Meta Archives - The Automatic Earth

⚡🇫🇷 Marine Le Pen has just backed defunding the globalist EU:

“We have ideas for savings – we will stop sending €6 billion to the European Union.” pic.twitter.com/FoFZCiQzsF
— Adam Moczar (@AdamMoczar) August 25, 2026

https://twitter.com/BasilTheGreat/status/2092526537526374759?s=20 https://twitter.com/NaomiSeibt/status/2092292533137101071?s=20

'Europeans now pay 8.6 (!) times more for natural gas than Americans' https://t.co/8l0k7OWh6i
— Willem Middelkoop (@wmiddelkoop) August 26, 2026

President Trump Says He would Sign an Act to BAN Sharia Law in America.

"I would absolutely prohibit the Sharia law thing and it is happening in this country a little bit and when we see it, we take it out and you have to take it out."

Sharia law is not compatible with… pic.twitter.com/VG4b7TEyc8
— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) August 26, 2026

“The story of Iranian success and American failure fit expectations many already held. Contradictory evidence produced cognitive dissonance.”

• Hormuz And The Law Of Diminishing Returns: When Leverage Burns (ET)

For months, the assumption that the Strait of Hormuz was Tehran’s ultimate card dominated commentary on the war.

As a narrow waterway through which roughly one-fifth of the world’s oil and a substantial share of liquefied natural gas had historically passed, it appeared to be a chokepoint Iran could close or severely disrupt at will. It did not need to destroy every tanker. Hitting a small percentage with drones, cruise missiles, speedboats, or mines would spike insurance rates, deter crews and companies, and effectively shut the strait without continuous physical control.
This idea was not new for 2026. It had long been a feature of the Iranian strategic posture, treated as both a military instrument and a political myth-proof that even under pressure Tehran retained a decisive lever over the global energy system. Parts of the Western media and independent analysts amplified the same narrative.Relying on incomplete open-source shipping data, especially once vessels began sailing dark, many concluded that the United States had been caught unprepared and lacked a realistic path to reopen the waterway. Hormuz, they argued, was effectively closed or closable at Iran’s discretion. That framing was powerful, but also incomplete.
How the Threat Has Been Eroded
The assumption that Iran’s detection and targeting system could not be dismantled without dramatic escalation proved wrong. Under the U.S. Central Command, also known as CENTCOM, and with significant involvement from the Fifth Fleet and Air Force components, the United States ran a sustained effort to degrade the sensors Iran needed to find and hit ships. Iran relied on mobile truck-mounted radars, drones, cruise missiles, Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) speedboats, and naval mines. Inside the narrow strait, ships move in relatively predictable lanes. Iran combined active radars with passive electro-optical and infrared cameras on elevated terrain and islands such as Qeshm, Larak, and Abu Musa.
Mobile radars would radiate briefly to locate shipping, then shut down and move before anti-radiation missiles could arrive. Once a ship’s approximate position was known, strike systems could be sent to search. The vulnerability was that every radar emission could be detected. American aircraft responded systematically with anti-radiation missiles while visual and intelligence efforts located the passive sensors. This was the core of what some involved called “draining the swamp.” Iran had redundancy, but the number of sensors was finite. Hundreds of precision strikes gradually reduced Iran’s ability to see traffic in the strait. As the detection layer thinned, the effectiveness of the strike systems declined with it.
Parallel efforts neutralized mines with unmanned vessels and declared the southern lane near Oman largely clear. Convoys moved under escort, often at night with the automated information system (AIS) off. Arleigh Burke-class destroyers with Aegis radars and standard missile (SM)-family interceptors formed the backbone; drones and Apache helicopters armed with laser-guided rockets provided additional cover. American ships also engaged IRGC speedboats that closed on the convoys.
On the commercial side, the United States addressed insurance barriers. In early March, President Donald Trump directed the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) to provide political risk insurance and guarantees for maritime trade. The DFC, working with the Treasury and CENTCOM, established a revolving reinsurance facility of roughly $20 billion-later expanded with private partners including Chubb-focused on hull, machinery, and cargo cover. Early uptake was limited. As Iranian success rates fell, more vessels joined.
Results have been significant. CENTCOM has reported assisting well over a thousand commercial vessels and moving hundreds of millions of barrels since the spring. Independent trackers often showed lower numbers because much of the traffic sailed dark. Pre-war throughput was 20 million to 21 million barrels per day. Flows through Hormuz remain below that, but combined with the Abu Dhabi-Fujairah pipeline and Saudi Arabia’s pipeline to Yanbu in the Red Sea, volumes recovered enough to keep oil prices in the $85 to $95 range-elevated, but far from the predicted catastrophe.
Not Seeing the True Picture
Public data lagged for both technical and psychological reasons. Ships that went dark during transit normally turned their AIS trackers back on afterward, so theoretically they could have been tracked and counted, yet matching was imperfect amid overlapping night movements, incomplete satellite reception, intermittent signals, and ship-to-ship transfers. Commercial trackers attempt corrections using imagery and other data, but confidence thresholds still produce undercounts relative to what escorting forces could see.
There was also a narrative reason. The story of Iranian success and American failure fit expectations many already held. Contradictory evidence produced cognitive dissonance. The common response was to protect the original frame-by applying greater skepticism to inconvenient details and treating quieter progress as temporary. In a contested information environment, narratives that confirm prior expectations often outlast those that require revision.

“..Fyodorov stated in particular, “it seems that we are gradually, slowly, losing [in the conflict].”

• Ukraine Is Definitely Losing In Conflict — Kremlin (TASS)

Dmitry Peskov

The dynamics at the frontline clearly show that Ukraine is losing the conflict, Russian Presidential Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Wednesday. “The fact that Ukraine is losing the conflict is unequivocal and the dynamics in all frontline areas clearly demonstrate this,” Peskov said at a press briefing. His statement comes after Ukrainian ex-Defense Minister Mikhail Fyodorov’s interview with Reuters on Tuesday. Fyodorov stated in particular, “it seems that we are gradually, slowly, losing [in the conflict].”.

“.. it is the same cycle of promise and despair, promise and failure that, again, has done nothing but cost the lives of both Russian and Ukrainian men and increasingly women,”

• Talk of Ukrainian Victory Like ‘Groundhog Day’ – ex-US Official (RT)

Steve Gill

Repeated claims that Ukraine is about to turn the tide against Russia and achieve a military victory are like being trapped in a time loop, a former White House official has told RT. The latest wave of media reports predicting a breakthrough in Kiev’s military campaign came on the heels of an escalation in Ukrainian long-range drone strikes on Russian oil refineries, retail warehouses, and cargo ships. Ukrainian officials claimed the attacks would pressure Moscow into accepting Kiev’s terms for a peace settlement.

Russia instead intensified its own strikes, virtually paralyzing crucial Ukrainian trade through Black Sea ports and inflicting other damage. On Sunday, President Vladimir Putin said Kiev was the one that “opened Pandora’s box.” “I feel like the old American movie ‘Groundhog Day’,” conservative media host Steve Gill, who served in the office of the US Trade Representative under Presidents George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton, told RT.
“How many times do we have to hear, ‘oh, it’s the spring offensive, the fall offensive, the summer offensive, the winter offensive that is going to win things for Ukraine? And it is the same cycle of promise and despair, promise and failure that, again, has done nothing but cost the lives of both Russian and Ukrainian men and increasingly women,” he added. Gill also suggested that Ukrainians who want to end the hostilities are in no position to do so because the country does not determine its own foreign policy.
“The ones who are making the decisions in Western Europe – and some in the United States, some who have the ear of President [Donald] Trump – are feeding misinformation and disinformation both through media and through the policymakers that is continuing the violence, continuing the death, and continuing this folly of Ukraine thinking that they’re somehow winning on the battlefield when nothing could be further from the truth,” he explained.

“Obstacles to Brussels’ plan – including Belgium’s fierce opposition – remain the same ..”

• EU Buries Plan To Steal Russian Assets For Ukraine – EurActiv (RT)

The EU is highly reluctant to revive plans to steal more than $200 billion in frozen Russian sovereign reserves and hand them over to cash-strapped Ukraine, EurActiv reported on Tuesday, citing sources.

On Monday, European leaders flocked to Kiev in a show of solidarity for Ukraine, which marked its 35th Independence Day, but the talks quickly turned to the country’s numerous issues, including a substantial budgetary deficit. Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky told European officials that his government still faces a €23.5 billion ($27.4 billion) shortfall on top of EU funding already promised and urged Brussels to accelerate the next instalment of its €90 billion support loan.
According to EurActiv, while the EU’s attention once again pivoted to the idea of confiscating around €210 billion of Russian funds immobilized in EU institutions, mostly in the Belgian-based Euroclear, “there is little sign the issue is about to return to the table in Brussels.” “The obstacles and the reservations by a number of member states haven’t changed,” a senior EU official told the outlet.
Last year, EU officials proposed a scheme to leverage the frozen Russian assets as collateral to issue a loan to Kiev, which it would repay only after receiving reparations from Moscow. Separately, the EU had already agreed to redirect net windfall profits generated by the immobilized assets to Ukraine.Russia has condemned the asset freeze as “theft,” ruled out paying any reparations to Ukraine, and has warned the EU of harsh retaliation if it confiscates the funds one way or another.
However, the scheme – which was championed by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen – met fierce opposition from a number of EU members, most notably Belgium. Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever argued that the plan would leave it uniquely exposed to legal and financial pushback from Russia. “
Taking [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s money and leaving the risks with [Belgium]. That’s not going to happen,” he said last year. Euroclear also vehemently opposed the seizure plot, at one point warning that it could sue the EU if the bloc tries to confiscate the assets. Several other EU leaders also raised concerns that confiscating Russian assets would erode international law and tarnish the bloc’s reputation and standing among investors.

Kiev has descended into complete repression at home and “outright terror” against Russian civilians, the UN envoy has said ..

• Ukraine a Western-Backed ‘Zelensky Concentration Camp’ – Moscow (RT)

Ukraine has been transformed into a “Zelensky concentration camp” with Western assistance, Russia’s envoy to the UN, Vassily Nebenzia, has said, accusing Kiev of suppressing dissent at home and increasingly resorting to attacks on civilians in Russia.

Nebenzia made the remarks at a UN Security Council meeting on Monday marking the 35th anniversary of Ukraine’s declaration of independence. The session was requested by the council’s five European members – Denmark, France, Greece, Latvia, and the UK – which reiterated their full support for Kiev. The Russian diplomat questioned whether Ukraine has anything to celebrate, arguing that successive governments have run the country “into the ground” and that Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky accelerated the process.
“With the most active involvement of the countries of the collective West, which claim to be ‘civilized’ and ‘democratic,’ Ukraine has morphed into a ‘Zelensky concentration camp,’ where any dissent or opposition is completely prohibited and those who find the courage to voice an alternative point of view are thrown behind bars without trial or due process, or physically eliminated,” he said.
Nebenzia described the persecution of the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church, the glorification of Nazi collaborators, and the suppression of shared history and the Russian language – including a ban on a popular Russian cartoon – as a “vivid illustration of the sheer wretchedness of Kiev’s rulers.”Amid a growing crackdown on dissent and a deteriorating battlefield situation, Kiev has now slipped into “outright terror against Russia’s civilian population,” Nebenzia said.
“Terror has become the last resort for Kiev in its attempt to reverse the situation that is not currently in its favor,” he added. “At the same time, Zelensky continues to beg his Western patrons for new shipments of weapons and ammunition, which are then used to hit Russian cities, residential areas, and civilian infrastructure.”The envoy said at least 475 Russian civilians were killed or injured in Ukrainian attacks from August 10 to 16 alone, with 69 fatalities, including children. He highlighted a strike on Nizhnekamsk that killed 13 people and wounded 78, as well as attacks in Novorossiysk, Rostov Region, and a number of towns in Donbass, which Kiev claims as its territory.
“It appears that Ukraine’s Western patrons, not to mention Zelensky himself, still harbor the dangerous illusion that further escalation, strikes deep inside our territory and terror against civilians will somehow force us to accept an ultimatum that is being pushed under the guise of peace.” Nebenzia said Russia retains the battlefield initiative and rejected calls for a temporary ceasefire that would give Kiev time to regroup and its Western sponsors time to rearm it. He warned that there would be no meaningful diplomatic process as long as Russia is confronted with ultimatums and threats while the reality on the ground is ignored.

The nazis have total control now, including financially. they won’t give that up voluntarily.

• Zelensky Continues To Oppose Wartime Democracy (Weeks)

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is facing mounting pressure to hold elections. The Ukrainian leader was elected to a five-year term in 2019, which expired in May 2024. Last week, Ukraine’s former defense minister Mykhailo Fedorov publicly called for elections, breaking what has been characterized as a “wartime taboo” within the nation’s elite. He continued to demand elections over the weekend and also directly accused the Defense Ministry of corruption.

Fedorov is not the first high-profile Ukrainian figure to call for elections. Back in 2024, Kiev Mayor Vitali Klitschko denounced Zelensky and called him an “autocrat” for refusing to hold elections. But Fedorov is the first figure to have served within the upper echelons of the national government to publicly endorse the restoration of democracy. On Sunday, Zelensky released comments slamming Fedorov’s recommendation as a threat to Ukrainian national security. “I believe that if we want to destroy the country, then during such a war we can move in the selection of elections,” Zelensky said.
While Zelensky has portrayed wartime elections as an existential threat to all of Ukraine, he also said he would be open to elections if the nation’s allies secured “specific conditions” that would allow all military personnel and displaced civilians, millions of people, to participate. This pledge undid the myth that Ukraine is forbidden to hold wartime elections by its own constitution under material law. It is also such an unlikely scenario; Zelensky appears open to democracy while safely shielded from it. If elections were held, he would lose.
The challenge from Fedorov is significant because the 35-year-old was the youngest minister of defense in Ukraine’s history, and his firing last month triggered protests throughout the country. Despite having no military experience, the former tech entrepreneur was viewed as revolutionizing Ukraine’s drone warfare. He only served for a few months before a rift with Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi, commander of Ukraine’s armed forces at the time, prompted Zelensky to fire him.
After protests broke out following Fedorov’s sacking, Zelensky tried to placate the people by firing Syrskyi as well. This has not turned down the temperature, as protestors want Fedorov reinstated. The anger is understandable. Zelensky and his administration are keeping the nation at war, and there is no end in sight. The war has been the justification for martial law, and the martial law has been the justification for the temporary, indefinite suspension of democracy.

“.. the direction points to intelligence sharing or notification.”

• CIA Director John Ratcliffe Visited Moscow (CTH)

CIA Director John Ratcliffe made an unexpected visit to Moscow, Russia, today. According to flight data and new media reporting Director Ratcliffe flew into Latvia and from Latvia into Russia on a C-17 military transport plane.

VIA CBS – CIA Director John Ratcliffe is in Moscow, Russia, for meetings, sources familiar with the situation told CBS News on Tuesday. News of his trip comes after a U.S. Air Force Boeing C-17A Globemaster III transport plane was spotted at a Moscow airport, along with a U.S. diplomatic motorcade. Neither the U.S. nor Russian governments has commented on the identity of the U.S. official in Russia or the purpose of the visit. The CIA did not immediately comment. It appears to be Ratcliffe’s first known trip to Russia as CIA director, though he has maintained contact with Russian intelligence counterparts. (more)
VIA AXIOS – CIA director John Ratcliffe is visiting Moscow on Tuesday for talks with Russian officials, two U.S. officials said. Why it matters: This is Ratcliffe’s first trip to Moscow since he took office and the highest-level visit by a Trump administration official to Russia since January. Ahead of Ratcliffe’s trip, the U.S. told Ukraine that a senior delegation was traveling to Moscow and asked it to suspend strikes until it leaves, according to a source with knowledge of the matter. (link) We shall not speculate too much on the purpose and intent of the visit; however, overall, the direction points to intelligence sharing or notification.
Recently the British announced they would be sharing “storm shadow missile” technology with Ukraine in order for Ukraine to build them for themselves. The Storm Shadow (also known as SCALP-EG in France) is a Franco-British, long-range, air-launched cruise missile used for precision deep-strike attacks against high-value targets. Essentially, the Storm Shadow missile is the U.K version of the Tomahawk cruise missile.
Ukraine would be building those missiles with money provided by the EU from the confiscated Russian sovereign wealth fund. Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin likely doesn’t appreciate that very much. According to Visegrad, “President Putin had a major event scheduled for today, with hundreds of people preparing for it. The event was canceled due to the visit of the CIA director, according to Kremlin pool journalists.” CIA Director John Ratcliffe is now returning home from Moscow.

Trudeau and Carney are girls dressed as guys. Trump has no time for that. If they were just normal people, he’d be very nice to them.

• White House Press Release: “Ending Canada’s Free Ride” (CTH)

Hopefully CTH readers have followed this story close enough to be able to predict where it ends. The White House has released an official and scathing press release outlining the lengthy and long-term issues with Canada and trade disputes.

WHITE HOUSE – Canada has been ripping off the United States for decades — and President Donald J. Trump is done letting them get away with it. Last week, the U.S. offered Canada the most preferential market access of any country on Earth, with deep cuts on steel, aluminum, autos, lumber, and more. Instead of partnership, Canada chose unreasonable demands, walk-backs, and flat-out rejection.
The record of Canadian abuse is clear and deliberate:
• FACT: Canada is joined only by the People’s Republic of China in choosing retaliation over negotiation. Their continued discriminatory treatment of U.S. commerce has burdened American workers, farmers, and businesses.
• FACT: Canada alone imposed discriminatory 25% tariffs and company-specific quotas on U.S. motor vehicles — measures applied to no other country. As a result, U.S. vehicle exports to Canada crashed 22% over the last year.
• FACT: Canada banned American wine, beer, and spirits in nearly every province and territory — while other countries have faced no such restrictions. As a result, U.S. alcohol exports to Canada collapsed 81% in a single year.
• FACT: Canada locks out U.S. dairy with tariff-rate quotas far more restrictive than those given to Europe, plus over-quota tariffs of nearly 300% — rates so extreme they function as a near-total ban and rank among the highest agricultural tariffs in the developed world.
• FACT: Canada has extracted a persistent average annual goods trade deficit of roughly $50 billion from the U.S. over the last decade — while refusing reciprocal access. FACT: Canada targeted American aerospace manufacturer Gulfstream for years. They effectively prohibited the sale of its G500, G600, G700, and G800 models while shielding its own competitor — until President Trump intervened.
• FACT: Canada’s protectionist barriers — discriminatory auto quotas, alcohol bans, and dairy lockouts — have hammered American companies. This has cost U.S. producers billions in lost sales, forced layoffs, and driven market share to foreign competitors who face none of the same restrictions.
• FACT: Without the United States, Canada could not survive. Canada sends roughly three-quarters of all its goods exports to America — and the U.S. market is where Canada gets the overwhelming majority of its money and economic oxygen.
• FACT: Canada’s failed trade policies are driving its own manufacturers south. A recent survey found 42% of Canadian manufacturers have already moved or are planning to move production to the U.S.
• FACT: Canada is doubling down on tariffs targeting American workers. Canada just announced an additional $27.6 billion in tariffs on American businesses — including a 50% tariff on American steel and aluminum, a 25% tariff on American fish, and a 25% tariff on American tools.
• FACT: The U.S. economy is approximately 13 times larger than the Canadian economy and home to over eight times as many people. The United States has the clear leverage. President Trump said it best: “Canada is easily the most difficult and unreasonable. They feel entitled, but they are not a State and will be entitled no longer!” Canadian leadership chose retaliation over partnership — and America is no longer willing to carry them.

D’oh Canada

“..,Outlines the Fracture Points and ..”:

• Canada Trade Minister LeBlanc Makes Mark Carney Look Like an Idiot (CTH)

–There are many people in Canada demanding to see the rough draft proposals of the U.S-Canada trade agreement so they can judge for themselves the issues that Carney claimed were irreconcilable. For those people this interview today by Canadian Trade Minister Dominic LeBlanc will only embolden those requests.
Trade Emissary LeBlanc outlined the major fracture points that drove Prime Minister Mark to reject the deal. I’ll put the full interview below which everyone should watch because what LeBlanc outlined is rather funny. Carney was obviously looking for a reason to walk away, because the fracture points were ridiculously small.
Essentially, it boils down to four issues. !1) Removal of tariffs on Canadian assembled Semi-Trucks. (2) U.S. streaming services writing code for “search engines” in the French language. (3) Canada demanding 5% of gross revenues from U.S. tech platforms, and the last one is silly because it already exists: (4) the U.S. having a right to reject a trade deal made by Canada with a non-market economy, ie. CHINA.

Taking the issues one by one we start with
• U.S. tariffs on Canadian Semi Trucks. Canada wanted tariffs on Big Rigs removed. The U.S. said no. The reason is simple. Big Rigs assembled/built in Canada are falling apart in the USA. Why? Because they are full of cheap Chinese component goods and parts that wear out quickly. The U.S. wants two things on this issue. Either: (1) Make them in the USA, or (2) stop using cheap Chinese component parts. The parts that Canada are using are not even available in the USA because we tariff and reject them, so why should we accept them when Canada installs them? Either quit using Chinese parts (hence, the trade alignment against Chinese imports), or accept a tariff equal to the rate we would apply if the product was coming directly from China.
• U.S. tariffs on Canadian Semi Trucks. Canada wanted tariffs on Big Rigs removed. The U.S. said no. The reason is simple. Big Rigs assembled/built in Canada are falling apart in the USA. Why? Because they are full of cheap Chinese component goods and parts that wear out quickly. The U.S. wants two things on this issue. Either: (1) Make them in the USA, or (2) stop using cheap Chinese component parts. The parts that Canada are using are not even available in the USA because we tariff and reject them, so why should we accept them when Canada installs them? Either quit using Chinese parts (hence, the trade alignment against Chinese imports), or accept a tariff equal to the rate we would apply if the product was coming directly from China.

• Intellectual Property. Canada was demanding 5% of U.S. tech platform gross revenue (not profit, gross), they call it a tax. Canada then uses the “tax revenue” to subsidize Canadian media and information platforms that promote the approved government message. In essence, Canada demands that information providers pay them 5% of their revenue so that Canada can subsidize information providers they approve of. This is what the Canadian government calls “cultural protection.” In reality it is state-run media using a financial system that would make Vladimir Putin blush.
• U.S. Right to Limit Canadian Trade Deals. This point is exponentially ridiculous for Canada to be upset about because the current USMCA/CUSMA already has that clause. The U.S (or Mexico) can exit the USMCA if Canada enters into a trade agreement with a “non-market” economy, ie China. [USMCA Sec 32:10]

Canada was already in violation of the USMCA/CUSMA when they entered into a trade agreement with China and agreed to import Chinese EVs. This action triggered the U.S. to become more focused on the stuff Canada was going to import; hence, the renewed emphasis on the clause.
That’s it. Prime Minister Mark Carney blew up the trade discussion based on his demand that: Canada should be allowed to make any deal they want with China; that Chinese component parts be allowed in Canadian assembled Semi Trucks; that streaming services install a French language search engine; and that tech platforms pay him to censor information and subsidize official narratives.
In other words, Mark Carney was looking for an excuse/justification not to make a trade deal, and make a political statement that would appeal to the uber leftist French Québécois and his partners in Beijing.
Clear enough?
Here’s Dominic LeBlanc:

“.. a teensy little 100,000% rounding error, about how much water data centers require ”

• China’s Data Center Psyop and the 100,000% Rounding Error (Stephen Green)

When I take a particularly cute photo of my 14-week-old puppy, I click the little heart button right there in my camera app. Without me doing anything else, the next time a screensaver comes up — on my laptop, my desktop, or even on the massive living room TV — the new pic joins the older photos scrolling by. Thank you, data centers.

Earlier this year, my wife was delayed by weather bringing our sons home from the airport after their first No Parents! trip together, so she hit the Share ETA button on the CarPlay screen in her Jeep. Virtually instantaneously, I got an alert on my phone letting me know they’d be late and not to worry. Thank you very much for that one, data centers. Sure, the internet is a “series of tubes,” as everyone must be aware by now, but the data doesn’t flow through them on its own.
Yes, AI requires bigger and more energy-hungry data centers — and we can’t seem to get enough AI. AI is either going to evolve itself into Skynet to kill us all, or deliver enough productivity growth to eliminate the deficit and make our accumulated debt look puny. I’m somewhere in the middle. I fully expect someday that my domestic help robot will somehow manage to kneecap me, but will then prove invaluable in nursing me back to health while still keeping the house tidy.
But none of it — not our messaging apps, not our GPS apps, not the website you’re reading right now — none of it works without data centers. To a surprising degree, data centers are the internet. And this country’s embrace of the internet is perhaps the most important among several reasons we left Europe in the economic dust. I’d also add that the reputable messaging apps are generally encrypted end-to-end, so for the first time in history, the general public’s default way of talking to one another, sharing photos, locations, and the like, is secure from prying eyes.
So why all the data center hate? While nearly all of it is ginned up, in my opinion, much of it rests on a “mistake,” a teensy little 100,000% rounding error, about how much water data centers require in Karen Hao’s purportedly nonfiction book, Empire of AI. Here you go:

Author @_KarenHao really messed up the discourse by publishing misinformation that over-reported data center water by 100,000% in her book, blaming the government (she misread the file), and then doing a book tour and selling the book anyways. https://t.co/zBF1OzsUYk pic.twitter.com/23D85kcKKC
— Kane 謝凱堯 (@kane) August 26, 2026

As it turns out, data centers — all data centers; not just the ones dedicated to AI — use less water than golf courses do. In fact, they use a fraction of 1% so small compared to golf courses that it actually could be a rounding error. And yet I can’t log into X without seeing everyone from Bernie Sanders (CPUSA-Vt. Oblast) to low-follower randos calling for a moratorium on data center construction. Remember when 5G radio waves were going to melt our brains and sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids? This is that, but even more important to combat.
But here’s where it really gets weird. I follow this stuff professionally, yet even I had to have a colleague share a link on X — no mainstream media source, naturally — to learn about Hao and her little tiny error. Even though she “discovered” her mistake in November of 2025, the whole data center controversy didn’t gain steam until the summer of 2026. Something stinks — and here is Blume Industries to explain: “Just gonna remind you the journo who produced the bogus water data for data centers now lives in Hong Kong. I’m sure you’re smart enough to figure it out from there.”
So yeah, I’m completely comfortable calling the sprang-up-outta-nowhere data center “debate” a Communist Chinese psyop to kneecap our high-tech edge over the People’s Republic.

“That’s part of the God-given talent you’re born with. It’s not something you can teach.”

• Remembering Dolly Through the Song I Loved First (Chris Queen)

I’ve written extensively here and on my Substack about the musical influences on my life. My mom and aunts were the primary agents of my musical exposure. My mom was a massive fan of The Carpenters and early Beatles, and she had the radio on all the time in the car. My aunts opened my ears to what we now call “classic rock.”

My dad was a different story. His musical tastes were much narrower in the ‘70s. I remember that he had a sticker advertising WPLO, a country station, on his Jeep, but I remember him listening to WBIE (I can still hear the jingle: “WBIE! Georgia’s! Country! Giant!”). He also had two 8-tracks: One was a greatest-hits compilation from Porter Wagoner and Dolly Parton, and the other was what was then Dolly’s current album, Here You Come Again.
The title track connected my parents’ distinct musical worlds. Since it was Dolly’s first hit to crossover to the pop music marketplace, I heard it on the radio in our apartment or in the car with my mom, and I also heard it on the 8-track when I was riding with my dad. I might be wrong, but I think “Here You Come Again” was the first radio song that I learned all the lyrics to. My mom also had the sheet music, and I remember her playing it as I sang along. It was one of my favorite songs on the radio at the time, and it remains my favorite Dolly track.
The album was part of a calculated move on the part of Dolly and her management team to expand her horizons beyond country radio. Her previous album, 1977’s self-produced New Harvest … First Gathering, deliberately incorporated pop and R&B elements but made no splash outside the country marketplace.
For Here You Come Again, Parton turned to Los Angeles-based producer Gary Klein, who enlisted top-notch studio musicians, including keyboardist (and later ultra-pop producer) David Foster and drummer Jim Keltner, to play on the album. The title track, which was also to serve as the first single, wasn’t one of Dolly’s compositions. Instead, “Here You Come Again” came from the pens of Brill Building stalwarts Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil.
Side note: I was precocious enough at age five to be able to read the lyrics and credits on the sheet music. I saw those names, and I couldn’t believe that people would sing songs that other people wrote unless they were in a movie! Even though the album — and especially its title cut — was part of a specific strategy to launch Dolly to pop stardom, Dolly wasn’t about to leave country behind. She talked Klein into adding subtle steel guitar to “Here You Come Again,” and that small detail helped ground the song in both stylistic camps.
Listeners could tell that this song was something different from the intro. Mix Online explains: The rhythm section on the track included Dean Parks (guitar), David Foster (keyboards), David Hungate (bass) and Jim Keltner (drums). The track opens with Foster’s Fender Rhodes. He recalls the session as fairly groundbreaking:
“I played the Fender Rhodes on the basic track,” Foster says. “Then I came up with the idea of duplicating exactly the same part on the acoustic piano, something I—or to my knowledge, no one—had ever done before. It became an interesting sound that years later became a stock ‘push of a button’ sound on many synthesizers, which some even called ‘Fosterized.’ “Also, I remember that while waiting to overdub the acoustic piano, no music was playing in my headphones and the tape op [second engineer] suddenly realized that he still had every track In Record and he ended up erasing about the first 20 seconds of the master,” Foster continues. “They had to go to an earlier take, splice them together and then I did my overdub acoustic piano part.”
Keltner and engineer Armin Steiner said that Dolly’s scratch vocals, which she recorded live with the band, were so good that some of them made the finished record. The arrangement proved that even though “Here You Come Again” was tailor-made for both country and pop radio, it wasn’t a simple track. The song crosses five keys throughout its journey, which made the song even more effective. If you’re not musically inclined, you may think I’m geeking out a bit; if so, skip a paragraph or two. ChatGPT helped me chart out those key changes.
“Here You Come Again” key changes
The key changes get Mann and Weil’s point across: Whenever Dolly (as the protagonist) thinks she’s gotten it all together, here comes that old flame back into her life to knock her off her equilibrium. Each time she thinks she has regained her footing, the song returns in a new key, familiar but no longer quite where she left it. Even before I was better versed in music, I knew that there was something about the sound of the song that was interesting and different.
The crossover gamble paid off. “Here You Come Again” hit number three on the Billboard Hot 100 and number two on the easy listening charts, but it also spent five weeks atop the country charts and won her a Grammy for Best Country Vocal Performance, Female — her first. Better still, it launched her career into the stratosphere. The band and crew recognized something special in Dolly. Her talent and personality dovetailed to make her more than just an ordinary entertainer.
“As a human being—forget about her great gifts as an entertainer— this is the one of the most delightful people we’ve ever had in the entertainment industry,” Steiner told Mix Online. “As a human being, she’s extraordinary. And she has such a beautiful voice, an incredibly identifiable sound, identifiable diction; she’s a fine writer and a great interpreter of lyrics. You believed what she sang. It’s all part of the talent and part of the human being. That’s part of the God-given talent you’re born with. It’s not something you can teach.”

Nearly half a century later, I can appreciate the craftsmanship that I couldn’t have understood at five: Foster’s layered keyboards, the subtle steel guitar, the improbable sequence of key changes, and Dolly’s effortless vocal holding it all together. But when I hear “Here You Come Again,” I still hear my mom playing it on the piano, the radio in her car, and that 8-track in my dad’s Jeep.
Dolly made a record that she intended to cross musical boundaries without leaving its country identity behind, and in our family, it did exactly that. It brought my parents’ different musical worlds together and gave me a song that has followed me for most of my life. Now, whenever those opening notes begin, here she comes again — and for three minutes, I’m five years old all over again.

Too big to fail.

“The worst-case scenario [..] was $1.4tn [..] up to $18bn (over a period of 10 years) is significantly smaller. Meta is not admitting to any wrongdoing…

“Instagram and Facebook’s billions of users provide the company with a goldmine of data, and the data of adults can be used to sell ads.”

• Meta’s $18bn Reckoning For Social Media On Child Safety (BBC)

Meta’s decision to agree to an $18bn (£13.3bn) settlement on Wednesday, to resolve claims that Facebook and Instagram harmed children, came as a surprise. I was expecting weeks of courtroom drama as 29 states – almost two-thirds of North America – took on one US tech giant.Technically, the trial was about children’s online privacy. It was based on a US law called the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), which is nearly 30 years old and predates all of today’s biggest social platforms. It centred around Meta’s historic gathering and use of data belonging to children under the age of 13 over a period of several years.

In reality, it was a co-ordinated attack on the firm’s online safety credentials.Meta, alongside other social media apps, is under fire around the world as 2026 is shaping up to be a year of reckoning for the entire industry – perhaps our days of doomscrolling are numbered. Meta has fought hard, over multiple lawsuits spanning many months and at great expense, to defend its commitment to protecting children on its platforms. More than once, I’ve been invited to detailed presentations at Meta’s London HQ, where senior executives have walked journalists like me through the many safety tools the company has launched over the years designed to give children better protection on its apps.
I have also met the parents of young people who have come to harm on those same platforms, and others who admit to being totally overwhelmed by the sheer number of safety tools that require their oversight – at the last count Meta had more than 60 of them, and that was just on Instagram. The trial went on for just five days, and came to an end before CEO Mark Zuckerberg took to the stand. But it was rough for Meta. Whistleblower Arturo Bejar, who once worked at Instagram, claimed that in the past he had told bosses that harmful stuff was happening to children on the platform, and no action was taken.
Another executive said he didn’t remember writing on a slide deck that sometimes Meta chose to pay fines for violating regulations rather than make changes. Internal memos suggested that the firm knew opt-in tools tended to have low adoption rates, and yet it still launched safety features that were not switched on by default. There had been intense speculation that Meta would have faced hundreds of billions of dollars in fines if it had lost. The worst-case scenario, which would have been the maximum penalty imposed for every single child who used one of its platforms for more than half an hour a day during a 12-year window, was $1.4tn (£1tn) – roughly the same as the company’s entire value.
That of course was never going to happen, but a more realistic figure was still in the hundreds of billions. By comparison, up to $18bn (over a period of 10 years) is significantly smaller. Meta is not admitting to any wrongdoing. You could argue that settling protects its core business – social networks are still the way in which it makes most of its money. Instagram and Facebook’s billions of users provide the company with a goldmine of data, and the data of adults can be used to sell ads. Meta may say it is now laser-focused on AI, but it still needs the vast revenue generated by its social apps.
What is Meta changing?
As part of the settlement, the social media giant has agreed to make a number of changes to the way Instagram and Facebook operate for its youngest users. Some experts say it is long overdue. The new safety barriers include a two-hour time limit across both platforms, which will be a default setting for known teen users. But direct messaging on the platforms will not count towards the daily use limit.Notifications will be muted between midnight and 06:00 and on school days between 08:00 and 15:00.Likes on posts and content will also be entirely hidden on the platforms for teens.
Most of these new features will be made either default or an option for teens within six months. However, new efforts by Meta to better identify which users on its platforms are children will take up to a year to be rolled out. I would be surprised if these measures remain within the confines of the US for very long, as other countries will almost certainly be keen to adopt them too. Meta also says the new features will only truly help children if all of its rivals adopt them as well. It’s a highly competitive industry, but given the global backlash against social media and its impact on children, perhaps others like TikTok and Snapchat may have to follow suit.
The question then is whether children will still bother with them, once they are deliberately toned down into a much blander offering. And perhaps that would bring the social media era to a natural end, as existing adults gradually aged out of it. Arturo Bejar, the ex-Instagram engineer turned whistleblower, says the proof of the pudding will be in whether the new teen safety features are effective. “At the end of the day, Meta needs to be held accountable for results, not efforts,” he told me.

“Do you really wanna live in a world without Coca-Cola?”

• James Carville Releases His Signature Uncut Product (Turley)

In Breaking Bad, the character Walter White explains to a major drug dealer why cheaper knockoffs of his signature Blue Sky methamphetamine are just not enough: “So… it’s grade-school tee-ball vs. the New York Yankees. Yours is just some tepid… off-brand, generic cola. What I’m making is classic Coke.”

This week, James Carville released his own uncut, undiluted classic product to a nation of rage addicts. Blue Sky rage. What set off Carville was telling. He and others were outraged that House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries met with Trump’s son-in-law and close adviser Jared Kushner to discuss areas of common ground. Such dialogue “with the enemy” is unthinkable in an “age of rage,” particularly for someone like Carville who previously threatened that, once Democrats are back in power, Trump supporters would be treated the same way as Nazi collaborators after World War II.
Carville went into his signature berserker trance on his podcast appropriately called the “Politics War Room”: “These people are a pack of felons and traitors, and you do not meet with them! You do not meet with them. There’s only one thing you can do with people that you genuinely believe deep inside of every fabric of your body are a pack of thieves and a pack of traitors.” As usual, Carville delivers the line with the intensity of a man seconds away from a self-induced stroke. The message, however, is clear. Anyone seeking a middle ground or compromise is a traitor and will be dealt with the same way as collaborators once Democrats regain power.
What is really on display is rage politics. When you feed this addiction, you have to keep your product pure to avoid the pain of rage withdrawal. Carville is asking Democrats the same question as Walter White: “Do you really wanna live in a world without Coca-Cola?” Go with the classic. Go with the rage. Over on the social media safe space for liberals, BlueSky, Carville is being heralded as a prophet of furor. It was a perfect combination. BlueSky was created for liberals to remove themselves, particularly from X, because of conservatives returning to social media after years of censorship.
The media billed BlueSky as the future, as many predicted the rapid death of X. It did not exactly work out that way. Many liberal influencers proclaiming their abandonment of X never actually left and many others have returned. BlueSky is now little more than a progressive boutique in comparison to X. It has an estimated 43 million users as opposed to as many as 600 million for X. (Monthly active users drop to around 27 million versus more than 300 million). Yet, the business model of BlueSky is to offer a protected zone for liberals to rave amongst themselves without the distraction of as many opposing views or voices.
It is a social platform that is premised on the same “you do not meet with them” screed of Carville.Recently, Carville has lashed out at the far left of his party, such as Democratic Socialists, over their radical agenda. However, he and other establishment figures are primarily objecting to the fact that these radical policies will not succeed in the election and return them to power.
Carville has no problem trashing the system to secure and maintain power. He previously called for packing the Supreme Court, but notably told Democrats not to actually talk about it: “If the Democrats win the presidency and both houses of Congress, I think on day one, they should expand the Supreme Court to 13. F—k it. Eat our dust. Don’t run on it. Don’t talk about it. Just do it.”
Other Democratic leaders continue to try to co-opt the mob for their own uses. Senate Minority Leader dismissed questions about the DSA platform in eliminating the presidency, the Supreme Court, and the Senate. These are small differences, according to Schumer, compared with the need to win elections: “Not everyone has the same exact view on every single issue.”
One of those small disagreements is the very existence of the institution that Schumer so desperately wants to lead.Carville and Schumer, however, appear to agree on the key element of the political strategy in keeping the rage alive. The greatest threat to that strategy is any dialogue of Democrats with their Republican neighbors. If reason were to break out before the elections, all could be lost.
The effort reflects the fact that the rage in an age of rage eventually burns off. People look into a mirror on both sides and realize that we have become grotesque like Carville by yielding (indeed enjoying) the anger and hate. Once people start to talk again, it is harder to hate so completely and blindly that hate traffickers need.So Blue Sky rage is hitting the streets. The Classic coke of hate to be injected directly into the veins of a nation of rage addicts. After all, as Walter White asked his fellow traffickers, “Do you really wanna live in a world without Coca-Cola?”

https://twitter.com/MAGAVoice/status/2092344675533561922?s=20

SpaceX has announced two mega-projects representing at least $116.8 billion in combined investment, all within less than three weeks:

• Terafab in Texas, the world’s largest chip manufacturing facility.

• Starbase, Louisiana, the world’s largest spaceport.

Together, they are… pic.twitter.com/o64tI8kTo8
— DogeDesigner (@cb_doge) August 25, 2026

Starbase Louisiana will ultimately have over a dozen launch towers, enabling more than 30 Starship flights per day and making it the biggest launch site on Earth!

SpaceX makes sci-fi real. https://t.co/C7Ht0U12ba
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 25, 2026

🚨 ELON MUSK ON TESLA’S VALUATION:

“I agree with Ark Invest and Cathie Wood that autonomy, robotic taxis, makes Tesla about a $5 trillion company.

The Optimus robot, I think, makes Tesla a $25 trillion company.”
pic.twitter.com/pwj6d4A19x
— America News (@AmericaPartyX) August 25, 2026

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

Debt Rattle January 13 2025

Jan 132025

January 13, 2025 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 10:52 am Finance Tagged with: California, FISA-702, Greenland, Jan 6, JD Vance, Meta, Newsom, Overton Window, Tulsi Gabbard, Waltz 67 Responses »

Pablo Picasso Self portrait 1906

• Trump Blew The Overton Window So Wide Open, Anything Seems Possible (Peters)

• Trump’s Plan For Greenland ‘Not A Crazy Idea’ – Former Top NATO Commander (RT)

• Greenland ‘Most Welcome’ To Join US – Musk (RT)

• Trump Energizes Greenland Independence Movement (Mish)

• Trump: California Fires ‘One Of The Worst Catastrophes’ In US History (JTN)

• Ukraine Must Acknowledge Territorial ‘Reality’ – Trump Adviser Waltz (RT)

• Biden Laying Russia Sanctions Trap For Trump – WaPo (RT)

• Anti-Russian Sanctions Killing German Companies – Wagenknecht (RT)

• Poles Tired Of Ukrainians – Defense Minister (RT)

• The Walls Close in on Zelensky (Jim Rickards)

• In the Western World You Become Respectable by Selling Out the People (PCR)

• Weaponizing Law Enforcement Against Americans (Spivak)

• Tulsi Gabbard Now Supports FISA-702 to Get Confirmed as Head of DNI (CTH)

• Biden Eyes Preemptive Pardons Amid Trump’s Return (RT)

• Vance Says Trump Won’t Issue Pardons for Violent Jan. 6 Defendants (ET)

• Biden Calls Meta Decision to End Fact-Checking Program ‘Really Shameful’ (ET)

https://twitter.com/i/status/1878102416429883684

Cali Fire

You can’t make this up

California called for help to neighboring states for firefighters, “Did all those fire rigs and personnel go straight to the fire lines? No, they did not. They went to Sacramento.”

“Why? Because California says if you send us your fire rig, it must first… pic.twitter.com/3xXmNpwQHg

— Wall Street Apes (@WallStreetApes) January 11, 2025

How Trump was made a felon. Listen well.
https://twitter.com/i/status/1878395613018026473

JD
https://twitter.com/i/status/1878456747850956958

Tucker Newsom

Here’s why Governor Gavin Newsom will NEVER resign despite being responsible for the Los Angeles fires and financially destroying California

Tucker Carlson explains the truth about Gavin Newsom “I know Gavin Newsom. I think a lot about Gavin Newsom, many different things about… pic.twitter.com/2qFl8VzhFb

— Wall Street Apes (@WallStreetApes) January 12, 2025

“..the feasibility of a policy idea depends not on its inherent merits but on whether it falls within the range of public acceptance..”

• Trump Blew The Overton Window So Wide Open, Anything Seems Possible (Peters)

“Wayne, would you like to be governor of Canada?” asked Trump, speaking with his buddy Gretzky, tugging at the Overton Window with all his might. “MAKE GREENLAND GREAT AGAIN,” the President-Elect tweeted on Truth Social, sending his oldest son north with a box of red hats. He wouldn’t rule out taking the Panama Canal by force. And with each such suggestion, the window widened further. The Overton Window is a concept in political science and sociology that refers to the range of policies or ideas considered acceptable in public discourse at a given time. Like most things in life, I learned about it rather late. “We’re going to be changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, which has a beautiful ring that covers a lot of territory, the Gulf of America. What a beautiful name,” Trump said at Mar-a-Lago, prying the window open so wide that nearly anything seems possible, plausible, probable.

