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Debt Rattle January 16 2025

Jan 162025
 
 January 16, 2025  Posted by at 11:22 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,  75 Responses »


Marcel Duchamp The king and queen surrounded by swift nudes 1912

 

• Trump Announces Israel-Hamas Ceasefire (RT)
• Trump Envoy Swayed Netanyahu More In One Meeting Than Biden Did All Year (ZH)
• “Turns Out, Presidents Matter”: Marc Andreessen (ZH)
• Marco Rubio Urges End to Ukraine Conflict (Sp.)
• Prepare For War – NATO Chief (RT)
• What Trump Should Do (Paul Craig Roberts)
• Trump Team’s Ukraine Predictions ‘Campaign Bluster’ – Reuters (RT)
• Ban On Talks With Moscow Remains – Kiev (RT)
• Moscow and Kiev Hold ‘Limited Talks’ – Bloomberg (RT)
• German Military Retreats From X (RT)
• Berlin Proves It Will Support Kiev To Its Own Detriment (Romanenko)
• Biden SEC Sues Musk Over Twitter Purchase In 11th Hour “Sham” (ZH)
• Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and Mark Zuckerberg To Attend Trump Inauguration (JTN)
• Trump Mulls Executive Order To ‘Save Tiktok’ – WaPo (RT)
• Why Europe Fears Free Speech (Munchau)

 

 


A Final Toast – by Mr. Fish

 

 

https://twitter.com/i/status/1879639928880943151

RFK

Cuomo

Bondi

Sheehy

Newsom

Palisades

Tucker

Sen. Kennedy

Gov. Taxes

 

 

Bibi doesn’t listen to Biden. He hears Trump loud and clear, though.

• Trump Announces Israel-Hamas Ceasefire (RT)

Israel and Hamas have struck a deal that sees all hostages released, US President-elect Donald Trump has announced “We have a deal for the hostages in the Middle East,” Trump posted on his TruthSocial platform on Wednesday. “They will be released shortly.” According to multiple media outlets, the agreement approved in Qatar involves a 42-day ceasefire and an exchange of prisoners, including all Israelis taken captive in the October 7, 2023 Hamas incursion from Gaza. “This EPIC ceasefire agreement could have only happened as a result of our Historic Victory in November, as it signaled to the entire World that my Administration would seek Peace and negotiate deals to ensure the safety of all Americans, and our Allies,” Trump added in another post.

His national security team will “continue to work closely with Israel and our Allies to make sure Gaza NEVER again becomes a terrorist safe haven,” the president-elect added. “This is only the beginning of great things to come for America, and indeed, the World!” Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff reportedly joined the talks in Doha and played a key role in persuading the Israeli delegation to accept the deal. “This deal was achieved because of the help of many and demonstrates that a policy of peace through strength wins,” Witkoff told Israel’s Channel 12 on Wednesday. “Thank you to the Israeli negotiating teams, thank you to the Qataris, thank you to Egypt, thank you to the Biden administration, and most of all to Donald Trump, whose policy of peace through strength is the one that won.”

A “breakthrough” in the talks was said to have been reached early on Monday. Qatari ruler Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani has met with senior Hamas officials to persuade the Palestinian group to accept the agreement. Egyptian and Turkish intelligence chiefs also took part in the negotiations, along with the heads of Israel’s Mossad and Shin Bet.

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Bide demands praise for a whole year in which he failed. Trump simply says: I don’t want my 2d term to start with an ugly war.

• Trump Envoy Swayed Netanyahu More In One Meeting Than Biden Did All Year (ZH)

Even Israeli media is very clearly attributing achievement of the Gaza ceasefire deal to President-elect Donald Trump and his team. President Biden too at one point in an afternoon press conference hailing the deal acknowledged that he spoke as ‘one team’ with Trump on the Gaza deal. According to The Times of Israel: “A “tense” weekend meeting between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and incoming Mideast envoy Steve Witkoff led to a breakthrough in the hostage negotiations, with the top aide to US President-elect Donald Trump doing more to sway the premier in a single sit-down than outgoing President Joe Biden did all year, two Arab officials told The Times of Israel on Tuesday. Witkoff has been in Doha for the past week to take part in the hostage negotiations, as mediators try to secure a deal before Trump’s January 20 inauguration. On Saturday, Witkoff flew to Israel for a meeting with Netanyahu at the premier’s Jerusalem office.

During the meeting, Witkoff urged Netanyahu to accept key compromises necessary for an agreement, the two Arab officials on Monday told The Times of Israel on condition of anonymity. Neither Witkoff nor Netanyahu’s office responded to requests for comment”. As expected, Biden disagrees with this assessment… Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has yet to make a public statement. Interestingly, Trump was the first leader to hail the deal, attributing it largely to his election victory in November and anticipation of his entering the Oval Office next Monday. But Biden chalked it up to his own diplomacy: “This deal will halt the fighting in Gaza, surge much-needed humanitarian assistance to Palestinian civilians and reunite the hostages with their families after more than 15 months in captivity,” he said in the statement.

The US president further said Wednesday’s agreement “not only of the extreme pressure that Hamas has been under and the changed regional equation after a ceasefire in Lebanon and weakening of Iran — but also of dogged and painstaking American diplomacy,” he says. “My diplomacy never ceased in their efforts to get this done.” Many political analysts, including Glenn Greenwald, would beg to differ. An initial Hamas statement is meanwhile celebrating this as a ‘win’ over the Israeli military machine, which has been unable to root out the Islamist insurgency in the strip. Words from Hamas leadership praised “the legendary steadfastness of the great Palestinian people and the valiant resistance in the Gaza Strip.” Hamas is for the first time coming out publicly in the streets of Gaza, as a deal finally looks legit at this point…

Still there are reports of intensified Israeli bombing in parts of Gaza, merely hours before the deal is expected to go into effect, which will see the release of hostages and an exchange for many dozens of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails. Meanwhile, Nassim Taleb makes a great point, stating on X that …with Kamala there is a near-certainty of more wars coupled with a lot of bullshit about “peace” initiatives. With Trump (rather, Trump-Vance) there is a possibility of peace coupled with loud saber rattling. Indeed, if the truce holds, it will likely go down in the history books as a victory for Trump’s early diplomacy. Progressives too have been wondering what took the Biden White House so long, given also that virtually the same deal was on the table previously this summer, and it collapsed. Israeli lawmakers and ministers are expected to vote on approving the deal on Thursday morning, but a lot can happen between now and then.

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Andreessen: “He’s world-class at real estate and communications.” “He’s probably the first person in the world to be world-class in both things.” “He very deeply understands business.” “When Trump puts up one of these giant hotels, these are large-scale systems projects. There are many dimensions. A lot of things can go wrong. There’s technology change. You’ve got to manage these hands-on because they can always go sideways.” “He’s world-class at thinking things through systematically.” “There’s this video of him talking about the water situation in California on Joe Rogan six months ago. It’s one of those classic Trump things, where at the time, everybody’s like, why is he going on and on about the water situation in California?”

“And then, of course, LA is burning down in the last three days. And if you listen to what he talked about with the water situation in California. He is exactly 100% correct.” “In the first term, when he diagnosed the German energy situation at the United Nations. He said you will become dependent on Russian energy, and that will be a disaster for you, and it has been. It was an extremely precise, accurate, and prescient five-minute analysis of this system’s problem.” “In my energy conversation with him, he’s extremely sophisticated. The energy people that I know know that he’s sophisticated. So, he wraps his head around these things very quickly and easily.”

• “Turns Out, Presidents Matter”: Marc Andreessen (ZH)

Marc Andreessen, the billionaire investor and co-founder of the influential Silicon Valley venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, joined the host of Uncommon Knowledge, Peter Robinson (former Reagan speechwriter), to discuss his pivotal role in shaping Silicon Valley and politics. For decades, Andreessen has supported Democrats, including Bill Clinton, Al Gore, John Kerry, Barack Obama, and Hillary Clinton. However, a troubling 2024 spring meeting with Biden administration officials spooked the Silicon Valley entrepreneur. He said Biden officials explained their plan to control AI through government regulatory capture—a strategy reminiscent of Communist policies in China. Andreessen told Robinson that President-elect Donald Trump’s knowledge about problem-solving in business and energy is “extremely sophisticated” and “world-class on real estate and communications.”

“My analysis would be he is world-class in real estate and on communications … and he’s world-class on both which is like probably the first person in the world to be world-class on both of those things, right? The real estate industry is not historically known for its great communicators,” Andreessen continued. Robinson and Andreessen also discussed Silicon Valley’s technological and political evolution, Andreessen’s shifting political alliances from Clinton, Obama, and Biden to MAGA, and his vision for harnessing cutting-edge technology to advance societal progress. They also addressed energy challenges, border security, and national defense. In particular, Robinson and Andreessen spoke about China’s manufacturing dominance. Andreessen explained:

“And I’ll just tell you where I’m worried right now, where the problem is compounding. So you mentioned the, sort of, iPhone assembly, and that’s a big deal. But basically, there’s three industries that sort of follow phones that are kicking in right now. So, one is drones. And it’s sort of in a bizarre turn of events, the Chinese basically own the global drone market for all, basically, the consumer drones, all the cheap drones. Which by the way, numerically then are the drones that all the militarys also use in overwhelming numbers. And something over 90% of all drones used by the US military are made in China. No, no, it gets worse, it gets worse, it gets worse, it gets worse before it gets. So the drone thing is not just a company, it’s an entire ecosystem. It’s all of the componentry.

“We have a drone company that’s been trying to compete with the Chinese company. Number one, the Biden FAA has been trying to kill us this entire time, trying to do all kinds of things to make sure that American drone companies can’t succeed as part of their war on tech. It’s literally just another in the long list of ways that they’ve been just trying to absolutely kill us. But two is, China has figured this out. And so, the US has been sanctioning AI chips going to China, China is now sanctioning, they sanction our drone company for the battery, [LAUGH] cuz the battery is made in China, right? And so they have like significant leverage, not just for the drones, but for the entire supply chain. By the way, the drone supply chain is very analogous to the car supply chain. A self driving electric car is very similar to a drone, or for that matter, to an iPhone. It’s an electrical mechanical device, but it’s a lot of the same kind of battery technology, chip technology, sensor technology.

So they now have their version of what the Germans used to have, which is sort of, the thousands of mid market companies that make all the parts that go into a car. But the German ecosystem is still making them for old internal combustion cars, the Chinese ecosystem is making them for electric cars and self driving cars. And of course, that means the new Chinese cars that are coming out are really good and they have a giant advantage on cost. And they are starting to bring to market cars that are equivalent in quality to western cars at a third or a fourth of price. So that’s coming. And then the big one that follows phones, drones, and cars, logically, is robots.

Robinson asked Andreessen: And the Chinese are ahead of us there? Andreessen responded: 100%, now, we have the leading, this is important, we have the leading software,like we have the leading R&D. Like, we have the smartest, I’m convinced we have like the smartest robotics AI people. We have the best people, specifically for the design of the systems, but we don’t have anything resembling the manufacturing capability at all. Andreessen noted that these technologies are upstream from all the military applications because they are intertwined in the same supply chains. He said the US must confront this and reverse the fragmented approach, where the Biden administration would “hate the domestic American technology industry and is trying to kill it” one day and then, on other days, “thinks we’re gonna somehow develop some sort of competitive response to China on cars or on weapons in the future.”

https://twitter.com/i/status/1879396919107313836

The takeaway from the interview is clear: Trump 2.0 must craft a coherent, competitive response to advancing technology under an ‘America First’ agenda. This is in contrast to the radicals in the Biden-Harris regime, who focused on de-growth policies (under the guise of climate change) that have allowed China to advance ahead of the US. “What’s the whole of government strategy on China? Zero, right? It turns out the president matters,” Andreessen concluded. One must ask: whose team was the Biden-Harris administration on? It doesn’t appear they prioritized an ‘America First’ agenda. This will change under Trump.

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Rubio presents the hawkish case.

• Marco Rubio Urges End to Ukraine Conflict (Sp.)

