Pieter Bruegel the Elder Hunters in the snow 1565
RFK Trump
RFK Jr. commented on President Trump's eating habits and seemingly inexhaustible energy: "He was doing, the day that I, one day I was with him, he did 12 teleconferences for congressional races around the country, which are actually more exhausting than the rallies because you're… pic.twitter.com/98F2WGw9sG
— Camus (@newstart_2024) November 25, 2024
Megyn RFK
Megyn Kelly: "He's (RFK Jr.) a killer because he questioned Fauci and the conventional wisdom about about vaccines. We've seen this in so many articles since Trump named Bobby Kennedy that he's dangerous, and he killed people because he had skepticism about vaccines."… pic.twitter.com/XYl1gWGE6S
— Camus (@newstart_2024) November 26, 2024
Elon Herridge
In the fall of 2023 I brought CBS News a proposed interview with Elon Musk.
Executives at the network said the interview couldn’t be done live, rather it had to be pre-recorded so they had the ability to edit the final product viewers would see.
“We don't know what [@ElonMusk]… pic.twitter.com/0LOEKohJdj
— Catherine Herridge (@C__Herridge) November 26, 2024
EXCLUSIVE: The Untold Story Of The Hunter Biden Reporting At CBS, “I wanted the cleanest copy of the laptop data, the same data that was provided to the FBI…”
The full +22 minute video goes in depth on the controversy surrounding my investigation starting in October 2020.… pic.twitter.com/58stp0oNXi
— Catherine Herridge (@C__Herridge) November 26, 2024
Ukr
Everytime the US government wants to overthrow a government they often use extremists to do their dirty work.
In Ukraine, they backed white supremacist braindead nazi's to overthrow the government in 2014.
Extremists are more violent, easier to motivate and cheaper to train… pic.twitter.com/BvIm2gE4TP— Richard (@ricwe123) November 26, 2024
Casey Means
Powerful…
Dr. Casey Means: " I learned virtually nothing at Stanford Medical School about the tens of thousands of scientific papers that elucidate these root causes of why American health is plummeting and how environmental factors are causing it.""For instance, in medical… pic.twitter.com/LPTHYzdU5s
— Camus (@newstart_2024) November 26, 2024
Rogan
Joe Rogan: " I called up the doctor and I said, hey. I'm here, for the fights. Can I get (COVID) vaccinated ? They said, sure. Come on in. And then when I got there, I called the doctor and said, actually, you have to go to the clinic. We have to do it at the clinic."
"Can you… pic.twitter.com/6X8fnFnk6U
— Camus (@newstart_2024) November 26, 2024
“..the Trump transition team has refused to sign an MOU with the Government Services Administration (GSA), and will not be using cell phones, computers, offices or “any technology” provided by the GSA.”
• Trump Transition Team Signs Modified White House Agreement (CTH)
The President Trump transition team has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to start the process of transferring control of the federal government. The landing teams from each of the cabinets will now begin to engage with their exiting counterparts. There were many articles written about the delays in signing the agreements. However, President Trump waited until he has his cabinet fully assembled before signing the first part that permits the landing teams to engage. The second part with government provided offices and technology is NOT being accepted. President Trump’s Chief of Staff, Susie Wiles, announced the Trump transition team has refused to sign an MOU with the Government Services Administration (GSA), and will not be using cell phones, computers, offices or “any technology” provided by the GSA.
This is a smart move to avoid the Deep State surveillance situation that was faced in the first term. In the first Trump administration, the GSA had wiretaps, office bugs, and gave all the electronic communication information from the Trump transition to the FBI, IC and later Robert Mueller. In essence, the GSA spied on the Trump team, then gave all the data to the operatives who were in place to target them. The Trump team is not making this mistake again. The Trump transition team is also not going to use the office space provided by the GSA and will instead have their own offices and security systems in place to coordinate the transition to power.
WASHINGTON DC – […] The Trump team’s unprecedented delay in signing these agreements, weeks after being declared the winner of the election, had alarmed former officials and ethics experts who warned it could lead to conflicts of interest and leave the new government unprepared to govern on Day One. In the Tuesday announcement, Wiles suggested the Trump transition will not sign a separate agreement with the General Services Administration, which would have allowed them to receive federal funding, cybersecurity support and government office space, pledging instead to fund the transition with private dollars, run it out of private facilities, and deploy their own “existing security and information protections” for sensitive data. The transition, Wiles said, “will operate as a self-sufficient organization, adding that declining government funding will “save taxpayers’ hard-earned money.”
And while Wiles also pledged in the Tuesday statement to publicly disclose the private donors to the transition and “not accept foreign donations,” there will be no legal mechanism to enforce those promises of transparency. The lack of federal cybersecurity support could also make the Trump transition a softer target for foreign hackers — who already successfully penetrated the campaign earlier this year. “That’s something that in 2020 was maybe the single most important worry of the [Biden] transition team — that they would be hacked, and all of this information, including intelligence information, personal information about job applicants, would be threatened,” said Heath Brown, an associate professor of public policy at CUNY’s John Jay College who wrote a book about Biden’s transition. “It’s imperative that the Trump Transition Team has installed the proper procedures to protect itself.”
