Lebanon, and 3 million in Turkey, Putin said.

Germany has accepted hundreds of thousands of migrants since 2015 – the height of the migration crisis – which has weakened Angela Merkel politically and split the European Union. “This is potentially a huge burden for Europe,” Putin said. “That’s why we have to do everything to get these people back home,” he added, emphasising the need to restore basic services such as water supplies and healthcare.

More refugees. Great.

• Ecuador Slams Door On Venezuelans (BBC)

Ecuador has brought in new rules to stop Venezuelan migrants entering the country without a passport, leaving many stranded in neighbouring Colombia. Thousands of Venezuelans fleeing their country’s economic and political crisis have been crossing into Ecuador from Colombia using only identity cards. Most are heading south to join family members in Peru and Chile. Colombia has protested against the move, saying vulnerable people will be trapped on its side of the border. In a separate incident, residents of a Brazilian town attacked a Venezuelan migrant camp on Saturday and drove the occupants back across the border. Venezuela has suffered for years from high inflation and the chronic shortage of food and medicines.

More than a million Venezuelan migrants have entered Colombia in the past 15 months, according to official estimates, and more than 4,000 have been arriving at Ecuador’s border every day. Many have been walking or hitching rides for weeks and are exhausted by the time they reach the frontier. [..] With the flow of Venezuelan migrants causing tensions across the region, Peru’s government announced immigration measures similar to Ecuador’s on Friday. Passport requirements for Venezuelans will begin on 25 August. In February, Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos announced a tightening of border controls, resulting in thousands of Venezuelans rushing to crossing points. Brazil, which neighbours Venezuela, has also expressed concerns and temporarily closed the border earlier this month. Violence has flared in the border state of Roraima where thousands of Venezuelans live in precarious accommodation.

“Carter has been an ex-president for 37 years, longer than anyone else in history.”He used those years to redeem himself.

• The Un-Celebrity President (WaPo)

Jimmy Carter finishes his Saturday night dinner, salmon and broccoli casserole on a paper plate, flashes his famous toothy grin and calls playfully to his wife of 72 years, Rosalynn: “C’mon, kid.” She laughs and takes his hand, and they walk carefully through a neighbor’s kitchen filled with 1976 campaign buttons, photos of world leaders and a couple of unopened cans of Billy Beer, then out the back door, where three Secret Service agents wait. They do this just about every weekend in this tiny town where they were born — he almost 94 years ago, she almost 91. Dinner at their friend Jill Stuckey’s house, with plastic Solo cups of ice water and one glass each of bargain-brand chardonnay, then the half-mile walk home to the ranch house they built in 1961.

On this south Georgia summer evening, still close to 90 degrees, they dab their faces with a little plastic bottle of No Natz to repel the swirling clouds of tiny bugs. Then they catch each other’s hands again and start walking, the former president in jeans and clunky black shoes, the former first lady using a walking stick for the first time. The 39th president of the United States lives modestly, a sharp contrast to his successors, who have left the White House to embrace power of another kind: wealth. Even those who didn’t start out rich, including Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, have made tens of millions of dollars on the private-sector opportunities that flow so easily to ex-presidents.

When Carter left the White House after one tumultuous term, trounced by Ronald Reagan in the 1980 election, he returned to Plains, a speck of peanut and cotton farmland that to this day has a nearly 40 percent poverty rate. The Democratic former president decided not to join corporate boards or give speeches for big money because, he says, he didn’t want to “capitalize financially on being in the White House.” Presidential historian Michael Beschloss said that Gerald Ford, Carter’s predecessor and close friend, was the first to fully take advantage of those high-paid post-presidential opportunities, but that “Carter did the opposite.” Since Ford, other former presidents, and sometimes their spouses, routinely earn hundreds of thousands of dollars per speech. “I don’t see anything wrong with it; I don’t blame other people for doing it,” Carter says over dinner. “It just never had been my ambition to be rich.”

One field where EU regulation is very harmful.

• Britain Has One Last Chance To Save Endangered Species (G.)

