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Debt Rattle November 20 2024

Nov 202024
 
 November 20, 2024  Posted by at 9:47 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,  72 Responses »


Caravaggio St. John the Baptist in the wilderness 1604

 

• Ukraine ATACMS Strike On Russia After Putin Lowers Threshold For Nukes (ZH)
• On Way Out, Reckless Biden Allows Deep Russia Strikes (Lauria)
• Biden Committing Unconstitutional Act Of War- Rep. Massie (RT)
• Kiev Has Permission To Launch Long-Range Strikes – Zelensky (RT)
• Ukrainian Attacks Could Merit Nuclear Response Against NATO – Medvedev (RT)
• New Russia Nuclear Doctrine: What Has Changed (Sp.)
• Kremlin Urges Foreign Nations To Study Russia’s New Nuclear Doctrine (RT)
• The Western World Has Degenerated Into Idiocy (Paul Craig Roberts)
• Can Trump End Ukraine’s ‘Endless War?’ (Victor Davis Hanson)
• Kremlin Reveals Why Ukraine Conflict Will Last ‘A Little Longer (RT)
• ‘Audit’ By Trump Would Be Nightmare For Zelensky – Moscow (RT)
• Secret British Military Cell Plotting To ‘Keep Ukraine Fighting’ (Klarenberg)
• Trump Confirms Plan To Use Military For Deportations (RT)
• Musk Goes All In On ‘Judge Dredd’ Matt Gaetz (ZH)
• Musk Mocks Pandemic Claim From Son of George Soros (RT)
• Diabetes Cases Quadruple Over 30 Years; WHO Urges Lifestyle Changes (ET)

 

 

 

 

Hammer

Trump tariffs

RFK

O’Leary

Scott Ritter

Jennings

Tucker

Shirt

 

 

 

 

Dems’ farewell present to America.

• Ukraine ATACMS Strike On Russia After Putin Lowers Threshold For Nukes (ZH)

About a day after President Biden authorized Ukraine to use the long-range US-made MGM-140 Army Tactical Missile System to strike deeper into Russian territory, a new report suggests that the Ukrainian Armed Forces have hit a military installation in the western Bryansk region. This comes after Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Russia’s nuclear weapons doctrine was changed and signed by President Vladimir Putin, indicating “the use of Western non-nuclear rockets by the Armed Forces of Ukraine against Russia can prompt a nuclear response.” “For the first time, Ukraine’s Defense Forces struck Russian territory with ATACMS ballistic missiles,” RBC Ukraine news agency reported Tuesday. RBC Ukraine said the military facility near the city of Karachev in the Bryansk region was successfully hit with ATACMS. This location was about 115 kilometers (71 miles) from the border with Ukraine.

“Indeed, for the first time, we used ATACMS to strike Russian territory. The strike was carried out against a facility in the Bryansk region, and it was successfully hit,” one source told the local media outlet. Separately, media outlet Kyiv Post stated the 67th arsenal of the Main Directorate of the Missile and Artillery Directorate of Russia was hit. The facility reportedly had large stockpiles of anti-aircraft missiles, munitions for multiple launch rocket systems, artillery ammunition, and guided bombs, much of which was supplied by North Korea. Kyiv Post noted: “Russian media sources, including residents on social networks, reported explosions coming from within the Karachev district, and suggesting that a “military base” was being attacked.” The Russian Astra Telegram channel shared videos of the incident, while local reports said that there had been strikes on this arsenal in late 2023 and again in June and October this year.

Bloomberg revealed more details about the attack: Russian Defense Ministry confirmed Ukrainian armed forces launched a strike with US-made ATACMS ballistic missiles at a military object in Bryansk region on the border with Ukraine, Interfax reports. • 5 missiles were shot down, 1 damaged; no casualties reported • Missile debris caused fire in a military installation. Earlier, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters that President Vladimir Putin signed new changes to Russia’s nuclear weapons doctrine. Peskov said the new modifications signify “the use of Western non-nuclear rockets by the Armed Forces of Ukraine against Russia can prompt a nuclear response.”

Peskov’s comments were made shortly after President Biden approved Ukraine’s use of ATACMS against military targets deep inside Russia. Additionally, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov addressed the nuclear doctrine, stating that the threshold for using nuclear weapons has been lowered, during an event in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on the sidelines of the G20 Summit. Lavrov asserted that Russia’s position is that nuclear war won’t happen, and that fundamentally Russian nuclear doctrine doesn’t differ from the United States’ – which sees nukes as a ‘deterrent’. But still, he added, Russia will “react accordingly” to Ukraine firing a US long-range missile.

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The story of the presence of 10,000 or so North Korean troops in Russia/Ukraine is highly questionable. It does come in handy when used as the reason to let Ukraine fire long range missiles at Russian targets.

• On Way Out, Reckless Biden Allows Deep Russia Strikes (Lauria)

Biden ultimately sided with the Pentagon, and he couldn’t be more explicit why. He opposed a NATO no-fly zone over Ukraine fighting Russian aircraft, he said, because “that’s called World War III, okay? Let’s get it straight here, guys. We will not fight the third world war in Ukraine.” U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin at the time backed him up, saying: “President Biden’s been clear that U.S. troops won’t fight Russia in Ukraine, and if you establish a no-fly zone, certainly in order to enforce that no-fly zone, you’ll have to engage Russian aircraft. And again, that would put us at war with Russia.” But now Biden has reversed himself on his sensible positions and is defying the Pentagon to roll the dice that Russia’s warnings, repeated on Monday by Putin’s spokesman, won’t lead to nuclear conflict.

While he previously would not even authorize British long-range missile attacks into Russia in September, let alone U.S. ATACMS, on Sunday he authorized the ATACMS, risking Russia taking direct action against U.S. targets. So what changed Biden’s addled mind? [..] Biden staked his legacy on Ukraine. He was involved in the 2014 coup, in allegedly shady practices there with his son and then in provoking Russia to invade in 2022. He foolishly believed he would prevail in bringing down Putin with an economic, information and proxy ground war. All three are now decisively lost as the U.S. — still under Biden — prepares for the end game. Biden’s only face saver is for Ukraine to get back some of its lost territory by trading for it with Russian territory it seized in Kursk this summer.

So he is authorizing U.S. soldiers to operate ATACMS missiles from Ukraine to beat back a 50,000-man Russian force seeking to take back all of that Russian territory. Part of that force, according to the Pentagon spokesman, is a contingent of at least 10,000 North Korean troops invited by Moscow, thus operating legally on pre-war Russian territory. Yet the presence of these North Koreans has sent the Biden administration and its allied media into paroxysms of near insanity. The New York Times reported on Sunday: “Officials said Mr. Biden was persuaded to make the change in part by the sheer audacity of Russia’s decision to throw North Korean troops at Ukrainian lines. He was also swayed, they said, by concerns that the Russian assault force would be able to overwhelm Ukrainian troops in Kursk if they were not allowed to defend themselves with long-range weapons.”

It is not like Biden doesn’t know the potentially grave consequences he is recklessly unleashing. He was already warned about the no-fly zone and said “that’s called World War III, okay?” He was then warned by the Pentagon against allowing the British missiles and acted like a responsible statesman. But now, when it comes to his precious legacy, he doesn’t appear to give a damn about anything else. He was deprived of a second term (by traitors within his own party he no doubt thinks) and he will risk a NATO-Russia war to avoid the taint of utter defeat in Ukraine. This is what he’s ignoring, according to the Times:

“Some of Mr. Biden’s advisers had seized on a recent U.S. intelligence assessment that warned that Mr. Putin could respond to the use of long-range ATACMS on Russian soil by directing the Russian military or its spy agencies to retaliate, potentially with lethal force, against the United States and its European allies. The assessment warned of several possible Russian responses that included stepped-up acts of arson and sabotage targeting facilities in Europe, as well as potentially lethal attacks on U.S. and European military bases.” Where it goes from there, nobody knows. Thanks, Joe.

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“President Joe Biden has violated the US Constitution and ought to be impeached..”

“Biden is committing an unconstitutional Act of War that endangers the lives of all US citizens..”

“This is an impeachable offense, but the reality is he’s an emasculated puppet of a deep state..”

• Biden Committing Unconstitutional Act Of War- Rep. Massie (RT)

President Joe Biden has violated the US Constitution and ought to be impeached for permitting Ukraine to fire American-supplied long-range missiles into Russia, Congressman Thomas Massie has said. Multiple US outlets reported over the weekend that Biden had lifted the restrictions on Kiev’s use of US-supplied rockets. While the White House has neither confirmed nor denied the news officially, a volley of missiles was fired at Russia’s Bryansk Region early on Tuesday. “By authorizing long range missiles to strike inside Russia, Biden is committing an unconstitutional Act of War that endangers the lives of all US citizens,” Massie, a Republican from Kentucky, posted on X (formerly Twitter) on Monday. “This is an impeachable offense, but the reality is he’s an emasculated puppet of a deep state,” he added.

According to anonymous officials who spoke to the media, the US permission would “mostly” apply to the Kursk Region of Russia, which Ukraine invaded in August. The decision was reportedly triggered by the Ukrainian claim that 10,000 North Korean soldiers have been deployed to Kursk to aid the Russian troops. The US and its allies had placed certain restrictions on the use of the weapons they have supplied to Kiev since 2022, in order to maintain plausible deniability regarding their involvement in the conflict with Russia.Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that the use of long-range missiles would change the nature of the conflict and make NATO a direct participant in the hostilities. Moscow has also revised its nuclear doctrine to encompass conventional attacks by proxies.

Massie has served in the US House of Representatives since 2012 and won his latest re-election bid unopposed. His insistence on constitutionalism has often put him at odds with both the Democrats and his own party. Under the US Constitution, only Congress has the power to start a war. The last time this happened, however, was in 1942, when it was declared against Axis-aligned Hungary, Bulgaria, and Romania. Since 1991, the national legislature has passed three Authorizations for Use of Military Force (AUMF), twice against Iraq and once against Al-Qaeda. The AUMF targeted at Al-Qaeda has been stretched to justify the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan as well as subsequent interventions in Syria, Somalia, Yemen and elsewhere.

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“At least six long-range ATACMS missiles were fired into Russia’s Bryansk Region overnight..”

• Kiev Has Permission To Launch Long-Range Strikes – Zelensky (RT)

Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky has claimed that several Western countries have given Kiev permission to use their long-range missiles against internationally-recognized Russian territory. The New York Times reported on Sunday that US President Joe Biden had lifted some restrictions on the use of US-provided ATACMS missiles. The White House has neither confirmed nor denied the NYT article, which cited anonymous officials. “Now that there are relevant decisions, not just in the media, but also from the relevant countries, it is very important to add to these decisions the number of opportunities with which we can reduce the military potential of the Russian Federation, wherever it is,” Zelensky said on Tuesday at a press-conference in Kiev.

Speaking alongside Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, Zelensky added that Ukraine is now “working to ensure that all countries support long-range capabilities,” urging Germany in particular to “take the appropriate decision” as well. The UK and France have also reportedly lifted restrictions on the use of the long-range missiles they have provided to Kiev, although they haven’t confirmed the move either. Germany and Italy have publicly said their policy remained unchanged, however, and that their weapons can only be used on Ukrainian soil.

At least six long-range ATACMS missiles were fired into Russia’s Bryansk Region overnight, Moscow’s Defense Ministry reported on Tuesday. Five of them were shot down, while debris from one reportedly caused a localized fire at a military base, causing no property damage. Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly warned that long-range strikes with Western weapons would change the nature of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, making it a direct confrontation between NATO and Moscow. On Tuesday, Russia officially updated its nuclear deterrence doctrine to authorize an atomic response to conventional attacks from countries backed by nuclear powers. This has been widely interpreted as applying to Ukrainian strikes with weapons supplied by the US, UK and France.

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“Russia reserves the right to retaliate with weapons of mass destruction against Kiev and key NATO facilities, wherever they may be located,” Medvedev said. “This would amount to World War III..”

• Ukrainian Attacks Could Merit Nuclear Response Against NATO – Medvedev (RT)

Moscow’s revised nuclear doctrine permits retaliatory strikes against NATO for the kind of attacks that US President Joe Biden reportedly authorized last week, former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev has warned. Washington has reportedly granted Kiev permission to use ATACMS ballistic missiles deep inside Russian territory. Medvedev, who serves as deputy chairman of the Russian Security Council, warned on Tuesday that such actions would qualify as a threat warranting a nuclear response under the new doctrine, which President Vladimir Putin enacted earlier in the day. In response to such an attack, “Russia reserves the right to retaliate with weapons of mass destruction against Kiev and key NATO facilities, wherever they may be located,” Medvedev said. “This would amount to World War III,” he added.

Unrestricted strikes using Western weapons are part of Vladimir Zelensky’s ‘victory plan’, which he presented to the US president in September. The reported change in US policy, which was confirmed by several American allies, came after Donald Trump won the presidential election earlier this month. The Republican politician has claimed that he could end the Ukraine conflict in 24 hours, once he is back in office in January. Some of his close supporters have accused Biden of trying to railroad the incoming administration into prolonging hostilities with Russia with his decision.

While Washington has not issued an official statement on the matter, State Department Assistant Secretary for Western Hemisphere Affairs Brian A. Nichols told the Brazilian newspaper O Globo on Tuesday that strikes by Kiev as authorized by Biden may encourage Russia to negotiate peace. In September, Putin issued a warning to NATO member states, which Zelensky was lobbying to authorize long-range strikes on Russia. Kiev is incapable of launching Western weapons without direct help of donor states, so any such attack would put NATO and Russia directly at war with each other, the Russian leader said. The updated Russian nuclear posture introduces several changes, one of which states that an attack by a foreign nation that does not have weapons of mass destruction but is backed by a nuclear power should be considered as a joint attack by both.

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“.. the previous version of the doctrine contained no mention of Russia being authorized to use nuclear weapons if attacked by a non-nuclear state backed by a nuclear power.”

• New Russia Nuclear Doctrine: What Has Changed (Sp.)

The new Russian nuclear doctrine recently signed by President Vladimir Putin features several notable articles that were absent from the doctrine’s previous iterations, Russian military analyst Ret.Col. Viktor Litovkin tells Sputnik. “Firstly, the 2020 edition of the doctrine contained no mention of Belarus where we deployed our nuclear weapons and whom we had taken under our ‘nuclear umbrella’,” Litovkin explains. “Secondly, the previous version of the doctrine contained no mention of Russia being authorized to use nuclear weapons if attacked by a non-nuclear state backed by a nuclear power.” According to him, Russia thus sends a direct warning to the United States and NATO who supply Ukraine with long-range missiles and urge Kiev to use them, effectively waging a war against Russia by proxy.

“This is a serious warning that, if they go too far and long-range missiles are used against Russian territory – and these long-range missiles are programmed by NATO specialists because Ukrainian specialists lack the necessary equipment and expertise, not to mention NATO aircraft and heavy UAVs guiding these missiles – we would be empowered to strike against the sites these missiles are launched from,” he adds. Dmitry Stefanovich from the Moscow-based Institute of World Economy and International Relations at the Russian Academy of Sciences also points out that the new edition of the nuclear doctrine states that nuclear weapons could be used in case of a threat to Russia’s “territorial integrity and sovereignty” rather than in case of a threat to “the country’s very existence” as before.

The doctrine thus serves as a reaction to “global processes in the military-political sphere, not all of which are related to Ukraine,” Stefanovich notes. “Most importantly, the document still maintains that nuclear deterrence works only until nuclear weapons are used. One can only guess what would happen ‘beyond the nuclear threshold’ and I hope these speculations remain purely hypothetical,” he remarks.

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“..the weapons authorized by President Biden would enhance Ukraine’s defense capabilities and may encourage Russia to negotiate peace..”

• Kremlin Urges Foreign Nations To Study Russia’s New Nuclear Doctrine (RT)

Foreign leaders should carefully study Russia’s new nuclear doctrine, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said, after President Vladimir Putin formally authorized the document. Published on Tuesday, the eight-page policy statement on Russian nuclear deterrence includes changes previewed by Putin in September. It is “extremely important” and should be “the subject of very deep analysis both in our nation and, probably, abroad,” Peskov told journalists during a regular briefing. Among the changes under the new rules, Russia will now consider an attack by a non-nuclear power backed by a nuclear one as a joint attack, and will also treat a massive air assault as warranting a nuclear response. Peskov highlighted specific wording in the doctrine “aimed at ensuring realization by the potential enemy of the inevitability of retaliation in case of aggression against the Russian Federation and/or its allies.”

Last week, US President Joe Biden reportedly granted Kiev permission to use American-made long-range weapons to deliver strikes deep into Russia. The policy change has been confirmed by some US allies, but not by Washington itself. Putin previously said that any such attack would amount to a direct war between NATO and Russia. Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky has included unrestricted attacks with Western weapons in his ‘victory plan’ for the conflict with Moscow, which he touted to Biden in September. Other points of his proposal include the deployment of a “conventional deterrence package” on Ukrainian soil. He reportedly requested the US to station Tomahawk cruise missiles in Ukraine and threatened to launch them against Russia.

Peskov was asked on Tuesday whether such a deployment would trigger a Russian nuclear strike under the new doctrine. He declined to answer directly, instead referring to the new provision about foreign attacks backed by nuclear states that Moscow wants to deter with the update. Moscow reserves the right to use nuclear weapons when its sovereignty and territorial integrity or those of its allies is at stake, the official added. On Tuesday, US State Department Assistant Secretary for Western Hemisphere Affairs Brian A. Nichols appeared to indirectly confirm the policy change when he claimed to the Brazilian newspaper O Globo that the weapons authorized by President Biden would enhance Ukraine’s defense capabilities and may encourage Russia to negotiate peace.

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“..it would make more sense for Trump to deport the Democrats and take in the Hispanics.”

• The Western World Has Degenerated Into Idiocy (Paul Craig Roberts)

The moron, Annalena Baerbock, Germany’s foreign minister, has threatened China for supporting Russia. What is it with Western politicians that they think they have authority over the foreign policy of sovereign countries and threaten powerful countries that can blow them off the face of the earth? Why do they so cavalierly stir up powerful enemies that can crush them? Annalena Baerbock is clearly a stupid person. The American Biden regime is even more stupid. The Biden morons have turned a contemptuous eye to Russian military doctrine and the Russian government’s statement that any missiles fired into Russia will be regarded as fired by the US and NATO and will receive a response that includes the possible use of nuclear weapons. The idiot Biden regime has thumbed its nose at Russia and, thereby, regarding the warning as “Putin’s bluff,” has invited nuclear war.

It is possible that Putin will accept Russia’s humiliation in order to spare the world, but he must know that sooner or later he must fight or surrender Russia to Washington. What is being gained from taking such an irresponsible risk? It would be one thing if it were only a risk the consequence of which would be borne only by the Biden morons. But it is another when the risk is borne by the entire world. Where is the world’s denunciation of the Biden idiots for exposing the world to nuclear war? What purpose justifies this extraordinary risk? Is the entire world as stupid as Biden? The notion that America whose government is demonstratively insane is a world leader is beyond absurdity. Such a threat to life as Washington presents cannot be made great. It can only be eliminated. If you care to understand how utterly stupid tens of millions of Americans are, note that about 45% of Americans who voted in the election voted for Democrats.

When almost half of the American population is totally mindless and supports with its votes military attack on Russia, how can Trump make America great again? Indeed, how can America even survive? If you think about it, it would make more sense for Trump to deport the Democrats and take in the Hispanics. America would be better off. To be great a country needs smart people, and clearly Hispanics are smarter than Democrats. We must hope that Trump has risen to the occasion, asked Putin to hold off, and promised to reverse the policy once inaugurated. To remind you, I warned that we would reach this dangerous point because Putin refused to use sufficient force to end the conflict with Ukraine before Washington could get deeply involved. Trying to avoid a larger war, Putin produced one. Note that the US and NATO are already in violation of this new doctrine.

For example, an Aegis Ashore facility, which is almost identical to the anti-ballistic missile Aegis Combat System carried by US naval vessels, just opened in Poland. This is the second such facility on the Russian border (the first is in Romania). Both facilities are armed with the dual-use Mark 41 launch system that can launch both ballistic and Tomahawk cruise missiles, which can be armed with nuclear weapons. The missiles arrive and are loaded into the launchers concealed in large crates that make it impossible for observers to ascertain which type of missile is being used. It is difficult to understand such provocative actions by Washington that clearly threaten the world with nuclear war.

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“..how could Putin reassure the Russian people of anything short of an absolute annexation of Ukraine after the cost of one million Russian casualties?”

1/ Russia doesn’t want to annex Ukraine. 2/ There are not nearly one million Russian casualties.

• Can Trump End Ukraine’s ‘Endless War?’ (Victor Davis Hanson)

Trump was elected in part on promises to avoid “endless wars” of the sort that cost American blood and treasure in Afghanistan and Iraq but without resulting in strategic advantage or civilized calm. Yet as a Jacksonian, Trump also restored American deterrence through punitive strikes against ISIS and terrorist thugs like Baghdadi and Soleimani—without being bogged down in costly follow-ups. During the last four administrations, Putin stayed within his borders only during the Trump four years. But upon entering office, Trump will likely still be faced with something far more challenging as he confronts what has become the greatest European killing field since World War II—the cauldron on the Ukrainian border that has likely already cost 1-1.5 million combined dead, wounded, and missing Ukrainian and Russian soldiers and civilians.

There is no end in sight after three years of escalating violence. But there are increasing worries that strategically logical and morally defensible—but geopolitically dangerous—Ukrainian strikes on the Russian interior will nonetheless escalate and lead to a wider war among the world’s nuclear powers. Many on the right wish for Trump to immediately cut off all aid to Ukraine for what they feel is an unwinnable war, even if that abrupt cessation would end any leverage with which to force Putin to negotiate. They claim the war was instigated by a globalist left, serving as a proxy conflict waged to ruin Russia at the cost of Ukrainian soldiers. They see it orchestrated by a now non-democratic Ukrainian government, lacking elections, a free press, or opposition parties, led by an ungracious and corrupt Zelensky cadre that has allied with the American left in an election year.