White House spokesperson Saloni Sharma said the Biden administration is concerned about the ramifications of their successors forgoing GSA support, but remains “committed to an orderly transition.” “While we do not agree with the Trump transition team’s decision to forgo signing the GSA MOU, we will follow the purpose of the Presidential Transition Act which clearly states that ‘any disruption occasioned by the transfer of the executive power could produce results detrimental to the safety and wellbeing of the United States and its people,’” she said. In the White House memo, Sharma added, the Trump transition “agreed to important safeguards to protect non-public information and prevent conflicts of interest, including who has access to the information and how the information is shared,” and also agreed to publicly share the ethics agreements it is imposing on its own employees.
“According to Biden, the truce is intended to be permanent.”
• Israeli-Hezbollah Truce Takes Effect (RT)
The ceasefire between Israel and the Lebanese-based armed group Hezbollah, brokered by the US and France, went into effect at 4 am local time on Wednesday. There were no immediate reports of violations. Israel Defence Forces (IDF) spokesman Avichay Adraee told reporters that the Israeli troops would remain in southern Lebanon for the time being. He warned Israelis who fled the border towns due to Hezbollah rocket fire that it is not safe to return yet. The fighting between Hezbollah and the IDF erupted in October 2023, when the pro-Palestinian armed group began firing rockets and mortar shells across the border. Hezbollah said at the time that it would not end hostilities until the IDF stopped their war against Hamas in Gaza.
Israel eventually invaded southern Lebanon in early October and stepped up airstrikes on Beirut and other cities, killing several high-ranking Hezbollah members, including the group’s longtime leader, Hassan Nasrallah. More than 60 people have been killed in Israel from Hezbollah attacks and more than 3,500 people have been killed by Israeli airstrikes in Lebanon since October 2023, according to officials from both sides. Some 70,000 people in Israel and around 1.2 million people in Lebanon were displaced. Announcing the ceasefire on Tuesday, outgoing US President Joe Biden said that Israel would “gradually withdraw its remaining forces” from Lebanon within the next 60 days. “Hezbollah terrorist infrastructure in southern Lebanon will not be allowed to be rebuilt,” he stated. According to Biden, the truce is intended to be permanent.
“..Ukraine is in perhaps its “weakest position in nearly three years..”
• Ukraine Could Be Pushed Into Negotiations ‘Within Months’ – WaPo (RT)
US officials are beginning to concede that Ukraine may be forced to negotiate with Russia and may ultimately have to give up territory it considers its own, the Washington Post reported on Tuesday, citing anonymous sources. With Donald Trump returning to the White House in January and Kiev’s forces suffering mounting battlefield losses as Russia reclaims occupied territory in Kursk Region, Ukraine is in perhaps its “weakest position in nearly three years,” the paper said. Many White House officials believe that “within a few months, Ukraine could be pushed into negotiations with Russia” and that it “could be forced to give up territory,” according to the report. The “quiet recognition” that Kiev may need to give up territory is also spreading among its European backers, the Post said.
US President Joe Biden’s recent decision to allow Ukraine to use US-supplied ATACMS missiles to strike deep into Russian territory, as well as his move to provide Kiev with banned landmines, were made in the hope that it would give the country the “the strongest hand possible” before any potential negotiations with Moscow after Trump takes office in January. Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky has rejected any suggestion of territorial concessions to Russia. However, Biden’s officials have “largely resigned themselves” to the likelihood that Trump “will not provide Ukraine more assistance,” the report said. According to the paper, many of Ukraine’s European allies are “frustrated” that it took Washington so long to provide the country with the latest capabilities and that this should have happened when Ukraine’s military position was “more robust.”
Officials told the paper, however, that Biden’s decisions have been “guided by evolving battlefield conditions” and that despite pressure from Kiev, he has only authorized the use of certain weapons when the “conditions warrant” them. Washington is particularly concerned that as Ukraine shifted troops to Russia’s Kursk Region, it began “losing territory in its east at a faster clip.” In response to US authorization for Kiev to use long-range ATACMS, Putin announced the deployment of Russia’s new hypersonic Oreshnik ballistic missiles last week. The weapon, which is capable of carrying nuclear warheads, was used against a Ukrainian military industrial facility in the city of Dnepropetrovsk. Putin said that Moscow will respond “decisively and in a mirror-like manner” to any further escalation of aggressive actions by Kiev and its foreign backers.
“Ukrainian war veterans and illicit arms will emerge as new threats to EU nations if Moscow prevails..”
• EU Spy Agencies Fear End of Ukraine Conflict – Bloomberg (RT)
Ukrainian war veterans and illicit arms will emerge as new threats to EU nations if Moscow prevails in its conflict with Kiev, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday, citing intelligence community assessments “across Europe.” The perceived dangers were mentioned in a report based on an interview with Michal Koudelka, the head of the Czech Republic’s Security Information Service (BIS). The counter-intelligence chief told Bloomberg why he believed the US and its allies should continue pouring money into Kiev rather than seeking a negotiated peace in the Ukraine conflict. “If Ukraine loses, or is forced to accept a bad peace deal, then Russia will perceive that as victory,” Koudelka said. “Russia would spend perhaps the next ten to 15 years recovering from its huge human and economic losses and preparing for the next target, which is Central and Eastern Europe,” he predicted.