Ministers may have only 12 months to rescue Britain’s degraded environment and to save its endangered birds and animals. That is the stark conclusion of Michael Clarke, chief executive of the RSPB, who has warned that parliamentary bills – to be published over the next year – will have to make crucial changes to the way our farms and fisheries are run if the wildlife and landscape of the nation are to be rescued from their dangerously depleted condition. “We are on a cusp, and if we fail to act decisively we will pay the price in coming years,” Clarke told the Observer last week. The three forthcoming bills – on agriculture, on fisheries and on the environment – will replace the EU legislation that currently controls our farming, fishing industry and the quality of our air, water and wildlife.

The government has yet to announce what these bills will contain. However, conservationists such as Clarke now fear there is a real risk that one or all of these new pieces of legislation will fail to provide the necessary powers to restore our crisis-hit environment. “Since 1980, across Europe 420 million individual birds have disappeared from the countryside thanks to the practices of modern agriculture,” said Clarke. And that staggering drop is matched by an even more catastrophic decline in insect life over the same period of time, he added. “For years, we could see the lack of insects on our windscreens on summer evenings. It was a smoking gun but there was no hard data – until recent research in Germany showed there had been a 75% decline in its flying insects, figures since matched by Dutch and some UK data. The insects have gone – and so have 420 million birds.”

[..] As to the causes of these declines, the intensification and spread of agriculture and changes in land use take most of the blame – with the EU common agricultural policy (CAP) being considered a particularly destructive agent in this process. The CAP stresses the importance of agricultural output above all else and has helped destroy the homes and food sources of countless birds, animals and insects, said Clarke. Crucially, as Britain prepares to withdraw from the CAP and the EU, the nation has a once-in-a-generation opportunity to put right this damage, said Clarke. About £3bn a year is spent on British farming through CAP, he pointed out.

Debt Rattle October 23 2017

Oct 232017

October 23, 2017 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 9:19 am Finance Tagged with: bonds, China, CO2, crisis, debt, Jimmy Carter, Mnuchin, Noble, salmon, trap, Trump 4 Responses »

Gordon Parks Place de la Concorde, Paris 1950

• Should I Stay or Should I Go? (IceCap)

• Americans Have More Debt Than Ever – And It’s Creating An Economic Trap (BI)

• Crisis, What Crisis? Banks Pile Back Into China (BBG)

• China’s Home Price Growth Steadies In September (R.)

• Jimmy Carter Unleashed: Russians Didn’t Alter Election (DaWi)

• Italy Regions Back ‘Big Bang’ Autonomy (AFP)

• Noble, Once Asia’s Largest Commodity Trader, Struggles To Survive (BBG)

• Washington To Back Greek Call For Debt Relief (K.)

• Car Pollution Causes A Huge Salmon Die-Off (WaPo)

• CO2 Rise ‘Will Affect All Sea Life’ (BBC)

“..a +0.7% increase in the US 10-Year Treasury market yield created chaos, havoc and over $1.7 Trillion in losses..”

• Should I Stay or Should I Go? (IceCap)

Life was so bad – especially for bond investors, that by the time 1982 rolled around you couldn’t give a bond away. If you were an investor or working in the investment industry at the time – you were painfully aware of the bond market and you were schooled to never, ever buy a bond again. Of course, 1982 was actually the best time ever to buy a bond. With long-term rates dropping like a stone over the next 35 years, bond investors and bond managers became known as the smartest people in the room. But, that was then and this is now. There are 2 points to remember forever here: 1) What goes down, must come up 2) There’s no one around today to remind us of what life was like for bond investors when long-term rates marched relentlessly higher

Interest rates are secular. And with interest rates today already hitting the theoretical 0% level – they have started to rise. And when long-term rates begin to rise, (unlike short-term rates) it happens in a snapping, violent manner. Neither of which is good for bond investors. Of course, there’s another important point to consider, the rise in long-rates from 1962 to 1982 occurred when there wasn’t a debt crisis in the developed world. And since 99% of the industry has only worked since 1982 to today, then 99% of the industry has never experienced, lived or even dreamt of a crisis in the bond market. This of course is the primary reason why all the negative stories about the stock market are alive and well played out in the media – they simply don’t know any better. And this is wrong. Very wrong. After all, the bond bubble dwarfs the tech bubble and the housing bubble. Think about it.