The United States’ official position on the Ukraine conflict must be that it should be brought to an end, Republican Senator Marco Rubio, President-elect Donald Trump’s secretary of state nominee, said on Wednesday. “I think it should be the official position of the United States that this war should be brought to an end,” Rubio said during a hearing in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, when asked to elaborate on his decision late last year to vote against aid to Ukraine. The 53-year-old admitted that “this is not going to be an easy endeavor” and called for “everyone to be realistic.” He suggested that conflict settlement could start with “some ceasefire” and require concessions by both Russia and Ukraine.

Rubio pointed to a change in the dynamic of the Ukraine conflict, saying it has become a “war of attrition” and “stalemate.” He believes there is “no way Russia takes all of Ukraine.” “It’s also unrealistic to believe that somehow a nation the size of Ukraine — no matter how incompetent and no matter how much damage the Russian Federation has suffered as a result of this invasion — there is no way Ukraine is also going to push these people all the way back to where they were on the eve of the invasion,” Rubio added.

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NATO wants war. Nobody else does.

• Prepare For War – NATO Chief (RT)

NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte has called on members of the US-led military bloc to adopt a “wartime mindset” and significantly increase defense spending, citing supposed threats from Russia and other nations. Rutte noted on Wednesday that NATO members have increased defense investments and conducted more frequent military exercises. However, he argued that these efforts are “not sufficient to deal with the dangers coming our way in the next four to five years.” The bloc’s “future security is at stake,” Rutte claimed in his opening remarks at a meeting of the Military Committee in Chiefs of Defense in Brussels. He accused Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran of attempting to “weaken our democracies and chip away at our freedom.”

“To prevent war, we need to prepare for it. It is time to shift to a wartime mindset,” Rutte asserted, urging NATO states to allocate more resources toward defense and develop “more and better defense capabilities.” He also stressed the importance of providing increased support to Ukraine to “change the trajectory of the war,” and called for enhanced cooperation with global partners. Moscow has repeatedly denied assertions that it represents a threat to any NATO member states and has instead accused the US-led bloc of waging a proxy war against Russia and encroaching on its territory. Last month, President Vladimir Putin said that practically all NATO states are currently at war with Russia.

Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov also noted on Tuesday that history appears to be repeating itself, suggesting that there were “obvious parallels” between Moscow’s current confrontation with NATO and the attempts of Napoleon Bonaparte and Adolf Hitler to take over Russia after subjugating dozens of European countries. On Tuesday, Rutte announced that NATO would bolster its presence in the Baltic Sea – a strategic area for Russian naval operations and energy exports – by launching a new mission under the pretext of protecting undersea infrastructure. The NATO chief revealed that this presence will involve frigates, maritime patrol aircraft, and a “small fleet of naval drones” that are expected to provide “enhanced surveillance and deterrence.”

The announcement follows an incident involving a Cook Islands-registered oil tanker, the Eagle S, which allegedly damaged the Estlink 2 power cable connecting Finland and Estonia last month. The EU has warned that it could impose sanctions on Moscow over what EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas has described as the “deliberate destruction of Europe’s critical infrastructure” using a “shadow fleet” of tankers, which supposedly includes the Eagle S. While the tanker has been detained by Finnish authorities, no conclusive evidence has been presented regarding its involvement in the alleged sabotage.

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If Trump can deal with the real challenges [..], he will go down as the greatest American president in history.

• What Trump Should Do (Paul Craig Roberts)

American security agencies have long used the cloak of national security to avoid accountability for their crimes, such as the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy and his brother, Robert F. Kennedy, and the numerous assassinations of foreign leaders and screw-ups. Beginning with the Clinton regime, presidents and non-security appointees also began escaping accountability. The situation worsened in the George W. Bush/Dick Cheney regime, and it exploded in the Biden regime with the Attorney General, FBI, and Democrat state attorneys general and prosecutors using law as a weapon against Trump, his attorneys, and his supporters. Many people were ruined financially.

Many were falsely imprisoned, and Trump himself had his reelection in 2020 stolen by the most brazen and obvious vote theft in American history. The evidence is clear that Biden himself is guilty of selling vice presidential and presidential influence with his son, Hunter, being the marketer and sharing the revenues. Yet the US Department of Justice prevented any investigation and indictments The whore American media covered up the story. The practice of elevating high office holders to the privileged status of a king or an aristocracy above both the law and the US Constitution must not continue in the Trump regime. If it does, high officials will have gained squatters’ rights in being above the law, and the US Constitution will be reduced to a dead document.

At this point, the only way a collapse of the rule of law in the US can be avoided is for the Trump regime to relentless prosecute the Department of Justice, FBI, and White House officials who selectively applied law in the form of lawfare against political opponents. If those responsible avoid accountability, a legal precedent will have been established, and the differential rights and status based on race and gender that are already in place will be joined by special legal privileges for high government officials. It would mean the end of any possibility of accountable government. This should be the highest priority of the Trump regime. It is even more important than closing the border.

On the war front Trump should simply walk away from conflict with Iran and Russia. Wars distract from domestic matters and will prevent focus on making America great again. Wars will bring more propaganda about “terrorists” and more infringements of US civil liberty, which is not a path to making America great again. There is no reason whatsoever for American blood, taxpayers’ money, and more issuance of US debt in order to enrich the coffers of the military/security complex and to expand the frontier of Greater Israel. Trump should come to the realization that Israel is of no value to America. Israel is a deadweight burden around our necks, and the unconditional American support for Israel’s wars and genocide of the Palestinians has cost America’s reputation hugely. If America ever had a moral luster, it no longer does.

Iran and Russia do not threaten the US. The Middle East is full of problems for Iran, whose government doesn’t need problems with the US. Ukraine is Russia’s problem, not ours. Washington is responsible for the conflict. Trump should apologize and remove us from the conflict. The minute Trump stops sending money and weapons to Ukraine and Israel, peace will descend on the world. Trump should return to his original position that NATO is of no value to America. If NATO did not exist, Russia and Europe would be engaged in mutually beneficial economic ventures. These ventures would create financing and business opportunities also for Americans. All would prosper. It is Washington’s pursuit of hegemony–the control over others–that is suppressing economic activity worldwide and eroding the living standard of all Americans except the top one percent.

MAGA America has no interest in the agendas of special interest lobby group policies that benefit only a tiny percentage of people who are already so rich that they can’t possibly spend their huge amount of income and wealth. The problems of the world originate in Washington and they are institutionalized in the Israel Lobby, the military/security complex, Big Pharma and its control over high cost and ineffective American medicine that sacrifices Americans’ health and the integrity of doctors to Big Pharma’s profits. These are the real threats to America that if America is again to be great, these threats, not Russia and Iran, must be destroyed and eliminated. If the Trump regime can reestablish the respect for a rule of law by indicting and prosecuting DOJ, FBI, and other officials for their criminal behavior, and if Trump can disengage the US/Israeli war machine, he will have saved the world from nuclear war and re-established the United States as the principal nation to whom the world looks for leadership.

My concern is that Trump will love the war role. As Winston Churchill believed, there is nothing more exciting than being a war leader, especially if you imagine prospects of winning. Trump is extremely susceptible to getting into war based on advice that Putin has no red lines because Putin is too fearful of conflict. With Iran’s isolation from the destruction of Syria and a reformist government that wants to be free of religious restrictions and to make money in the West, Trump is being advised it is time to bring Iran down.

When the Ruling Elite have you blocked elsewhere, their agenda becomes your only choice. Has Trump fought so hard only for the sake of being used by the well-institutionalized American Establishment? The third thing Trump should immediately do is to shut down the US biowarfare labs Washington is operating all over the world. These labs are trying to create deadly pathogens that are highly contagious. The labs are even attempting to target the pathogens at specific ethnicities, collecting, for example, Russian DNA in the hopes of finding some material unique to Russians to which to attach the pathogen. These American labs are all illegal. Washington tries to avoid responsibility by locating its biowarfare labs in other countries. Trump should put an immediate halt to the activity and prosecute those responsible, including the US Congress if Congress authorized this illegal activity.

Those who profit from this evil activity claim that we have to do it because our enemies do it, but they never provide any documentation for their claim. Regardless, as the Covid experience proves, when a pathogen is released it goes everywhere. To use one as a weapon results in the same self-destruction as nuclear war. So much of science is committed to weapons. Science needs to be turned back to improving health and the human condition. If Trump can deal with the real challenges that we face instead of being led off to fake challenges serving special interests, he will go down as the greatest American president in history.

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If the shooting stops within 24 hours, there’s no bluster. Negotiations will come after.

• Trump Team’s Ukraine Predictions ‘Campaign Bluster’ – Reuters (RT)

Donald Trump’s election promises to end the Ukraine conflict “in 24 hours” were driven by “a combination of campaign bluster and a lack of appreciation of the intractability” of the situation, Reuters reported on Wednesday, citing sources close to the US president-elect. Trump repeatedly touted his ability to end hostilities between Russia and Ukraine while on the campaign trail, accusing President Joe Biden of mishandling the crisis. Privately, members of the Trump team expect the timeline for resolving the conflict to be measured in months, the news agency said. Reuters spoke with two individuals on condition of anonymity, who described themselves as Trump associates who have discussed the issue with him.

The view aligns with public remarks by members of the future administration. Keith Kellogg, whom Trump has tapped to serve as a special envoy for Ukraine and Russia, told Fox News last week that he aims to mediate a resolution within 100 days after Inauguration Day on January 20. Trump expressed frustration that he has to wait to be sworn in before implementing his plans, speaking at a recent press conference at his residence in Florida. Asked whether he intended to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin in the first three to six months of his presidency, the politician said such a meeting would hopefully be arranged “long before six months”. At the same event, Trump expressed empathy with Russian concerns over NATO’s expansion in Europe, which Moscow has cited as one of the key causes of the Ukraine conflict. He criticized the Biden administration for falling to effectively negotiate with Putin on the issue.

According to Reuters, Trump advisers generally support proposals that would take Ukraine’s bid to join NATO off the table for the foreseeable future, and push for a ceasefire along the current battle lines. They also advocate deploying European troops to monitor a potential demilitarized zone, the report said. The Kremlin has welcomed Trump’s recognition of Russian national concerns. However, Moscow expects a sustainable solution addressing the wider European security architecture. Moscow will not accept an agreement that would merely freeze the conflict and give Kiev time to rebuild its army for future hostilities, as happened with the Minsk Agreements of 2014-2015, officials have said.

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The talks won’t involve Ukraine.

• Ban On Talks With Moscow Remains – Kiev (RT)

Kiev is maintaining its moratorium on direct negotiations with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Andrey Sibiga confirmed in an interview with European Pravda published on Wednesday. Two years ago, Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky signed a decree banning his government from any talks with Moscow. When asked if Russia should be involved in potential peace negotiations, Sibiga stated that at the moment, such a “modality” has not been considered. “Let us wait for official contacts with the US, where we will discuss further steps,” the diplomat added. Sibiga took up the post as Kiev’s chief diplomat in September, following the resignation of his predecessor Dmitry Kuleba, who stepped down amid a large-scale purge of Ukraine’s senior officials and took up a position at a Harvard-based research center.

In the interview, Sibiga claimed that US President-elect Donald Trump’s “peace through strength” approach aligns with Zelensky’s so-called “peace formula,” which is predicated on Russia withdrawing its troops from all territory claimed by Ukraine, paying reparations, and subjecting itself to a war crimes tribunal. Moscow has dismissed the plan, calling it “detached from reality.” Russia has repeatedly said it is open to talks on Ukraine, provided they take into account the territorial “reality on the ground,” an approach recently echoed by French president, Emmanual Macron. The Ukrainian leader, however, has recently shifted his rhetoric from emphasizing “victory” to demanding a “just peace,” underpinned by security guarantees from the West, including NATO membership, while leaving the status of the new Russian regions undetermined.

Last week, Zelensky expressed a desire to secure a peace agreement with Russia within the year, emphasizing the need for strong security guarantees from its Western supporters. Trump had repeatedly claimed while on the campaign trail that he could end the conflict within 24 hours. However, the president-elect recently said it might take up to six months after taking office to facilitate a deal between Moscow and Kiev. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Tuesday that Moscow is ready to discuss security guarantees for Ukraine within a broader Eurasian framework in order to address larger geopolitical issues. The Russian president reiterated last month that Moscow is ready for negotiations with Kiev without any preconditions other than those agreed upon in Istanbul in 2022, which involved Ukraine agreeing to a neutral status and restrictions on the deployment of foreign weaponry in the country.