The Czech spy chief was repeating a common line of reasoning among proponents of prolonging the Ukraine conflict. US President Joe Biden claimed earlier this year that Russia would attack NATO after Ukraine, while calling on American lawmakers to authorize more spending to prop up Kiev. Moscow has denied having any such intentions. Koudelka has previously accused Moscow of waging “hybrid warfare” on his nation. In another recent interview, he claimed that a series of bomb threats sent via email to Czech and Slovak schools in September had “a clearly visible Russian trace.”
Prague has been ramping up tensions with Moscow since before the Ukraine conflict escalated into open hostilities in early 2022. It expelled Russian diplomats in 2021, claiming they were spies under diplomatic cover. Last year, it banned purchases of nuclear fuel for its two Soviet-built power plants from Russia, replacing the supplies with American substitutes. Moscow has called the Ukraine conflict a US-led proxy war against Russia, which Washington intends to wage “to the last Ukrainian.” The root causes of the conflict are NATO’s expansion in Europe, Kiev’s intention to join the military bloc, and the impunity that Western backers gave it to discriminate against ethnic Russians, officials have asserted.
“There was no way Joe Biden was going to get it done without much more blood being shed..”
• Pentagon Made No Full Analysis of ATACMS Missiles Use on Russia – Hersh (Sp.)
The Pentagon has not conducted a full analysis of consequences of the decisions to allow Ukraine to conduct strikes on the Russian territory with the US-made ATACMS missiles and to use landmine mines, US Investigative Journalist Seymour Hersh said on Tuesday. “I have been told that the strategic implications of the president’s escalation — both [US President Joe] Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin have nuclear bombs at their fingertips — had not been fully analyzed inside the Pentagon, and that some important offices, sure to have different views about escalation, were never asked for their input. Putin responded by escalating in turn by firing a nuclear-capable ballistic missile at Ukraine and said in a speech that what had been a regional conflict ‘had now acquired elements of a global character,'” Hersh wrote on his Substack blog.
According to Hersh, the agenda of US President-elect Donald Trump is to put an end to the military conflict in Ukraine and possibly to start the process by working more with military-to-military negotiations. “There was no way Joe Biden was going to get it done without much more blood being shed,” Hersh added. Last week, Russian President Vladimir Putin said in a televised speech that Ukraine had fired US-supplied ATACMS missiles and the UK’s Storm Shadows at facilities in the Kursk and Bryansk regions. In response, Russia launched a strike against a defense industry facility, the Yuzhmash plant, in Dnepropetrovsk (Dnipro) on November 21, using its newest medium-range missile, dubbed Oreshnik. Moscow also updated its nuclear doctrine earlier in the week.On November 25, White House National Security Communications Advisor John Kirby confirmed that Ukraine was allowed to use US-made ATACMS ballistic missiles to fire at targets in the western Russian region of Kursk.
It’s unelected people like Borrell and Ursula that are the gravest danger.
• Future of EU ‘In Danger’ – Borrell (RT)
The future of the EU is in jeopardy at a time of multiple crises beyond its borders and doubts over defense guarantees from the US, Brussels’ outgoing foreign policy chief said on Monday. Josep Borrell painted an alarming picture of the state of world affairs when marking the release of a collection of his speeches and essays titled ‘Europe in the Arc of Fire.’ He listed conflicts in Ukraine, Gaza, and Africa among the key factors threatening global security. “The events we have had to face during the last several months have – unfortunately – confirmed the diagnosis made earlier: Europe is in danger,” Borrell wrote on his office’s website. “Our geopolitical environment is deteriorating, and conflicts and crises are multiplying on our doorstep. From Ukraine to the Middle East, via South Caucasus, the Horn of Africa or the Sahel,” he added.
“All of this against a backdrop where the future US commitment to European security is becoming much more uncertain.” The diplomat argued that Washington’s commitment “for Europe’s security as a whole has become more uncertain for the future,” given the re-election of Donald Trump. “Our well-being and future cannot continue to depend on the mood of US voters in the Midwest every four years,” Borrell wrote, urging the bloc’s member states to boost their own defense. He further stated that there was “a serious risk” that the Ukraine conflict “could help to solidify a coalition of the ‘rest against the West.’”
He pointed to last month’s BRICS summit in Kazan, Russia, and stressed that such a coalition could also “materialize” in the Sahel, with UN peacekeepers leaving Mali in late 2023. BRICS (originally BRIC) was founded in 2006 by Brazil, Russia, India and China. The group’s members have refused to impose sanctions on Moscow over its conflict with Kiev and continue to advocate for a diplomatic resolution to the crisis. Russia and China have deepened economic ties in recent years, describing their relations as a “strategic partnership.” The two nuclear superpowers have also opposed the “unilateralism” of the US-led NATO alliance and said they wish to participate in the formation of a fairer model of international relations.