To grasp why the bond market is on the verge of crisis, and why trillions of Dollars, Euros, Yen and Pounds are about to panic and run away, we ask you to understand how free-markets really work. For starters, all free markets have two sides competing and participating. There are natural buyers and there are natural sellers. The point at which they meet in the middle is the selling/purchase price and the entire process is called price discovery. Price discovery is a wonderful thing. It always results in the determination of a true price for a product or service. However, a big problem arises when there is an imbalance between the buyers and sellers, and when one of the sides isn’t a natural buyer or seller. This is what has happened in the bond market. And this is why bond prices (or yields) have become so distorted; the true price of a bond hasn’t existed now for almost 9 years.

[..] over the last year, we’ve seen the most significant market reaction in the history of the bond world, not once but twice. Yet, the talking heads, the big banks and their mutual fund commentaries, and the stock market focused world have completely missed it. Almost a year ago in November immediately after the American Election, over a span of 54 hours – the bond market blew up. To put things into perspective, Chart 2 shows what happened during those fateful days. Ignoring the why’s, the how’s and the who’s – the fact remains that this tiny, miniscule increase in long-term interest rates caused the bond market to vomit over itself. Yes, a +0.7% increase in the US 10-Year Treasury market yield created chaos, havoc and over $1.7 Trillion in losses around the world.

“Most consumers, especially those in the bottom 80%, are tapped out..”

• Americans Have More Debt Than Ever – And It’s Creating An Economic Trap (BI)

There’s a scary little statistic buried beneath the US economy’s apparent stability: Consumer debt levels are now well above those seen before the Great Recession. As of June, US households were more than half a trillion dollars deeper in debt than they were a year earlier, according to the latest figures from the Federal Reserve. Total household debt now totals $12.84 trillion — also, incidentally, around two-thirds of GDP. The proportion of overall debt that was delinquent in the second quarter was steady at 4.8%, but the New York Fed warned over transitions of credit card balances into delinquency, which “ticked up notably.” Here’s the thing: Unlike government debt, which can be rolled over continuously, consumer loans actually need to be paid back. And despite low official interest rates from the Federal Reserve, those often do not trickle down to many financial products like credit cards and small business loans.

Michael Lebowitz, co-founder of market analysis firm 720 Global, says the US economy is already dangerously close to the edge. “Most consumers, especially those in the bottom 80%, are tapped out,” he told Business Insider. “They have borrowed about as much as they can. Servicing this debt will act like a wet towel on economic growth for years to come. Until wages can grow faster than our true costs of inflation, this problem will only worsen.” The IMF devotes two chapters of its latest Global Financial Stability Report to the issue of household debt. It finds that, rather intuitively, high debt levels tend to make economic downturns deeper and more prolonged. “Increases in household debt consistently [signal] higher risks when initial debt levels are already high,” the IMF says.

Nonetheless, the results indicate that the threshold levels for household debt increases being associated with negative macro outcomes start relatively low, at about 30% of GDP. Clearly, America’s already well past that point. As households become more indebted, the Fund says, future GDP growth and consumption decline and unemployment rises relative to their average values. “Changes in household debt have a positive contemporaneous relationship to real GDP growth and a negative association with future real GDP growth,” the report says. Specifically, the Fund says a 5% increase in household debt to GDP over a three-year period leads to a 1.25% fall in real GDP growth three years into the future.

“Housing busts and recessions preceded by larger run-ups in household debt tend to be more severe and protracted,” the IMF said. Is there a solution? If things reach a tipping point, yes, says the IMF — there’s always debt forgiveness. Even creditors stand to benefit. “We find that government policies can help prevent prolonged contractions in economic activity by addressing the problem of excessive household debt,” the report said. The Fund cites “bold household debt restructuring programs such as those implemented in the United States in the 1930s and in Iceland today” as historical precedents. “Such policies can, therefore, help avert self-reinforcing cycles of household defaults, further house price declines, and additional contractions in output.”

“.. it’s odd that banks would think China is getting debt under control even as they provide more of it.”