In contrast, many on the left see Putin’s invasion and the right’s weariness with the costs of the conflict as the long-awaited global proof of the Trump-Russian “collusion” unicorn. Thus, after the 2016 collusion hoax and 2020 laptop disinformation ruse, they see in some of the right’s opposition to the war at last proof of the Russophiliac Trump perfidy. They judge Putin, not China’s imperialist juggernaut, as the real enemy and discount the dangers of a new Russia-China-Iran-North Korean axis. And to see Ukraine utterly defeat Russia, recover all of the Donbass and Crimea, and destroy the Putin dictatorship, they are willing again to feed the war to the last Ukrainian while discounting escalating Russian threats to use tactical nuclear weapons to prevent defeat.

Trump has vowed to end the catastrophe on day one by doing what is now taboo: calling Vladimir Putin and making a deal that would do the now impossible: entice Russia back to its February 24, 2022, borders before it invaded and thus preserve a reduced but still autonomous and secure Ukraine.How could Trump pull that unlikely deal off? Ostensibly, he would follow the advice of a growing number of Western diplomats, generals, scholars, and pundits who have reluctantly outlined a general plan to stop the slaughter.

But how could Putin reassure the Russian people of anything short of an absolute annexation of Ukraine after the cost of one million Russian casualties? Perhaps in the deal, Putin could brag that he institutionalized forever his 2014 annexations of once Russian-speaking majority Donbass and Crimea; that he prevented Ukraine from joining NATO on the doorstep of Mother Russia; and that he achieved a strategic coup in aligning Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea in a new grand alliance against the West and particularly the United States, with the acquiescence if not support of NATO member Turkey and an ever more sympathetic India.

And what would Ukraine and the West gain from such a Trump art of the deal? Kyiv might boast that, as the bulwark of Europe, Ukraine heroically saved the country from Russian annexation as envisioned in the 2022 attempt to decapitate Kyiv and absorb the entire country. Ukraine subsequently was armed by the West and fought effectively enough to stymie the Russian juggernaut, wound and humiliate the Russian military, and sow dissension within the vastly weakened Russian dictatorship, as evidenced by the assassinated would-be insurgent Prigozhin.

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“..it started against the Kiev regime. And now it is continuing as a war between Russia and NATO. That is why it took a little bit longer and will take a little bit longer..”

• Kremlin Reveals Why Ukraine Conflict Will Last ‘A Little Longer (RT)

Russia’s military operation was initially aimed at Ukraine but quickly became a conflict with NATO, President Vladimir Putin’s press secretary Dmitry Peskov has said. Putin sent troops towards Kiev in February 2022 after the Ukrainian government openly rejected the Minsk Agreements and began shelling the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics in the Donbass. In an extended interview with Indian media on Tuesday, Peskov was asked why the hostilities have taken 1,000 days and counting, and if he could predict when they might end. “When all this started, it started against the Kiev regime. And now it is continuing as a war between Russia and NATO. That is why it took a little bit longer and will take a little bit longer,” the Kremlin spokesman said.

“It will come to an end as soon as we reach our goals,” Peskov said, adding that Russia would prefer to achieve its objectives through negotiations, but Ukraine has literally outlawed any talks with Moscow. “So that’s why we’re continuing the military operation, because the possibility of peaceful negotiations is now being denied, both by Kiev and their [bosses] in Washington,” Peskov told the Indian media. The initial spring 2022 peace talks between Russia and Ukraine were reportedly derailed by Boris Johnson, the British prime minister at the time, who told Kiev that the West was not ready to make peace with Moscow. The US and its allies have funneled almost $200 billion worth of aid to Ukraine since 2022, including weapons, ammunition and combat equipment such as artillery, tanks, fighter jets and long-range missiles, while insisting this did not make them a party to the conflict.

On Tuesday morning, Ukraine used long-range ATACMS missiles provided by the US to strike Russia’s Bryansk Region, confirming media reports that Washington had given Kiev permission to do so. Putin has warned that such a step would change the very nature of the conflict and make NATO a direct participant in the hostilities. He also updated Russia’s nuclear doctrine to allow a strategic response to a conventional attack by the proxy of an atomic power.

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Put Musk and Ramaswamy and their investigators on it. They’ll have a ball.

• ‘Audit’ By Trump Would Be Nightmare For Zelensky – Moscow (RT)

A possible financial review under the administration of US President-elect Donald Trump must be a cause of alarm for Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky, Russia’s envoy to the UN Vassily Nebenzia has said. Trump’s election victory earlier this month, having made a critical approach to Ukraine part of his platform, poses a threat to Zelensky, because he could force an unfavorable peace deal on Kiev in order to deliver on his promise to end the fighting. Commenting on Monday at a UN Security Council meeting dedicated to Ukraine, Nebenzia said officials in Kiev likely have more personal reasons to be concerned.“The new authorities might want to check all the money that was sent to Ukraine and conduct a full audit of the assistance already provided,” the Russian envoy stated.

“This scenario… is much more frightening for Zelensky, because a significant part of the aid has been simply plundered and misappropriated by [him] and his entourage,” he added. Nebenzia cited media reports that Ukrainian officials had gone into panic mode after news of Trump’s victory. All Western support for Kiev is inherently vulnerable to graft, he claimed, stating that “the scale of the corruption is something we can only guess.” Trump has called Zelensky the “greatest salesman ever” over the Ukrainian’s repeated extraction of aid money from the incumbent Democratic US administration. Government graft has been consistently named by observers as a major problem for Ukraine since it gained independence in the 1990s. Transparency International last year ranked it 104th among 180 nations for which the West-sympathetic organization calculates its corruption perception index.

The Zelensky government claims that it has made great strides in tackling the problem. Kiev has reportedly complained about US Ambassador Bridget Brink, maintaining that she creates “unnecessary tensions” with Washington by pressing the corruption issue. Contrary to the assurances, the problem seems acute, Time magazine reported last November, citing a source claiming that Ukrainian officials are “stealing like there’s no tomorrow.” Pentagon Inspector General Robert Storch reported this week that “corruption continues to complicate Ukraine’s efforts to achieve its EU and NATO aspirations,” particularly due to multiple scandals in the Defense Ministry.

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Desperately seeking relevance.

• Secret British Military Cell Plotting To ‘Keep Ukraine Fighting’ (Klarenberg)

Emails and internal documents reviewed by The Grayzone reveal details of a cabal of British military and intelligence veterans which plotted to escalate and prolong the Ukraine proxy war “at all costs.” Convened under the direction of the British Ministry of Defense in the immediate aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the cell referred to itself as Project Alchemy. As British leadership sabotaged peace talks between Kiev and Moscow, the cell put forward an array of plans “to keep Ukraine fighting” by imposing “strategic dilemmas, costs and frictions upon Russia.” The leaks obtained by The Grayzone expose a hidden hand behind Britain’s policy in Ukraine, showing in unusually granular detail how it aimed to engineer a long, grinding war through covert operations that stretched the bounds of legality.

Project Alchemy’s proposed schemes spanned every conceivable field of warfare, from cyber attacks to “discreet operations” to outright terrorism. The secret cell even put forward a plan to “aggressively pursue” and “dismantle” independent media outlets – including The Grayzone – through an aggressive campaign of legal harassment and online censorship, so they “would be forced to close.” The incendiary blueprints were fed to the highest levels of the British state and national security structure, where they were apparently well-received. Founded by a senior British Ministry of Defence official, Project Alchemy is composed of veteran military and intelligence operatives united by a desire for all-out war between the West and Russia. Some have trained Ukrainian forces in clandestine sabotage tactics. Members of the national security cabal tacitly acknowledged that their proposed operations stretched the bounds of British law.

Thus they suggested that London should be “prepared to creatively use the law” to meet its goals, and even be willing to erase “legal restrictions on UK deniable ops” against Russia. Some of Project Alchemy’s most extreme recommendations have already been implemented, often with calamitous results. These include the cell’s proposal to strike Crimea’s Kerch Bridge, which prompted a Russian escalation that saw punishing attacks on Ukraine’s electricity infrastructure. Alchemy also envisioned the construction of a secret, Gladio-style army of Ukrainian partisan fighters to carry out assassination, sabotage, and terror missions behind enemy lines. It appears the British premier, Keir Starmer, fell under the influence of the Project Alchemy cabal soon after his election in July, when he eagerly embraced the role of “wartime prime minister.”

After pledging to support Ukraine “as long as it takes,” however, Starmer is quietly backing away from the maximalist policy. In Kiev, Ukrainians are left to ponder how their “friends” in London got them into this mess, and why they can not, or will not get them out of it. The British spooks who gathered around Project Alchemy reasoned that the longer the proxy war continued, the more Russian president Vladimir Putin’s “credibility at home and abroad drops, and his ability to fight NATO is degraded.” Today, Project Alchemy’s gambit has clearly backfired, as Putin remains popular within Russia, while a crumbling Ukrainian army loses territory by the day despite constant re-arming by the West. But the war planners in London remain staunchly committed to escalation, refusing to shelve their diabolical proposals.

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“Under legislation from 1976, US presidents can declare national emergencies at their discretion..”

• Trump Confirms Plan To Use Military For Deportations (RT)

US President-elect Donald Trump has confirmed that he intends to declare a national emergency and use military resources to deport undocumented immigrants. During his re-election campaign, Trump vowed to launch “the largest deportation program” of criminals in US history, and repeatedly floated the possibility of involving the army. On Monday, Trump shared a post by conservative activist Tom Fitton on the Truth Social media platform. Fitton, who is the president of Judicial Watch, a public interest group dedicated to investigating government corruption, had written that Trump’s administration would “declare a national emergency and will use military assets” to address illegal immigration “through a mass deportation program.” Reposting Fitton’s comment, Trump wrote, “TRUE!!!” Under legislation from 1976, US presidents can declare national emergencies at their discretion and redirect funds designated by lawmakers for other purposes.

Trump’s plans regarding illegal migration include ramping up deportations, reinstating a “travel ban” for certain countries, and closing the border to asylum seekers. He’s also vowed to end birthright citizenship for infants born on domestic soil to undocumented migrant parents. Trump’s top immigration adviser Stephen Miller told The New York Times last year that the military could construct large-scale camps to hold people slated for deportation. According to Department of Homeland Security estimates, around 11 million people are in the US illegally. Trump declared a national emergency at the southern US border amid a surge in asylum seekers during his first term in 2019 and reappropriated military funds for the construction of a wall along the border with Mexico. When Joe Biden was elected president in 2021, further construction of the wall was halted.

Read more …

“Matt Gaetz has 3 critical assets that are needed for the AG role: a big brain, a spine of steel and an axe to grind..”

• Musk Goes All In On ‘Judge Dredd’ Matt Gaetz (ZH)

Elon Musk has come out swinging for Rep. Matt Gaetz, as the Florida lawmaker and President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for attorney general faces scrutiny over sexual misconduct allegations that may throw his Senate confirmation into disarray. “Matt Gaetz has 3 critical assets that are needed for the AG role: a big brain, a spine of steel and an axe to grind,” Musk wrote in a Tuesday post on X. “He is the Judge Dredd America needs to clean up a corrupt system and put powerful bad actors in prison,” Musk continued, adding “Gaetz will be our Hammer of Justice.” Musk also addressed the allegations, saying he considers them “worth less than nothing,” as “Under our laws, a man is considered innocent until proven guilty.

“If AG Garland (an unprincipled douchebag) could have secured a conviction against Gaetz, he would have, but he knew he could not. “Case closed.” Senators on both sides of the aisle are requesting more information into a House ethics probe of Gaetz which allegedly contains accusations that Gaetz paid for sex with a woman who was 17 at the time. The DOJ investigated the allegations, but decided in February of 2023 not to file any charges against him. Gaetz has denied the allegations.

Read more …

Scamdemic.

• Musk Mocks Pandemic Claim From Son of George Soros (RT)

SpaceX and Tesla boss Elon Musk has ridiculed a claim made by Alex Soros, son of billionaire financier George Soros, that Americans would be “screwed” if there was another pandemic. The comment appeared to target President-elect Donald Trump’s choice for the next US health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. In a post on X (formerly Twitter) on Monday, Soros, heir to his father’s business and philanthropic empire, suggested that the plans for health agencies announced by RFK Jr. “could weaken a future pandemic response.” “They are playing with fire! Americans will be screwed if there is another pandemic!” Alex Soros wrote. ”*scamdemic,” responded Musk, a close confidant of Donald Trump, who played a prominent role in the former president’s re-election campaign.

RFK Jr., an anti-vaccine activist and environmentalist, has pledged to revise the work of US health agencies, claiming that the Food and Drug Administration’s “war on public health is about to end.” During the Covid-19 pandemic, RFK Jr. railed against response measures such as lockdowns and mandatory vaccinations, claiming they were more about power grabs than genuine public health concerns. Among RFK Jr.’s current healthcare policy priorities are reviewing vaccine safety and combating chemicals, pollutants, and additives that he claims contribute to chronic disease in the US. Critics argue that RFK Jr.’s views run contrary to the medical and scientific consensus.

Elon Musk has also slammed governments’ handling of the Covid-19 pandemic and mass inoculations, suggesting that the “vaccine is potentially worse” than the disease if administered to the whole population. The tech mogul said in 2021 that he and his family were vaccinated against the virus. Trump has nominated Musk for a role aimed at streamlining the work of the government, co-leading a Department of Government Efficiency – which will be an advisory body without the status of a department.

American investor and philanthropist Alex Soros is one of five children of Hungarian-American billionaire investor and liberal George Soros. The 39-year-old chairs the Board of Directors of the Open Society Foundations, and sits on the investment committee of Soros Fund Management. His father, 94-year-old George Soros, has an estimated net worth of nearly $7 billion. George Soros has for decades been a prominent US Democratic Party donor. In the run-up to the recent US presidential election, Musk earned the nickname “George Soros of the Right,” due to his large financial contributions to the Trump campaign. The Tesla CEO has on numerous occasions been critical of Soros, accusing him of trying to destroy Western civilization and of hating humanity.

Read more …

“Out of every $4 in health care spending in the United States, $1 was used for people diagnosed with diabetes..”

That Tedros guy still has a job? Whatever he urges, who will listen?

• Diabetes Cases Quadruple Over 30 Years; WHO Urges Lifestyle Changes (ET)

Hundreds of millions of people globally have become diabetic over the past 30 years, leading the World Health Organization (WHO) to call for “urgent action” to deal with the health crisis. The number of adults living with diabetes worldwide has more than quadrupled since 1990, the WHO said in a Nov. 13 statement citing the results of a recent study it supported. An estimated 828 million adults were living with the condition worldwide in 2022, an increase of 630 million from 1990. The lowest prevalence of diabetes was in “Western Europe and East Africa for both sexes, and in Japan and Canada for women.” The highest prevalence was in Polynesia and Micronesia, certain nations in the Caribbean, North Africa, and the Middle East, as well as Pakistan and Malaysia. In total, 14 percent of the world’s adults had diabetes in 2022, double the seven percent 30 years back.

“We have seen an alarming rise in diabetes over the past three decades, which reflects the increase in obesity, compounded by the impacts of the marketing of unhealthy food, a lack of physical activity, and economic hardship,” said WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. “To bring the global diabetes epidemic under control, countries must urgently take action. This starts with enacting policies that support healthy diets and physical activity, and, most importantly, health systems that provide prevention, early detection, and treatment.”Nearly 450 million adults aged 30 and above with diabetes remained untreated in 2022. This represented 59 percent of all adults who have the condition, a 3.5-fold jump. Ninety percent of untreated adults were living in low- and middle-income countries.

According to data from the CDC, around 38 million Americans were living with diabetes in 2021, which was roughly one in 10 individuals. One in five didn’t know they had the condition. Nearly 100 million, or more than one in three Americans, suffered from pre-diabetes. A bipartisan group of senators in June announced legislation aimed at improving the early detection and screening of type 1 diabetes, titled “Strengthening Collective Resources for Encouraging Education Needed (SCREEN) for Type 1 Diabetes Act.” Early identification “can prevent life-threatening conditions like diabetic ketoacidosis and potentially allow for the use of therapeutics to delay the clinical onset of the condition, helping to improve patients’ quality of life and reliance on insulin,” said Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine).

A report from the American Diabetes Association last year found that the country’s annual cost of the illness was nearly $413 billion in 2022, which included more than $306 billion in direct medical costs. Out of every $4 in health care spending in the United States, $1 was used for people diagnosed with diabetes, it said.“In addition to its enormous physical and health burden, diabetes also carries an untenable cost burden that is often disproportionately borne by vulnerable and underserved communities,” said Charles Henderson, CEO of the organization. He pointed out that the medical costs for such people have risen by 35 percent over the previous decade. “Reducing the cost of diabetes is essential to improving the lives of all people with diabetes.”

Read more …

 

 

 

 

 

 

Naomi Wolf

 

 

Mercury

 

 

McCullough
https://twitter.com/i/status/1858659012796973480

 

 

Optimus

 

 

Cork

 

 

Swans

 

 

Coke
https://twitter.com/i/status/1858865116285968806

 

 

First date

 

 

Jaguar
https://twitter.com/i/status/1858833641519890711

 

 

Ducklings
https://twitter.com/i/status/1858903107104608555

 

 

Cran
https://twitter.com/i/status/1858755011142185146

 

 

 

 

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Debt Rattle November 17 2024

Nov 172024
 
 November 17, 2024  Posted by at 9:41 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,  75 Responses »


Jerry Bywaters Oil Field Girls 1940

 

• The Revolution of 2024 (Jeffrey A. Tucker)
• Trump Will Bring Justice, Not Revenge (Jim Rickards)
• Tulsi Gabbard, The New US Intel Chief (SCF)
• RFK Jr. Is Poised To Save The Health And Lives Of Millions Of Americans (Hill)
• What Could Trump 2.0 Mean for US Healthcare? (Sp.)
• Why Voters Trusted The GOP More On Democracy (Turley)
• Rachel Maddow Claims Trump is Trying To “Destroy The US Government” (MN)
• Pentagon Spends $187 Mln on Audit, Fails Seventh Year in a Row (Sp.)
• Trump Team To Write Off ‘Project Ukraine’ as Sunk Cost (Sp.)
• Zelensky Wants To Intensify Military Draft (RT)
• Ex-FM Warns Of Potential ‘Internal Collapse’ In Ukraine (RT)
• Moscow Continues To Warn The West About The Risk Of Nuclear Escalation (SCF)
• War Games Show UK’s Flagship Aircraft Carriers ‘Get Sunk’ Every Time (Sp.)
• The Novichok Attack Was A British Operation, Not A Russian One (Helmer)
• Climate-Change Debate ‘Heats Up’ With Collum, Keen, Fleckenstein (ZH)

 

 

 

 

Bannon

Rogan


https://twitter.com/i/status/1857708065191338428

Leavitt

Mollie
https://twitter.com/i/status/1857599848062628084

FBI J6

Alina
https://twitter.com/i/status/1857500858746835041

Jail

Trover

 

 

 

 

“We are barely ten days into the realization of what just transpired and the entire lay of the land seems different, like a tectonic shift in politics, culture, mood, and possibilities..”

• The Revolution of 2024 (Jeffrey A. Tucker)

People are out and about, smiling at each other. It’s been true since the morning after the election, the results of which defied every prediction. Who doesn’t like to see the smug elites who have ruled the world for five awful years taken down a peg? More than that, there are hints of a return to sanity. Mainstream advertisers are suddenly returning to X, putting their economic interest above their tribalist loyalties. The editor of pro-lockdowns Scientific American, which had long blessed totalitarian measures as true science, has resigned. The attempt to pillage InfoWars and give it to The Onion has been reversed by a federal judge. That might be a fluke or might not be: maybe the lawfare is dialing back too. The cabinet of the incoming administration is being filled by voices that were fully censored for years. Employees are reportedly packing their bags at the FDA and other agencies.

Mainstream news commentators are sputtering around with less bravado than they have shown in years. CNN is firing major personalities. Trump is talking about abolishing the income tax and granting $10K in tax credits per homeschooled child, not to mention blowing up college accreditation systems, among other sweeping changes. The American Bastille day is coming, not only freeing the political prisoners of January 6 but also many of the unjustly persecuted including Ross Ulbricht, Roger Ver, and Ian Freeman, among so many others. That will be a day of rejoicing. Oh, and peace seems to have broken out in some contentious areas of the world, for now. What is happening? This is not the usual transfer of the resident of the White House. This is starting to look like an actual transfer of power, not just from Biden to Trump but from the permanent government – ensconced in many sectors – that has been long in hiding to an entirely new form of government responsive to actual voters.

As it turns out, there was no late surge for Kamala Harris. All the polls were wrong, and the rest was media blather. What was correct were the betting odds on Polymarket, and only days later, the FBI raided the 26-year-old founder’s home and confiscated his phone and laptop. There are still many millions of missing voters, people who supposedly showed up for Biden in 2020 but stayed home this time. Meanwhile, there has been a historic shift in all races, ethnicities, and regions, with even the possibility of flipping California from blue to red in the future. After decades of academic slicing and dicing of the population according to ever more eccentric identity buckets involving race, ethnicity, gender, and sexual interest, along with countless thousands of studies documenting deep complexity over intersectionality, the driving force of the election was simple: class, and the few intellectuals and some wealthy entrepreneurs who understand that.

The division was not really left vs right. It was workers vs laptoppers, wage earners vs six-figure stay-at-homers, bottom half vs top 5 percent, people with actual skills vs weaponized resume wielders, and those with affection for old-world values vs those whose educations have beaten it out of them for purposes of career advancement. The silent majority has never been so suddenly loud. It just so happened that the heavily privileged had come to inhabit easily identifiable sectors of American society and, in the end, had no choice but hitch the whole of the overclass wagon to the fortunes of a candidate like themselves (Kamala) but who was unable to pull off a compelling masquerade. Not even a parade of well-paid celebrity endorsements could save her from total rebuke at the polls. Sylvester Stallone called Trump a second George Washington but another reference point might be Andrew Jackson.

The overwhelming victory for Trump is on a scale not seen since 1828 when, four years after the presidency was stolen from Jackson, Old Hickory came back in a wild landslide and cleaned up Washington. Trump arrives in Washington with a mandate for the same, with 81% of the public demanding that the government shrink in size and power. It has all happened so quickly. We are barely ten days into the realization of what just transpired and the entire lay of the land seems different, like a tectonic shift in politics, culture, mood, and possibilities. We are even seeing blunt and open talk about the horrendous Covid response that so utterly demoralized the country and the world, after years of silence on the topic. We have promised hearings coming, and court cases galore now on fast track. The sudden coming together of three great sectors of anti-establishment fury – MAGA, MAHA, and DOGE – in the last two months of the election of 2024 is one for the ages.