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Oh wait…

• Moscow and Kiev Hold ‘Limited Talks’ – Bloomberg (RT)

Russia and Ukraine are holding “limited talks” in Qatar, Bloomberg reported on Wednesday, citing sources on the Russian side. The negotiations are focused on preventing threats to nuclear facilities amid the ongoing conflict between the two neighbors, the media outlet claimed. Bloomberg’s Ukrainian sources maintained that the only talks held between the two nations are linked to prisoner exchanges. Earlier on Wednesday, Moscow and Kiev confirmed the latest POW swap, which involved 25 servicemen from each side. According to Bloomberg, the Kremlin did not respond to a request for comment. In August 2024, the Washington Post claimed that Moscow and Kiev were holding talks on a potential moratorium on striking energy infrastructure in the summer of that year, allegedly also mediated by Qatar. The negotiations were reportedly thwarted by the Ukrainian incursion into the Russian Kursk border region in early August, the US media outlet stated.

Moscow then refuted the report, saying that “no one has derailed anything.” Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov brushed the information off as mere “rumors.” Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said at that time that no “security regimes” for critical infrastructure had been discussed by the two sides. According to Zakharova, Moscow and Kiev have not engaged in any talks since spring 2022 when peace talks collapse, which Russia blamed on Western interference. In November 2024, Qatar’s foreign ministry spokesman, Majed bin Mohammed al-Ansari, told journalists that his nation’s mediation efforts in the Ukraine conflict go beyond the humanitarian efforts aimed at helping children affected by the hostilities to reunite with their families.

According to al-Ansari, Qatar has always pursued a policy aimed at “reaching peace.” The spokesman also stated that time that Doha was supporting all the efforts aimed at achieving a peaceful resolution to the crisis. Kiev has refused direct talks with Moscow ever since Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky banned direct talks in autumn 2022. Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrey Sibiga confirmed in an interview with European Pravda published on Wednesday that the moratorium is still in place. He also said that Kiev would wait for further contacts with the US before making any moves. Moscow has repeatedly stated that it is ready for peace talks at any moment without any preconditions other than those agreed upon in Istanbul in 2022. The draft treaty involved Kiev agreeing to a neutral status and accepting restrictions on foreign weaponry deployment on Ukrainian territory.

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Who cares?

• German Military Retreats From X (RT)

The German Defense Ministry and the Army (the Bundeswehr) have announced they will stop posting on X claiming that Elon Musk’s platform makes it “difficult to have a factual exchange.” Musk has lambasted the current German government for promoting the “woke mind virus” and leading the country to ruin, going so far as to endorse the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party and interview its leader Alice Weidel live on his platform earlier this week. “We will leave our X-channel dormant until further notice and will not post anything actively for the time being,” the Defense Ministry announced on Wednesday. “We have decided to take this step because a factual exchange is becoming increasingly difficult here.”

According to a statement posted on the ministry’s website, it will continue to communicate with the public via press releases, a WhatsApp group, YouTube, Instagram, and “other social media.” The Bundeswehr reserves the right to post on X “in the case of disinformation campaigns,” it said. The move comes after over 60 German universities and research institutes announced their departure from X, alleging “increasing radicalization” on the site. Two labor unions and the top federal court have also departed the platform in a huff. Musk bought Twitter in October 2022, citing the previous management’s out-of-control censorship, and has since rebranded the platform as X. Subsequent revelations have shown that Twitter’s previous executive team worked closely with the government to suppress opposition narratives.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz will continue to use X “for the time being,” his spokesman told reporters in Berlin on Wednesday. “It’s a difficult balance to strike,” the official representative said, describing X as “not without controversy.” The “controversy” in question appears to be Musk’s endorsement of AfD and an interview with Weidel. He did the same last year to back Donald Trump’s presidential bid in the US, which saw him triumph in November. The German establishment has long tarred AfD with accusations of “extremism,” but its popularity has surged in recent months due to its positions on immigration and the economy. Scholz’s “traffic light” coalition collapsed in November and Germans will have to vote for a new parliament in late February. Since Musk’s $44 billion purchase, proponents of “fact-checking” and censoring “disinformation” have tried to set up alternatives such as Threads and Bluesky, but failed to make an appreciable dent in X’s user base.

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“..each new pledge to Ukraine serves as a stark reminder of Berlin’s neglect of its own citizens..”

• Berlin Proves It Will Support Kiev To Its Own Detriment (Romanenko)

As Germany’s Defense Minister Boris Pistorius proudly announced the delivery of RCH 155 self-propelled howitzers to Ukraine – even before the Bundeswehr receives them – Berlin’s priorities have once again come under scrutiny. The decision to ship this state-of-the-art artillery system to Ukraine highlights a glaring paradox: Germany’s commitment to modernizing its own armed forces seems secondary to its zeal in arming Kiev for a war increasingly serving as a proxy for Western interests against Russia. “We are standing by Ukraine in this existential fight. The RCH 155 represents not only our technical capabilities but also our steadfast support,” Pistorius declared. Yet, for many Germans, each such statement lands like a hammer blow to national confidence in their government.

Comments online have laid bare the growing resentment, with users describing each new arms shipment as “another 0.5% boost for the AfD.” This remark reflects a troubling but undeniable trend in German politics: the ruling coalition’s unwavering support for Ukraine is alienating voters at home. The RCH 155 is an advanced artillery system mounted on a Boxer wheeled vehicle, boasting a range exceeding 40 kilometers and cutting-edge mobility. It was intended to play a key role in modernizing Germany’s military – a long-overdue initiative for the Bundeswehr, which has been plagued by underfunding and outdated equipment. Instead, these cutting-edge weapons will first see action in Ukraine, leaving Germany’s armed forces waiting. Critics argue that this decision exemplifies the government’s misguided priorities. “The Bundeswehr is not only defending Germany but also the NATO alliance,” said one military analyst.

“If we are not equipped to fulfil that role, it weakens the very foundation of our defense strategy.” The irony is inescapable: while Pistorius makes sweeping promises to Kiev, German soldiers continue to train on aging and inadequate equipment. This frustration is not confined to military circles. Across the political spectrum, Germans are increasingly questioning their country’s role as a financial and military backer of Ukraine. The Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), a far-right populist party, has capitalized on this discontent, surging in the polls to become a significant political force. Recent state elections have seen the AfD achieve double-digit gains, fueled by voter dissatisfaction with the government’s handling of domestic issues. Energy prices remain high, inflation eats into wages, and public infrastructure continues to crumble.

Many Germans feel that resources and attention should be directed inward, not outward. For them, each new pledge to Ukraine serves as a stark reminder of Berlin’s neglect of its own citizens. The government’s unwavering support for Ukraine – a proxy for Western interests against Russia – is also being called into question. Pistorius’ rhetoric about an “existential fight” may resonate with international allies, but for many Germans, it rings hollow. They see a government that appears more concerned with maintaining its standing in Washington and Brussels than with addressing the needs of its own people. Comments on Die Welt reports about the transfer often highlight this disconnect. One user wrote, “We’ve become the arms supplier for the world while our own army remains underfunded and ill-equipped. How long will this madness continue?” Another opined, “Every tank, every howitzer we send is another nail in the coffin of this coalition’s credibility.”

Read more …

I read he had a 10-day grace period and filed the docs after 11 days. So one day late. Enough for Gensler to sue.

• Biden SEC Sues Musk Over Twitter Purchase In 11th Hour “Sham” (ZH)

The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has sued Elon Musk in connection to his $44 billion purchase of Twitter (now X) in October 2022. In a Tuesday press release, the agency claims that by delaying the filing of a beneficial ownership report by 11 days, Musk saved $150 million, or 0.34% on several subsequent tranches of stock he bought before filing the disclosure on April 4, 2022. According to the agency, Twitter shares surged by 27% after Musk filed the ownership report – by which time he already owned 9% of the company’s shares. “Investors who sold Twitter common stock during this period did so at artificially low prices and thus suffered substantial economic harm,” reads the complaint. The agency wants Musk to disgorge any profits he incurred due to the late filing, along with pay a civil fine.

In response, Musk’s attorney, Alex Spiro, told the Epoch Times that Musk did nothing wrong – calling the SEC’s lawsuit a “sham.” “Today’s action is an admission by the SEC that they cannot bring an actual case,” he said, adding that Musk “has done nothing wrong and everyone sees this sham for what it is.” As the Epoch Times notes further, Spiro accused the SEC of running a “multi-year campaign of harassment” against Musk and insisted the agency was blowing the alleged late disclosure filing out of proportion, adding that this type of infraction carries a nominal penalty.

The lawsuit is the latest chapter in Musk’s contentious relationship with the SEC. In 2018, the agency sued him for posting on social media that he had “funding secured” to take Tesla private at $420 per share, a claim that was later revealed to be exaggerated. The SEC contended that Musk’s “misleading” post caused Tesla’s stock price to jump by over 6 percent and led to “significant market disruption.” That case was settled with Musk agreeing to pay a $20 million fine and step down as Tesla’s chairman for three years. The settlement did not require Musk to admit to any wrongdoing.

Musk’s “funding secured” post also sparked another lawsuit by a group of Tesla investors, who claimed that it was materially misleading and led them to suffer as much as $12 billion in financial losses. During a three-week trial in the case, Musk’s attorneys argued that he believed his statements about taking Tesla private were truthful, citing discussions with Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) as evidence of potential funding. Musk testified that PIF representatives showed strong interest in the deal, which led him to claim that the funding was secured.

“I had no ill motive,” Musk said in court. “My intent was to do the right thing for all shareholders.” The jury sided with Musk in the case. Jurors delivered a unanimous verdict in February 2023, finding that Musk and Tesla were not liable for misleading investors with the posts. The investors appealed the decision, arguing that the judge gave erroneous instructions to the jurors. The appellate court upheld the jury’s decision, clearing Musk of securities fraud.The SEC’s current chair, Gary Gensler, plans to step down from his post on Jan. 20, the day President-elect Donald Trump will be inaugurated for a second term. Meanwhile, SEC Chief Accountant Paul Munter will retire from the agency effective Jan. 25 – making it unclear if the agency will even proceed with its filing against Musk.

JD Vance Gensler

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“All three CEOs are expected to be seated with Trump and his administration officials on the platform.”

• Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and Mark Zuckerberg To Attend Trump Inauguration (JTN)

Tech giants Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and Mark Zuckerberg will all attend President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration next week, and will be featured in a prominent spot together on the stage, according to NBC News. The three CEOs have all donated at least $1 million to Trump’s campaign or the Trump-Vance inaugural committee, and Musk is considered a close Trump ally. Musk, who runs and owns multiple companies including the social media platform X, will be co-leading the new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) during the second Trump administration, and has donated more than $250 million to getting Trump reelected.

Bezos, who owns the Washington Post and is the owner and founder of Amazon, instructed his paper not to endorse a presidential candidate in the 2024 elections. Amazon has also donated $1 million to the inaugural fund. Zuckerberg, who runs and founded the social media platform Facebook and its parent company Meta, recently reshuffled his company’s moderation policies in a move that some believe was done to appease the incoming Trump administration. He will also co-host a black tie reception on Monday night with Republican megadonor Miriam Adelson, per the Associated Press. Trump will officially be sworn into office on Capitol Hill on January 20. All three CEOs are expected to be seated with Trump and his administration officials on the platform.

Read more …

Trump wants TikTok as a negotiating tool with China.

“For all of those who want to save TikTok in America, vote for Trump. The other side is closing it up, but I’m now a big star on TikTok.”

• Trump Mulls Executive Order To ‘Save Tiktok’ – WaPo (RT)

President-elect Donald Trump is considering issuing an executive order to delay the enforcement of a US law that mandates the sale or shutdown of TikTok, potentially granting the popular social media platform a temporary reprieve, according to The Washington Post. The current legislation, which was passed by Congress and signed by President Joe Biden last year, requires ByteDance, TikTok’s Chinese parent company, to divest from its US operations by January 19, 2025. Failure to comply would result in TikTok being removed from US app stores and losing access to essential infrastructure, effectively ceasing its operations in the country.