“Pray that Putin’s patience holds even at the risk of his own country.”
• The Utter and Total Insanity of Western “Leadership” (Paul Craig Roberts)
Since my strong warning yesterday of the stupidity and insanity of Western leaders who are without any doubt driving the world to nuclear Armageddon, the hyper dangerous situation has further deteriorated. While we all look forward to Thanksgiving holiday, the leadership of the Western world is setting us up for death. The insanity of the West is so extreme as to be incomprehensible. Not satisfied by taking the US and Europe to war with Russia by firing missiles into Russia, the NATO military committee is openly discussing preemptive missile strikes on Russia. This is extraordinary. At the present moment it is only Putin’s patience that stands between life and death on planet Earth. Putin is willing to tolerate the West’s provocations in the face of his clear warning until Trump assumes the presidency and indicates whether a mutual security agreement between the US and Russia is possible.
With life on earth dependent on Putin’s patience with the West, what does the West do? The NATO Military Committee openly discusses a preemptive attack on Russia. To be effective, the attack would have to be nuclear. Admiral Rob Bauer, the insane fool who is head of the NATO military committee, said publicly that NATO has changed its attitude and is no longer the defense organization that its charter defines it to be. It has become a first strike force. Here are his words: “It is more competent not to wait, but to hit launchers in Russia in case Russia attacks us. A combination of precision strikes is needed that will disable the systems that are used to attack us, and we must strike first.” If not insanity, it is the triumph of evil that the West tells Putin, whose patience is the only guarantor of avoidance of nuclear war, that NATO is considering preemptive strikes on Russia.
My warning yesterday and my denunciation of the stupidly insane Western “leaders” who have us slated for total destruction was not strong enough. We now have NATO, a puppet organization of Washington, telling Putin to expect a first strike attack to prevent him from making good on his warning about starting a war with Russia. For a person of my generation, such callous disregard for human life as Western “leaders” proclaim is incomprehensible. With nuclear war on the table, the task is to defuse the threat, not to inflame it. But the insane West has chosen to inflame it. And the people of the West are unaware. The media lies to them and withholds real information. Those few of us who bring reality to the people barely receive enough support to keep the website operating. For our troubles we are called names and are subject to the FBI calling on us.
Right now with the world on the cusp of destruction, what are Americans thinking about? Will Thanksgiving be ruined by political differences between Trump supporters and Democrats? How is my college football team doing? Is my 12-year old daughter taking her birth control pills? Can I make my car payment next month? Is my boss going to fire me because I am a white male and used the wrong pronoun for a transgendered co-worker. These, and such, are the concerns of Americans as their “leaders’ lead them to the brink of nuclear war. Dear readers, be assured that the Russians have noted these latest threats. Pray that Putin’s patience holds even at the risk of his own country.
“..a continued commitment to American primacy was ineluctably going to prove a commitment to one or another degree of disorder..”
• Biden’s ‘Samson Option’ (Patrick Lawrence)
It has been clear since the terror attacks in New York and Washington on Sept. 11, 2001 — the date I choose to mark a great turn in the global order — that America’s abdication of its postwar hegemony was to rank high among the 21st century’s defining events. The questions from that day onward have been how the policy cliques in Washington would respond to such a change in America’s place in the community of nations and what they might do — how great the risks they would take — to avoid, or at least forestall, this world-historical shift. How chaotically or otherwise, to put this question another way, would the arrival of a new, post–American world order prove? We have just witnessed a week’s worth of shocking provocations as the U.S. and Britain escalate their proxy war against Russia under the pretense of defending Ukraine in a war that is already lost.
Washington and London — the latter with the former’s assent — have now authorized the grossly irresponsible regime in Kiev to fire American– and British-made missiles into Russian territory. The Ukrainians wasted no time doing so. The Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) launched a volley of U.S.–made ATACMS (Army Tactical Missile System) missiles at Russian targets last Tuesday. A day later the AFU fired a similar barrage of British-made Storm Shadow missiles into Russian territory. The degree of planning and coordination behind these attacks seems to me self-evident. Nobody in Washington, London, or Kiev is commenting on the targets hit, but these, too, were without question chosen after careful consultation. Moscow has responded just as it said it would weeks ago. It now considers itself at war with the Western powers and, last Thursday, attacked a Ukrainian target with a new-generation hypersonic missile capable of carrying a nuclear warhead.
The message could scarcely be clearer — providing, I must add, one is capable of reading it accurately. So we now have answers to the above-noted questions. It was never difficult to foresee that those planning and executing U.S. foreign policy, lacking all imagination and anything remotely resembling courage, would prove incapable of an orderly transition to a multipolar world order. After the Sept. 11 events, a continued commitment to American primacy was ineluctably going to prove a commitment to one or another degree of disorder. The Biden regime’s latest escalation of its proxy war in Ukraine indicates the limits of this commitment: There are none. We are now on notice that the world — bitter to write this — is condemned to unceasing chaos and violence so long as the American imperium’s ideologues are capable of mounting a resistance against the world as it struggles to be.