It provides the beginnings of an answer to the great question on our minds for decades: how precisely does an authentic revolution take root in an industrialized Western democracy? Are elections capable of delivering real results? For now, the answer seems to be yes. That should thrill any responsible observer of social, cultural, economic, and political affairs. It means that the early architects of the American system were not wrong. The intolerable costs of political upheaval of ages past can be mitigated by planting power firmly in the hands of the people through the plebiscite. This was their view and their gamble. All the evidence of our time points to the wisdom of the idea. In the darkest days of the last year of the first Trump presidency, the bureaucracy was riding high, in full revenge mode against an elected government it hated and sought to overthrow. The agencies were passing strange edicts that felt like laws but no one knew for sure. You are essential, you are not. You must stay home, unless you have an emergency. Your elective surgery needs to wait. The kids cannot go to school. That European vacation cannot happen.

You can eat at a restaurant but only if you are six feet away from other patrons and you must put this China-made cloth on your mouth if you get up to go to the restroom. The flurry of edicts was mind-boggling. It felt like martial law, because it was some form of exactly that. The best research points to the astonishing reality that this was never really a public-health response but a scheme by security and intelligence sectors to enact some kind of global color revolution, which is why the policies were so similar the world over. It was indeed an awesome display of power, one that invaded all our communities, homes, and families. No one knows this better than Team Trump, even if there has been near silence on the topic for all these years. They have had time to put the pieces together and figure out what happened and why. And they carefully, and in seclusion worthy of a Cistercian monastery, plotted their return, leaving nothing to chance.

Read more …

“The departments and agencies that have been weaponized will be completely overhauled.”

• Trump Will Bring Justice, Not Revenge (Jim Rickards)

The persecution and prosecution of President Donald Trump is finally winding down. Jack Smith, a primary player in the lawfare campaign against Trump, has filed to dismiss the case involving classified documents at Mar-a-Lago. Rep. Jim Jordan has instructed Special Counsel Smith to preserve all records related to the cases. The Deep State tried everything to make Trump lose. In total, 91 frivolous felony charges were thrown at the former president. All so they could brand him a felon, tie up resources and prevent him from campaigning. Then there was the January 6th “insurrection”, multiple Russian collusion hoaxes and countless media lies. The Deep State even prosecuted his advisers, such as 75-year-old famed economist Peter Navarro, who was the first former White House official ever imprisoned on a contempt-of-court charge. This dignified gentleman was frog-marched into prison as part of a political persecution campaign.

The entire affair was a disgrace to the nation. On Election Day, Americans rejected this vile lawfare. And soon, it will be time for justice. With GOP control over both sides of the Congress and a near-landslide win, Trump has a mandate from the American people to pursue it aggressively. President Trump has not been shy about his intentions, stating, “The departments and agencies that have been weaponized will be completely overhauled.” On day one, he promised to reissue his executive order allowing the President to remove “rogue bureaucrats” from their positions. Trump promised to “wield that power very aggressively” against the Deep State. Our once and future President even promised to establish a “Truth and Reconciliation Commission”, opening the books on issues including the JFK assassination, illicit spying, and government corruption. I can’t wait to see what it uncovers. Trump’s recent speech was packed full of details on how he plans to drain the swamp. He starts strong and keeps going:

“This is how I will shatter the Deep State and restore government that is controlled by the people and for the people… Make every Inspector General’s office independent and physically separated from the departments they oversee so they do not become the protectors of the Deep State… Launch a major crackdown on government leakers who collude with the fake news to deliberately create false narratives and to subvert our government and our democracy… Clean out all of the corrupt actors in our national security and intelligence apparatus… Push a constitutional amendment to oppose term limits on members of Congress. “Shatter the Deep State”. No ambiguity there.

Some will call what is coming revenge. But this will not be revenge. It will be justice. The distinction is important. I would fully support justice here if the shoe was on the other foot, and the GOP were the offending party. This type of behavior simply cannot stand. It undermines and corrupts the entire system. Re-establishing a just and fair government is critical. It will be difficult, but I believe Trump will succeed this time. He has learned from the mistakes of his first term. Trump has the right people around today. He has already rejected the idea of inviting Nikki Haley or Mike Pompeo to join the new administration.

This is an excellent sign of things to come. Given the mandate, the appointment of Attorney General will be particularly important. I have my eye on Mike Davis. He is the exact type of person this position calls for. Tough as nails, fair, and dedicated to cleaning up the system. I’ve met the man, and he’s just the type of person required for this job. The stage is set for a historic draining of the swamp. Of course, there is still the potential for last-minute desperation moves by the Democrats, including their plan to disqualify Trump using the “insurrection clause”. But given my prediction that Congress will be controlled by Republicans, I think we’ll be in the clear in that department.

Read more …

“..in The Atlantic, an establishment mouthpiece, Gabbard was denounced as a “threat to the security of the United States.” That’s a staggering charge to levy on the person who is going to be head of national security..”

• Tulsi Gabbard, The New US Intel Chief (SCF)

The nomination of Tulsi Gabbard as the United States intelligence supremo has sent shockwaves through the American and NATO establishments. The Western news media – always a dutiful echo chamber for deep-state policymakers – is reverberating with horror at her nomination by President-elect Donald Trump. That reaction is a good sign that something significant has happened. The potential appointment of Gabbard as Director of National Intelligence (DNI) could be the most consequential decision yet by Trump in forming his cabinet. If one move could signal the foreign policy direction under the 47th president, Gabbard’s nomination is the most salient and potentially the most constructive on the key issue of world peace. Time magazine headlined with the U.S. intelligence community’s response to Gabbard’s selection. “We are reeling,” it was reported. Reuters reported that the Western “spy world is vexed.” Meanwhile, in The Atlantic, an establishment mouthpiece, Gabbard was denounced as a “threat to the security of the United States.”

That’s a staggering charge to levy on the person who is going to be head of national security. It is almost hilarious to see the apoplectic reaction in the U.S. establishment and its servile mainstream media. CNN’s news anchor Jim Sciutto was distraught in sharing his concerns with colleague Richard Quest, remarking that Gabbard’s views “contradict” almost everything about U.S. foreign policies. If we may paraphrase that exchange, the sentiments were: Oh my God, how terrible! Whatever shall we say now about all the lies we have been spinning for years and getting fat salaries for? After all, as far as the U.S. corporate media are concerned, especially those channels and newspapers associated with the Democrats, the establishment, and the deep state intelligence apparatus, Tulsi Gabbard has been smeared as a “Russian asset.” It is indeed profoundly challenging – one might even say, earth-shattering – to the deep state if Gabbard becomes Director of National Intelligence.

As with Trump’s other cabinet picks, the nominations will have to be approved by Senate panels. So there is a while to go before her post is confirmed. A lot can change or be derailed. Trump’s cabinet picks this week have been keenly watched by observers trying to discern the future foreign policies of the next presidency, which begins in January after his inauguration. Trump’s early call-ups this week of hawkish figures Pete Hegseth for defense and Marco Rubio for secretary of state caused dismay among some critics of U.S. foreign policy who wanted a fundamental break from warmongering and hostility toward Russia, China, and Iran, among others. Then came Trump’s selection of Tulsi Gabbard. The former Congresswoman has gained wide popular American and international respect for her outspoken and independent criticism of U.S. militarism in the Middle East and Ukraine.

However, the U.S. political establishment and media have slandered her as a “traitor” and a “Russian asset” for her views criticizing Washington’s regime change wars in Syria and the Middle East. In 2017, Gabbard traveled to Syria and met with President Bashar al-Assad. She spoke out against Washington’s covert policy of sponsoring terrorist militia for regime change in Damascus. For telling the truth, she was vilified as an “apologist” for Assad. More recently, the “apologist” slur was thrown at her again after Gabbard opposed the U.S. and NATO’s arming of the Kiev regime and the proxy war against Russia. She said that the conflict in Ukraine could have been avoided if Russia’s security concerns about NATO’s threatening expansion had been taken into consideration. How refreshing to hear that sanity and objectivity.

In a twisted way, the CNN clapping seals are correct. Her views on the conflict in Ukraine do indeed contradict the U.S. establishment and media’s propaganda about “Russian aggression.” Her views unequivocally debunk the wall-to-wall “news” propaganda as false and serve as a warning to the public that NATO’s lies are dragging the world into a nuclear war. The role of Tulsi Gabbard in the second Trump administration – if she makes it through Senate vetting – cannot be overstated. In her DNI capacity, she is the intel supremo who oversees the CIA and NSA. Through her daily briefings to the president, Gabbard will play a crucial role in President Trump’s foreign policymaking. Given Trump’s freewheeling style, it can be fairly assumed that Gabbard’s input into policymaking will have much greater influence than the secretaries of defense or state. She will call the shots, and Trump will designate Hegseth, Rubio, and others to follow suit on the policies.

Wasserman

Read more …

“..the secretary of State, Defense, Treasury or Interior is a very important position. But measurable progress can often be incremental. But imagine being the “Secretary of Saving Human Lives.”

• RFK Jr. Is Poised To Save The Health And Lives Of Millions Of Americans (Hill)

What is the value of someone who has the potential to literally save millions of lives and improve the health of tens of millions of children and adults? We may be on the verge of revolutionizing America’s failing health care system for the better, and two men will be responsible: President-elect Donald Trump and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Trump has long been a fan of Kennedy’s intellect, independence from special interests, passion, empathy and connection with the American people. Trump also no doubt realizes that Kennedy’s value to his incoming administration is immeasurable, as RFK Jr. can wear multiple hats of expertise. Trump has picked him to run the Department of Health and Human Services. And it is from under that HHS hat that Kennedy will transform our “sick-care” industry and literally save millions of lives in the process.

Anyone paying attention to the utter catastrophe that has become America’s “health care” industry knows that this is not political hyperbole or an exaggeration. It is an outright obscenity that we are losing so many Americans to entirely preventable causes. Three days before the election, I wrote about “The 2 decisions that crushed Harris’s momentum.” One was Harris’s selection of Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate. The other, and more important of the two, was Kennedy suspending his campaign and endorsing Trump. “One of the main reasons is the ‘mom vote,’” I wrote. “Kennedy’s endorsement will potentially bring millions of previously ambivalent female voters to the table for Trump. Why? Because they are moms who are worried about the health and wellbeing of their children and have long believed that Kennedy was one of the few people in public life who would protect those children. This is a much bigger deal than the media realizes or will acknowledge. It is a real game changer. Toward that end, these moms want Trump to win so he will bring Kennedy into his cabinet.”

After the column ran, I heard from many mothers confirming that exact point. Said one: “Yep, as one of those ‘mom votes’ who was dying to vote for Robert F. Kennedy Jr. I will now vote for the unity party.” After Kennedy got out of the race and Trump welcomed him with open arms, the two created what future historians may record as the most important health care movement in the history of our nation. It is a grassroots phenomenon spreading like wildfire as more and more parents and adults wake up to the chemicals and poisons being introduced into their bodies against their will. On Nov. 6, Kennedy posted: “President Trump has asked me to do three things: 1. Clean up the corruption in our government health agencies. 2. Return those agencies to their rich tradition of gold-standard, evidence-based science. 3. Make America Healthy Again by ending the chronic disease epidemic.”

In the speech announcing the suspension of his campaign and his unequivocal endorsement of Trump, Kennedy ticked off some truly horrifying statistics. “We spend more on health care than any country on Earth,” he said. “Nobody has a chronic disease burden like we have … Two-thirds of American adults and children suffer from chronic health issues. Fifty years ago, that number was less than 1 percent. So, we’ve gone from 1 percent to 66 percent. In America, 74 percent of Americans are now overweight or obese, and 50 percent of our children… Half of Americans have pre-diabetes or type two diabetes…And this is a crisis that 77 percent of our kids are too disabled to serve in the United States military. What is happening to our country and why isn’t this in the headlines every single day?…

“Cancer rates are skyrocketing in the young and the old. Young adult cancers are up 79 percent … So, what’s causing this suffering? I’ll name two culprits. First and the worst is ultra-processed food. About 70 percent of American children’s diet is ultra-processed. That means industrial manufactured in a factory … The second culprit is toxic chemicals in our food and our medicine, in our environment … The assault on our children’s cells and hormones is unrelenting.” Unfortunately, what is also “unrelenting” is the opposition to Kennedy from Big Pharma, Big Agriculture and special interests that realize hundreds of billions in profits at the direct expense of the health of every man, woman and child in America. In opposing that massive force, Kennedy is in the fight for our lives.

To be sure, being the secretary of State, Defense, Treasury or Interior is a very important position. But measurable progress can often be incremental. But imagine being the “Secretary of Saving Human Lives.” If Kennedy is even halfway successful in his quest to save the American people — and especially our children — from the life-robbing threats of ultra-processed foods and toxic chemicals, he can potentially save or improve tens of millions of lives over the next four years. That “cure” that will transcend every demographic and income level. Under the direction of Trump, Kennedy may turn ignorance to acceptance, acceptance to hope, hope to belief and belief to results. Again, what is the value of someone who literally has the potential to save millions of lives and improve the health of tens of millions of children and adults? I suspect we are about to find out.

RFK

Dr. Oz

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“If we can come up with a plan that’s going to cost our people, our population, less money, and provide better health care than Obamacare, then I would absolutely do it.”

• What Could Trump 2.0 Mean for US Healthcare? (Sp.)

US President-elect Donald Trump has tapped Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to be his Department of Health and Human Services Secretary tasked with fixing America’s raging health crisis. Donald Trump has promised to “bring down costs” and increase the quality of US healthcare. What changes can be expected?
• During his first term, Trump tried but failed to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA), aka Obamacare. Trump called Obamacare “lousy health care” and floated replacing it, saying, “If we can come up with a plan that’s going to cost our people, our population, less money, and provide better health care than Obamacare, then I would absolutely do it.”
• Trump has vowed to protect Medicare, the federal health insurance program for people aged 65 or older and younger people with disabilities.
• Cuts to Medicaid, the largest government health-insurance program that covers low-income Americans, may be expected under Trump.
• During his first term, Trump proposed cutting the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and eliminating the Medicaid expansion that was passed as part of the ACA.
• A work requirement might be added for some able-bodied adult beneficiaries, with federal spending on the program capped.
• Trump has promised to veto a federal abortion ban “under any circumstances”, saying, “It is up to the states to decide.”
• Trump didn’t rule out banning certain vaccines, promising to “make a decision” after Robert F. Kennedy Jr. – now tapped to be his HHS chief – hinted at the possibility of ending vaccine mandates. With an estimated 108,000 people dying from drug overdoses in the US last year, Trump blamed it on the migrant crisis. Although he criminalized all fentanyl-related substances in 2018, overdose deaths continued to soar.

Read more …

“..there is work to be done as a nation committed to the rule of law. We cannot win at any cost when that cost is the very thing that defines us.”

• Why Voters Trusted The GOP More On Democracy (Turley)

“People violate laws any time they want.” Those words, shrugging off an alleged unlawful move last week, did not come from some Chicago gangbanger or Washington car thief. Those words of wisdom came from Democrat Commissioner Diane Marseglia in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. They came in response to the fact that the Democratic majority on the election commission had decided to ignore a binding state Supreme Court ruling in an attempt to engineer the election of Democratic incumbent Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.). Rather than prompting a degree of introspection, the loss of both houses of Congress and the White House has had a curious effect on many Democrats, dropping any pretense of protecting democracy over partisanship.

Despite polls showing that the public trusted former president Donald Trump more than Vice President Harris in combatting threats to democracy, Democrats made “saving democracy” the thrust of this election. The polls reflected a certain common sense of the public when harangued with predictions from President Biden, Harris and a host of politicians and pundits that this would likely be our last election. Few believed that after over two centuries as the most stable and successful democracy in history, all three branches would collapse in unison and embrace dictatorship. Even fewer believed the predictions of the rounding up of homosexuals, journalists and political critics for camps in what some described as an American Third Reich. American voters are not chumps and what they saw were strikingly anti-democratic positions from those claiming to be the defenders of democracy, including:

• Seeking to strip Trump from ballots under an unfounded theory rejected unanimously by the Supreme Court.
• Fighting to block opponents of Biden from ballots in the primary and general elections.
• Suing to keep Robert F. Kennedy on ballots after his withdrawal in swing states, in order to confuse voters and reduce the vote for Trump.
• Calling for blocking dozens of incumbent GOP officials and legislators from ballots as “insurrectionists.”
• “Protecting democracy” through the most extensive censorship in history and the blacklisting of opponents.
• Engaging in open and raw lawfare in the prosecutions of Trump in places like New York.

Each of these efforts ultimately failed to stop Trump and was opposed by a majority of voters even before the election. So now, Democrats are dropping the pretense of raw partisanship. That was evident in Bucks County, when a motion arose to reject a challenge to count provisional ballots, including undated or invalidly dated mail ballots. It should have been easy. To its credit, the majority-Democratic Pennsylvania Supreme Court had already refused a Democratic push to change the rules shortly before the election and to ignore the plain language of the election laws. In ordering the rejection of ballots without dates, Justice Kevin Doughtery (joined by Chief Justice Debra Todd) wrote a concurrence declaring “‘This Court will neither impose nor countenance substantial alterations to existing laws and procedures during the pendency of an ongoing election.’ We said those carefully chosen words only weeks ago. Yet they apparently were not heard in the Commonwealth Court, the very court where the bulk of election litigation unfolds.”

It is apparently still not being heard. In the Bucks County hearing, Marseglia spoke as she and Democratic Board chairman Robert Harvie, Jr., dismissed the earlier rulings in order to accept ballots without required signatures or mandatory dates. She declared that she would not second the motion to enforce the rulings “mostly because I think we all know that precedent by a court doesn’t matter anymore in this country and people violate laws any time they want. So, for me, if I violate this law, it’s because I want a court to pay attention to it.” That was a lot of words to say that she does not really seem to care if this is lawful. For his part, Casey has shown the same abandon as he clings to his Senate seat at any cost.

That cost, in this case, was an alliance with Marc Elias, the controversial Democratic lawyer at the center of the infamous Steele Dossier scandal. Elias has been sanctioned in court and criticized for his work to flip elections. He is known for baselessly blaming voting machine errors for electing Republicans and pushing gerrymandering plans rejected by the courts as anti-democratic. Casey is unlikely to change the result without counting defective or challenged ballots. Fortunately, law and precedent “does matter in this country.” There are still officials who can transcend their political preferences to maintain the rule of law. After the last presidential election, many Trump appointees ruled against the former president, and many Democratic judges rejected the effort to strip Trump from ballots.

That does not mean that Democrats who value the weaponization of law will not continue to embrace lawfare warriors like New York Attorney General Letitia James (D). Others will use the rage of these times as a license to ignore legal and ethical obligations altogether. They are arguably the saddest manifestation of our political discord. They are people who have not just lost faith in our system but in themselves. They have become untethered from any defining principle for their own conduct. This election has left them adrift in a sea of moral and legal relativism, with only their rage as a following wind. They cling to that rage as reason vanishes like a distant shore. For the rest of us, there is work to be done as a nation committed to the rule of law. We cannot win at any cost when that cost is the very thing that defines us.

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She’s lost it all. But she can’t stop herself.

• Rachel Maddow Claims Trump is Trying To “Destroy The US Government” (MN)

MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow took a break from claiming she’s about to be thrown into a concentration camp to charge that president Trump is attempting to “destroy” the government. Maddow said, “I think the idea of the authoritarian promise is that everything shrivels in government other than the will of the leader, right?” She further claimed “You don’t necessarily put a Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in charge if you’re hoping for great things from HHS.” “Matt Gaetz, he has explicitly proposed abolishing the Justice Department, not specifically abolishing the FBI and the ATF but talking about abolishing the Justice Department,” she added. Maddow continued to blather, “Tulsi Gabbard as the Director of National Intelligence is, I mean, the idea that Tulsi Gabbard, in a normal circumstance, could get a security clearance to be like a Walmart-style greeter at any U.S. intelligence agency, let alone get past the security barriers, is insane.”

“So, you do that because you want the worst for these agencies, because you want the worst for the U.S. government because you think that the U.S. government is worthless,” she asserted. Why would Trump do all this? Well it’s all a big conspiracy to become a dictator… or something. “That’s part of consolidating power, to make the U.S. government nothing other than the leader and people who will do what he says,” Maddow claimed. She continued, “Steve Bannon used to say, it’s a sort of Leninist project, right? Destroy the state. This is the cabinet that you nominate to, not to run the U.S. government, to do anything, but to destroy the U.S. government.” “So that the U.S. government can be fundamentally reimagined as something much more like a unitary authoritarian or autocratic, for lack of a better term, system,” Maddow concluded, ending her paranoid rant. Or maybe, just maybe, people voted for reform and gave Trump a mandate to implement that, meaning putting people outside of the Washington establishment furniture into key positions.

Yeah, probably more likely that, right. As we highlighted earlier, all the right people are big mad at Trump’s appointments. Add to that list the disgraced former CIA Director John Brennan, who parroted absurd claims that Gabbard is some kind of Russian asset. “Clearly, Tulsi Gabbard has taken actions and made statements over the past several years that raise serious questions about her common sense, judgment, and political sympathies,” Brennan proclaimed. “Cozying up to Putin as well as to Bashar al-Assad shows she doesn’t have the type of perspective needed for someone who is going to head up these 18 intelligence agencies,” he further declared, labelling Gabbard “an unserious pick for a serious position.”

This coming from a guy who pushed the Russia hoax for years, and claimed the Hunter Biden laptop was a Russian psy op. He says everything is a Russian plot. His credibility is shot. Meanwhile, AOC ranted about Gabbard, ridiculously claiming she is “pro-war.” Anyone who has listened to Gabbard talk for more than five minutes knows this is the complete opposite of her actual position.

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“It has never passed, and is the only Cabinet-level department of the federal government never to do so.”

• Pentagon Spends $187 Mln on Audit, Fails Seventh Year in a Row (Sp.)