Trump has reportedly been “mulling ways to save the day,” including potentially issuing an executive order that would extend the compliance deadline by 60 to 90 days, allowing for further negotiations, the Washington Post reported on Wednesday, citing two people familiar with the matter. TikTok has already devised a plan to “go dark” for 170 million US users on Sunday. According to anonymous insiders cited by Reuters, the app would greet American users with a pop-up message explaining the ban and providing an option to download their data. This move would exceed the law’s requirements, which permit existing users to continue using the app without new downloads. The Supreme Court has yet to issue a ruling on TikTok’s appeal against the law. During recent oral arguments, the justices appeared to prioritize national security concerns over potential free speech implications.

During his first term, Trump attempted to ban TikTok, citing national security risks due to its Chinese ownership. However, during the recent campaign, he changed his mind, stating: “For all of those who want to save TikTok in America, vote for Trump. The other side is closing it up, but I’m now a big star on TikTok.” In December, Trump reportedly met with TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, further signaling a shift in his stance toward the platform. Trump’s legal team has also requested the Supreme Court to halt the ban’s implementation, seeking additional time to pursue a political solution.

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“I am struggling to spot the difference between the extremists of the Right, and those who are trying to fight them.”

• Why Europe Fears Free Speech (Munchau)

We all know the old joke: when a European referendum delivers the “wrong” outcome, the country votes again until they get it “right”. The EU thought this would be the case after Brexit. But so far, no one’s laughing. If anything, things have got worse. Take Romania, which recently cancelled its presidential election when Calin Georgescu, leader of a nationalist Right coalition, won the first round. Thierry Breton, former French European Commissioner, revealed the EU’s mindset during a damning recent TV interview. “We did it in Romania and we will obviously do it in Germany if necessary,” he said. In other words, if you can’t beat the far-Right, ban them.

I disagree with almost everything Breton has ever said, but I am grateful to him for stating his case with such revealing clarity. During his time as industry commissioner in Brussels, from 2019 until last summer, when Emmanuel Macron replaced him with a more compliant figure, he was the driving force behind a series of laws designed to keep Europe in the digital dark ages. The most extreme of which is the Digital Services Act (DSA) which compels “very large online platforms”, such as X and Meta, to check facts and filter out fake news. But, thanks to Breton, the truth is out there. Europe’s ultimate aim isn’t to save public discourse, it is to suffocate far-Right parties by depriving them of the oxygen of information. The DSA isn’t even the last word in the EU’s anti-digital jihad. One of Ursula von der Leyen’s big ideas last year during the European election was the so-called “democracy shield” — effectively launching even more legislation to prevent outside interference in EU affairs.

This notion conjures up images of laser beams and light-sabre fights. And in some respects it’s not far from the truth: a frightened bloc needs a shield to protect itself from the encroaching enemy. Mark Zuckerberg is certainly on the attack. Last week he announced that he is abandoning fact-checking on his platforms — effectively defying the DSA. And he is betting on Donald Trump to protect him from the legal consequences. Given that J.D. Vance, the Vice President-elect, has already threatened to end US support for Nato if Europe tries to censor Elon Musk’s X, surely the same will apply to Facebook. And the EU is far too dependent on the US to be able to mount an effective campaign against any of America’s social media platforms once Trump is president. The DSA, hastily drawn up during the pandemic, not only misjudges the nature of the social media, it misjudges political power. It exposes Europe’s essential weakness before America.

This isn’t just a geopolitical battle, though. It is also a European one. The attempted clampdown reveals that there is something the bloc fears more than free speech: populism. MEPs found it hard enough to stomach Nigel Farage’s brutal outbursts when he was a member of the European Parliament. Now they have Musk breathing down their neck, endorsing candidates from the AfD, a party that sits on the far-Right in the European Parliament’s benches and which supports German withdrawal from the EU. The German media had a collective breakdown when Musk tweeted an endorsement for the AfD, interviewed Alice Weidel, the party’s co-leader, on X, and then endorsed her in an article for Die Welt. The op-ed editor of the German daily resigned in protest. And an article in another newspaper hysterically described Musk’s intervention as unconstitutional. That journalists would advocate censorship seems shocking, until one understands the role of journalism in continental European society. It operates firmly inside a narrow centrist political consensus, which spans all the parties from the centre-left to the centre-right. Naturally, the AfD does not get much airtime in the German media.

But while marginalised by traditional media, the AfD thrives on TikTok, where it has large following. So what irks the German media, and politicians from other parties, is that the censorship cartel is no longer functioning as well as it once did. In the US and in the UK, the once mighty legacy media have already lost their power. Hillary Clinton expressed the frustration perhaps most clearly when she said that social media companies must fact check, or else “we lose total control”. But Europe still lives in a twilight zone where the traditional media still basks in the dwindling sunset of power, trying to ignore social media rising on the other horizon. Like all the modern political battles in Europe, this is about protecting vested interests.

The Romanian case demonstrates how these restrictions on freedom of speech are the first salvos in a greater war of repression. The presidential elections there were cancelled on the grounds that a Russian-infested TikTok had misinformed voters. I am sure that the Russians were active. But it is shocking to think that an election was cancelled because someone lied on TikTok. Let’s be clear, there was no suggestion of any vote rigging. Georgescu won the first round of the election fair and square. But as with the laughable misperception in Brussels after the Brexit vote, the presumption behind the EU’s support for the nullification of the result, was that voters were too stupid to make up their own mind. The rerun is to take place on 4 May, followed by a run-off between the most successful candidate two weeks later. Georgescu is still the most likely candidate to win according to opinion polls, but the Romanian political establishment is still determined to find ways to disbar him, the most promising of which is the hope that he may have received undeclared funds.

There are similar patterns elsewhere. Marine Le Pen faces potential disqualification from the 2027 presidential elections following accusations of irregularities regarding her assistants in the European Parliament. More recently, Brussels was spooked by the victory in Austria of the Freedom Party, which managed to obtain 28.8% of the vote in the September general election. It surpassed a threshold at which point it became politically impossible for the other parties to form coalitions. Herbert Kickl, the FPÖ’s leader, is now likely to become Austria’s next chancellor. Meanwhile, in Germany, a group of 113 MPs has ganged up to ban the AfD. Their story is that the far-Right wants to destroy democracy. While the party is not yet polling high enough to frustrate yet another centrist coalition in Berlin after next month’s elections, Germany may only be a few percentage points away from an Austrian-style impasse.

Surely, though, the sensible approach to the rise of the AfD, the FPÖ and other parties of the Right is not to censor them, but to address the underlying problem that has made them so strong: persistent economic uncertainty, loss of purchasing power, and dysfunctional policies on migration. Failing that, why not co-opt parties of the far-Right as junior coalition partners as they did in Sweden and Finland? If Weidel were suddenly thrust into the job of economics minister, we would see whether she could defend her record in government. But the centrist parties in Germany and France do neither. They have erected political firewalls against the far-Right. And they are doubling down with the same old policies.

It’s an approach that will inevitably backfire. A banned Le Pen would be far more dangerous for the centrist establishment, and possibly even more extreme when she eventually gets to power. Likewise the AfD would surely be radicalised after a ban. Until then, the EU’s blunt weapons of choice — the legal bans, political firewalls, and censorship — will inflict more self-harm than good. In the pecking order of democratic rights, freedom of speech has a relatively low priority in Europe. Like the creatures in George Orwell’s Animal Farm, I am struggling to spot the difference between the extremists of the Right, and those who are trying to fight them.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

Garland

 

 

Rescue

 

 

Encantadora

 

 

Shark attack

 

 

Snow cats

 

 

Penguin

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle November 14 2024

Nov 142024
 
 November 14, 2024  Posted by at 9:27 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,  60 Responses »


Diego Velázquez The Spinners 1655-60

 

• RINOs Keep Senate As Thune Beats Rick Scott To Replace McConnell (ZH)
• Marco Rubio Doesn’t Even Speak MAGA (Marsden)
• Jack Smith To Resign In Defeat Before Trump Takes Office (ZH)
• Advertisers Plan Return To X To Get In “Good Graces Of Elon” (ZH)
• Heritage Picks Up the Pieces With Trump After Project 2025 (Wegmann)
• The Establishment Is Disarming the Trump Insurrection (Paul Craig Roberts)
• Congress Should Fire Jerome Powell (McMaken)
• “Remember, Remember, the 5th of November” (Turley)
• Marc Elias and the Demise of the Faux “Save Democracy” Movement (Turley)
• The Guardian Accuses Musk Of ‘Racism’ And Quits X (RT)
• Trump To Appoint ‘Special Envoy’ To End Ukraine Conflict – Fox (RT)
• Trump Has ‘Deep Disdain’ For Zelensky – The Hill (RT)
• This Is Why Trump’s Approach To Ukraine Is So Different (Lukyanov)
• Ukrainian Defenses ‘Crumbling’ In Donbass – FT (RT)
• Russian Gas Rejecters Will Repent – Serbian President (RT)
• The Truth About Trump’s “24 Hour” Peace Deal In Ukraine (Jay)
• Zelensky Insulated From Truth By His Officials – The Economist (RT)
• Short On Troops, Israel Turns To Mercenaries (Al-Omari)
• The CDC Planned Quarantine Camps Nationwide (Jeffrey A. Tucker)

 

 

 

 

Hegseth

https://twitter.com/i/status/1856507774198292807
https://twitter.com/i/status/1856547051116388693

Elon Rogan

Candace

Alina

Waste

Bash

TMZ
https://twitter.com/i/status/1856542948999012652

CNN

No, not Joe..

 

 

 

 

“..a victory for the post-Trump establishment..”

• RINOs Keep Senate As Thune Beats Rick Scott To Replace McConnell (ZH)

President Trump’s mandate just got a little more complicated, as longtime never-Trumper John Thune (R-SD) was just elected Senate majority leader, setting the stage for him to replace Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), the longest-serving GOP leader who has held the top spot for the past 18 years. Thune, the Senate GOP whip and the #2 ranking member since 2019, largely managed operation of the Senate floor since McConnell suffered a concussion in 2023. As Axios notes, Thune’s win “is a victory for the post-Trump establishment,” as he’s “not a natural, true-believer Trump guy like Rick Scott and his supporters are.” Several of Trump’s most prominent supporters, including Elon Musk, Tucker Carlson and RFK Jr. had endorsed Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) in the race. John Cornyn, an underdog to Thune, ended up finishing in a close second. Needless to say, things just got more complicated for MAGA…

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“They need a guy who can talk the same language as the neocon desk jockeys at the State Department..”

• Marco Rubio Doesn’t Even Speak MAGA (Marsden)

Of all the people that US President-elect Donald Trump could have picked as America’s chief diplomat, he’s chosen Marco Rubio, Florida senator and neocon talking-point guzzler. Guess it sort of makes sense on one level. They need a guy who can talk the same language as the neocon desk jockeys at the State Department. Kind of like an African Grey parrot who can speak English with humans but also bird language with other birds. The bird-brains at State speak mainly neocon, like Rubio. And he could be the MAGA-to-neocon translator for Trump, packaging the 47th president’s vision in a way that’s palatable enough for them to not spend the entire time trying to regime-change him, like they did last time he was elected. But how well does Rubio even speak MAGA – the language of Trump’s non-interventionist, America First, and pro-peace base? Not very well, if his record is any indication.

Case in point: Back when the Nord Stream pipelines were mysteriously blown up, Rubio was one of the first out of the starting blocks to blame Russia for blowing up their own economic lifeline to Europe. But he quickly tripped over his own shoelaces. “The only people in that region who have both the motive and the capability to have done it are Russian or Russian forces. So I think, for me, it’s not an intelligence matter at this point. It’s a common sense matter,” Rubio said in the wake of the attack. It turns out that even the dumbest establishment fixtures didn’t buy the narrative of “Russia blew up its own pipeline.” Apparently, they consider it to be even less of a viable scenario than some drunken Ukrainians with Aquaman-grade diving skills blasting through concrete and steel in highly monitored waters, despite Zelensky trying to stop them at the behest of the CIA, of course.

And then punishing the general they claim to be responsible for the operation, Valery Zaluzhny, by sending him to… London, where he’s currently Ukrainian ambassador to Britain. Guess Western officials and intelligence sources went to the trouble of making all that up to hide Russia’s involvement. Because that’s the only way that Marco Rubio’s confident assertions could be considered credible. Or maybe the actual responsibility lies with another nation state that has the same kind of capabilities? Who could that possibly be? Rubio is apparently so indoctrinated that he simply can’t imagine. Either that, or he does know and is being deliberately dishonest.