We know now the risks those devoted to prolonging the imperium’s final phase will take in defense of the no-longer-defensible: All risks are acceptable as they cling to power. They will risk another world war; they will risk nuclear annihilation. We hear a lot these days about the Israeli doctrine known as the Samson Option, whereby the Israelis, if they thought themselves under an existential threat, would use their nuclear arsenal to bring the world down with them. Those freak-show terrorists running the Zionist state, you might say: Who or what could be more diabolic?
“With everything—literally everything—at stake, you might think that averting thermonuclear war between the world’s two nuclear superpowers [..] would be high on a president’s to-do list.”
• From Genocide Joe to Omnicide Joe (Solomon)
President Biden has never wavered from approving huge arms shipments to Israel during more than 13 months of mass murder and deliberate starvation of Palestinian civilians in Gaza. Biden’s crucial role earned him the name “Genocide Joe.” That nickname might seem shrill, but it’s valid. Although Biden will not be brought to justice for serving as a key accomplice to the horrific crimes against humanity that continue in Gaza, the label sticks—and candid historians will condemn him as a direct enabler of genocide. Biden could also qualify for another nickname, which according to Google was never published before this article: “Omnicide Joe.” In contrast to the Genocide Joe sobriquet, which events have already proven apt, Omnicide Joe is a bit anticipatory. That’s inevitable, because if the cascading effects of his foreign policy end up as key factors in nuclear annihilation, historians will not be around to assess his culpability for omnicide—defined as “the destruction of all life or all human life.”
That definition scarcely overstates what scientists tell us would result from an exchange of nuclear weapons. Researchers have discovered that “nuclear winter” would quickly set in across the globe, blotting out sunlight and wiping out agriculture, with a human survival rate of perhaps 1 or 2 percent. While Russia’s invasion and horrible war in Ukraine should be condemned, Biden has compounded Putin’s crimes by giving much higher priority to Washington’s cold-war mania than to negotiation for peace—or to mitigation of escalating risks of nuclear war. With everything—literally everything—at stake, you might think that averting thermonuclear war between the world’s two nuclear superpowers, Russia and the United States, would be high on a president’s to-do list. But that hardly has been the case with Joe Biden since he first pulled up a chair at the Oval Office desk.
In fact, Biden has done a lot during the first years of this decade to inflame the realistic fears of nuclear war. His immediate predecessor Donald Trump pulled the U.S. out of two vital treaties — Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces and Open Skies — and Biden did nothing to reinstate them. Likewise, Trump killed the Iran nuclear deal negotiated during the Obama administration, and Biden let it stay dead. Instead of fulfilling his 2020 campaign promise to adopt a U.S. policy of no-first-use of nuclear weapons, two years ago Biden signed off on the Nuclear Posture Review policy document that explicitly declares the opposite. Last year, under the euphemism of “modernization,” the U.S. government spent $51 billion — more than every other nuclear-armed country combined — updating and sustaining its nuclear arsenal, gaining profligate momentum in a process that’s set to continue for decades to come.
Before and after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in late February 2022, Biden showed a distinct lack of interest in actual diplomacy to prevent the war or to end it. Three days before the invasion, writing in the Financial Times, Jeffrey Sachs pointed out: “Biden has said repeatedly that the U.S. is open to diplomacy with Russia, but on the issue that Moscow has most emphasized—NATO enlargement—there has been no American diplomacy at all. [Russian President Vladimir] Putin has repeatedly demanded that the U.S. forswear NATO’s enlargement into Ukraine, while Biden has repeatedly asserted that membership of the alliance is Ukraine’s choice.” While Russia’s invasion and horrible war in Ukraine should be condemned, Biden has compounded Putin’s crimes by giving much higher priority to Washington’s cold-war mania than to negotiation for peace—or to mitigation of escalating risks of nuclear war.
From the outset, Biden scarcely acknowledged that the survival of humanity was put at higher risk by the Ukraine war. In his first State of the Union speech, a week after the invasion, Biden devoted much of his oratory to the Ukraine conflict without saying a word about the heightened danger that it might trigger the use of nuclear weapons. During the next three months, the White House posted more than 60 presidential statements, documents and communiques about the war in Ukraine. They all shared with his State of the Union address a stunning characteristic — the complete absence of any mention of nuclear weapons or nuclear war dangers—even though many experts gauged those dangers as being the worst they’d been since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. With everything—literally everything—at stake, you might think that averting thermonuclear war between the world’s two nuclear superpowers, Russia and the United States, would be high on a president’s to-do list.
“Revenues from premium subscriptions nearly quadrupled, and advertising revenues roughly doubled in the first six months of 2024..”
• Telegram Revenues Booming – FT (RT)
Messaging app Telegram posted significant financial growth in the first half of the year, with revenues driven by strong performance in its cryptocurrency holdings, the Financial Times (FT) has reported, citing the tech company’s disclosures. The gains have buoyed the messenger amid legal challenges faced by CEO Pavel Durov, the outlet noted. The messenger’s digital assets rose to $1.3 billion in January-June from nearly $400 million at the end of last year, the FT wrote on Tuesday, citing unaudited financial statements. The value of Toncoin, Telegram’s own digital token, more than tripled over the stated period, according to trading data. The crypto gains helped create a financial buffer for the Dubai-based company just before it was shaken by Durov’s arrest in France in August, the FT noted.