This year’s financial review, carried out by the DoD’s Office of the Inspector General and an independent accounting firm, employed 1,700 auditors and cost $187 million – slightly more than the entire defense budget of the West African nation of Mauritania. The US spent a record $824 billion on defense in 2024, $27 billion more than a year earlier. The US Department of Defense has failed its seventh consecutive audit, with more than half of its departments unable to provide auditors with sufficient data to accurately evaluate the status of hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of assets under the Pentagon’s domain.

DoD comptroller and Chief Financial Officer Michael McCord – appointed by President Obama in 2014, and under whom the Pentagon failed every one of its independent audits since they began in 2017, assured in a statement that the Pentagon had “turned a corner in its understanding of the depth and breadth of its challenges” and promises to do better in the future. “Momentum is on our side, and throughout the Department there is strong commitment – and belief in our ability -to achieve an unmodified audit opinion,” McCord said. The Pentagon expects to receive a passing grade by 2028, as required in this year’s National Defense Authorization Act (the annual must-pass Congressional legislation approving the defense budget).

The audit’s failing grade was based on financial inspections of 28 subordinated bodies, with 15 receiving disclaimers (which means auditors were unable to obtain sufficient evidence to form an opinion on the financial statements being audited), nine unmodified audit opinions (that is, a reasonable level of assurance that financial statements represented a true and fair reflection of audit results), one a qualified opinion (issued when auditors identify material misstatements in financial statements), and three opinions which remain pending. Agencies that passed included the DoD’s Defense Commissary Agency (responsible for food supplies to servicemen and their families), the Defense Financial and Accounting Service (which oversees payments to servicemembers, employees, vendors and contractors), and the Defense Health Agency (supplying an ensuring the readiness of military medical commands).

The Defense Information Systems Agency, which provides IT and communications support to the services, the Military Retirement Fund, the National Reconnaissance Office (responsible for the operation of space and ground-based intelligence collection systems worldwide), the US Army Corps of Engineers’ Civil Works agency and the Defense Contract Audit Agency (responsible for contract audits and related financial advisory services) also passed. The Defense Threat Reduction Agency, mentioned in a series of damning intelligence briefings by Russia’s Radiological, Chemical and Biological Defense Troops on US illicit military biological activities in Ukraine and across the globe, also got a passing grade. McCord defended the results at a press conference on Friday.

“This was not a surprise and I know that on the surface it doesn’t sound like we are making progress,” he said. “I do not say we failed, as I said, we have about half clean opinions. We have half that our not clean opinions. So if someone had a report card that is half good and half not good, I don’t know that you call the student or the report card a failure,” he said. Passing an audit by the 2028 deadline is “achievable,” he said. Also this week, the DoD Inspector General’s Office calculated that Congress has now appropriated nearly $183 billion in assistance to Ukraine since February 2022, including $131.36 billion for security-related assistance and activities, and $43.84 billion for ‘governance and development’. The Department of Defense carried out its first independent audit in 2017, and has been legally mandated to do so since 2018. It has never passed, and is the only Cabinet-level department of the federal government never to do so.

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“They don’t feel “invested” in propping up Zelensky’s corrupt regime in the same way that the current Biden administration does..”

• Trump Team To Write Off ‘Project Ukraine’ as Sunk Cost (Sp.)

Donald Trump repeated his pledge to end the Ukraine conflagration as he addressed a gala organized by the America First Policy Institute at his Mar-a-Lago resort on November 15, saying that “the conflict has got to stop.” There is a general consensus within President-elect Donald Trump’s team that the failed “Project Ukraine” needs to be shut down, British political analyst Alexander Mercouris speculated on his YouTube channel. “Overall, despite different opinions and nuances among them, they have reached a general consensus that ‘Project Ukraine’ has absorbed a huge amount of energy and resources on the part of the United States, but it has not delivered what it promised. Ukraine has not been successful on the battlefield, there has been no economic collapse in Russia, and President Putin is still very firmly in control of things in Moscow,” the expert said.

In his opinion, these people, who come from the business world in many cases, have taken a simple “cost-benefit view”, and have agreed that “the time has come to close the whole thing down.” They don’t feel “invested” in propping up Zelensky’s corrupt regime in the same way that the current Biden administration does, according to the analyst. “They are resisting falling for the sunk costs fallacy, the one that says that you have already invested so much in terms of funding, weapons and resources that you can’t stop now,” Mercouris noted. Trump repeatedly said on the campaign trail that he could end the fighting “in 24 hours” if reelected; he slammed US aid to Kiev, and vowed not to put US troops on the ground in Ukraine.

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“..numerous Ukrainian officials – as well as their backers in the West – have proposed that Kiev lower the draft age even further..”

• Zelensky Wants To Intensify Military Draft (RT)

The tightening of mobilization rules earlier this year has failed to solve Ukraine’s manpower shortage on the battlefield, Vladimir Zelensky has admitted, adding that the relevant legislation should be adjusted. In an interview with Ukrainskoye Radio on Saturday, Zelensky said that Ukraine “has not mobilized” enough troops under two new laws were passed this spring after significant back-and-forth in parliament. The first lowered the draft age from 27 to 25, while the second cracked down on draft dodgers, forcing all citizens eligible for conscription to report to military authorities for “data clarification.”

At the same time, Zelensky rejected speculation that Ukraine had drafted half a million men while pointing to problems with the available replenishments for frontline units. “The brigades in the East are exhausted, rotation is needed. The guys are getting tired and leaving. They must be replaced with fresh units,” Zelensky said. He also admitted that the frontline situation is “really difficult” and that Russia has indeed managed to accomplish “slow progress.” Before this year’s tightening of the rules, Kiev had announced a general mobilization, barring most men between 18 and 60 from leaving the country. Recruitment has been marred by widespread bribery and draft-dodging, with some Ukrainians trying to flee the country at all costs, even at a serious risk to their lives.

Meanwhile, social media is filled with videos of military patrols trying to catch eligible men in the streets, shopping malls, and gyms, often resulting in clashes. Despite the intensification of the draft, Ukrainian soldiers have consistently complained of the lack of reinforcements and inadequate training for new recruits, leading to long rotations and exhaustion. In light of this, numerous Ukrainian officials – as well as their backers in the West – have proposed that Kiev lower the draft age even further. Some Ukrainian politicians have also argued that all the country’s citizens should dedicate themselves to fighting Russia either directly on the front lines or indirectly by helping the army in the rear.

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“..Trump “cannot afford for Ukraine to become his Afghanistan.”

• Ex-FM Warns Of Potential ‘Internal Collapse’ In Ukraine (RT)

Ukraine could face civil unrest and even a full-blown “collapse” if US President-elect Donald Trump reverses the outgoing administration’s policy of unconditional support for Kiev, former Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba has warned. The election of Trump on November 5 prompted fears in Kiev that Washington would end financial and military aid and would strong-arm the country into an unfavorable settlement with Russia. “If the money were to dry up, a new dynamic would come into play, and not all of it on the battlefield. True, bereft of funding, Ukraine could lose ground completely,” Kuleba wrote in an op-ed published in The Economist on Wednesday. He argued that Ukraine could plunge into a civil conflict if the US forces it to sign a bad peace deal.

“If the Trump administration then imposed unpalatable peace terms on Ukraine, and if Mr. Zelensky agreed (an unlikely scenario), part of Ukrainian society would resist. Domestic unrest would risk the country’s internal collapse,” Kuleba wrote. This would give Russian President Vladimir Putin “the victory he has long desired, painting Ukraine as a failed state,” Kuleba suggested, warning that Trump “cannot afford for Ukraine to become his Afghanistan.” Throughout his election campaign, Trump claimed that he would quickly mediate a peace agreement between Kiev and Moscow, without specifying the terms. During a televised debate with Vice President Kamala Harris, he refused to directly answer a question on whether he wants Ukraine to win. “I want the war to stop,” he said at the time.

In June, Reuters reported that two of Trump’s advisers had drawn up a plan to reach a ceasefire based on the current front lines. The Trump campaign distanced itself from any concrete proposals, however. Kiev has long insisted that a peace deal can only be based on Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky’s ‘peace formula’, which includes the restoration of the country’s 1991 borders. Russia has rejected these terms wholesale, insisting that Ukraine should drop its aspirations to join NATO in favor of becoming a neutral country and renounce its claims on Crimea and other regions which voted in referendums to join Russia. Speaking to German Chancellor Olaf Scholz over the phone on Friday, Putin reiterated that the conflict “was a direct result of NATO’s long-standing aggressive policy” of ignoring Russia’s security concerns.

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“..authorization of the use of long-range missiles against targets deep inside Russia would place Moscow and NATO facing the near inevitability of a nuclear confrontation..”

• Moscow Continues To Warn The West About The Risk Of Nuclear Escalation (SCF)

Tensions over the issue of “deep” strikes continue to escalate. Kiev continues to demand permission to strike targets in the Russian Federation’s demilitarized zone, while Moscow continues to make it clear that it will interpret such maneuvers as a declaration of war by NATO. In a recent statement, Maria Zakharova, the spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry, emphasized how Ukrainians and their partners are “playing with fire” with such threats, promising an “immediate and devastating” response in the event of a long-range strike.

The Russian government has repeatedly stated that the long-range weapons systems supplied by the West to Ukraine cannot be operated without the presence of NATO specialists, who would provide the necessary training and logistical support to the Ukrainians. This is because such weapons are not compatible with the Ukrainian military infrastructure, which depends on continuous intelligence support and strategic guidance provided by the Atlantic alliance. Moscow’s position is clear: authorizing the use of these missiles for strikes outside the official conflict zone, in addition to representing an expansion of Western involvement, would constitute direct NATO intervention in the conflict. Russia would regard any use of these weapons in such circumstances as a direct aggression against its sovereignty by the Western countries themselves, which would require an “immediate and devastating” retaliation.

The discussion about the deployment of Storm Shadow missiles and other advanced weapons systems in “deep” Russian territory is a clear demonstration of the dangerous game the West is playing, ignoring all the limits imposed by Russia. NATO’s role in the war in Ukraine has been a sensitive issue since the beginning of the conflict. Although Western powers insist on their position of supporting Ukraine as a legitimate right to defend it against what they call a Russian “invasion”, many analysts and officials point out that the interventions of the powers of the Atlantic alliance, both in terms of weapons and intelligence, have led to an unnecessary prolongation of the conflict, dragging Ukraine into a proxy war that puts the world on the brink of a nuclear confrontation.

By offering more powerful and sophisticated weapons, the West is not only strengthening Kiev’s military capabilities – which seem to have little strategic relevance at the moment – but also risks turning the local conflict into a war of global proportions. Moscow’s concern is legitimate, considering that the absence of limits on Western involvement in Ukraine could lead to a situation of unrestricted aggression against the Russian people, including even demilitarized cities far from the zone disputed by Kiev.

Indeed, the eventual authorization of the use of long-range missiles against targets deep inside Russia would place Moscow and NATO facing the near inevitability of a nuclear confrontation. As spokeswoman Zakharova has made clear, Russia is on high alert for the use of advanced missiles against its territory. Moscow has repeatedly stated that if such attacks occur, Russia’s response will be strong and decisive. This would not only imply a military escalation, but also a redefinition of relations between Russia and the West, with the possibility of unpredictable consequences for international stability.

The recent changes in Russia’s nuclear doctrine, allowing a nuclear response to deep strikes by non-nuclear powers supported by nuclear states (just like in the Ukraine-NATO case), were a clear attempt by Moscow to de-escalate the current situation through rhetoric and indirect deterrence. At first, the measure seemed sufficient to calm public pressure from some NATO figures for the authorization of the strikes. However, it is difficult to predict what the Democratic “administration” plans to do in its final days in power, and it is possible that Biden and his team will go into “suicide mode” and put the entire global security architecture at risk, despite Russian warnings.

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“..large assets like the aircraft carriers are under heightened scrutiny to decide whether they are still a vital staple for modern warfare.”

• War Games Show UK’s Flagship Aircraft Carriers ‘Get Sunk’ Every Time (Sp.)

In a reflection of the UK’s host of internal political and economic problems, its Armed Forces have likewise been grappling with financial and operational woes. In most war games carried out by the UK military, its costly flagship aircraft carriers “get sunk”, The Times cited a source as saying. HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Prince of Wales, commissioned into the Royal Navy in 2017 and 2019, respectively, together cost £6.2 billion. (approx. $7.8 billion) to build but are reportedly vulnerable to missiles. A “whole load of scenarios” was run during war games to test the Royal Navy’s “ability to survive” against an “overwhelming force”, a British military source was quoted as saying, adding: “We stretch everything to the limit. At some point you will get to a scenario where it [the carrier] is sunk.”

The report cited Matthew Savill, director of military sciences at the Royal United Services Institute, as speculating that the great stride made in missile technology development was the ability to “locate and track” aircraft carriers. This comes amid an ongoing Strategic Defence Review commissioned by Britain’s Labor Prime Minister Keir Starmer, and overseen by the Defence Secretary John Healey. The review is due in the first half of 2025. Both ministers and military chiefs have been pressured to implement cost-cutting measures due to financial constraints. Hence, large assets like the aircraft carriers are under heightened scrutiny to decide whether they are still a vital staple for modern warfare.

“There will be casualties,” a source hinted, indicating that the prospect of scrapping at least one of the carriers was raised. Former Minister for Defence Procurement Lord Lee of Trafford told the outlet that the military was struggling to afford the requisite numbers of F-35 aircraft for the carriers, along with escort ships and support vessels. Decades of defense cuts by successive British governments have left the country’s military understaffed and underequipped, resulting in delays in production and upgrades. The HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Prince of Wales have both been plagued by technical malfunctions, with humiliating breakdowns affecting Britain’s ability to participate in large-scale joint NATO drills. Furthermore, the UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) is facing a £16.9 billion ($22.17 billion) deficit, the National Audit Office (NAO) revealed in 2023.

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“Hughes has also banned Yulia and Sergei Skripal from testifying at the Inquiry.”

• The Novichok Attack Was A British Operation, Not A Russian One (Helmer)

Yulia Skripal communicated from her bedside at Salisbury District Hospital on March 8, 2018, four days after she and her father Sergei Skripal collapsed from a poison attack, that the attacker used a spray; and that the attack took place when she and her father were eating at a restaurant just minutes before their collapse on a bench outside. The implication of the Skripal evidence, revealed for the first time on Thursday, is that the attack on the Skripals was not perpetrated by Russian military agents who were photographed elsewhere in Salisbury town at the time; that the attacker or attackers were British agents; and that if their weapon was a nerve agent called Novichok, it came, not from Moscow, but from the UK Ministry of Defence chemical warfare laboratory at Porton Down. Porton Down’s subsequent evidence of Novichok contamination in blood samples, clothing, car, and home of the Skripals may therefore be interpreted as British in source, not Russian.

This evidence was revealed by a police witness testifying at the Dawn Sturgess Inquiry in London on November 14. The police officer, retired Detective Inspector Keith Asman was in 2018, and he remains today the chief of forensics for the Counter Terrorism Policing (CTPSE) group which combines the Metropolitan and regional police forces with the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) and the Security Service (MI5). According to Asman’s new disclosure, Yulia Skripal had woken from a coma and confirmed to the doctor at her bedside that she remembered the circumstances of the attack on March 4. What she remembered, she signalled, was not (repeat not) the official British Government narrative that Russian agents had tried to kill them by poisoning the front door-handle of the family home. The new evidence was immediately dismissed by the Sturgess Inquiry lawyer assisting Anthony Hughes (titled Lord Hughes of Ombersley), the judge directing the Inquiry. “We see there,” the lawyer put to Asman as a leading question, “the suggestion, which we now know not to be right, of course”. — page 72.

Hughes then interrupted to tell the witness to disregard what Skripal had communicated. “If the record that you were given there is right, someone suggested to her ‘Had you been sprayed’. She didn’t come up with it herself.” — page 73. Hughes continued to direct the forensics chief to disregard the hearsay of Skripal. “Anyway the suggestion that she had been sprayed in the restaurant didn’t fit with your investigations? A. [Asman] No, sir. LORD HUGHES: Thank you.” So far in in the Inquiry which began public sessions on October 14, this is the first direct sign of suppression of evidence by Hughes. Hearsay, he indicates, should be disregarded if it comes from the target of attack, Yulia Skripal. However, hearsay from British Government officials, policemen, and chemical warfare agents at Porton Down must be accepted instead. Hughes has also banned Yulia and Sergei Skripal from testifying at the Inquiry. The lawyer appointed and paid by the Government to represent the Skripals in the inquiry hearings said nothing to acknowledge the new disclosure nor to challenge Hughes’s efforts to suppress it.

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“Climate change could be roaring but the naked eye can’t see it.”

• Climate-Change Debate ‘Heats Up’ With Collum, Keen, Fleckenstein (ZH)

Steve Keen, while primarily an economist, is well-versed in the research and a firm believer in the danger climate change poses. Dave Collum, chemistry professor at Cornell, believes much of the science to be bogus. Legendary short-seller Bill Fleckenstein was kind enough to shepard them along. We hope you enjoy and that you give both Keen and Collum a fair shake: For those short on time, here were the highlights:

Poking holes in the ‘narrative’. Things heated up when Collum unleashed a flurry of charts documenting trends that run counter to what we hear from most climate alarmists: Today, we actually see fewer hurricanes, tornadoes, heat waves, and forest fires than decades past. Collum: “There’s no obvious change in the frequency of global hurricanes back to 1980… Back to 1990, it actually has a distinct downward trend… Here’s one that goes back to 1960. These are violent tornadoes. Again, downward trend.” “Climate change could be roaring but the naked eye can’t see it.”

“Potentially Suicidal”. Natural disasters aside, Keen brought his own charts showing the recent and rapid ascent of global temperature. If accurate, the rise in temperature in the last 150 years when viewed on an axis of millions of years is staggering. Keen: “That’s the real danger of climate change. We’ve built [civilization] in a stable period of the climate. We’re destroying that stability and thinking we can still have the social system we’ve designed… I just don’t think that’s true.”

Keen’s sources provided below: Judd, E. J., J. E. Tierney, D. J. Lunt, I. P. Montañez, B. T. Huber, S. L. Wing and P. J. Valdes (2024). “A 485-million-year history of Earth’s surface temperature.” Science 385(6715): eadk3705. https://www.science.org/doi/abs/10.1126/science.adk3705. Scotese, C. R., H. Song, B. J. W. Mills and D. G. Van Der Meer (2021). “Phanerozoic paleotemperatures: The earth’s changing climate during the last 540 million years.” Earth-Science Reviews 215: 103503. https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.earscirev.2021.103503

Green New Deal? Assuming humanity put all its resources and minds together to avert the Earth’s heating… can it be done? Fleckenstein asked our distinguished guests whether they would support a “Green New Deal” (massive public spending effort to combat climate change): Collum: “My dad taught me this: Never ask the government to spend your money. They’ll do a terrible job.” “If we were serious about climate change… They should never put guys like John Kerry in charge as Climate Czar.” “Steve’s enthusiastic about intervening as scientists. But here’s the question I have is who is going to make these tough calls? Who has the right to sign off the informed consent to say we are going to cover the world with a blanket of particles to block the sun?” Keen argued that — while governments are inefficient — we do not have a choice. Keen: “I’ll go on record on saying that if we continue down the trends we’re doing right now… we’re going to destroy civilization before 2050.”

Read more …

 

 

 

 

SpaceX

 

 

Baron

 

 

Camelemon
https://twitter.com/i/status/1857448564957327748

 

 

Phare du Four

 

 

Coconut oil

 

 

Wolf

 

 

Doggy

 

 

Black hole
https://twitter.com/i/status/1857668215725285772

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle November 16 2024

Nov 162024
 
 November 16, 2024  Posted by at 9:55 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,  48 Responses »


Arnold Böcklin The Isle of Life 1888

 

• This Time Trump Really Means Business (Lukyanov)
• Your Trump Investment Guide (James Rickards)
• The Great ‘Splainin’ Cometh (James Howard Kunstler)
• Democratic Senators Demand Musk Be Probed For Russia Ties (RT)
• There Are No “Easy Wars” Left To Fight (Alastair Crooke)
• RFK Jr. vs. Big Pharma Goliath: Drug Makers, Big Food and the FDA (Sp.)
• Has Matt Gaetz Been Set-up for Eviction from Public Life? (Paul Craig Roberts)
• Tulsi Gabbard Right Pick to Shake-Up US Spy Agencies – Giraldi (Sp.)
• Tulsi and the Establishment Meltdown (Tom Woods)
• Trump Makes Brilliant Choice for the Next White House Counsel (Turley)
• X Sees Return Of Major Advertisers Under Fire From FCC (ZH)
• Germany’s AfD Urges UN to Investigate Nord Stream (Sp.)
• Trump’s Win Means End Of Zelensky – Ukrainian MP (RT)
• No Use Blaming Britain For Kiev’s War Policy – Ukrainian MP (RT)
• Laboratory Head Given Licence To Lie In Novichok Show Trial (Helmer)
• How Did A Puritanical Nation End Up Idolizing Transvestites? (Frascolla)

 

 

Wow.

 

 

Avengers

Blanche

Alina

Tuberville

Target
https://twitter.com/i/status/1857136364531429859

Vivek

Watters

Lara Logan start 5:00min

 

 

 

 

 

 

Perhaps fitting that the best(?!) overview comes from Russia.

• This Time Trump Really Means Business (Lukyanov)

US President-elect Donald Trump has moved quickly to form his proposed new administration. His team is better prepared to take power than it was in 2016 – when neither the candidate himself nor the vast majority of his supporters believed he could win. It’s too early to draw far-reaching conclusions, but in general, the composition of the preferred government reflects the ideological and political coalition that has gathered around the president-elect. From the outside, it may look motley, but so far it is all in line with Trump’s views. Contrary to the perception actively propagated by Trump’s opponents, he is not an unpredictable and inconsistent eccentric. More precisely, we should separate his character and mannerisms, which are flighty, from his overall worldview. The latter has not changed, not only in the years since Trump entered big politics, but more generally in his public life since the 1980s.