Say such things enough times, amplify the words using our AI-enabled social media machines, and presto, nothing’s shocking. But not only that, AI will soon converge with quantum computing. “The Willow processor performed a computation in under five minutes that would take one of today’s fastest supercomputers 10 septillion years. It lends credence to the notion that quantum computation occurs in many parallel universes, in line with the idea that we live in a multiverse,” wrote Google, presenting its latest breakthrough, cracking our perception of reality. As the window widens fully, not only is nothing impossible, but almost anything can seem reasonable. The right and left tails of every distribution lengthen and fatten. And we are left unanchored, adrift, in an endless sea of wild possibility, volatility. “I’m going to give you a report on drones about one day into the administration, because I think it’s ridiculous that they’re not telling you about what’s going on with the drones,” pledged the President-Elect.

Windows. John Overton posited that ideas travel through stages, moving from being seen as extreme or unthinkable to becoming widely accepted and adopted as policy. Democracy was once considered unthinkable. Universal suffrage too. Emancipation. Most things that matter have traveled this path.

Here are Overton’s six stages:
• Unthinkable – outside of acceptable thought.
• Radical – at the edge of discussion.
• Acceptable – starting to gain traction.
• Sensible – reasonable and widely discussed.
• Popular – widely supported.
• Policy – acted upon and implemented.

Overton introduced this framework to describe how the feasibility of a policy idea depends not on its inherent merits but on whether it falls within the range of public acceptance. He argued that public policy is constrained by this “window” of acceptable ideas and politicians tend to stay within the window to maintain public support. But what was yesterday’s unthinkable can become tomorrow’s policy as the window widens, shifts left, or right. And what moves the window is naturally tied into one of life’s great mysteries, the superorganism we call humanity. Overton’s framework helps us make sense of society, markets too, risks, opportunities. I try to look at emerging investment themes through this lens. With each move of the window, power structures shift, capital flows adjust, new winners emerge, incumbents struggle or fail. The nimble survive, thrive.

With such stakes, those with influence are desperate to guide the process. Politicians, propagandists, business leaders, religious leaders, union bosses, authors, artists, athletes, advocacy groups, lobbyists, social media influencers, and now AI. There was a time, not so long ago when it was radical or even unthinkable to call network news fake. No longer. And now we openly joke about Canada becoming our 51st state. Where that leads is anyone’s guess, but the window has widened. Greenland’s Prime Minister announced today that he’s ready to speak with Trump. I started trading in 1989 and never in that time has the Overton Window shifted this rapidly across so many dimensions. There’s no precedent for it in modern history. And this dynamic is becoming a new market fundamental.

But it’s not just Trump. Javier Millei has thrown open an anti-statist libertarian window that had been nailed shut for as long as I’ve been alive. Argentina had the best performing stock market in the world last year. This is breathtaking change. And in roughly two short years, we went from the FTX apocalypse to serious talk of strategic sovereign Bitcoin reserves. That window is wide open. Intertwined with both Millei and Bitcoin is radical talk of sovereign insolvency throughout the western world. Before it’s over, make no mistake, we’ll be talking about massive entitlement cuts. But for today, that idea is stuck in the unthinkable stage.

The best idea for Greenland?!

• Trump’s Plan For Greenland ‘Not A Crazy Idea’ – Former Top NATO Commander (RT)

US President-elect Donald Trump’s plan to acquire Greenland from Denmark is not a “crazy idea,” former NATO supreme allied commander in Europe, James Stavridis, has said. He, however, dismissed the possibility of military intervention, instead advocating for economic engagement as a means to strengthen ties with the region. Speaking at ‘The Cats Roundtable’ with John Catsimatidis on WABC 770 radio on Sunday, the retired admiral described Greenland as a “strategic goldmine for the United States,” highlighting its geopolitical position and abundant natural resources. “It sits at the very top of the North Atlantic. It protects approaches to our own country – the Atlantic Ocean – so it is geographically very important,” Stavridis said. He added that the region is rich in rare minerals and likely has vast oil and gas deposits.

“And it’s huge, a huge land mass. It’s three times the size of Texas,” he said, agreeing with the host that Greenland is “almost a better deal than Alaska.” “And here’s my point. We already almost bought Greenland,” Stavridis said. “We almost bought it at the same time when we bought Alaska, back in the 1860s. So it’s not a crazy idea.” The former NATO commander ruled out using “military force to attack Greenland or Denmark,” arguing that the US should focus on economic engagement to counter Russian and Chinese influence in the region. “We could do an awful lot in terms of business, investment, box out the Russians, box out the Chinese, and work very closely with Greenland,” he said. He added that Greenland “doesn’t have to become the 51st state, but it could certainly be an economic objective for us.”

Trump first floated the idea of purchasing Greenland in 2019, a proposal that was swiftly rejected by Danish and Greenlandic officials. He revived the idea last month, describing the ownership of the Arctic island as an absolute necessity” for US security. Greenlandic pro-independence prime minister, Mute Egede, ruled out selling the island but said on Friday that he was “ready to talk” with Trump. “We have a desire to be the master of our own house,” he said. Although Denmark rejected Trump’s proposal, Copenhagen has reportedly floated to Trump the possibility of boosting US military presence on Greenland, which already hosts an American base. A self-governing Danish territory since 1979, Greenland has gradually been pursuing greater sovereignty. The island currently has its own government, but Denmark retains control over foreign affairs and defense.

US needs an arctic base.

• Greenland ‘Most Welcome’ To Join US – Musk (RT)

Tech billionaire Elon Musk has expressed support for Greenland potentially becoming part of the United States, after incoming President Donald Trump renewed interest in acquiring the Danish self-governed island. Musk made the remarks on Sunday, writing on X: “If the people of Greenland want to be part of America, which I hope they do, they would be most welcome!” In doing so, he was responding to a recent poll by the University of Copenhagen indicating that the majority of Greenlanders favor independence. Musk’s comments came after Trump voiced support for the acquisition of the island, describing it as an “absolute necessity” and a “national security” matter. The president-elect first suggested purchasing Greenland during his first term in 2019, but the idea went nowhere at the time due to opposition both from Greenland and Denmark.

Greenlandic Prime Minister Mute Egede has rejected the possibility of selling the island to the US, but said on Friday that “we are ready to talk” with Trump. He noted that “we have a desire for independence, a desire to be the master of our own house… This is something everyone should respect.” On Saturday, Axios reported, citing sources, that Denmark, Washington’s NATO ally, had sent “private messages” to Trump signaling that it is open to discussing boosting US military presence in Greenland. The island of about 60,000 people is already home to a US military base and plays a key role in NATO’s defense because of its strategic location, which allows it to control vital Arctic shipping lanes that are gradually becoming more navigable due to global warming.

An autonomous territory of Denmark since 1979, Greenland has been gradually seeking more sovereignty. The island currently has its own government, but Denmark retains control over foreign affairs and defense. A 2019 poll indicated that 67.8% of Greenlanders favor independence from Denmark within the next two decades.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1878454609720606735

They’ll always depend on someone. Just got to choose who.

• Trump Energizes Greenland Independence Movement (Mish)

The Wall Street Journal reports “Trump’s Talk of Buying Greenland Energizes Island’s Independence Movement”. “Greenland is a self-ruling part of the Kingdom of Denmark. The Danish government says it is willing to grant Greenland full independence if there is local support, and recent Greenlandic elections and polls indicate there is. Trump’s recent threat of a trade war with Denmark is changing the negotiating dynamic, says Ulrik Pram Gad, a senior researcher at the Danish Institute for International Studies. The Danish government now might be more open to agreeing a divorce deal that includes some continued payments to ease Greenland’s path to independence, he says. “My prognosis is that the Danish government will accept it in the next few years,” he says.

“An independent Greenland would then be free to forge its own security or economic ties with the U.S., Denmark or anyone else. In April, Greenland goes to the polls in a vote that could fire the starter gun on independence for the territory of 57,000 people. The last time elections were held, pro-independence parties got 80% of the vote. The prime minister of Greenland made a New Year’s address to the nation saying that a draft constitution for the country has been prepared and that the independence process should be triggered. “It is now time to take the next step for our country,” Múte Egede said. “Like other countries in the world, we must work to remove the obstacles to cooperation—which we can describe as the shackles of the colonial era—and move on.”

“A 2009 Danish law lays out how Greenland can take the first step in the process: It must notify the Danish government, the two must negotiate a divorce agreement and the deal must then be ratified by a referendum in Greenland. The Greenlandic government has commissioned legal experts to work out the details of how step one would work with a two- year deadline. Pro-independence campaigners in Greenland would like to adopt a “free association” model, similar to the relationship between the Marshall Islands and the U.S. or the Cook Islands and New Zealand. Some of Trump’s advisers have privately acknowledged a sale of Greenland is unlikely, but an expansion of U.S. military and financial presence on the island is a possibility. A poll in 2021 showed that 69% of Greenlanders favored more cooperation with the U.S., compared with 39% who favored tighter cooperation with China.”

Trump’s Offer to Buy Greenland. Some people thought I was crazy when I posted Trump’s Offer to Buy Greenland Is Not as Preposterous as it Sounds. A free association model may be more likely, but don’t rule out an outright purchase. There are only about 59,000 Greenland citizens. I proposed an offer of $2 million each. That would only be $118 billion. Greenland would be cheap at double the price if I am correct about the mineral deposits.

Critical Materials Risk Assessment. Our Department of Energy has placed some of the rare earth minerals we need for weapons systems, wind turbines, batteries, semiconductors, cell phones, and aircraft on a critical materials list. Nearly all of them are mined or refined in China. If Trump increases tariffs on China by 60 percent, China could easily shut down rare earth exports. I have been warning about this for years China controls more than 80% of the world’s supply of tungsten and about 90% of global magnesium production China has an effective monopoly over processing major heavy rare earths – Dysprosium (Dy) and Terbium (Tb), and Light Rare Earths – Neodymium (Nd) and Praseodymium (Pr).

On December 3, I commented China Halts Rare Exports Used by US Technology Companies and the Military. This is China’s advance salvo at Trump tariffs. It comes one day after the Biden administration expanded curbs on the sale of advanced American technology to China. The US gets rare earths from allies who get them from China. But don’t rule out the possibility that China shuts off all access.

“There is death all over the place.”

• Trump: California Fires ‘One Of The Worst Catastrophes’ In US History (JTN)

President-elect Donald Trump blasted California and Los Angeles officials for their handling of the wildfires that have been raging for nearly a week. “The fires are still raging in L.A.,” Trump wrote on Truth Social early Sunday morning. “The incompetent pols have no idea how to put them out. Thousands of magnificent houses are gone, and many more will soon be lost. There is death all over the place.” He said that this is turning out to be “one of the worst catastrophes in the history of our Country.” “They just can’t put out the fires. What’s wrong with them?” he continued, according to The Hill. Last week Trump wrote on Truth Social that “Governor Gavin Newscum refused to sign the water restoration declaration put before him that would have allowed millions of gallons of water, from excess rain and snow melt from the North, to flow daily into many parts of California.”

“NO WATER IN THE FIRE HYDRANTS, NO MONEY IN FEMA. THIS IS WHAT JOE BIDEN IS LEAVING ME. THANKS JOE!” Trump posted later that day. Newsom pushed back on X regarding Trump’s claim about the water restoration declaration. Newsweek, among others, fact-checked the claim about the water restoration declaration and concluded, “The notion that Newsom therefore turned down a ‘declaration,’ referring to federal action that Trump introduced anyway, is not accurate. However, it is clear that the governor has opposed Trump’s actions on water policy, drawing a sharp response from Trump in turn.”

The death toll has climbed to 16 as of Saturday evening. LA County has declared a local health emergency as over 40,000 acres have burned, according to Cal Fire. While this is clearly a combination of natural and environmental phenomenon, arson, and government failure and mismanagement, this catastrophe will be analyzed and characterized for decades to come, often through a political lens as the region and the country come to grips with the realities and implications on the ground.

They take it step by step.

• Ukraine Must Acknowledge Territorial ‘Reality’ – Trump Adviser Waltz (RT)

It is not possible to “expel every Russian from every inch” of soil claimed by Ukraine, including the Crimean peninsula, incoming US National Security Adviser Michael Waltz has admitted. Acknowledging “that reality” has become a major step toward resolving the conflict between Moscow and Kiev, Waltz told ABC News in an interview on Sunday, adding that this idea is now in the process of being accepted by Ukraine’s backers. “Everybody knows that this [conflict] has to end somehow diplomatically. I just don’t think it’s realistic to say we’re going to expel every Russian from every inch of Ukrainian soil. Even Crimea – President[-elect Donald] Trump has acknowledged that reality, and I think it has been a huge step forward that the entire world is acknowledging that reality,” Waltz stated.

Waltz suggested that accepting the fact that returning to Ukraine’s original post-Soviet borders is unrealistic now opens the way to addressing the question of “how do we no longer perpetuate this conflict and how… we no longer allow it to escalate in a way that drags in the entire world.” The remarks appeared to be reminiscent of statements previously made by other close Trump allies, including his vice president, J.D. Vance. Shortly ahead of the November election, Vance suggested Kiev could end up in a situation where it decides to cede some lands to Russia.

The stance signaled by the incoming US administration sharply contrasts with the goal repeatedly proclaimed by Kiev of regaining the entirety of its post-Soviet territory. This has been accompanied by an explicit refusal by Ukraine to engage in any meaningful negotiations with Russia. Moscow, however, regards the five formerly Ukrainian regions, including Kherson, Zaporozhye, Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, as well as Crimea, as integral parts of its territory. Crimea broke away from Ukraine in the aftermath of the 2014 Maidan coup in Kiev, joining Russia via a referendum shortly thereafter. The four other regions were incorporated into Russia in late 2022 after the local population overwhelmingly backed such a move during separate referendums. Last year, Moscow demanded that Kiev pull its troops out of the areas it still controls in its former regions in order to begin the long-stalled negotiation process.

“Key obstacles include the legal framework under which the sanctions are authorized and the likelihood of strong congressional resistance..”

• Biden Laying Russia Sanctions Trap For Trump – WaPo (RT)

The administration of US President Joe Biden has set a sanctions trap for President-elect Donald Trump, making it politically and legally challenging to roll back sweeping measures targeting Russia’s energy sector, according to a report by the Washington Post. The newspaper claims that Biden’s actions could create significant hurdles for Trump if he seeks to lift the restrictions. Key obstacles include the legal framework under which the sanctions are authorized and the likelihood of strong congressional resistance. Republican lawmakers have previously pushed for tougher penalties, potentially complicating Trump’s efforts to reverse course. “It’s entirely up to [the next administration] to determine whether, when, and on what terms they might lift any sanctions we put in place,” a senior Biden official is quoted as saying. However, current sanctions laws give Congress the power to block any move to ease restrictions.

This framework leaves Trump with limited options, potentially forcing him to maintain the pressure on Moscow despite his calls for a quick settlement in Ukraine. Michael Waltz, Trump’s incoming national security adviser, has argued for leveraging the sanctions to encourage Russian President Vladimir Putin into peace talks. In an article for The Economist before the election, Waltz wrote: “If [Putin] refuses to talk, Washington can… provide more weapons to Ukraine with fewer restrictions. Faced with this pressure, Mr. Putin will probably take the opportunity to wind the conflict down.” Targeting oil giants Gazprom Neft and Surgutneftegas, as well as 183 oil tankers, the latest US measures are designed to strike at Russia’s energy industry, which helps fund its budget. They also tighten the US Treasury Department’s license, restricting Moscow’s ability to be paid in dollars for energy exports.

The timing – just days before Trump’s inauguration – has drawn accusations from Moscow of deliberate sabotage. “Of course, we are aware that the administration will try to leave the most difficult legacy possible in bilateral relations to Trump and his associates,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said ahead of the sanctions announcement. Biden officials have framed the sanctions as a long-term strategy. “We believe our actions are leaving a solid foundation upon which the next administration can build,” one official said, predicting the measures would cost Russia billions in monthly revenue and force “hard decisions” between sustaining its economy. With the sanctions tied to bipartisan legislation, any rollback is expected to face resistance in Congress, leaving Trump constrained as he takes office, the Washington Post added.

“The sanctions have nothing to do with morality, they have nothing to do with human rights, they have nothing to do with the love of peace, they are simply a stimulus program for the US economy…”

• Anti-Russian Sanctions Killing German Companies – Wagenknecht (RT)

Western sanctions imposed on Russia are “killing” German companies and enriching the American economy, Sahra Wagenknecht, the leader of Germany’s left-wing BSW party, said during an election conference on Sunday. The delegates of the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance – Reason and Justice (BSW) gathered in the city of Bonn to adopt the platform for the Bundestag election that will take place next month. During her speech, Wagenknecht refused to blame Russia for the ongoing Ukraine conflict. “The sanctions have nothing to do with morality, they have nothing to do with human rights, they have nothing to do with the love of peace, they are simply a stimulus program for the US economy and a killer program for German and European companies,” Wagenknecht said.

She called for the restoration of the gas imports from Russia. “We simply have to tie our energy imports with the criteria of the lowest price and not any kind of double standards or ideology,” she stated. The left-wing politician condemned Washington’s foreign policy, alerting the audience about “the blood trail of US proxy wars” around the globe. She stressed that the German chancellor must not be “a vassal” of the US. BSW co-leader Amira Mohamed Ali said that the party stands for “a strong, fair and sovereign Germany.” The right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) party held its conference in Riesa, Saxony on Saturday. The delegates rejected a motion condemning Russia and called for a diplomatic resolution of the conflict. The snap election was called after Germany’s ruling three-party coalition collapsed last month due to disagreements over the budget.

“..especially when people here see young Ukrainian men driving the latest cars or staying in five-star hotels.”

• Poles Tired Of Ukrainians – Defense Minister (RT)

Poles are “fatigued” of Ukrainian migrants in their country, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of National Defense Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz has stated. The official partially attributed this sentiment to the sight of young men leading an ostentatious lifestyle in the EU nation instead of defending their homeland. Nearly a million Ukrainians currently reside in Poland, according to UN estimates. While Poland opened its doors to those fleeing the neighboring country following the escalation of the Russia-Ukraine conflict in February 2022, attitudes towards Ukrainians among Poles have somewhat soured since then. In an interview to the Financial Times published on Sunday, Kosiniak-Kamysz said: “Of course there is fatigue in Polish society, and it is understandable especially when people here see young Ukrainian men driving the latest cars or staying in five-star hotels.”

In October, the official voiced identical criticisms, arguing that young Ukrainian men flaunting their wealth were an affront to Polish taxpayers, who contribute to Warsaw’s military and financial aid to Kiev. Around the same time, the Center for Public Opinion Research published a poll indicating that some 67% of Polish citizens were in favor of deporting male Ukrainian migrants back home. Referring to a recent spat over the delivery of the remaining Polish MiG-29 fighter jets, the defense chief on Sunday also suggested that the Ukrainian leadership would do well to “remember that when others were only sending helmets, we sent tanks.”

In November 2024, Kosiniak-Kamysz similarly suggested that Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky had a “short memory.” A month prior, Kiev slammed its NATO backers, and Poland in particular, over their failure to provide previously promised Soviet-era warplanes. Warsaw clarified that it needed the remaining MiG-29 fighter jets to ensure its own security before the F-35s that it has ordered arrive. In his interview to the FT, Kosiniak-Kamysz also ruled out deploying Polish peacekeepers to Ukraine once Kiev and Moscow seal a truce, calling for “greater burden sharing and diversification within NATO” instead.

“Trump has his work cut out for him. But he is the only person in the world today who stands a chance at ending this war.”

• The Walls Close in on Zelensky (Jim Rickards)

The walls are closing in on Ukraine’s President Zelensky. In a meeting with allies in Germany this week, the embattled leader requested NATO troops on the ground in Ukraine. “Our goal is to find as many instruments as possible to force Russia into peace. I believe that such deployment of partners’ contingents is one of the best instruments. Let’s be more practical in making it possible.” Nothing about this proposal is “practical”. Even if Zelensky is speaking about peacekeeping troops as part of a settlement, which isn’t clear, it’s still a fundamentally crazy idea. Simply put, it would bring us to the brink of nuclear war. Of course, this isn’t the first time Zelensky has suggested that NATO should send troops to fight and die in this war. But this latest instance is noteworthy because it comes just ahead of President Trump’s inauguration. Given the circumstances, the move signals desperation.

President Trump has stood his ground on this issue thus far. Just this week he acknowledged that NATO’s courtship of Ukraine was a major cause of the war, noting that if Ukraine were to join the Western military alliance, “then Russia has somebody right on their doorstep, and I could understand their feelings about that.” Trump correctly blames Biden for promising Ukraine NATO membership and escalating the war. In early December, Trump’s team conveyed the message that Ukraine would need to make major concessions to end the war. Those concessions will probably involve giving up land already captured by Russia, agreeing to a form of disarmament, and pledging to never join NATO. This was an important shift, as it became clear even to the biggest hawks that Ukraine wasn’t going to recapture much, if any lost territory. And forget about Crimea.

Trump’s views on Ukraine are certainly unique in Washington D.C., But his base is ready for the war to end, and this issue was one of the keys to his landslide victory. Meanwhile, it’s unclear whether Zelensky and the Ukrainian deep state would agree to such concessions. It’s also unclear whether they truly have a say in the matter, unless they’re prepared to go it alone against Russia. But it’s also not clear if Russia would agree to such a deal. Putin could insist upon an end to sanctions on Russia, and a return of their frozen assets.There’s also a chance that Russia won’t want to give Ukraine a break to re-arm itself. NATO has already pulled a fast one on Russia once, during the Minsk accords from 2014-2021. Former German Chancellor Angela Merkel has admitted this peace deal was in actuality a stall tactic to give Ukraine more time to build its military capabilities.

So President Putin may want to press the attack, eliminate Ukraine’s military capabilities, and gain more territory. Russia is advancing along almost the entire frontline. Its use of hypersonic missiles, artillery, drones, and guided glide bombs has devastated Ukrainian strongholds. Ukrainian forces have been forced to fall back into far less favorable defensive positions, and this does not bode well for their outlook. The waste of life in this conflict is exponentially larger than the public has been told. In December of 2024, President Zelensky claimed that only 43,000 of his nation’s troops had been killed in the war so far. In truth, upwards of 600,000 Ukrainian soldiers have likely died. On paper, the Ukrainian army is over one million strong. But across the line, foxholes are empty. Where are all the soldiers?

Russia has likely lost at least 100,000 soldiers KIA as well, though they haven’t released any specific numbers. When the truth about this war comes out, it will shock anyone who is still paying attention at that point. Make no mistake. Trump has his work cut out for him. But he is the only person in the world today who stands a chance at ending this war. I believe he’ll get it done. But the cost in terms of geopolitical capital may be high.

Paul Craig Roberts: “I keep waiting [for] the day that every member of the French Legion of Honor is arrested for being a patriot..”

• In the Western World You Become Respectable by Selling Out the People (PCR)

Two themes to which I return are the difficulty of effecting change and the disappearance of ethnic nations in the West. What is going on right now in France is a story of both together. Marine Le Pen’s political party, National Rally (formerly National Front), is the largest French party, but it is kept from office by all other parties combining against it. Le Pen’s party has stood for French ethnicity as opposed to a diverse Tower of Babel. In Europe an ethnic-based national state has become associated with Hitler’s Third Reich. Consequently, the French establishment has branded the National Rally racist and even Nazi. By branding the National Rally in this way, the French establishment endeavors to make Le Pen’s party, not immigrant-invaders, the main threat to France. The French establishment and French left-wing have equated hating Le Pen with resisting fascism.

But it is not working. Native French are awakening to the fact that their civilization and their culture are being transformed by waves of immigrant-invaders and that France is ceasing to be French. So the French establishment has focused on Marine Le Pen herself with the lawfare made famous in America with the false indictments of Donald Trump. Le Pen faces the prospect of a devastating prison sentence plus five years of political ineligibility on the charge that she used European Parliament funds where she is represented to pay for National Front employees. All parties do the same thing, but the investigation was limited to Marine Le Pen. We are witnessing the French establishment’s selective use of law to eliminate a perceived threat.

On January 7 Le Pen’s father, Jean-Marie, the founder of the party, passed away. The French left-wing, or perhaps it was the Establishment, celebrated his death with fireworks on the Place de la Republique. French Establishment commitment to diversity, the EU, and globalism requires the death of a French patriot to be celebrated. I keep waiting [for] the day that every member of the French Legion of Honor is arrested for being a patriot. One would think that the insult to Jean-Marie and the sentencing of Marine would strengthen Le Pen’s party as France’s only representative. But according to an article by Pierre Levy the National Rally’s new leader, Jordan Bardella, craves respectability. He has succumbed to the temptation of gaining office by making the National Front acceptable to the establishment.

The question in my mind is: Will Trump also choose to become respectable? When change is desperately required, dictatorships are more easily overthrown than democracies. In democracies the system permits well-financed interest groups to dominate the countries political, legal, media, entertainment, and educational institutions. A ruling establishment becomes institutionalized in the countries’ institutions. Attempts to bring governance back to service to the people from service to the establishment requires the equivalent of a religious revival or the blood of a Leninist revolution, the consequences of which can be worst than what was overthrown. Over the course of my lifetime I have witnessed the dissolution of the belief system that is Western civilization. The voices that have attempted to defend civilization have been weak. The very definition of civilization has changed. Are Western peoples sufficiently aware and educated to face this challenge?

“Above all, the administration must not redirect targeting—it must eradicate these stains on the American soul.”

• Weaponizing Law Enforcement Against Americans (Spivak)

Reports released by two House committees in December shine a harsh light on the deceptions and oppressive tactics utilized by numerous federal agencies, the Intelligence Community, and leaders of the Democratic Party. During the last year of the first Trump Administration, agencies within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), State Department, and Justice Department (DOJ) initiated improper contacts with media in an effort to censor conservative views. These agencies also took steps to interfere in the 2020 election to benefit Joe Biden. The Biden-Harris Administration supercharged the weaponization of the federal government against the American people. With the active participation of the media, the administration followed a whole-of-government effort to collude with, and coerce, the media to suppress and censor conservatives and others who opposed progressive goals.

It threatened parents with terrorist “threat tagging” and visits from the FBI for speaking their minds, stretched statutory authority beyond recognition to prosecute Donald Trump and his supporters, harassed and penalized whistleblowers, invaded bank privacy, sent heavily armed federal agents into private homes, and brought an unprecedented barrage of litigation against states to force them into compliance with the administration’s unconstitutional goals. On December 17, 2024, the House Administration Committee’s Subcommittee on Oversight (Administration Subcommittee) released its report on the events surrounding January 6, 2021 and the politicization of the Select Committee (January 6 Committee) established by then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi to investigate those events. Three days later, the House Judiciary Committee’s Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government (Justice Subcommittee) released a 17,000-page final report detailing the administrative state’s and the Biden-Harris Administration’s repressive censorship enterprise and other abuses.

Based on the evidence described in these reports, there are two inescapable conclusions: (1) regardless of the administration in office, the Deep State in DHS, DoD, DOJ, IRS, the Intelligence Community, and other agencies have arrogated to themselves unconstitutional and unlawful powers to infringe individual liberties, expand rules, and use force to suppress conservatives’ goals, religion, and free speech; and (2) the Biden-Harris Administration, Pelosi, and leading Democrats endorsed, supported, facilitated, and led the expansion of these efforts. These reports are products of extensive investigations and include copious evidence. Though the Administration Subcommittee’s report can be faulted for its angry tone, a vainglorious pandering to its chairman, Barry Loudermilk, and sometimes hyperbolic conclusions, it provides compelling evidence of wrongdoing.

Broader in scope and more thoroughly researched, the Justice Subcommittee’s report is the product of a detailed inquiry into a broad betrayal of trust. Justice Subcommittee Chairman Jim Jordan is to be commended for uncovering problems and taking steps that have already ameliorated some of these practices. The findings in these reports show why the Trump Administration must clean house. That is why Trump has nominated sometimes controversial individuals such as Tulsi Gabbard, Kash Patel, Pete Hegseth, Pam Bondi, John Ratcliffe, Russell Vought, and Rick Grenell. It explains Trump’s impulsive, properly withdrawn nomination of Matt Gaetz and the creation of DOGE as an advisor outside of government. It is why so many of Trump’s appointees have expressed concern about the agencies they have been selected to lead. Above all, the administration must not redirect targeting—it must eradicate these stains on the American soul.

Feels like the Matrix.

• Tulsi Gabbard Now Supports FISA-702 to Get Confirmed as Head of DNI (CTH)

As the story is told, and it aligns with every scintilla of researched data on the darkest and deepest elements of the Deep State, DNI nominee Tulsi Gabbard has reversed her position and will now support FISA-702, the warrantless searches of American communication and electronic metadata. Apparently the FISA process and the 702 aspect (specific to American citizens) is the line in the sand the Senate Select Intelligence Committee has drawn. If Tulsi Gabbard does not support it, her confirmation is in doubt. As a result, she has reportedly reversed her position and now supports it. This is absolutely par for the course.

It should be remembered, in the last reauthorization of FISA-702 congress exempted themselves from the warrantless search and surveillance system used by the U.S. Intelligence Apparatus. Congress forbids the FBI or any entity with access to the NSA database, from being allowed to use the process to search themselves or their staff. However, every other American does not enjoy this same protection. After spending years asking every representative of consequence why they support the FISA-702 process, I can tell you every one of them says they believe it is needed because the IC tells them there are just too many domestic terror threats that need to be monitored. It is impossible to find a person in DC who will forcefully try to stop FISA-702 reauthorization.

If you ask me why in hindsight, I now take the position that FISA-702 is the gateway to the massive surveillance system currently being put into place using Real ID and the AI facial recognition software provided by Palantir (CIA exploit). In essence, the gateway that allows the full-scale surveillance state, is opened by the prior authorization of FISA-702 that negates any 4th amendment protection. Why? Because all of the surveillance mechanisms within the network being updated and enhanced by AI search and capture, comes from the IC being allowed to exploit the NSA database. That same database access allowance is the targeting mechanism for FISA-702. If warrantless searches of the NSA database were stopped, the Palantir/IC and Tech Bro collaboration could hit a brick wall. Against this backdrop, the SSCI telling Tulsi Gabbard that her nomination approval is contingent upon her support for FISA-702, simply makes sense.

WASHINGTON DC – […] Multiple senators from both parties who met with the former Hawaii lawmaker in recent days told us they emerged from those sessions unsure about Gabbard’s position on the 702 program. During these meetings, senators have pressed Gabbard on her previous public statements on the issue, as well as her votes against 702 reauthorization throughout her eight years in Congress. GOP national security hawks in particular viewed this as problematic, we’re told, fueling renewed doubts about her confirmation prospects. Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.), a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, suggested on a WSJ podcast Wednesday that Gabbard should disavow her previous opposition to the 702 program.

“Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) also sent us a statement Thursday night supporting Gabbard’s 702 stance — a key indicator of how the GOP leadership is thinking about her nomination. “Tulsi Gabbard has assured me in our conversations that she supports Section 702 as recently amended and that she will follow the law and support its reauthorization as DNI,” Cotton said. That last part is important because, if confirmed as DNI, Gabbard would need to certify the statute annually in order for intelligence collection to continue under the 702 program. This is also a big part of the reason why the DC Deep State will easily confirm Kash Patel to be Donald Trump’s FBI Director. Kash Patel is a big believer in the value of FISA-702.”

“Asked if he would pardon himself, Biden dismissed the idea, saying, “I didn’t do anything wrong.”

What does that say about those he did hand a pardon?

• Biden Eyes Preemptive Pardons Amid Trump’s Return (RT)

US President Joe Biden is considering issuing preemptive pardons for individuals who may be targeted by the incoming administration of President-elect Donald Trump. Trump, who defeated Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 election, is set to return to the White House on January 20. “There’s still consideration… but no decision,” Biden told reporters at the White House on Friday, in response to a question regarding potential preemptive pardons. “It depends on some of the language and expectations that Trump broadcasts in the last couple days here as to what he’s going to do.” Biden withdrew from the 2024 presidential race in July after concerns arose within the Democratic Party following a June debate performance against Trump which raised doubts about his viability as a candidate. He ultimately endorsed Harris, who lost the general election to the Republican candidate, Trump.

The president-elect has expressed intentions to prosecute perceived “enemies,” including Harris and “the most corrupt president in the history of the United States of America, Joe Biden, and the entire Biden crime family.” Trump also criticized Biden for pardoning his son Hunter in December. In a reversal of his pledge to not do so, Biden pardoned Hunter, who was convicted of tax evasion and gun charges and was set to be sentenced in December. Trump called the decision a “miscarriage of justice,” while referencing the people who were jailed for the January 6 Capitol riots. “Does the Pardon given by Joe to Hunter include the J-6 Hostages, who have now been imprisoned for years? Such an abuse and miscarriage of Justice!” Trump wrote on Truth Social. The president-elect also called for investigations into former President Barack Obama and Liz Cheney, a high-profile Republican critic of Trump.

Ahead of the November 2024 election, Trump threatened unprecedented prosecution for individuals he accused of potential election cheating. “Please beware this legal exposure extends to Lawyers, Political Operatives, Donors, Illegal Voters, & Corrupt Election Officials,” Trump posted on Truth Social. He previously claimed widespread fraud in the 2020 election. Trump also stated last year that he would fire Jack Smith, the Justice Department’s special counsel overseeing criminal investigations into the Republican president-elect. Smith resigned on Friday. Biden described Trump’s intentions to prosecute political opponents as “outrageous.” Asked if he would pardon himself, Biden dismissed the idea, saying, “I didn’t do anything wrong.”

The president likely possesses the constitutional authority to issue broad preemptive pardons for federal offenses committed in the past, even if charges have not yet been filed. However, this authority does not apply to state crimes or future offenses. The types of pardons Biden might consider would generally fall within his executive power.

More pardons. But these ones are not pre-emptive.

• Vance Says Trump Won’t Issue Pardons for Violent Jan. 6 Defendants (ET)

Vice President-elect JD Vance said on Jan. 12 that individuals who were violent during the U.S. Capitol breach on Jan. 6, 2021, “obviously” should not be pardoned. President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to use his clemency power for people who have been charged in connection with the incident over the past four years. Those who “protested peacefully” on Jan. 6 should receive a pardon, Vance told Fox News. He added that there is also a “little bit of a gray area” in some of those cases. “I think it’s very simple,” Vance said. “If you protested peacefully on Jan. 6 and you’ve had [Attorney General] Merrick Garland’s Department of Justice treat you like a gang member, you should be pardoned. If you committed violence on that day, obviously you shouldn’t be pardoned.”

More than 1,500 people have been charged with federal crimes in connection with the Capitol breach, according to Department of Justice records. A number of people were charged with misdemeanor offenses for entering the Capitol in an unauthorized manner, and some were charged with felonies. Leaders of the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys groups were convicted of seditious conspiracy for what prosecutors described as plots to use violence to stop the peaceful transfer of power from Trump to then-President-elect Joe Biden. Vance said on Jan. 12 that he believes that “a lot of people” have been “prosecuted unfairly” over the past several years. “We need to rectify that,” Vance said. “We’re very much committed to seeing the equal administration of law.”

Also on the morning of Jan. 12, Vance responded to critics on social media who said that his comments to Fox News didn’t go far enough, with some saying that all Jan. 6 defendants should be pardoned. “I’ve been defending these guys for years,” Vance wrote on social media platform X. “The president saying he’ll look at each case (and me saying the same) is not some walkback … I assure you, we care about people unjustly locked up. Yes, that includes people provoked and it includes people who got a garbage trial.” That comment came in response to a prominent conservative social media account’s statement on Jan. 12 that new footage has shown “cops shooting innocent J6 protesters and [Vance] goes on Fox News and tells the world that only non violent protesters should get pardoned … better rethink what you just said JD.” Vance noted that he donated to a Jan. 6 “political prisoner fund” and was criticized over it during his run for Ohio’s Senate seat.

In a wide-ranging news conference last week at his Florida Mar-a-Lago residence, Trump suggested that he would initiate “major pardons” for individuals arrested in the aftermath of Jan. 6. A reporter asked him, “You said on your first day of office you were going to pardon Jan. 6 defendants. Are you planning to pardon those who were charged with violent offenses?” “Well, we’re looking at it, and we have other people in there,” Trump said. “People that didn’t even walk into the building are in jail right now. “We’ll be looking at the whole thing. But I’ll be making major pardons, yes.” The president-elect has said on multiple occasions that he would carry out the pardons quickly after he is sworn into office on Jan. 20.

Fake anger.

• Biden Calls Meta Decision to End Fact-Checking Program ‘Really Shameful’ (ET)

President Joe Biden has shared his disapproval at Meta’s decision to do away with its current social media fact-checking program. This week Meta, which owns the Facebook and Instagram social media platforms, announced it would stop using its third-party fact-checking program for U.S.-based content review purposes. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said he made the decision because the existing fact-checking program has become “too politically biased,” resulting in censorship and a loss of trust. “It’s time to get back to our roots around free expression on Facebook and Instagram,” he said in a Jan. 7 video statement. Asked for his opinion on the move at a Jan. 10 press conference, Biden said, “It’s just completely contrary to everything America is about.”

Up until this week, Meta had partnered with the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) to run its third-party fact-checking service. The IFCN is administered by the Poynter Institute, which also operates the PolitiFact fact-checking publication. “The idea that, you know, a billionaire can buy something and say ‘by the way from this point on, we’re not going to fact-check anything’ and you know when you have millions of people reading, going online reading this stuff it’s—anyway, I think it’s really shameful,” Biden said. Meta is not doing away with fact-checking outright. Rather, Zuckerberg said Meta’s platforms will move toward a “more comprehensive community notes” style system, similar to the one employed by social media platform X. He will start the new model in the United States.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1878485939091025933

Rather than relying on a fact-checking organization such as the IFCN to review content, X’s community notes feature allows users to weigh in directly. X users may suggest a fact-checking note on controversial posts on the platform, and then provide feedback on whether a suggested fact-checking note is itself accurate, and necessary for the particular post. Posts that have been flagged with sufficient community input display an attached fact-checking note explaining why the particular post is inaccurate or may be missing important context. Zuckerberg also announced that Meta’s content moderation team will be moved out of California to Texas “where there is less concern about the bias of our teams.” Zuckerberg and other Meta officers have defended the move as needed to restore free speech and expression to their platforms.

In a Jan. 7 blog post, Meta’s chief global affairs officer, Joel Kaplan, said as well-intentioned as their prior fact-checking efforts had been, “they have expanded over time to the point where we are making too many mistakes, frustrating our users, and too often getting in the way of the free expression we set out to enable.” “Too much harmless content gets censored, too many people find themselves wrongly locked up in ‘Facebook jail,’ and we are often too slow to respond when they do,” Kaplan said. Meta’s fact-checking and content moderation decisions had been a point of contention during the 2020 presidential election cycle.

In October 2020, the Meta platforms reduced the reach of posts linking to articles by The New York Post concerning a laptop that then-candidate Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, had reportedly abandoned at a Delaware computer repair shop. The New York Post’s articles detailed the contents of the laptop, including documents indicating the elder Biden had some level of interaction with his son’s foreign business partners. In a Jan. 10 interview with podcast host Joe Rogan, Zuckerberg alleged that officials in the Biden administration routinely contacted Meta, with demands that they remove or suppress certain content, including memes and satirical posts. “Basically these people from the Biden administration would call up our team and like scream at them and curse,” Zuckerberg said.

Starlink
https://twitter.com/i/status/1878673305588359296

Elon Musk stepped up big time, donating Starlink to help Los Angeles firefighters and people stay connected during the chaos. Say what you want about the guy, but who else is making moves like this when it counts? pic.twitter.com/TlKozxKVjs

— Desiree (@DesireeAmerica4) January 12, 2025

Tumbling
https://twitter.com/i/status/1878690946340270500

little men
https://twitter.com/i/status/1878695718132813987

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

Debt Rattle January 12 2025

Jan 122025

January 12, 2025 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 11:20 am Finance Tagged with: Frankenstein, Jack Smith, Meloni, Merchan, Meta, Pacific Palisades, shadow White House, Starmer, Trump, WhatsApp, Woke Mind Virus 89 Responses »

René Magritte The victory 1939

• Trump Starts Governing Early From His Palm Beach Shadow White House (Whedon)

• Trump To Sign Around 100 Executive Orders Upon Taking Office (ZH)

• Trump Admin Prepares Response to Starmer’s Election Interference (Ferguson)

• Something Is Rotten In The State Of Starmer (Milbank)

• Trump’s ‘Crazy’ Ideas Not So Crazy After All (Kadish)

• Meloni: Soros Is Interfering In Democracies, Not Musk (RMX)

• Musk Bought Twitter To “Destroy The Woke Mind Virus” (RT)

• Trump To Place Investments In A Trust During Presidency (JTN)

• Special Counsel Jack Smith Resigns (RT)

• Merchan’s Frankenstein Monster (Turley)

• House Judiciary Expected To Continue Hunter Biden Probe Despite Pardon (JTN)

• CIA Can Read WhatsApp Messages – Zuckerberg (RT)

• We Were Censored By Meta; We’re Taking Them to the Supreme Court (CHD)

• US Playing ‘Fool’s Game’ By Ignoring Russia’s Red Lines – Peter Kuznick (RT)

• AfD Delegates Reject Motion Condemning Putin (RT)

• Why Was Pacific Palisades Reservoir EMPTY? It Gets Worse. (Victoria Taft)

Remember when Kash Patel said THIS? “I'm working on a measure to subpoena Judge Merchan's daughter who has made $15,000,000 off this trial.” @Kash_Patel He was on it!
pic.twitter.com/npA3IhB9tx

— NanLee Marie Carissimi (@NanLee1124) January 10, 2025

“JUDGE MERCHAN DECIDED TO OUTSMART SCOTUS, SO HE ANNOUNCED IN ADVANCE THAT HE WOULDN’T SEND TRUMP TO JAIL!” @AlanDersh believes Merchan played a game for the Supreme Court, and they fell for it. “The whole thing is a distortion of our legal system!” @AmandaHead pic.twitter.com/ch3Y4xmmge

— Real America's Voice (RAV) (@RealAmVoice) January 10, 2025

ALAN DERSHOWITZ:

"He will appeal to the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court will take the case. Once the case is taken on the merits, I think it will be reversed."

"I'll never call Donald Trump a convicted felon. He is a convicted innocent man. A convictively framed-up man." pic.twitter.com/7581fIDU00

— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) January 10, 2025

No punishment

You've gotta love what Andy McCarthy just said on Fox News just now.

So what was the "criminal conspiracy" that Trump was trying to "cover up" with his falsification of business records?

Trying to "steal" the presidential election.

That earns Trump… *checks notes*… an… pic.twitter.com/CaNECAhzHI

— Kyle Becker (@kylenabecker) January 10, 2025

Maher

BILL MAHER: ELON HAS SAID SOME THINGS I THINK ARE GREAT

“I'm curious to see, for example, what Elon Musk is going to do.

I'm curious to see how influential he's going to be.
He is tasked with reinventing the government, basically.

He said some things that I think are great,… pic.twitter.com/sorKEZRbVL

— Mario Nawfal (@MarioNawfal) January 11, 2025

Watters

The guys who bankrolled @JoeBiden and covered up the laptop are flying to Florida to kiss the ring. These guys want their own villas at Mar-A-Lago just like @ElonMusk, but Elon had to earn it. Mark Zuckerberg, who's been increasingly MAGA-curious, is trying to earn his stripes by… pic.twitter.com/1aPPd9NmOM

— Jesse Watters (@JesseBWatters) January 11, 2025

The ground running.