Telegram’s revenues were up 190% from the first half of last year, amounting to $525 million, according to the documents. Nearly half of the income came from a one-time deal with an unnamed party, which allowed Toncoin to be the exclusive method for small businesses to buy advertising on the app, according to the publication. The exclusivity agreement was terminated on October 1, it added. Revenues from premium subscriptions nearly quadrupled, and advertising revenues roughly doubled in the first six months of 2024, according to Telegram’s financial disclosures.
Russian tech entrepreneur Durov, who is also a citizen of France, the UAE and Saint Kitts and Nevis, was arrested after landing in Paris in late August and charged with multiple offenses, including complicity in distributing child porn, drug dealing, and money laundering. The charges stem from the accusation that Telegram’s lax moderation rules allow for the widespread misuse of the messenger service. Durov was later released on bail of €5 million ($5.5 million) in early September, but has been banned from leaving France while his case is ongoing. Some of the charges against him could carry sentences of up to ten years. The businessman has vehemently denied the accusations. Durov revealed last month that the messenger service had been complying with privacy policies in several countries and had been disclosing information about criminals to authorities for the past six years.
“A merkin is an artificial hairpiece once used to cover the pubic area..”
• Musk Hits Merkel ‘Below The Belt’ – German Media (RT)
Elon Musk has directed what Bild has called a “below the belt” insult at former German Chancellor Angela Merkel after she criticized him for being too influential in both politics and space. “Who is this Angela Merkin person?” Musk posted on X in response. A merkin is an artificial hairpiece once used to cover the pubic area. Musk’s use of it was unlikely to be a misspelling: he had posted about merkins in 2019, urging people not to search for the term because it’s not safe for work. Merkel, who led her country from 2005 to 2021, has just published a memoir (Freedom: Memories 1945-2021), which hit German bookstores on Tuesday. Promoting the book in an interview last weekend, she criticized Musk’s Starlink program. “If a person like him [Musk] owns 60% of all satellites orbiting in space, then that has to be a huge concern for us in addition to the political issues,” Merkel told Der Spiegel on Friday.
Musk’s SpaceX operates the satellite internet provider Starlink, which has over 6,000 satellites in orbit. One of its most prominent clients is Ukraine, which uses Starlink for military communications. Although Musk made the cheeky post on Sunday, German media only noticed on Tuesday. Bild called it a “below the belt” insult, while Der Spiegel refrained from descriptions but used the notoriety to promote the Merkel interview as well as another article about Musk, which dubbed him “Public enemy number two.” “It is questionable whether Musk read the entire interview,” the German tabloid wrote. “At least he took note of one of the Spiegel articles about him.”
This is not the first time Musk has insulted German politicians. On November 7, when the ruling ‘traffic light’ coalition imploded, he called Chancellor Olaf Scholz a “fool” (ein Narr). He used the same term for Economy Minister Robert Habeck three days later, after the leader of the Greens argued that algorithms running social media platforms (such as X) should be regulated by EU laws. The world’s richest man has also become a prominent adviser to US President-elect Donald Trump, after helping his re-election bid. Together with Vivek Ramaswamy, he is due to lead the ‘Department of Government Efficiency’ (DOGE), charged with slashing the size of American bureaucracy.
A podcast host gets discussed in the press. We’ve come a long way. Then again, he has the audience the MSM does not have.
• Joe Rogan Launches Tirade Against Zelensky (RT)
American podcast host Joe Rogan has hammered Joe Biden for allowing Ukraine to launch missile attacks deep behind Russia’s borders, accusing the US president and Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky of trying to provoke a world war before Donald Trump takes office. Biden reportedly gave Ukraine permission last week to use long-range US-provided ATACMS missiles to attack targets in internationally-recognized Russian territory. Kiev carried out its first such strike on Russia’s Bryansk Region on Tuesday, followed by an attack on Kursk Region using British Storm Shadow cruise missiles the following day. “How are you allowed to do that when you’re on your way out?” Rogan asked on Friday’s installment of ‘The Joe Rogan Experience.’ ”The people don’t want you to be there any more,” he added. “There should be some sort of pause for significant actions that could potentially start World War III. Maybe that would be a good thing that we would like to avoid from a dying former president.”
“Zelensky says [Russian President Vladimir] Putin is terrified,” Rogan continued. “F**k you, man. F**k you people. You f**king people are about to start World War III.” Russia responded to last week’s strikes by using a newly-developed hypersonic ballistic missile to rain multiple warheads down on a Ukrainian military industrial facility in Dnepropetrovsk. In a speech on Thursday evening, Putin warned that further attacks on Russian soil would be met with retaliatory strikes on targets of Moscow’s choosing, which could include the military facilities of countries providing Kiev with long-range weapons. Moscow considers ATACMS and Storm Shadow strikes escalatory, Putin said, as these weapons cannot be fired “without the direct involvement of military experts from the manufacturing nations.” Rogan noted that Russia’s latest ballistic missile can carry a nuclear payload, stating that “if it does, the whole world changes.”