It suffices to look through the old interviews of the famed tycoon to see this: ‘Communism (in the broadest sense) is evil’, ‘the allies must pay up’, ‘the American leadership does not know how to make favorable deals but I do’, and so on. Trump’s personal qualities are important. But more importantly, in a somewhat cartoonish way, he embodies a set of classic Republican notions. America is at the center of the universe. However, not as a hegemon that rules everything, but simply as the best and most powerful country. It must be the strongest, including (or especially) militarily, in order to advance its interests wherever and whenever it needs to. Essentially, there is no need for Washington to get directly involved in world affairs at all. Profit is an absolute imperative for the future president (he is a businessman), and this does not contradict conservative ideals. America is a country built on the spirit of enterprise.

Hence his rejection of over-regulation and his general suspicion of the extensive powers of the bureaucracy. In this, Trump joins forces with the equally flamboyant libertarian Elon Musk, who promises to rid the state of a hodgepodge of bureaucrats. Musk himself is unlikely to be hanging around the president’s office for long, but politicians who think along these lines are likely to be there. An important difference between the new Trump cohort and traditional Republicans is a significantly lower degree of ideologization of politics in general and international politics in particular. Domestically, the rejection of an aggressive agenda in the spirit of the Woke movement and the imposition of the cult of minorities (which the Republicans call ‘Marxism’ and ‘communism’) plays an important role. It’s about imposition, because the human right to any lifestyle is not in itself questioned by conservatives.

For example, key figures around Trump – ardent supporter and former ambassador to Germany Ric Grenell and billionaire Peter Thiel – are married to men. In foreign policy, the conceptual difference is that Trump and his entourage do not believe, as the Biden White House does, that at the core of international relations is the struggle of democracies against autocracies. This does not mean ideological neutrality. The idea of the ‘free world’ and criticism of ‘communism’ (in which they include China, Cuba, Venezuela, and by inertia, Russia) plays an important role in the thinking of many Republicans. But the defining factor is something else – intolerance of those who for various reasons do not accept American supremacy.

Trump’s choice for national security adviser, Michael Waltz, for example, speaks negatively and disparagingly of Russia, but not in terms of a need to be ‘re-educated’, but because it interferes with America. Marco Rubio, who is being considered for secretary of state, does not oppose regime change in his ancestral homeland of Cuba, but is otherwise not a militant supporter of American intervention anywhere. The undoubted priority of the Trumpists and those who have joined them is to support Israel and confront its opponents, first and foremost Iran. Last year, Elise Stefanik, the likely US ambassador to the UN, publicly shamed the presidents of leading American universities in Congress for alleged anti-Semitism. It is worth remembering that the only really effective use of force in Trump’s first term was the assassination of General Qassem Soleimani, the head of the special forces of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Trump is not a warrior. Threats, pressure, violent demonstrations – yes. A large-scale armed campaign and mass bloodshed – why? Perhaps because of the peculiarities of relations with China, which is clearly seen as the number one rival. Not in a military sense, but rather in the political and economic sphere, so any ‘war’ with it (forcing it to accept terms favorable to America) should be cold and ruthless. This also applies in part to Russia, though the situation is very different. All of this is neither good nor bad for Moscow. Or to put it another way, it’s both good and bad. But the main thing is that it is not the way it has been up to now.

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How far will Trump go in implementing The American System?

• Your Trump Investment Guide (James Rickards)

Now that Trump is on his way to the White House as the 47th president, it’s not too soon to start building a portfolio that will outperform the stock market in the early years of the new Trump administration. This kind of active asset allocation requires close attention to prospective policy details and their possible impact on specific business models. Not all stocks will perform well under the new administration. Some will perform brilliantly. Let’s first review the likely Trump policies and then consider their impact on certain stocks and sectors. The Revival of the American System. Under the guidance of Trump advisors Robert Lighthizer (former U.S. Trade Representative) and Peter Navarro (former Director of the Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy), Trump will pursue a twenty-first-century version of what was originally known as the American System.

The American System was invented in 1790 by Alexander Hamilton and supported by a succession of U.S. presidents and leading political figures including George Washington, Henry Clay, John Quincy Adams, Abraham Lincoln, William McKinley, Calvin Coolidge, and Dwight Eisenhower. There were opponents who favored agrarian interests over manufacturing interests, including early members of what later became the Democratic Party such as Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and James Monroe. Yet, their financial failures, including the liquidation of the First Bank of the United States (an early central bank with limited powers) and difficulties in financing the War of 1812 led to the success of the mercantilist and manufacturing programs of the American System leaders.

The American System relied on the following policies:
• High tariffs to support manufacturing and high-paying jobs
• Infrastructure investment (public and private) to support productivity
• A strong army and navy to protect the U.S. but not to fight foreign wars
• A central bank with limited powers to provide liquidity to commerce

To the extent there was government spending, it was for productive projects such as canal and road building and later to support railroads. To the extent that early central banks existed, they were for secure lending to sound entities (including the U.S. government) and not for purposes such as printing money, fixing interest rates or “stimulus.” The entire program could be summarized as sound money, smart investment and a strong military in the service of high-paying American jobs. The American System prevailed from 1790 to 1962 with occasional periods of agrarian ascendency and some disruptions such as the Civil War. Beginning after World War I, the neo-liberal movement of Austrian economists and libertarians began to promote globalist policies of open borders, open capital accounts, and free trade. Of course, free trade is a myth because of subsidies and non-tariff barriers. Comparative advantage is obsolete because the factors of production are highly mobile.

Taiwan had no comparative advantage in semiconductors in 1979, but today they dominate global production. They made that happen through a Taiwanese version of the American System. In contrast, the neo-liberals were living an ideological fantasy in which globalism was to displace sovereignty. At a minimum, their goal was the encasement of sovereigns in a larger orb of multilateral institutions such as the IMF, World Bank, WTO and the United Nations. Beginning with the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, the Trade Act of 1974, and successive rounds under the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (today the WTO), the U.S. embraced the neo-liberal consensus including drastic tariff cuts. As jobs moved offshore to take advantage of cheap labor, capital followed as direct foreign investment.

The result was the hollowing-out of U.S. manufacturing, wage stagnation, slower growth, greater debt, and a succession of failed wars. The open border policy of Biden-Harris is consistent with neo-liberal views on the end of sovereignty but is a death knell for American jobs and social cohesion. Trump, Lighthizer, Navarro, and others will return the United States to the pre-1962 glory days with the revival of the American System. Foreign companies will be free to sell goods to Americans but only if they are manufactured in the U.S. This will lead to a wave of inbound investment in the U.S., a reduction in U.S. trade deficits, a stronger dollar (as the world demands dollars to invest here), and higher wages for U.S. workers. Higher wages will raise real incomes, stimulate consumption, decrease income inequality and expand the tax base to help reduce deficits without raising tax rates.

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“The meltdown has gotten so heavy liberal bureaucrats are ready to form antigovernment militias and fretting about black helicopters” – Max Blumenthal

• The Great ‘Splainin’ Cometh (James Howard Kunstler)

In July 27, 1794, the non-insane members of the Convention, or national legislative body in Paris, suddenly turned on the rabid Jacobin leader Maximillian Robespierre and overthrew his ruling tyrannical bunch — who had killed 40,000 of their fellow countrymen in the paranoid orgy known as The Reign of Terror. The next day, Robespierre rode the tumbrel to his own appointment with “the national razor” and the Thermidorian Reaction was on! By the way, in one of their many acts disordering French society, the Jacobins had changed the calendar, renamed all the months, and changed the weeks from seven to ten days (to eliminate Sundays as a holy day of rest in their anti-church crusade). Thus, Thermidor, the month of mid-summer. This was but a small part of their proto-communist agenda, but you see in it the flavor of their radical extremism.

The Woke Democrats of recent times were our Jacobins, and the election of November 5, 2024, marks the kick-off of America’s Thermidorian Reaction. The crazies have been overthrown and our country awaits a restoration of norms in culture and law. No more sexualizing of children, no more flood of criminal mutts across the US border, no more furtive censorship of public speech, no more creative lawfare, no more women on the battlefield, no more “anti-racist” racism in the workplace, no more intel takeover of everyone’s private life. . . you get the picture. Many abiding mysteries about how this happened — even of what exactly did happen — remain to be sorted out by law and by history. That is probably because so much of the Woke Revolution was provoked by state-of-the-art mind-fuckery out of the giant intel blob’s psy-ops lab.

This blob, you understand, had grown to be a colossal racketeering operation with many branches and ever-spreading roots, and it cast its spells over the populace to protect these interests — which, of course, involved huge revenue streams. Perhaps its most potent spell was the manipulation of women’s emotion, harnessing female psychodrama as the propellant for mass social discord. In a nation of absent fathers, damaged children, and broken male-female relations, Donald Trump was painted as the ultimate archetypal tyrant Daddy figure to deflect the public’s attention from the actual tyranny growing under the US intel blob and its Globalist sidekicks. Case in point: RussiaGate, a long-running hysteria of fabricated accusations, a fabulous medley of scurrilous gossip, engineered at the highest levels of our government for the express purpose of wrecking Mr. Trump’s first term in office. “Witch hunt” was exactly the right term.

Many more psychodramas followed, all of them artificially cooked up by various branches of the blob: impeachments #1 and #2; the FBI-induced J-6 riot and the fake House J-6 inquiry that followed; the roll-out of DOJ-inspired fake criminal and civil cases that tied-up Mr. Trump in courtrooms through the year, and most especially the hostile news media’s presentation of all these things as one great big everlasting frenzy of on-screen women shrieking at the Daddy-figure, Donald Trump, like thirteen-year-old girls in fugues of hormonal disruption. The voters, subject to years of trips laid on them, were eventually able to see through all this induced psychodrama as to how they were being manipulated, and on November 5, they finally revolted.

Their quandary was probably epitomized by the absurdity of watching men in women’s sports — spiking volleyballs on the girls’ heads, bashing them on the lacrosse field, humiliating them in the swim lanes — and, more to the point, being helpless to do anything about it, because the officials in-charge under “Joe Biden” said it must be, no matter what you think and feel about what you are seeing. The New York Times, your field-guide to blob-think, is warning its dwindling readership of psychodrama addicts that Donald Trump will now take out his “grievances” on the noble, self-sacrificing bureaucracy that manages things so well in this land. As usual, The Times misleads and misinforms. These are the grievances of the nation that has seen its law and its culture twisted into new orders of wickedness that leave daily life in the USA perverted, dishonored, and grotesquefied.

So now Mr. Trump has picked a cabinet that scares the blob to death — for good reason. They are aiming to systematically disarm and disassemble the blob. They are a team of serious and intelligent warriors and they mean business, in particular Gaetz, Gabbard, Kennedy, Ratcliffe, and Homan, with Elon and Vivek riding shotgun. (A new FBI Director has not yet been named.) You must wonder how the blob is planning to defend itself, for it surely will resist.

Many of us believe that the two recent assassination attempts against the now-President-elect were blob-sponsored operations. Everybody expects they’ll try again. But it’s possible that the American system still has enough mojo to self-correct. A whole lot of public officials have a whole lot of ‘splainin’ to do. It looks like they will be compelled to now, including the public health officers who brought us Covid-19 and the mandated, ineffective-and-harmful mRNA vaccines. There’s every reason to believe that the ‘splainin’ can take place in correct proceedings according to law: hearings, grand juries, courts. We do have actual laws against racketeering, abuse of power, election fraud, bribery, malicious prosecution, sedition, treason, and conspiracy to commit all those crimes. Pay attention: all that is distinct from lawfare, which is making-up crimes, faking crimes, and faking procedure. You are going to see a demonstration of how law differs from lawfare. It ought to have a salutary effect on our national esprit. And that should motivate us to get on with the job of repairing the damage done to our country.

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Seamlessly switching from Trump to Musk.

• Democratic Senators Demand Musk Be Probed For Russia Ties (RT)

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk should be investigated over media claims that he communicated with several senior Russian officials in recent years, two top Democratic senators have demanded in a letter. Jack Reed, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and Jeanne Shaheen, a senior member of the Foreign Relations Committee, raised concerns about the media allegations in a letter to US Attorney General Merrick Garland and Pentagon Inspector General Robert Storch on Friday. In October, at the height of the US presidential election, the Wall Street Journal claimed that Musk had communicated with several top Russian officials, including President Vladimir Putin, as recently as this year.

Musk oversees billions of dollars in US government contracts as CEO of SpaceX. As the tech billionaire claims to hold top secret level security clearance, and manages extremely sensitive government contracts, his potential communication with Russia is a risk, the senators said. “These relationships between a well-known US adversary and Mr. Musk, a beneficiary of billions of dollars in US government funding, pose serious questions regarding Mr. Musk’s reliability as a government contractor and a clearance holder,” they wrote. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov blasted the pre-election WSJ claims about the billionaire’s alleged phone calls with Putin as “disinformation.” Historically, there was only one call between the two, he said.

“It was before 2022, they spoke over the telephone,” Peskov stated, adding that they discussed Russia’s scientific progress, and likely future developments. “There were no contacts between Musk and Putin after that, and all claims otherwise are false.” The spokesman noted the claims are likely related to the “extremely confrontational electoral political fight” in the US. After his victory in the US presidential race, Donald Trump announced that Musk will head the future Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). The initiative will aim to cut trillions of dollars in “waste and fraud” in annual US government spending, “dismantle Government Bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure Federal Agencies,” Trump said on Thursday. Musk said his role in DOGE “is going to be a revolution.”

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“The Israeli media term it a ‘dream team’ for Netanyahu. It certainly looks that way.”

• There Are No “Easy Wars” Left To Fight (Alastair Crooke)

Israelis, as a whole, are exhibiting a rosy assurance that they can harness Trump, if not to the full annexation of the Occupied Territories (Trump in his first term did not support such annexation), but rather, to ensnare him into a war on Iran. Many (even most) Israelis are raring for war on Iran and an aggrandisement of their territory (devoid of Arabs). They are believing the puffery that Iran ‘lies naked’, staggeringly vulnerable, before a U.S. and Israeli military strike. Trump’s Team nominations, so far, reveal a foreign policy squad of fierce supporters of Israel and of passionate hostility to Iran. The Israeli media term it a ‘dream team’ for Netanyahu. It certainly looks that way. The Israel Lobby could not have asked for more. They have got it. And with the new CIA chief, they get a known ultra China hawk as a bonus.

But in the domestic sphere the tone is precisely the converse: The key nomination for ‘cleaning the stables’ is Matt Gaetz as Attorney General; he is a real “bomb thrower”. And for the Intelligence clean-up, Tulsi Gabbard is appointed as Director of National Intelligence. All intelligence agencies will report to her, and she will be responsible for the President’s Daily briefing. The intel assessments may thus begin to reflect something closer to reality. The deep Inter-Agency structure has reason to be very afraid; they are panicking – especially over Gaetz. Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy have the near impossible task of cutting out-of-control federal spending and currency printing. The System is deeply dependent on the bloat of government spending to keep the cogs and levers of the mammoth ‘security’ boondoggle whirring. It is not going to be yielded up without a bitter fight.

So, on the one hand, the Lobby gets a dream team (Israel), but on the other side (the domestic sphere), it gets a renegade team. This must be deliberate. Trump knows that Biden’s legacy of bloating GDP with government jobs and excessive public spending is the real ‘time bomb’ awaiting him. Again the withdrawal symptoms, as the drug of easy money is withdrawn, may prove incendiary. Moving to a structure of tariffs and low taxes will be disruptive. Whether deliberate or not, Trump is keeping his cards close to his chest. We have only glimpses of intent – and the water is being seriously muddied by the infamous ‘Inter-Agency’ grandees. For example, in respect to the Pentagon sanctioning private-sector contractors to work in Ukraine, this was done in coordination with “inter-agency stakeholders”.

The old nemesis that paralysed his first term again faces Trump. Then, during the Ukraine impeachment process, one witness (Vindman), when asked why he would not defer to the President’s explicit instructions, replied that whilst Trump has his view on Ukraine policy, that stance did NOT align with that of the ‘Inter-Agency’ agreed position. In plain language, Vindman denied that a U.S. president has agency in foreign policy formulation. In short, the ‘Inter-Agency structure’ was signalling to Trump that military support for Ukraine must continue. When the Washington Post published their detailed story of a Trump-Putin phone call – that the Kremlin emphatically states never happened – the deep structures of policy were simply telling Trump that it would be they who determine what the shape of the U.S. ‘solution’ for Ukraine would be.

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“If you work for the FDA and are part of this corrupt system, I have two messages for you: 1. Preserve your records, and 2. Pack your bags..”

• RFK Jr. vs. Big Pharma Goliath: Drug Makers, Big Food and the FDA (Sp.)

Donald Trump has tapped Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for HHS chief – the top advisor to the president on health-related matters, and chief administrator overseeing the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health, Medicare and Medicaid. Here’s what he can actually do to make real change. Fixing even a fraction of the problems contributing to America’s health crisis could prove daunting, with the nation facing an obesity epidemic (over 70% of American adults are obese or overweight), an addiction scourge (15% use illicit drugs, 20% suffer from alcohol dependency), a prescription drug crisis (66% use at least one prescription medication), contaminated drinking water (a concern for nearly half of the population), skyrocketing autism (which affects one in 36 children, compared to about one per 1,000 in the 1980s), and other serious health-related issues.

Kennedy has recognized the gargantuan scope of the challenge, saying in a recent interview that the US health care system as it’s presently set up means there’s “nothing more profitable” than keeping Americans sick “for life,” with chronic disease a big business he estimates to be worth some $4.3 trln (i.e. about five times the size of the US’s 2024 defense budget). Kennedy has yet to lay out the details of his agenda as potential Trump Health and Human Services Secretary, including for make good on promises to rein in Big Pharma, but has dropped important hints in recent interviews and speeches about:
• negotiating with drug companies on medication costs,
• barring major pharmaceuticals from being able to spend billions of dollars on television advertising, which he has characterized as a disguised form of lobbying and insurance against media criticism,
• ending vaccine mandates, at least for federal agencies and the military, and lobbying to do so at the state level, while preserving Americans’ rights to make an informed choice,
• reforming vaccine research standards. Kennedy has been outspoken in his criticism of former chief presidential medical advisor Anthony Fauci and others at the NIH over US-funded gain of function research thought to have ultimately caused the Covid crisis.

As Secretary of Health and Human Services, Kennedy would also be responsible for America’s food safety regulations, an area of government he has said repeatedly has been captured by big corporations. On this front, Kennedy could:
• encourage municipalities to get rid of fluoride in tap water, citing fluoride’s long-suspected impact IQ levels in children,
• push to ban or at least restrict artificial food coloring, additives and chemicals,
• restrict processed foods in school lunches, and roll back subsidies for corn and soy,
• end perceive FDA overregulation on “stem cells, raw milk, hyperbaric therapies, chelating compounds, ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine, vitamins, clean foods, sunshine, exercise, nutraceuticals and anything else that advances human health and can’t be patented by Pharma,” as he suggested in a recent X post.
• RFK Jr. also wants federally-funded medical schools to focus more on nutrition, and to create a national fitness standard like the one promoted by his uncle – President John F. Kennedy.

Kennedy has promised to take on conflicts of interest between regulators and the entities they’re meant to be regulating – citing money given to the FDA by Big Pharma, and corporate links to health and dietary advisories. The HSS Secretary job requires Senate approval, meaning Kennedy’s selection could become a daunting uphill battle come January, especially if Big Pharma and Big Food use their lobbying muscle to pull strings to block his appointment. Battle lines are already being drawn, with GOP senators promising to give him a shot, calling his selection “a bad day for Big Pharma,” and his candidacy a “brilliant” move by Donald Trump. Senate Democrats have rushed to dub Kennedy a “fringe conspiracy theorist” spouting “outlandish views on basic scientific facts,” over his much-publicized vaccine hesitancy, and argued that his selection “would be nothing short of a disaster.”

Senior officials from agencies Kennedy would be tasked with overseeing also called him out, with Clinton-era HHS chief Donna Shalala saying he’s “totally unqualified” and “dangerous” to America and the world. Former Obama HHS chief Kathleen Sebilius, meanwhile, has expressed hopes that Kennedy would get bogged down in the agency’s bureaucracy. “He has no organizational management experience, and HHS is one of the largest domestic organizations,” she said, highlighting the agency’s 83,000 employee workforce and massive $1.7 trillion budget. Kennedy has expressed readiness to work with the HHS and its subordinate agencies, but warned naysayers in top jobs, including at the FDA, that he will not tolerate efforts to block his initiatives. “If you work for the FDA and are part of this corrupt system, I have two messages for you: 1. Preserve your records, and 2. Pack your bags,” he wrote in a tweet last month.

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“That the Democrats stood down from stealing the presidency in 2024 doesn’t mean they didn’t steal House and Senate seats..”

• Has Matt Gaetz Been Set-up for Eviction from Public Life? (Paul Craig Roberts)

I have had a horrible thought. Of all of Trump’s appointees, Matt Gaetz and Robert Kennedy will be the most difficult to get confirmed. And Gaetz has resigned from the House of Representatives where he is the most effective member against the ruling establishment. Was his appointment as Attorney General a trick to get him out of public life? Robert Kennedy’s appointment was said to be in doubt because he would be hard to confirm, but so would Gaetz. Gaetz’s high profile powerful position scares to death the corrupt Justice (sic) Department, the corrupt FBI, the corrupt Democrats, and the corrupt ruling elites. Perhaps the Senate will let Trump have his appointments without confirmation as recess appointments, so non-confirmation is not an issue.

It is revealing that there were no confirmation worries about Trump’s appointments of his Zionist war cabinet. Some claim that it is not a war cabinet, that Stefanik, Waltz, Rubio, and Hegseth have been cured of their Zionism by Israel’s massacre of Palestinians. Perhaps, but I have not heard a recantation from a single one of the “die-for-Israel” crowd. Certainly, Huckabee, sent by Trump as ambassador to Israel, and Witkoff, sent by Trump as his Special Envoy to the Middle East, will not take exception to Israel’s claim to title to Palestine. So how are they going to bring about any Israeli restraint? Isn’t it curious that Trump didn’t appoint anyone inclined to rein-in Israel?

That the Democrats stood down from stealing the presidency in 2024 doesn’t mean they didn’t steal House and Senate seats. The Republicans barely did well enough to change a thin Democrat Senate majority into a thin Republican majority, and it seems there was little, if any, change in the House. In contrast, when Reagan won in 1980 the Republicans captured 12 Democrat seats in the Senate. It is suspicious that Trump’s convincing win did not carry over into Congress.