• Trump Starts Governing Early From His Palm Beach Shadow White House (Whedon)

President-elect Donald Trump’s past few months have been unusually busy for an incoming president and have seen him notch key agenda wins before even returning to office. With President Joe Biden essentially absent from the public eye, Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate has taken on the role of a shadow White House, from which he has begun to operate a sort of pre-presidential administration. Foreign dignitaries, domestic politicians, and billionaire investors alike have flocked to the Palm Beach resort to meet with the incoming president, some of whom have brought with them economic and/or ideological offerings. His reach has extended well beyond the confines of his compound, reverberating across allied nations while he and his surrogates work to seemingly push out opposition figures leading key American partners. Here’s a look at his biggest moves while waiting to reclaim the Oval Office:

Outgoing Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau speedily traveled to Mar-a-Lago after Trump floated the possibility of imposing tariffs on the country. The meeting was widely panned in Canadian media and even led to comedic skits depicting Trudeau eating a Big Mac without the use of his hands at Trump’s behest. The president-elect’s subsequent retorts referring to Trudeau as the “governor” of Canada further belittled his status in the eyes of the Canuck electorate. Already struggling in the polls, Trump’s proposition of making Canada the 51st state seems to have helped fuel Trudeau’s already significant decline in public opinion and he subsequently announced his plans to resign once the Liberal Party selected his replacement.

Trump notched a major win on digital censorship when Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg announced the platform would end its partnerships with fact-checking organizations and instead switch to a user-driven correction system similar to X’s community notes. The move followed a late November meeting at Mar-a-Lago between Zuckerberg and Trump. Facebook was one of the major platforms that banned Trump in the wake of the Jan. 6, 2021, incident at the U.S. Capitol, though it later restored his accounts. In December, Facebook parent company Meta donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration fund. Google and Boeing this week each donated $1 million to the same fund, helping the pot reach a record $170 million. Amazon Executive Chairman Jeff Bezos, moreover, congratulated Trump on his comeback and later met with him at Mar-a-Lago as well. The owner of the Washington Post prevented the left-wing outlet from issuing an endorsement in the 2024 election. He has further worked to tone down the outlet’s anti-Trump bias in the wake of the election.

Trump’s victory evidently signaled to some Democrats that the public favors some of key policies, namely on reducing the size of government and cracking down on illegal immigration. Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., made headlines this week with plans to visit Mar-a-Lago at Trump’s request. Fetterman has developed a reputation as a moderate willing to work with Republicans and co-sponsored the “Laken Riley Act” in the Senate, which would require the detention of illegal immigrants accused of a wide array of crimes. That bill passed the House this week and cleared a procedural hurdle in the upper chamber. It is expected to pass the Senate and reach the president’s desk in time for Trump’s inauguration. “I think it’s pretty reasonable that if the president would like to have a conversation — or invite someone to have a conversation — to have it. And no one is my gatekeeper.”

He also appears to have found an ally in Rep. Jared Moskowitz, D-Fla., who in December joined the DOGE Caucus, a group of lawmakers dedicated to working with Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). “The Caucus should look at the bureaucracy that the DHS has become and include recommendations to make Secret Service and FEMA [Federal Emergency Management Agency] independent federal agencies with a direct report to the White House,” Moskowitz said of the bloc. Trump notched two multi-billion dollar investment deals with foreign companies during his transition, including from SoftBank and DAMAC Properties, which pledged $100 billion and $20 billion investments in the U.S., respectively. DAMAC Chairman Hussain Sajwani and SoftBank Group CEO Masayoshi Son both visited Mar-a-Lago and announced their investments in joint press conferences with Trump.

The incoming president used the DAMAC conference to highlight his pledge to help clear administrative red tape for foreign investors as an incentive to do business in the U.S. “And I made it a point of telling people, if you invest a billion dollars or more, and we’ll do this for people with far less too, but we guarantee it, we’re going to move them quickly through the environmental process,” he said this week. Trump has also used the transition period to unveil an ambitious foreign policy agenda that includes the acquisition of foreign territory, including at the expense of treaty allies. He has vowed to use economic coercion to reclaim the Panama Canal and acquire Canada and Greenland. He further said he wouldn’t rule out military force to take Greenland or the Canal Zone. Denmark currently maintains official control over Greenland and is a member of NATO, as is Canada.

When pressed on whether he would rule out a military seizure, he told reporters that “I’m not going to commit to that now, it might, it might be that you’ll have to do something. Look, the Panama Canal is vital to our country.” Trump has insisted that Panama, which purchased the canal zone for $1 dollar under President Jimmy Carter, has repeatedly violated the terms of the agreement by overcharging American ships for passage and allowing the Chinese government to exert control over the critical waterway. The president-elect has insisted that the United States needs the Panama Canal and Greenland “for economic security.” “The Panama Canal was built for our military,” he added during a press conference in Palm Beach, Fla. Donald Trump Jr. visited Greenland this week along with Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk in a highly publicized trip that saw them tour the area and meet with locals.

There will be surprises.

• Trump To Sign Around 100 Executive Orders Upon Taking Office (ZH)

President-elect Donald Trump will sign around 100 executive orders as soon as he takes office, according to Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK). Mullin did not go into details, however Trump has previously said he would sign a variety of border and immigration-related EOs following his second inauguration, including a national emergency over illegal immigration – and rolling back ‘climate agenda’ regulations surrounding drilling for oil and natural gas. “I will sign Day One orders to end all Biden restrictions on energy production, terminate his insane electric vehicle mandate, cancel his natural gas export ban, reopen ANWR in Alaska—the biggest site, potentially anywhere in the world—and declare a national energy emergency,” Trump said in December.

According to Trump transition spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt, “The American people can bank on President Trump using his executive power on day one to deliver on the promises he made to them on the campaign trail.” Bloomberg reports that Trump will put a hiring freeze on the government, and mandate that federal employees return to the office for in-person work, a position pushed by billionaire Elon Musk as part of the newly formed Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). In recent weeks, the Trump team has been working behind-the-scenes to make sure its initial months are as productive as possible.

“While chief of staff Susie Wiles has said she views the first 100 days as an artificial metric, she and the entire Trump team see the first two years — before midterm elections could imperil Republican majorities in the House and Senate — as the best opportunity for the term-limited incoming president to achieve his sweeping goals”. -Bloomberg. That said, as Mullin noted further in an appearance on Fox & Friends, EOs can easily be undone by future administrations. “As he said, it’s not permanent,” said Mullin. “I would like reconciliation so we can start making this stuff into legislation, so we can move forward.” “The president was very clear, he wants results,” Mullin continued. “He said he can wait if we can do one big, beautiful bill. He’d like to have one big, beautiful, beautiful bill. But if the House were to get bogged down, maybe we have to divide it up in two.”

As the Epoch Times notes, the senator was making reference to comments made by Trump this week after he met with Republicans in Washington. “I think there’s a lot of talk about two [bills], and there’s a lot of talk about one (bill), but it doesn’t matter,” Trump told reporters. “The end result is the same,” he said, adding that his meeting with GOP lawmakers showed the party is ”unified.” Mullin added that Republicans need to “deliver for the American people on securing the border, on energy independence, on getting the regulations rolled back and making sure that we have taxes that are permanent, so we don’t have a $4 trillion tax increase on the American people right now.”

X thread.

• Trump Admin Prepares Response to Starmer’s Election Interference (Ferguson)

In an unprecedented twist in global politics, the Trump administration is rumored to be preparing a dramatic response to revelations of foreign interference in the 2024 U.S. presidential election. With undeniable proof surfacing that UK Labour leader Keir Starmer allegedly orchestrated a covert operation involving 100 staffers to support Donald Trump’s rival, Kamala Harris, the political landscape has been shaken to its core. As Donald Trump triumphantly prepares to return to the White House, insiders close to the administration suggest that his approach to this betrayal could mark a turning point in U.S.-UK relations. The weight of the evidence reportedly leaves no room for doubt: this was not just meddling—it was a calculated assault on American democracy. And now, Trump may be ready to wield the full force of the presidency to hold the Starmer government accountable.

Extreme Measures on the Table Behind closed doors, discussions are said to be taking place within the Trump inner circle. Options under consideration range from economic sanctions targeting Starmer’s allies to severe diplomatic actions that could isolate the UK on the world stage. One unnamed senior advisor was quoted as saying, “This isn’t just politics—it’s treason against the American people. The response will be swift and decisive.” Whispers of even more drastic measures have surfaced, with some speculating that the administration may seek an international tribunal to prosecute Starmer for violating U.S. election integrity. Others suggest that covert operations to destabilize the Labour-led UK government could be on the table, a stark reminder that the Trump presidency is unafraid to take bold action when American sovereignty is at stake.

The End of the ‘Special Relationship’?This scandal threatens to unravel the longstanding “special relationship” between the United States and the United Kingdom. Trump, a known advocate of strong nationalist policies, could view this betrayal as the ultimate affront to American independence and might use it to justify a dramatic recalibration of the alliance. Sources close to the administration say Trump has already warned of “serious consequences” during private conversations, leaving the Starmer government scrambling to contain the fallout. Starmer’s alleged interference, if confirmed, could not only undermine his credibility at home but also plunge the UK into political chaos. Already, opposition voices in Parliament are calling for investigations into Starmer’s actions, fearing repercussions that could devastate Britain’s economy and its standing on the world stage.

A Warning to All Foreign Leaders By making an example of Starmer, Trump could send a stark message to any foreign leader contemplating interference in U.S. elections: no one is beyond the reach of American justice. The world is watching as the Trump administration crafts its response, knowing that the actions taken in the coming weeks could set a precedent for how the U.S. deals with foreign adversaries.

A New Era of Retribution This unfolding drama signals a new era in international politics, where foreign meddling in American elections is met with fierce and uncompromising retaliation. As Trump prepares to step back into the Oval Office, one thing is clear: the rules of the game have changed, and the cost of betrayal has never been higher. The stage is set for an international showdown, and the Starmer government may soon find itself in the crosshairs of an administration determined to defend American democracy at all costs. As the world holds its breath, one question looms: how far is Donald Trump willing to go to settle the score?

https://twitter.com/i/status/1878009896832049281

I think he himself is rotten. This kind of “it’s everyone’s fault” and “it ain’t so bad” is precisely what’s wrong.

• Something Is Rotten In The State Of Starmer (Milbank)

Elon Musk, and a host of other critics, have been going after Keir Starmer for his and Jess Phillips’ decision to refuse a national inquiry into the grooming gangs in Oldham. Keir Starmer is furiously angry about the grooming scandal. Unfortunately, what he is mostly angry about seems to be those attacking his record, rather than the rape gangs. Before we get to what was wrong with his response, and there was a great deal, we should first understand where he and his supporters are coming from. Musk is ill-informed, unconcerned with the truth and making reckless assertions, and he is doing so from a massive social media platform, on the eve of his becoming an official in the US government. Musk and his allies have attacked Starmer and Jess Phillips, both of whom believe they have taken a substantive role in fighting against sexual abuse.

From inside No 10, the situation feels desperately unfair, and manipulated by an irresponsible right wing press and social media. Labour refused a national inquiry into abuse in Oldham, instead encouraging the council to hold its own, as many others had already done so with some success. In this judgement, they were backed by none other than Professor Alexis Jay, who led the previous national inquiry in 2015, and who argues that another inquiry will just delay justice and vitally needed reforms. The government says they are intent on implementing her recommendations, and point out that much of the inaction happened on the watch of the Conservative Party. Labour allies understandably wonder where this anger on the issue has been for the last ten years, when the Conservatives were at the helm, and in a position to do something about it.

From Labour’s perspective, the issue they are handling responsibly is being turned into a cynical political football by a Right that cares little about white working class girls, and quite a lot about using migration to rack up votes. Reform, led by Nigel Farage, has been unrelenting online and in the press condemning Keir Starmer personally. Robert Jenrick attacked the culture of British Pakistanis in a statement that so offended the political Left that the leader of the Lib Dems called on him to resign. Aside from divisive language, an amendment mandating a national inquiry was added by the Tories to the children’s wellbeing and schools bill, which Labour says could kill the legislation and endanger children.

You can see why Labour feels it needs to be combative and set the record straight. Unfortunately, this approach is a catastrophic error of political judgment, and reveals severe moral failings in Starmer’s approach to leadership. Put aside the wild exaggerations bandied about online, and forget about the sickening tussle in Westminster to lay the blame at a rival party’s door. What actually matters here? The truth, public safety, and justice for victims. In this situation Starmer isn’t the former head of the CPS, he isn’t even the leader of the Labour Party — he is the leader of this country, and the representative of the British crown. The grooming gang scandal touches every political party and level of government. Police, courts, social workers, local councils, and the national government all failed victims, and many colluded in their victimisation.

The seriousness of Musk’s claims, which millions of people saw, needed to be addressed, but ultimately Musk is a private individual living in America, making these allegations on social media. A simple statement setting the record straight from a spokesperson was all that it merited, and the Prime Minister personally responding was wildly disproportionate. For all that Musk is an adolescent throwing fuel on the fire of British politics, he is also a father and a human being encountering, probably for the first time, reports of the British police allowing thousands of children to be raped and, in at least one case, killed, out of a fear of appearing racist. His untruths and half truths are unforgivably irresponsible from the owner of a social media company, but his anger was entirely legitimate.

Canada, Panama, Greenland, it all makes a lot of sense from an American point of View.

• Trump’s ‘Crazy’ Ideas Not So Crazy After All (Kadish)

Why is it that people are always calling for someone to think “outside the box,” then when someone does, say, “Aaaak! He thought outside the box!” In that view, President-elect Donald J. Trump has already committed (at least) three heresies: Buy Greenland, stop China from controlling the Panama Canal and deepen America’s affiliation with Canada. All three ideas are neither crazy nor even new. President Harry S. Truman looked at acquiring Greenland in 1946. Thomas Jefferson, after the Louisiana Purchase, proposed buying Cuba – just think how the Cubans would be prospering now, politically and economically, if that deal had gone through. Those acquisitions didn’t take place but in 1917, the US did acquire Denmark’s Virgin Islands for $25 million.

As historian Stephen Press writes, “As secretary of state, John Quincy Adams arranged debt relief for Spain in exchange for Florida. Secretary of State William Seward acquired Alaska. “What Mr. Trump proposes is consistent with this American tradition—and with our current borders. Sovereignty purchases are responsible for more than 40% of U.S. land… “History suggests the benefits of being open-minded about this. Inhabitants of Alaska wouldn’t be better off under Russian sovereignty. Bringing Greenlanders into closer affiliation with the U.S., and sweetening the deal with economic subsidies, could conceivably prove beneficial to all parties” As for the Panama Canal, President Jimmy Carter handed it to Panama for $1, but on the condition that it permanently remain a neutral zone – not one controlled at both ends by China.

“We gave the Panama Canal to Panama,” Trump has pointed out. “We didn’t give it to China. They’ve abused that gift.” The US built the Panama Canal in the first place to be able to avoid having commercial and military sea traffic avoid the long journey around South America’s southernmost sea route, the Strait of Magellan – where the Chinese Communist Party also located a base. If there were to be a conflict with Communist China, it would be easy enough for them to block the Canal to U.S. use. As China expert Gordon G. Chang has pointed out: “China’s port facilities are at both ends of the canal. And when Gen. Laura Richardson took a helicopter ride over the Canal Zone, this was the middle of 2022; she said she ‘looked down and saw all of these dual-use facilities.’ … at a time of war, they could make the canal totally useless…. They say that we have a two-ocean Navy. Well, we would have two separate navies. It’d be very difficult to get ships from the Atlantic to the Pacific, or vice versa.”

Closer ties with Canada, as Trump appears to see them, would make a united-in-some-way North America a formidable landmass to any would-be adversary. “You get rid of that artificially drawn line,” Trump stated, “and you take a look at what that looks like, and it would also be much better for national security. Don’t forget, we protect Canada.” Trump seems to have been merely responding to the opening provided him by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, days before the latter announced that he would be resigning. According to Trump:

“I said what would happen if we didn’t do it. He said Canada would dissolve. Canada wouldn’t be able to function, if we didn’t take their 20% of our car market… So, I said to him, well, why are we doing it? He said, I don’t really know. He was unable to answer the question, but I can answer it. We’re doing it because of habit, and we’re doing it because we like our neighbors, and we’ve been good neighbors. But we can’t do it forever and it’s a tremendous amount of money. And why should we have a $200 billion deficit and add on to that many, many other things that we give them in terms of subsidy?” Trump has also announced a “Made in America,” tax break incentive for investment in the US, and a “Golden Age of America.” It seems to have begun already — and he is not even president yet.

“I never talked about this with Musk. It’s not my habit to use my public role to do favors to friends,” Meloni said.

“Is the problem that Elon Musk is influential and rich or that he is not left-wing?”

• Meloni: Soros Is Interfering In Democracies, Not Musk (RMX)

At a press conference in Rome earlier this year, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said that Elon Musk’s political posts on X do not pose a threat to democracy; while oligarch George Soros, however, continuously interferes in the politics of other nations, according to Italy’s leader. “The problem is when wealthy people use their resources to finance parties, associations and political exponents all over the world to influence the political choices of nation states”, Meloni told reporters at an annual press conference. “That’s not what Musk is doing,” she added. “Elon Musk financed an election campaign in his country, by his candidate, in a system in which, by the way, I would point out that this is quite common,” Meloni said. “But I am not aware of Elon Musk financing parties, associations or political exponents around the world. This, for example, is what George Soros does.”

“And yes, I consider that to be dangerous interference in the affairs of nation states and in their sovereignty,” she noted. Meloni also pointed to other wealthy people actively funding parties and NGOs around the world to influence local policies. “This is not the first time that famous and wealthy people have expressed their opinions. I have seen many such cases, often against me, and no one was offended then…” Musk, she said, is a very rich man who expresses his opinion and does not pose a threat to democracy. “Is the problem that Elon Musk is influential and rich or that he is not left-wing?” asked Meloni. She also noted that she and many others on the right are not financially dependent on Musk, unlike many on the left who are funded by Soros, or have been funded by him over the years. Meloni denied ever taking any money from Musk, “unlike those who have taken it from Soros”.

She also denied various media reports that her government is on the verge of signing a massive deal with Musk’s company SpaceX. However, even if that were true, signing a business deal is far different than receiving financial aid for political activities, which is behavior that Soros often partakes in with his beneficiaries. In response to a journalist’s question, Meloni also spoke about Elon Musk’s open support for the right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD). Meloni stressed that if anyone tried to influence the Italian elections, it was Germany, under the then Social Democratic-Liberal-Green government. “I would like to remind you of the German side’s interference in the Italian election campaign,” Meloni said, referring to previous German concerns about the right-wing position she represented.

Soros has long been a controversial figure due to his outsized role in the politics of nations around the world, however, few on the left-liberal spectrum ever criticized this interference. Soros has also long called for the removal of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, with both figures antagonistic towards each other over the years.

“In 2021, I set out to destroy the woke mind virus and now it has been deleted..”

• Musk Bought Twitter To “Destroy The Woke Mind Virus” (RT)

X owner Elon Musk has said that he purchased the platform, then known as Twitter, in order to “destroy the woke mind virus.” Musk has blamed much of modern society’s ills on radical liberalism. “In 2021, I set out to destroy the woke mind virus and now it has been deleted,” Musk wrote on X on Saturday, after sharing a post he made in 2021 reading “traceroute woke_mind_virus.” A traceroute is a diagnostic command used to troubleshoot Internet Protocol networks. Asked by a follower if this was “the main reason you bought twitter?” Musk replied “Yes.”Musk has frequently lashed out against the “woke mind virus,” a catch-all term used by some conservatives to condemn radical liberal philosophies and policies including transgenderism, censorship, and the promotion of diversity in the workplace at the expense of merit.

In an interview with Canadian psychologist Dr. Jordan Peterson last July, Musk said that the “woke mind virus” killed his son, referring to his transgender child Xavier. Musk claimed that he was “tricked” by doctors into signing documents authorizing his son to undergo hormone treatment, which permanently sterilized him. “I lost my son, essentially. They call it deadnaming for a reason,” the billionaire said. “The reason it’s called deadnaming is because your son is dead. My son Xavier is dead, killed by the woke mind virus. I vowed to destroy the woke mind virus after that.” Musk purchased Twitter for $44 billion in 2022, rebranding the platform as X, firing most of its content moderation staff, and rolling back the majority of its censorship policies.

X was the first major social media platform to reinstate US President-elect Donald Trump’s account, which was suspended after his supporters rioted on Capitol Hill in January 2021. The platform’s overhaul initially made it an outlier, with most of its competitors maintaining their restrictive speech policies. However, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently announced that his platforms – which include Facebook and Instagram – will dial back their moderation policies to “restore free expression” and will no longer work with third-party “fact checkers” to label political content. Alongside these planned changes, Meta ended its diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) hiring programs this week, and according to the New York Times, removed tampons from men’s bathrooms in its offices, where they had been provided “for nonbinary and transgender employees.”

Someone will find fault.

• Trump To Place Investments In A Trust During Presidency (JTN)

The Trump Organization on Friday announced that President-elect Donald Trump will place his investments into a trust controlled by his children and will have limited access to the company during his presidency. The organization released a five-page ethics plan on Friday that included several of the adjustments the company will make while Trump works from the Oval Office. The organization has also hired a new ethics advisor to ensure the company meets and exceeds its ethical and legal obligations. The release comes 10 days before Trump is set to take office on January 20. The company said that Trump would not be consulted on most matters related to the business and would only receive “general business updates,” according to NBC News. The investments will also be managed independently by “outside financial institutions” that will not seek his input on specific holdings or transactions.

It also said the company “will not enter into any new material transactions or contracts with a foreign government, except for Ordinary Course Transactions,” but does not mention whether it would do business with any foreign private entities. The disclosure comes after the Trump Organization backed away from foreign business dealings following Trump’s first election in 2016. The company also said that it would donate all profits from foreign governments at its hotels and similar businesses to the U.S. Treasury Department, as it did in 2016, and offer discounted rates to members of the U.S. Secret Service and other government agencies that lodge at Trump hotels. The Trump Organization is largely operated by the Trump’s sons Eric and Donald Trump Jr., who are executive vice presidents.

Time to go after him.

• Special Counsel Jack Smith Resigns (RT)

US Special Counsel Jack Smith, who led two federal cases against President-elect Donald Trump, has resigned after handing in his final report on his findings, according to court documents lodged on Saturday. The prosecution filed a motion to urge District Judge Aileen Cannon not to extend her injunction temporarily blocking the release of a portion of the special counsel’s report pertaining to the classified documents case against Trump. News of Smith’s resignation from the US Justice Department came in a brief footnote in the court filing. “The Special Counsel completed his work and submitted his final confidential report on January 7, 2025, and separated from the Department on January 10,” the footnote said.

Judge Cannon presides over the mishandling of classified documents case against Trump. Her block on releasing Smith’s report on the case lasts until Monday. Attorney General Merrick Garland intends to publicly release the other part of Smith’s report – detailing his findings in the case of Trump’s alleged attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 US election, according to court documents released on Wednesday. Smith led two of the four criminal cases brought against Trump after his first presidency. Cannon dismissed the first case in July last year, while DC District Judge Tanya Chutkan dropped the second in November, citing legal immunity afforded a sitting US president.

Neither of the cases went to trial. Smith’s resignation comes just ten days before Trump takes office on January 20. The incoming president had said he would fire Smith “within two seconds” of assuming office. The president-elect has repeatedly stated that the charges against him are groundless and “lawless.” On Friday, Trump was sentenced in the ‘hush money’ case brought against him in New York. While the ruling means he will not face fines or jail time, Trump will be considered a felon under US law.

The legal system is barely functioning anymore. The skin of Frankenstein’s teeth.

• Merchan’s Frankenstein Monster (Turley)

This week, the sentencing of President-Elect Donald Trump saw one of the most impassioned defense arguments given at such a hearing in years . . . from the judge himself. Acting Justice Juan Merchan admitted that the case was “unique and remarkable” but insisted that “once the courtroom doors were closed, the trial itself was no more special, unique, and extraordinary than the other 32 cases in this courthouse.” If so, that is a chilling indictment of the entire New York court system. Merchan allowed a dead misdemeanor to be resuscitated by allowing Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg to effectively prosecute declined federal offenses. He allowed a jury to convict Trump without any agreement, let alone unanimity, on what actually occurred in the case. Merchan ruled that the jury did not have to agree on why Trump committed an alleged offense in describing settlement costs as legal costs.

Neither the defendant nor the public will ever know what the jury ultimately found in its verdict. I once described this case as a legal Frankenstein: “It is the ultimate gravedigger charge, where Bragg unearthed a case from 2016 and, through a series of novel steps, is seeking to bring it back to life…Bragg is combining parts from both state and federal codes.” Even liberal legal experts have denounced the case and Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) recently called it total “b—s–t.” Now, Merchan seemed to assure this Frankenstein case that he was just like any other creature of the court. It did not matter that he was stitched together from dead cases and zapped into life through lawfare. Merchan knows that there is a fair chance this monstrosity will finally die on appeal, and he was making the case for his own conduct. The verdict, however, is likely to last far longer than the Trump verdict.

It is a judgment against not just Merchan but the New York legal system, which allowed itself to be weaponized against political opponents. In the Mary Shelley novel, Frankenstein says “I am thy creature: I ought to be thy Adam, but I am rather the fallen angel.” Trump can now appeal the case as a whole. Prior appeals in the New York court system were unsuccessful, and hopes are low that the system will redeem itself. However, Trump can eventually escape the vortex of the New York court system in search of jurists willing to see beyond the rage and bring reason to this case.

Notably, prosecutor Joshua Steinglass cited Chief Justice John Roberts in his argument before Merchan, noting that Roberts recently chastised those who attack the courts. (Roberts just the night before joined liberal justices and Justice Amy Coney Barrett in refusing to stay the sentencing). Steinglass portrayed Trump as an existential threat to the rule of law. Roberts, however, is everything that Merchan is not. You can disagree with him, but he has repeatedly ruled against his own preferred outcomes in cases, including rulings against President Trump and his campaign and Administration. For his part, Trump declined to criticize the court and declared that “This is a long way from finished and I respect the court’s opinion.” Indeed it is. Merchan’s monster will now go on the road and work its way back to the Supreme Court. Outside of New York this freak attraction will likely be viewed as less thrilling than chilling.

The election had the feel of the townspeople coming to the castle in the movie. In this case, however, the townspeople were right about what they saw in the making of a creature that threatened their very existence. Lawfare is that monster. It threatens us all, even those who hate Trump and his supporters. Once released, it spreads panic among the public which can no longer rely on the guarantees of blind and fair justice. That includes businesses who view this case and the equally absurd civil case brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James as creating a dangerous and even lawless environment. Many are saying “but for the grace of God go I” in a system that allows for selective prosecution. In the sentencing proceeding, Merchan was downplaying his hand in creating this Frankenstein. However, the case is the fallen angel of the legal system. While heralded in court by Bragg’s office as the triumph of legal process, it is in fact the rawest and most grotesque form of lawfare. Many will be blamed as the creators of this monster but few will escape that blame, including Merchan himself.

Hunter will have to talk. And under oath he can’t lie.

• House Judiciary Expected To Continue Hunter Biden Probe Despite Pardon (JTN)

House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan on Thursday indicated that he would keep the investigation into first son Hunter Biden going in the 119th Congress, even though President Joe Biden already pardoned him for all crimes committed in the past decade. The wide-ranging pardon was announced last month, and blamed Republicans for the reason he broke a promise he had made to voters. The pardon even forgives any theoretical crimes Hunter Biden may have committed when serving on the board of Burisma. President-elect Donald Trump has also threatened to go after his political adversaries after they allegedly targeted him in a series of court cases during the Biden administration.

Jordan said that one way the investigation can continue is by interviewing special counsel David Weiss, who ultimately recommended Hunter Biden be prosecuted on federal gun and tax evasion charges. Weiss was interviewed last year as part of the committee’s impeachment investigation into the president, per Politico. “We think we need to look at David Weiss, the special counsel,” Jordan said. “There will be some additional work we need to do, I think, there because when we deposed him, he wasn’t willing to — he didn’t answer any questions, really, because it was [an] ongoing investigation.”

The Judiciary committee also questioned Hunter Biden and Joe Biden’s brother, James Biden, in closed-door interviews last year regarding the impeachment inquiry. Jordan also declined to investigate the president’s pardon of his son, claiming that even though he did not support the decision, the president has proper authority to pardon whoever they like.

“What they do is have access to your phone. So it doesn’t matter if anything’s encrypted, they could just see it in plain sight..”

• CIA Can Read WhatsApp Messages – Zuckerberg (RT)

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has acknowledged that US authorities, including the CIA, can access WhatsApp messages by remotely logging into users’ devices, effectively bypassing the platform’s end-to-end encryption. Speaking on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast on Friday, Zuckerberg explained that while WhatsApp’s encryption prevents Meta from viewing message content, it does not protect against physical access to a user’s phone. His comments came in the context of a question by Rogan about Tucker Carlson’s quest to set up an interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin. In February last year, while speaking about finally succeeding in talking to Putin after three years of failed attempts, Carlson blamed the US authorities, namely the NSA and the CIA, for stalling his efforts.

According to Carlson, the agencies spied on him by tapping his messages and emails, and leaked his intentions to the media, which “spooked” Moscow from talking to him. Rogan asked Zuckerberg to explain how this could have happened given encryption safeguards that are supposed to protect messages. “The thing that encryption does that’s really good is it makes it so that the company that’s running the service doesn’t see it. So if you’re using WhatsApp, there’s no point at which the Meta servers see the contents of that message,” Zuckerberg said, noting that even if someone were to hack into Meta’s databases, they could not access users’ private texts. The Signal messaging app, which Carlson used, uses the same encryption, according to Zuckerberg, so the same rules apply. However, he noted that encryption does not stop law enforcement from viewing messages stored on devices.

“What they do is have access to your phone. So it doesn’t matter if anything’s encrypted, they could just see it in plain sight,” he clarified. Zuckerberg mentioned tools such as Pegasus, a spyware developed by the Israeli company NSO Group, which can be covertly installed on mobile phones to access data. According to Zuckerberg, the fact that users’ private messages can be jeopardized by directly breaking into their devices is the reason Meta came up with disappearing messages, where one can have one’s message thread erased after a certain period of time. “If someone has compromised your phone and they can see everything that’s going on there, then obviously they can see stuff as it comes in… So having it be encrypted and disappearing, I think is a pretty good kind of standard of security and privacy,” he stated.

Zuckerberg’s remarks come amid ongoing debates about digital privacy and government surveillance. While end-to-end encryption is lauded for protecting user data, agencies like the CIA and FBI have argued it can impede efforts to combat crime and terrorism. A 2021 FBI training document indicated that US law enforcement can gain limited access to encrypted messages from services like iMessage, Line, and WhatsApp, but not from platforms such as Signal, Telegram, Threema, Viber, WeChat, or Wickr. Additionally, while encrypted messages cannot be intercepted during transmission, reports indicate that backups stored in cloud services may be accessible to law enforcement if an encryption key is attached.

Children’s Health Defense. RFK Jr’s organization.

• We Were Censored By Meta; We’re Taking Them to the Supreme Court (CHD)

The headline from Politico’s “Playbook” would have been unthinkable eight years ago: “Meta sends Trump a friend request.” After all, Meta’s founder, Mark Zuckerberg, is a political lightning rod in conservative political circles, especially after the $300 million worth of “Zuckerbucks” spent during the 2020 election to elect like-minded politicians. Yet lately, Zuckerberg has been singing a much different tune. He referred to President-elect Trump as “badass,” visited him at Mar-a-Lago, and donated one million dollars to his inaugural fund. This week, Meta made news by adding Dana White, a longtime Trump ally and head of the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC), to its board of directors. Then came the real bombshell: Meta ended its so-called “independent fact-checking program,” ostensibly lifting restrictions on speech across Facebook, as well as their other platforms like Instagram and WhatsApp.

In doing so, Zuckerberg admitted the current content moderation practices – in place since criticism of his platform during the 2016 presidential election – have “gone too far” and stressed a commitment to “restoring free expression.” Make no mistake: Meta’s “independent fact-checkers” are neither independent nor fact-based. Their elimination is a positive step and should be encouraged. The announcement came less than 24 hours after the organization I lead – the nonprofit Children’s Health Defense – asked the U.S. Supreme Court to hear our censorship lawsuit against Meta. But if Meta is serious about supporting “free expression,” they have a lot of work to do – and it requires more than moving workers from California to Texas, as Zuckerberg also pledged to do.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Meta not only censored our posts – many having to do with topics that the so-called medical “experts” like Dr. Anthony Fauci were dead wrong about – but outright kicked us off the platform without warning. Meta first took action against CHD in May 2019, from takedowns and restrictions to an outright ban in August 2022 that is still in effect. What were our offenses? Simply publishing data on the risks of COVID vaccines, Remdesivir, and ventilation, as well as having the temerity to raise the benefits of natural immunity and alternative treatment with ivermectin and other protocols. An unfettered discussion of all these issues would have saved lives. We knew that many of the government’s promises – on items like the pandemic’s origin and the best way to treat symptoms and prevent its spread – were not grounded in “science” as they claimed but political imperatives from the Biden administration.

In 2020, we took them to court, starting in the San Francisco federal court. We suffered some legal setbacks along the way, and this week ended up before the U.S. Supreme Court. Meta will not change its ways without a fight. They not only kicked us off the platform but censored our supporters and erased our past posts. Meta shut down the “free expression” they claim to be championing. Yes, Meta was coerced by the Biden administration, but there’s more to the story. Zuckerberg’s WhatsApp messages showed that he conspired with the government and chose to censor because he had “bigger fish to fry” than protecting free speech. He knew then that censorship violated the rights of free expression, and he knew then that it wouldn’t help the administration bring COVID under control, but he did it anyway.

The pandemic may be over, but speech about COVID is not. If the Supreme Court takes our case, it can guarantee accountability for Meta’s role in this man-made disaster – and prevent another in the future. Meta, like the other mega-platforms, must be held accountable when they knowingly conform their content-moderation process and decisions or cede active, meaningful control to the government’s preference to suppress constitutionally protected speech. This time it was CHD’s health and medical freedom issues. But who will be next?

Ultimately, this debate is not about any one group or individual but all of us. How many people suffered or lost their lives because they didn’t have access to information that could have helped them make better-informed decisions about their health? The American public is better served with more information rather than less, especially when it is grounded on data-based scientific information. People are smart enough to make up their own minds. Last November, voters sent an unmistakable message that they want a break from the status quo. Kudos to Mark Zuckerberg for recognizing the prevailing winds and saying the right things. But the free speech fight won’t be over until those who were kicked off his platforms are reinstated.

“I don’t see Trump as a friend of Russia. I don’t see him being in Putin’s pocket the way a lot of people in the West do. But I see him as willing to make deals..”

• US Playing ‘Fool’s Game’ By Ignoring Russia’s Red Lines – Peter Kuznick (RT)

The strategy pursued by the US in the Ukraine conflict risks provoking serious responses from Russia, Peter Kuznick, professor of history and director of the Nuclear Studies Institute at American University, has said. Kuznick earlier appeared on US journalist Tucker Carlson’s podcast show alongside director Oliver Stone. In an exclusive interview to RT on Saturday, he warned against assuming Russia’s red lines can be crossed without consequence. “Russia keeps drawing red lines, and the United States keeps crossing them” on the assumption that Russia is “bluffing” and that President Vladimir Putin “is not going to follow through on his threats,” Kuznick said.

He described this approach as a “fool’s game,” warning it could lead to severe repercussions. Kuznick criticized the belief that Russia will remain passive, calling it “insanity” and stressing that such assumptions gamble with global safety. In December, Putin accused the US of encouraging escalation by arming Kiev and pushing Russia to the “red line.” He claimed the West uses these provocations to instill fear in their populations. Reflecting on Donald Trump’s policies, Kuznick noted Trump “does not view Russia as an implacable enemy,” though his administration provided lethal aid to Ukraine in 2019 and increased sanctions on Russia. “I don’t see Trump as a friend of Russia. I don’t see him being in Putin’s pocket the way a lot of people in the West do. But I see him as willing to make deals,” he said.

“Trump doesn’t have any fixed values or strong beliefs,” which “means that he could either be worse, dramatically worse, or he could be dramatically better,” Kuznick added. He and director Oliver Stone appeared on Tucker Carlson’s show earlier this week in the hopes Trump “would be listening” and “encourage the side of Trump that looks for peaceful solutions.”Kuznick warned that crises in Ukraine, Gaza, Taiwan, or the South China Sea could rapidly escalate into broader conflicts, including nuclear war. Highlighting the growing danger, he said he “would have moved the Doomsday Clock to 60 seconds to midnight.”

In November, Putin approved changes to Russia’s nuclear doctrine that expanded the scenarios that could warrant a nuclear response to include aggression by a non-nuclear state backed by a nuclear power. The doctrine describes nuclear weapons as an “extreme and forced measure” aimed at conflict prevention.Kuznick urged the US to adapt to a multipolar world, emphasizing diplomacy over unilateral action. He also criticized the administration of current President Joe Biden for its aggressive foreign policy and unwavering support for Israel’s actions in Gaza, which he argued undermines Washington’s global standing. “You can’t have it both ways,” Kuznick asserted, highlighting the inconsistency in condemning Russia’s actions in Ukraine while supporting Israel’s in Gaza.

Kuznick

‘Nyet means nyet’—even the CIA warned against crossing Russia’s red lines over NATO expansion in Ukraine.

In a conversation with Tucker Carlson, Peter Kuznick explains how U.S. actions since 2008, including NATO ambitions, regime change plans, and the Iraq War, fueled tensions… pic.twitter.com/L6TNjdvdYp

— DD Geopolitics (@DD_Geopolitics) January 11, 2025

Sounds more like the voice of reason instead of some extreme right wing party.

• AfD Delegates Reject Motion Condemning Putin (RT)

The right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) party has overwhelmingly voted against including in its 2025 election manifesto a condemnation of Russian President Vladimir Putin over the Ukraine conflict. The delegates gathered for a conference in Riesa, Germany on Saturday to decide on the platform for the snap parliamentary elections which will be held next month. Albrecht Glaser, a member of the Bundestag, proposed accusing Russia of failing to protect civilians in Ukraine and stating that the “AfD condemns the behavior of President Putin and once again calls on all warring parties to propose an immediate ceasefire and hold peace talks.” According to news channel N-tv, 69% of the delegates voted to reject the motion.

The draft program approved by the party leadership only briefly mentions the conflict, saying, “the war in Ukraine has disturbed the European peaceful order,” Deutsche Presse-Agentur reported. The draft reportedly says the AfD “sees Ukraine’s future as a neutral state outside of NATO and the EU,” and calls for the restoration of “undisturbed trade” with Russia. Known for its anti-immigration stance, the AfD is the second-most popular party in Germany, according to polls. The party has often been accused of parroting Russian narratives about the conflict between Russia and Ukraine. The party has rejected the ‘pro-Russian’ label, insisting that continuing military support for Kiev and sanctions on Russian trade and energy exports are counter to German national interests.

During a recent conversation with tech billionaire Elon Musk, AfD co-leader Alice Weidel argued that the EU has abandoned diplomatic efforts in favor of dangerous confrontation with Russia. The conflict could “escalate big time towards a nuclear exchange,” she warned. Early elections were called after Germany’s ruling three-party coalition collapsed in late 2024 due to disagreements over the budget.

Ursula

Is @ElonMusk interfering in German elections? Listen to Ursula von der Leyen who threatens Italians a few days before the elections won by Giorgia Meloni: "We will see the result of the vote in Italy. If things go in a difficult direction, we have the tools, as in the case of… pic.twitter.com/umWcBx63Sy

— RadioGenoa (@RadioGenoa) January 11, 2025

Former European Commissioner Thierry Breton says the EU has mechanisms to nullify a potential election victory of the AfD:
”We did it in Romania and we will obviously do it in Germany if necessary”

https://twitter.com/i/status/1878061051993854015

FRENCH TAUNTER DENIES EU TOLD ROMANIA TO CANCEL ELECTION RESULTS

Thierry Breton, the former EU Commissioner who tried to interfere with Elon’s interview with Trump, claimed his recent comments were taken out of context.

His statement comes after he said EU laws were enforced in… https://t.co/yvcGEdLH8H pic.twitter.com/NwXIdDEbwr

— Mario Nawfal (@MarioNawfal) January 11, 2025

The mismanagement is mindblowing.

• Why Was Pacific Palisades Reservoir EMPTY? It Gets Worse. (Victoria Taft)

An empty reservoir and dry fire hydrants are now the symbols of California and local officials’ response to the horrific Pacific Palisades wildfire—one of six Santa Ana windblown firestorms still burning in Los Angeles. Gov. Gavin Newsom has ordered an investigation to demonstrate that he’s doing something, but the damage is being done right now. The 117 million-gallon Santa Ynez Reservoir was empty and down for maintenance when the devastating fire was sparked, perhaps in the brush, between the homes and the Pacific Coast Highway. You can see a map of the area in my story Good Intentions Might Be the Cause of Devastating Palisades Fire. Friday, officials confirmed that the reservoir had been down for nearly a year —closing in February 2024—for maintenance to the cover of the reservoir.

The New York Times reports that a contractor was hired in November to fix a crack in the cover. It is unclear why the reservoir had to be shut down for that extended period of time. The ripple effect was beyond devastating. The fires broke out Tuesday, Jan. 7. By the next day, Janisse Quiñones, the head of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, said their system tanks went dry three times. You’ll want to remember that because the story is about to get worse. We have three large water tanks, about a million gallons each. We ran out of water in the first tank at about 4:45 p.m. yesterday. We ran out of water in the second tank about 8:30 p.m. and the third tank about 3 a.m. this morning. She never mentioned the empty reservoir, though former DWP Commissioner and mayoral candidate Rick Caruso did say that “the reservoir” hadn’t been filled. He was right and righteously angry.

Firefighters complained that there was no water coming out of the hydrants. The fires burned uncontrollably. In addition to the “investigation” by Newsom, the New York Times reported that the Department of Water and Power, whose job it is to fill the reservoirs, is looking into whether the empty Santa Ynez reservoir in Pacific Palisades made a difference in their fire response. We are not kidding. [..] Water for the Pacific Palisades is fed by a 36-inch line that flows by gravity from the larger Stone Canyon Reservoir, said Marty Adams, a former general manager and chief engineer at the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. That water line also fills the Santa Ynez Reservoir. Water from the two reservoirs then sustain the water system for the Pacific Palisades, and also pump systems that fill storage tanks that feed higher-elevation homes in the neighborhood.

It was unclear whether officials could have brought the reservoir back online before the fire, after forecasters began warning of dangerous wildfire conditions. Now, I’m no hydrologist or physicist, but wouldn’t water pressure be helped by having water in all the tanks and reservoirs? Am I missing something here? But, what ho! We get an answer. Mr. Adams said an operational reservoir would have been helpful initially to more fully feed the water system in the area. But he also said it appeared that that reservoir and the tanks would have eventually been drained in a fire that was consuming so many homes at once. Municipal water systems are generally designed to sustain water loads for much smaller fires than what consumed Pacific Palisades. [emphasis added]

Those are a lot of words to say that more water would have been helpful. Speaking of not being a hydrologist, I looked up the latest state hydrology report because the global warming crowd desperately hopes to blame “climate change/catastrophe” for the fires. Yeah, well, that dog won’t hunt. If you’re new here, from east to west Southern California, there’s desert, then mountains, then semi-arid land all the way to the ocean. While the media will tell you this is climate change, this is no change at all. This is the state of play in California all the time. However, California has received a surge in water in the last few years following a drought, but there have been no new reservoirs built to store water since the last one opened in 1979. According the latest hydrologist report, “Major flood control reservoirs are either near their respective top of conservation levels or below.”