Back in 2021, Rubio was literally calling on Biden and Germany to do something to stop the pipeline. “US Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) sent a letter to President Joe Biden, ahead of his meeting with Angela Merkel, Chancellor of Germany, asking him to convey to her ‘that there is broad bipartisan support for preventing the completion of yet another pipeline that bypasses Ukraine.’” Rubio also highlighted that “completing the Nord Stream 2 pipeline will only endanger our democratic allies in East and Central Europe and embolden Russian President Vladimir Putin in his aggression towards them,” he wrote. So, Putin, “emboldened” by Nord Stream, according to Rubio, then decided to just blow it up? Yeah, okay.

Read more …

“you can’t fire me, I quit!”

• Jack Smith To Resign In Defeat Before Trump Takes Office (ZH)

A defeated special counsel Jack Smith and his team are planning to resign before President-elect Donald Trump takes office, the NY Times reports, citing a source familiar with the matter. The news comes days after Smith moved to pause his J6 case against Donald Trump and vacate all remaining deadlines. According to the new report, Smith’s office has been looking at the best path forward in winding down its work on the two outstanding federal criminal cases against Trump – as the DOJ has a longstanding policy not to charge or prosecute a sitting president with a crime. Smith’s departure is more of a “you can’t fire me, I quit!” after Trump vowed to fire him within “two seconds” of being sworn in. “We got immunity at the Supreme Court. It’s so easy. I would fire him within two seconds. He’ll be one of the first things addressed,” Trump told radio host Hugh Hewitt last month.

Department regulations require Smith to file a report summarizing his investigation and decisions – though it’s not clear how quickly he can finish his work – or whether it could be made public before President Biden leaves office – however several officials told the NY Times that he has no intention of lingering any longer than he has to, and has told career prosecutors and FBI agents who are not directly involved in the case that they can start planning their departures over the next few weeks. On Friday, GOP lawmakers told DOJ officials to preserve all of their communications for investigators – who view Smith and crew as the embodiment of a Democratic effort to use lawfare as part of a weaponized Justice Department. According to Smith, he needs until Dec. 2 to figure out how exactly to wind down his J6 case, as well as another case in which he charged Trump with mishandling classified national security documents after leaving office. The latter case was dismissed by Judge Aileen Cannon of the Federal District Court in Fort Pierce, FL – a decision which is currently under appeal in federal court in Atlanta.

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“Dark money-funded fact-checkers allegedly created false reports to discourage companies from advertising on the platform..”

• Advertisers Plan Return To X To Get In “Good Graces Of Elon” (ZH)

Donald Trump is set to return to the White House in January. Ahead of his return, the former president announced that Elon Musk would lead the new “Department of Government Efficiency” in his second administration. With Musk’s close ties to Trump, advertisers are expected to flock back to X to gain access to the administration. The Financial Times recently spoke with media executives who revealed that some brands are preparing to advertise on X again, particularly due to Musk’s connections with the incoming administration. Lou Paskalis, CEO of the marketing consultancy AJL Advisory and a former media executive at Bank of America, explained that marketers plan to reallocate spending dollars on X as a form of “political leverage.” He noted that some companies are seeking government contracts and trying to get in the “good graces of Elon.”

“It could be seen as an official channel for White House communications,” another advertising agency chief told FT, adding that Trump’s victory has shifted significant power and legitimacy into Musk’s hands. However, only some are optimistic. One media director described X as a “mess,” questioning, “Which brand will take the risk?” Musk’s $44 billion acquisition of X initially triggered chaos in ad monetization. Dark money-funded fact-checkers allegedly created false reports to discourage companies from advertising on the platform, attempting to starve it of ad revenue.

The problem for Soros-funded Media Matters and other far-left organizations was that Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, could support X operations for a long time. Musk famously told brands that pulled their ads to “go f**k yourself” at the DealBook Conference and has since announced plans to sue the so-called advertising censorship cartel. Richard Exon, founder of the ad agency Joint, said, “Trump’s victory may well mean brands give X a second chance in 2025,” though he cautioned that they “will be wise to proceed with extreme caution.” Meanwhile, as X cements its role as a central hub for distributing news to Americans, legacy media outlets like CNN and MSNBC are imploding.

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“There is no door, and there is no key, for Project 2025 into the Trump-Vance transition..”

• Heritage Picks Up the Pieces With Trump After Project 2025 (Wegmann)

As Donald Trump paused briefly to fix his tie in a floor-length mirror at the Palm Beach Convention Center, a thousand miles away inside the Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C., staff rushed to quickly put out a prepared statement congratulating the president-elect. Exactly 15 minutes before Trump walked on stage, and while most of the television networks were still waiting to project the winner, an email from Heritage landed in the inboxes of political reporters everywhere. “We look forward to this historic term,” wrote Kevin Roberts, “during which President Trump has an opportunity to make America great, healthy, safe, and prosperous once again.” Added the Heritage chief, “the entire conservative movement stands united behind him.” But does Trump need them in his administration? Does Trump want them after the campaign headaches they caused?

As the Republican candidate closed in on 270 electoral votes, Roberts told RealClearPolitics that the drama was in the past. “The political season is behind us, and we’re now in the policy-making season,” he said. After all, added the Project 2025 architect, “Heritage as an enterprise exists for the policy, not the politics.” Ahead of the second Trump season, he believes the relationship with the president-elect has been repaired. “We will leave the political decisions to the smart campaign people, but now that we’re in the policy-making world,” he said, “I don’t see how you have a conservative administration without, not just Heritage, but the 110 other groups that are part of the project.”

Heritage has worked with every Republican president since Ronald Reagan to staff their administrations and stock their libraries with policy proposals. Trump quickly embraced the think tank during his first term, heralding them as “titans in the fight to defend, promote, and preserve our great American heritage.” But the conservative behemoth may have jeopardized that special relationship when liberals turned their efforts to plan for a second Trump term into an effective campaign foil. “Just google Project 2025,” Vice President Kamala Harris said of the thinktank’s blueprint for how Trump ought to govern if returned to the White House. At nearly every campaign stop, the Democratic nominee would urge voters to go “read the plans for yourself.” And voters did. A lot of them. At one point in the home stretch of this campaign, Google searches for “Project 2025” exceeded those for “Taylor Swift.”

The 900-page collection of white papers went viral, and Trump’s campaign was spooked. Denunciations from Republicans followed, including from Howard Lutnick, who declared anyone associated with the Heritage endeavor “radioactive.” “There is no door, and there is no key, for Project 2025 into the Trump-Vance transition,” Lutnick told RCP ahead of the October vice-presidential debate. The CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald would know: Trump named him and Linda McMahon as co-chairs of his transition. She handles the policy. He oversees personnel. “So, if someone tried to send me a resume,” Lutnick said of staff associated with the endeavor, “they’d get an ‘I’m sorry’ back. Radioactive means ‘no thank you.’”

Read more …

We’re not there yet.

• The Establishment Is Disarming the Trump Insurrection (Paul Craig Roberts)

It is dangerous for Trump supporters to think that the battle is over with the election victory. The battle has not begun, and it never will if Trump cannot put together a fighting administration. There are about 4,000 political appointees in the Executive branch, 1,200 of which have to be confirmed in office by the Senate. The confirmation power gives the Senate input in controlling staffing in a presidential administration. Trump and his transition team do not know 1,200 people, much less 4,000. Desperate to get a government underway, their inquiries will result in input from many sources, especially from the ruling establishment. At best a president and transition team can only focus on a few key areas where the president’s key agendas are. Even here Trump is not doing a great job.

Let’s start with the war front. Trump has said he can immediately stop the war in Ukraine and the Israeli-Hamas-Hezbollah-Iran war in the Middle East. But Trump’s appointees to US Ambassador to the UN, National Security Advisor, Secretary of State, US Ambassador to Israel, and Secretary of Defense are war hawks. UN Ambassador Elise Stefanik is a warmonger for Israel. National Security Adviser Mike Waltz has called for enforcing the energy sanctions on Russia and taking the handcuffs off long-range missiles provided to Ukraine. Secretary of State Marco Rubio is a warmonger. Trump has appointed Mike Huckabee US Ambassador to Israel to the great delight of Israeli extremists. Huckabee has said that Israel has title to Palestine. Trump has appointed Steven Witkoff Special Envoy to the Middle East. Witkoff who is Jewish is tasked with dealing with the Iranian threat, the Israel–Hamas war, the Israel–Hezbollah fighting, the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.

For Defense Secretary Trump has chosen Fox News co-host and commentator Pete Hegseth, a non-Woke masculine man without faith in a DEI military. The downside is that he believes in the official narratives constructed by the military/security complex and neoconservatives of America’s Russian, Chinese, and Iranian enemies. He describes Iran as “an evil regime” and wants to modernize the US military so that it is a match for China’s. It seems we are in for a rise in the defense budget and no closed bases, an obstacle to Musk’s plan to cut $2.5 trillion from the budget. Together with Stefanik, Waltz, and Rubio, Hegseth gives Trump a quattro for war. Do any of these Trump appointees have the flexibility to see the Russian, Iranian, Chinese, and Palestinian point of view?

In his comments about John Bolton, Trump indicated that he thinks presenting adversaries with war mongers is what will bring them to concessions. I doubt this will work with Russia, China, and Iran. Let’s now look at the prospects for RFK Jr. and Elon Musk. The UK newspaper, The Telegraph, reports that Trump’s advisors are distancing Trump from Bobby Kennedy. As I predicted would happen, Trump’s advisors are questioning whether Kennedy can be confirmed. The Big Pharma and fluoride lobbies have asserted their muscle, and it looks like Trump’s advisors are backing down. They lack the intelligence to see that Big Pharma’s blocking of Kennedy would play into Trump’s hands. But as we all know, Republicans simply are not fighters. Most in Congress are RINOs and they are not going to burn their bridges with the Establishment.

The Telegraph is an unreliable newspaper as its totally incorrect coverage of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict demonstrated. The Telegraph’s report could be a Big Pharma plant that seeks to raise questions in the minds of those on the transition team about Bobby Kennedy. Trump transition team member Howard Lutnick had already announced that Bobby would not be getting a job. Instead of having executive authority as Secretary of Health and Human Services or as Director of the Food and Drug Administration, Bobby will collect data on vaccines. It seems Big Pharma and agri-business have killed any improvement in the safety of medicines and food during Trump’s second term.

It seems that Elon Musk also is to be denied a position of executive authority. Initial reports were that the person ideally suited to be Director of the Office of Management and Budget was to be made head of a Commission on Government Efficiency. The commission has now become a new cabinet department, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) jointly led by Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy. Trump says that “these two wonderful Americans will pave the way for my Administration to dismantle government bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure federal agencies.” How are they going to do that if they have no executive power over spending? It is paradoxical that Trump begins his assault on government bureaucracy and waste by creating a new bureaucracy. The way to control the budget is to appoint Musk Director of the Office of Management and budget. What Trump has done is to create a new government bureaucracy that will grow and grow and grow.

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“Trump could leave Powell in his position on the Fed’s 7-member Board of Governors but demote him from his role as chair [..] “That’s a subtle question that has never been tested,”

• Congress Should Fire Jerome Powell (McMaken)

There were a few seemingly tense moments at the FOMC press conference on Thursday when two reporters asked Jerome Powell about the prospect of Donald Trump asking Powell to resign. The first reporter asked “would you resign if asked to do so by Donald Trump?” To this, Powell responded with a resounding “no” followed by silence. A few moments later, Powell was asked by another reporter if it was lawful for Trump to either remove or “demote”—that is, remove Powell as chairman, but leave him on the Board of Governors—Powell. To this, Powell responded with a forceful “not permitted under the law.” Apparently, Powell wished to leave no ambiguity whatsoever about this position that he cannot be removed or demoted by a sitting president. It would agree that the spirit of the law here is that a president not be able to remove a Fed chairman, except for some kind of misconduct. But, ambiguity remains.