Trump is taking Republican members of Congress as appointees into his administration. Republican governors can appoint replacements until the next election, but the appointed replacements might be vulnerable as they were not elected. Matt Gaetz was secure in his base. Will his appointed replacement be as secure? We can be thankful that Trump has appointed some officials who fight for the correct causes. We can keep hoping that Trump will make a difference.


https://twitter.com/i/status/1857135399887405420

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“It is likely that Trump appointed her to shake up the intel community, which is regarded by many as the black heart of the deep state..”

• Tulsi Gabbard Right Pick to Shake-Up US Spy Agencies – Giraldi (Sp.)

President-elect Donald Trump nominated the former Democratic congresswoman and a 21-year army reserve veteran to oversee the bewildering array of 18 US spy agencies in his incoming administration. “A foreign policy and national security appointment that has created considerable dissent is that of Tulsi Gabbard as Director of National Intelligence [DNI],” Philip Giraldi, a former CIA operations officer with experience in Europe and the Middle East, told Sputnik. The CIA veteran said much of the dissent comes from inside the ‘intelligence community’, including active officers and former staff of organizations like the CIA and NSA. Objections to Gabbard’s nomination have focused on her lack of intelligence experience, claiming she will “be unable to perceive problems among an unruly 18-member intelligence community,” the pundit said.

But Giraldi countered that she was “smart, experienced and capable enough to gather her own staff around her that will guide her way through the shoals of Washington DC.” “To my mind, she is an excellent choice, coming from outside of the intelligence community ‘club,’ and could be an effective and ethical DNI,” he added. The former CIA officer noted that Gabbard is viewed as a “peace candidate” for her opposition to endless overseas wars, the US military occupation of parts of Syria and the demonization of China. But she is also known for her support for Israel, currently waging a war against the Palestinian territory of Gaza. “It is likely that Trump appointed her to shake up the intel community, which is regarded by many as the black heart of the deep state,” Giraldi said. “She will, of course, be both helped and handicapped by being provided with plenty of ‘direction’ by a president who is fundamentally ignorant of foreign policy and national security issues.”

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“If Gaetz gets in, I do believe he will cut the legs out from under the giant lawfare operation that has grown up around his office in recent years..”

• Tulsi and the Establishment Meltdown (Tom Woods)

[..] let me say a quick something about Tulsi Gabbard as Director of National Intelligence and Matt Gaetz as Attorney General. Tulsi is said to be “unqualified” because she doesn’t come from the existing cabal of liars and propagandists who have never told the American public the truth in their lives. Rep. Abigail Spanberger in particular is horrified at the prospect that our intelligence world might not bombard us 24 hours a day with lies that would insult a second grader: “As a former CIA case officer, I saw the men and women of the U.S. intelligence community put their lives on the line every day for this country — and I am appalled at the nomination of Tulsi Gabbard to lead DNI. Not only is she ill-prepared and unqualified, but she traffics [sic] in conspiracy theories and cozies up to dictators like Bashar-al Assad and Vladimir Putin. As a Member of the House Intelligence Committee, I am deeply concerned about what this nomination portends for our national security.”

Rep. Spanberger is a “former CIA case officer,” which means we should favor the opposite of whatever she says. She claims to be concerned about “conspiracy theories,” when it was contractors with her beloved CIA who spun the absurd theory that Russia had come up with the story about Hunter Biden’s laptop (honestly, if you’re going to pretend a foreign power invented a story, make it not as weird and random as “the president’s son had a laptop with stuff on it”). She is deeply worried about someone who “cozies up to dictators” — the CIA would never do that! It just installs them. Here’s what our friend Dave Smith had to say about the present situation:

“A lot of crazy things have happened in this country over the last few years, so you may have forgotten this one minor story from eight years ago: The US intelligence agencies framed the sitting US President for treason. They all knew that Donald Trump wasn’t involved in a conspiracy with the Russians, but they lied. Well, that President is back AND the boss of the Intelligence agencies is now, not only someone completely outside of that conspiracy, but someone who was slandered with that same accusation, by the same nasty woman whose campaign came up with the whole Trump frame job to begin with.”

Interesting times. As for Matt Gaetz, they really don’t like him. John Bolton says Gaetz “must be the worst nomination for a cabinet position in American history.” National Review Online has a predictable article against him. JD Vance snapped back: “The main issue with Matt Gaetz is that he used his office to prosecute his political opponents and authorized federal agents to harass parents who were peacefully protesting at school board meetings. Oh wait, that’s actually Merrick Garland, the current attorney general.” They’re appalled that the attorney general isn’t being chosen from D.C. swampdom, because that’s what they’ve come to expect. But John F. Kennedy didn’t do that, and neither did Ronald Reagan. If Gaetz gets in, I do believe he will cut the legs out from under the giant lawfare operation that has grown up around his office in recent years — and this, rather than genuine concerns about his qualifications (these people care about qualifications all of a sudden?) is what the people screaming about him are actually worried about.

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“Do not let his various degrees fool you. He is neither an egg-headed nor lace-curtained lawyer. He is an intellectual who knows how to scrap..”

• Trump Makes Brilliant Choice for the Next White House Counsel (Turley)

President-elect Donald Trump’s nomination of Matt Gaetz as Attorney General has consumed most of the media attention in the last week. Indeed, it seems to have sucked the oxygen out of this city. The media frenzy over Gaetz and a couple of other nominations has served to brush over an appointment that should be universally praised: William McGinley as the next White House Counsel. I had the pleasure of teaching Bill at George Washington Law School, and he is ideal for this position, particularly at this critical time in our country. Bill was one of my students in first-year torts in the mid-1990s. He was a gifted student who knew early on that he wanted to work along the borderline of law and politics. It is an area where GW has long excelled, and Bill was quickly recognized as one of the rising stars among young Republican lawyers. (Notably, Bill attended my class a couple years after prior Trump counselor Kellyanne Conway).

Bill received a B.A. in history from UCLA and a master’s in history from California State University. During his first summer, when other students were seeking summer internships with firms, Bill clerked for the Republic National Committee (RNC) and delved into the world of law, politics, and policy. Upon his graduation, his rise in the profession can only be described as meteoric. At a young age, he would serve as Deputy General Counsel to the RNC and coordinate the national campaigns for candidates and ballot initiatives. He also served as counsel to the RNC Standing Committee on Rules, the powerful group that establishes the framework for the party and its conventions. Bill ultimately became the General Counsel to the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) before becoming a partner at some of the most prestigious law firms, including Patton Boggs and Jones Day.

He also remained active as an alumnus at GW Law School, supporting other students in pursuing their careers in Washington, D.C., and other cities. Bill has all the qualities of an ideal White House Counsel. He can offer the President the clarity of judgment and foresight needed in this position, which requires the authority to give needed direction on the best course for achieving goals and unwanted advice when needed. That is the model of past successful White House Counsels, like the late C. Boyden Gray. It requires the trust of a president that, while the advice is sometimes inconvenient, his counsel seeks to facilitate, not frustrate, his legacy.

Bill is a tenacious and seasoned fighter with the “street cred” to be taken seriously by everyone in this city. He also has a deep-seated love for the law and legal education. Trump found a White House counsel who knows this city and how to get things done despite the deep partisan divides. Do not let his various degrees fool you. He is neither an egg-headed nor lace-curtained lawyer. He is an intellectual who knows how to scrap. He is someone who not only has a deep understanding of history but also someone who knows how to make history. Trump picked wisely with Bill McGinley, and I am particularly proud of his success as a leader in our profession.

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“Section 230 only confers benefits on Big Tech companies when they operate, in the words of the statute, “in good faith.”

• X Sees Return Of Major Advertisers Under Fire From FCC (ZH)

While Mark Cuban and other sore losers are leaving X to shout into the void, several major advertisers have returned to the platform. Comcast, IBM, Disney, Warner Brothers, Discovery and Lionsgate Entertainment have all resumed ad spending on the social media giant – albeit this is more of a toe-dip than a full recommitment. According to Adweek, the brands collectively spent less than $3.3 million on X from January to September 2024, a far cry from the $170 million spent during the same period in 2023. Either way, it’s an admission that pulling ad spend over ‘hate speech’ and ‘antisemitism’ was nothing more than a giant virtue signal, particularly considering Facebook and Instagram’s long history of providing a safe forum for child sexual abuse. While a global survey by Kantar of senior marketers across 20 countries found that 26% of them plan to cut spending on X in 2025, the 2024 election may have changed that.

“X’s owner now has the ear of the president-elect, a man who has a long history of helping his friends, and punishing his enemies,” said Max Willens, senior analyst at Emarketer. “Sending at least a trickle of ad spending toward X may be seen as good for business, albeit in an indirect way.” Speaking of the tide turning, the woke cabal of advertisers trying to starve conservative platforms out of a voice is now coming under fire (have we mentioned lately that we really appreciate our premium subscribers?). In a Wednesday letter to Microsoft, Alphabet (Google), Apple, and Meta, FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr accused them of having “participated in a censorship cartel that included not only technology and social media companies but advertising, marketing, and so-called “fact-checking” organizations as well as the Biden-Harris Administration itself.”

“The relevant conduct extended from removing or blocking social media posts to suppress their information and viewpoints, including through efforts to delist them, lower their rankings, or harm their profitability.” Carr then suggested that their protection from liability under Section 230 may be on the line. “As you know, Big Tech’s prized liability shield, Section 230, is codified in the Communications Act, which the FCC administers. As relevant here, Section 230 only confers benefits on Big Tech companies when they operate, in the words of the statute, “in good faith.” Wow… Carr then set his sights on NewsGuard – which Jonathan Turley notes has been long accused by conservatives “of targeting conservative and libertarian sites and carrying out the agenda of its co-founder Steven Brill. Conversely, many media outlets have heralded his efforts to identify disinformation sites for advertisers and agencies.”

Basically, NewsGuard bombards conservative sites with struggle-session questionnaire emails demanding explanations for the slightest of indiscretions, after which they issue a “report card” that advertisers use to justify pulling ad spend. As Carr notes in the letter; “It is in this context that I am writing to obtain information about your work with the one specific organization – the Orwellian named NewsGuard. As exposed by the Twitter Files, NewsGuard is a for-profit company that operates as part of the broader censorship cartel. Indeed, NewsGuard bills itself as the Internet’s arbiter of truth or, as its co-founder put it, a “Vaccine Against Misinformation.” Newsguard purports to rate the credibility of news and information outlets and tells readers and advertisers which outlets they can trust.” Carr suggests following NewsGuard’s ratings may constitute a violation of Section 230 (this is huge).

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“..we need to find out if members of the German government were aware of this incident before or after it occurred..”

• Germany’s AfD Urges UN to Investigate Nord Stream (Sp.)

The right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) party has called on the United Nations to prosecute an inquiry into the Nord Sream pipelines explosions and find out whether government officials were aware of this incident, party’s co-chair Tino Chrupalla said. “We believe that the incident needs to be thoroughly investigated, and those responsible must be held accountable. In particular, we need to find out if members of the German government were aware of this incident before or after it occurred. We have called for the establishment of an inquiry commission in the European Parliament and are now calling for a UN investigation,” Chrupalla told Turkish newspaper Aydinlik.

The Nord Stream and Nord Stream 2 gas pipelines, built to deliver gas under the Baltic Sea from Russia to Europe, were hit by explosions on September 26, 2022. Germany, Denmark and Sweden have not ruled out deliberate sabotage. The Russian Prosecutor General’s Office has opened an investigation into it as an act of international terrorism. Russia has repeatedly requested data on other countries’ investigations into the explosions, but never received it, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said.

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“The Ukrainian leader governs like a king leading a “terrorist organization..”

• Trump’s Win Means End Of Zelensky – Ukrainian MP (RT)

Donald Trump’s victory in the US presidential election means that Vladimir Zelensky will soon be removed from power, which will be great for Ukraine, exiled lawmaker Artyom Dmitruk has told RT. The Ukrainian MP fled from his home country earlier this year, saying he feared for his safety after taking a public stance against Kiev’s crackdown on the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. He went to the UK and is currently fighting an extradition request, which he claims is based on fabricated charges issued at Zelensky’s orders. The Ukrainian leader governs like a king leading a “terrorist organization,” Dmitruk said in an interview on Thursday, citing the effects that Zelensky’s policies had on the country. The incumbent government does not care about Ukrainian lives, persecutes political opponents, and enriches officials through corruption, he alleged.

“This man, he has managed to steal more than all previous presidents who robbed Ukraine. His money certainly has more blood on it than anyone’s,” the lawmaker said. Zelensky’s team was counting on Vice President Kamala Harris winning the election, which would have allowed the grift to continue, Dmitruk believes. He sees Trump’s victory as “a clear signal that their power is coming to an end.” “Zelensky must go,” he asserted. “I say: liberate Ukraine from Zelensky. This is my key political slogan.” “As a citizen, I wish Ukrainian issues were decided by Ukraine itself,” he added. “But thanks to all our previous presidents we have lost… sovereignty. Unfortunately, others now have to decide for us.” Dmitruk does not expect Trump to end the conflict “in 24 hours,” which he said he would do if elected. But reaching a peace deal would secure the president-elect’s legacy, which gives him a strong incentive to deliver, he reasoned.

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“When given a choice between peace and war, Zelensky helped himself by choosing war..”

• No Use Blaming Britain For Kiev’s War Policy – Ukrainian MP (RT)

Kiev’s confirmation that former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson derailed peace talks with Russia in 2022 is an attempt to avoid responsibility for Vladimir Zelensky’s decision to seek a military victory, exiled Ukrainian MP Artyom Dmitruk asserted in an interview with RT on Thursday. Moscow and Kiev held several rounds of talks shortly after the conflict escalated in February 2022. In Istanbul, the two sides preliminarily agreed a draft truce, but Kiev later rejected the document and pulled out of the talks. David Arakhamia, the Zelensky-allied MP who led the Ukrainian delegation, confirmed in November 2023 that Johnson, the British prime minister at the time, had advised Kiev not to sign anything and “just continue fighting.” “Don’t put your responsibility on Britain and Boris Johnson personally. What is that? Is that some hide-and-seek game?” Dmitruk, a vocal critic of Zelensky, said.

The Ukrainian leader’s popularity was rapidly dwindling before the hostilities with Russia started, the lawmaker pointed out. The conflict provided justification to remain in power and keep enriching himself and his inner circle, he alleged. Zelensky’s term as president expired in May, but he refused to transfer power to the parliament speaker as mandated by the Ukrainian constitution. “Terrifying things happen during war. Terrifying things that generate huge money, bigger than anything anyone could ever make in Ukraine. And he leads it all,” Dmitruk claimed. When given a choice between peace and war, Zelensky helped himself by choosing war, the MP stated.

Dmitruk fled from his home country earlier this year after publicly criticizing Kiev for its intensifying crackdown on the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, the country’s largest religious organization, to which Dmitruk belongs. He claims to be a victim of political persecution. The lawmaker described the ouster of Zelensky as a key condition that he hopes will clear the way for peace, a new election, and national reconciliation. He hopes that the expected change in US foreign policy under the incoming president, Donald Trump, will help facilitate that outcome.

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It gets crazier as we go along.

• Laboratory Head Given Licence To Lie In Novichok Show Trial (Helmer)

Anthony Hughes, the retired judge (titled Lord Hughes of Ombersley) directing the Dawn Sturgess Inquiry in London, opened the questioning of a senior British Government chemical warfare agent on Wednesday by telling him “you’re not bound by your statement, but by all means use it to refresh your recollection” — page 5. This is a licence to lie. The head of chemical and biological analysis at the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL) at Porton Down was given the cipher MK26 to conceal his name — his face screened from view in the videotape of the hearing — to do just that. Hughes also arranged for his assisting counsel, Andrew O’Connor KC, to give the government official this version of the witness oath. “May I ask you,” O’Connor said, “whether you have had an opportunity to read through this statement before giving evidence today? A. Yes, I have. Q. Are its contents true to the best of your knowledge and belief? A. Yes, they are. Q. Thank you.”

As Hughes and O’Connor know very well, the official oath in British courtroom practice is that witness swears his testimony “shall be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.” In this case, the judge and his lawyer gave the witness a licence not to tell the whole truth. Just in case these licences to lie and to evade the truth were spotted by the public, O’Connor told MK26 that he and Hughes accepted his “statement does not contain everything that you can say about these matters because there are some further issues, further material that is covered by the restriction [secrecy] orders. A. Yes, that’s correct. Q. As a result, it’s right, is it not, that you will be coming back when the Inquiry sits in its closed sessions to give further evidence and on that occasion you will be able to provide the Chair with the information which you cannot provide today? A. Yes.” — page 6.

According to the exhibits MK26 had signed for the Inquiry, of the two pages of witness statement he had signed to the police on July 16, 2018, everything has been blacked out except one short paragraph giving the official accreditation of the workshops MK26 headed at the DSTL Porton Down. A second witness statement MK26 signed for the Coroners Court on August 20, 2019, comprises five pages, but they have all been censored. The only lines which remain say: “I have complied with, and will continue to comply with, my duty to the court to provide independent assistance by way of objective unbiased opinion in relation to matters within my expertise.” At the Bar this is recognized as the Queen Gertrude defence for lying; it comes from “the lady doth protest too much, methinks”, the well-known line from Shakespeare’s Hamlet. A Defence Ministry employee cannot be independent, or objective, or unbiased in relation to his official work orders.

The political significance of the Porton Down lying has been international. It was the foundation of the claim the British Government made to its NATO allies five weeks after Sergei and Yulia Skripal’s collapse that the UK was the target of a Novichok attack by Russia. According to a letter sent to the NATO headquarters by Sir Mark Sedwill, then the Prime Minister’s national security advisor and supervisor of intelligence operations, “I would like to share with you and Allies further information regarding our assessment that it is highly likely that the Russian state was responsible for the Salisbury attack. Only Russia has the technical means, operational experience and the motive. The OPCW’s. [Organization for the Prevention of Chemical Weapons] analysis matches the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory’s [DSTL Porton Down] own, confirming once again the findings of the United Kingdom relating to the identity of the toxic chemical of high purity that was used in Salisbury.

OPCW have always been clear that it was their role to identify what substance was used, not who was responsible… of course, the DSTL analysis does not identify the country or laboratory of origin of the agent used in this attack…We therefore continue to judge that only Russia has the technical means, operational experience and motive for the attack on the Skripals and that it is highly likely that the Russian state was responsible. There is no plausible alternative explanation.” Sedwill was lying. Porton Down was lying. OPCW repeated the lies it was given by the British. There was, there still is, a plausible alternative explanation. In his appearance at Hughes’s hearing this week, MK26 tried to conceal this with what an independent British organic chemist with comparable expertise to MK26 describes as “camouflage science – faulty assumptions, missing chemical names, speculative findings, a day of witchcraft.”

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Good question.

• How Did A Puritanical Nation End Up Idolizing Transvestites? (Frascolla)

A cause cherished by Mary Shelley and Harriet Taylor Mill’s husband is the equality of women with men. As bad as feminism is, and as bad as the world is for most Western women (who can’t start a family or find fulfillment in their jobs), there’s no denying that, in the 19th century, marriage could leave women to a private despotism of bad husbands. In the 20th century, the Unitarians were advocating for the equality of black people and, later, for gay people. What did the feminist, black and gay causes have in common? The fact that they proposed social reforms that went against society (it’s worth remembering that the U.S. is a country with deep racist roots). In practice, the moral rule ends up being to go against society – and that’s why the U.S. ended up embracing transvestites and putting them to read stories in children’s libraries.

Why did this doctrine gain so much traction in the U.S.? For two reasons, the main one being political liberalism. The United States was even more liberal than England, since, unlike the latter, it never prohibited Catholicism by law. Thus, the United States had nothing remotely similar to the Inquisition, and Unitarianism enjoyed the same freedom as any other religion. There is no room, in the institutional history of the United States, for the category of heretic. Nothing is heresy, everything is religion. Unitarianism spread like wildfire. If in 1774 they founded the first church in England, in 1805 (only 31 years later), they already had the rectorship of Harvard, and in 1825 they already had the sixth president of the United States. The United States became independent and constituted itself as a nation in 1776, that is, only two years after the founding of the Unitarian Church in England. Thus, we can say that the country existed for less than 30 years free of great Unitarian influence.

If the United States, being liberal, cannot adhere to any religious creed, and does not have any strong leader (such as an Emperor or a Supreme Leader), power ends up falling into the hands of technocrats trained by the most important universities. Unitarianism has this convenience of not seeing itself as a religion among others; thus, its principles are easily secularized – so much so that Mill’s On Liberty is a typical work of Unitarianism, but it is not seen as such. In addition to being considered secular, Unitarianism ended up giving rise to theological liberalism (which we have already discussed) and spreading through various churches and even synagogues. Protestants of any denomination ended up being divided between fundamentalists (who denied science) and liberals (who repeated the Unitarians). That is why we see so much transvestites and rainbows in the Episcopal and Anglican Churches, even though the thing arose in the Unitarian Church: both adhered to liberalism, instead of fundamentalism.

In view of this, ladies and gentlemen, what we can conclude is that the adoration of transvestites is an inevitable consequence of liberalism, and that the Inquisition burned too few people.

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Stallone

 

 

duckpuppy
https://twitter.com/i/status/1857071025617285467

 

 

Paddle

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle November 15 2024

Nov 152024
 
 November 15, 2024  Posted by at 9:50 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  53 Responses »


Arnold Böcklin The Isle of the Dead III 1883

 

• Trump Picks RFK Jr. as Secretary of Health and Human Services (PCR)
• Trump’s Foreign Policy Team May ‘Double Down on Stupid’ – Larry Johnson (Sp.)
• Trump Team Members Irritated By Musk – NBC (RT)
• Will Gabbard Be Able to Direct the Intelligence ‘Community’? (Ray McGovern)
• Has America Lost Its Mind Or Will Trump Get It Right This Time? (Ryumshin)
• Make Money Free Again (Ron Paul)
• Infowars Auction Thrown Into Chaos After Judge Investigates Malarkey (ZH)
• What Are Trump’s Chances to Make American Great Again? (Paul Craig Roberts)
• Trump Team To Nuke EV Tax Credit As Musk’s Price-War Endgame Looms (ZH)
• Tucker Carlson: Joe Rogan Has “Changed American History” (MN)
• FEC Chairman: Biden DOJ Broke Federal Policies with Letter Targeting Musk (AmG)
• Trump Vows To ‘Work Very Hard’ On Ukraine (RT)
• Will Trump Stop Ukraine From Joining NATO? (van den Ende)
• Ukrainian State-run Agency Scrubs Posts Bashing Tulsi Gabbard (RT)
• Electric War Moves Beyond Putin Pause Button To Power Off Button (Helmer)
• The State-Backed Settler War To Annex The West Bank (Inlakesh)
• Some Elections Will Never Be ‘Democratic’ Enough For The West (Behanzin)
• French Prosecutors Seek Prison Term And Election Ban For Le Pen (RT)

 

 

 

 

Rogan

Kirk

Gaetz

Barrack

Enten

Eva

CIA
https://twitter.com/i/status/1856754040505602131

Homan

Thiel Musk

 

 

 

 

“I am astonished and delighted. I hope it isn’t fake news.”