Precipitation has been slow in the first couple of weeks of the year, but the “The statewide accumulated precipitation to end of November 2024 was 5.22 inches, which is 132% of average.” The snowpack, which is also where water is stored, and Gavin Newsom lets flow out to the Pacific Ocean to “save” a bait fish, is growing. “The statewide average snow water equivalent (SWE) was 5.1 inches for December 1, which is 168% percent of normal and 19% of April 1 average.” In other words, there’s been precipitation — remember all those atmospheric rivers? — and if there were more storage there would be more water available for drinking and fighting fires. I could go into the environmental rules that don’t allow much, if any, thinning in forests, road building, otherwise known as fire breaks, reservoir building, and preventative burning, which used to happen all the time to stop these conflagrations that the enviros like to blame on climate, but I do in my other stories.

Pope
https://twitter.com/i/status/1877908221987291462

Stone

“Ukraine changed in 2014 after Maidan. It became truly a dangerous country.”

Oliver Stone, in an interview with Tucker Carlson, explains how the 2014 Maidan coup brought zealous neo-fascists to power, destabilizing Ukraine and violating its neutrality. pic.twitter.com/ZFCnyotYyP

— DD Geopolitics (@DD_Geopolitics) January 11, 2025

Train
https://twitter.com/i/status/1877829927334236235

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

Debt Rattle January 11 2025

Jan 112025

January 11, 2025 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 10:48 am Finance Tagged with: AI, DEI, Greenland, grooming gangs, Merchan, Meta, Putin, rare earths, Trump, Zuckerberg 56 Responses »

Salvador Dali Portrait of Gala with Two Lamb Chops Balanced on Her Shoulder 1933

• Putin Ready For ‘Unconditional’ Trump Meeting – Kremlin (RT)

• Could Merchan Pull a Bait-and-Switch? (Turley)

• The Verdict is in . . . for the New York Legal System (Turley)

• Greenland PM Says He’s Ready To Talk To Trump (RT)

• US Blocked Sale Of Greenland Rare Earths Developer To China (RT)

• US Creates Infrastructure for Nuclear-Capable Jets in Greenland – Russia (Sp.)

• Trump Shares Video Calling Netanyahu ‘A Deep, Dark SOB’ (RT)

• When The United States Tried To Conquer Canada (Pacini)

• Double-Barreled Probes of Trump May Further Boomerang On Democrats (JTN)

• Vast Majority Of Brits Want ‘Grooming Gangs’ Investigated – Poll (RT)

• UK Gov’t Investigating Elon Musk’s TWEETS About Muslim Pedophile Gangs (MN)

• Meta Nukes DEI Program; “Morale For Queer Staff In Shitter” (ZH)

• Zuckerberg’s Sudden Censorship Thaw Is Not Free Speech (Marsden)

• Apocalypse Still Unspooling (James Howard Kunstler)

• AI To Displace Millions of Jobs By 2030 – WEF (RT)

• DeSantis Blasts Media Coverage of California Wildfires (RT)

• Empire of Chaos, Reloaded (Pepe Escobar)

Pope of Greenland

John Fetterman is asked about his visit to Mar-a-Lago: “I demand that I need to be made Pope of Greenland.” pic.twitter.com/Dra2eTpS0t

— TheBlaze (@theblaze) January 9, 2025

Baron

so let me get this straight… Nikola Tesla dies, and the ONLY person allowed access to his safe—the one containing all his most secret inventions—is John G. Trump, a brilliant MIT scientist and, oh yeah, Donald Trump’s uncle, who conveniently says, “nothing to see here” while the… pic.twitter.com/2SYaqqSLRC

— stepfanie tyler (@wildbarestepf) January 10, 2025

Joe Mel
https://twitter.com/i/status/1877537741153644903

Shellen
https://twitter.com/i/status/1877548531394793891

17 seconds

Neuroscientist explains how a thought held for 17 seconds, will start to manifest… science meets ancient wisdom

What are your thoughts?
pic.twitter.com/77VjGbD8Zm

— Interesting STEM (@InterestingSTEM) January 9, 2025

Necessary first step. They can achieve a lot together. Build things, not destroy them.

• Putin Ready For ‘Unconditional’ Trump Meeting – Kremlin (RT)

Russian President Vladimir Putin is open to direct talks with US President-elect Donald Trump, but no specific details have yet been finalized, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said. Previously, Trump announced that a meeting with Putin is being set up, suggesting that it will likely take place after he officially assumes office on January 20. Throughout his 2024 presidential campaign, the Republican repeatedly vowed to end the Ukraine conflict “within 24 hours” of entering office and said he would compel Moscow and Kiev to restart negotiations. Speaking to reporters on Friday, Peskov confirmed that Putin and Trump have expressed their readiness to communicate, adding that there are no preconditions to holding a meeting between the two leaders.

“President Putin has repeatedly stated his openness to contacts with international leaders, including the US president and, in particular, Donald Trump,” Peskov said. “No conditions are required for this. What is required is a mutual desire and political will to conduct a dialogue, to resolve existing problems through dialogue,” the spokesman added, noting that Moscow has recognized Trump’s readiness to solve problems through talks. “We welcome this.” Peskov stated that there are still no specifics on when and where the meeting would be held and that Moscow is currently acting on “the assumption of mutual readiness for the meeting.” He added that it is likely there will be “some movement” in this regard after Trump enters the Oval Office. Speaking to journalists at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida earlier this week, Trump said he might need up to six months after taking office to help Moscow and Kiev reach a deal.

His special envoy on the Ukraine conflict, retired US Army Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg, told Fox News that he would like to set a 100-day timeline to end the conflict. While Trump has yet to lay out any specifics about how he would achieve a peace deal between Moscow and Kiev, some media reports have suggested that the president-elect’s team is considering a freeze of the conflict along the current battle lines. Moscow, however, has repeatedly stated that it seeks to end the conflict once and for all instead of putting it on hold, which it said could be used by Kiev to recuperate and rearm itself for a future conflict. Putin has stated that a ceasefire and peace negotiations with Ukraine can only take place after Kiev withdraws its forces from all Russian territories, abandons its NATO ambitions, and commits to a neutral and nuclear-weapons-free status.

Trump at Truth Social: “The Radical Democrats have lost another pathetic, unAmerican Witch Hunt. After spending tens of millions of dollars, wasting over 6 years of obsessive work that should have been spent on protecting New Yorkers from violent, rampant crime that is destroying the City and State, coordinating with the Biden/Harris Department of Injustice in lawless Weaponization, and bringing completely baseless, illegal, and fake charges against your 45th and 47th President, ME, I was given an UNCONDITIONAL DISCHARGE. That result alone proves that, as all Legal Scholars and Experts have said, THERE IS NO CASE, THERE WAS NEVER A CASE, and this whole Scam fully deserves to be DISMISSED. The real Jury, the American People, have spoken, by Re-Electing me with an overwhelming MANDATE in one of the most consequential Elections in History. As the American People have seen, this “case” had no crime, no damages, no proof, no facts, no Law, only a highly conflicted Judge, a star witness who is a disbarred, disgraced, serial perjurer, and criminal Election Interference. Today’s event was a despicable charade, and now that it is over, we will appeal this Hoax, which has no merit, and restore the trust of Americans in our once great System of Justice. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”

• Could Merchan Pull a Bait-and-Switch? (Turley)

The Supreme Court voted 5-4 to allow the sentencing of President-elect Donald Trump to go forward today. The bare majority was secured when Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justice Amy Coney Barrett voted with their liberal colleagues, Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson. However, part of the rationale for the decision was that Acting New York Justice Juan Merchan indicated that he was going to issue an unconditional discharge without any jail or probation. The question is whether Merchan could pull a bait-and-switch and decide to impose punishment. It is highly unlikely but intriguing. Some of us predicted this result and specifically noted that Chief Justice Roberts would not want to issue a stay. Roberts prefers regular order and, like many jurists, prefers for cases to be finalized to allow for a complete appellate review.

They tend to oppose interlocutory appeals for that reason. In his earlier order, Merchan discussed various options and only said “an unconditional discharge appears to be the most viable solution to ensure finality and allow Defendant to pursue his appellate options.” That is where some of us said that this case would land after the conviction. After the election, such a sentence became all but certain. It is the only option that would avoid the constitutional problems — and likely reversal — for Merchan. The majority took that as a done deal and noted that the President-elect would not have to attend in person and would not face any punishment. The Court may believe that it has sealed Merchan’s suggestion in legal amber. There is little likelihood that Merchan will depart from the course, but could he?

The answer is probably yes. Defendants are allowed to address the court before sentencing and no sentence is finalized until the sentencing hearing. What if Trump came in and expressed open contempt for Merchan and mocked the case? Some judges might take such an allocution moment to increase punishment. Merchan could threaten contempt but that increasing punishment would go against the operating assumption of the Court’s 5-4 decision. The Supreme Court decision itself does not order Merchan to issue an unconditional discharge. It simply treats it as a done deal. It is not as a legal matter, but it is as a practical matter. Today, we will see the ignoble end to a raw form of lawfare by one of its most committed warriors. After millions in costs and years of litigation, it will result in no punishment.

What the left will get is the labeling of Trump as a convicted felon, a fact that will then be repeated like a mantra by the media. Merchan can be expected to add to that rhetoric with punishment soundbites, as he has in the past. However, the result shows how this case was more inflated by the Goodyear blimp. It will be punishment by soundbite in a case based on a ridiculous criminal theory. He will be sentenced without our even knowing what jurors concluded happened in the case since Merchan did not require them to agree on the specific motivation or purpose of underlying acts. The benefit for President Trump is that he can finally appeal this case. While expectations are low for the New York court system which failed to prevent the political weaponization of its criminal justice system, it can now be reviewed in its totality and eventually go back the United States Supreme Court.

Lawfare

President Trump just released his first statement in the wake of the New York criminal case sentencing.

Here's what the president-elect had to say;

"The radical Democrats have lost another pathetic, un-American witch hunt after spending tens of millions of dollars wasting over… pic.twitter.com/daIWCdQp0C

— Overton (@overton_news) January 10, 2025

“The ultimate penalty on Friday morning from Judge Merchan reflects the lack of seriousness in the case. It was more inflated than the Goodyear blimp..”

• The Verdict is in . . . for the New York Legal System (Turley)

With the sentencing of Donald Trump Friday, the final verdict on the New York criminal trial of the president-elect is in. The verdict is not the one that led to no jail or probation for the incoming president. Acting Justice Juan Merchan has brought down the gavel on the New York legal system as a whole. Once considered the premier legal system in the country, figures like New York Attorney General Letitia James, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, Justices Arthur F. Engoron and Juan Merchan have caused the system to be weaponized for political purposes. Trump will walk away from this trial and into the White House in less than two weeks, but the New York system will walk into infamy after this day. The case has long been denounced by objective legal observers, including intense Trump critics, as a legal absurdity.

Even CNN’s senior legal analyst Elie Honig denounced the case as legally flawed and unprecedented while Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., simply called it total “b—s–t.” It is a case based on a non-crime. Bragg took a long-dead misdemeanor and zapped it back into life with a novel and unfounded theory. By using federal violations that were never charged, let alone tried, Bragg turned a misdemeanor into dozens of felonies and essentially tried Trump for federal offenses. Merchan not only allowed those charges to be brought to trial but then added layers of reversible errors in the effort to bag Trump at any cost. For that, he was lionized by the liberal media and many New Yorkers. However, Trump still managed to pull in 3.6 million New York votes, or 42.7%, in the 2024 election.

After all of the lawfare and every advantage (including a heavily biased media and a larger war chest), Vice President Kamala Harris lost hundreds of thousands of votes in 2024 in comparison to Joe Biden just four years earlier. Many polls showed that the public saw the Manhattan criminal case for what it was: raw lawfare targeting a leading political opponent. The election itself felt like the largest verdict in history as citizens rejected the political, legal, and media establishments in one of our nation’s most historic elections. The New York court system will now have a chance to redeem itself but few are holding their breath. The appellate court has still not ruled on an appeal of Attorney General Lettia James’s equally absurd civil lawsuit against Trump. Despite judges expressing skepticism over Engoron’s use of a law to impose a grotesque $455 million in fines and interest, we are still waiting for a decision.

Most are waiting for this criminal case to escape the vortex of the New York court system. With this appeal, this peddler’s wagon of reversible errors will finally pull up in front of the Supreme Court itself. With its ruling on Thursday night, the setting for a decision could not be better for Trump. The Supreme Court has again demonstrated that it has shown restraint and independence in these cases. In response to the ruling, Trump struck the perfect note Thursday night and declined to criticize the Court, stating that “This is a long way from finished and I respect the court’s opinion.” The ultimate penalty on Friday morning from Judge Merchan reflects the lack of seriousness in the case. It was more inflated than the Goodyear blimp, pumped up by hot rage and rhetoric. The sentence was the pinprick that showed the massive void within this case. The verdict is in. The New York legal system has rendered it against itself.

45,000 Greenlanders. That’s 1 for every 8,000 Americans.

As someone noted: the US can make every Greenlander a millionaire. That would cost just $45 billion.

Note: the PM doesn’t seem to be overly happy with the role Denmark plays here. There’s definitely wiggle room.

• Greenland PM Says He’s Ready To Talk To Trump (RT)

Greenland Prime Minister Mute Egede has said he is prepared to speak with US President-elect Donald Trump, who has stated that ownership of the Danish overseas territory is an “absolute necessity” for American national security. Trump, who takes office on January 20, refused to rule out military force or coercive economic methods to secure US ownership of the island, in a statement on Tuesday. At a press conference alongside Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen in Copenhagen on Friday, Egede was asked whether he had been in contact with Trump. “No, but we are ready to talk,” he said. Asked about Trump’s refusal to rule out force in his goal of acquiring the island, Egede replied that he thinks the statement was “serious,” but “Greenland belongs to the Greenlanders.”

Egede noted that international cooperation with allies is very important, and that the island will continue working with the US in the future. Greenland was allowed home rule by Denmark in 1979, and granted the right to declare independence via a referendum in 2009. The Arctic island’s pro-independence leader reiterated this ambition in Friday’s press conference. “The desire for independence, the wish to be in one’s own house, is probably understood by all people in the world,” Egede said. “We do not want to be Danish, we do not want to be Americans, we want to be Greenlandic.” Egede told journalists that an independence “vote will come soon.” The Danish prime minister noted “a strong desire among many Greenlanders to move towards independence,” an aspiration she described as “both legitimate and understandable.”

Both Frederiksen and Egede rejected Trump’s proposals to buy Greenland in the past. “We are not for sale and never will be for sale,” Egede said in December, after Trump first expressed his renewed interest in the island. On Thursday, Frederiksen stated that she had proposed a conversation with Trump’s team. “Intensive work is underway with the Americans,” she told Danish TV2. Denmark and its number one ally, the US, share the common goal of “strengthening the security of the Western alliance.” Greenland hosts a US military base and ballistic missile early-warning infrastructure.

“..China accounted for some 60% of global production and 85% of processing capacity of rare earths..”

• US Blocked Sale Of Greenland Rare Earths Developer To China (RT)

US officials pressured a Greenland-based precious minerals group not to sell a rare-earth project to Chinese investors, the company’s chief executive has claimed. Speaking to Reuters, Tanbreez Mining CEO Greg Barnes confirmed that the deposit was eventually sold to a US-based firm. The news comes amid US President-elect Donald Trump’s insistence that Washington should take over the island, which is rich in minerals and occupies a key strategic position in the Arctic. Barnes told Reuters that the privately owned developer struggled with funding for extraction and was forced to consider offers to sell its deposit at Kringlerne, in southern Greenland. He noted that he received a number of bids for the project from Chinese firms.

However, he also said that US officials, who visited the project twice last year, had repeatedly insisted that he not sell the deposit to a Beijing-linked buyer. According to the executive, he eventually decided to sell to Critical Metals, a New York-based mining development firm, as offers from Chinese and other companies had not clearly indicated how they would pay. Critical Metals CEO Tony Sage confirmed to the news outlet that “there was a lot of pressure not to sell to China” on Barnes. The latter was ultimately forced to accept a much less lucrative deal than what Chinese buyers offered, Sage claimed. Critical Metals paid Barnes $5 million in cash and $211 million in company stock. Neither Sage nor Barnes disclosed the names of officials they met or the Chinese companies that made offers. [..]

Rare earth minerals are critical components in advanced technologies and military equipment due to their strong magnetic properties, making them strategically important in industries ranging from electric vehicles to missile systems. The Tanbreez deposit is about 30% heavy rare earths. Among other minerals, the site contains gallium, which is common in semiconductors, transistors, and small electronic devices. Trump has voiced plans to acquire Greenland since his first term in office. The world’s largest island gained home rule from Denmark in 1979, and is already home to a big US military base. Speaking to reporters on Tuesday, Trump said the island was an “absolute necessity” for US national security, and he would not rule out either military or economic steps to acquire it.

Greenland’s government has firmly rejected Trump’s plans, calling them “an absurd idea.” Denmark has also opposed the proposal. There have been increasingly vocal warnings from Washington about the risks posed by China’s dominance in the global rare earths market. As of 2022, China accounted for some 60% of global production and 85% of processing capacity of rare earths, and the US has been concerned about dependency on Beijing for essential materials.

“The US military has been permanently present in Greenland since World War II..”

• US Creates Infrastructure for Nuclear-Capable Jets in Greenland – Russia (Sp.)

The United States is creating an airfield infrastructure in Greenland for planes capable of carrying nuclear warheads, Russian Ambassador to Denmark Vladimir Barbin told Sputnik. Last month, US President-elect Trump, who is due to assume office on January 20, called it “an absolute necessity” for the United States to own Greenland, thus commenting on his decision to appoint a new US ambassador to Denmark. Greenland Prime Minister Mute Egede has since responded, saying that the island is not for sale. “The island-based US Pituffik Space Base [ex-Thule Air Base] today is a part of the US’ system for warning about a nuclear strike from the Arctic direction. It is undergoing comprehensive modernization, including radar systems worth billions of dollars. It is also building airfield infrastructure for F-35 fighter jets, which are capable of carrying nuclear weapons. Such jets have already used the base’s airfield for training,” Barbin said.

The US military has been permanently present in Greenland since World War II, the ambassador added. “Russia supports boosting stability in the Arctic. It is possible only on the foundation of creating a system of international security equal for all Arctic states,” Barbin said. “Greenland is interested in developing mutually beneficial international cooperation, including with the United States. The question of Greenland’s fate should be decided on the basis of the expression of the will of the Greenlanders themselves within the framework of the current Danish legislation and without any outside interference,” Barbin said. US President-elect Donald Trump, due to assume office on January 20, in December 2024 called it “an absolute necessity” for the United States to own Greenland, an autonomous territory within the Danish Realm, thus commenting on his decision to appoint a new US ambassador to Denmark.

Greenland Prime Minister Mute Egede has since responded, saying that the island is not for sale. Trump told reporters earlier in January that he cannot guarantee he will not use military force to take over Greenland. Later, Pentagon Deputy Press Secretary Sabrina Singh said there are currently no military plans in place to take control over Greenland by force. Trump first announced his claims for Greenland in 2019, when he was serving his first presidential term.

“The first person to congratulate Biden was Bibi. And not only did he congratulate him, he did it on tape,” Trump continued, adding: “I haven’t spoken to him since. F**k him.”

• Trump Shares Video Calling Netanyahu ‘A Deep, Dark SOB’ (RT)

US President-elect Donald Trump has shared a video of an interview with Jeffrey Sachs in which the American economist calls Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “a deep, dark son of a b***h.” Trump posted the clip on his Truth Social platform on Tuesday without comment. In the two-minute video, Sachs accuses former US President Barack Obama of arming jihadists in Syria in a bid to overthrow Bashar Assad’s government. Sachs also condemns former President George Bush’s 2003 invasion of Iraq, and accuses Netanyahu of goading Bush into launching the two-decade war and pushing for US intervention in Syria and Iran. “He’s still trying to get us to fight Iran this day, this week,” Sachs says at the end of the clip. “He’s a deep, dark, son of a b***h… because he’s gotten us into endless wars.”

Trump posted the following video of Professor Jeffrey Sachs, who refers to Netanyahu as a "deep, dark son of a bitch".
– How can this be interpreted? Trump presents himself as the best friend of Israel, but he wants to end the expensive forever wars pic.twitter.com/Lcmk7O1Aud

— Glenn Diesen (@Glenn_Diesen) January 10, 2025

Trump was a close ally of Netanyahu during his term in the White House, and described himself as “history’s most pro-Israel US president.” He imposed sanctions on Iran at Netanyahu’s request, moved the US embassy in Israel to West Jerusalem, and brokered the Abraham Accords, which saw Israel normalize relations with Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Morocco, and Sudan. However, the two seemingly fell out after Netanyahu congratulated President Joe Biden while Trump was still attempting to challenge Biden’s electoral victory in the courts in late 2020. “I liked Bibi. I still like Bibi. But I also like loyalty,” Trump told Axios in 2021, using a nickname for the Israeli PM. “The first person to congratulate Biden was Bibi. And not only did he congratulate him, he did it on tape,” Trump continued, adding: “I haven’t spoken to him since. F**k him.”

Trump and Netanyahu have gotten back in contact in the meantime, with the pair speaking multiple times this year. Last month, Netanyahu said that he and Trump “had a very friendly, warm and important discussion” by phone, focused on Israel’s ongoing war in Gaza. Trump has publicly called on Israel to “finish up” the war. During a meeting with Netanyahu at the Republican’s Mar-a-Lago estate in October, then-candidate Trump reportedly told the Israeli premier that he wanted to see the conflict resolved by the time he takes office later this month. The incoming president has also warned Hamas that there will be “all hell to pay in the Middle East” if the Palestinian militants do not free their remaining Israeli hostages before inauguration day.

Netanyahu has repeatedly stated that the Israel Defense Forces will continue to wage war until they achieve “total victory” over Hamas, and that Israel will maintain “full security control” over the enclave afterwards. Netanyahu will not attend Trump’s inauguration, an aide to the PM told the Times of Israel on Thursday, without commenting further.

Read the original for the history lesson.

• When The United States Tried To Conquer Canada (Pacini)

Thus we arrive at 2025, a year that is ushered in with Trump’s threats to trade relations with Canada and beyond. In light of what happened a couple of centuries ago, it is curious that in pursuit of his MAGA campaign motto, Trump has once again gone on the attack against Canada. It almost seems as if this thorn in the side never passes for Americans. The fact is even more interesting if one considers it from a strategic point of view: for the U.S., the ‘conquest’ of Canada or at least part of it, hand in hand with Greenland, would mean not only having access to the many energy delicacies found there, but also being able to position medium-range weapon systems towards Russia and China. Yes, the white war is more realistic than some mainstream analysts think. Geography is not an opinion and neither are international relations.

Going from the North, from the polar zone, is quicker than going round the entire world. However, there is the disadvantage of the inhospitable nature of the territory, so it is necessary to organize management strategies for this ‘new’ – so to speak – domain, so as to be able to play on a theatre of possible conflict with a certain familiarity. The urgency of this strategic acquisition is very strong. Indeed, a multipolar world is more complex to cope with than the old model, but it is still at an early stage, so the Nordic loophole must be played out with good timing. If we add to this the historical dislike for Canada, the combination works perfectly.

Politically, this can also be played out against liberalism and globalism: Trudeau is a progressive Dem leader, going against his presidency means gaining some support in the international conservative area. A more aligned Canada is convenient for the whole American bloc, according to the U.S. perspective. Moreover, Trudeau is too tied to Europe, so it is not convenient to keep him where he is. Let us therefore not be surprised if we see destabilization in the U.S.-Canadian border territories, beyond the usual migratory tensions: a continental infighting would be a nice play to achieve the strategic objectives of the northern route.

All this is consistent with the already well-known doctrine of the Northwest Passage, the sea route through the Canadian Arctic archipelago, connecting the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans through polar waters. The increasing accessibility of the Northwest Passage, due to the melting of Arctic ice, has opened up new possibilities for maritime trade and the exploitation of natural resources, as well as for optimal military positions to ‘close’ Eurasia from above. However, this situation has raised a number of geopolitical issues, especially for the United States.

One of the main points of contention is the control of the sea route. Canada claims sovereignty over the waters of the Northwest Passage, classifying them as internal waters. The United States, on the contrary, considers the Passage an international waterway, arguing that it should be open to global navigation according to the rules of international law. This divergence reflects a potential conflict of interest, as recognition of Canadian sovereignty could restrict U.S. and other states’ freedom of movement. The presence of a navigable route in the Arctic increases the need to monitor and protect northern waters. For the U.S., this means developing military capabilities and infrastructure in the region to prevent intrusions from potential rivals, such as Russia and China, which are also expanding their influence in the Arctic.

Diplomatically, the U.S. could have sought a more balanced alliance with Canada to move beyond territorial issues, but American arrogance is apparently getting the better of them. The U.S. is planning quite a revival. Who knows if it will end up like the previous one? We only have to conclude with the irony of Dmitry Medvedev, who commented on X on the matter with these words: ‘It is not clear why the United States, as a country, should annex Canada, Greenland or even Great Britain and take back the Panama Canal. There is a more civilized way: Donald Trump and Elon Musk can simply buy the land, making it their own private property’. To each the president he deserves.

“If I were Liz Cheney, I’d be very concerned about being prosecuted for witness tampering..”

• Double-Barreled Probes of Trump May Further Boomerang On Democrats (JTN)

The first Trump term was marked by two impeachments that threatened to tarnish the legacy of his administration, namely, the Ukraine impeachment scandal and the aftermath of Jan. 6. But now, after both of those efforts were undermined by new evidence, their legacy could rebound on President Joe Biden and congressional Democrats. Donald Trump survived both impeachment attempts by House Democrats during his first term, but ultimately lost the 2020 election to Joe Biden. When he departed the White House on Inauguration Day in January 2021, just weeks after the Capitol riot, Trump had the lowest approval rating of his presidency. Many suggested his political career might be over. Democrats moved to impeach Trump the first time with a simple storyline: The then-president abused his power by requesting an investigation of Hunter Biden’s dealings in Ukraine when Joe Biden’s son had done nothing wrong.

After the Republican Senate acquitted the president, this narrative was repeated by both candidate Joe Biden and friendly news anchors during the election. In the second attempt, Democrats tried to impeach Trump for allegedly inciting a riot against the Capitol building by claims of voter fraud in the 2020 election. After the second impeachment also failed, the Democrat-led Jan. 6 Select Committee echoed this narrative and ultimately asserted that Trump engaged in a “multi-part conspiracy” to overturn the election results and incited an insurrection. However, during Joe Biden’s term in office, evidence uncovered by dogged congressional investigators and the media have turned the premises of those dual impeachment pushes upside down, which in many ways exonerated the once and future president.

Republican Senator Ron Johnson, who will chair the investigating arm of the powerful Senate Homeland Security Committee, said congressional Republicans, with a new Washington, D.C., trifecta, may still have an interest in getting to the bottom of Hunter Biden’s dealings in Ukraine and the conduct of the Democrat-led Jan. 6 Select Committee. “I think the American people deserve the truth here,” Senator Johnson, who represents Wisconsin, told the John Solomon Reports podcast. “President Trump has falsely accused your son of doing something wrong while serving on a company board in Ukraine,” CNN anchor Anderson Cooper claimed setting up an interview question for Joe Biden during the campaign. “I want to point out there is no evidence of wrongdoing by either one of you.”

Evidence uncovered by House Republicans and Just the News in the intervening years show that, in fact, there is significant documentary evidence that Hunter Biden and his father engaged in an influence peddling scheme in Ukraine while the younger Biden was serving on the board of Ukrainian energy company Burisma. The final report from House Republicans’ own impeachment inquiry into President Biden over the issue furnished several pieces of evidence to back this claim. Most importantly, evidence first reported by Just the News showed then-Vice President Biden changed official policy by calling an “audible” on a flight to Kyiv, linking a $1 billion loan guarantee for the struggling country to its firing of the Prosecutor General of Ukraine, Viktor Shokin, who was investigating Burisma’s founder, Mykola Zlochevsky.

This evidence contradicted claims from several government witnesses and congressional Democrats during the 2019 probe that Joe Biden did not change U.S. policy and that the Ukrainian prosecutors were not investigating Burisma at the time Hunter Biden worked for the company. Now, Sen. Johnson says Joe Biden’s pardon of his son paves the way to call in Hunter Biden for his complete testimony on how his business role intersected with his father’s political responsibilities in Ukraine. “But what is interesting is, with the hunter Biden’s pardon, he has no Fifth Amendment right not to testify and tell the truth, and so he could be we could prosecute him for lying to Congress,” Sen. Johnson said. “He’s going to have to answer truthfully. So that’s a real possibility. Again, we’d have to get our ducks in a row. You know, you know me, I want documents, I don’t want to just come in for a show trial,” he continued.

Good luck with that.

• Vast Majority Of Brits Want ‘Grooming Gangs’ Investigated – Poll (RT)

Three out of four Britons want Prime Minister Keir Starmer to launch a national inquiry into the sexual abuse of thousands of underage girls by ‘grooming gangs’, according to a new poll. Starmer’s ruling Labour Party has already rejected calls for such an investigation. Conducted by YouGov on behalf of the Women’s Policy Center and published on Thursday by GB News, the survey suggested that 76% of the public back demands for a probe into the abuse, while only 13% reject these demands. Some 84% of Conservative voters and 65% of Labour voters support an inquiry, as do 91% of Reform voters, according to the poll. Hours before the poll was published, Parliament rejected a Conservative-proposed amendment to a child protection bill that would have set up a national inquiry into the gangs by 364 votes to 111.

All 411 Labour MPs either voted against the amendment or abstained, while 101 of 111 Conservatives and all five Reform MPs supported it. The vote came after weeks of constant posts by SpaceX CEO and X owner Elon Musk drawing attention to the activity of the gangs, and to Starmer’s handling of the rapes during his time in charge of the Crown Prosecutorial Service (CPS) from 2008 until 2013. The gangs systematically raped and tortured tens of thousands of underage girls in towns across northern England over the last two decades, according to multiple government and media reports. Almost all of the perpetrators were Pakistani men, and the victims white British girls. Successive governments declined to investigate the scandal – which received mainstream media attention after a series of reports by The Times in 2011 – and several police departments covered up the existence of the gangs, inquiries later found.

Under Starmer, the CPS was heavily criticized for declining to prosecute a gang in Rochdale, and police in Rotherham told a 2015 inquiry that they considered the CPS unwilling to bring charges against the alleged perpetrators. Musk has called Starmer “evil,” and according to the Financial Times, is working on a behind-the-scenes campaign to oust the British prime minister. Starmer’s already dismal approval rating has sunk even further since Musk began attacking his handling of the rape gangs last week. According to a YouGov poll published on Monday, 63% of voters disapprove of his government’s performance, while just 16% approve, a fall of two points since December.

They don’t investigate the gangs, or the politicians, police and media that let them rape unhindered. No, they’re after Musk, who exposes it.

• UK Gov’t Investigating Elon Musk’s TWEETS About Muslim Pedophile Gangs (MN)

Elon Musk’s tweets about Muslim pedophile gangs are being assessed by the UK Government’s counter-extremism unit, as a potential threat to the security of the country, it has emerged. The Daily Mirror reports that The Home Office unit has stepped up social media monitoring of accounts with large followings, including Musk’s, as pertains to the grooming gangs issue. Musk has posted hundreds of tweets in the past week related to the scandal, including openly calling Prime Minister Kier Starmer “evil,” accusing him of facilitating a cover up, and labelling Starmer and safeguarding minister Jess Philips as complicit in the “rape” of Britain. The Mirror report states that the UK government’s counterterrorism unit has “been involved in content analysis and wider risk assessment.” A government source told the Mirror “We keep a close eye on how disinformation and hate can proliferate, including online.”

John Woodcock, the government’s adviser on political violence and disruption, asserted that “Britain’s democracy isn’t a play thing for foreign billionaires – Elon Musk needs to back off and concentrate on his rockets and his cars or whatever he wants to obsess about next. Our electoral laws rightly forbid foreign donations and my recent review warns against our information channels being deliberately manipulated from abroad. We should be watching closely to ensure that doesn’t happen here.” The government’s website states that the counter-extremism unit “focuses on the highest harm risks to the homeland, whether from terrorists, state actors, or cyber and economic criminals,” While the tweets are being investigated, the government has rejected calls for a new national inquiry into the pedophile gangs scandal, with ministers voting down a move to legislate for an inquiry.

UK s Head of Counter-Terrorism Policing AC Matt Jukes is currently probing Elon Musk over his posts on 5yO› pertaining to the grooming gang scandal.

Matt Jukes served as Borough Commander in Rotherham from 2006-2010, which coincided with a peak in child sexual exploitation by& pic.twitter.com/AS3rKQGZIO

— Ian Miles Cheong (@stillgray) January 10, 2025

Ironically, the current head of counter-terrorism policing in the UK is an officer who served as Borough Commander in Rotherham, one of the areas most notorious for child sexual abuse at the hands of Muslim pedophile gangs, from 2006-2010. In comments to GB News, former Head of the Counter Terrorist Unit at Ministry of Defence, Major General Chip Chapman suggested that Musk’s tweets could influence others to take violent action, and that there is a history of ‘conspiracy theorists’ doing that in the UK.

Don’t trust Zuck.

• Meta Nukes DEI Program; “Morale For Queer Staff In Shitter” (ZH)

Days after Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg eliminated “politically biased” fact-checkers—and on the same day his Joe Rogan podcast episode was dropped—Business Insider leaked an internal memo revealing that Meta dialed back its diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts. “The legal and policy landscape surrounding diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts in the United States is changing,” Janelle Gale, vice president of human resources at Meta, wrote in the memo, adding, “The Supreme Court of the United States has recently made decisions signaling a shift in how courts will approach DEI.” Gale pointed out, “The term “DEI” has also become charged, in part because it is understood by some as a practice that suggests preferential treatment of some groups over others.”

Meta is the latest mega-corporation to roll back toxic DEI initiatives, following Walmart and McDonald’s. Over a year ago, Robby Starbuck’s campaign to end DEI in corporate America ignited this trend. The tides have turned in corporate America, and the reelection of Donald Trump will accelerate and ensure Marxist DEI initiatives are replaced with meritocracy (not just in corporate America – but across the government and the military).

I need a new grim reaper meme with all of these companies. We ran out of doors.

• Walmart
• Tractor Supply
• John Deere
• Harley Davidson
• Indian Motorcycle
• Lowe’s
• Ford
• Coors
• Jack Daniels
• Caterpillar
• Boeing
• Toyota
• Stanley Black & Decker
•… pic.twitter.com/3Dkz6crVpv

— Robby Starbuck (@robbystarbuck) November 26, 2024

* * *
Earlier, Joe Rogan dropped a podcast featuring Zuck. Zuck seems to be trying to get on the right side of history…

HOLY SHLIT. Mark Zuckerberg says the Biden admin called his employees and “screamed and cursed” at them to take down Covid/vaccine content. They wanted Meta to censor memes too.

When he pushed back, the Biden regime started investigating his companies.

“It was brutal.” pic.twitter.com/rNwZtoq0hO

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) January 10, 2025

Watch the full episode:

Wherever the wind blows.

• Zuckerberg’s Sudden Censorship Thaw Is Not Free Speech (Marsden)

Why are some folks gobbling up the notion that having the newly restored right to fire off as many “c**ts,” *d**ks,” and “a*****es” as you want on Facebook is the best thing for free speech since the Magna Carta? Facebook’s safe space for easily triggered mental midgets is now supposed to suddenly transform into a beacon of free speech and debate. But only for some. Sort of. Who are apparently now free to call transgenderism a mental illness, for example. Everyone else will have to wait for their potential future liberation from the virtual hall monitor. Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook and its parent company, Meta, has just announced that audiences won’t be subjected to thought policing through fact-checking anymore. Well, American audiences, at least. And not by professional gatekeepers designated specifically for the task. The language patrol will also apparently unclench a bit.

“Starting in the US, we are ending our third party fact-checking program and moving to a Community Notes model,” the company announced, citing the open collaborative model of Elon Musk’s X Platform. The move comes in the wake of Zuckerberg’s pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago where he met with incoming US President-elect Donald Trump – who was himself banned and restricted by Meta until last summer – and his perpetual sidekick, self-styled “free speech absolutist” Musk. Meta’s statement cites “societal and political pressure to moderate content,” claiming that it “has gone too far.” You think? It took Zuckerberg until August 2024 to admit to a congressional committee that “in 2021, senior officials from the Biden Administration, including the White House, repeatedly pressured our teams for months to censor certain COVID-19 content, including humor and satire,” and that it led to “choices that, with the benefit of hindsight and new information, we wouldn’t make today.”

In the same letter, he said the FBI warned his team ahead of the 2020 US presidential election about a “Russian disinformation operation” involving the Biden family and Ukrainian energy company Burisma, on whose board President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, served. Zuckerberg says he now realizes that the story turned out to be legit, and not Russian fake news as the FBI claimed – but only after the New York Post dared to counter the official narrative that Facebook had colluded in protecting by censoring debate. Until now, designated “professionals” in various countries have been working with Meta to ensure narrative compliance. In Canada, for example, partner AFP Fact Check has recently posted that there’s “no evidence linking methane inhibitors for cows to human health problems.” It’s a reference to the Western establishment’s new strategy, introduced in Canada and elsewhere, of suppressing cow farts with feed additive called Bovaer 10 – all in a valiant effort to save the planet from climate change.

Some people have been asking whether the fart suppressor could somehow end up in milk or meat. But the fact checkers say that the government says it’s safe. So case closed. Until it isn’t, of course. But that would require alternative information to come to light, as is always the case when the public finds out after the fact that something officially authorized was in fact problematic. But good luck having that debate on Facebook, where you risk posting something that ends up being scarlet-lettered with an official message from the online Gestapo constantly scouring the website via algorithms for wrongthink.

At least in the US, this is all now supposed to be ending precisely where it began in the wake of the 2016 presidential election when Democrats and other assorted anti-Trumpers were in hysterics over the idea that Russia singlehandedly got Trump elected through social media. That led to pressure on outlets like Meta to censor fake news as defined by establishment-friendly fact checkers. The slippery censorship slope then led to a move by Meta to then prioritize approved “trustworthy” information sources in 2018 – a system that expanded further under the pretext of the Covid fiasco in 2020. After the Capitol riots in January 2021, Facebook dumped Trump’s account indefinitely, citing the need to prevent violence and disinformation.

And in September 2024, amid the most recent US presidential election campaign, Meta globally banned Russian media accounts, like RT, citing “foreign interference” – a move that effectively reduces the odds of users being exposed to unauthorized or alternative views that risk challenging the status quo. RT news articles posted on Facebook warn the user to proceed with caution when reading. No such call to engage critical thinking accompanies Western news sources, because they’re always in unfailing alignment with the objective truth. There’s no evidence yet that anyone outside the US will be spared from Meta’s digital thought safety patrol. Or even that Americans still won’t be subjected to less obvious censorship of information sources.

France is straight-up expressing concern over the rule loosening anyway. “France remains vigilant and committed to ensuring that META, along with other platforms, comply with their obligations under European law, particularly the Digital Services Act (DSA),” the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement, citing the same European law that led to the EU threatening Musk with 150 bureaucratic monitors ahead of his planned online interview with German right-wing populist leader Alice Weidel, currently polling as the voters’ favored choice for chancellor ahead of next month’s parliamentary elections.

“Freedom of expression, a fundamental right protected in France and Europe, should not be confused with a right to virality, which would permit the dissemination of inauthentic content to millions of users without any filtering or moderation,” the French government said. Yeah, well, it would also mean the dissemination of debate and an increased opportunity for contributions of all kinds.

“‘Climate Change’ has been identified: it’s a 28-YO man from Reseda in a black hoodie holding a lighter and some matches.” — Peach Keenan

• Apocalypse Still Unspooling (James Howard Kunstler)

“Life imitates art,” Oscar Wilde quipped, a most insightful glimpse into the human condition delivered as a wise-crack. Very Hollywood. Too bad there were no late-night talk shows in Oscar’s time. It took more than eighty years, but the apocalyptic burning of Los Angeles depicted at the climax of Nathanial West’s 1939 novel The Day of the Locust has finally come — the city of dreams turned into one big flaming nightmare. The adumbrations of this fiasco will darken our national life for years to come. Who knew that the best way to convert Utopian Woke Democrats back into a reality-based thought system would be to burn their houses down? The wealthy showbiz folk occupying the moral high ground of the Pacific Palisades voted Democratic by 90-percent. They were fully on-board with the agenda of the Party of Chaos, especially Diversity-Equity-and-Inclusion (DEI) and the open border that allowed a deluge of mysterious strangers to flood the country.

Now, reports come across the “X” wires that these mystery folk are cruising the wreckage in the canyons on scooters and in cars to loot anything left of value. The police are shown on video capturing a mystery migrant with a blowtorch suspected of starting the latest outbreak named the Kenneth Fire on the edge of the San Fernando Valley. Loud-and-proud DEI firefighters were stymied in their work by neighborhood fire hydrants that were disappointingly not “full of water,” as they put it. Is that how it works? Each hydrant is supposed to get filled up on a regular schedule by water pixies?

You know by now that LA Mayor Karen Bass was unavailable for the early innings of the conflagration, having flown to the West African nation of Ghana for the inauguration of the new president John Dramani Mahama. But she managed to scramble back in time to mourn the smoldering ruins of Malibu. Governor Gavin Newsom dallied on a smoke-filled street with CNN’s disaster specialist, Anderson Cooper, pretending to manage the situation, which was, in fact, completely out of control. Among the things the governor has been criticized for is poor forest and brush management. Mr. Newsom has been lately working to pass a $25-million bill to fund measures for “Trump-proofing” California. For that same $25-million, he could have hired 500 workers at $50,000-a-year to cut brush around Los Angeles County. That is, if he didn’t avail himself of work-gangs from the California penitentiaries.

Even “Joe Biden” was in town, to announce the creation of a new national monument, the Chuckwalla National Monument, south of Joshua Tree National Park — 125 miles out in the Mojave Desert from LA. But he had helpful phone conversations with Governor Newsom. . . promises of federal funding to build Malibu back better. I wonder if the folks still camping out in tents back in the Mountains of Carolina heard about that. This same week “JB” also announced another $500-million aid package for Ukraine. Anybody wondering why “America First” helped get Mr. Trump elected?

You can’t overstate the amount and degree of family devastation to be endured in the months and years ahead. For one thing, many homeowners recently had their fire insurance cancelled. Decades of punitive bureaucracy made rate increases difficult in wildfire-prone areas, so companies like Allstate decided to quit doing business in the state. So, many of the thousands of lost houses will be total losses. A great many of these were multi-million-dollar houses, even modest ones built in the 1960s, due to the extreme desirability of neighborhoods like Pacific Palisades, the Hollywood Hills, and Malibu Beach. Some middle-class people had their entire nest-eggs vested in these houses.

“..170 million new jobs will be created by the end of the decade, while 92 million jobs will be displaced.”

• AI To Displace Millions of Jobs By 2030 – WEF (RT)

The deployment of artificial intelligence could deal a heavy blow to the worldwide labor market and result in massive layoffs in global companies, the World Economic Forum (WEF) Future of Jobs report published on Wednesday, warns. The study, which surveyed hundreds of large businesses worldwide, found that 41% of companies plan to slash their workforce by 2030 in response to the increasing capabilities of AI. Further, 77% of companies are preparing to reskill and upskill their existing staff from 2025 to 2030 for better human-machine collaboration. The report predicted that 170 million new jobs will be created by the end of the decade, while 92 million jobs will be displaced. The WEF noted that skills in AI, big data, and cybersecurity are expected to be in high demand.