Even Alan Blinder, a proponent of the myth of “Fed independence,” admits that in the world of political reality, Trump could potentially remove Powell: “Experts who spoke to ABC News acknowledged that some legal ambiguity looms over what type of conduct warrants sufficient cause for removal, but they said a policy dispute is unlikely to meet such a standard. Still, Trump could attempt to push out Powell and test how courts interpret the law, experts added, noting that the case could end up with the conservative-majority Supreme Court. “Trump could try and he might try,” Alan Blinder, a professor of economics at Princeton University and former vice chairman of the Federal Reserve. “It’s very unlikely that he has that authority, but if he takes this to the Supreme Court, I don’t know what to think of the Supreme Court.” Instead, Trump could leave Powell in his position on the Fed’s 7-member Board of Governors but demote him from his role as chair, Blinder said. “That’s a subtle question that has never been tested,” Blinder said, acknowledging a lack of clarity about whether it would be allowed. “We can’t answer that quite as definitively.”

In any case, Trump would likely have to expend some serious political capital if he wants to remove Powell via presidential power. Yet, Powell’s defiance ought to provoke us to ask why wealthy, pampered, out-of-touch technocrats like Jerome Powell get to act like their removal constitutes some sort of transgression. Central bankers are just bureaucrats, and their removal ought to be regarded with no more trepidation than the removal of an undersecretary of agriculture. Regardless of what Trump’s legal powers may be, it is clear that Congress has the power to remove Powell, just as Congress has the power to abolish the central bank altogether. The Congress ought to abolish the Fed entirely, of course, but if members lack the stomach for that heroic act, Congress can begin with amending the Federal Reserve Act to make it clear that the chairman of the Fed is not a Holy Person, untouchable by the mere mortals who are actually elected to run the federal government.

There are many ways Congress could approach this issue. For example, Congress could rewrite the law to allow Congress to remove the Fed chairman with a majority vote in either house. It doesn’t really matter, so long as central bankers get the message that they’re not special. While Congress is at it, it could make a few other crucial changes as well. Congress should prohibit the Fed from buying any assets of any kind. This would end the Fed’s habit of buying up mortgage-backed securities and government securities to prop up the banker class and Powell’s buddies—i.e., Janet Yellen—at the Treasury. It would also end the Fed’s ability to manipulate interest rates since the Fed’s main tool here is its “open market operations.” A second key change that is very necessary is removing the Fed’s so called “dual mandate.” As the Fed likes to often mention, the Fed has a dual mandate of both “stable prices” and “maximum employment.”

Congress should immediately abolish the mandate for “maximum employment” because the only purpose this has ever served has been as an excuse for the central bank to inflate the money supply. As is abundantly clear from Fed press conferences and publications, the Fed routinely justifies its dovish policy in terms of fulfilling its mandate to maximize inflation. That is, the Fed often says something to the effect of “we’re embracing easy-money policy because our dual mandate to maximize employment says we have to.” Congress should just delete the mandate. (By the way, the Fed actually has a third mandate. It’s to ensure “moderate long-term interest rates.” Getting rid of the Fed’s power to purchase assets probably nullifies this mandate in any case, but Congress might as well remove any doubt and totally prohibit the Fed from manipulating interest rates of any kind.)

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All they had to run on was abortion. And still:

“Trump won white women voters by eight points at 53 percent..”

• “Remember, Remember, the 5th of November” (Turley)

Democracy appears to be losing its appeal on the left. After campaigning on panic politics and predicting the imminent death of democracy, some on the left are now calling to burn the system down in light of Republicans not only taking both houses and the White House but Trump likely winning the popular vote. Some seem to believe that what happened on November 5th is a license to become a modern version of Guy Fawkes (“Remember, remember, the 5th of November; Gunpowder, treason and plot; I see no reason; Why gunpowder treason; Should ever be forgot”). Protesters after the election called for tearing down the system as a whole, insisting that “Trump is not an individual. He’s a figurehead of a system that’s rotten.” Even before the election, law professors and law deans called for a break from the Constitution. Those voices will likely be amplified after the massive electoral loss by Democrats.

Others are seeking to evade the results of the election to still bring Harris to power. CNN’s Bakari Sellers wants to pressure Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor to resign and replace her with Harris. Former Harris aide Jamal Simmons wants Biden to resign to allow Harris to become president despite the vote of the majority. It is an ironic twist after Democratic politicians and pundits repeated the mantra that, if we did not elect Harris, this might be our last election. After losing that election, democracy appears to be the problem. The majority of Americans voting for Trump have been called “anti-American” by Gov. Hochul. Other politicians and pundits have called them racists, misogynists, or weaklings seeking domination by strongmen and bullies. The problem is now with young and minority voters. Trump won white women voters by eight points at 53 percent. Harris actually fell slightly in the support of women overall.

Conversely, roughly 43 percent of men voted for Harris. Forty percent of women under 30 voted for Trump. Even CNN reports that Trump’s performance was the best among young people (18-29 years old) in 20 years, Black voters in 48 years, and Hispanic voters in more than 50 years. So, it appears that it is time to move on. The call for Biden to simply do what the public did not want to do (in making Harris president) is particularly ironic. Many voters were repulsed by the Democrats simply making Harris the nominee after all the primaries were over. This was the candidate who could not garner any appreciable votes in the prior presidential primaries before being made Vice President by Biden. Now, the idea is that she would be elevated by the unilateral act of Biden.

Without a hint of self-awareness or recognition of the hypocrisy, Simmons insisted that this would “Fulfill [Biden’s] last promise — to be transitional.” Most people understood that to mean democratically transitional in opening the way for the election of new leadership. He did so after he was forced to step aside after winning every Democratic primary and tens of millions of votes. Nevertheless, Simmons argued that “Democrats have to learn drama and transparency and doing things that the public wanna see is the time.” That would certainly be dramatic as well as anti-Democratic. Yet, Simmons explained that “this is the moment for us to change the entire perspective of how Democrats operate.” Indeed, it would. It would confirm that the Democratic Party is an effective oligarchy, the very thing that they just campaigned against.

Sellers is more modest. He just wants Harris on the Supreme Court. At no point in history has anyone suggested that Harris was a leading legal mind. Nothing in her history suggests that she is a competent, let alone promising, candidate for the highest court. Harris has previously suggested her support for possible radical changes on the Court, including court packing. She is also a decidedly anti-free speech figure in American politics. None of that matters any more than the results of the election. Harris would be put on the Court not due to any specific talents or skills but because it would be “consequential.” He wrapped up by saying “let Republicans go crazy, ape, I’m even mentioning that option.”

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“..not only rejected but ridiculed the Elias Law Group for one of its challenges. Judge James Peterson (an Obama appointee) said that the argument “simply does not make any sense.”

• Marc Elias and the Demise of the Faux “Save Democracy” Movement (Turley)

Marc Elias is back and that is not good news. Despite the Pennsylvania race being called by the AP almost a week ago, Elias is working with Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.) to try to change that outcome. It is not surprising that Casey was left with Elias. For many, Elias is a notorious figure who captures the hypocrisy of the “save democracy” crowd. Elias is an attorney who has been sanctioned in court and denounced by critics as a Democratic “dirty trickster” and even an “election denier.” Despite his checkered history, Elias remains the go-to lawyer for many Democratic campaigns. It was Elias who was the general counsel to the Clinton presidential campaign when it funded the infamous Steele dossier and pushed the false Alfa Bank conspiracy. (His fellow Perkins Coie partner, Michael Sussmann, was indicted but acquitted in a criminal trial.)

During the campaign, reporters asked about the possible connection to the campaign, but Clinton campaign officials denied any involvement in the Steele Dossier. When journalists discovered after the election that the Clinton campaign hid payments for the Steele dossier as “legal fees” among the $5.6 million paid to Perkins Coie, they met with nothing but shrugs from the Clinton staff. New York Times reporter Ken Vogel said at the time that Elias denied involvement in the anti-Trump dossier. When Vogel tried to report the story, he said, Elias “pushed back vigorously, saying ‘You (or your sources) are wrong.’” Times reporter Maggie Haberman declared, “Folks involved in funding this lied about it, and with sanctimony, for a year.” Elias was back when John Podesta, Clinton’s campaign chairman, was questioned by Congress on the Steele dossier and denied categorically any contractual agreement with Fusion GPS.

Sitting beside him was Elias, who reportedly said nothing to correct the misleading information given to Congress. The Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee were ultimately sanctioned by the FEC over the handling of the funding of the dossier through his prior firm. (I previously discussed the comparison to the criminal charges against Trump for treating the mislabeling of payments as “legal expenses.”). The Democratic National Committee reportedly later cut ties with Elias. Nevertheless, other Democrats continued to hire Elias despite his checkered past. He unsuccessfully led efforts to challenge Democratic losses. Elias also was the subject of intense criticism after a tweet that some have called inherently racist. Elias continued to be accused of not defending but thwarting democracy.

In Maryland, Elias filed in support of an abusive gerrymandering of the election districts that a court found not only violated Maryland law but the state constitution’s equal protection, free speech and free elections clauses. The court found that the map pushed by Elias “subverts the will of those governed.” His work for New York redistricting was ridiculed as not only ignoring the express will of the voters to end such gerrymandering but effectively negating the votes of Republican voters. His work for New York redistricting was ridiculed as not only ignoring the express will of the voters to end such gerrymandering but effectively negating the votes of Republican voters. In 2024, the Chief Judge of the Western District of Wisconsin not only rejected but ridiculed the Elias Law Group for one of its challenges. Judge James Peterson (an Obama appointee) said that the argument “simply does not make any sense.”

The point is that it does not have to make sense. Democratic campaigns fund Elias and his various profitable enterprises to seek to change the outcome of called elections. That is the case with Casey. Trump won Pennsylvania’s presidential election, and Dave McCormick received tens of thousands more votes. With 99 percent of the votes counted, even Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer relented in reversing his decision to bar McCormick from the orientation for new senators. What is most striking is the strategy of Elias. The state has roughly 87,000 provisional ballots to count, but those ballots were generally challenged for defects or suspected invalidity. Even if they were to count, it is unlikely that they will break so overwhelmingly for Casey to overturn the result. Indeed, only about 30,000 were coming from Casey strongholds in Philadelphia and Allegheny County. However, Elias just wants to get within .5% to trigger a mandatory recount.

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“Its journalists will still use the platform for “news gathering purposes” and X embeds will still appear in Guardian articles..”

• The Guardian Accuses Musk Of ‘Racism’ And Quits X (RT)

The Guardian has announced that it will no longer post on X, calling Elon Musk’s social media platform a “toxic” source of “far-right conspiracy theories and racism.” Conservative users accused the liberal British newspaper of “throwing in the towel” when confronted with free speech. In an explanation to readers on Wednesday, the paper said that “the benefits of being on X are now outweighed by the negatives and that resources could be better used promoting our journalism elsewhere.” The Guardian said it had considered the decision for some time, “given the often disturbing content promoted or found on the platform, including far-right conspiracy theories and racism.” X “is a toxic media platform,” the newspaper declared, claiming that the decision to quit was finally made after the US presidential election, in which Elon Musk used the site’s influence “to shape political discourse.”

The Guardian has more than 80 accounts on X with approximately 27 million followers. Its journalists will still use the platform for “news gathering purposes” and X embeds will still appear in Guardian articles, the paper said. Musk purchased Twitter for $44 billion in 2022, rebranding it as X and rolling back most of its censorship policies. Pro-censorship activists and NGOs have claimed that this losing of restrictions has allowed so-called “hate speech” to flourish on the platform, a claim denied by the billionaire. Last month, journalists Matt Taibbi and Paul Thacker revealed that one of these NGOs – the Center for Countering Digital Hate – was lobbying top Democrats in Washington to “kill” X, and pressuring regulators in the UK and EU to “impose consequences for harmful content” shared on the platform.

The Guardian’s announcement came three months after several Labour Party lawmakers in the UK quit X, accusing Musk’s platform of inciting a spate of nationwide rioting after a teenager of Rwandan descent stabbed three children to death and injured ten others in the town of Southport, near Liverpool. The newspaper’s decision has been mocked by conservatives and right-wingers on X. “The Guardian didn’t have a problem with the previous Twitter regime censoring the Hunter Biden laptop story to ‘shape political discourse’ and interfere in an election,” commentator Paul Joseph Watson wrote. “Elon allows free speech, and they have a tantrum.” Under X’s previous management, “many of us would get banned weekly (in some cases, daily) but we never left. As soon as Elon turns the tables a little bit, leftists throw in the towel,” another commenter wrote.