• Crisis, What Crisis? Banks Pile Back Into China (BBG)

China has been working hard to convince the world that it’s not a financial crisis waiting to happen. Judging from the latest data on cross-border lending, banks are buying it. Foreign banks’ total exposure to China reached $750 billion in June 2017, up from $659 billion a year earlier, according to the Bank for International Settlements. That’s a big contrast to a couple of years ago, when lenders were pulling tens of billions out amid concerns that a combination of high indebtedness, excessive investment and slowing growth would precipitate a wave of defaults. Here’s how that looks:

What changed? For one, China’s economy (according to the suspiciously smooth official data, at least) has proven more resilient than expected: The pace of growth has accelerated from a mid-2016 low of 6.7%, and forecasters have raised their projections for 2018. Perhaps more important, Chinese officials have advertised their commitment to controlling debt and containing an overheated property market. That said, it’s odd that banks would think China is getting debt under control even as they provide more of it. Although the accumulation has slowed in some areas, it has boomed in households and elsewhere. By one early-warning measure – the difference between the current and long-term levels of business and household credit as a share of GDP, also known as the credit gap – China and Hong Kong are still by far the riskiest countries tracked by the BIS.

As Beijing buys 25% of sales.

• China’s Home Price Growth Steadies In September (R.)

China’s new home prices registered a second straight month of weak growth in September, with prices in the biggest markets slipping and gains in smaller cities slowing as government measures to cool a long property boom took hold. China’s housing market has been on a near two-year tear, giving the economy a major boost but stirring fears of a property bubble even as authorities work to contain risks from a rapid build-up in debt. While monthly price rises peaked in September 2016 at 2.1% nationwide, they have softened only begrudgingly since then, regaining momentum as buyers shrugged off each new wave of measures to curb speculation. Analysts say more tightening could still be expected in lower-tier cities with relatively fast price gains, as critics argue China’s ever-growing administrative control over its property market has only reaffirmed speculator views that prices will remain steady.

“China’s property prices are still rising even as sales are falling off a cliff, which suggests the market still sees property as an investment product in the belief that the government won’t let prices fall,” said Yi Xianrong, a Professor of Economics at Qingdao University. Still, signs of a more stable and less frothy housing market for now will be welcome to the country’s leaders as they attend a critical Communist Party Congress to set political and economic priorities for the next five years. President Xi Jingping opened the twice-a-decade gathering last week, stressing the need to move from high-speed to high-quality growth. Average new home prices rose 0.2% month-on-month in September, the same rate as in August when prices rose at the slowest rate in seven months, according to Reuters calculations from National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) data out on Monday.

“The curbs are in general still intensifying, which have gradually impacted property buyers’ expectations,” said Zhang Dawei, an analyst with Centaline, a property agency. New home prices rose 6.3% year-on-year in September, decelerating from August’s 8.3% increase, partly thanks to last September’s high base. Higher prices are also eating up more of home buyers’ disposable income, which could dampen future demand.

Truth to power.

• Jimmy Carter Unleashed: Russians Didn’t Alter Election (DaWi)

At 93, Jimmy Carter is cutting loose. The former president sat down with The New York Times recently and chatted about all kinds of subjects. The Times decided to play up the fact that Carter — one of the worst presidents in U.S. history — would love to go over to North Korea as an envoy. But the Times is steadily proving how out of touch it is, and how it no longer seems to actually “get” what real news is. Here are some major highlights from the interview:

1. The Russians didn’t steal the 2016 election. Carter was asked “Did the Russians purloin the election from Hillary?” “I don’t think there’s any evidence that what the Russians did changed enough votes — or any votes,” Carter said. So the hard-left former president doesn’t think the Russians stole the election? Take note, Capitol Hill Democrats.

2. We didn’t vote for Hillary. Carter and his wife, Roselyn, disagreed on the Russia question. In the interview, she “looked over archly [and said] ‘They obviously did'” purloin the election. “Rosie and I have a difference of opinion on that,” Carter said. Rosalynn then said, “The drip-drip-drip about Hillary.” Which prompted Carter to note that during the primary, they didn’t vote for Hillary Clinton. “We voted for Sanders.”

3. Obama fell far short of his promises. Barack Obama whooshed into office on pledges of delivering “hope and change” to the country, spilt by partisan politics. He didn’t. In fact, he made it worse. “He made some very wonderful statements, in my opinion, when he first got in office, and then he reneged on that,” he said about Obama’s action on the Middle East.

4. Media “harder on Trump than any president.” A recent Harvard study showed that 93% of new coverage about President Trump is negative. But here’s another shocker: Carter defended Trump. “I think the media have been harder on Trump than any other president certainly that I’ve known about,” Carter said. “I think they feel free to claim that Trump is mentally deranged and everything else without hesitation.”