“Trends such as generative AI and rapid technological shifts are upending industries and labor markets, creating both unprecedented opportunities and profound risks,” Till Leopold, the head of Work, Wages and Job Creation at the WEF, said. The WEF said that advances in AI, robotics, and energy systems, particularly in renewable energy and environmental engineering, are expected to boost demand for specialist roles in these fields. The report also identified job categories that will face the largest decline in numbers due to AI and other technological trends. They include service clerks, executive secretaries, payroll clerks, and graphic designers.

“The presence of both graphic designers and legal secretaries just outside the top 10 fastest-declining job roles, a first-time prediction not seen in previous editions of the Future of Jobs Report, may illustrate GenAI’s increasing capacity to perform knowledge work,” the report said. The report stressed that the impact of AI extends beyond job displacement, highlighting the potential of the technology to augment human output, rather than replace it outright. The WEF concluded that “human-centered skills” such as creative thinking, resilience, flexibility, and agility will continue to be critical.

Meanwhile, high-profile figures and scientists have raised concerns in recent years over the potential dangers posed by AI. Last year, computer scientist and author Paul Graham warned that the use of AI for writing will result in the majority of people losing the skill in a few decades. The labor market will change significantly because of the adoption of advanced technology, according to Daniil Gavrilov, the head of the Artificial Intelligence Research Laboratory at T-Bank AI Research. Everything a human is capable of doing can be done by AI, and machines can do it well, he said in an interview with RIA Novosti last year. Gavrilov noted that in the short and medium term, employees will have to master AI skills in order to remain competitive.

“If Newsom was a Republican… you guys would have him nailed to the wall for what they’re doing over there.”

• DeSantis Blasts Media Coverage of California Wildfires (RT)

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has blasted the US media for what he perceives as partisan coverage of natural disasters in the country. California is battling some of the worst wildfires in recent history, with officials reporting ten fatalities in Los Angeles County as of Friday. Republican politicians are blaming the authorities in the Democratic-leaning state for undercutting the ability of emergency services to tackle the disaster with skewed policy priorities. On Wednesday, President-elect Donald Trump called on Governor Gavin Newsom to resign for allegedly mismanaging water reserves in California. DeSantis confronted members of the press on Thursday evening, after one of them suggested that the call was inappropriate. The on-camera exchange took place during a press conference held by a group of Republican governors at Trump’s residence in Mar-a-Lago.

“Is it appropriate for people in your industry to try to create division and to try to create narratives anytime these things happen?” DeSantis reacted. “If Newsom was a Republican… you guys would have him nailed to the wall for what they’re doing over there.” The governor cited coverage of incidents in his own state, such as the deadly collapse of a condominium in the Miami suburb of Surfside in 2021. His people in Florida just assume that any such occurrence would be “politicized by the media,” he said, and other Republican state officials have similar expectations. Considering their track record, pro-Democratic journalists are in no position to complain about the party’s messaging now, DeSantis stated.

“You could criticize the president-elect, but I think you also have to hold these other people accountable, and I have not seen that,” he concluded, referring to Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and other elected officials in California. Bass was among the primary targets for conservative critics during the crisis. She was part of the US delegation to Ghana, which attended the inauguration of President John Mahama on Tuesday, and did not return home until Wednesday evening. By that time, more than 1,000 homes had been burned and some 100,000 people across the region had to evacuate, according to media reports. The mayor underestimated the risks to the city, when the National Weather Service in Los Angeles issued a warning of extreme weather conditions on Thursday last week, the New York Times has suggested.

“Welcome to Terror and Genocide R Us.”

• Empire of Chaos, Reloaded (Pepe Escobar)

All warfare is based on deception. Hence, when able to attack, we must seem unable; when using our forces, we must seem inactive; when we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away; when far away, we must make him believe we are near. Sun Tzu, The Art of War.

The Empire of Chaos is relentless. Lawfare, destabilizations, sanctions, kidnappings, color revolutions, false flags, annexations: 2025 will be the year of BRICS – plus BRICS partners – as choice targets under fire. Inestimable Prof. Michael Hudson coined “chaos” as official US policy. That’s bipartisan – and it runs across all silos of the Deep State. In the absence of long-term strategic vision, and amidst the progressive imperial expulsion from Eurasia, all that’s left for the Hegemon is to unleash chaos from West Asia to Europe and parts of Latin America – a concerted attempt to Divide and Rule BRICS and thwart their collective drive affirming sovereignty and the primacy of national interests. US Think Tank had already floated a year and a half ago the notion of swing states. Not the parochial American electoral version, but its transposition to geopolitics.

All six candidates at the time were BRICS members (Brazil, India, South Africa), or potential BRICS members or partners (Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Turkiye). The code for “swing states” was unmistakable: all these are targets for destabilization – as in if you do not abide by the “rules-based international order”, you’re going down. Saudi Arabia, wary of its wealth parked in London and New York financial markets, is still cautiously hedging its bets: theoretically Riyadh is a BRICS member, but in practice not really. Turkiye has been invited as a partner (no official response yet). And then there’s Southeast Asia powerhouse Indonesia, which has just been admitted as a full member this week – under the Brazilian BRICs presidency. Call it BRIIICS: the predominant vector of a seismic recalibration of the geopolitical tectonic plates – bound to reshape trade, finance, and governance.

BRIIICS and selected partners are configuring a formidable network – bent on rewriting the rules of the game: currently 10 full members and 8 full partners – and counting, making up 41.4% of global GDP by PPP and roughly half of the world’s population. This is what the Empire of Chaos is up against. Imagine China-India-Russia-Iran-Indonesia-South Africa-Brazil-Egypt-Saudi Arabia as the transcontinental pearls of the emerging multi-nodal world. Huge populations; massive natural resources and industrial might; myriad development possibilities.

The ruling elites of the Empire of Chaos have nothing to offer as a counterpoint to this growing geopolitical powerhouse – complete with its own development bank (granted, that needs a lot of work); full commitment to develop and test alternative payment systems; and a sprawling transcontinental trade alliance bent on progressively sidestepping the US dollar. Instead of working on diplomacy, dialogue and cooperation, the Empire of Chaos – and the vassalized collective West – do “offer” something to the Global Majority: their full support for an ethnic cleansing genocide, and their full support for a suit-and-tie terror gang of “moderate” head choppers taking power in a former sovereign Arab nation. Welcome to Terror and Genocide R Us.

Musk
https://twitter.com/i/status/1877690442889708006

Snow
https://twitter.com/i/status/1877317916359606466

Drown

Elephant alerts keeper of drowning animalpic.twitter.com/quNNZaDKUC

— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) January 10, 2025

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

Debt Rattle October 8 2024

Oct 082024

October 8, 2024 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 9:00 am Finance Tagged with: Chernobyl, Elon Musk, Jack Smith, Meta, Renaissance man, Trump, two-state solution, ultra processed foods, Von der Leyen 79 Responses »

Paul Henry Altan Lough, Donegal 1933-34

• Like a Prayer (Jim Kunstler)

• ‘If He Loses I’m F**ked’: Musk And Tucker Carlson’s Must-Watch Interview (ZH)

• We Are in Need of Renaissance People (Victor Davis Hanson)

• Where is America’s Co-President, Dr. Jill? (AmG)

• Jack Smith’s October Surprise Was Not That Surprising (Turley)

• Supreme Court Rejects Musk’s Case Against Jack Smith Over Trump Tweets (ET)

• Top EU Court Rules Against Meta In Use of Personal Data for Ads (ET)

• German Industrial Orders Collapse (RT)

• The Lack of a Two-State Solution Most Threatens Israel (Jeffrey Sachs)

• Perfidy in Tehran (Alastair Crooke)

• West Aims To ‘Bring Russians To Their Knees’ – Slovak Prime Minister Fico (RT)

• UK and US Helped Ukraine Plan ‘New Chernobyl’ – Russian Intel Chief (RT)

• Georgia Supreme Court Reinstates State’s Abortion Law (ET)

• Trial Date Set In Von der Leyen Covid-19 Vaccine Scandal – FT (RT)

• US Children’s Diets Are Now “Over 70%” Ultra-Processed Foods (ZH)

NEW: Trump surges to nearly a double-digit lead over Kamala Harris on political betting platform Polymarket.

The surge happened almost immediately after Trump held his Butler, PA, rally with Elon Musk.

The surge comes as Trump gets a rush of positive developments:

– New… pic.twitter.com/UobE5pOtL7

— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) October 7, 2024

https://twitter.com/i/status/1843035872922566982

RFK

The principal objective of the FDA today is to serve the mercantile interests of pharmaceutical companies. Let's get @realDonaldTrump elected so I can go to Washington and rid our government agencies of corruption. pic.twitter.com/ntNfaHa3Gn

— Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@RobertKennedyJr) October 7, 2024

Anyone catch that? pic.twitter.com/m9JYjisflb

— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) October 7, 2024

UNLEASHED: The Democrats have decided they had to have Kamala Harris start doing interviews. They're not going well. She is completely unprepared to discuss the current policies of the Biden-Harris regime much less what changes she would make under a Harris-Walz regime.… pic.twitter.com/ugGSVEck9N

— @amuse (@amuse) October 6, 2024

70 days

CBS: You were basically handed the nomination. No primary process. No votes. That's not how our system was intended to work.

KAMALA: "I am proud to have earned the support."

CBS: People don't even know who you are.

KAMALA: "I've been in this race for 70 days!" pic.twitter.com/j0U3hiPExv

— Trump War Room (@TrumpWarRoom) October 8, 2024

This might be the worst television interview by a candidate in U.S. presidential history.

Bill Whitaker: “You’ve changed your positions so much that no one believes anything.”

Harris: “Well, I’m the vice president and I travel a lot.”pic.twitter.com/5T33OawnD5

— Tim Murtaugh (@TimMurtaugh) October 8, 2024

US Musk
https://twitter.com/i/status/1842920925504884820

Debanked

Wow. @MELANIATRUMP said that after 2021, she was DEBANKED.

The same thing happened to Donald Trump after J6. If they can debank a sitting US President and First Lady, they can and will debank you too.

Vote for Trump!

pic.twitter.com/n6lkm774he

— Laura Loomer (@LauraLoomer) October 6, 2024

NC is my home.
After listening to people claim @elonmusk is wrong to call this out – that Tim Kennedy is wrong – that this is all misinformation… I am fed up.

There are reports that the government is now turning away volunteers trying to enter the state. @TimKennedyMMA if… pic.twitter.com/gPYrTqoDJI

— Warren Smith (@WTSmith17) October 6, 2024

FEMA

The Democrats are claiming FEMA has two different budgets – one for migrant resettlement and one for disaster relief. The truth is Congress never allocated FEMA any money to fund Kamala Harris’s open border policy – they just took the money.
pic.twitter.com/c7kMqsYpUE

— @amuse (@amuse) October 6, 2024

Tucker

Tucker discusses why all these “republicans are voting for Harris.”

They are very mad that Donald Trump doesn’t want any more wars. pic.twitter.com/oiuj8TY68J

— Insurrection Barbie (@DefiyantlyFree) October 7, 2024

Eugenics?!

HOLY SH— This is the second hour CNN has platformed unhinged Dem Operative Aisha Mills to call Trump Hitler, a eugenicist and suggest that he wants to “exterminate a group of people."

The segment devolves into chaos when David Urban has had enough, and debunks her lies about… pic.twitter.com/7oQu7QfPLE

— Western Lensman (@WesternLensman) October 8, 2024

Greenwald/Sachs

“So, yes, Hillary. You lose total control. Totally. For now and forever, amen.”

• Like a Prayer (Jim Kunstler)

Why exactly Hillary Clinton would be dumb enough to come out on every news channel and Internet site on Gawd’s green earth to declare the end of free speech throughout Western Civ might remain one of those abiding mysteries of history. Bad timing doesn’t begin to explain it. What does explain it is the psychotic desperation of her party now that the days to election dwindle down and the pathetic figure they “nominated” stumbles from one campaign blunder to the next, and the whole sick crew behind her entertains dark visions of courtrooms and prison cells — including, by the way, her cohort in nation-wrecking Barack Obama, who could be liable to charges such as conspiracy to commit sedition, or even a higher crime, if the election goes the wrong way for him. You might suppose they are fighting for their very lives without being accused of exaggeration.

In the event of Hurricane Helena and other churning contingencies of the season, Mr. Trump is not only looking more presidential, he is apparently being regarded as something close to an actual acting president in the eerie absence of “Joe Biden,” who looks more and more like one of those three-hundred-dollar Home Depot animatronic ghouls Americans are planting in the front yard this season of the walking dead, along with the giant inflated jack-o-lanterns, beckoning skeletons, and plastic tombstones. In other words, it looks like the people are going to vote Mr. Trump back into office, since he is the only thing the least bit presidential on offer in 2024. Even the Covid-addled, the many new demoralized Woke drop-outs, and the beaten-down male youth of America are leaning his way now and it scares the Democrats down to their livers and lights.

Accordingly, I received notice late Sunday from an informant in commercial aviation, with connections to military aviation, that a massive deployment of aircraft is preparing logistics for a major operation set to go down in about a week, probably in the Middle East. I can’t guarantee you that it is for real, but it was a real warning message, at least, from a serious person, and you know that something could be up. . . some humdinger of an October Surprise, like a big fat world war. What else have they got now? Jack Smith’s lame-ass attempt to beef-up an “insurrection” charge against Mr. Trump in Judge Chutkan’s abject facsimile of a federal court? Everything else has been fail, fail, fail all year long . . . the head-cases with rifles. . . all the other court cases contrived by Merrick Garland, Andrew Weissmann, Norm Eisen, and Mary McCord. . . the ineffectual bleatings of The New York Times’s editorial board? They’re plumb out of tricks and they know it. So, yes, Hillary. You lose total control. Totally. For now and forever, amen.

Strong pairing. Full interview at the bottom.

• ‘If He Loses I’m F**ked’: Musk And Tucker Carlson’s Must-Watch Interview (ZH)

Tucker Carlson sat down with Elon Musk for an extensive interview this week, where they covered a broad spectrum of topics that ranged from political endorsements and disaster relief efforts to social issues and technological advancements. Musk offered his perspective on current events – including his enthusiastic support for Donald Trump, his concerns about democracy, and his criticisms of government decisions affecting his businesses like Starlink. Musk also shared his views on broader societal trends, such as the declining birthrate in Europe and the influence of religion in modern society. Musk also shared his thoughts on the impact of technology in everyday life, including artificial intelligence and the intersection of big tech and global politics. “If Trump loses, I really fear for what’s going to be left of democracy in America,” said Musk, suggesting that immigration policies have been manipulated to bolster Democratic voter bases, potentially undermining the fairness of elections.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1843387882666635539

Musk also suggested that if Trump loses, “I’m fucked.”

"If Trump loses, I am fuc*3d. How long do you think my prison sentence is gonna be?"

Elon Musk is simply supporting the candidate he believes is best for America’s future. No one can arrest him, regardless of who wins—supporting a candidate is not a crime. pic.twitter.com/xKBLjBbMp9

— DogeDesigner (@cb_doge) October 7, 2024

Musk discusses the use of Starlink to aid victims of Hurricane Helene, criticizing the Federal Communications Commission’s decision to cancel a contract that Starlink had won previously. According to Musk, “The FCC pulled the rug under us after a political decision,” suggesting that the decision was influenced by partisan politics rather than practical considerations.

“[Starlink] is the primary means of communication in the devastated areas.”@elonmusk and @TuckerCarlson on Hurricane Helene and how Musk’s @Starlink is helping. pic.twitter.com/TT6k96jmx7

— Tucker Carlson Network (@TCNetwork) October 7, 2024

Musk warns that if Trump doesn’t win in November, it will be the end for genuine democratic elections in the United States. He argues that certain policies favor a demographic shift intended to secure a permanent Democratic majority. “If Trump doesn’t win this election, it’s the last election we’re going to have.”

Elon Musk: “If Trump doesn’t win this election, it’s the last election we’re going to have”

pic.twitter.com/aF6efJKZiG

— The Post Millennial (@TPostMillennial) October 7, 2024

The pair then discussed the Epstein client list, with Musk slamming the lack of accountability for high-profile individuals implicated in Epstein’s scandals – and predicting that if Trump wins, the Epstein client list “is going to become public.” “It’s strange that there has been no significant action against those on the list,” Musk remarked.

“If Trump wins, that Epstein client list is going to become public.”@elonmusk explains why he thinks Kamala Harris receives so much support from the elites.

“Between Diddy and Epstein there's probably several thousand hours of footage. pic.twitter.com/qBz2rbwIlW

— Tucker Carlson Network (@TCNetwork) October 7, 2024

Musk then touched on vaccines, slamming the push for repeated COVID-19 jabs and the morality of forcing people to take them. He questions the efficacy and safety of continually administering boosters, especially without substantial data to support long-term health impacts.

Musk criticizes policies that he perceives as effectively decriminalizing certain behaviors, linking them to rising crime rates in cities like San Francisco. He specifically slams laws that reduce penalties for theft under $1,000, arguing that they hurt small businesses and encourage lawlessness. He also slammed California Governor Gavin Newsom, whose policies he says are ineffective and detrimental to the state’s economic and social health. Musk predicts that these policies, if not revised, might lead to significant long-term problems for California.

The conversation turns to Europe’s declining birthrate, with Musk expressing concerns about demographic trends and their implications for Europe’s future. He emphasizes the need for policies that encourage family formation and higher birth rates to sustain economic and cultural vitality. Musk emphasized the importance of religion in society, arguing that it provides a necessary moral framework and sense of community. He warns against the loss of religious adherence, suggesting it could lead to a breakdown in societal cohesion.

Full interview

Elon Musk is all in.

(0:00) Elon Musk Is All in on Donald Trump
(6:35) Providing Starlink to Victims of Hurricane Helene
(9:22) If Trump Loses, This Is the Last Election
(21:49) The Epstein and Diddy Client List
(33:38) Vaccines
(35:49) The Movement to Decriminalize Crime… pic.twitter.com/jNqB1ThqQz

— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) October 7, 2024

Elon Musk the Renaissance man.

“Modern society’s focus on credentials has created a two-tiered system, where multi-talented individuals are criticized, and elites oversee a dependent underclass.”

• We Are in Need of Renaissance People (Victor Davis Hanson)

[..] Benjamin Franklin may best approximate the model of the Florentine Renaissance holistic brilliance—journalist, publisher, printer, author, politician, diplomat, inventor, scientist, and philosopher. Franklin’s life was one of perpetual motion and achievement. In one lifetime, he helped to draft the Constitution, invented everything from the lightning rod to bifocals, founded the American postal service, and successfully won over European countries to the nascent American cause. Theodore Roosevelt—president, historian, essayist, conservationist, naturalist combat veteran, battle leader, explorer, and cowboy—exemplified the idea of an American president as the master at almost everything else. The history of our own contemporary Renaissance people often suggests that they are not fully appreciated until after their deaths—especially in the post-World War II era. Why?

We have created a sophisticated modern society that is so compartmentalized by “professionals” and the credentialed that those who excel simultaneously in several disciplines are often castigated for “amateurism,” “spreading themselves too thinly,” “not staying in their lanes,” or not being degreed with the proper prerequisite letters—BA, BS, MA, PhD, MD, JD, or MBA—in the various fields that they master. But specialization is the enemy of genius, as is the tyranny of credentialism. Because the Renaissance figure is not perfect in every discipline he masters, we damn him for too much breadth and not enough depth—a dabbler rather than an expert—failing to realize that his successes in most genres he masters and redefines is precisely because he brings a vast corpus of unique insights and experience to his work that narrower specialists lack.

The Greek poet Archilochus first delineated the contrast between the fox who “knows many things” and the hedgehog who “knows one—one big thing.” We have become a nation of elite hedgehogs, whose narrow expertise is not enriched by awareness of or interest in the wider human experience. Renaissance people often live controversial lives and receive 360-degree incoming criticism, not surprising given the many fields in which they upstage specialists and question experts—and the sometimes overweening nature of their personalities that feel no reason to place boundaries and lanes on their geniuses and behavior or to temper their exuberances. The best American example of the current age is the controversial Elon Musk, a truly Renaissance figure who has revolutionized at least half a dozen entire fields. No one prior had broken the Big Three auto monopoly of GM, Ford, and Chrysler.

Musk did just that. He exploded all three companies’ dominance with his successful creation of the first viable electric vehicle, Tesla, whose comfort, drivability, reliability, safety, and power rivaled or exceeded the models of all his competitors. His spin-off battery storage and solar panel companies allowed thousands of families to go off the grid and stay self-sufficient in power usage. Musk’s revolutionary Starlink internet system—a mere five years old—provides global online service to over 100 countries. Through its some 7,000 satellites, Starlink brings internet service to remote residents far more effectively and cheaply than do their own governments. When natural disasters overwhelm utilities or war disrupts the normality of peace, all look to Musk to restore online reconnections to the outside world.

Musk, almost singlehandedly, transformed the U.S. space program from a NASA 60-year-old government monopoly to an arena of fervent private-public competition. His Space Exploration Technologies Corporation (SpaceX) created a rocket and spacecraft program that has kept the U.S. preeminent in space exploration and reliable satellite launches. When NASA and old aerospace companies falter, the government looks to Musk to bail them out. Musk, at great personal cost, radically transformed the old Twitter—poorly managed, censorious of ideas and expressions not deemed progressive, and mired in scandal for partnering with the FBI to silence news deemed possibly injurious to Democratic candidates and left-wing campaigns. His new X replacement is an unfettered platform for free expression. And the more the left abhors their loss of the monopolistic old Twitter’s ideological clearing house, and vows to flee X and start their own new left-wing, censorious Twitters, the more they stay on X.

Musk’s newest companies have now entered the convoluted, little-understood, radically competitive, and dangerous field of artificial intelligence (OpenAI) and the emerging discipline of bonding the natural brain to the electronic online world (Neuralink). To the degree Musk is successful, America will lead these areas of intense international rivalry that involve the gravest issues of national security and survival.

“Supposedly she thought the public would be delighted to know that an unelected community college teacher would be discussing international affairs with elected world leaders.”

• Where is America’s Co-President, Dr. Jill? (AmG)

Public officials, both elected and unelected, curiously are rarely held accountable for their actions, as are the rest of us. Harvey Weinstein goes to prison, while Bill Clinton goes on his merry way. That’s just one example of many, yet the lack of accountability has gotten to the point of absurdity. And now we have deceit that has massive consequences for everyone. Since January 2021, when he took office until his forced departure from the 2024 race on July 21 after his disastrous debate performance on June 27, the aggressively stage-managed presidency of Joe Biden has been exposed as a fraud. This elderly man with failing physical and mental facilities has been foisted upon America as the purported “leader of the free world” who is “fit to serve,” is “sharp as a tack,” and “runs circles around those half his age.” As we now know, Biden was nowhere near the “unrivaled statesman” who was in “command of the facts” and “performed masterfully” at important cabinet meetings and international summits.

This is what was being hidden from the public for nearly three years by the U.S. government, its enablers in the legacy media, Biden’s inner circle of advisors, and most vigorously of all by the nation’s First Lady Jill Biden. Long claiming to be her husband’s fiercest advocate, Jill Biden had the opportunity and influence to assume the role of a caring wife and confidant to Joe, making sure his health would not worsen given the extreme demands of the American presidency. Jill could have also shown the world what a dedicated spouse looks like, how a devoted wife and mother shows strength and resilience in troubling times as her husband’s age-related condition becomes visible to the world, and how we should treat our elderly loved ones with respect and dignity. This awful and truly evil person, however, has put on a disgraceful display of naked conceit and unchecked personal entitlement throughout Joe Biden’s entire presidential term.

As Joe’s condition worsened, Jill’s shameless quest to be in charge of the Biden White House exposed her as an opportunistic parasite who routinely lied to the country about the real state of Joe’s infirmity while she lived the high life on the taxpayer’s dime. Insisting that she be referred to as “Dr. Biden,” an honorific issued from her 2007 Ed.D doctorate in education she received from the University of Delaware, a school conveniently located in the state where Joe Biden was currently a five-time-elected Senator, Jill has displayed a notable eagerness to supplant Joe as the public face of his administration. One of the most notorious examples is the picture she posted on social media in 2021, showing her pouring over paperwork on Air Force One with the caption “Prepping for the G7.” Supposedly she thought the public would be delighted to know that an unelected community college teacher would be discussing international affairs with elected world leaders.

Jill Biden repeatedly made speeches and appearances at numerous functions in place of her husband, the president of the United States, inserting herself as a proxy president and speaking on behalf of America’s commander-in-chief. This was not only inappropriate and deceptive, but it was also an important element of the massive cover-up of Joe’s rapidly deteriorating mental and physical health, a conspiracy that included his vice president, the anointed replacement for Joe once it was apparent he couldn’t win in November. This is in addition to other members of his cabinet who should have invoked the 25th Amendment to move him out the door years ago. This is in addition to other Democrat power brokers like Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and so many others who perpetuated this hoax on all Americans, Democrats, Independents, and Republicans alike.

Trump should have had the chance to file his appeal first. But Jack couldn’t wait. He wants the whole shebang before the election. So does the judge.

• Jack Smith’s October Surprise Was Not That Surprising (Turley)

“The most stupendous and atrocious fraud.” Those words from federal prosecutors could have been ripped from the filing this week of Special Counsel Jack Smith defending his prosecution of former President Donald Trump. Yet they were actually from a Justice Department filing 184 years ago, just days from the 1840 presidential election. Democratic President Martin Van Buren was struggling for reelection against Whig William Henry Harrison, and his Justice Department waited until just before voters went to the polls to allege that Whig Party officials had paid Pennsylvanians to travel to New York to vote for Whig candidates two years earlier. It was considered by many to be the first “October Surprise,” the last-minute pre-election scandal or major event intended to sway voters.

To avoid such allegations of political manipulation of cases, the Justice Department has long followed a policy against making potentially influential filings within 60 or 90 days of an election. One section of the Justice Department manual states “Federal prosecutors… may never select the timing of any action, including investigative steps, criminal charges, or statements, for the purpose of affecting any election.” Jack Smith, however, has long dismissed such considerations. For years, Smith has been unrelenting in his demands for a trial before the election. He has even demanded that Donald Trump be barred from standard appellate options in order to expedite his trial. Smith never fully explained the necessity of holding a trial before the election beyond suggesting that voters should see the trial and the results — assaulting the very premise of the Justice Department’s rule against such actions just before elections.

After the Supreme Court rendered parts of his indictment against Trump presumptively unconstitutional, Smith made clear that he was prepared to prosecute Trump up to the very day of his inauguration. True to his reputation and record, Smith refused to drop the main allegations against Trump to avoid official decisions or acts that the court found to be protected in Trump v. United States. Instead, he stripped out some prior evidence linked to Trump’s presidency, including witnesses serving in the White House. Yet the same underlying allegations remain. Smith just repeatedly uses references to Trump as acting as “a private citizen.” It is like a customer complaining that he did not order a Coke and the waiter pouring it into a Mountain Dew bottle and saying, “Done!”

Smith even refused to drop the obstruction of official proceedings, despite another recent Supreme Court decision (Fischer v. United States) rendering that charge presumptively invalid. Smith is making his case not to Judge Tanya Chutkan, but to America’s voters. Chutkan has consistently ruled with Smith to help him expedite the case. She permitted his hastened “rocket docket” despite declaring that she would not consider the election schedule as a factor in the pace of filings or even of the trial itself.

For critics, Judge Chutkan has proven far too motivated in the case. Indeed, many thought that she should have recused herself given her statement from a sentencing hearing of a Jan. 6 rioter in 2022. Chutkan said that the rioters “were there in fealty, in loyalty, to one man — not to the Constitution.” She added then “[i]t’s a blind loyalty to one person who, by the way, remains free to this day.” That “one person” was then brought to her courtroom for trial by Smith. In their latest move, Chutkan and Smith used the Supreme Court decision to file a type of preemptive defense — an excuse to lay out the allegations against Trump in a 165-page filing filled with damaging accounts and testimonials against Trump, just weeks ahead of the election.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1843351487025463654

“..a court “found probable cause to search the account for evidence of criminal offenses..”

• Supreme Court Rejects Musk’s Case Against Jack Smith Over Trump Tweets (ET)

The U.S. Supreme Court declined to take up a challenge filed by Elon Musk’s X platform to rulings that forced it to turn over data on former President Donald Trump’s X account to special counsel Jack Smith. In 2023, Smith obtained a warrant for Trump’s Twitter account as part of federal prosecutors’ 2020 election case against the former president. Trump had frequently used the account during the 2016 presidential campaign and during his first administration. The high court on Monday rendered its decision without any comment. There were no noted dissents. The Musk-owned platform had initially refused to comply with a nondisclosure order and was fined $350,000 by a judge in August 2023, records show. At the time, the court had rejected X’s claim that it should not have been held in contempt or sanctioned. Smith’s team repeatedly mentioned Trump’s posts on Twitter in the first indictment, which was unsealed last year.

A revised indictment was brought against Trump by Smith in September after the Supreme Court separately ruled in July that presidents should be declared broadly immune from prosecution for their official acts and duties. Trump has pleaded not guilty to all the charges in the case. Prosecutors obtained the search warrant on Jan. 17, 2023, directing Twitter to produce information on Trump’s account after a court “found probable cause to search the account for evidence of criminal offenses,” according to last year’s court ruling. The government also obtained a nondisclosure agreement that had prohibited Twitter from disclosing the search warrant, the filing says.In its appeal to the Supreme Court in May, X argued that Smith’s team carried out an “unprecedented end-run around executive privilege” by obtaining a “nondisclosure order preventing Twitter from notifying former President Trump of a warrant for private communications that he sent and received during his presidency.”

“Although Twitter had provided these communications to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), the government informed Twitter and the district court that it ‘did not want to obtain data from NARA, as it would require notification [to the former President] pursuant to the Presidential Records Act,’” the petition said. In trying to bolster its case before the Supreme Court, X had said its petition was designed to allow the court to uphold the First Amendment. “The potential consequences are far-reaching,” the company said. “Twitter alone annually receives thousands of nondisclosure orders attached to demands for user information. Indeed, the D.C. Circuit agreed that this issue is likely to recur for Twitter. Other platforms, too, receive thousands of requests for user information—many with nondisclosure orders.” Lawyers for Smith’s team dismissed X’s arguments, telling the Supreme Court that the social media platform cannot assert any privilege over the records in question.

“The First Amendment did not justify petitioner’s refusal to comply” with the special counsel’s warrant “before litigating its separate challenge to the nondisclosure order,” the government wrote, adding that X is trying to assert a “right to immediate resolution of its First Amendment claim to interests.”

“..the GDPR, specifically the data minimization rule, which requires companies to limit the amount of personal data collected and stored to what is strictly necessary.”

• Top EU Court Rules Against Meta In Use of Personal Data for Ads (ET)

In a landmark decision, the top court in the European Union has ruled that Facebook parent company Meta cannot use personal data gathered from its own platforms or from external sources for targeted advertising without adhering to strict limits and restrictions under the bloc’s privacy laws. The ruling, hailed as a victory by privacy advocates, was issued on Oct. 4 by the Court of Justice of the European Union. The decision was a response to a lawsuit brought by Austrian activist Max Schrems, who has long campaigned for stricter enforcement of the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation. Schrems had accused Facebook of processing his sensitive personal data to serve him with targeted ads in violation of the GDPR, specifically the data minimization rule, which requires companies to limit the amount of personal data collected and stored to what is strictly necessary.

The court sided with Schrems, stating that Meta’s data practices violated GDPR principles. Meta, according to the court, aggregated and processed vast amounts of user data for advertising purposes without appropriate restrictions on time or the type of data involved. The judges wrote in their ruling that the relevant provisions of the GDPR “must be interpreted as meaning that the principle of data minimisation provided for therein precludes any personal data obtained by a controller, such as the operator of an online social network platform, from the data subject or third parties and collected either on or outside that platform, from being aggregated, analysed and processed for the purposes of targeted advertising without restriction as to time and without distinction as to type of data.” The court’s decision highlighted that Meta cannot process user data indefinitely, as it had been doing—even data from users who consent to personalized ads.

Katharina Raabe-Stuppnig, Schrems’s lawyer, expressed satisfaction with the ruling, while emphasizing the wider implications of the decision for the online advertising industry. She noted that other companies operating without stringent data deletion practices will also be affected. “Meta has basically been building a huge data pool on users for 20 years now, and it is growing every day,” she said in a statement. “However, EU law requires ‘data minimisation.’ Following this ruling, only a small part of Meta’s data pool will be allowed to be used for advertising—even when users consent to ads. This ruling also applies to any other online advertisement company, that does not have stringent data deletion practices.” In response to the court’s decision, Meta issued a statement saying it was reviewing the judgment while reaffirming its stated commitment to privacy.

“Everyone using Facebook has access to a wide range of settings and tools that allow people to manage how we use their information,” the company said in the statement, adding that it “takes privacy very seriously.” The ruling is the latest setback for Meta in Europe. The tech giant has faced numerous legal and regulatory challenges there in recent years, and has been at the center of multiple investigations, particularly regarding compliance with the GDPR. The EU’s focus extends beyond data privacy to concerns about how digital platforms’ algorithms and system designs affect behavior. Meta’s recommender systems, which power its advertising-driven business model, are under scrutiny for potentially fostering addictive behaviors, particularly in minors.

The initial phases.

• German Industrial Orders Collapse (RT)

New orders for German-made industrial goods suffered their sharpest drop so far this year in August, the latest provisional data from the statistics bureau Destatis showed on Monday. Factory orders in manufacturing were down 5.8% in August from the previous month, and down 3.9% year-on-year. The figures defied analyst forecasts of a 1.9% decline. Destatis attributed the severity of the month-on-month slump mainly to the high-base effect of the previous month, when large orders were placed in what is classified as ‘other vehicle construction’ (manufacture of aircraft, ships, trains, military vehicles). Excluding this segment, incoming orders were only down 3.4%.

Orders for capital goods and intermediate goods fell by 8.6% and 2.2%, respectively, in August compared to July, while incoming orders for consumer goods dropped 0.9%, according to Destatis. The capital goods sector includes a wide range of industries, from aerospace and defense to construction and engineering. Intermediate goods are classified as those used as inputs in the production of other goods.The breakdown of the origin of new orders shows an increase from outside the Eurozone of 3.4%, whereas orders from Eurozone countries fell 10.5%. Domestic orders were down 10.9%. Germany’s industrial output shrank in July, driven mainly by weak activity in the automotive sector, Destatis said in a separate release on Sunday.

Production declined in most manufacturing segments in July, with the automotive industry posting an 8.1% month-on-month drop. Economists polled by Reuters suggested that there will be no speedy recovery for Europe’s largest economy, and that it could contract again in the third quarter, thus putting the country back into recession. German GDP declined -0.1% in the second quarter.After a recession in Germany in 2023, the European Commission expects the country’s economy to stagnate this year. Persistent inflation, high energy prices, and weak foreign demand have been cited as the reasons for the slowdown.

“The whole point of Netanyahu’s politics for decades has been to prevent the emergence of a Palestinian state using any argument at hand.”

• The Lack of a Two-State Solution Most Threatens Israel (Jeffrey Sachs)

Israel rejects the two-state solution because it claims that a sovereign state of Palestine would profoundly endanger Israel’s national security. In fact, it is the lack of a two-state solution that endangers Israel. Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestinian lands, its continuing apartheid rule over millions of Palestinians, and its extreme violence to defend that rule, all put Israel’s survival in jeopardy, as Israel faces dire threats from global diplomatic isolation and the ongoing war, including the war’s massive economic, social, and financial costs. There are three basic reasons for Israel’s opposition to the two-state solution, reflecting a variety of ideologies and interests in Israeli society. The first, and most mainstream, is Israel’s claim that Palestinians and the Arab world cannot live alongside it and only wish to destroy it. The second is the belief among Israel’s rapidly growing religious-nationalist population that God promised the Jews all of the land from the Euphrates to the Mediterranean, including all of Palestine.

We recently wrote about that ideology, pointing out that it is roughly 2,600 years out of step with today’s realities. The third is straightforward material gain. With its ongoing occupation, Israel aims to profit from control over the region’s freshwater resources, coastal zones, offshore natural gas deposits, tourist destinations, and land for settlements. These various motives are jumbled together in Israel’s continued intransigence. Yet taken individually or as a package, they fail to justify Israel’s opposition to the two-state solution, certainly not from the perspective of international law and justice, but not even with regard to Israel’s own security or narrow economic interests. Consider Israel’s claim about national security, as was recently repeated by PM Benjamin Netanyahu at the United Nations on September 27th. Netanyahu accused the Palestinian Authority, and specifically President Mahmoud Abbas, of waging “unremitting diplomatic warfare against Israel’s right to exist and against Israel’s right to defend itself.”

After Netanyahu’s speech, Ayman Safadi, Jordan’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, standing beside Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Mustafa replied to Netanyahu in a press conference: “All of us in the Arab world here, want a peace in which Israel lives in peace and security, accepted, normalized with all Arab countries in the context of ending the occupation, withdrawing from Arab territory, allowing for the emergence of an independent, sovereign Palestinian state on the June 4, 1967 lines with East Jerusalem as its capital.”Minister Safadi was speaking on behalf of the 57 members of the Muslim-Arab committee, who are all willing “to guarantee Israel’s security” in the context of a two-state solution. Minister Safadi, alongside the Palestinian Prime Minister, articulated the region’s peace proposal, an alternative to Netanyahu’s endless wars. Earlier this year, the Bahrain Declaration in May 2024 of the 33rd Regular Session of the Council of the League of Arab States, on behalf of the 22 member states, re-iterated:

“We call on the international community to assume its responsibilities to follow-up efforts to advance the peace process to achieve a just and comprehensive peace based on the two-state solution, which embodies an independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital on the lines of the fourth of June 1967, able to live in security and peace alongside Israel in accordance with the resolutions of international legitimacy and established references, including the Arab Peace Initiative.” The many Arab and Islamic statements for peace, including those of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), in which Iran is a repeated signatory, trace back to the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative of Beirut—where Arab countries first proposed the region’s readiness to establish relations with Israel in the context of the two-state solution. The initiative declared that peace is based on Israel’s withdrawal from the Palestinian, Syrian, and Lebanese occupied territories.

Israel claims that even if the Arab states and Iran want peace, Hamas does not, and therefore threatens Israel. There are two crucial points here. First, Hamas accepted the two-state solution, already 7 years ago, in their 2017 Charter. “Hamas considers the establishment of a fully sovereign and independent Palestinian state, with Jerusalem as its capital along the lines of the 4th of June 1967, with the return of the refugees and the displaced to their homes from which they were expelled, to be a formula of national consensus.” This year again, Hamas proposed to disarm in exchange for Palestinian statehood on the 1967 borders. Israel, in turn, assassinated the Hamas political chief and cease-fire negotiator, Ismail Haniyeh.

Second, Hamas is very far from being a stand-alone actor. Hamas depends on funds and arms from the outside, notably from Iran. Implementation of the two-state solution under UN Security Council auspices would include the disarmament of non-state actors and mutual security arrangements for Israel and Palestine, in line with international law and the recent ICJ ruling, which Iran voted in favor of at UN General Assembly. The giveaway that Hamas is an excuse, not a deep cause, of Israel’s intransigence is that Netanyahu has tactically if quietly supported Hamas over the years in a divide and conquer strategy. Netanyahu’s ruse has been to prevent the unity of different Palestinian political factions in order to forestall the Palestinian Authority from developing a national plan to forge a Palestinian state. The whole point of Netanyahu’s politics for decades has been to prevent the emergence of a Palestinian state using any argument at hand.

“Having no real culture of its own, the western professional class views religion as outdated and sees history as dangerous..”

• Perfidy in Tehran (Alastair Crooke)

John Kerry, just last week at the World Economic Forum, so clearly blurting out the truth: “Our First Amendment stands as a major block to our ability to be able to hammer [disinformation] out of existence”. Translated: Governing is all about narrative control. Kerry articulates the ‘International Order’s’ solution to the unwelcome phenomenon of an uncontrolled populism and of a potential leader who speaks for the people: Simply, ‘freedom to speak’ is unacceptable to the prescriptions agreed by the ‘inter-agency’ – the institutionalised distillation of the ‘International Order’. Eric Weinstein calls this The Unburdening: The first Amendment; gender; merit; sovereignty; privacy; ethics; investigative journalism; borders; freedom … the Constitution? Gone? Today’s reality unhinged narration is that Iran’s launch on Tuesday of 200 ballistic missiles – of which 181 reached Israel – were overwhelmingly intercepted by Israel’s Iron Dome and Arrow missile defence systems, and with no deaths to show for the assault.

It was “defeated and ineffective”, Biden pronounced. Will Schryver however, a technical engineer and security commentator, writes: “I don’t understand how anyone who has seen the many video clips of the Iranian missile strikes on Israel cannot recognize and acknowledge that it was a stunning demonstration of Iranian capabilities. Iran’s ballistic missiles smashed through U.S./Israeli air defences and delivered several large-warhead strikes to Israeli military targets”. The effect and the substance then lies in ‘proven capacity’ – the capacity to select other targets, the capacity to do more. It was in fact a restrained demonstrative exercise, not a full attack. But the message has been erased from sight.

How is it that the U.S. Administration refuses to look truth in the eye and acknowledge what occurred, and prefers instead to ask the entire world, who saw the videos of missiles impacting in Israel, to ‘move along’ – as the authorities advise, pretending that there was ‘nothing substantive to see here’. Was ‘the affair’ just a nuisance to system governance and ‘consensus’, as Kerry so branded free speech? It seems so. The structural problem, essayist Aurelien writes is not simply that the western professional class holds to an ideology – one that is the opposite to how ordinary people experience the world. That certainly is one aspect. But the bigger problem lies rather, with a technocratic conception of politics that is not ‘about’ anything. It is not really politics at all (as Tony Blair once said), but is nihilistic and absent of moral considerations.

Having no real culture of its own, the western professional class views religion as outdated and sees history as dangerous since it contains components that can be misused by ‘extremists’. It prefers therefore not to know history. This produces the mixture of the conviction of superiority, yet deep insecurity, which typifies western leadership. The ignorance and fear of events and ideas that fall outside the confines of their rigid zeitgeist, they perceive, almost invariably, as innately inimical to their interests. And rather than seek to discuss and understand, that which is outside their capabilities, they use disparagement and character assassination instead to remove the nuisance.

“Everyone thinks that through Ukraine we will bring the Russians to their knees, but this Russophobia does not work. It turns out that this problem cannot be solved militarily..”

• West Aims To ‘Bring Russians To Their Knees’ – Slovak Prime Minister Fico (RT)

The West is deliberately fueling the Ukraine conflict because its ultimate goal is to weaken Russia, Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico has said. In an interview with Slovak broadcaster STVR on Sunday, Fico expressed concern over the EU’s increasing involvement in the ongoing hostilities between Moscow and Kiev, arguing that the conflict cannot be resolved on the battlefield.“There is a military conflict in a neighboring country where Slavs are killing each other, and Europe is significantly supporting this killing, which I just don’t understand,” Fico said. He added that the fighting “continues only because it is being strongly supported by the West.” “The sooner it ends, the better it will be,” he added, arguing that Western efforts to use the conflict to inflict a defeat on Russia will fail.