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Seems to make sense.

• Trump To Appoint ‘Special Envoy’ To End Ukraine Conflict – Fox (RT)

US President-elect Donald Trump will appoint a special envoy to lead negotiations on resolving the Ukraine conflict, Fox News reported on Wednesday. Trump had previously said he would speak with Russian President Vladimir Putin in the near future. “You’re going to see a very senior special envoy, someone with a lot of credibility, who will be given a task to find a resolution, to get to a peace settlement,” an anonymous source told Fox, adding: “You’re going to see that in short order.” In the week since he defeated Vice President Kamala Harris, Trump has announced a flurry of names that he intends to appoint to senior cabinet and advisory positions. The incoming president announced earlier this week that he would appoint real estate developer Steven Witkoff as his special envoy to the Middle East, saying Witkoff would be “an unrelenting voice for peace” in the region.

Throughout his campaign, Trump repeatedly promised to end the Ukraine conflict “in 24 hours” if elected. He has not explained how he would do this, although he has claimed that he would use his “great relationship” with Putin, and with Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky, to broker a peace deal. Trump spoke to Zelensky last week, and told NBC News that he would likely speak to Putin in the near future. Putin congratulated Trump on his electoral victory last Thursday, telling reporters that he was ready to speak to the president-elect. While the Kremlin has repeatedly downplayed suggestions that Trump could easily end the conflict with Kiev, Putin said Trump’s statements on the matter “deserve attention, at the very least.”

It is unclear what kind of resolution Trump will push for in the conflict. On the campaign trail, Vice President-elect J.D. Vance suggested that a ceasefire could be declared and a demilitarized zone established along the current 1,300km front line, with Ukraine being denied NATO membership. According to a Wall Street Journal report last week, Trump’s advisers support some version of this plan, and are encouraging the president-elect to present it to Zelensky and Putin. Moscow maintains that any settlement must begin with Ukraine ceasing military operations and acknowledging the “territorial reality” that it will never regain control of the Russian regions of Donetsk, Lugansk, Kherson, and Zaporozhye, as well as Crimea. In addition, the Kremlin insists that the goals of its military operation – which include Ukrainian neutrality, demilitarization, and denazification – will be achieved.

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“..he said the Russian president was among the world leaders who are at the “top of their game,” adding that this is something that the US “does not have.”

• Trump Has ‘Deep Disdain’ For Zelensky – The Hill (RT)

US President-elect Donald Trump despises Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky, while showing “affinity” with Russian President Vladimir Putin, The Hill’s columnists have claimed. Trump’s return to the White House in January 2025 could have “huge” implications for international politics, with the “most dramatic change” likely affecting Washington’s policy on the conflict between Moscow and Kiev, the outlet’s opinion contributors, Robert Hamilton and Dan Perry, suggested in an article on Tuesday. Hamilton is a retired colonel, who now heads Eurasia research at Philadelphia-based think tank, the Foreign Policy Research Institute. The article’s co-author, Perry, is AP’s former chief editor in Europe, Africa and the Middle East. The administration of outgoing US President Joe Biden has “backed Ukraine’s sovereignty,” but Kiev was still “frustrated” by Washington’s reluctance to allow it to use Western long-range weapons to strike deep inside Russian territory, they said.

But Trump “will likely be far worse” for Ukraine, Hamilton and Perry warned. The president-elect “has long demonstrated affinity for Vladimir Putin, while harboring deep disdain for Ukraine’s President Vladimir Zelensky,” they claimed. According to the columnists, Trump’s hostility towards the Ukrainian leader stems from his first term in office, when the Republican was impeached in 2019 after allegedly pressuring Zelensky to investigate the activities of Biden and his son Hunter in Ukraine. “The stage could be set for Trump to reduce aid to Ukraine to push Zelensky into negotiations with Russia,” they suggested. The possible abandonment of Ukraine by the new US administration “risks Putin perceiving a green light to pursue further expansions,” and could “trigger an earthquake in European politics,” Hamilton and Perry suggested.

“The EU would face a difficult choice: step in to fill the void left by the US and rapidly bolster its own defense and aid mechanisms for Ukraine, or risk Russian expansionism moving unchecked,” they wrote. Moscow has repeatedly denied claims that it is planning to attack NATO countries, with Putin recently describing warnings about Russian aggression towards the EU as “nonsense” aimed at alarming citizens and raising defense budgets in the West. During his reelection campaign, Trump stated on several occasions that he had “good” relations with Putin. In late October, he said the Russian president was among the world leaders who are at the “top of their game,” adding that this is something that the US “does not have.” Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un are “tough, smart, streetwise” people, the Republican said.

Last week, the Russian president congratulated Trump on winning a second term. Putin said he had been “impressed” by his behavior during an attempt on his life in July, when then-candidate Trump rose to his feet and raised his fist after a bullet grazed his ear. “He is a courageous person,” he said. Speaking of Trump’s claims that he would swiftly end the conflict between Moscow and Kiev if he were reelected, Putin said such statements “deserve attention, at the very least.” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Sunday that, compared to Biden, Trump is “less predictable” and it’s unclear whether he will follow through on his election promises.

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Fyodor Lukyanov, the editor-in-chief of Russia in Global Affairs, chairman of the Presidium of the Council on Foreign and Defense Policy, and research director of the Valdai International Discussion Club.

• This Is Why Trump’s Approach To Ukraine Is So Different (Lukyanov)

Donald Trump formulates his political course using memes. Strategies, programs and action plans are then drawn up by people around him. But the impetus comes from the main character’s pronouncements. That’s why we hear the US president-elect promise to end the war in Ukraine in 24 hours. It sounds unrealistic, to say the least, but it reflects his desire. Which is obviously a conscious one. Which means it shouldn’t be dismissed out of hand. It’s a pointless exercise to speculate on the basis of leaks and anonymous comments from people – supposedly – close to Trump about what he really has in mind. In all likelihood, he doesn’t yet know himself what he will do. What matters is something else: how Trump’s approach to Ukraine will differ from that of the current presidential administration, and whether he even understands rapprochement.

With regards to the first of these, the difference is stark. President Joe Biden and his team represent a cohort of politicians whose views were shaped by the end of the Cold War. America’s ideological and moral righteousness – and its unquestioned power superiority – determined not even the possibility, but rather the necessity of world domination. The emergence of rival powers that could challenge certain elements of the liberal world order has been met with fierce resistance. That’s because this setup didn’t allow for any deviation from its basic principles and refused to allow for compromise on fundamental issues. Russia’s actions in Ukraine are seen as an encroachment on the very essence of the liberal order. Hence the call for Moscow’s “strategic defeat.” Trump stands for a change in positioning. Instead of global dominance, there will a vigorous defense of specific American interests. Priority will be given to those that bring clear benefits (not in the long term, but now).

Belief in the primacy of domestic over foreign policy, which has always characterized Trump’s supporters and has now spread throughout the Republican Party, means that the choice of international issues is going to be selective. Preserving the moral and political hegemony of the US is not an end in itself, but a tool. In such a system of priorities, the Ukrainian project loses the destiny it has in the eyes of the adherents of the liberal order. It becomes a pawn in a larger game. Another peculiarity of the president-elect is that even his detractors largely admit that he doesn’t see war as an acceptable tool. Yes, he’ll use hard bargaining, muscle-flexing and coercive pressure (as practiced in his usual business). But not destructive armed conflict, because that is irrational. Trump doesn’t seem to have a twisted heart when he talks about the need to stop the bloodshed in Ukraine and Gaza. Now let’s look at his methods. Trump’s previous term offers two examples of his approach to regional conflicts.

One was the ‘Abraham Accords’, an agreement that facilitated formal relations between Israel and a number of Arab countries. The second was the meetings with Kim Jong-un, including a full-fledged summit in Hanoi. vThe first was the result of shuttle diplomacy by Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner. The powerful financial interests of America, the Gulf monarchies and Israel led to a series of shady political deals. The current situation in the region is many times worse than it was then, but it cannot be said that the arrangements have collapsed. The framework is still in place. But such a foundation can hardly be considered a model. The system of relations in the Middle East is very special, and the scale of the Ukraine conflict is incomparably greater. The second example is negative. Trump hastily tried to shift the systemic confrontation by resorting to a spectacle. The bet was on pleasing the ego of the interlocutor – the first North Korean leader to meet with a US president. It didn’t work, because beyond that there was no idea how to solve the real complex problems.

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“Moscow’s forces are now advancing at a faster rate than at any point since the escalation of the conflict in 2022..”

• Ukrainian Defenses ‘Crumbling’ In Donbass – FT (RT)

Ukrainian officials admit that Russian forces are advancing in Donbass faster than at any time since the escalation of the conflict, and Kiev says its defenses are collapsing due to manpower shortages, the Financial Times reported on Wednesday. Ukrainian military officials as well as international experts expect the conflict to enter a critical phase in the coming months, according to the newspaper, as both sides are fighting for territorial advantage ahead of Donald Trump’s inauguration. The article suggested that a “key battle is also shaping up in Russia’s Kursk Region,” parts of which Ukraine invaded in August, deploying some of its best-equipped units. The invading force was ultimately contained by Russian troops and is currently being beaten back, according to Moscow. While Kiev is channeling resources to reinforce its incursion into Kursk Region, the country’s defenses in Donbass are “crumbling” due to manpower and ammunition shortages, the outlet noted.

The Russian forces have intensified attacks in the east in recent months, where Ukrainian troops have been unable to hold the line. “The average age is already above 40 in various brigades and there doesn’t seem to be enough reinforcements arriving on the front line,” Franz-Stefan Gady, a military analyst and fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London who recently visited Ukraine, told the FT. Moscow’s forces are now advancing at a faster rate than at any point since the escalation of the conflict in 2022, the newspaper said. They have been making great strides in Donbass over the past few weeks, taking over a significant number of villages and key settlements, such as the heavily fortified mining town of Ugledar, according to Russia’s Defense Ministry.

A commander of an artillery unit told the FT this week that Ukraine’s troops are facing a severe push back in the Donetsk region as the Russian forces are “attacking from three sides.” The commander said his troops “are ready to pull back… but we do not have the order from the top yet.” To make up for the shortage of soldiers, Kiev is sending air force pilots, engineers, medics and surgeons to the front line as manpower, especially infantry, remains Ukraine’s biggest challenge, the outlet said, citing commanders and analysts. More than a million Ukrainians have been reportedly drafted since the start of the conflict, and another 160,000 are expected to be mobilized over the next three months. Moscow has repeatedly accused the Ukrainian government of sacrificing its citizens to serve the interests of its Western backers, while also describing the conflict as a US-triggered proxy war against Russia, which Washington intends to wage “to the last Ukrainian.”

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“..those who have banned Russian gas “will stand in line before Moscow to ask: ‘give us back gas so we can survive the winter.’”

• Russian Gas Rejecters Will Repent – Serbian President (RT)

Countries that have banned Russian natural gas could soon have to beg Moscow to resume deliveries after Washington stops sending its liquefied natural gas (LNG), Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic predicted on Tuesday. Speaking at the UN Climate Change Conference in Baku, Azerbaijan, Vucic suggested that in three or four years, the US could completely stop its LNG exports to meet its own increased demand, caused by energy-hungry artificial intelligence and the rapid spread of charging stations for electric vehicles. The Serbian leader claimed that if such a thing happens, those who have banned Russian gas “will stand in line before Moscow to ask: ‘give us back gas so we can survive the winter.’” Vucic noted that since the victory of Donald Trump in the US presidential election last week, the oil price has dipped, while gas prices have surged.

After the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in 2022, the EU moved to ban cheap Russian pipeline gas and replaced it with much more costly LNG. Last year, the US was the largest LNG supplier to the EU, representing almost 50% of its total LNG imports, having tripled the supply volume since 2021, according to European Council data. Previously, Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed that the EU “lacks brains” and that its leaders continue to take “politicized” and “ill-considered” steps that “work to the detriment of their own interests and only benefit US politics and economy.”