5. NFL players should “stand during the American anthem.” Carter, who joined the other four living ex-presidents on Saturday for a hurricane fundraiser, put his hand on his heart when the national anthem played — and he has a strong opinion about what NFL players should do, too. “I think they ought to find a different way to object, to demonstrate,” he said. ” I would rather see all the players stand during the American anthem.”

Expect more of this. Much more.

• Italy Regions Back ‘Big Bang’ Autonomy (AFP)

Two of Italy’s wealthiest northern regions on Sunday voted overwhelmingly in favour of greater autonomy in the latest example of the powerful centrifugal forces reshaping European politics. Voters in the Veneto region that includes Venice and Lombardy, home to Milan, turned out at the high end of expectations to support the principle of more powers being devolved from Rome in votes that took place against the backdrop of the crisis created by Catalonia’s push for independence. Veneto President Luca Zaia hailed the results, which were delayed slightly by a hacker attack, as an institutional “big bang”. But he reiterated that the region’s aspirations were not comparable to the secessionist agenda that has provoked a constitutional crisis in Spain.

Turnout was projected at around 58% in Veneto, where support for autonomy is stronger, and just over 40% in Lombardy. The presidents of both regions said more than 95% of voters who had cast ballots had, as expected, done so to support greater autonomy. The votes are not binding but they will give the right-wing leaders of the two regions a strong political mandate when they embark on negotiations with the central government on the devolution of powers and tax revenues from Rome. Secessionist sentiment in Veneto and Lombardy is restricted to fringe groups but analysts see the autonomy drive as reflecting the same cocktail of issues and pressures that resulted in Scotland’s narrowly-defeated independence vote, Britain’s decision to leave the EU and the Catalan crisis.

“What this vote has shown is that there is no ‘autonomy party’ in Veneto – what there is is an entire people who back this idea,” said Zaia. “What’s won is the idea that we should be in charge of our own back yard.” Lombardy governor Roberto Maroni said he would be looking to present detailed proposals on devolution within two weeks, in a bid to ensure they are considered before national elections due by May next year. “I will go to Rome and ask for more powers and resources within a framework of national unity,” he said.

Too much debt?!

• Noble, Once Asia’s Largest Commodity Trader, Struggles To Survive (BBG)

Embattled commodity trader Noble Group warned of a more than $1 billion third-quarter net loss and agreed to sell most of its oil-liquids unit to Vitol Group at a loss, further complicating its fight for survival. The long-awaited deal to sell its prized oil business provided little relief to Hong Kong-based company, with shares falling the most in three months. Details of the sale announced on Monday failed to give much clarity on how much Noble Group would ultimately receive from Vitol, while the third-quarter results highlighted the company’s struggle to return to profitability as it offloads assets to repay debt. “They’re still fighting to survive,” Nicholas Teo, a trading strategist at KGI Securities said by phone. Noble Group’s stock slumped as much as 12% in Singapore, extending a more than 90% retreat since questions over its financial reporting emerged in early 2015.

While the company has defended its accounting, it has also written down the value of its long-term commodity contracts, ousted senior managers and put almost all of its businesses outside Asia up for sale. Noble Group’s 2020 notes are trading at about 39 cents on the dollar, with analysts at BNP Paribas and Nomura predicting that the company will eventually be forced to restructure its debt. Noble Group said that based on its end-June accounts it would have received net proceeds of $582 million from the oil unit deal after paying back borrowings under a secured credit facility. But that figure included proceeds from the earlier sale of its gas-and-power unit, the company said, and was prior to a third quarter in which the business was “adversely impacted” by “capital constraints.” Based on that number, the company would report a $525 million loss on the sale.

As US alienates itself from Erdogan. For good reasons.

• Washington To Back Greek Call For Debt Relief (K.)

US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin appears set to spearhead initiatives for Greek debt relief as part of Washington’s efforts to bolster Greece as a bastion of stability in the wider region, according to Kathimerini sources. Mnuchin took part in a meeting between US President Donald Trump and Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras at the White House last week that addressed ways to promote investments in Greece, strengthen defense cooperation and push Greek debt relief demands. It was, reportedly, made clear at the meeting that Trump has made a strategic decision to support Greece as a reliable ally in the Eastern Mediterranean.