“Everyone thinks that through Ukraine we will bring the Russians to their knees, but this Russophobia does not work. It turns out that this problem cannot be solved militarily,” Fico stated. Fico, a longtime critic of Western military aid to Kiev, promised to block Ukraine from joining NATO, as allowing the country to join the US-led military bloc could prepare the way for a world war, he warned. After winning the parliamentary election last year, Fico’s Smer-SD party halted deliveries of weapons to Ukraine and called for a diplomatic resolution of the conflict. He promised to restore trade and political ties with Moscow once the fighting ends, arguing that “the EU needs Russia, and Russia needs the EU.” Moscow has warned against Western aid to Kiev, saying no amount of foreign support will change the outcome of the conflict.

”Had they been able to carry it out, Europe would have faced an environmental and humanitarian disaster comparable to Chernobyl..”

• UK and US Helped Ukraine Plan ‘New Chernobyl’ – Russian Intel Chief (RT)

British and American spies helped Ukraine develop plans for blowing up the Kursk Nuclear Power Plant, which would have plunged Europe into another radiation nightmare, the head of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), Sergey Naryshkin, has said. Ukrainian troops crossed into Russia’s Kursk Region in August, but were stopped short of the nuclear plant in Kurchatov. Speaking at a meeting of intelligence and security principals of post-Soviet states in Astana last week, Naryshkin revealed the West’s disturbing plan for the facility. “According to intelligence obtained by the SVR, the planned terrorist attack included taking and mining the Kursk NPP,” he said, according to remarks made public on Monday. ”Had they been able to carry it out, Europe would have faced an environmental and humanitarian disaster comparable to Chernobyl,” Naryshkin added.

A 1986 accident at the Chernobyl NPP caused one of its reactors to explode and catch fire, forcing the evacuation of the town of Pripyat and the creation of a 30km exclusion zone on the border between present-day Ukraine and Belarus. Radioactive fallout from the blaze was carried by the wind all the way to Scotland. According to Naryshkin, British and American intelligence have provided Ukraine with information that allowed it to attack Russian civilian infrastructure, including high-resolution satellite imagery of border regions. Ukrainian artillery used this information to carry out strikes with rockets and drones. ”Available intelligence indicates that Western intelligence agencies, primarily the British MI6, have systematically prepared Ukrainian sabotage and reconnaissance groups to organize provocations at a number of nuclear power plants in Russia,” the SVR head claimed, alleging that the British spies and their Ukrainian counterparts were “developing an operation to blow up power lines connecting nuclear power plants with the Russian national energy grid.”

The Zaporozhye NPP in Energodar has been a target of Ukrainian attacks since mid-2022. Europe’s largest nuclear power plant eventually had to shut down due to the hazards, which included drones, rockets, loss of water for its cooling systems and even an amphibious assault by Ukrainian commandos in October 2022. International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) observers deployed on site have repeatedly acknowledged attacks on the ZNPP, but have refused to identify who is responsible. Russia has described the attacks as an attempt at “nuclear blackmail,” while Ukraine has alleged that Moscow is shelling the plant to defame Kiev.

“..the ban on abortions after a fetal heartbeat is detected will go back into effect as the case proceeds..”

• Georgia Supreme Court Reinstates State’s Abortion Law (ET)

A judge’s ruling striking down Georgia’s abortion ban was stayed on Oct. 7 by the Georgia Supreme Court. The stay means the ban on abortions after a fetal heartbeat is detected will go back into effect as the case proceeds. Six justices granted a request by Georgia officials to reinstate the law after a county judge on Sept. 30 concluded that the law violates the right of women in the state to have an abortion.Georgia’s Constitution gives residents liberty, and that liberty includes the right of a woman to “control what happens to and within her body,” Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney said in his ruling.In a one-page order from the Georgia Supreme Court, a majority of justices said they were staying McBurney’s ruling as of 5 p.m. on Oct. 7. The majority did not explain their reasoning. The law states that abortion is not authorized if the heartbeat of an unborn child has been detected.

Exceptions include cases in which doctors determine a medical emergency exists and, in some instances, incest or rape.The Georgia Supreme Court order does not impact the block of a provision that would provide abortion-related health records to district attorneys.According to the high court, Justice Nels S.D. Peterson was disqualified from considering the state’s emergency request to intervene, and Justice Andrew A. Pinson did not participate.In an opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part, Justice John J. Ellington said the state had not provided sufficient arguments to prompt a stay, particularly in light of how groups suing over the law met the burden of establishing that the law violates Georgia’s Constitution.

“Fundamentally, the state should not be in the business of enforcing laws that have been determined to violate fundamental rights guaranteed to millions of individuals under the Georgia Constitution,” he wrote. “The ’status quo’ that should be maintained is the state of the law before the challenged laws took effect. Accordingly, I dissent.”

This is about her talks with Bourla on WhatsApp, because those don’t need to be preserved. Billions of dollars involved.

• Trial Date Set In Von der Leyen Covid-19 Vaccine Scandal – FT (RT)

The European Court of Justice will hear a case on November 15 concerning European Commission President Ursula Von der Leyen’s handling of Covid-19 vaccine procurement, the Financial Times has said, citing anonymous sources. A panel of 15 judges will reportedly consider whether she illegally withheld private text messages she supposedly exchanged with Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla. At the height of the pandemic, the commission advocated collectively purchasing billions of shots and distributing them among EU member states struggling to contain Covid-19. In 2020 and 2021, Brussels struck deals with vaccine manufacturers to the tune of approximately €2.7 billion ($2.95 billion). It is believed that Von der Leyen played a key role in organizing the procurement, with critics claiming the negotiations were not transparent enough.

In its article on Monday, the Financial Times noted that the EU court’s Grand Chamber, which is reportedly going to weigh the evidence, usually deals with complex or particularly important cases. Back in January 2023, the New York Times sued the European Commission after the latter claimed not to have Von der Leyen’s alleged text messages, which the US newspaper had asked for as part of a freedom of information request. According to the outlet, Bourla confirmed that he and Von der Leyen had indeed exchanged private messages, and that the European Commission president had told him she was personally involved in negotiating the vaccine purchase contracts. While the NYT has insisted on the publication of the purported communications, Von der Leyen claims that she deleted most of the exchange with Bourla.

Next month, the EU court is expected to ask the commission’s representatives whether the messages at the heart of the case ever existed, and if so, whether and why they were later destroyed, FT reported on Monday. In a separate case in mid-July, the EU’s general court ruled that the Commission had concealed details of multibillion-euro Covid vaccine deals with Pfizer and AstraZeneca without a legitimate reason. In 2021, a group of MEPs requested access to the relevant documents to make sure that the public interest had been protected and the members of the EU negotiating team had no conflict of interest. The Commission only agreed to release a redacted version and refused to reveal the identities of the negotiating team’s members. The lawmakers subsequently took the issue to court.

Just how insane is this?

• US Children’s Diets Are Now “Over 70%” Ultra-Processed Foods (ZH)

It looks like the “Make America Healthy Again” movement could be showing up right on time… At least according to one registered dietitian nutritionist in Los Angeles, who recently took to Fox News to lay out the risks from ultra-processed foods in the American diet. Ilana Muhlstein said on Fox news that America’s diet is 60% ultra-processed, but that kids consume even more than that. “With children, it’s actually over 70%. That is really wild when you think about it,” she said. “What we eat defines how our cells work, how our organs work, and we’re seeing a strong decline in mental health and well-being.” And a recent BMJ study found that 60% of Americans’ daily calories come from ultra-processed foods (UPFs), which are linked to 32 poor health outcomes, including mental, respiratory, cardiovascular, and metabolic issues like cancer, heart disease, and type 2 diabetes, according to Fox.

Muhlstein added: “We’re actually seeing that this next generation might be the first generation to … have a shorter lifespan than their parents due to nutrition and lifestyle factors.” A nutritious diet boosts children’s mental well-being, behavior, and academic performance, says Muhlstein, a nutritionist and instructor of “Raising Balanced Eaters.” While cutting ultra-processed foods entirely is unrealistic, Muhlstein advocates for reversing the typical 70/30 ratio of processed to whole foods, recommending an “80/20 rule”—80% whole foods like eggs, fish, and vegetables, and 20% indulgent foods like chips and ice cream.

For healthier options, Muhlstein suggests swapping ketchup for marinara sauce on chicken nuggets and fries, opting for chicken strips over mechanically processed nuggets, and choosing hamburgers over nitrite-laden hot dogs. Each small change reduces the overall level of food processing. The nutritionist warns that poor eating habits won’t resolve on their own and encourages exposing kids to diverse flavors and textures early on. The Fox News report says that sitting down for family meals—without screens—can reduce the risk of eating disorders and promote a healthy relationship with food. Just three to five family meals a week can make a positive difference, fostering better eating habits and family connection.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1842968057888534683

Blind dog
https://twitter.com/i/status/1843528351614677117

Lynx

We captured a lot of really neat lynx footage this past fall and winter! They are just such ethereal looking creatures, and its always a highlight when we get footage of them, especially in the daylight.

We were going to make a video sharing our best lynx footage from the fall… pic.twitter.com/6F1zoTeRzL

— Voyageurs Wolf Project (@VoyaWolfProject) October 7, 2024

Thermochromic

How this thermochromic tea pot is made

Watch this
pic.twitter.com/iHa0MFsLWX

— Science girl (@gunsnrosesgirl3) October 7, 2024

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

Debt Rattle September 18 2024

Sep 182024

September 18, 2024 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 8:39 am Finance Tagged with: Hillary, hypersonic, Macron, Meta, Mueller, pagers, PETN, political violence, rationing, RT, Trump, Yemen 36 Responses »

René Magritte The song of love 1948

• 9 Killed, 2700+ Wounded In Israel’s Pager Attack On Hezbollah (ZH)

• Gunman Lurked For 12 Hours Before Trump’s Last-minute Game Of Golf (BBC)

• 26 Million Americans Say Political Violence Against Trump Is Justified (Turley)

• CNN Worries That Trump Assassination Attempts Are HELPING Him Politically (MN)

• Negotiate With Moscow To Prevent Nuclear Devastation (Trump Jr, RFK Jr)

• Secret Service ‘Aware’ Of Elon Musk Post About Harris, Biden (BBC)

• Meta Bans RT (RT)

• Meta’s Ban on Sputnik ‘Very Bad’ and Politicized Decision (Sp.)

• Grocery Rationing within Four Years (Jeffrey A. Tucker)

• Hillary Demands Criminal Charges For Americans “Engaged” In “Propaganda” (ZH)

• Experts Gone Wild (Mike Scanlon)

• Springfield Ohio Is Just the Beginning (Paul Craig Roberts)

• Macron’s Impeachment Clears First Hurdle in Left-Dominated National Assembly (Sp.)

• The EU Retreats Further into a World of Self-Delusion (NC)

• Yemen’s Hypersonic Ballistic Missile Rocks Israel’s Defenses (Nasrallah)

Trump ad
https://twitter.com/i/status/1835763816979673208

Birdie

J.D. Vance shares President Trumps reaction to almost being assassinated again:

“He said 'I'm a little mad because I was about to make a birdie putt on the 6th hole and they wouldn't let me finish'—That is kind of the guy you want to be President..” pic.twitter.com/aWTUTHOHaS

— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) September 16, 2024

Balls of steel
https://twitter.com/i/status/1835824494423769390

RFK
https://twitter.com/i/status/1835746266485276806

SHOCK REPORT: National Marine Fisheries opens 15 YEAR OLD investigation on RFK Jr. After endorsing Trump..

PAYING ATTENTION NOW? pic.twitter.com/pkaYVYIUne

— Chuck Callesto (@ChuckCallesto) September 17, 2024

SS Obama Trump
https://twitter.com/i/status/1835722737148686485

Jennings

WATCH: CNN’s Scott Jennings torches anchor claiming ‘rhetoric is on both sides’; “They have tried to kill this man TWICE——I know after something like this happens, it’s very fashionable to talk about rhetoric on both sides. DONALD TRUMP is THE target!”pic.twitter.com/emXGAPIUSN

— Overton (@overton_news) September 16, 2024

Eric Prince: “There’s some indication that shows the Butler shooter and yesterday’s shooter both appeared in BlackRock TV commercials. The statistical likelihood of that being random is impossible.”
https://twitter.com/i/status/1835654344902942916

“The Israeli spy agency placed a quantity of PETN, a highly explosive material, on the batteries of the devices, and detonated them by raising the temperature of the batteries from afar..”

• 9 Killed, 2700+ Wounded In Israel’s Pager Attack On Hezbollah (ZH)

Official Lebanese Health Ministry figures are that nine people were killed in the simultaneous pager explosions, including a young girl, and some 2,750 wounded. The Lebanese government has identified “Israeli aggression” as being behind the attack, while Hezbollah also says it holds Israel “fully responsible”. Israel has yet to issue official comment, but there are several reports from the region that war preparations are underway. There are reports of evening Israeli shelling of Hezbollah positions in south Lebanon. Israel’s Channel 14 is reporting that “senior Israeli military officials are preparing for a third Hezbollah war which is expected to begin almost immediately.” The US State Department has said the US “was not aware of this operation and was not involved” in the attack. The Biden administration says it is “still gathering information”.

The WSJ has offered some initial details on the sophisticated attack, which Lebanese and Arabs have condemned as a major ‘terror attack’. “The affected pagers were from a new shipment that the group received in recent days, people familiar with the matter said,” WSJ writes. “A Hezbollah official said hundreds of fighters had such devices, speculating that malware may have caused the devices to explode. The official said some people felt the pagers heat up and disposed of them before they burst.” And more: “Hezbollah said a number of pagers carried by its members exploded simultaneously at 3:30 p.m. It couldn’t immediately be determined what caused the blasts, which were spread out across the country in several areas where Hezbollah has a heavy presence.”

Israeli media says Mossad rigged the pager batteries of a shipment that was imported five months ago: The Israeli spy agency placed a quantity of PETN, a highly explosive material, on the batteries of the devices, and detonated them by raising the temperature of the batteries from afar, the source says. There are initial reports that more European airlines have began cancelling flights to Lebanon and Israel amid more headlines of war plans. Lebanese schools and colleges have announced widespread closures tomorrow. The US administration appears to be standing idly by in the meantime.

He waited for 12 hours, having no idea if Trump would show up? Hmmm.. Check his phone, I’d say. Oh wait, the FBI has it..

• Gunman Lurked For 12 Hours Before Trump’s Last-minute Game Of Golf (BBC)

A gunman hid for nearly 12 hours in bushes before Donald Trump played an unscheduled game of golf at his oceanfront club in Florida – leaving locals stunned at what authorities say appears to be the second attempt to assassinate the former president in as many months. It was hot and cloudy on Sunday afternoon when Trump and his good friend, real estate developer Steve Witkoff, arrived on the course of Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach. The former president was on the fifth fairway at 13:31 EDT (17:31 GMT), an area adjacent to busy roads near Palm Beach International Airport, when a member of his protection detail spotted a rifle poking out of foliage by the sixth hole. Trump – who was evacuated unharmed – recounted on Monday night that he heard “probably four or five” shots ring out in the near-distance. A quick-thinking Secret Service agent had opened fire in the direction of the suspect, who was about 300-500 yards away and did not have a clear line of sight to Trump, federal investigators said.

“Secret Service knew immediately it was bullets, and they grabbed me,” said Trump during a live-streamed event on X, formerly Twitter, from his Mar-a-Lago resort. “We got into the carts and we moved along pretty, pretty good. I was with an agent, and the agent did a fantastic job.” The gunman – who investigators say did not fire any shots – was concealed by the well-manicured shrubbery and tall palm trees that line the perimeter of the 27-hole course.He had been lurking there on the public side of a fence since 01:59 local time on Sunday morning, according to mobile phone records, cited by federal officials. The suspect was equipped with two digital cameras, a black plastic bag of food, an SKS-style semi-automatic rifle – a weapon with a range of nearly 440 yards – and a scope to magnify its lens. The Republican presidential candidate’s last publicly scheduled campaign event had been on Saturday evening, on the other side of the country, in the state of Utah.

Residents say Trump spends almost every Sunday at the West Palm Beach golf club when he is not on the campaign trail. But Secret Service director Ronald Rowe said on Monday that the former president was “not even really supposed to go there”, so agents had to put together a security plan at the last minute. The foiled plot has left Trump’s neighbours in Palm Beach with pressing questions. Did the suspect know the former president would be coming to play golf, or was it a guess? How could he have gone undetected for so long, hiding in the bushes with a rifle? The gunman escaped the scene in a black Nissan, ditching his backpack of goods and weapon. A civilian woman was able to take a picture of his licence plate and pass it to investigators, Trump said on Monday night. The gunman made it about 40 minutes before officers pulled over his vehicle on Interstate 95 and ordered him out.

Bodycam footage shows he seemed calm as officers shouted at him to step to the side before handcuffing him without incident. On Monday, the suspect Ryan Routh, 58, appeared in a crowded Palm Beach court, wearing a blue prison jumpsuit and smiling as he chatted with his attorney. He was charged with one count of possession of a firearm by a convicted felon and one count of possession of a firearm with an obliterated serial number. More charges could follow. Routh, a Hawaii resident with a criminal history, had come across the FBI’s radar in 2019 for being a felon in possession of a firearm. The bureau tipped off law enforcement in Honolulu at the time.

“It was only after she later chased reporters with a machete that the college fired Rodríguez. She was then hired by another college.”

• 26 Million Americans Say Political Violence Against Trump Is Justified (Turley)

A poll released by the University of Chicago via the Chicago Project on Security and Threats offers a chilling account of the growing radicalism in America, particularly after the second foiled assassination attempt of former president Donald Trump, the poll found that 26 million Americans believe “the use of force” is justified to keep Trump from regaining the presidency. As discussed in my book, “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage,” we have seen an increasing level of rage rhetoric in our political system. For some, violent language can become violent action. There is a normalization that can occur as extreme actions become more acceptable to more and more citizens: “We are living in an age of rage. It permeates every aspect of our society and politics. Rage is liberating, even addictive. It allows us to say and do things that we would ordinarily avoid, even denounce in others. Rage is often found at the farthest extreme of reason. For those who agree with the underlying message, it is righteous and passionate. For those who disagree, it is dangerous and destabilizing.”

With the unrelenting claims of President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, and others that democracy is about to die in America, some now feel a license to commit criminal acts in the name of “saving democracy.” It is the ultimate form of self-delusion that one saves democracy by committing political violence against those with whom you disagree. We have seen this radicalism spread in past years from higher education into society at large. Years ago, many of us were shocked by the conduct of University of Missouri communications professor Melissa Click who directed a mob against a student journalist covering a Black Lives Matter event. Yet, Click was hired by Gonzaga University. Since that time, we have seen a steady stream of professors joining students in shouting down, committing property damage, participating in riots, verbally attacking students, or even taking violent action in protests.

It is now common to hear inflammatory language from professors advocating “detonating white people,” denouncing police, calling for Republicans to suffer, strangling police officers, celebrating the death of conservatives, calling for the killing of Trump supporters, supporting the murder of conservative protesters and other outrageous statements. At the University of Rhode Island, professor Erik Loomis defended the murder of a conservative protester and said that he saw “nothing wrong” with such acts of violence. At the University of California Santa Barbara, professors actually rallied around feminist studies associate professor Mireille Miller-Young, who physically assaulted pro-life advocates and tore down their display. Despite pleading guilty to criminal assault, she was not fired and received overwhelming support from the students and faculty. She was later honored as a model for women advocates.

At Hunter College in New York, Professor Shellyne Rodríguez was shown trashing a pro-life display of students. She was captured on a videotape telling the students that “you’re not educating s–t […] This is f–king propaganda. What are you going to do, like, anti-trans next? This is bulls–t. This is violent. You’re triggering my students.” Unlike the professor, the students remained calm and respectful. One even said “sorry” to the accusation that being pro-life was triggering for her students. Rodríguez continued to rave, stating, “No you’re not — because you can’t even have a f–king baby. So you don’t even know what that is. Get this s–t the f–k out of here.” In an Instagram post, she is then shown trashing the table. Hunter College, however, did not consider this unhinged attack to be sufficient to terminate Rodríguez. It was only after she later chased reporters with a machete that the college fired Rodríguez. She was then hired by another college.

“Their followers, the people listening to their incessant 24 hour ‘Trump is Hitler’ loop, are literally trying to murder him, yet somehow Trump is the one who needs to tone it down..”

• CNN Worries That Trump Assassination Attempts Are HELPING Him Politically (MN)

A former Obama administration official turned CNN shit talker expressed a concern Sunday that all these pesky failed attempts to assassinate Donald Trump are helping him politically. Yes, really. Juliette Kayyem, a former Department of Homeland Security official under Obama, labelled the situation a “problem” and “unfortunate” because it is making Trump more popular. “I really don’t care what you feel about him, or Harris,” Kayyem said referring to Trump, adding “I mean, this is, this is the expectation that he will be safe.” Kayyem continued, “And the reason why this is, you know, in some ways, you know, you said how close the election is, the problem is this is a safety issue that is being thrown into a very intense political environment in which the very fact of an assassination, a constitutional moment, because it’s, it could have impacted voters, will be used for political purposes.” “And that, to me, is, is just as not as a, you know, exceptionally unfortunate, because whatever your beliefs are, we do deserve to have campaigns that are not part that where violence isn’t being used as either a sword or a shield,” she added.

CNN's Juliette Kayyem laments this second Trump assassination attempt "could have impacted voters" and "will be used for political purposes" and that's "exceptionally unfortunate" pic.twitter.com/ymJKE3VbUZ

— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) September 16, 2024

So, the only reason why CNN Democrats believe attempting to murder a political rival is bad appears to be because it could help them in the polls. How unfortunate that Trump keeps dodging bullets fired by radicalised deranged leftists and then… talking about it! CNN’s Wolf Blitzer expressed the same concern that Trump is using the assassination attempts “as a way to rile up his base.” So, the only reason why CNN Democrats believe attempting to murder a political rival is bad appears to be because it could help them in the polls. It’s good to see they have their priorities straight.

Wolf Blitzer: "The Trump campaign is seizing on this apparent assassination attempt as a way to rile up his base."

Or, ya know, we're a little angry that people keep trying to MURDER President Trump. pic.twitter.com/Xv540CXgqT

— Trump War Room (@TrumpWarRoom) September 16, 2024

The media reaction to this second attempt to shoot Trump to death is just incredible. They’re actually running with the narrative that it is Trump’s OWN FAULT that a blue haired Harris supporter hid in a bush with an AK47 and tried to shoot him in the head.

Harris Campaign Co-Chair Chris Coons blames the assassination attempt on President Trump's "rhetoric."

When they show you who they are… pic.twitter.com/EYtvrsKVLI

— Trump War Room (@TrumpWarRoom) September 16, 2024

It’s absolutely fascinating, and hideously disgusting at the same time. Their followers, the people listening to their incessant 24 hour ‘Trump is Hitler’ loop, are literally trying to murder him, yet somehow Trump is the one who needs to tone it down. It’s the equivalent of saying “she got raped because her skirt was too short.” Lets check where we are now on the leftist news cycle: You see, it’s ALL Trump’s fault. These shooters just have unclear political ideologies. It’s not like this latest nutcase just parroted the exact same phrases as the Democrat controlled leftist media while cosplaying as some sort of NGO official coordinating a Ukraine war effort response… is it?

“There is no remaining step between firing U.S. missiles deep into Russian territory and a nuclear exchange. We cannot get any closer to the brink than this..”

• Negotiate With Moscow To Prevent Nuclear Devastation (Trump Jr, RFK Jr)

The New York Times reported Thursday that the Biden administration is considering allowing Ukraine to use NATO-provided long-range precision weapons against targets deep inside Russia. Such a decision would put the world at greater risk of nuclear conflagration than at any time since the Cuban missile crisis. At a time when American leaders should be focused on finding a diplomatic off-ramp to a war that should never have been allowed to take place, the Biden-Harris administration is instead pursuing a policy that Russia says it will interpret as an act of war. In the words of Vladimir Putin, long-range strikes in Russia “will mean that NATO countries — the United States and European countries — are at war with Russia.” Some American analysts believe Putin is bluffing, and favor calling his bluff.

As the Times reported, “‘Easing the restrictions on Western weapons will not cause Moscow to escalate,’17 former ambassadors and generals wrote in a letter to the administration this week. ‘We know this because Ukraine is already striking territory Russia considers its own — including Crimea and Kursk — with these weapons and Moscow’s response remains unchanged.’” These analysts are mistaking restraint for weakness. In essence, they are advocating a strategy of brinksmanship. Each escalation — from HIMARS to cluster munitions to Abrams tanks to F-16s to ATACMS — draws the world closer to the brink of Armageddon. Their logic seems to be that if you goad a bear five times and it doesn’t respond, it is safe to goad him even harder a sixth time. Such a strategy might be reasonable if the bear had no teeth. The hawks in the Biden administration seem to have forgotten that Russia is a nuclear power.

They have forgotten the wisdom of John F. Kennedy, who said in 1963, “Nuclear powers must avert those confrontations which bring an adversary to a choice of either a humiliating retreat or a nuclear war.” We should take this advice seriously. Putin has signaled numerous times that Russia would use nuclear weapons in extreme circumstances. In September 2022, Putin said, “If the territorial integrity of our country is threatened, we will without doubt use all available means to protect Russia and our people — this is not a bluff.” In March 2023, he struck a deal with Belarus to station tactical nuclear weapons there. Earlier this month, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov announced that Russia would be amending its nuclear doctrine in response to Western involvement in the Ukraine war. Imagine if Russia were providing another country with missiles, training and targeting information to strike deep into American territory. The U.S. would never tolerate it. We shouldn’t expect Russia to tolerate it either.

This game of nuclear “chicken” has gone far enough. There is no remaining step between firing U.S. missiles deep into Russian territory and a nuclear exchange. We cannot get any closer to the brink than this. And for what? To “weaken Russia”? To control Ukraine’s minerals? No vital American interest is at stake. To risk nuclear conflict for the sake of the neoconservative fantasy of global “full-spectrum dominance” is madness. The war fever in the U.S. foreign policy establishment is at such a pitch that it is hard to tell whether they believe their own rhetoric. In last Tuesday’s debate, Vice President Kamala Harris conjured up images of Russian forces rolling across Europe. Surely she must know how absurd that is. For one thing, Russia can barely wrest a few provinces from Ukraine, which is by no means one of Europe’s great powers.

Secondly, Russia made its war aims very clear at the outset — most notably Ukrainian neutrality and a halt to NATO’s eastward expansion. Hundreds of thousands of lost lives, and hundreds of billions of dollars later, no one is better off — not Europe, not America and certainly not Ukraine. It is past time to de-escalate this conflict. This is more important than any of the political issues our nation argues about. Nuclear war would mean the end of civilization as we know it, maybe even the end of the human species. Former President Donald Trump has vowed to end this war, but by the time he takes office, it might be too late. We need to demand, right now, that Harris and President Biden reverse their insane war agenda and open direct negotiations with Moscow.

“..the White House condemned the post, saying that “this rhetoric is irresponsible”. Guys, check out White House rhetoric.

“Turns out that jokes are way less funny if people don’t know the context and the delivery is in plain text..”

• Secret Service ‘Aware’ Of Elon Musk Post About Harris, Biden (BBC)

The US Secret Service says it is “aware” of a social media post by Elon Musk in which he said that “no one is even trying” to assassinate President Joe Biden or Vice-President Kamala Harris. Mr Musk has since deleted the post and said it was intended as a joke. His post on X, formerly Twitter, came just hours after the suspected attempted assassination of Donald Trump at his golf course in Florida on Sunday. The tech billionaire is a close ally of Trump, who has vowed to enlist Mr Musk to run a “government efficiency commission” if he wins a second term as US president. Many X users criticised Mr Musk’s comments – which were accompanied by a raised eyebrow emoji – with some alleging that the post was a form of incitement against the US president and vice-president. In a statement, the White House condemned the post, saying that “this rhetoric is irresponsible”.

“Violence should only be condemned, never encouraged or joked about,” the statement said, adding that there should be “no place for political violence or for any violence ever in our country”. When contacted by the BBC, the US Secret Service said only that it is “aware” of the post. “As a matter of practice we do not comment on matters involving protective intelligence,” the statement added. “We can say, however, that the Secret Service investigates all threats related to our protectees.” After deleting the post, Mr Musk tweeted that “one lesson I’ve learned is that just because I say something to a group and they laugh doesn’t mean it’s going to be all that hilarious as a post on X.”

“Turns out that jokes are way less funny if people don’t know the context and the delivery is in plain text,” a subsequent post read. The controversial tech mogul is considered a close ally of Trump and formally endorsed him in the aftermath of a separate assassination attempt against the former president that took place at a rally on 13 July in Butler, Pennsylvania. In that attempt, the suspect fired multiple rounds, injuring Trump and killing an attendee at the rally. Since then, Mr Musk has often tweeted or re-posted messages critical of both Biden and Harris and in support of Trump.

“RT Editor-in-Chief Margarita Simonyan joked that RT had learned from the Americans, rather than from Russian intelligence officers. “Seriously? Did you run out of mirrors?”

• Meta Bans RT (RT)

US tech giant Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, has banned several Russian news networks, including RT. Since the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in 2022, Meta has been cooperating with a prohibition on RT imposed by the EU and other individual Western nations. In a statement on Monday, the company said the deplatforming of the media outlets from its apps is due to “foreign interference activity” and would be implemented globally over the next several days. The US government sanctioned RT last week, with Secretary of State Antony Blinken claiming that the outlet is “functioning as a de facto arm of [Russian] intelligence.” Moscow has called the move an act of information warfare, which exposes America’s inability to fairly compete with Russian media.

US officials have expressed frustration with RT’s role in offering an alternative to Washington-backed narratives on international affairs. “One of the reasons – not the only reason – why so much of the world has not been as fully supportive of Ukraine as you would think they would be, given that Russia has invaded Ukraine and violated rule number 1 of the international system – is because of the broad scope and reach of RT, where propaganda, disinformation, and lies is spread to millions if not billions around the world,” State Department spokesman Jamie Rubin told journalists on Friday, following Blinken’s remarks.

RT Editor-in-Chief Margarita Simonyan joked that RT had learned from the Americans, rather than from Russian intelligence officers.“Seriously? Did you run out of mirrors?” she asked, commenting on the American allegations. Meta has faced legal issues in Russia after allowing exemptions in its rules forbidding hate speech. Meta management ruled that Ukrainians were entitled to call for violence against Russians and to hail extreme nationalists fighting against Russia on its platforms. Moscow labeled Meta an extremist organization and banned Facebook and Instagram in Russia.

“..there’s no excuse or reason for this kind of embargo on foreign information based on the idea that it’s protecting the American people… from whom? From Mark Zuckerberg?”

“..other countries should consider Meta a government agency..”

• Meta’s Ban on Sputnik ‘Very Bad’ and Politicized Decision (Sp.)

A politically motivated move by Meta* to ban Russia’s Rossiya Segodnya and RT news outlets from its apps globally reflects the company’s biased approach, analysts said in separate interviews with Sputnik. “There is a perception in the United States that the flow of Russian information will always be disinformation and that it will be tipped in favor of Donald Trump, even though [Russian President Vladimir] Putin has said that he could deal with Kamala Harris, too. This [perception] is simply untrue. I mean, the idea is to frighten the American people that they don’t know one idea from another. I mean, that’s the smokescreen,” Professor Joe Siracusa, political scientist and dean of Global Futures, Curtin University, told Sputnik. As such, the idea that Russia spends all of its time to propagandize the American public, and that “there is a body of information out there that is going to undermine their faith and their freedom is ridiculous”, Siracusa underlines.

Recently, Russia’s Rossiya Segodnya, RT and “other related entities” were banned from Meta* apps globally over alleged foreign interference activity. This is a “very bad decision, particularly coming from an American company,” the political scientist points out. Meta’s ban on Russian news outlets mean that “they [Meta] are really sort of censoring the news themselves. What they’re saying to the American people is that you’re not mature enough to understand ideas”, per the professor. “This is the kind of game that the Democratic Party plays. I mean, there’s no excuse or reason for this kind of embargo on foreign information based on the idea that it’s protecting the American people… from whom? From Mark Zuckerberg? It’s ridiculous. Meta was in very close cahoots with the Democratic Party the last time around when it went after Donald Trump. So, in a way, it’s already been politicized,” the professor concludes.

In a separate interview with Sputnik, Facebook whistleblower Ryan Hartwig says that as a former Facebook content moderator, he saw firsthand how the company “influenced elections throughout the world.” “Facebook is clearly biased and has an agenda with elections. At a whim, it can make newsworthy exceptions to protect certain politicians. They may as well ban their own app and go after themselves for foreign interference activity,” Hartwig, who is the co-author of “Behind the Mask of Facebook: A Whistleblower’s Shocking Story of Big Tech Bias and Censorship”, points out. When it comes to Facebook’s foreign influence, suffice to mention the elections in Spain, Venezuela, and the US, according to Hartwig. Given the fact that Facebook was being influenced by the FBI “to suppress major stories” like the Hunter Biden laptop saga, “other countries should consider Meta a government agency,” the whistleblower adds. As for the Ukraine crisis, “It’s clear that Meta is acting in coordination with the US government and the US State Department as a proxy for a foreign conflict,” Hartwig concludes.

“Price controls lead to shortages of anything they touch, especially in inflationary times.”

• Grocery Rationing within Four Years (Jeffrey A. Tucker)

There is a lack of public comment and debate about Kamala Harris’s call for price controls on groceries and rents, the most stunning and frightening policy proposal made in my lifetime. Immediately, of course, people will reply that she is not for price controls as such. It is only a limit on “gouging” (which she variously calls “gauging”) on grocery prices. As for rents, it’s only for larger-scale corporations with many units. This is nonsense. If there really are national price-gouging police running around, every single seller of groceries, from small convenience stores to farmers’ markets to chain stores, will be vulnerable. No one wants the investigation so they will comply with de facto controls. No one knows for sure what gouging is. Don Boudreaux is correct: “A government that threatens to punish merchants for selling at nominal prices higher than deemed appropriate by government clearly intends to control prices. It’s no surprise, therefore, that economists routinely analyze prohibitions against so-called ‘price gouging’ using exactly the same tools they use to analyze other forms of price controls.”

As for rental units, the only result will be fewer amenities, new charges, new fees for what used to be free, less service, and a dramatically reduced incentive to build new units. That will only lead to a pretext for more subsidies, more public housing, and more government provision generally. We have experience with that and it is not good. The next step is nationalizing housing and rationing of groceries because there will be ever fewer available. The more the betting odds favor Kamala, the stronger the incentive to raise prices as high as possible now in anticipation of price controls come next year. That will provide even more seeming evidence for the need for more controls and a genuine crackdown. Price controls lead to shortages of anything they touch, especially in inflationary times. With the Federal Reserve seemingly on the verge of cutting rates for no good reason – rates are very low in real terms by any historical standard – we might see wave two of inflation later next year.

[..] Kamala is wrong that this will be the “first-ever” ban on price gouging. We had that in World War II, along with rationing tickets on meat, animal fats, foil, sugar, flour, foil, coffee, and more. It was a time of extreme austerity, and people put up with it because they believed it was saving resources for the war effort. It was enforced the same as we saw with covid lockdowns: a huge network enlisting state and local institutions, media, and private zealots ready to rat out the rebels. Franklin Roosevelt issued Executive Order 8875 on August 28, 1941. It claimed broad powers to manage all production and consumption in the US. On January 30, 1942, the Emergency Price Control Act granted the Office of Price Administration (OPA) the authority to set price limits and ration food and other commodities. Products were added as shortages intensified.

It is pretty wild that Hillary mentions Mueller to make her point. Talk about propaganda.. Hillary should be indicted over Russiagate.

Aaron Mate: “To make her argument against free speech, she invokes the Russiagate scam that itself was the product of her campaign’s own propaganda. Speaking of which, the case that she invokes here — Mueller charging some Russians for social media activity — led to Mueller dropping the case after the Russian company showed up to fight the case in court.”

• Hillary Demands Criminal Charges For Americans “Engaged” In “Propaganda” (ZH)

Amid claims that Trump is a “danger to this country and the world,” Hillary Clinton – the original sinner of ‘Russia, Russia, Russia’-propaganda – has called for anyone spreading “misinformation” to be criminally charged as a “better deterrence” ahead of the election. Specifically, the former Secretary of State told MSNBC host Rachel Maddow on Monday that Americans “engaged” in “propaganda” – similar to the type that led to the Russians “boosting Trump” in 2016 – should face criminal prosecution.

MADDOW: Speaking of dictators, the Justice Department and the State Department have taken another of act — a number of actions in the past several weeks, striking actions, to both call out and indict and take action against the Kremlin for their attempts at interfering in this — in yet another presidential election cycle on Trump’s behalf. The State Department has put out a $10 million reward for information leading to — for information about people who are trying to — about entities that are trying to illegally interfere in our election. We have seen these dramatic indictments from the Justice Department, including for paying millions of dollars, the Kremlin paying millions of dollars to pro-Trump influencers.

We have seen the Justice Department seize Web domains, where the Kremlin had set up news sites, what looked like news sites, looked like versions of American news sites, but were secretly operated by the Russian intelligence services or by the Russian government. You feel like the U.S. government is sort of starting to figure out how to do this and taking this seriously enough, or do you still think there’s a far distance to go?

CLINTON: I think there’s a far distance to go. I applaud the actions taken by the Justice Department and the State Department. I think that they’re very important. But, truly, we are just at the beginning of uncovering everything that Russia, but not just Russia, other countries, have done and are doing to influence our election. If you focus on Russia — and I commend you, Rachel, for your new movie — because we are only at the beginning of understanding the whole iceberg here. What the Russians started doing in 2015 and 2016, what they continued doing, they have gotten more sophisticated. They aren’t even pretending anymore.

Their international news operation, Russia Today, R.T., is an arm of the Russian government, an arm of its intelligence operation. It’s basically an extension of their spying efforts. They are using Americans, both those who are witting and willing and those who are unwitting and are just so surprised they’re getting $400,000 a week or $100,000 a podcast to parrot Kremlin propaganda. We know from what even Republicans have said, the chairs of the Intelligence Committee and the Foreign Affairs Committee and other Republicans who are currently in office have said that Republicans go to the floor of the Congress and they parrot Russian talking points.

So, I think it’s important to indict the Russians, just as Mueller indicted a lot of Russians who were engaged in direct election interference and boosting Trump back in 2016. But I also think there are Americans who are engaged in this kind of propaganda. And whether they should be civilly or even in some cases criminally charged is something that would be a better deterrence, because the Russians are unlikely, except in a very few cases, to ever stand trial in the United States. They’re not going to be going to a country where they can be extradited or even returning to the United States, unless they are very foolish. So I think we need to uncover all of the connections and make it very clear that you could vote however you want, but we are not going to let adversaries, whether it is Russia, China, Iran, or anybody else, basically try to influence Americans as to how we should vote in picking our leaders.

BREAKING: Hillary Clinton suggests jailing Americans for posting "misinformation"

"There needs to be deterrence" pic.twitter.com/soxI3wl7To

— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) September 17, 2024

“..their right to say them, their right to record them, and their right to have them at places where they are accessible to others is unquestioned, or it isn’t America.”

• Experts Gone Wild (Mike Scanlon)

An ability to win hearts and minds has long been seen by America’s leadership as essential to domestic and international politics and security. For much of the Pax Americana, our government and intelligentsia have poured time, effort, and money into studying how to persuade everyone from allies to enemies and, conversely, how to counter an opponent’s influence campaigns. But something essential has changed since the rise of President Donald Trump as a political force. During the Cold War, President Dwight Eisenhower spoke up against censorship and for lay readers in the wake of an attempt by Senator Joseph McCarthy’s henchmen to eradicate communist books from libraries:

“Don’t join the book burners. Don’t think you are going to conceal faults by concealing evidence that they ever existed. Don’t be afraid to go in your library and read every book . . . . How will we defeat communism unless we know what it is, and what it teaches, and why does it have such an appeal for men, why are so many people swearing allegiance to it? . . . And we have got to fight it with something better, not try to conceal the thinking of our own people. They are part of America. And even if they think ideas that are contrary to ours, their right to say them, their right to record them, and their right to have them at places where they are accessible to others is unquestioned, or it isn’t America.”

These days, America’s most educated have grown distrustful of non-experts and their ability to process dangerous ideas. Our elites have launched a campaign to protect the undereducated from themselves. The credentialed class pressures book retailers to stop selling “uncritical” translations of sinister foreign texts, meaning those lacking an accepted authority’s “soberly critical framing, complete with detailed footnotes, contextual commentary, or other forms of annotation.” Journalists writing about controversial topics do not link directly to primary sources but instead filter such news “through multiple layers of condemnation by a shrinking pool of academics trusted to read raw material.”

Our best and brightest unabashedly seek to silence individuals who disagree with their betters and to regulate (or outright suppress) social media sites that allow free (or free-ish) debate about unsafe thoughts. Opinion makers cheer on activists seeking to deplatform or shout down an ever-growing list of enemies, including those who refused to toe the party line on Russia’s war in the Ukraine. Self-proclaimed defenders of press freedom are rallying to safeguard the right of social media companies to collaborate with state actors to squelch wrongheaded arguments and to wall the incorrigible off from the marketplace of ideas. The Biden Administration tried to establish a governance board to combat disinformation. That crusade is not going well.

“.. [Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela] .. the program had brought up to 30,000 migrants from those four nations into the U.S. every month under two-year work permits..”

• Springfield Ohio Is Just the Beginning (Paul Craig Roberts)

Why does the US government hate the American people? Why does the US government try to destroy us? The Anti-White American Democrats are Incapable of Understanding that an illegal alien does not become part of a national community by unlawfully entering it, any more than a thief becomes an owner of property by stealing it. What has happened to America when the entirety of the media, the entirety of the Democrat Party, the entirety of the universities, Homeland Security (sic) not only welcome but also facilitate the immigrant invasion that is overrunning the United States while Washington, abandoning its own borders, fights for Ukraine’s?

The national print and TV media describe the over-running of Springfield by immigrant-invaders as a restoration of a declining city, restoring property values, and enriching the culture. Every bit of information to the contrary is dismissed as fake news. Wake Up White People. Your Existence Is Being Erased. How is the Department of Homeland Security Protecting Our Security by Flying into Our Country at Our Expense Immigrant-invaders from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela? “DHS restarts migrant flights from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela – weeks after halting program over ‘fraud’ concerns” | 29 Aug 2024 |

The Department of Homeland Security said Thursday it is resuming migrant flights into the US from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela — one month after putting the program on pause due to potentially massive “fraud.” Under the Harris-Biden administration, the program had brought up to 30,000 migrants from those four nations into the U.S. every month under two-year work permits, so long as they passed a vetting process. Nearly half a million migrants had already received advance travel authorizations and then made their own arrangements to enter America via the humanitarian parole process before it was paused in mid-July. Around that time, an internal DHS report found thousands of sponsors allegedly committing fraud by listing fake Social Security numbers, home addresses or phone numbers — some of which belonged to dead people.

Storm brewing..

• Macron’s Impeachment Clears First Hurdle in Left-Dominated National Assembly (Sp.)

France’s lower house of parliament – the Bureau – has approved the draft resolution which must now be approved by the legislative commission before moving to the Senate. “The Bureau of the National Assembly has approved the procedure for removing Emmanuel Macron from power,” newspaper Le Parisien reported on Tuesday.. The Bureau is the highest collegial body of the lower house of parliament. Currently, 12 of its 22 members are representatives of the left. The proposal to remove Macron from power was put forward by the left-wing party La France Insoumise (lit. Unsubmissive France). According to the BFMTV channel, the proposal was supported by 12 votes to 10 during consideration by Bureau members. The party made this move after the French leader excluded left-wing parties from the newly formed government, despite their coalition’s victory in parliamentary elections.