“It changes because of the military industrial complex and it changes because of the money that’s going to Ukraine, and it changes because the outgoing president – or whoever the f**k is actually running the country – has decided to do something f**king insane,” he exclaimed. Rogan endorsed Trump shortly before this month’s election, after the then-candidate appeared on his podcast. Trump, who takes office in less than 60 days, has vowed to push Zelensky and Putin into a peace deal, but has not revealed how he plans to achieve this. Rogan’s comments were condemned by pro-Kiev pundits, including Ukrainian heavyweight boxer Vladimir Klitschko. In a post on X on Sunday, Klitschko claimed that Putin is “in trouble” and any concern that he may retaliate is “Russian propaganda.” “Does this make sense to anyone or just an attempt to get on the podcast?” Rogan responded.
“..Russia built it together with constructively minded Europeans, and the Anglo-Americans blew it up..”
• US and UK ‘Directly Involved’ In Nord Stream Sabotage – Russia’s Spy Chief (RT)
The US and British intelligence services were involved in the sabotage of the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines, the head of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), Sergey Naryshkin, has said. The key energy connector, built to deliver Russian gas to Germany and the rest of Europe, was ruptured by explosions at the bottom of the Baltic Sea in September 2022. “It has long been known that the West uses international terrorism as a tool to achieve its geopolitical goals. However, the Western intelligence agencies themselves also do not hesitate to resort to terrorist methods in fighting their opponents,” Naryshkin told the heads of security agencies and intelligence services from former Soviet republics on Tuesday. According to the Russian spy chief, the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines was one example of such methods.
“The SVR possesses information about a direct involvement of professional saboteurs from the Anglo-American special services in this terrorist attack,” he stated. Naryshkin noted that Nord Stream was a joint project between companies from Russia and other European countries, intended to provide for “an uninterrupted supply of affordable Russian gas to Europe.” “Meaning that Russia built it together with constructively minded Europeans, and the Anglo-Americans blew it up,” he said. The SVR head insisted that “destroying Nord Stream was an obsession not only of the Democratic, but also of the Republican administration in the US.”
“..a tangle of inconsistencies, contradictions, fabrications, stonewalling, and lies..”
• Skripal Grave Gives Up The Truth (Helmer)
On March 1, 2018, Alexander Skripal would have turned 44 years old. But he couldn’t celebrate his birthday with father Sergei Skripal and sister Yulia because Alexander was dead. He died on July 18, 2017; his body cremated in St Petersburg; his ashes buried at the London Road Cemetery at Salisbury, beside his mother, Lyudmila Skripal. To honour Alexander’s birthday, his father and sister drove to the cemetery on Sunday morning, March 4, 2018. The distance from their home in Salisbury to the cemetery is less than five kilometres; depending on the route and the traffic, the drive can take less than ten minutes. Early on that cold wintry day, the journey would have taken less time. The Skripals’ journey, their evidence of what happened, and the police testimony, which has followed in the hearings of the Dawn Sturgess Inquiry, reveal a tangle of inconsistencies, contradictions, fabrications, stonewalling, and lies. This tangle is proof enough that the British Government narrative of the Russian Novichok attack has collapsed. The truth can be found in the rubble.
A Sunday morning witness named John Hiles, “a retired minister”, told the police “he was following the victim’s vehicle southbound on A30 London Road.” The southbound direction in the police report indicates the Skripals were driving from the cemetery back towards their home – unless the witness and the policeman confused their north and south directions. The BBC reported on September 27, 2018, that there had been not one but several witness sightings of the Skripal car driving on the route between their home and the cemetery on Sunday morning. What exactly happened at the cemetery that morning was witnessed by no one except the Skripals. In six years of police interview records released publicly to the Sturgess Inquiry, there is no trace the police asked either of them to explain how they had spent their morning before the attack on the Sunday afternoon. If the police asked the question, the record of the answers Sergei and Yulia Skripal gave has been kept secret.
However, the police made a “forensic management record” reporting evidence from a source the police report doesn’t identify: “Sergey and Yulia Skripal attended the graves of family members on the morning of the incident.” The only source for this police report was either Sergei or Yulia Skripal, or both of them. Contradicting this is a police report, titled “Selective Timeline of Sergei and Yulia Skripal”, claiming “Yulia states that neither she nor Sergei left the house on the morning of 4th March.” In the version of this 11-page report presented to the Sturgess Inquiry, computer activity is recorded on devices of both Sergei and Yulia from 08:27 until 13:10. However, the pages of the report recording the early morning hours of Sunday are missing; only five of the eleven pages have been revealed publicly. The police report claiming the Skripals did not go to Alexander Skripal’s grave that Sunday morning is dated April 1, 2018. The date of the police record saying the Skripals did go to the cemetery is May 23, 2018. Almost two months of police operations elapsed before the evidence was switched.