As a first step, the US may ask for an informal meeting of the IMF’s Executive Board to be convened – after a government is formed in Berlin and provided the third Greek bailout review is completed – where pressure will be applied for a specific time frame with regard to Greece’s debt. Another indication that the ball is beginning to roll was the result of talks between Tsipras and IMF chief Christine Lagarde a day before the meeting with Trump. Mnuchin told Trump and Tsipras that Lagarde had contacted him saying her talks with the Greek premier went well and there will be no surprises during the negotiations to complete the review. Mnuchin added that Lagarde said the IMF will push for debt relief.

A curious story.

• Car Pollution Causes A Huge Salmon Die-Off (WaPo)

Silvery coho salmon are as much a part of Washington state as its flag. The fish has a sacred place in the diets and rituals of the state’s indigenous peoples, beckons to tourists who flock to watch its migration runs, and helps to sustain a multimillion-dollar Pacific Northwest fishing industry. So watching the species die in agony is distressing: Adult coho have been seen thrashing in shallow fresh waters, males appear disoriented as they swim, and females are often rolled on their backs, their insides still plump with tiny red eggs that will never hatch. “Coho have not done well where a lot of human activity impacts their habitat,” said Nat Scholz, a research zoologist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. That’s to say the least.

A recent study traced a major coho salmon die-off to contaminants from roads and automobiles — brake dust, oil, fuel, chemical fluids — that hitch a ride on storm water and flow into watersheds. The contaminants are so deadly, they kill the salmon within 24 hours. “Our findings are . . . that contaminants in stormwater runoff from the regional transportation grid likely caused these mortality events. Further, it will be difficult, if not impossible, to reverse historical coho declines without addressing the toxic pollution dimension of freshwater habitats,” said the study, published Wednesday in the journal Ecological Applications. This sort of point-source pollution from antiquated sewer systems is a problem across the nation, including the Chesapeake Bay region. Rain overwhelms storm drains, commingles with human waste and surface road garbage, then flushes into ponds, creeks, streams and rivers.

In Seattle and large cities across the Pacific Northwest, those waters are stocked with salmon. The finding could be a breakthrough in a mystery that has vexed scientists for years. But it fell short of explaining another mystery: Why are coho the only one of five salmon species to be affected? Chinook, sockeye, pink and chum don’t remotely experience the same mortality. “This is the great mystery that we are working on,” Scholz said. The future for a species that experiences up to 40 percent mortality before spawning in Puget Sound is no mystery. “The population will crash,” said Jay Davis, an environmental toxicologist for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service who coordinated field research for the study.

“.. an increase in acidity of about 26%…”

• CO2 Rise ‘Will Affect All Sea Life’ (BBC)

All sea life will be affected because carbon dioxide emissions from modern society are making the oceans more acidic, a major new report will say. The eight-year study from more than 250 scientists finds that infant sea creatures will be especially harmed. This means the number of baby cod growing to adulthood could fall to a quarter or even a 12th of today’s numbers, the researchers suggest. The assessment comes from the BIOACID project, which is led from Germany. A brochure summarising the main outcomes will be presented to climate negotiators at their annual meeting, which this year is taking place in Bonn in November. The Biological Impacts of Ocean Acidification report authors say some creatures may benefit directly from the chemical changes – but even these could still be adversely affected indirectly by shifts in the whole food web.

What is more, the research shows that changes through acidification will be made worse by climate change, pollution, coastal development, over-fishing and agricultural fertilisers. Ocean acidification is happening because as CO2 from fossil fuels dissolves in seawater, it produces carbonic acid and this lowers the pH of the water. Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, the average pH of global ocean surface waters have fallen from pH 8.2 to 8.1. This represents an increase in acidity of about 26%. The study’s lead author is Prof Ulf Riebesell from the GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research in Kiel. He is a world authority on the topic and has typically communicated cautiously about the effects of acidification. He told BBC News: “Acidification affects marine life across all groups, although to different degrees.

“Warm-water corals are generally more sensitive than cold-water corals. Clams and snails are more sensitive than crustaceans. “And we found that early life stages are generally more affected than adult organisms. “But even if an organism isn’t directly harmed by acidification it may be affected indirectly through changes in its habitat or changes in the food web. “At the end of the day, these changes will affect the many services the ocean provides to us.”