The proposal was submitted under Article 68 of the French Constitution, which allows for the removal of the president in the event of a breach of his duties. The resolution must now be approved by the legislative commission of 73 deputies, where the left holds only 24 seats. After that, it must be passed by two-thirds of the National Assembly (385 deputies) within two weeks. The final two stages must also pass in the upper house of parliament, the Senate, where the left does not have a majority. If the Senate approves the resolution (with 232 votes), both chambers will meet in a joint session, and 617 of the 925 parliamentarians from both houses must support the resolution. If this happens, the president will be forced to resign immediately.

In 2016, the Bureau of the National Assembly ruled a similar impeachment resolution against President François Hollande to be inadmissible. In the July parliamentary snap elections, the left-wing bloc gained the most votes, winning 182 seats out of 577. Macron’s presidential coalition Together for the Republic came in second, with 168 seats in the National Assembly. The right-wing party National Rally and its allies from the Republicans became the third-largest force in parliament with 143 seats. As a result, no political force secured a majority to form a new government. The composition of the new French cabinet, led by Prime Minister Michel Barnier, is expected to be announced this week.

“.. the report is trash economics that reads like something out of the late-stage USSR, according to economist Philip Pilkington.”

• The EU Retreats Further into a World of Self-Delusion (NC)

The situation in Europe is getting so bad on so many different levels, the Brussels crowd had to bring in “Super” Mario Draghi to save the day — or at least write a report telling them what to do… Draghi has spent time at Goldman Sachs, the European Central Bank (ECB) during the sovereign debt crisis, and as unelected prime minister of Italy during the early days of the Covid pandemic and runup to Project Ukraine. Depending on where you sit, he could be an odd choice to chart a path forward; while Draghi knows his way around a crisis control center, he’s also plenty experienced at creating them. He was one of the chief architects of the EU’s disastrous economic war against Russia and he’s always been a grim reaper for working class citizens of his native country of Italy. No wonder that for months the neoliberal, war-loving spreadsheet crowd in Brussels has eagerly awaited the report as if it is manna from heaven that will help deliver them from the corner they have backed themselves into.

Curiously, his report was delayed by months, which only increased the anticipation, and it finally dropped last week, conveniently timed at another crisis point. Project Ukraine is quickly unraveling and pressure is coming from all directions for Berlin to give the go ahead for joint EU debt in order to make the EU “competitive” again and buy a bunch of weapons to do something (nobody is too sure of what exactly) about Russia. Indeed, Draghi’s report doesn’t say, nor does it ever consider making nice with Moscow. That’s because the report, “EU Competitiveness: Looking Ahead” is a political document more than economic one intended to not only give cover to the bloc’s disastrous Russia policies, but continue to double down. And it is already being used as more ammunition for those in the Baltics, Poland, the media, US-funded think tanks in Europe, and more who are calling on Germany to support debt for an extended Cold War.

Specifically, they wanted Super Mario to tell them how to get out of the predicament of their own making without changing course on Russia and a host of other issues, and Draghi delivered — as long as you don’t let reality get in the way. His answer? More money. Lots of it. He calls for massive infusions of cash into multiple sectors: green, tech, energy, and of course defense. According to Draghi, the price tag is a minimum of 800 billion euros annually until 2030. Asked if his message was “implement your report, or die?” he replied that “It’s ‘Do this, or it’s a slow agony.’” The EU certainly needs an economic plan, but Draghi’s report never questions whether ongoing belligerence toward Moscow (and loss of pipeline Russian gas) is in the bloc’s best interest and it never mentions Brussels’ obsession with austerity, which is once again being forced on member countries. From a purely economic standpoint, the report is trash economics that reads like something out of the late-stage USSR, according to economist Philip Pilkington.

But it does plug nicely into the political economy of today’s EU, which is being subsumed under Washington and NATO. It is engaged in open economic war and an proxy war in Ukraine against Russia, both of which have hurt working class citizens across the bloc. The austerity-obsessed EU is once again forcing its member states to enact austerity budgets. Draghi’s report was requested by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, who is working to amass more power to her mostly unaccountable throne, and is one of many voices calling for a defense union and militarization and the ability to borrow and potentially levy taxes to pay for those debts.

Happened right before the pager attack..

• Yemen’s Hypersonic Ballistic Missile Rocks Israel’s Defenses (Nasrallah)

In the early hours of Sunday, 15 September, a Yemeni hypersonic ballistic missile pierced through the air, striking at the heart of Tel Aviv. Launched on the Mawlid, or birthday of Prophet Muhammad, the missile traveled over 2,000 kilometers, evading the collective defense systems of Israel, the US, and its Arab allies. This latest attack by Yemen’s Ansarallah-aligned armed forces “was carried out with a new hypersonic ballistic missile … within 11 and a half minutes, and caused a state of fear and panic among the Zionists,” according to a statement by the movement. The missile strike occurred against the backdrop of mounting Israeli threats of military action against fellow Axis of Resistance member Hezbollah in Lebanon, as well as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s refusal to accept a ceasefire in Gaza.

In an interview with The Cradle, Ansarallah’s political bureau and Shura Council member Dr Hizam al-Assad confirmed that “the missile operation confused the enemy’s calculations and drew new rules in the balance of deterrence operations,” pointing out that it is “the first for future operations.” Assad separates the operation from the response to the Israeli aggression that affected Hodeidah, stressing that it will come “deep inside Israel and in what the enemy or those who stand behind the enemy or on his side do not expect.” Regarding the Israeli occupation army’s denial that the missile that hit Tel Aviv was hypersonic, Assad confirmed that “the Republic of Yemen has developed military technologies and entered the path of technological industrialization, including hypersonic missile systems, in addition to drones and other things.”

On Netanyahu’s intention to expand the battle with Lebanon, the Ansarallah official charges that those “threats come from a position of weakness” and warns the Israeli prime minister that “the next will be worse for your forces and settlers.” And Assad doubles down against Israeli attempts to compartmentalize its battles on various fronts, arguing that the Resistance Axis’ military efforts represent a unified front: As for us, within the framework of the support front, we stand by our brothers in Hizbullah, our brothers in the Iraqi front, and the various fronts inside and outside Palestine, and we coordinate and cooperate within the framework of joint and non-joint operations. He concludes by underlining the goal for all parts of the axis: “We will not stop until the aggression on the Gaza Strip is stopped and the siege on its people is lifted.”

Yemen’s bold missile operation on Sunday was a clear message that it, too, holds sway in shaping the future of the conflict, defying Israel’s expectations and altering the strategic calculations of regional players. Crucially, it served as a warning to the occupation state to “expect more strikes and qualitative operations to come – as we are on the threshold of the first anniversary of the blessed October 7 operation – including the response to its criminal aggression on the city of Hodeidah.” Indeed, this is not the first time Yemen has targeted Tel Aviv in support of the Palestinian resistance. In July, representing the “fifth phase” of operations, the armed forces launched a long-range drone attack that resulted in one fatality, prompting the occupation state’s subsequent bombing of the Yemeni port city.

In his Sunday speech to commemorate the Mawlid, Ansarallah leader Abdul Malik al-Houthi reiterated the commencement of the fifth phase, stating that the attack that targeted occupied Jaffa “was carried out with a high-tech missile that bypassed the enemy’s systems.” He also stressed that “Yemen’s operations and positions would continue as long as the aggression and siege on Gaza continue” and “until Palestine is cleansed from the clutches of the occupation.”

https://twitter.com/i/status/1835793692302418144

Tiger
https://twitter.com/i/status/1835960868615422428

Electric elephant

Elephant carefully tests the electric fence before removing it.. pic.twitter.com/HVF4qOqn8f

— Buitengebieden (@buitengebieden) September 17, 2024

Puppylings
https://twitter.com/i/status/1835993455954166004

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

Debt Rattle July 7 2023

Jul 072023

July 7, 2023 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 9:19 am Finance Tagged with: Bulgaria, cocaine, Lancet, Lukashenko, Meta, NATO, Raiffeisenbank, SCOTUS, Zelensky 30 Responses »

Camille Pissarro Rue Saint-Honoré in the Afternoon, Effect of Rain 1897

• Zelensky Holding Out For NATO To Enter Ukraine Conflict – Lukashenko (TASS)

• Zelensky ‘Dragging Entire Planet’ To Hell – Russian Envoy (RT)

• Kiev Dragging Other Countries Into Conflict – Moscow (RT)

• Lukashenko Outlines Deal With Wagner (RT)

• The Capitalists Are Circling Over Ukraine (Fazi)

• Zelensky Clashes With Bulgarian President Over Weapons Demands (RT)

• Bulgaria Plans $650 Million Nuclear Sale To Ukraine – WSJ (RT)

• Warsaw Wants ‘Gestures’ From Kiev On Massacres (RT)

• South American Leaders Block Zelensky From Summit (RT)

• Raiffeisenbank ‘Postpones’ Plan To Leave Russia – Reuters (RT)

• SCOTUS Is Losing Legitimacy – And Only Has Itself To Blame |(Blankenship)

• Meta Launches Data-Harvesting Twitter Clone, Immediately Starts Censoring (ZH)

• Cocaine at White House Was Found Inside Cubby – Not West Wing Lobby (Sp.)

• Lancet Study on Covid Vaccine Autopsies Finds 74% Were Caused by Vaccine (DS)

The keyboard Meta used to produce their new app, Threads.

Gal Luft

BREAKING — Israeli professor Dr. Gal Luft, the "missing witness" in the Biden corruption investigation, accuses the Bidens of receiving bribes from individuals linked to Chinese military intelligence and using an FBI mole named "One Eye" to share classified information with CEFC… pic.twitter.com/ADGC8pXTr8

— KanekoaTheGreat (@KanekoaTheGreat) July 6, 2023

Maersheimer

“The unipolar moment has gone.

There are now three great powers — US, China and Russia.

We (USA) have lost our soft power. People all over the world think that the United States acts like a thug.”

— Professor John Mearsheimer pic.twitter.com/lkhpNQy75K

— S.L. Kanthan (@Kanthan2030) July 6, 2023

The five hottest Julys in the US were 1936, 1901, 1934, 1930 and 1931.

@JimSteeleSkepti
The jet stream NOT CO2 is our weather control knob. Below is the satellite data from June 28, 2023 showing (above) the wavy behavior of the jet stream and (below) how the troughs coincide with cool temperatures and the ridges with heat domes and high temperatures. On the same dates the public was given very different weather news. Experts reported for Los Angeles under the jet stream’s trough: Records from Downtown Los Angeles, where records date back to 1877, show June 2023 being the coolest such month since 1965.

But in Texas, where the jet stream generated a heat dome, the news misleadingly reported: “Climate change has sent temperatures soaring in Texas” While along the east coast in Connecticut beneath a trough reported: “What’s behind Connecticut’s unusually cool weather in June — and what’s coming next?”

“He will insist on Ukraine being admitted to NATO so that NATO will then join the war against Russia…

• Zelensky Holding Out For NATO To Enter Ukraine Conflict – Lukashenko (TASS)

Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky will insist that Ukraine be accepted for NATO membership and that the bloc get directly involved in the conflict, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said at a meeting with representatives of foreign and Belarusian media outlets. “He (Zelensky – TASS) will insist on Ukraine being admitted to NATO so that NATO will then join the war against Russia,” he said. According to Lukashenko, Zelensky has finally realized that he will not win the war, and so has gradually started making demands on those who pushed his country into it. The Belarusian leader noted that Zelensky’s demands would, above all, concern money and new weaponry. “By July 11 (the start date of NATO’s Vilnius summit – TASS), they [the NATO countries] will be expected to come up with something to demonstrate” support for Kiev, he said.

“American and European citizens are hardly ready to march in orderly rows to the hell into which the Zelensky government is dragging the entire planet.”

• Zelensky ‘Dragging Entire Planet’ To Hell – Russian Envoy (RT)

Faced with failure on the battlefield, Ukraine’s president is trying to drag NATO into the conflict with a false-flag attack on Europe’s largest nuclear power plant, Russia’s ambassador to the US, Anatoly Antonov, said on Thursday. “News reporters continue to pretend not to notice the obvious: from the very beginning of the special military operation, all the accusations of the Zelensky regime against us turned out to be sabotage operations of Kiev itself,” Antonov told Newsweek in an email interview. The difference now, he added, was that “this time stakes have grown substantially: Europe’s nuclear security is at risk.” Zelensky has accused Russia of planting explosives at the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP). Antonov called it “absurd” to accuse Russia of wanting to damage the facility which it has controlled since March 2022.

Kiev’s “criminal intentions” divert attention from “the failed counteroffensive of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, in which the West has invested enormous resources,” to falsely accuse Russia as a ‘nuclear terrorist’ ahead of the NATO summit, and draw the US-led bloc into the conflict directly, Antonov said. “Western ruling elites should understand that the failures on the battlefield make Kiev eager to create a pretext for the deployment of the NATO contingent to Ukraine, thereby to inflate a regional conflict into World War III,” the Russian ambassador told Newsweek. “We call on the curators of the Kiev regime to exercise responsibility and exert influence on their ‘wards’ in order to avoid a large-scale catastrophe,” he added. “American and European citizens are hardly ready to march in orderly rows to the hell into which the Zelensky government is dragging the entire planet.”

International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors, who are on the ground at the ZNPP, reported on Wednesday that they have found no signs of any mines, either at the cooling pond – as Kiev initially claimed – or on the roofs of the reactor buildings. The IAEA observer mission was deployed to the ZNPP in September 2022. Prior to that, the station and its environs had been repeatedly targeted by Ukrainian artillery, which Kiev admitted at one point. Just before the IAEA mission arrived, Ukrainian commandos also attempted to seize the facility but were driven back. Russia has provided evidence of Ukrainian attacks to the UN, which has avoided assigning blame.

Bulgaria: “the nation’s new pro-European government – which was formed in early June – confirmed that it would continue to provide Ukraine with military equipment. ..”

• Kiev Dragging Other Countries Into Conflict – Moscow (RT)

Ukraine’s attempts to secure more foreign military aid and make other countries direct participants in the conflict will fail to change its eventual outcome, Kremlin Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov said on Thursday. Speaking to reporters, Peskov was asked to comment on Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky’s trip to Bulgaria, in which he intends to discuss further security assistance to Kiev. “The Kiev regime is doing its best to drag as many countries directly into this conflict as possible,” Peskov said, adding that some nations are already immersed in hostilities from head to toe. Peskov confirmed that he was not surprised such deliberations were taking place, noting that “fundamentally, all these discussions and their results are in no way capable of influencing the outcome of the special military operation.”

“The current frontline situation provides ample proof for that,” the spokesman added. He was referring to the ongoing Ukrainian counteroffensive that, according to the Russian Defense Ministry, has so far failed to gain ground despite being supported by a large amount of Western weaponry. Zelensky’s visit to Bulgaria comes after last week Sofia announced a new package of military aid to Kiev. While it stated that the new batch of military assistance would be “comparable in volume to the aid from the first package” granted last December by the caretaker government, it did not provide any details on its contents. The decision came after the nation’s new pro-European government – which was formed in early June – confirmed that it would continue to provide Ukraine with military equipment.

This stance, however, is not shared by President Rumen Radev, who earlier insisted that Bulgaria should refrain from supporting Ukraine with arms, arguing those policies would not be able to stop the conflict and would only damage the country’s economy. Sofia has been slow to provide Kiev with security assistance, largely due to opposition from the Bulgarian Socialist Party, with the gridlock removed only in December. However, a Euractiv report from October suggested that the Balkan nation emerged as one of the biggest indirect suppliers of military aid to Ukraine, having sent at least €1 billion of weapons and ammunition to Ukraine via brokers. Russia has repeatedly warned the West that weapons deliveries to Ukraine will only prolong hostilities and make it a direct participant in the conflict, without changing the outcome.

“The experience that Wagner and its commanders have, they’ll gladly pass it on to our military…. The ones that we need: in tactics, combat operations..”

• Lukashenko Outlines Deal With Wagner (RT)

Wagner troops could be used to defend Belarus after they relocate from Russia, where they took part in a failed revolt last month, President Alexander Lukashenko has said. Military personnel attached to Evgeny Prigozhin’s private military company are being transferred to the country subject to “certain conditions,” including that they can be deployed instantly if they’re needed to “defend the state,” he explained. “I’m absolutely not worried and not troubled that we’ll have a certain number of these fighters stationed here [in Belarus],” Lukashenko told journalists on Thursday. The likes of Polish President Andrzej Duda and his Ukrainian counterpart Vladimir Zelensky have vowed that “they won’t leave Belarus alone,” Lukashenko said, adding that “he must react” to such threats as supreme commander of the armed forces.

“The experience that Wagner and its commanders have, they’ll gladly pass it on to our military…. The ones that we need: in tactics, combat operations,” he continued. Wagner was instrumental in the capture of the strategic city of Artyomovsk (Bakhmut) from Ukraine in May. The PMC has also operated in Syria and Africa. When asked about the possibility of Wagner attempting a mutiny in Belarus like they did in Russia last month, Lukashenko replied: “I don’t think that Wagner will somehow rise up and turn its guns against the Belarusian authorities and the Belarusian state. Everything happens in life. But today I don’t see such a situation.” He also provided information regarding the whereabouts of Prigozhin, saying the Wagner head is currently not in Belarus, but in Russia, and that they had talked the previous day.

Kremlin Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov said on Thursday that the Russian authorities “don’t have either the ability or desire” to track Prigozhin’s movements. All of the statements made by Moscow and Belarus regarding the fate of Wagner in the wake of the failed mutiny “remain relevant,” he added. In a short message on social media earlier this week, Prigozhin claimed that the botched uprising by his men was aimed at “fighting traitors and mobilizing the society” of Russia. “I think we succeeded in many of those goals,” he claimed. The two-day insurrection by Wagner in late June was ended through talks between Lukashenko and Prigozhin in close coordination with Russian President Vladimir Putin. According to Moscow, it was agreed that the Wagner chief and his men who took part in the mutiny would avoid prosecution. As part of the deal, Prigozhin left for Belarus, with his men offered the choice of following him, signing contracts with the Russian military, or returning home.

“..the IMF played a key role in precipitating the 2014 crisis: Ukraine’s then-President, Viktor Yanukovych, refused to accept IMF demands that he cut wages, slash social spending and end gas subsidies in order to integrate with the EU..”

• The Capitalists Are Circling Over Ukraine (Fazi)

Two weeks ago, thousands of representatives from businesses and governments from across the world gathered in London to “support Ukraine’s recovery”. But was the gathering of all those Western corporate elites at the Ukraine Recovery Conference entirely altruistic? There are, after all, massive profit opportunities being created by the war. Last year, the Ukrainian government essentially outsourced the entire post-war “reconstruction” process to BlackRock, the world’s largest asset management firm. They signed an agreement to “provide advisory support for designing an investment framework, with a goal of creating opportunities for both public and private investors to participate in the future reconstruction and recovery of the Ukrainian economy”. In February, J.P. Morgan was brought on board as well.

The two banks will run the Ukraine Development Fund, which aims to raise private investment in projects potentially worth hundreds of billions of dollars across sectors including tech, natural resources, agriculture and health. BlackRock and J.P. Morgan are donating their services, but, as the Financial Times noted, “the work will give them an early look at possible investments in the country”. The opportunities are significant, particularly in the agricultural sector: Ukraine is home to a quarter of the world’s chernozem (“black earth”), an extraordinarily fertile soil, and before the war it was world’s top producer of sunflower meal, oil and seed, and one of the biggest exporters of corn and wheat. From certain perspectives, the war is clearly good for business: indeed, the greater the destruction, the greater the opportunities for reconstruction.

At Davos this year, Larry Fink, CEO of BlackRock, said he hoped the initiative would turn the country into a “beacon of capitalism”. David Solomon, CEO of Goldman Sachs, also spoke cheerily of Ukraine’s post-war future. “There is no question,” he said, “that as you rebuild, there will be good economic incentives for real return and real investment.” Seeing opportunity amid the tragedy, 500 global businesses from 42 countries have already signed the Ukraine Business Compact “to help realise its huge potential” — or secure their slice of the Ukrainian pie. “Most are standing on the sidelines for now, given the security threat,” the FT reported. “But there are already companies on the cusp of moving in — especially in the low-hanging-fruit industries of construction and materials, agricultural processing and logistics.”

Over the years, across a series of similar events, Western governments and corporate leaders have made no secret of their enthusiasm to use the post-Maidan regime — and now the war — to radically alter Ukraine’s political economy. The agenda: to open up the country and make it safe for Western capital by transforming it into a special economic zone. This neoliberal shock therapy should, in their view, include “strengthening the market economy”, “decentralisation, privatisation, reform of state-owned enterprises, land reform, state administration reform”, and “Euro-Atlantic integration”, as well as widespread “deregulation” and the slashing of “outdated labour legislation leading to complicated hiring and firing process, regulation of overtime, etc”. In short, the Washington Consensus on steroids.

This programme has, arguably, been underway since the mid-Nineties, when the West used IMF loans-cum-conditionalities to impose on Ukraine, just as it did on Russia, a series of radical free-market-minded reforms that crippled the economy. As the Indian economist Prabhat Patnaik has pointed out, the IMF played a key role in precipitating the 2014 crisis: Ukraine’s then-President, Viktor Yanukovych, refused to accept IMF demands that he cut wages, slash social spending and end gas subsidies in order to integrate with the EU, and turned instead to Russia for an alternative economic agreement. This was the backdrop for the Western-backed Euromaidan protests and, eventually, the 2014 regime change.

So he gets to “new friend” Bulgaria and what does he do?

“Zelensky “savaged” Radev and “opened up with both barrels” to “maul” the Bulgarian president, delivering his words “with measured scorn” and “barbed irony” as Radev “took refuge” in the sheet of paper in his hands.”

• Zelensky Clashes With Bulgarian President Over Weapons Demands (RT)

Bulgarian President Rumen Radev found himself lectured by his Ukrainian guest Vladimir Zelensky on Thursday, after telling him that Sofia had no weapons to spare for Kiev. As TV cameras documented their meeting, Zelensky attacked Radev for advocating a diplomatic solution to the conflict. “I do not agree to provide ammunition, especially from the Bulgarian army reserves,” Radev told Zelensky, according to one of the translations. “I continue to maintain that this conflict has no military solution and more and more weapons will not solve it.” Zelensky objected to Radev’s use of the term “conflict,” insisting that “this is definitely a war.” “God forbid, some tragedy should befall you and you should be in my place,” he added. “And if people with shared values do not help, what will you do? You would say: Putin, please grab Bulgarian territory?”

“I also want to tell you, whatever your army has in terms of munitions, it will not be enough to fight with the Russian Federation. You don’t have a bad army, your people are good but it would not be enough to fight against 160 million people. That is why it is good to give the people to defend themselves, so that the war does not come to you, to the Poles, to the Romanians – war knows no distance, I can tell you,” the Ukrainian leader told his host. “You cannot support Russia and support a balancing position because Russia wants to destroy NATO, wants to destroy Europe and the European Union; these are their goals. Do you get me?” Zelensky told Radev.

According to Politico’s description of the incident, Zelensky “savaged” Radev and “opened up with both barrels” to “maul” the Bulgarian president, delivering his words “with measured scorn” and “barbed irony” as Radev “took refuge” in the sheet of paper in his hands. The Bulgarian president eventually asked the cameras to leave the room. NATO countries have sent billions of dollars worth of weapons, ammunition and equipment to Ukraine since February 2022, while insisting they were not directly involved in the conflict with Russia. Earlier in the day, Zelensky met with the government of PM Nikolai Denkov, who has only been in office for a month. Denkov’s cabinet supports selling weapons to Kiev. The Ukrainian delegation departed Sofia for Prague, on board a Czech air force transport.

Ukraine has no money.

• Bulgaria Plans $650 Million Nuclear Sale To Ukraine – WSJ (RT)

Bulgaria is close to completing a deal to sell two Russian-made nuclear reactors to Ukraine’s state-owned energy company Energoatom for around $650 million, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday. Under the terms of the proposed deal, which has yet to be completed, Sofia’s energy firm NEK would sell the Ukrainian company two reactors from Bulgaria’s unfinished Belene Nuclear Power Plant. It would be the first time that Russian-designed nuclear equipment would be used to boost Kiev’s energy output, the WSJ said. The same publication also notes that two primary methods of payment for the reactors have so far been proposed. One would see the United States provide part of the funds to Energoatom as part of an aid package for Ukraine, which would subsequently be transferred to NEK.

Another option, the WSJ reported, would be for Sofia to assume a minority shareholding in Ukraine’s Khmelnytsky Nuclear Power Plant, where the reactors would be installed. Ukraine’s president Vladimir Zelensky arrived in Sofia for a one-day visit on Thursday, where it is expected that the nuclear deal will be discussed with Bulgarian officials. Also on Thursday, Sofia’s parliament passed a motion requiring its government to hold negotiations with Kiev regarding the sale of the nuclear equipment. The proposal has been slammed by pro-Moscow opposition parties in Bulgaria, who claim it was rushed through the legislature in order to obstruct any attempts to block it. The possible sale of the reactors further illustrates a European energy market in flux after the EU last year ended most of its imports of Russian oil, gas and coal in the wake of Moscow’s military operation in Ukraine. Prior to this, even Bulgaria relied on Russia for much of its gas supplies.

The still-uncompleted Belene Nuclear Power Plant has been the source of much controversy since the project was first undertaken in the mid-1980s. Construction at the site has been halted and resumed on several occasions, with some Western governments noting their opposition due to the proposed plant possibly being dependent on Russian fuel. It has also received objections from environmental campaigners, who claim that its location in a seismic active zone represents an unnecessary risk. For Kiev, though, the Soviet-designed Khmelnytsky power plant in Ukraine’s west already has technicians trained to operate the Russian-made reactors, potentially establishing new energy exports from Kiev to Europe. On Thursday, two pro-Russian parties in Sofia, the Socialist Party and Revival, a nationalist party, voted against approving the sale of the reactors to Kiev.

“On last year’s day of remembrance for Polish victims, the Ukrainian leader submitted a draft law to parliament which granted special privileges to modern-day Polish citizens. They are now treated similarly to Ukrainian nationals in many regards..”

• Warsaw Wants ‘Gestures’ From Kiev On Massacres (RT)

Kiev must prove it is taking steps to acknowledge the responsibility of Ukrainian nationalists for the mass murder of ethnic Poles during World War II in Volhynia, a Polish MP involved in implementing Warsaw’s European policy has said. On Sunday, Poland will mark the day of remembrance for victims of the atrocities, which the EU nation considers an act of genocide. The massacres in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia 80 years ago were intended to further the cause of an ethnically uniform Ukrainian nation state. Their perpetrators are considered national heroes by Kiev today. Szymon Szynkowski vel Sek, the Polish secretary of state for European policy, said on Thursday that he expects gestures from the Ukrainian government regarding the tragedy, because “this matter is an unhealed wound.”

Polish officials “have been in contact with the Ukrainian side regarding these commemorations for months, and that’s all I can say at the moment,” the lawmaker told RMF FM radio. Last month, Polish Deputy Foreign Minister Pawel Jablonski identified the dispute over the tragic events as a potential stumbling block on Ukraine’s path towards EU membership, insisting that it must be resolved. Opposition politician Tomasz Siemoniak, a former Polish defense minister, last week argued against driving Kiev into a corner to extract a formal apology. However, he added that he “would expect some gestures, at least in this practical sphere – exhumations, monuments, access.”

In 2017, the Ukrainian government prohibited the search for and exhumation of victims of the massacres on Kiev-controlled territory. The move was retaliation for the dismantling of a monument to Ukrainian nationalists in Poland, although the decision was reversed last year under President Vladimir Zelensky. On last year’s day of remembrance for Polish victims, the Ukrainian leader submitted a draft law to parliament which granted special privileges to modern-day Polish citizens. They are now treated similarly to Ukrainian nationals in many regards, including employment opportunities, access to education, and certain social benefits. Zelensky’s Polish counterpart, Andrzej Duda, noted at the time that he appreciated the symbolism.

“One EU diplomat told Euractiv that the counter-proposal shows “we are not on the same wavelength” and that “it looks like they want to be perceived as equal partners.”

• South American Leaders Block Zelensky From Summit (RT)

The Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) has purged every reference to Ukraine from the joint declaration proposed by the EU, the outlet Euractiv reported on Thursday. Their objections also forced the EU to un-invite Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky from the joint summit. The 33-member South American bloc is supposed to hold a joint summit with the EU in Brussels, starting on July 17. Spain had initially invited Zelensky to attend, but the invitation was “dropped” after “pushback” from CELAC leaders, Euractiv reported. Ahead of the meeting, the EU sent over a draft of a joint declaration, which included support for Ukraine, climate change and green energy pledges, combating corruption, and other major EU policy goals. On Tuesday, the CELAC sent back a 21-page counter-proposal, which “deleted everything about Ukraine,” one EU diplomat told Euractiv.

The counter-proposal says the EU and CELAC would “advocate for serious and constructive diplomatic solutions to the current conflict in Europe, by peaceful means, which guarantees the sovereignty and security of us all, as well as regional and international peace, stability and security,” according to Euractiv. The EU regards it as “crucial” that the declaration condemns “Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine” and contains specific language about the UN Charter, sovereignty and territorial integrity, said one unnamed diplomat. Brussels also wanted an explicit commitment to Zelensky’s “peace platform,” which the CELAC has rejected. Most Latin American countries have repeatedly said they don’t wish to be dragged into a conflict they see as a primarily European problem.

One CELAC diplomat told Euractiv that the summit needs to be about more than the Ukraine conflict, and address things that matter to the region, including a stalled trade pact between the EU and Mercosur members Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay. The CELAC has also asked Europeans to pay reparations for the damages caused by slavery. One EU diplomat told Euractiv that the counter-proposal shows “we are not on the same wavelength” and that “it looks like they want to be perceived as equal partners.” EU ministers are scheduled to discuss the counter-proposal at a meeting on Friday, and will have to decide how much they are willing to compromise, or if they will press ahead with the summit without a joint communique.

10,000 staff in Russia.

• Raiffeisenbank ‘Postpones’ Plan To Leave Russia – Reuters (RT)

Austrian banking group Raiffeisen, one of the last major Western lenders in Russia, is delaying its withdrawal despite pressure from EU regulators, Reuters reported on Thursday. The agency quoted officials in Vienna as defending long-standing ties with Moscow. Raiffeisen is viewed as playing an important role in the Russian economy, providing a lifeline for euro payments to and from the country. It is one of only two foreign banks on the Russian central bank’s list of 13 systemically important credit institutions, the other being Italy’s UniCredit. The Austrian lender announced in March its plans to spin off its Russian business by September, following mounting pressure from Western authorities.

The RBI Group, which owns the bank, has been resisting demands from the US and EU to speed up its Russia exit, while Austrian officials have expressed hope of reviving relations with Moscow after the conflict in Ukraine ends, according to Reuters. “Although Austria publicly supports Ukraine, several officials who spoke to Reuters said they were reluctant to completely sever decades-old ties with Russia, thinking it will still be possible to restore relations,” the outlet wrote.

Austria’s second-biggest credit institution has been under growing pressure from Western officials and investors in recent months. The European Central Bank (ECB) has reportedly urged the lender to quit the Russian market, while the RBI Group has faced scrutiny in the US and EU over potential breaches of Western sanctions. Under pressure from Washington, Raiffeisen has transferred data on Russian transactions to the US’ sanctions authority, the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), Reuters reported, citing sources. However, Austrian officials have claimed that the bank has been unfairly singled out, the news agency said, citing people familiar with the matter. A spokesperson for the Austrian Finance Ministry reportedly stated that other EU banks were also active in Russia.

RBI has not yet outlined its plans to the ECB, making an exit from Russia unlikely by September, according to Reuters. “RBI’s presence underlines the depth of relations between Austria and Russia, which maintain close ties through Russian gas pipelines and finance, with Vienna a hub for cash from Russia and its former Soviet neighbors,” the outlet noted.Raiffeisen earlier warned that the decision to exit its highly profitable business in Russia would lead to “a decline in income generated by Raiffeisen Bank Russia” and impact RBI’s customers. Senior Raiffeisen executives previously stressed that any spin-off would take four to seven months. RBI has around 2,600 corporate customers, 4 million local account holders, and 10,000 staff in Russia.

“The question here is not whether something should be done; it is who has the authority to do it.”

• SCOTUS Is Losing Legitimacy – And Only Has Itself To Blame |(Blankenship)

The US Supreme Court (SCOTUS) last Friday struck down President Joe Biden’s plan to provide up to $20,000 in student debt relief to Pell Grant recipients who hold federal student loans and up to $10,000 for all federal loan holders. SCOTUS argued that the HEROES Act, which was passed in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks (not to be confused with a similarly-named law passed during the COVID-19 pandemic), did not grant the administration authority to cancel some $400 billion in debt for 43 million Americans. Chief Justice John Roberts said: “The question here is not whether something should be done; it is who has the authority to do it.” Roberts invoked the “major questions” doctrine, which holds that if an administrative agency – like the Department of Education – ought to be granted a particular power, then Congress must say so explicitly.

SCOTUS ruled that the HEROES Act did not authorize a debt-relief program and, in doing so, implicitly suggested that Congress would need to pass a bill to provide debt relief. For anyone familiar with the current composition of the Supreme Court, this ruling is not entirely surprising. The Court has made it clear that it will break significantly with the country’s traditional legal norms in order to consolidate corporate power. For example, the SCOTUS decision last year on a hypothetical carbon emissions cap broke significantly with the Court’s tradition of only settling matters that are actually an existing issue and leaving political issues to the other branches of government. This was cause enough for alarm that the rule of law no longer exists in the US of A.

Who wants to be part of this?

• Meta Launches Data-Harvesting Twitter Clone, Immediately Starts Censoring (ZH)

Meta claims that over 10 million people had signed up for its Twitter competitor, Threads, in what CEO Mark Zuckerberg framed as a “friendly” alternative to the little blue bird. “Let’s do this. Welcome to Threads,” wrote Zuckerberg in his first post on the app, which is a “text-based conversation app” where users can publish posts up to 500 characters long, and allows people to post links, photos and videos. Threads is directly linked to Meta-owned Instagram, which has over 2 billion users. The Twitter competitor is being rolled out in over 100 countries for iOS and Android. “The goal is to keep it friendly as it expands. I think it’s possible and will ultimately be the key to its success,” wrote Zuckerberg in a Wednesday post, casting the service as a more wholesome substitute to Twitter. “That’s one reason why Twitter never succeeded as much as I think it should have, and we want to do it differently.”

Meanwhile, data privacy and censorship concerns have emerged, with former Twitter owner Jack Dorsey highlighting the vast amount of data collected by Threads. As journalist Michael Shellenberger notes, Within a few hours of launching, Threads was already secretly censoring users and not offering them the right to appeal. “Meta is already too powerful. One company controls what much of the public is allowed to see. And if Threads succeeds, it will have 80% of the global market outside of Russia and China, according to one industry insider. As such, it’s reasonable to expect that Meta will censor precisely the same way the large news media corporations, including the New York Times, and corporate advertisers want it to. More censorship is what the mainstream news media, big corporations, and their celebrity pitch people have been demanding.

…additionally, Unlike Twitter, Threads collects data about “Health & Fitness,” “Financial Info,” “Sensitive Info,” and “Other Data.” What’s ‘other data’? Shellenberger further noted that within hours of launching, Threads was already secretly censoring users and not offering them the right to appeal. Threads flashed a warning after users clicked on Utley and O’Hanley’s profiles. “Are you sure you want to follow…?” asked the Threads warning. “This account has repeatedly posted false information.” -Public.substack. Other Twitter clones who have taken a shot at the king include Donald Trump’s Truth Social, Jack Dorsey’s Bluesky and Mastadon – all of which have failed to gain large enough user bases to cross into the mainstream. The new leftist echo chamber attracted celebrities such as Kim Kardashian and Jennifer Lopez, as well as Congressional performance artist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who hit a snag after just five minutes.

They’ll keep changing the story.

“The younger Biden has recently been frequently seen at the White House, leading some to speculate he may have moved in.”

• Cocaine at White House Was Found Inside Cubby – Not West Wing Lobby (Sp.)

A website that records police and fire radio communications revealed on Sunday that a DC firefighter was testing a substance found in the White House, later stating it tested positive for cocaine. Officials are now telling US media that the cocaine discovered at the White House on Sunday was actually found in a different place than was previously reported. According to US media, “multiple officials” have indicated the bag of cocaine was recovered from a cubby near the White House’s West Executive entrance, not a West Wing work area as multiple media outlets reported earlier in the week. Those earlier reports also cited unnamed US officials. Immediately after the substance was first found, outlets initially reported the bag was found in the White House Library. The updated location is reportedly between the foyer and a lower-level lobby, close to where the vice president’s limo and SUV are parked. It is also on the same floor as the Situation Room and dining area.

In addition to changing the location of where the bag was found, officials also shortened the expected investigation time. Reports noted the Secret Service expects to finish its report by Monday, it was previously thought it would take weeks. While White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said on Wednesday that the White House has “confidence” the Secret Service will “get to the bottom” of the incident, officials have been signaling to media outlets that they believe it is unlikely the culprit will be identified. Officials were quick to point out that the area is also heavily trafficked. A Secret Service official said it was found during a routine patrol. Initially, the content of the bag was unknown, causing a brief shutdown of the White House campus until it was tested.

The White House has largely stayed mum on the subject. On Wednesday, Jean-Pierre repeatedly declined to answer reporters’ questions about the illicit drug, referring to the Secret Service and insisting any comment by the White House would “get ahead” of their investigation. “This is their kind of guidance and guidelines, their world. So we are going to let them do their jobs, we are not involved in this,” she said. Jean-Pierre also stressed that the area the bag was found is heavily trafficked by visitors. US President Joe Biden and his family were away when the bag of cocaine was found. However, the commander-in-chief’s son, Hunter Biden, has a documented history of cocaine use and was at the White House on Friday night. The younger Biden has recently been frequently seen at the White House, leading some to speculate he may have moved in.

US Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) has sent a letter to Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle, asking for more information about the investigation. A Secret Service spokesperson confirmed to media outlets that the agency has received the letter and will respond. In the letter, Cotton asked for a complete list of people who are not subject to security screening at the White House or are subject to lesser screenings, information on how the Secret Service uses K-9 screenings, details on internal audits of their security practices and “how often” the agency encountered “illegal drugs at the White House complex” in the past five years. The letter also asks if the Secret Service will arrest the perpetrator if the investigation reveals their identity.

“Study is Removed Within 24 Hours”

“Dr. Harvey Risch, one of the study’s authors, told the Daily Sceptic he deems it “pure Government-directed censorship, even after the Missouri v. Biden injunction”.

• Lancet Study on Covid Vaccine Autopsies Finds 74% Were Caused by Vaccine (DS)

A Lancet review of 325 autopsies after Covid vaccination found that 74% of the deaths were caused by the vaccine – but the study was removed within 24 hours. The paper, a pre-print that was awaiting peer-review, is written by leading cardiologist Dr. Peter McCullough, Yale epidemiologist Dr. Harvey Risch and their colleagues at the Wellness Company and was published online on Wednesday on the pre-print site of the prestigious medical journal. However, less than 24 hours later, the study was removed and a note appeared stating: “This preprint has been removed by Preprints with the Lancet because the study’s conclusions are not supported by the study methodology.” While the study had not undergone any part of the peer-review process, the note implies it fell foul of “screening criteria”.

Background: The rapid development and widespread deployment of COVID-19 vaccines, combined with a high number of adverse event reports, have led to concerns over possible mechanisms of injury including systemic lipid nanoparticle (LNP) and mRNA distribution, spike protein-associated tissue damage, thrombogenicity, immune system dysfunction and carcinogenicity. The aim of this systematic review is to investigate possible causal links between COVID-19 vaccine administration and death using autopsies and post-mortem analysis.

Methods: We searched for all published autopsy and necropsy reports relating to COVID-19 vaccination up until May 18th, 2023. We initially identified 678 studies and, after screening for our inclusion criteria, included 44 papers that contained 325 autopsy cases and one necropsy case. Three physicians independently reviewed all deaths and determined whether COVID-19 vaccination was the direct cause or contributed significantly to death.

Findings: The most implicated organ system in COVID-19 vaccine-associated death was the cardiovascular system (53%), followed by the hematological system (17%), the respiratory system (8%) and multiple organ systems (7%). Three or more organ systems were affected in 21 cases. The mean time from vaccination to death was 14.3 days. Most deaths occurred within a week from last vaccine administration. A total of 240 deaths (73.9%) were independently adjudicated as directly due to or significantly contributed to by COVID-19 vaccination.

Interpretation: The consistency seen among cases in this review with known COVID-19 vaccine adverse events, their mechanisms and related excess death, coupled with autopsy confirmation and physician-led death adjudication, suggests there is a high likelihood of a causal link between COVID-19 vaccines and death in most cases. Further urgent investigation is required for the purpose of clarifying our findings.

Cone

A group of San Franciscans realized that they can disable Waymo and Cruise robotaxis by placing a traffic cone on the vehicle's hood.

They're now encouraging others to do it: "Hell no, we do not consent to this." pic.twitter.com/ZrYhy4OATy

— David Zipper (@DavidZipper) July 6, 2023

Poso

I did not know this.

pic.twitter.com/qwu1mArhtq

— Cernovich (@Cernovich) July 6, 2023

This is insanity pic.twitter.com/g1CMVYeZoa

— Karli Bonne’ (@KarliBonnita) July 6, 2023

Angel song

One of the most fucked up videos I've ever posted. Watch at your own discretion.

This is just the surface of it. It's ten times more evil than you even know. pic.twitter.com/qm4H0xnisu

— illuminatibot (@iluminatibot) July 6, 2023

Charles Bridge, Prague

Bear

Fuck life like this, don't worry bro pic.twitter.com/E4B1371EOv

— Enezator (@Enezator) July 6, 2023

Polar bear

pic.twitter.com/mOMgiidBd3

— Nature is Amazing ☘️ (@AMAZlNGNATURE) July 6, 2023

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

Debt Rattle January 24 2023

Jan 242023

January 24, 2023 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 9:52 am Finance Tagged with: annual vaccine, Azov, carbon credits, Greens, hybrid war, indulgences, Lavrov, Mar-a-Lago, Meta, multipolar, WWIII 79 Responses »

Vincent van Gogh The Parsonage Garden at Nuenen in Spring 1884

• Russia and West On Verge Of ‘Real War’ – Lavrov (RT)

• War Between West, Russia No Longer Hybrid, But Real, Says Lavrov (TASS)

• Why the End of the American Empire Was Delayed (Batiushka)

• US Plans Threatened WWIII And Forced Moscow’s Hand – Medvedev (RT)

• Germany Rewrites History To Blame Russia For Its Own Bad Decisions (Marsden)

• Hungary To Oppose EU’s Anti-Russian Nuclear Sanctions – Foreign Minister (TASS)

• Italy’s New Foreign Policy And A Multipolar World Order (Papalia)

• Poland Considered Partitioning Ukraine – Former FM (RT)

• Wagner Founder Gives Explanation For US Hostility (RT)

• Meta/Facebook Takes Azov Regiment Off Its Dangerous Organizations List (EG)

• The 2024 Election and the “Get Out of Jail Free” Vote (Turley)

• Mar-A-Lago Raid Was Just Another Russia-Collusion Hoax (Fed.)

• FDA Panel To Consider Annual Covid-19 Vaccine Shots (Hill)

• Collapse Is Not An Event, But A Process (Ugo Bardi)

• Temperatures in Northern Hemisphere Due to Fall Over Next 25 Years (DS)

• Carbon Credits Are the Biggest Scam Since Indulgences (IM)

???? “To be published June 6 2023”.