Putin specifically criticized EU politicians for abandoning Russian gas amid sanctions linked to the Ukraine conflict. He described such policies as “incomprehensible”, particularly as the same officials have “made so much noise” about green goals while restarting coal plants to offset the energy crisis that they themselves had caused. The Financial Times warned last week that the EU’s decision to ban Russian pipeline gas and increase its reliance on LNG could put the bloc’s energy supplies at risk this winter. “Anything can happen. You just need a few supply disruptions and things could go horribly wrong,” one analyst told the paper.

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“Trump will not hesitate to pull the U.S. out of NATO, albeit temporarily to make his point. Trump will also insist that the 300 billion dollars of Russian assets that the EU holds should be unfrozen and given back to its rightful owner..”

• The Truth About Trump’s “24 Hour” Peace Deal In Ukraine (Jay)

The cat is finally out of the bag. As the EU now comes to terms with a Trump win in Washington, it has to face its hardest dilemma to date: whether to continue supporting President Zelensky in Ukraine and keep the war going there, or face realities and shut down the racket and work on a peace deal. It really comes down to two relationships. One with the U.S. itself and its administrations; and two, with Trump himself. Trump has claimed that he will stop the Ukraine war in 24 hours. Contrary to many reports he has even explained how we would do it, by simply shutting off all military aid to Zelensky. This move throws a spotlight on a prickly subject once again of how EU countries play such a minor role to the U.S. The former gets a free ride on being part of a global defence bloc, while the latter picks up most of the bill.

It is little secret that most of the weapons which are keeping the war going on the Ukraine side are from the U.S. If that supply is abruptly halted, then the world’s media will be forced to look at the equation and report on Trump’s chief complaint that the deal between the U.S. and EU countries is unfair and needs rejigging. The minimum spending of 2% of countries’ GDP is probably unrealistic and would need to be hiked to 4 or even 5 percent if there were to be some sort of balance on defence spending and equal responsibility for the so-called “peace keeping” initiatives that the West indulges itself with, which in all cases always ends in troubled hotspots around the world becoming even more of a threat than they were before U.S.-led intervention.

Who could have imagined that the Taliban would be in power now in Afghanistan after the U.S.-led NATO coalition (plus a few others like Australia) cost over 2 trillion USD and 2500 dead U.S. soldiers? Biden may be gone, but the news archive clip of Afghans running alongside a U.S. air transport plane as it takes off will be remembered and watched perhaps in decades to come as a chilling reminder how U.S. intervention usually fails. However, Old Europe has its own ideas about Ukraine and Trump. EU leaders, leading up to the U.S. election, quickly patched together and passed a number of aid packages for Ukraine which a number of experts, like Ian Proud, the former UK diplomat, claim would keep the war going for about a year with or without the U.S. lifeline.

This, once it is realized in the coming days, will anger Trump even more and put him in a position where his first contacts with the EU and its leaders will be a confrontational one. His chief task to keep his word on the 24 hours claim, will be to tell the EU to cancel its own pledges to Zelensky which will immediately remind the entire world who is still calling the shots in the West. If they resist, Trump will not hesitate to pull the U.S. out of NATO, albeit temporarily to make his point. Trump will also insist that the 300 billion dollars of Russian assets that the EU holds should be unfrozen and given back to its rightful owner. As part of a new deal to get peace in Ukraine, the U.S. will have to show some good will on its part and it will be Trump who will be the guarantor for the Europeans, making sure that they don’t “do a Minsk” and sign papers only to double cross those who are on the other side of the negotiating table.

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“It’s not even that he’s being kept in a warm bath,” he said. “He’s being kept in a sauna.”

• Zelensky Insulated From Truth By His Officials – The Economist (RT)

The Ukrainian military and civilian leadership are keeping Vladimir Zelensky in the dark about the desperate situation of his country in the conflict with Russia, The Economist reported on Tuesday, citing sources. As Kiev is forced to gradually yield to Russian troops, and with the prospects of continued US military aid unclear following Donald Trump’s election victory, the “deteriorating situation on the front lines is already rippling through society,” the outlet reported. According to The Economist, to avoid spreading panic and defeatism, the Ukrainian military is attempting to censor the most negative news from the front line. One unnamed senior military official confirmed this, telling the magazine that some Ukrainian leaders are seeking to insulate Zelensky from the hard truth. “It’s not even that he’s being kept in a warm bath,” he said. “He’s being kept in a sauna.”

Military chaplain Dmitry Povorotny also told The Economist that many newly arrived soldiers are reluctant to continue the struggle. “There are a lot of unmotivated men. They are fighting because that’s the only way they stay alive,” he remarked. The outlet noted that many in Kiev are paying particular attention to two dates – January 20 and May 25. The first is the day of Trump’s inauguration, which could potentially pave the way for a ceasefire, while the second is the earliest potential date for an election. The presidential election in Ukraine was supposed to take place in the spring but was canceled by Zelensky, who cited the conflict with Russia. His term officially expired in May, with Moscow questioning his legitimacy.

Ukraine has denied making any preparations for a vote, although The Economist reported that “some groundwork appears to have begun,” with local officials purportedly seeking to keep it under wraps to avoid Kiev’s wrath. Meanwhile, media reports have indicated that Trump, who has claimed he could swiftly end the Ukraine conflict upon taking office, plans to push Kiev to suspend its NATO ambitions and freeze the hostilities along the current front line. Ukrainian media reports have suggested that if this were the case, and Russia were to agree, Zelensky would have little choice other than to accept the deal. Russian officials, however, have ruled out the freezing of the conflict. President Vladimir Putin has said that any peace talks with Kiev could begin once it withdraws its troops from Russia’s Donbass as well as Kherson and Zaporozhye Regions, which overwhelmingly voted to join the country in the autumn of 2022.

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“Offered monthly salaries ranging between €4,000 to €5,000 and fast-tracked German citizenship, many have joined the fight.”

• Short On Troops, Israel Turns To Mercenaries (Al-Omari)

Facing increasing domestic pressure to reveal the true extent of their military losses in Gaza and Lebanon, Israeli officials have released figures that are likely to only reveal minimal numbers. The data claims that since the beginning of Operation Al-Aqsa Flood on 7 October 2023, around 12,000 soldiers and officers have been injured or forced into rehabilitation under the occupation state’s Ministry of Defense. This includes 910 wounded during what Israel calls a “limited ground maneuver” launched by Tel Aviv on the Lebanese border, in addition to the deaths of over 760 officers and soldiers and 140 left completely disabled. These admissions, although selective, have stirred growing skepticism within Israeli society, already at its most politically divided since the inception of the state in 1948. Following the sacking of Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, questions are mounting: how does Israel plan to sustain its fighting force amidst the Lebanese resistance’s deadly daily attacks on them?

Opposition against compulsory military service from religious groups, particularly the Haredim, has compounded the army’s challenges – so has the removal of Gallant, an army dropout rate soaring above 17 percent, a wave of reverse immigration that has reached one million people in a single year, the highest since 1948, and increasing reluctance among shell-shocked reservists to return to the horror of battlefields in Gaza and the Lebanese border. The treacherous northern front, especially, has become a symbol of perpetual fear for Israeli soldiers stationed there against Hezbollah, as history repeats itself in south Lebanon. The “huge shortage” of capable fighters has forced Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to explore a range of unconventional options, especially after the Haredim conscription law passed in mid-July proved insufficient in addressing the manpower gap.

Many of these options are centered around utilizing tens of thousands of mercenaries, drawing on assistance from western intelligence agencies, and enlisting unconventional fighters, including Jewish militias. For the past seven decades, successive Israeli administrations have been reluctant to encourage a wholesale migration or naturalization of African Jews – the ‘Falasha’ from Ethiopia – to an Israel rife with racism, citing their ‘lower status’ to Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews. As a result, only around 80,000 Ethiopian Jews, 20,000 of whom were born in the occupation state, hold Israeli citizenship. But today, desperate for manpower, the Ministry of Defense has begun granting amnesty to Falasha currently imprisoned for attempting illegal entry into Israel or for overstaying their visas.

These men, aged between 18 and 40, are being fast-tracked for citizenship on the condition that they enlist. The Zionist organization ‘Al-Harith’ has also been active in Ethiopia, recruiting and training Ethiopian Jews with promises of citizenship, job opportunities, and residence within Israel after the war. It is estimated that by October 2024, more than 17,000 Falasha, including only 1,400 women, have been recruited. Another initiative by the Netanyahu administration involves cooperation with German intelligence and Zionist organizations in Germany to recruit asylum seekers from Afghanistan, Libya, and Syria. Over the past seven months, the Values Initiative Association and the German–Israeli Association (DIG) have worked to enlist these refugees from war-torn Muslim-majority countries as mercenaries for Israel.

Offered monthly salaries ranging between €4,000 to €5,000 and fast-tracked German citizenship, many have joined the fight. Reports suggest that around 4,000 immigrants were naturalized between September and October alone. This shift highlights a significant change in Berlin’s position – which once served as a mediator in prisoner exchange deals between Israel and Palestinian or Lebanese factions, but now vocally and materially leads global support of Israeli military objectives, under the guise of a moral obligation toward the occupation state. Germany’s policy of supporting genocide in Gaza and terror in Lebanon was expressed by none other than Berlin’s Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock during her recent visit to Lebanon and then in her speech in the German Parliament, the Bundestag, in late September:

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“..physically separating high-risk individuals from the general population” allows authorities “to prioritize the use of the limited available resources.”

• The CDC Planned Quarantine Camps Nationwide (Jeffrey A. Tucker)

Consider the vaccine passports alone. Six cities were locked down to include only the vaccinated in public indoor places. They were New York City, Boston, Chicago, New Orleans, Washington, D.C., and Seattle. The plan was to enforce this with a vaccine passport. It broke. Once the news leaked that the shot didn’t stop infection or transmission, the planners lost public support and the scheme collapsed. It was undoubtedly planned to be permanent and nationwide if not worldwide. Instead, the scheme had to be dialed back. Features of the CDC’s edicts did incredible damage. It imposed the rent moratorium. It decreed the ridiculous “six feet of distance” and mask mandates. It forced Plexiglas as the interface for commercial transactions. It implied that mail-in balloting must be the norm, which probably flipped the election. It delayed the reopening as long as possible. It was sadistic.

Even with all that, worse was planned. On July 26, 2020, with the George Floyd riots having finally settled down, the CDC issued a plan for establishing nationwide quarantine camps. People were to be isolated, given only food and some cleaning supplies. They would be banned from participating in any religious services. The plan included contingencies for preventing suicide. There were no provisions made for any legal appeals or even the right to legal counsel. The plan’s authors were unnamed but included 26 footnotes. It was completely official. The document was only removed on about March 26, 2023. During the entire intervening time, the plan survived on the CDC’s public site with little to no public notice or controversy. It was called “Interim Operational Considerations for Implementing the Shielding Approach to Prevent COVID-19 Infections in Humanitarian Settings.”

“This document presents considerations from the perspective of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC) for implementing the shielding approach in humanitarian settings as outlined in guidance documents focused on camps, displaced populations and low-resource settings. This approach has never been documented and has raised questions and concerns among humanitarian partners who support response activities in these settings. The purpose of this document is to highlight potential implementation challenges of the shielding approach from CDC’s perspective and guide thinking around implementation in the absence of empirical data. Considerations are based on current evidence known about the transmission and severity of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) and may need to be revised as more information becomes available.”

By absence of empirical data, the meaning is: nothing like this has ever been tried. The point of the document was to map out how it could be possible and alert authorities to possible pitfalls to be avoided. The meaning of “shielding” is “to reduce the number of severe Covid-19 cases by limiting contact between individuals at higher risk of developing severe disease (‘high-risk’) and the general population (‘low-risk’). High-risk individuals would be temporarily relocated to safe or ‘green zones’ established at the household, neighborhood, camp/sector, or community level depending on the context and setting. They would have minimal contact with family members and other low-risk residents.” In other words, this is what used to be concentration camps.

Who are these people who would be rounded up? They are “older adults and people of any age who have serious underlying medical conditions.” Who determines this? Public health authorities. The purpose? The CDC explains: “physically separating high-risk individuals from the general population” allows authorities “to prioritize the use of the limited available resources.” This sounds a lot like condemning people to death in the name of protecting them.

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3D

 

 

PuppyKitten

 

 

Thank you
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Taxi
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Sea horse

 

 

Dog flood
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Kangal

 

 

Bowling
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