“It will be ironic if Kennedy restores our health but Trump’s foreign policy team destroys us in war.”

• Trump Picks RFK Jr. as Secretary of Health and Human Services (PCR)

I am astonished and delighted. I hope it isn’t fake news. President-elect Donald Trump on Thursday said he is “thrilled to announce” Robert F. Kennedy Jr as his nominee for Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) in a statement on social media. “For too long, Americans have been crushed by the industrial food complex and drug companies who have engaged in deception, misinformation, and disinformation when it comes to Public Health,” Trump wrote on platform X, along with his announcement. “HHS will play a big role in helping ensure that everybody will be protected from harmful chemicals, pollutants, pesticides, pharmaceutical products, and food additives that have contributed to the overwhelming Health Crisis in this Country,” Trump wrote on Nov. 14.

If this is real, the media and Trump Transition Team certainly misled me about the impossibility of Bobby Kennedy in a power position that can bring down the criminal pharmaceutical industry. This is a victory even if Big Pharma, wielding its campaign contributions, forces the Senate to refuse to confirm Kennedy in office. Trump can go to the public with the names of the bought-and-paid-for corrupt Senators and ask why Americans elect people who knowingly serve corporate criminals who knowingly damage the health of the American people. The nomination of Kennedy is the most powerful of all of Trump’s appointments, with Matt Gaetz’s being second.

We will now see if the Republican Senate is with Trump or against Trump and the American people. If the Senate consents to recess appointment of Trump’s team, they are with the President. If they do not, they are against him and are part of the deadly enemy he and we must defeat. Kennedy’s nomination restores my hope that Trump might achieve something. Trump, Kennedy, Gaetz, and Gabbard are fighters, a rarity in a Republican administration. But I still have concern about what seems to be a foreign policy/military team that is too committed to Israel to achieve peace. It will be ironic if Kennedy restores our health but Trump’s foreign policy team destroys us in war.

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“They still believe, foolishly, naively, that they can easily split Russia from China..”

• Trump’s Foreign Policy Team May ‘Double Down on Stupid’ – Larry Johnson (Sp.)

Days after his election victory over Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris, Republican President-elect Donald Trump began filling Cabinet positions and other key roles inside his future administration. Donald Trump’s foreign policy appointments for his incoming administration show that “he didn’t learn a thing during his first term,” Larry Johnson, retired CIA intelligence officer and State Department official, told Sputnik. “He talked one thing during the campaign about ending needless wars. And yet he is staffing himself with really a lot of young people who are locked up with old ideas,” Johnson noted. In his opinion, Pete Hegseth, Trump’s pick for secretary of defense, is just an absurd joke. Florida Congressman Michael Waltz, tapped as Trump’s national security advisor, is also a disaster, Johnson argued, underscoring that he “represents everything that Donald Trump said that Donald Trump stood against.”

New York Congresswoman Elise Stefanik, tapped to serve as US ambassador to the United Nations, “comes in with a very strident pro-Zionist point of view,” the expert remarked. With a foreign policy team like that, Johnson said, Trump is “going to double down on stupid” when it comes to most important international areas, such as Ukraine, the Middle East, and China. “He doesn’t understand that the world has changed. They still believe, foolishly, naively, that they can easily split Russia from China, that there’s no natural alliance between Russia and China so that we can we can manipulate Russia into joining with us to defeat China. They just don’t get it,” the ex-CIA analyst underscored.

“They believe that they can boss people around in the Middle East and control what they do. Not recognizing the fact that Saudi Arabia and Iran, who were at odds two years ago, have now reestablished diplomatic relationships, are exchanging defense ministers to visit each other’s capital, and are planning joint military exercises. The Organization of Islamic Countries has made it quite clear that there should be no normalizing any relations with Israel until there is a Palestinian state and the Palestinians are secure. The Trump team doesn’t get that… And they’re going to probably have to get punched in the face to wake up and grasp the new reality,” said Johnson.

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Oh yeah, they all hate him, right, NBC?!

“Trump joked that “Elon won’t go home. I can’t get rid of him.”

• Trump Team Members Irritated By Musk – NBC (RT)

SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk is overstaying his welcome at US President-elect Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate and “behaving as if he’s a co-president,” sources close to the election winner have told NBC News. Trump’s team has denied that there is any tension between the pair. Musk joined Trump at Mar-a-Lago on election night and has spent much of the last week at the Florida resort assisting the transition team. The tech tycoon has weighed in on Trump’s cabinet appointments, and was present when Trump held phone calls with Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, reportedly speaking directly to Zelensky at one point. Musk’s closeness to Trump has apparently irritated some of the president-elect’s transition staff, a source at Mar-a-Lago told NBC News on Wednesday.

“And he’s sure taking lots of credit for the president’s victory. Bragging about America PAC and X to anyone who will listen. He’s trying to make President Trump feel indebted to him. And the president is indebted to no one,” the source added. A second source said that Musk has an “opinion on and about everything” and that his insistence on sharing these opinions has started to annoy Trump’s most senior aides and advisers. “He wants to be seen as having a say in everything (even if he doesn’t),” the source said, adding that Musk’s aggressive lobbying may hurt his standing with the president-elect in the long run. Over the last week, multiple sources close to Trump have fed a steady stream of transition-related gossip to the media. It is unclear how accurate this gossip is, particularly in the case of Musk, who Trump speaks glowingly about.

“Elon Musk is a great guy, loaded with personality and ‘brainpower’,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform on Wednesday. “He is definitely a high IQ person, which is the reason that his really strong endorsement meant so much to me, and to MAGA. He’s at a beautiful Mar-a-Lago concert right now, and the crowd absolutely loves him,” Trump continued, adding that Musk’s contribution to his win “will never be forgotten.” “Elon Musk and President Trump are great friends and brilliant leaders working together to Make America Great Again. Elon Musk is a once in a generation business leader and our federal bureaucracy will certainly benefit from his ideas and efficiency,” a spokesperson for Trump told NBC.

At a meeting with House Republicans on Wednesday morning, Trump joked that “Elon won’t go home. I can’t get rid of him.” However, Trump went on to praise Musk for dedicating so much time and money to his campaign, and Republican lawmakers told NBC that his statement on how Musk “won’t go home” was made in jest. On Tuesday, Trump nominated Musk and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy to lead the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Although not an actual federal agency, DOGE will “provide advice and guidance” to the White House and Office of Management and Budget on how to eliminate regulations, slash government spending, and restructure other agencies, Trump said in a statement.

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“It would take a courageous and politically astute person and strong backing and trust from the president for any DNI to be able to fulfill the duty to “oversee and provide advice … on covert action programs.”

• Will Gabbard Be Able to Direct the Intelligence ‘Community’? (Ray McGovern)

President-elect Donald Trump’s selection of Tulsi Gabbard to be director of national intelligence (DNI) will cause shockwaves in and among the 18 fiefdoms that now comprise the U.S. intelligence community. Gabbard will be fighting an uphill battle if she tries to herd those 18 cats into a cohesive whole and restore integrity to intelligence analysis. The hill’s incline will be still steeper, if she takes seriously her duty to warn the president of the frequently noxious blowback of C.I.A. covert actions. I cannot overcome the urge to quote from “The Princess Bride”: Good luck stormin’ the castle, Tulsi … It will take a miracle! In short, the odds are against her. Whether she succeeds depends, first and foremost, on how strongly the president backs her. Unlike most former DNIs, she has already demonstrated uncommon courage, as well as smarts and political skill. On the other hand, she has had virtually no experience managing a large institution, much less a “community” well versed in internecine warfare to protect individual rice bowls, and populated with careerist bureaucrats all too accustomed to telling the ultimate boss, the president, what he wants to hear.

Important Duties The DNI is in charge of preparing The President’s Daily Brief (PDB), National Intelligence Estimates and the annual Threat Assessment required by Congress. What is less well known is her role in covert action — a favorite of the C.I.A.’s clandestine service. Executive Order 12333 (July 2008) stipulates: “The Director of National Intelligence (DNI) shall oversee and provide advice to the President and the NSC with respect to all ongoing and proposed covert action programs.” Thus, what the EO says. My own experience suggests that this covert-action-related duty has been more honored in the breach than in the observance, so to speak. Director of Central Intelligence William Colby was, in my personal experience, the only director to give intelligence analysts a look at some covert action proposals and ask for comment. I served directly under Colby as an acting national intelligence officer in the mid-70s. Will DNI Tulsi Gabbard (assuming she is confirmed by the Senate) step up to this task? It would take uncommon courage. Was the current DNI, Avril Haines, informed beforehand that the C.I.A. would blow up the Nord Stream pipelines? If so, did she give it her blessing? Or was she kept in the dark?

Blowing Up Pipelines … My guess is that DNI Gabbard would have promptly recognized the folly in that C.I.A. “can-do” attitude/escapade and would have briefed the president on its longer-term implications. She is a good listener to analysts who she asks to brief her. I know that, too, from personal experience responding to her questions when she was one of Hawaii’s representatives in the House. It would take a courageous and politically astute person and strong backing and trust from the president for any DNI to be able to fulfill the duty to “oversee and provide advice … on covert action programs.”

… and Blowing Off the Analysts Sizable covert action programs require a sanity check from analysts with substantive expertise, as sad experience has shown. Recall the Bay of Bigs operation of April 1961. At President John Kennedy’s request, historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. investigated the affair. His conclusion, set down in a MEMORANDUM FOR THE PRESIDENT dated June 30, 1961, speaks for itself: “The trouble with the Cuban [Bay of Pigs] operation, for example, was not that the intelligence and operations were combined, but precisely that the Cuban operation evaded systematic intelligence judgment. The Intelligence Branch (DDI) of the CIA was never informed of the existence of the Cuban operation. The Office of National Estimates was never asked to comment on the assumption, for example, that discontent had reached the point in Cuba where a successful landing operation would provoke uprisings behind the lines and defections from the Militia. I gather that if its opinion had been invited, DDI would have given quite a different estimate of the state of opinion in Cuba from that on which the operation was based. … The Bureau of Intelligence and Research of the Department of State knew even less about the Cuban operation.”

Tulsi

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“..one of the biggest comebacks since Lazarus..”

• Has America Lost Its Mind Or Will Trump Get It Right This Time? (Ryumshin)

[..] .. there are indications that Trump’s new four-year term will at least be more meaningful than the previous one. Firstly, no one will dare question the legitimacy of the elected president. In 2016, Trump’s victory seemed unnatural (Clinton won the popular vote). This led people to see his presidency as a failure of the system and to speculate about foreign interference. Now Trump has safely won both the electoral and popular votes. The Democrats are unlikely to dispute this. There could be a flare-up of political tensions if Trump starts taking revenge on all those who have wronged him (which the Democrats are very afraid of). But I think a truce is more likely. The Democratic Party is facing a massive internal showdown, with a search for those responsible for its electoral woes. The president-elect has never been particularly eager to follow through on his threats (remember: Hillary Clinton wasn’t jailed).

Second, the Trump of 2024 is not the same as the Trump of 2016. Eight years ago, a somewhat naive businessman who thought running a government was as easy as building skyscrapers in Manhattan entered the White House. Since then, however, Trump has matured politically, learned to compromise and completely taken over the Republican Party. The bitter experience of his first administration, filled with random and often disagreeable people, suggests that this time he’ll have a clear plan of action and a suitable team under him. For Russia, the positions of Secretary of State and National Security Advisor are of particular interest. These are the people who will determine the foreign policy of the second Trump administration – and whether he will keep his promise to end the conflict in Ukraine. There is the former US ambassador to Germany, Ric Grenell. He hangs out in European right-wing circles, opposes Ukrainian membership in NATO and favors the creation of ‘autonomous zones’ there (i.e. recognizing Russia’s control over the south-east). Grenell is being considered for Secretary of State or National Security Adviser – if he takes either position, it would be rather good news for us. It would be doubly good if other foreign policy positions were filled by people with similar views (Marco Rubio or Bill Hagerty).

There’s also Trump’s former national security adviser, Robert O’Brien. He’s also a contender for the top job, but is seen as a ‘hawk’. O’Brien supports military aid to Ukraine, and his selection could be a sign that potential negotiations between Moscow and Washington will be difficult. Of course, whoever Trump picks, we should not expect a ‘‘ceasefire in 24 hours’ — that is, to put it mildly, an unrealistic exaggeration. But I believe that under him, serious settlement talks could actually begin in 2025. Well, at least there will be an attempt to start a peace process. The other question is what methods will the president use to achieve this? What will his proposal be and what will he ask of Russia in return for concessions? But it is probably too early to speculate about that. For now, let’s look at the new US president-elect’s first steps.

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“President Trump should work to eliminate the need for the Fed to keep interest rates low. He can do this by fighting for massive spending cuts, starting with the military-industrial complex..”

• Make Money Free Again (Ron Paul)

Two days after Donald Trump became the first American since Grover Cleveland to win nonconsecutive presidential elections, the Federal Reserve announced a quarter percent cut in interest rates. Following this announcement, Fed Chairman Jerome Powell held a press conference where he said that he would not comply with any presidential request that he step down before his term ends in May of 2026. Powell claimed that the president lacks the legal authority to fire the Fed chairman. So, if President Trump tells Chairman Powell “you’re fired,” Powell could bring suit asking a court to review Trump’s action. President Trump and Chairman Powell are at odds over President Trump’s desire to require the Federal Reserve to consult with the president before changing interest rates or taking other significant actions. Powell is likely to do all he can to convince Congress to reject any legislation giving the president any type of official role in setting monetary policy.

After all, Chairman Powell is so protective of Fed autonomy that he opposes auditing the Fed on the grounds that it could threaten the Fed’s independence, even though there is nothing in the Audit the Fed legislation giving the president or Congress any new authority over the Fed’s conduct of monetary policy. Requiring the Fed to consult with the president regarding monetary policy would likely increase price inflation and dollar devaluation. Politicians usually like low interest rates because they associate low rates with economic growth. Politicians also want the Fed to keep rates low so the federal government can keep racking up huge amounts of debt. Without a central bank that is ready, willing, and able to monetize the federal debt, the welfare-warfare state would not exist.

Despite the claims of Chairman Powell and other central bank apologists, the Fed has never been free of political pressure. Presidents were trying to influence the Federal Reserve long before Donald Trump began posting “mean tweets” about Jerome Powell. Requiring the Fed to consult with the president would at least make the president’s efforts to influence monetary policy open and transparent. President Trump and other Fed critics such as Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren think they are more capable of determining the “correct” interest rate than the Fed. This ignores the fact that interest rates are the price of money and like all prices are shaped by a variety of constantly changing factors. When the Fed manipulates interest rates, it distorts the signals sent to investors. The result is the boom- bust business cycle.

The fiat system is also responsible for rising income inequality and the decline of the dollar’s purchasing power, which has lowered most Americans’ standard of living. President Trump should work to eliminate the need for the Fed to keep interest rates low. He can do this by fighting for massive spending cuts, starting with the military-industrial complex. He should also push Congress to pass the Audit the Fed bill. Additionally, President Trump should support legalizing all competing currencies. The forthcoming tax bill should include a provision exempting precious metals and cryptocurrencies from capital gains taxes. The key to making America great again is to make money free again.

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The trustee stiffed the Sandy Hook families to keep Jones’s frieds from buying his company.

• Infowars Auction Thrown Into Chaos After Judge Investigates Malarkey (ZH)

(Update 2020ET): Just when you thought the least funny website on the planet, The Onion, had prevailed in the Infowars auction, the judge in the case put the brakes on the sale after it was revealed that the (anti-Jones) bankruptcy trustee did not accept the highest bid, and instead allowed the Sandy Hook families to ‘assist’ by pledging their massive judgement towards the auction – which Jones says is illegal. According to Jones, there should be some sort of a hearing to discuss this early next week. He believes that the judge is likely to order a new auction for sometime in January, where a Jones-allied group will have the opportunity to buy the company without the trustee picking their own winner regardless of actual bid. The saga continues…

(Update 1130ET): Hours after yesterday’s auction, Infowars.com is now down. We wish Alex Jones well on his next endeavor, which we’re guessing is going to be massive. The leftist-satirical rag The Onion announced on Thursday that it had won a bankruptcy auction to acquire Infowars – the website founded and operated by Alex Jones since 1999. On Wednesday, Jones said that the auction’s trustee could choose any bidder it wanted – not necessarily the high bidder. Jones announced the sale on X Thursday morning. “I just got word 15 minutes ago that my lawyers and folks met with the U.S. trustee over our bankruptcy this morning and they said they are shutting us down even without a court order this morning,” he said. “The Connecticut democrats with The Onion newspaper bought us.”

The Onion told the NY Times that the bid was sanctioned by the families of the victims of the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, who won a $1.4 billion defamation lawsuit against Jones. The Onion did not disclose the price it paid for Infowars and its assets, including Jones’ production studio and supplement business. Ben Collins, CEO of The Onion parent company, Global Tetrahedron, says he plans to relaunch Infowars in January as a parody of itself, mocking “weird internet personalities.”

Infowars

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“Gaetz is no milk toast. He is a strong individual, the kind of person needed in such a critical office. My question is: does he have the seasoning..”

• What Are Trump’s Chances to Make American Great Again? (Paul Craig Roberts)

No, MAGA Americans, I am not a party pooper. I am a realist. No, I am not trying to make Trump look bad. I was Trump’s defender against all the false accusations and indictments. I insisted that we had to stand up for Trump and elect him or never again would a presidential candidate take the side of the people against the Establishment. I warned over and over that Trump does not know Washington, and he has again proven me correct with his appointments of a war cabinet of Washington insiders, with no executive authority for Elon Musk and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Today (November 13) Trump’s announcements of appointees was a little better in the cases of Tulsi Gabbard and Matt Gaetz. When I say a little, I don’t imply any criticism of these two Americans. In Gabbard’s case, I don’t know what the executive power of the Director of National Intelligence is. Is Gabbard above the CIA, NSA, State Department, or is she a coordinator of information that she does not originate and control?

The Director of National Intelligence is a cabinet-level agency or department created in 2004 during the orchestrated hysteria of “Muslim terrorists.” It advises the president, the National Security Council, and the Homeland Security Council. Apparently, it has taken over the CIA’s function of providing the president’s daily briefing. Where it gets its information from is unclear. Is the National Intelligence Agency just a mouthpiece for the CIA? Regardless, Tulsi Gabbard’s voice is important, and the position gives her a voice. The same for Matt Gaetz’s appointment as US Attorney General. Gaetz is no milk toast. He is a strong individual, the kind of person needed in such a critical office. My question is: does he have the seasoning. I certainly don’t object if he does. I would have thought that some of Trump’s attorneys, illegally prosecuted by Biden’s totally corrupt Attorney General, would have been a better choice.

I think my choice would have been the Texas Attorney General, Ken Paxton. He has experience as an attorney general, and he has challenged the Biden regime criminals on several fronts. This doesn’t mean that Gaetz can’t be successful. Perhaps Gaetz should insist that Paxton be appointed deputy attorney general. That would be a strong team, a team that could guarantee the Trump administration’s success. If Trump is to return America to the rule of law, those who weaponized law must be punished. Also on the 13th Trump appointed the Treasury Secretary. His name is Scott Bessent. He is a hedge fund manager who created a global investment fund. He might be a good pick. I don’t know. Bessent is a Southerner and, thereby, possibly possesses integrity. But his background indicates a man out for himself at the expense of other people: Yale University, George Soros Fund Management, a successful Soros destabilizer of the British pound and Japanese yen. In other words, a person out for his own benefit.

Perhaps he has reformed. But there is no indiction that he has any grasp of economic policy. Will he see his Treasury seat as a way to build relationships and to expand his opportunities to make money? Trump’s view seems to be that making money is what makes America great again. In my day the US Treasury Department was a policy organization. Today it is a police agency at work imposing sanctions and stealing the central bank reserves of “enemies.” When I was in the US Treasury, I had to tell my executive secretary that I did not want any more appointments with lobbyists telling me how I was to formulate policy to serve them. Being of years of experience, she told me: you won’t get the directorships, you won’t get the consultant fees. I told her I was there to serve the president and that was our job.

It is going to be a challenge for the administration Trump has assembled to make America great again. Trump is there to be tough for America. War is a likely outcome. The threatened world already sees it coming. Mohammed bin Salman, the ruler of Saudi Arabia has been conducting naval exercises with Iran. The Saudi ruler recently had talks with Putin about preventing Israeli/US attacks on Iran. It seems that the US has lost the Saudis and is on the verge of losing a war, the loss of which will disappoint Trump supporters looking to be made great again. My hope is that Trump can get enough done peacefully that the American people don’t give up hope, thereby empowering the ruling elite with the gift of a demoralized population.

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“..Tesla – the largest EV automaker in the US and the only one not reliant on EV credits for survival..”

• Trump Team To Nuke EV Tax Credit As Musk’s Price-War Endgame Looms (ZH)

The final chapter of the electric vehicle price war, sparked by Tesla’s Elon Musk, hinges on President-elect Donald Trump’s plan to eliminate the $7,500 consumer tax credit. Sources with direct knowledge told Reuters that the Trump team has discussed ending the EV tax credit as part of broader tax reform legislation. Sources indicated that Tesla – the largest EV automaker in the US and the only one not reliant on EV credits for survival – told the Trump transition committee that it fully supports the federal government ending the subsidy. Here’s more from Reuters: Repealing the subsidy, which has been a signature measure of President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), is being discussed in meetings by an energy-policy transition team led by billionaire oilman Harold Hamm, founder of Continental Resources, and North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum, the two sources said.