Compare Tim Norman’s detailed timeline of the Skripal movements and his analysis of mainstream media reporting of what the police, intelligence services, and government officials were leaking, published in November 2022. Norman warns that neither he nor his publisher “is assessing the sources quoted as trustworthy.” The police also claim the Skripals’ mobile telephones were switched off throughout the fateful Sunday morning until past 13:00; they leaked this information to the media. During the Skripals’ telephone silence that morning, this police report reveals they were sent three SMS messages which were in code. Between 10:16 and 10:22 two messages came in from CIK; one from SNOWQUEEN. The police also record that Sergei Skripal’s next-door neighbour telephoned his home landline number at 10:32 to arrange a plumbing repair. Sergei reportedly replied he “wouldn’t be in between 4:00hrs and 1700 hrs”.
Chief Metropolitan Police investigator Commander Dominic Murphy claims the absence of police evidence of the Skripals’ movements on Sunday morning is evidence that they didn’t move out of their house. “No further activity on the devices attributed to the Skripals until they were found in the Maltings. This indicated that the Skripals were at their home from the time that Ross and Maureen Cassidy dropped them off [Saturday March 3] until they left to go into the centre of town on 4 March 2018.” The MI6 version of the Sunday morning, reported by Mark Urban, says that “inasmuch as Sergei had a regular ‘pattern of life’, a Sunday morning visit to the London Road cemetery was often part of it”. — page 262. Urban published this in September 2019. He and his MI6 sources didn’t realize the police were switching their stories.
“..this technology could become “the key for China to win future wars.”
• China Creates Coating Making Warplanes Invisible to Anti-Stealth Radars (Sp.)
Chinese military scientists have developed a stealth material for aircraft and other defense equipment that minimizes their visibility for anti-stealth radars, Chinese media reported on Monday. The South China Morning Post newspaper reported that the new material, unveiled by the National University of Defense Technology, can convert electromagnetic waves with wavelengths from 2.3 feet to 0.6 feet into heat, which effectively covers the operating bandwidths of most current anti-stealth radars, specifically the P-band and L-band. The new material is lightweight, flexible and easy to produce in large quantities, making it suitable for covering aircraft or other weapon platforms requiring stealth capabilities, the newspaper said.
Scientists have said that the new material was cost-effective and could be used in various types of military equipment. They believe that this technology could become “the key for China to win future wars.” China currently holds the majority of the world’s patents in metamaterials.
“..an exercise in consumption and waste..”
• F-35 is Modern Rube Goldberg Machine, Musk is Right to Criticize It (Sp.)
Tesla CEO Elon Musk has called the Lockheed Martin F-35 fighter “an expensive and complex jack of all trades, master of none.” What does he mean? “The F-35 design was broken at the requirements level because it was required to be too many things to too many people,” tweeted Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who was picked by President-elect Donald Trump to co-lead the new Department of Government Efficiency. “Manned fighter jets are obsolete in the age of drones anyway. Will just get pilots killed,” he added. Musk is correct in his assessment of the Lockheed Martin F-35 fighter, retired US Air Force Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski, a former Pentagon analyst, tells Sputnik.
“The F-35 is very nearly a modern Rube Goldberg machine [a contraption that does a very basic job in a complicated way – Sputnik] – with many parts that drive whole new requirements, and new remedies,” Kwiatkowski says. The program will cost more than $2 trillion, becoming one of the most expensive in US history, according to the Government Accountability Office. Despite this, the US military continues to discover new technical risks that cost American taxpayers more money. “[The F-35] was designed, much as the last tranches of US aid to Ukraine in the Biden administration, more of an exercise in consumption and waste as the current military leadership wonders how to get out of its 60 year productivity and performance rut,” Kwiatkowski says.
The F-35 has repeatedly come under heavy criticism: • X influencer Mario Nawfal appears to share Musk’s skepticism: “China is building swarm drones,” Nawfal tweeted. “Meanwhile some idiots are still building manned fighter jets like the F-35,” he quoted Musk • Matt Gaetz, a former US congressman and Trump pick for attorney general, called the F-35 “a $100 million paperweight” earlier this year • Adam Smith, the Democratic chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, dubbed the F-35 a “rathole” in March 2021.
Mailman
ADORABLE! How Hamilton the French Bulldog greets his Best Friend!!! pic.twitter.com/zQdO9S8vdD
— B&S (@_B___S) November 25, 2024
Mr Fox
https://twitter.com/i/status/1861058797286089136
Cub
Rescued lion cub and his caretaker at a wildlife sanctuary – if this isn't love, I don't know what is pic.twitter.com/YiVOQgmf3h
— Nature is Amazing ☘️ (@AMAZlNGNATURE) November 26, 2024
Giraffe
https://twitter.com/i/status/1861210763467149605
Cat duck
https://twitter.com/i/status/1861072355373834322
Hippo
https://twitter.com/i/status/1861296328334045624
Elephant
https://twitter.com/i/status/1861238445814718518
That time
https://twitter.com/i/status/1861505602884702509
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