The group has had several meetings since Trump’s Nov. 5 election victory, including some at his Florida Mar-a-Lago club, where Tesla chief executive Elon Musk has also spent considerable time since the election. In mid-July, Trump stated at a campaign rally that he would “end the Electric Vehicle Mandate on Day One — thereby saving the US auto industry from complete obliteration, and saving US customers thousands of dollars per car.” On X, around that time, Musk explained to the Whole Mars Catalog why repealing the tax credit would only benefit Tesla: In October, the Alliance for Automotive Innovation, a trade group representing all automotive brands besides Tesla, penned a letter expressing to lawmakers in Congress how crucial the EV tax credit is in “cementing the US as a global leader in the future of automotive technology and manufacturing.”

In the markets, Rivian shares tumbled by 10% in the early afternoon, while Tesla shares fell by 3.5%. We knew the playbook in July. Here it is again: “Musk’s strategy to win the EV price war: Build the largest EV business with taxpayer dollars, popularize EVs, allow other startups and OEMs to enter the market, and then support politicians who want to end EV subsidies, crushing the competition and leaving Tesla reigning supreme.”

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“Rogan is just willing to just sit there with interesting people and talk for three hours. That was the most affirming, reassuring thing I’ve seen in 35 years of media — that that worked.”

“I’m thrilled and proud to be Rogan’s friend. I admire him more than anybody in media — by far..”

• Tucker Carlson: Joe Rogan Has “Changed American History” (MN)

During a recent discussion with Joe Polish, at the Genius Network Annual Event, Tucker Carlson heaped praise on Joe Rogan, going as far to say that the podcast king has changed American history. Tucker noted that “Rogan created the genre of podcasting. I’ve been in the media my whole life. Rogan used to be a sitcom actor, a standup comedian, and an MMA fighter. So he starts this thing called a podcast where he talks for like three hours.” Carlson admitted “I’m in television at a big network and I thought it was dumb. No one is going to listen to a three-hour podcast from some MMA fighter?” “I know, right?” Carlson said as the audience began to chuckle. “And this guy’s not even in our business! What’s he doing?” Carlson related, explaining his feelings at the time. “He completely changed not only American media but also American history.

He created a whole new genre — it would be like if one guy invented the newspaper or television, that’s how big what he did was,” Carlson urged. He continued, “And I will admit I did not see it coming, I did not understand it, I did not think it would work. And the fact that it did work says something so great and important about Americans. Rogan proved that Americans really want to learn.” “They’re not learning in school, they’re not learning in the rest of the media. It’s all shallow and dumb, about race and gender, it’s all lying,” Carlson further asserted. He continued, “Rogan is just willing to just sit there with interesting people and talk for three hours. That was the most affirming, reassuring thing I’ve seen in 35 years of media — that that worked.” “I’m thrilled and proud to be Rogan’s friend. I admire him more than anybody in media — by far,” Carlson concluded.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1856141962967212230

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“..an attempt “to intimidate and chill private citizens and organizations from campaigning on behalf of President Trump.”

• FEC Chairman: Biden DOJ Broke Federal Policies with Letter Targeting Musk (AmG)

On Wednesday, the chairman of the Federal Election Commission (FEC) admitted that the outgoing Biden-Harris Department of Justice (DOJ) violated federal policies and illegally targeted “perceived political opponents” by sending a threatening letter to Elon Musk. According to the Washington Examiner, FEC Chairman Sean Cooksey sent a letter to DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz, saying that the letter to Musk concerning his efforts to encourage people to support freedom of speech constituted an attempt “to intimidate and chill private citizens and organizations from campaigning on behalf of President Trump.” Cooksey also recommended that Horowitz, along with the DOJ’s Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR), open investigations into the incident and “hold accountable any individuals responsible for any violations of federal law or department policies.”

The letter in question was sent to Musk by the DOJ just weeks before the election on November 5th. In it, DOJ officials warned Musk’s America PAC that the pledge to give away $1 million every day to a randomly-selected voter who signed the PAC’s petition in support of freedom of speech was allegedly a violation of federal law. The letter also accused Musk of making “a mockery of democracy.” Musk defended his PAC’s actions, pointing out that participants at the time did “not need to register as Republicans or vote in the Nov. 5 elections.” “The underlying motivation behind this stunt is obvious,” said Cooksey in his scathing letter to the DOJ. “Employees of President Biden’s Department of Justice wanted to stop an independent political committee from campaigning for President Trump in crucial swing states just prior to election day.”

Cooksey further accused the DOJ’s Public Integrity Section of deliberately leaking the Musk letter to the New York Times, which was a violation of the department’s media policies. “Writing such a letter and then leaking it also violates the department’s long-standing policy against the identification of uncharged parties and the disclosure of prejudicial information,” Cooksey continued. Elon Musk, the founder and owner of Tesla and SpaceX, as well as the owner of the social media platform X (formerly known as Twitter), is the wealthiest man in the world.

He was previously a Democrat who supported politicians such as Barack Obama, but has shifted further to the right in recent years, due primarily to the Democrats’ increasingly radical stances, including support for censorship and transgenderism. Musk gave his official endorsement of President-elect Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign following the assassination attempt against him on July 13th. President-elect Trump has since announced that Musk, alongside businessman and former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, will lead an entirely new federal agency called the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), with the purpose of significantly reducing the size of the federal government over the course of the next two years. The agency plans to complete its work by July 4th, 2026, which will be the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States.

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“..the goals of its military operation – including Ukrainian neutrality, demilitarization, and denazification – must be met..”

• Trump Vows To ‘Work Very Hard’ On Ukraine (RT)

US President-elect Donald Trump has promised that his team will work hard to resolve the Ukraine conflict to prevent further bloodshed. Trump made the remarks at the America First Policy Institute gala at his Mar-a-Lago residence in Palm Beach, Florida on Thursday. “We’re going to work in the Middle East, and we’re going to work very hard on Russia and Ukraine.” He went on to say that the conflict “has got to stop,” adding that he has seen a report claiming that “thousands of people… were killed” over the past three days. “They happen to be soldiers but whether they’re soldiers or they’re people sitting in towns, we’re going to work [on] it,” Trump said, without elaborating further. In the run-up to the presidential election, the Republican – who has been critical of unconditional US support for Kiev – promised to end the Ukraine conflict within 24 hours if elected, even before being sworn into office.

While that pledge remains far from fulfilled, media reports have claimed that Trump is already reshaping US policy on Ukraine. A Wall Street Journal report earlier this month indicated that one potential peace plan would force Ukraine to suspend its ambitions to join NATO for at least 20 years and would freeze the conflict along the current front lines in exchange for continued US military assistance to Kiev. In addition, Trump has nominated several critics of Ukraine aid for top government positions, including Senator Marco Rubio for secretary of state, Tulsi Gabbard for director of national intelligence, and Matt Gaetz for attorney general. The nominations must be confirmed by the Senate, which the Republicans regained control over in this year’s election.

Moscow has said it is open to dialogue, but has ruled out freezing the conflict, insisting that the goals of its military operation – including Ukrainian neutrality, demilitarization, and denazification – must be met. President Vladimir Putin has signaled that Russia is willing to immediately declare a ceasefire and start peace talks as soon as Kiev begins withdrawing troops from the regions of Donetsk, Lugansk, Kherson, and Zaporozhye, which voted in referendums to join the country in autumn 2022. Moscow has also ruled out talks with Kiev as long as Ukrainian troops occupy part of the border region of Kursk.

Bowes

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“President Biden could push the process of admitting Ukraine to NATO, and the current Congress or a future Congress could vote on it even after he is no longer in office.”

• Will Trump Stop Ukraine From Joining NATO? (van den Ende)

President-elect Trump bragged during his election campaign that he could solve the Ukraine conflict in 24 hours once he is installed in the White House. Trump’s bombast is, of course, unrealistic. No war can be solved within 24 hours. There must be peace talks and, above all, a treaty to secure territory and people. And what about the thorny issue of Ukraine joining NATO? For Russia to make a durable peace, that issue must be erased. Will Trump stop Ukraine from joining NATO? For Ukraine to join NATO, the U.S. Senate must approve its membership, as must the other 31 NATO member states. Russia is adamant that Ukraine will not be permitted to join the U.S.-led military bloc. But let’s just consider how the U.S. and its NATO allies might procedurally attempt Ukraine’s membership.

Trump’s “America First” policy will have consequences for NATO. At this point, it is unclear whether a new Republican-dominated Congress will even vote on Ukraine’s admission to NATO. With the recent U.S. elections, the American people have chosen to change course, but will a change of course be allowed by the powers that be? Does it matter which party, Democrats or Republicans, are in Congress and governing America? Will the war hawks win again, perhaps? Trump is not in the White House yet. That won’t be until January 20, and there could be surprises from the outgoing Biden administration during the next two months. President Biden could push the process of admitting Ukraine to NATO, and the current Congress or a future Congress could vote on it even after he is no longer in office.

The U.S. Senate could also vote on a treaty to approve Ukraine’s membership in NATO as early as the next few weeks, although it could take years for the country to become a full member. Both Democrats and some Republicans hope that this solution would still allow Ukraine to join NATO. Many people forget in the “heat of the election show” that we’ve seen in recent weeks and the election hype around Donald Trump that both Democrats and Republicans support the proxy war against Russia and would like to see Ukraine join NATO. It was recently revealed that primarily Republicans in the House of Representatives — who chair the national security committees — have formally filed a request pressuring President Biden to lift remaining restrictions on Ukraine’s use of U.S.-supplied Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) long-range missiles.

Although Trump’s son, Donald Jr, recently said that there is no place for “war hawks” in the new government, there will probably be pro-Ukraine figures in cabinet positions. This includes Senator Lindsey Graham, a prominent member of the GOP and a big Trump supporter, who might be given a ministerial post. Graham candidly told CNN and CNBC that the Donbass is full of mineral resources that America wants its hands on and that access to such natural wealth was central to the conflict. The hawkish senator has also said, and make no mistake, he is a close political friend of Trump and will have a lot of influence in the next administration, that “Trump will give Ukraine a lot of leverage to end the war.” So, are Americans being fooled again? Thinking now that Trump is elected, the proxy war against Russia will be over quickly, only for the American warmongers to start another war, say, against Iran.

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“..someone who “for several years, has been working for foreign audience for the Kremlin money.”

• Ukrainian State-run Agency Scrubs Posts Bashing Tulsi Gabbard (RT)

Ukraine’s Center for Countering Disinformation (CCD) has quietly removed its news bulletins accusing former US Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard of spreading fake news on behalf of Russia. The change came after US President-elect Donald Trump nominated Gabbard, a lieutenant colonel of the US Army Reserve, to oversee the CIA and the NSA as the director of national intelligence. Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council set up the CCD in March 2021 with the stated goal of fighting disinformation in news reports and on social media. In practice, the agency focuses on flagging and “debunking” stories that are critical to Ukraine and has accused many Russian and Western officials of spreading “fake news.” According to the news website Strana.ua, the CCD took down four of its bulletins mentioning Gabbard from social media, including one from April 2022 that described her as someone who “for several years, has been working for foreign audience for the Kremlin money.”

In a bulletin from June 2024, Gabbard was accused of spreading disinformation about Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky, and a bulletin from February 2023 said that the politician was “espousing pro-Russian rhetoric.” The posts were removed on Thursday morning, Strana.ua said. As of the time of writing, the CCD’s 2022 post accusing Gabbard of taking “the Kremlin money” is still up on the National Security and Defense Council’s account on X. The link to the CCD bulletin is inactive, however. Kiev has repeatedly lashed out at Western public figures critical of Ukraine, including journalist Tucker Carlson and tech billionaire Elon Musk.

Gabbard, who has long opposed US military interventions in the Middle East and has accused Washington of warmongering, left the Democratic Party in 2022. Last month, she announced that she had joined the Republican Party and was backing Trump. In 2022, Gabbard argued that the conflict in Ukraine could have been avoided if the US “had simply acknowledged Russia’s legitimate security concerns” regarding Kiev’s aspirations to join NATO. She has since insisted that the conflict should be resolved through negotiations and that Ukraine should become a neutral country. Gabbard slammed Zelensky last year, accusing him of seizing “absolute control of Ukrainian media, outlawing opposition political parties.”

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“The temperature is dipping below freezing at night, the daylight hours are shorter, the electrical lighting and heating loads are going up.”

• Electric War Moves Beyond Putin Pause Button To Power Off Button (Helmer)

This week’s announcements of emergency electricity rationing and scheduled power supply cuts in the farwestern Ukrainian regions of Volyn, Ivano-Frankivsk and Transcarpathia indicate that pinpoint drone targeting by the Russian General Staff is a new stage in the electric war since President Vladimir Putin put on pause long-range missile attacks on western Ukrainian power generation plants since August 26. On Tuesday, the regional Ukrainian media reported “restrictions will apply to businesses in the Ivano-Frankivsk and Volyn oblasts starting on 13 November, in five phases, and will be scheduled from 07:00 to 20:00. The restrictions are being implemented due to damage to critical infrastructure by Russian forces and decreasing temperatures.” The national utility Ukrenergo announced that from November 13 “GOPs [power limit schedules] are being introduced due to a shortage in the energy system in the Carpathian region”.

The deficit in the current demand-supply balance for electricity has also been compounded by the decline reported in the Ukrainian press of imports of power from cross-border sources in Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, and Moldova. The reported cutback this week defies the European Union (EU) agreement at the end of October for “an increase of the export capacity limit to Ukraine and Moldova to 2,100 megawatts (MW) during this winter. It represents an increase of 400 MW from the previous value [1,700 MW]…The 2,100 MW export capacity limit will apply from 1 December 2024.” “This is a temporary situation,” Ukraine’s energy minister Herman Halushchenko announced on Wednesday. “ ‘Unfortunately, restored generation facilities can occasionally fail. This has happened, but all these issues will be resolved, and the situation will stabilize,’ he stated. The minister also pointed to a significant reduction in electricity imports to Ukraine, which are currently down to about 100 MW.”

A military source comments: “The damage from the August attacks has not been repaired – just patched up. There have been strikes on transformer stations since. They’ve been smaller in scale but indicative of the [Russian] General Staff’s knowledge of the [Ukrainian] distribution grid vulnerabilities. The General Staff’s moves have complicated Ukrainian efforts to keep the power on. The Ukrainians are hiding how bad the situation is, including in terms of getting spares. The temperature is dipping below freezing at night, the daylight hours are shorter, the electrical lighting and heating loads are going up. The jury-rigged grid is unable to handle it without curtailments.”

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“..this attack will be particularly focused on completely erasing Palestinians from what is known as Area C, which constitutes roughly 60 percent of the West Bank. That escalation has already begun.”

• The State-Backed Settler War To Annex The West Bank (Inlakesh)

Despite Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza and military aggression against Lebanon, Tel Aviv is preparing to unleash its fanatical Jewish settlers in a coordinated war against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, aiming to ethnically cleanse what remains of the territory and pave the way for further annexation. Adding fuel to the fire, billionaire Miriam Adelson, the wealthiest Israeli in the world, bankrolled Donald Trump’s “huge victory” in his successful presidential campaign with one clear condition: support for annexing the West Bank. Last month The Times of Israel noted that the wealthy widow “is carrying on a legacy she built with her late husband, casino magnate Sheldon Adelson,” and that “The Adelson family has long been one of the largest sources of campaign money for Republican candidates and has backed Trump during each of the last three general elections.”

Speaking to The Cradle, Ubai al-Aboudi, executive director of Palestinian rights group ‘Bisan Center,’ says that “the Israeli settlers are preparing to carry out a major attack, to ethnically cleanse the Palestinian population,” adding that this attack will be particularly focused on completely erasing Palestinians from what is known as Area C, which constitutes roughly 60 percent of the West Bank. That escalation has already begun. On 4 November, armed settlers launched a brazen assault on the Palestinian city of Al-Bireh, marking a surge in the violence that has gripped the West Bank. In October alone, settlers carried out at least 1,490 attacks against Palestinians, their property, and their land – often under the supervision and protection of occupation soldiers. In the past, extremist settler attacks against Palestinians were characterized by their spontaneous nature and uncoordinated thuggery, but this has begun to change.

During a recent interview with Israel’s Channel 7 News, West Bank Settlement Council leader Israel Gantz commented on a meeting he had with the recently sacked Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant: “We asked that the West Bank be treated as Jabalia, Rafah, and the villages of southern Lebanon were treated, which means displacing the residents, killing the terrorists in these villages, cleansing the terrorist infrastructure, confiscating the weapons and then returning them to their villages.” While the statement includes the idea of returning Palestinians to their villages, if such an operation replicated Gaza and southern Lebanon, there would be no village to return to. Gantz also requested that Palestinian villages bordering illegal Jewish settlements be ‘cleansed’ due to the potential security threat posed to Israelis living there – both ideas reportedly opposed by Gallant.

On 5 November, however, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu replaced Gallant and handed the defense minister position to long-time ally Israel Katz. While serving in his previous role as Israel’s foreign minister, Katz openly called for expelling Palestinians from their homes in the West Bank, unlike his predecessor.

Huckabee

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“It seems that this is less about fraud or malfunctions and more about disappointment over the defeat of their pro-Western Georgian political allies.”

• Some Elections Will Never Be ‘Democratic’ Enough For The West (Behanzin)

We have witnessed a strong reaction from the United States and the European Union following the elections in Georgia held late last month. Their pro-Western candidate suffered a defeat, and these Western powers – particularly Washington and the European Council – have expressed doubts about the election’s legitimacy, even calling for an investigation into its conduct. It is legitimate to ask whether the right to validate the election results in this sovereign country lies in the hands of Washington or Brussels, while the Georgian people have expressed themselves democratically. This situation once again raises the crucial issue of foreign powers intervening in the internal affairs of sovereign nations. For several years, the United States, often followed by its European allies, has taken the liberty of intervening in the electoral processes of various countries under the pretext of ensuring “democracy.”

However, this posture of self-proclaimed guardians of democracy becomes inconsistent if it only applies to elections that serve their interests. In Georgia, the people voted and chose to place their trust in Georgian Dream, a local party which seeks to build pragmatic relations with Russia and managed to gather broad popular support. The Georgian Dream party secured 54% of the votes. International observers present noted that the electoral process adhered to democratic standards, despite unfounded accusations made by some external actors. So why, in this context, do Washington and Brussels suddenly feel the need to question the results? It seems that this is less about fraud or malfunctions and more about disappointment over the defeat of their pro-Western Georgian political allies.

In short, for some Western powers, when they do not win an election, they adopt a strategy aimed at delegitimizing the results through unfounded doubts and calls for investigations. This eerily recalls similar situations, such as the one experienced during the presidential election in July 2024 in Venezuela. US interference in the internal affairs of other countries is well-documented, but it is paradoxical to see Europe blindly following this path. In recent decades, Europe, once proud of its independent stance on the global stage, seems, with its puppet leaders in Brussels, to have gradually aligned itself with American policies, to the point where it is now perceived as merely a relay for Washington’s interests. This trend is visible in its foreign policy, particularly during major crises, where Brussels seems increasingly dependent on the American line.

In the Georgian case, the European reaction is particularly troubling. Why is the European Union, which claims to promote peace and international stability, suddenly seeking to question a democratic election simply because the results do not align with its political expectations? This attitude reflects a deep contradiction between the so-called “democratic values” that Europe claims to defend and the actual practices on the ground. If the Georgian situation is such a problem for Brussels, perhaps the president of the European Council should personally travel to Georgia to conduct this much-demanded investigation. More seriously, is it truly the mandate of the European Union to question the sovereignty and the will expressed by the Georgian people? What about respecting the democratic processes it claims to uphold?

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Germany, France, they do the same thing. AFTER sinking their economies.

• French Prosecutors Seek Prison Term And Election Ban For Le Pen (RT)

French prosecutors have asked a judge to slap former National Rally party leader Marine Le Pen with a five-year prison term and a ban from running for public office in an embezzlement case. Le Pen and 24 other current and former members of the right-wing National Rally are accused of using €3 million ($3.3 million) in European Parliament money intended for payments to parliamentary assistants to fund work on internal party business from 2004 to 2016, in violation of EU law. All of the defendants have denied any wrongdoing. During the proceedings in Paris on Wednesday, the prosecutors argued that Le Pen should receive the harshest punishment as she was a member of the European Parliament and the leader of the National Rally when some of the alleged violations took place. She led the party, which was previously called the National Front, from 2011 to 2021 and still remains a member.

Three years of Le Pen’s sentence would be suspended, and the other two could be served with an electronic bracelet, the prosecutors said. They also asked for her to be fined €300,000 ($316,000). The prosecutors said the five-year ban on running for office should be implemented immediately, before the defense can appeal the ruling. This means that if found guilty, Le Pen would be disqualified from the presidential election in 2027. During the trial, which began in late September, she announced plans to run for president for the third time. “It is clear that the only thing the public prosecutors wanted was Marine Le Pen’s exclusion from political life,” Le Pen told reporters after the hearings.

National Rally leader Jordan Bardella, who is not a defendant in the case, took to X to accuse the prosecutors of an “assault on democracy,” saying they are “seeking to persecute and take revenge on Marine Le Pen.” The prosecutors also requested that the National Rally be fined €2 million, and that all of the others who are accused receive bans from running for public office from one to five years. The defense will now present its arguments to the judge until the trial concludes on November 27. A verdict is expected in early 2025. In the 2022 election, Le Pen lost to President Emmanuel Macron in the second round 58.55% to 41.45%.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

Friends AI
https://twitter.com/i/status/1856787925859443045

 

 

NZ

 

 

Dog hide

 

 

King&son

 

 

Tank

 

 

Molly

 

 

Salt mine

 

 

 

 

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.

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“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.’”

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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
https://twitter.com/i/status/1856361314349920342

 

 

Taxi
https://twitter.com/i/status/1856385211317268937

 

 

Sea horse

 

 

Dog flood

 

 

Kangal

 

 

Bowling
https://twitter.com/i/status/1856659212492833107

 

 

 

 

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