Zelensky Addressing a Chambers of Commerce meeting in Boca Raton

Addressing a Chambers of Commerce meeting in Boca Raton today, Zelensky thanks BlackRock, JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, and others for their support of Ukraine. Adds that sending Ukraine heavier weapons, like Abrams tanks, represents a "big business" opportunity for US corporations pic.twitter.com/N1h8OVECLt

— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) January 24, 2023

Gonzalo F-16s

Wagenknecht
https://twitter.com/i/status/1617331636433035264

Shellenberger

The World Economic Forum is a ‘creepy event’: Michael Shellenberger
Source: Fox News (Youtube) pic.twitter.com/NyKLhiRETI

— Wittgenstein (@backtolife_2023) January 23, 2023

EU Foreign Ministers will discuss the allocation of a new tranche of military aid to Ukraine from the “European Peace Fund” – Josep Borrell

Stating the obvious.

• Russia and West On Verge Of ‘Real War’ – Lavrov (RT)

The current situation in Ukraine shows that the conflict between Russia and the West can no longer be defined as a “hybrid war” but is instead approaching being a real one, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Monday. Speaking at a press conference following a meeting with his South African counterpart, Naledi Pandor, Lavrov also noted that this “almost real” war was something that the West “has been preparing for a long time against Russia.” The minister claimed that Western powers are seeking to destroy everything Russian, from the language to the culture that had existed in Ukraine for centuries, and even forbid people from speaking their native language.

Lavrov went on to point out that such practices have become commonplace throughout Ukraine and that the country’s last two presidents, Pyotr Poroshenko and current leader Vladimir Zelensky, have both turned into “presidents of war” and “Russophobic leaders” after gaining power, despite running their presidential campaigns under the promise of establishing peace. The minister also recalled that Ukraine has adopted laws that prohibit using the Russian language in education, media, and even in everyday life. “And this is all supported by the West,” Lavrov said, adding that this support extends to neo-Nazi marches with swastikas and symbols of banned Nazi divisions being held across the country. He also accused the West of turning a blind eye to the fact that Kiev’s forces continue to deliberately choose targets and carry out attacks in such a way as to terrorize the civilian population.

“The West knows perfectly well that the Ukrainian regime deliberately bombs cities and towns using Western-supplied weapons,” the minister said. Lavrov reiterated Moscow’s position that it has not carried out attacks in Ukraine against civilian infrastructure, and that the damage to it is attributable to Kiev’s regular practice of deploying heavy weapons and air defense systems in residential areas. Despite the spiraling tensions, Lavrov noted that Moscow remains open to negotiations with Kiev, and warned that those who refuse talks should understand that the longer they are delayed, the harder it will be to find a solution. The minister also asked the Ukrainian government to explain, perhaps through a third party, how it sees the situation in the country playing out and the possibility of negotiations with Russia.

Same issue, but different words.

• War Between West, Russia No Longer Hybrid, But Real, Says Lavrov (TASS)

What is going on in Ukraine is no longer a hybrid war, but a real war between the West and Russia, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Monday. “When we talk about what is going on in Ukraine, we are talking about the fact that this is no longer a hybrid war, but a real one, the West has been preparing for a long time against Russia, trying to destroy everything Russian: from language to culture, which has been in Ukraine for centuries, and forbidding people to speak their native language,” he said at a press conference following talks with South African Foreign Minister Naledi Pandor.

“In Ukraine, this is all common practice. Both the former president [of Ukraine, Pyotr] Poroshenko and the current one [Vladimir] Zelensky, who were elected under the slogan of establishing peace, immediately after being elected turned into war presidents, Russophobe presidents,” Lavrov said. The Russian top diplomat recalled that Ukraine has adopted laws that prohibit education in Russian, media in Russian, including such media in Ukraine, laws that even, in fact, prohibit the use of the Russian language in everyday life. “Any cultural contacts related to the Russian language are prohibited. And this is all supported by the West. Just like the West supports the regular marches of neo-Nazis with swastikas, with symbols of division which were banned by the Nuremberg Tribunal, recognized as criminal. The West supports all this,” Lavrov said.

“..it never really grasped how completely underhand and perfidious the West is..”

• Why the End of the American Empire Was Delayed (Batiushka)

Why did President Putin and the Russian Federation as a whole allow the White House to take over Kiev and then most of the Donbass in 2014-2015? As a result, Russian forces have been faced since 2022 with the far worse task of liberating, demilitarising and denazifying the Ukraine. Worse still, because Washington has forced Kiev to reject any peace negotiations with Moscow and is sending the Ukraine much of what it has through its NATO proxies, Russian forces are faced with the even worse task of liberating, demilitarising and denazifying the whole of the US-run NATO. President Putin has himself admitted that he made a mistake in not acting in 2015. So why this delay in resistance and bringing about the collapse of the American Reich? There are three clear reasons:

1. In 2014-15 the Russian Federation was far too weak militarily, economically and politically to stand up to the bully of the Western world. A war of liberation initiated then could have ended up very badly for Russia, which had suffered greatly from Western ‘sanctions’ just for its liberation of the Crimea.

2. The Russian Federation government had too little support inside its Westernised self to resist. CIA assets, including treacherous followers of the Vlasovtsy (5), had infiltrated all its institutions, including even the Russian Orthodox Church. This was already clear in 1993 during the October Coup, Black October, in which probably thousands of Russian patriots were massacred by the pro-Western Yeltsin regime. Five years ago, I met a former US marine, who had been sent in 1993 to a base outside Moscow, together with 4,000 other marines, who had been instructed that they might be needed to put down an anti-American revolt in Moscow. (In the end, they were not). 4,000 US troops around Moscow in 1993 at the invitation of its drunken ruler? Yes. A fifth column of Russian Westernisers, pussy rioters, liberals, journalists, actors, musicians, oligarchs, politicians, educationalists? Yes. All Russian institutions infiltrated by traitors? Yes. Only in 2022 was the Russian Federation ready to resist the American bully. It had taken it until 2022 to get ready, and even then the traitors were there in abundance, though soon running away to Israel, Finland, Georgia and elsewhere (6).

3. Western readers should not underestimate the incredible naivety of Russians towards the West. The Russians did not think that the West would forbid Kiev to reject a peace agreement in March/April 2022, thus forcing Kiev and Western economies to commit suicide, like a spoilt child who hurts himself just in order to spite his parents. As a result the limited operation to free the Donbass had to be entirely rethought. Again, President Putin was quite recently shocked to learn that he had been lied to by the German Merkel and the French Hollande. He had been tricked into believing that the West was sincere and that it was actually going to implement the Minsk Accords to protect the Donbass. As those two Western leaders recently admitted, the Minsk accords had only been playing for time to allow the Kiev Army to prepare, dig in, arm, train and then invade. Western leaders are liars. Fact. The origin of this extraordinary Russian naivety seems to be because between 1917 and 1991 Russia was cut off from the West, it lived in a bubble, so that it never really grasped how completely underhand and perfidious the West is. I have been living in Western Europe for too long not to know it. Ten years ago a Muscovite put it to me very well: ‘We knew that the Communists were lieing to us about Communism. What we didn’t know is that they were telling us the truth about Capitalism’.

..“serious crisis” at the UN and other international institutions, which were created to resolve international disputes but have been turned into a battlefield by the West instead.”

• US Plans Threatened WWIII And Forced Moscow’s Hand – Medvedev (RT)

The US and its allies almost ignited a third world war by preparing to attack Russia, which had no choice but to do something about it, former president Dmitry Medvedev said on Monday, addressing the leadership of the ruling United Russia party in Moscow. “Our party should help the people around the world understand that the ongoing special operation was a forced and last-resort response to preparations for aggression by the US and its satellites,” Medvedev said. “It is obvious that the world came close to the threat of WWIII because of what was happening,” he added. Medvedev also described a “serious crisis” at the UN and other international institutions, which were created to resolve international disputes but have been turned into a battlefield by the West instead.

“Our opponents are trying to enlist as many votes as possible in support of their anti-Russian initiatives, using underhanded means such as economic pressure, extortion and political bribery,” Medvedev said, adding that the main mission of Russian diplomacy remained countering this “cynical line” by the West. Medvedev was president of Russia between 2008 and 2012, when he became the chairman of the ruling party and prime minister. He stepped down as PM in 2020 to run the national security council. Though the West considered him a “liberal” during his presidency, Medvedev has been blunt and outspoken about the special military operation in Ukraine since it was launched in February 2022. Just last week, he ridiculed the World Economic Forum in Davos and warned the West that the current conflict is existential in nature for Russia, which should be kept in mind when it comes to nuclear weapons and their possible use.

The Greens play a curious role in Germany. They have a lot of power.

• Germany Rewrites History To Blame Russia For Its Own Bad Decisions (Marsden)

The German town of Brunsbuttel, near Hamburg, received a new floating liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal on Friday, another step in the country’s search to replace the gas supplies it now can’t get from Russia. Small protests in the vicinity of the port held by locals unhappy with the new facility belied the official fanfare. Meanwhile, wider criticism has been levelled against Berlin’s efforts to boost gas imports by both land and sea, which climate activists believe to be very environmentally unfriendly. German Vice Chancellor and Federal Minister for Economic Affairs and Climate Action Robert Habeck, of the Green Party, said the new terminal was necessary because “half of the gas supply to Germany stopped, because [Russian President Vladimir] Putin has cut it off. Now the supply has been stopped completely and it will not come back to us.”

Except that’s not how it all went down. Nearly a year ago, just before the Ukraine conflict turned hot and as German Chancellor Olaf Scholz stopped the approval process for the Nord Stream 2 pipeline from Russia to Germany and into Europe, Habeck was already keen to give Russian gas the boot. He told public radio that the country could go without it. The comment promptly raised eyebrows in the Western press, with Bloomberg, for example, calling the proposition “tricky.” Habeck’s Greens, and the German government more generally, have long been obsessed with renewables. The Ukraine conflict was merely an excuse to double down. Even the International Energy Agency took note of this back in March 2022. “Progress towards net zero ambitions in Europe will bring down gas use and imports over time,” according to an IEA report.

In April, Habeck said, “We are working actively to become independent on fossil fuels from Russia,” and cited “great progress.” Not once, but twice, Habeck publicly declared that he had reduced his shower time, in hat had become both a means of saving energy and also of sticking it to Putin, a gesture reminiscent of the folks who pull on escalator handrails thinking that they’re helping move all the people to the top. Habeck said that such measures would “annoy Putin.” Actually, it mostly just annoyed Germans and Europeans. Habeck appeared alongside European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen at a meeting of bloc representatives in Versailles on March 8, when she said, “We must become independent from Russian oil, coal and gas.” Habeck echoed the sentiment: “All the German government’s, the country’s, efforts are going toward reducing this dependency as quickly as possible and then using the energy policy room for maneuver we have gained, including in security policy terms.”

“Hungary will not support any EU sanctions that would potentially limit cooperation with Russia in the nuclear field..”

• Hungary To Oppose EU’s Anti-Russian Nuclear Sanctions – Foreign Minister (TASS)

Hungary will not support any EU sanctions that would potentially limit cooperation with Russia in the nuclear field, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto told reporters during a break at a meeting of EU Foreign Ministers in Brussels Monday. “Hungary will not support any sanctions that in any way limit nuclear cooperation with Russia,” Szijjarto said. The Minister noted that “the European Commission has, obviously, commenced the development of the 10th sanctions package.” However, Hungary warned that it will not support any proposals “if they include restrictions on cooperation with Russia in the nuclear area,” Szijjarto said.

“This would cause enormous damage to our country and violate its energy security,” he underscored. “I made it clear that nuclear energy is crucial for Hungary’s power supply,” the Foreign Minister said, noting that the Paks Nuclear Power plant, which uses Russian nuclear fuel, provides half of the country’s energy supply. “Without the Paks NPP, the current power supply in Hungary would be impossible. Just as it would be impossible to ensure Hungary’s power security in the upcoming decades without construction of new reactor units at the Paks NPP,” Szijjarto said.

‘Italy’s posture must return to the defence of its national interests … It doesn’t mean having a negative stance toward others, it means having a positive one for ourselves … because everyone else is doing it’

• Italy’s New Foreign Policy And A Multipolar World Order (Papalia)

In recent developments Meloni’s foreign policy has been pointing away from the EU and NATO. She and her political allies have publicly supported Hungary’s prime minister Viktor Orbàn, who has attacked the sanctions against Russia, following the EU’s condemnation of his authoritarian policies; Hungary is a NATO member but has signed a separate deal with Gazprom to secure supplies of Russian gas. Meloni’s party is also allied to the governing nationalist Right in Poland, the Czech Republic’s governing Civic Democratic Party, and the far right Sweden Democrats Party that triumphed in elections in September 2022. The German far right Alternative für Deutschland Party was ‘jubilant’ over Meloni’s success; it too has opposed sanctions against Russia and its vote is also on the rise.

As in the 1930s, one should not discount ideological and political affinities across national borders, particularly when national interests also align. As Bhadrakumar warns: ‘Do not underestimate the “Meloni effect”. The heart of the matter is that far-right forces invariably have more to offer to the electorate in times of insecurity and economic hardship.’ In the current era, these affinities can be gathered under the broad ideological umbrella of ‘sovereigntism’, putting EU unity at risk. Should Italy distance itself from NATO or leave it altogether, particularly in the light of Turkey’s ambivalent stance and the possibility of a Russian victory in Ukraine, it is doubtful that the alliance would be able to survive. This is not as far-fetched a thought as it might seem.

According to retired Italian General Fabio Mini, former commander of the NATO-led KFOR mission in Kosovo (2002–03), NATO’s expansion to Eastern Europe over recent decades, promoted by the United States, has further undermined the alliance’s cohesion and unity of purpose. The Ukraine–Russia crisis, as pointed out by Thomas Hughes, a scholar of international and defence policy, ‘marks an existential crisis for NATO’. Under these circumstances the United States would find it increasingly difficult to maintain a military presence in Italy. On 1 October 2022, following news that Germany’s Social Democrat-led government had rejected Italy’s proposed Europe-wide price cap on gas and that Italy would no longer receive gas from Russia through Austria, Meloni addressed a crowd of angry farmers in Milan: ‘Italy’s posture must return to the defence of its national interests … It doesn’t mean having a negative stance toward others, it means having a positive one for ourselves … because everyone else is doing it’.

Poles falling over each other to be the most belligerent.

• Poland Considered Partitioning Ukraine – Former FM (RT)

Former Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski has suggested that the government in Warsaw considered partitioning Ukraine in the first weeks of the military conflict between Kiev and Moscow. His comments came in an interview with Radio ZET on Monday, prompting a strong retort from the country’s prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki. Sikorski was asked if the ruling Law and Justice (PiS) government had ever entertained the idea of dividing up Ukraine. He replied by stating that there was “a moment of hesitation in the first 10 days of the war, when we all didn’t know how it would go, that maybe Ukraine would fall.” “Had it not been for the heroism of Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky and the help of the West, things could have been different,” Sikorski said.

His remarks soon drew a reaction from Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, who accused Sikorski of behaving “like a Russian propagandist.” “The former foreign minister must weigh his words. I expect these disgraceful statements to be withdrawn. I call on the opposition to dissociate themselves from Radoslaw Sikorski’s declaration,” Morawiecki tweeted. It is not the first time Sikorski has been at odds with the government in Warsaw. In September, the ex-minister tweeted “Thank you, USA” alongside a photo of a massive gas leak caused by the sabotage of Russia’s Nord Stream pipelines in the Baltic Sea.

Sikorski further congratulated those responsible for the act, saying the severe damage caused to the natural gas pipelines would force Russia to talk to Poland and Ukraine if it wanted to continue delivering gas to Europe. “Good work,” he concluded in a second tweet. He later deleted both tweets. Russia responded to the former FM’s post by calling it an “official statement” confirming the Nord Stream incident was a “terrorist attack.” It still remains unclear who exactly was behind the sabotage as both Ukraine and Washington and its allies have denied responsibility.

“..Of course, if you’re doing a reversal of concepts, you can make anyone look bad.”

• Wagner Founder Gives Explanation For US Hostility (RT)

The Wagner Group scares the US because it is willing to oppose American atrocities around the world, the private military company’s founder Yevgeny Prigozhin claimed on Monday, answering a question from RT. Washington said last week that it would designate the Russian PMC as an international criminal organization, accusing it of “widespread atrocities and human rights abuses.” “Unlike American paramilitary structures,” Prigozhin said in a written response to RT, “Wagner PMC only goes after the enemies of peace, and does not commit crimes. Of course, if you’re doing a reversal of concepts, you can make anyone look bad.”

The US is the only country to use nuclear weapons in history, and “organized wars and revolutions” in “Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Mozambique, Central Africa and so on,” Prigozhin noted, adding that in some of those countries Wagner came in and “stopped the wars with an iron fist.” Calling the US “a powerful criminal syndicate subsisting on the money of the entire world,” Prigozhin said Wagner was “more like the vice police” in relation. Washington “trained bandits and terrorists all over the world so that there would be unrest everywhere,” while the “fantasy island called the USA” lives in peace, he added. Used to people not fighting back or getting intimidated by name-calling, the Americans don’t know what to do with Wagner, who “looks into the eyes of the personification of world evil without fear.”

Prigozhin said the US objective is to break up Russia just as it did to the USSR, then take on China, in order to maintain its global hegemony. The Wagner Group was originally established in 2014. Over the past year, its fighters have taken part in battles against the Ukrainian military in the Donbass. Earlier this month, the Russian Defense Ministry acknowledged Wagner’s role in capturing the key town of Soledar. US authorities have accused the PMC of unspecified “human rights violations” in Syria and the Central African Republic, where Wagner helped the government against jihadist insurgents. Last month, the State Department declared Wagner an “entity of particular concern” for religious freedom in Africa, in the same category as Al-Qaeda and Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS).

Why?

• Meta/Facebook Takes Azov Regiment Off Its Dangerous Organizations List (EG)

Facebook parent company Meta has removed the Azov Regiment, a controversial unit within the Ukrainian National Guard with alleged far-right political leanings, from its list of dangerous individuals and organizations. The move, first reported by The Kyiv Independent, means members of the unit can now create Facebook and Instagram accounts and post without Meta automatically flagging and removing their content. Additionally, unaffiliated users can praise the Azov Regiment, provided they abide by the company’s Community Standards. “The war in Ukraine has meant changing circumstances in many areas and it has become clear that the Azov Regiment does not meet our strict criteria for designation as a dangerous organization,” a company spokesperson told The Kyiv Independent.

Sharing more information on the policy change, Meta told The Washington Post it recently began to view the Azov Regiment as a separate entity from other groups associated with the far-right nationalist Azov Movement. Specifically, the company pointed to Ukraine’s National Corp political party and founder Andriy Biletsky, noting they’re still on its list of dangerous individuals and organizations. “Hate speech, hate symbols, calls for violence and any other content which violates our Community Standards are still banned, and we will remove this content if we find it,” Meta said. The Azov Regiment was founded in 2014 by Biletsky following Russia’s annexation of Crimea and the start of the Donbas War that same year. Before the unit was integrated into Ukraine’s National Guard in November 2014, it was controversial for its adherence to neo-Nazi ideology.

In 2015, a spokesperson for the Azov Regiment said 10 to 20 percent of the unit’s recruits were self-professed Nazis. At the start of the 2022 conflict, Ukrainian officials said the Azov Regiment still had some extremists among its ranks but claimed the unit had largely become depoliticized. During the months-long siege of Mariupol, the Azov Regiment played a prominent role in the city’s defense. Russia captured many of the battalion’s fighters at the end of the battle. The change underscores just how much Meta’s content moderation policies have changed since the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Partway through last year, the company began temporarily allowing people in Ukraine and a handful of other countries to call for violence against Russian soldiers. After the decision created controversy, Meta said it would turn to the Oversight Board for policy guidance, a request the company later withdrew, citing “ongoing safety and security concerns” related to the war.

“..Both of these investigations could easily take a year or more.”

• The 2024 Election and the “Get Out of Jail Free” Vote (Turley)

President Biden has declared that the criminal investigation into his possession of classified material ultimately will fizzle out because “there is no ‘there’ there.” To the contrary, there obviously is a great deal “there,” enough that a special counsel was appointed to investigate a classified documents trail from a D.C. office closet to Biden’s Delaware garage. Although the president wants Americans to look down the road past images of classified documents next to his vintage Corvette, we may be heading into one of the most bizarre, unsettling moments in our constitutional history. There is now a distinct possibility we will have not just two leading candidates campaigning for the presidency with their own respective special counsels in tow, but two candidates who could be indicted or close to indictment at the time of the election. That would present some novel political and constitutional questions.

A great deal already has been written about comparisons of the two cases and the obvious differences. The Justice Department’s Trump investigation includes not only accusations of mishandling classified material but also of false statements and obstruction; far more documents are involved, too. Yet enough similarities exist that Justice could weigh charges in both cases, even if only misdemeanors. Moreover, the Biden allegations are serious in their own way. The documents in Donald Trump’s possession at Mar-a-Lago were largely housed in a locked storage room with security added at the FBI’s request; there was ’round-the-clock Secret Service protection and camera surveillance. That is not ideal — but it is better than a dozen documents scattered around a closet, garage and library in different states.

There is no question of gross mishandling in Biden’s case. There is only the question of who was responsible. If the evidence shows that Joe Biden used any of these clearly marked documents to write his book or other projects, his insistence on “inadvertent” possession will take on a more sinister meaning as an effort to deceive the public and the FBI. Both of these investigations could easily take a year or more. The average time of a special counsel investigation of a president is over 900 days. These two investigations should take less than the average — but they are starting in 2023, with a presidential election in 2024. Trump has already announced, and Biden is expected to do so soon.

Equal justice?

• Mar-A-Lago Raid Was Just Another Russia-Collusion Hoax (Fed.)

The search of Biden’s home followed the discovery in November 2022 of at least 10 classified documents, including ones reportedly marked “top secret.” Those documents also dated back to his days as vice president under Barack Obama and were stored in a closet at a private office building in D.C. But the so-called “think tank” where they were stored, the Penn Biden Center, did not open until February 2018, meaning Biden had kept the classified documents found there at another location for the year following his time as vice president. That the classified documents Biden removed from the White House and earlier the Senate were not missed at the time and are only now being discovered — at least a decade later for some — and then only after multiple searches of different locations, contrasts sharply with what happened following Trump’s time in office.

According to then-archivist of the United States, David S. Ferriero, he watched “the Trumps leave the White House and getting off in the helicopter” at the end of Trump’s term. Ferriero recalled someone was “carrying a white banker box,” prompting Ferriero to ask himself, “What the hell’s in that box?” Ferriero claimed, “[T]hat began a whole process of trying to determine whether any records had not been turned over to the Archives,” with the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) “going through materials transferred from the White House in the chaotic final days of Trump’s presidency.” According to The Washington Post, “officials had noticed that certain high-profile documents were missing,” such as “Trump’s correspondence with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un that he had termed ‘love letters.’”

The NARA also could not locate the “National Weather Service map of Hurricane Dorian, which Trump had famously marked up with a black Sharpie pen to extend to Alabama,” or the letter Obama had left for Trump upon the change in administrations. NARA sought the return of these documents, and in January 2022, Trump representatives worked with NARA employees to arrange for 15 boxes of presidential papers to be returned to the archive. Within those boxes were some documents marked “classified,” which led NARA to refer the matter to the Department of Justice. The DOJ then launched an investigation into Trump, even though when alerted to Hillary Clinton’s mishandling of classified documents, NARA made no such referral.

A grand jury later issued a subpoena for any presidential documents, and following a search of Mar-a-Lago by Trump’s representatives, those documents were turned over. However, after a source told the DOJ that some documents remained at Mar-a-Lago, the FBI obtained a search warrant and executed a surprise raid on the former president’s home. This entire sequence began because NARA went looking for missing documents and then, rather than work with Trump to establish his presidential library and to arrange for the documents to be stored under the auspices of NARA’s custody at a mutually agreeable location — something NARA had done for Obama — NARA created a federal criminal case out of the matter.

Maybe 1% will take them.

• FDA Panel To Consider Annual Covid-19 Vaccine Shots (Hill)

The Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) advisory panel on vaccines is set to consider an annual schedule for the coronavirus vaccine, akin to how flu vaccines are administered, when it meets this week. The FDA’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC) will meet Thursday to discuss how to simplify and streamline the COVID-19 vaccination process, including the composition of coronavirus vaccines and the recommended scheduling for these shots. The rapid evolution of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, resulting in variants with an improved ability to escape immune protection, means that “periodically updating the composition of COVID-19 vaccines as needed,” as was done with the updated bivalent booster, requires consideration, according to panel documents posted Monday.

The panel said it anticipates evaluating the composition of the COVID-19 vaccine annually in June and making a recommendation for the following year — though it acknowledged the difficulties of mounting a globally coordinated vaccine recommendation. “FDA anticipates conducting an assessment of SARS-CoV-2 strains at least annually and to engage VRBPAC in about early June of each year regarding strain selection for the fall season,” the VRBPAC documents said. While acknowledging that COVID-19 and the flu are not identical, VRBPAC said the deployment of the bivalent COVID-19 boosters, created to target both the ancestral strain of the virus as well as the BA.4 and BA.5 omicron subvariants, was “analogous” to annual flu vaccinations.

“There is nothing definitive in the universe, and collapses exist because the old must leave space for the new. ”

• Collapse Is Not An Event, But A Process (Ugo Bardi)

About ten years ago, my friend and colleague Massimo Nicolazzi wrote that the inversion of the declining trend of oil production in the US could not be neglected any longer. I commented by saying that it was a short-lived flare that couldn’t last for long. It turned out that Nicolazzi was right and I was wrong. By now, the growth of the US oil production curve has been lasting for more than ten years and is still ongoing — it was not just a short-lived flare. Of course, it cannot last forever but, for the time being, it changed everything. Among others, it propeled the American Empire back to the path of world domination that the Neocons theorized in the 1990s.

Does that mean that Hubbert’s “peak oil” theory is wrong and must be discarded? Of course not. It only means reinforcing some of the basic rules of complex systems. For instance, the one that goes “complex systems always surprise you,” and also, “never take an example as a rule.” So, when dealing with collapse (that I call the “Seneca Cliff) we should always remember that collapse is not an event, it is a process. Collapses have a history, they are the result of the interaction of several factors, and the same processes that generate collapse can also generate its opposite, which I tend to call the “Seneca Rebound.” It is normal. There is nothing definitive in the universe, and collapses exist because the old must leave space for the new.

Recently, for another unexpected change, I identified a new trend: the rapid growth of renewable energy production worldwide. A trend that can be well described by some recent studies in terms of the EROI (energy returned for energy invested) of renewables having become several times larger than that of fossil fuels. No wonder we are seeing — or we’ll soon see — a revolving door effect in energy production. Fossils are out, renewables are in. History rhymes, as it usually does! Then, just like Nicolazzi’s statement about tight oil was not believed by peak-oil hardliners (including me), my statements on renewables were understood as a mortal offense by catastrophistic hardliners. You can’t believe how nasty their comments have been: apart from branding me an incompetent, an idiot, and ignorant of the basic laws of physics, catastrophism seems to be strictly linked to conspirationism, so people have been writing that I cannot tell the truth because I am blackmailed by the powers that be (no, really, someone wrote exactly that!).

The problem is the science of complex systems is never black or white. It doesn’t allow for absolute truths, nor it is sympathetic to people choosing between complacency and panic (the two functioning modes of human beings according to James Schlesinger). The science of complex systems is, well, a little complex and it needs a little mental flexibility to be understood. Not that it takes superhuman mental capabilities, not at all. It is just that you need to free yourself from the schematic way of reasoning that’s normally imposed on all of us by the media.

“..the North Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation, an important sea current that has been pumping warmer water into the Arctic, is weakening and that’s leading to a cooler North Atlantic area and lower temperatures, as was observed in the period 1950-1970.”

• Temperatures in Northern Hemisphere Due to Fall Over Next 25 Years (DS)

Whisper it quietly – and don’t tell Al ‘Boiling Oceans’ Gore – but the Northern hemisphere may be entering a temperature cooling phase until the 2050s with a decline up to 0.3°C. By extension, the rest of the globe will also be cooled. These sensational findings, ignored by the mainstream media, were released last year and are the work of six top international scientists led by Nour-Eddine Omrani of the Norwegian Bjerknes Centre for Climate Research. Published in the Nature journal Climate and Atmospheric Science, the scientists say that the North Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation, an important sea current that has been pumping warmer water into the Arctic, is weakening and that’s leading to a cooler North Atlantic area and lower temperatures, as was observed in the period 1950-1970.

Certainly, current observations back up these suggestions. As we reported recently, Arctic summer sea ice stopped declining about a decade ago and has shown recent growth. The Greenland surface ice sheet grew by almost 500 billion tonnes in the year to August 2022, and this was nearly equivalent to its estimated annual loss. Of course, climate alarmists have not quite caught up with these recent trends, with Sir David Attenborough telling his BBC Frozen Planet II audience that the summer sea ice could all be gone within 12 years.

Interestingly, the six scientists, whose work has helped debunk the ‘settled’ science myth, still attribute some global warming to human causes. The Northern hemisphere is characterised by “several multidecadal climate trends that have been attributed to anthropogenic climate change”. But producing work that predicts 30 years of global cooling puts them outside the ‘settled’ narrative that claims human-produced carbon dioxide is the main – possibly the only – determinant of global and local temperatures. At the very least, it dials down the hysteria pushing for almost immediate punitive net-Zero measures. Lead author Omrani is reported to have said that the expected warming pause “gives us time to work out technical, political and economic solutions before the next warming phase, which will take over again from 2050”.

“..there’s a growing push to implement the carbon credit scam worldwide. And that’s not a coincidence.”

• Carbon Credits Are the Biggest Scam Since Indulgences (IM)

In the Middle Ages, the Catholic Church convinced the commoners to buy indulgences to alleviate their sins. And they made a fortune in the process. Similarly, today, our overlords—the mainstream media, central bankers, and their political allies—are working overtime to convince the commoners to pay for their alleged climate sins. Enter carbon credits, government-issued permits that grant you the privilege to emit a certain amount of carbon dioxide. Although advocates promote them as a way to “save the environment,” in reality, carbon credits are nothing more than a devious mechanism to tax, regulate, and control you. It’s not a coincidence that the most philosophically and ethically bent people are promoting them.

For example, at a recent World Economic Forum (WEF) meeting in Davos, participants revealed and touted an “individual carbon footprint tracker.” It will track where people travel, how they travel, what they eat, and what they consume. Carbon accounting is already creeping into many places, like Google Flights. A federal carbon tax is already a reality in Trudeau’s Canada, and it’s causing the price of food and other goods and services to soar. But Canadians haven’t seen anything yet—the federal carbon tax will triple by 2030. In short, there’s a growing push to implement the carbon credit scam worldwide. And that’s not a coincidence. Remember, central banks only exist to harvest wealth from the populace through inflation and redirect it to the politically connected, an insidious practice known as seigniorage.

Pfizer India
https://twitter.com/i/status/1617493297735270400

‘Girls in the Windows’ – New York (1960) – Ormond Gigli
The building was knocked down the next day

Kafka

kinetic sculpture of writer Franz Kafka,

by artist David Černý, layers of steel with a weight of 45 tons

Ever turning to capture the writers unrelenting self doubt and anguish, this sculpture makes physical the writhing torment of the writers mind. pic.twitter.com/b5t9mWOBHU

— Science girl (@gunsnrosesgirl3) January 23, 2023

This iconic picture by Masa Ushioda is now famous as the ‘whale’s high five’ and was taken off the coast of Hona, Hawaii in 2018

Limit

Do not limit your imagination to the possible. pic.twitter.com/yjfn2AjoZW

— Vala Afshar (@ValaAfshar) January 23, 2023

Lifeguards working in Croatia.

Pelican landing
https://twitter.com/i/status/1617631392644628480

Alligator lurking in the duckweed. Photo: Cole Frechou

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

Debt Rattle November 25 2022

Nov 252022

November 25, 2022 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 9:34 am Finance Tagged with: Amnesty, Belarus, constitution, DeSantis, Elon Musk, free speech, Meta, MSM, Pentagon, price cap, Twitter 126 Responses »

Salvador Dali Figure at a window 1925

• Media Serve the Governors, Not the Governed (Lauria)

• Musk Announces Twitter Amnesty (RT)

• Musk Says Granting ‘Amnesty’ To Suspended Twitter Accounts (AP)

• NATO Doesn’t Supersede the U.S. Constitution (McKnight)

• Electric War (Escobar)

• Belarus Paints Grim Picture For Ukraine If It Won’t Negotiate (RT)

• Pentagon Dodges Ukraine Aid Question (RT)

• French Interior Minister Labels Italy Enemy Of France After Migration Row (RMX)

• EU Fails To Agree On Gas Price Cap – Hungary (RT)

• Estonia Warns It Will Veto EU Price Cap On Russian Oil (RT)

• Hungary Faces Pressure To Ratify NATO Expansion (RT)

• Oddsmakers Favor DeSantis For 2024 (JTN)

• Climate Policy Makes Europe Too Expensive for Low-Cost EV Manufacturing (CTH)

• Meta Uncovers US Military-Linked Propaganda Campaign (RT)

• You’re Going To Get Robbed (Denninger)

Gonzalo

Let’s talk a bit about Twitter and its amnesty policy Elon Musk announced yesterday. Which is basically free speech. Which in turn is something many people feel threatened by. The Constitution itself is a threat to them.

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black in 1971:“In the First Amendment the Founding Fathers gave the free press the protection it must have to fulfill its essential role in our democracy..”

• Media Serve the Governors, Not the Governed (Lauria)

In his 1971 opinion in the Pentagon Papers case, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black wrote: “In the First Amendment the Founding Fathers gave the free press the protection it must have to fulfill its essential role in our democracy. The press was to serve the governed, not the governors. The Government’s power to censor the press was abolished so that the press would remain forever free to censure the Government.” That’s what WikiLeaks and Julian Assange have been doing since 2006: censuring governments with governments’ own words pried from secrecy by WikiLeaks’ sources—whistleblowers. In other words, WikiLeaks has been doing the job the U.S. constitution intended the press to do.

One can hardly imagine anyone sitting on today’s U.S. Supreme Court writing such an opinion. Even more troubling is the news media having turned its back on its mission. Today they almost always serve the governors—not the governed. The question is why. Consolidation of media ownership has increased obedience of desperate journalists; entertainment divisions have taken over news departments; and careerist reporters and editors live vicariously through the power of those they cover, rejecting the press’ unique power to hold those officials to account. It comes down ultimately to lifestyles. Men go to war to protect and further their lifestyles. The press cheers them on for residual material betterment and increase in status. Millions of lives erased for lifestyles.

It used to be accepted in television that news departments would lose money and would be supported by the entertainment division. That’s because news was considered a public service. TV newsmen — they were almost all men in those days— were former wire service and newspaper reporters. But greed has put the presenters’ personalities before public service, as entertainment masquerades as news. Newspapers have sacrificed investigative units to maximize profit. Government is the winner. The abdication of the mainstream media of their constitutional responsibility to serve the governed and not the governors has left a void filled for more than a decade by WikiLeaks.

No longer do today’s Daniel Ellsbergs need to take their chances with editors at The New York Times or The Washington Post, or with their reporters spinning the damning information they risk their freedom to get to the public — no matter how disinterested and distracted the public may be. Now the traditional media can be bypassed. WikiLeaks deals in the raw material, that governments hang themselves with. That’s why they want Assange’s head. They lust for revenge and to stop further leaks that threaten their grip on power. That the corporate media has turned on Assange and WikiLeaks reveals their service to the state and how much they prioritize their style of life — disregarding the carnage they help bring about.

Twitter “amnesty”. RT provides a factual story…

• Musk Announces Twitter Amnesty (RT)

Twitter boss Elon Musk has vowed to extend a “general amnesty” to an unspecified number of suspended users, a week after reversing former US President Donald Trump’s lifetime ban from the platform. “The people have spoken. Amnesty begins next week,” Musk tweeted on Thanksgiving Day. He added “Vox Populi, Vox Dei,” a Latin phrase that means “the voice of the people is the voice of God.” The SpaceX and Tesla CEO launched a Twitter poll on Wednesday, asking if Twitter should “offer a general amnesty to suspended accounts, provided that they have not broken the law or engaged in egregious spam?” Out of more than 3.1 million users who took part, 72.4% voted ‘yes’ and 27.6% voted ‘no’.

In a separate message Musk also promised to start freeing and offering up for grabs “vast numbers of handles” that had previously been “consumed” by bots and trolls. Since acquiring Twitter for $44 billion last month, Musk has faced growing criticism for laying off hundreds of employees and reversing the permanent suspensions of multiple notable accounts, including former US President Donald Trump following a similar public vote. While critics claimed that Musk’s actions fuel hate speech, harassment and misinformation, he has rejected accusations he was some kind of “right-wing bogeyman” and insisted that Twitter under his ownership has not banned any leftists, not even for “utter lies.”

It remains to be seen how many users would be eligible for amnesty. This week the platform already reinstated Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, whose personal Twitter account had been permanently banned since early January 2022 for posting “misinformation” about the Covid-19 pandemic. Musk, however, drew the line at Alex Jones, saying he had “no mercy” for someone who used children’s deaths for clout. Musk had vowed to transform the platform and turn it into a bastion of free speech, saying it was “important to the future of civilization” to have a digital town square where a wide range of beliefs could be discussed.

…but the MSM, in this case AP, sees enormous threats in free speech. And if free speech equals freedom, we know what they’re afraid of. It reminds me of Sartre’s “L’enfer c’est les autres”, (Hell is -the- other people). In other words, if you honor the priciple of free speech, you welcome hell into your world. That sounds like the opposite of what the founding fathers thought. Hell is other people’s freedom.

• Musk Says Granting ‘Amnesty’ To Suspended Twitter Accounts (AP)

New Twitter owner Elon Musk said Thursday that he is granting “amnesty” for suspended accounts, which online safety experts predict will spur a rise in harassment, hate speech and misinformation. The billionaire’s announcement came after he asked in a poll posted to his timeline to vote on reinstatements for accounts that have not “broken the law or engaged in egregious spam.” The yes vote was 72%. “The people have spoken. Amnesty begins next week. Vox Populi, Vox Dei,” Musk tweeted using a Latin phrase meaning “the voice of the people, the voice of God.” Musk used the same Latin phrase after posting a similar poll last last weekend before reinstating the account of former President Donald Trump, which Twitter had banned for encouraging the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection.

Trump has said he won’t return to Twitter but has not deleted his account. Such online polls are anything but scientific and can easily be influenced by bots. In the month since Musk took over Twitter, groups that monitor the platform for racist, anti-Semitic and other toxic speech say it’s been on the rise on the world’s de facto public square. That has included a surge in racist abuse of World Cup soccer players that Twitter is allegedly failing to act on. The uptick in harmful content is in large part due to the disorder following Musk’s decision to lay off half the company’s 7,500-person workforce, fire top executives, and then institute a series of ultimatums that prompted hundreds more to quit. Also let go were an untold number of contractors responsible for content moderation.

Among those resigning over a lack of faith in Musk’s willingness to keep Twitter from devolving into a chaos of uncontrolled speech were Twitter’s head of trust and safety, Yoel Roth. Major advertisers have also abandoned the platform. On Oct. 28, the day after he took control, Musk tweeted that no suspended accounts would be reinstated until Twitter formed a “content moderation council” with diverse viewpoints that would consider the cases. On Tuesday, he said he was reneging on that promise because he’d agreed to at the insistence of “a large coalition of political-social activists groups” who later ”broke the deal” by urging that advertisers at least temporarily stop giving Twitter their business.

More violations of what the founding fathers bestowed upon us. How did all these things become so normal?

• NATO Doesn’t Supersede the U.S. Constitution (McKnight)

As our government continues to bumble and stumble at full speed towards World War III, the concept of tripwires and the legal authority of Article 5 become required understanding for the vigilant citizen. Last week the American people received the then-breaking news that a missile had landed in Poland and killed two people.Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky said that this was a purposeful act of war by Russia, and that the West must respond with full kinetic retaliation. He was joined by his amen corner here in the United States, that group of politicians, regime journalists, and paid lobbyists who have sold out their country for the requisite thirty pieces of silver. The War Party immediately jumped into action: this was what they’ve been waiting, praying for. A catalyst to launch the missiles, and sacrifice the world.

Poland, like the United States and nearly all of Europe, is a member of NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. (Maybe we should wonder why countries like Poland, Estonia, and Romania are in an “Atlantic” alliance.) A provision of NATO is Article 5, which popular conception treats as a mandatory obligation to go to war when a member of the alliance is attacked. It’s a one way pass into World War III. There were just two things wrong with this narrative. First, as was revealed within forty-eight hours and confirmed by both the Polish government and Biden White House, the missile was Ukrainian, not Russian. Vladimir Putin had not attacked NATO—purposefully or accidentally. Instead, a Ukrainian air defense missile attempting to intercept a Russian strike went off trajectory killed two Poles across the border.

All of a sudden “collective security” was no longer threatened, and no one on cable news was talking about how this required NATO retaliation on Kiev. (Surprised?) Secondly, even if it had been a Russian missile, and even if Vladimir Putin himself had aimed directly at that Polish farm, Article 5 obligates the United States to nothing. The NATO Treaty also has an Article 11, which specifies that the provisions of the alliance will be carried out in accordance with the domestic constitutions and processes of the respective members. That means a majority vote of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives on a formal declaration of war. Any member of Congress or news talking head saying Article 5 requires an immediate military response without a debate or vote is either lying or woefully uninformed.

And even if the NATO Treaty didn’t have that provision, we’d still rest our argument of Article I, Section 8 of the United States Constitution, the supreme authority of our laws. We are a sovereign nation, and the American people always have a choice on whether or not to go to war. Any international piece of paper trying to say otherwise be damned. Unfortunately, the War Party doesn’t always make that choice easy. They bribe politicians with weapon contract profits, flood the corporate press with propaganda, and instruct the American people that they must either commit to endless war or lose their liberty. They manufacture themselves consent.

“..a Polish farmer, his footfalls echoing in our collective memory, may have saved the world from WWIII..”

• Electric War (Escobar)

Spare a thought to the Polish farmer snapping pics of a missile wreckage – later indicated to belong to a Ukrainian S-300. So a Polish farmer, his footfalls echoing in our collective memory, may have saved the world from WWIII – unleashed via a tawdry plot concocted by Anglo-American “intelligence”.Such tawdriness was compounded by a ridiculous cover-up: the Ukrainians were firing on Russian missiles from a direction that they could not possibly be coming from. That is: Poland. And then the U.S. Secretary of Defense, weapons peddler Lloyd “Raytheon” Austin, sentenced Russia was to blame anyway, because his Kiev vassals were shooting at Russian missiles that should not have been in the air (and they were not). Call it the Pentagon elevating bald lying into a rather shabby art.

The Anglo-American purpose of this racket was to generate a “world crisis” against Russia. It’s been exposed – this time. That does not mean the usual suspects won’t try it again. Soon. The main reason is panic. Collective West intel sees how Moscow is finally mobilizing their army – ready to hit the ground next month – while knocking out Ukraine’s electricity infrastructure as a form of Chinese torture. Those February days of sending only 100,000 troops – and having the DPR and LPR militias plus Wagner commandos and Kadyrov’s Chechens do most of the heavy lifting – are long gone. Overall, Russians and Russophones were facing hordes of Ukrainian military – perhaps as many as 1 million. The “miracle” of it all is that Russians did quite well.

Every military analyst knows the basic rule: an invasion force should number three times the defending force. The Russian Army at the start of the SMO was at a small fraction of that rule. The Russian Armed Forces arguably have a standing army of 1.3 million troops. Surely they could have spared a few tens of thousands more than the initial 100,000. But they did not. It was a political decision. But now SMO is over: this is CTO (Counter-Terrorist Operation) territory. A sequence of terrorist attacks – targeting the Nord Streams, the Crimea Bridge, the Black Sea Fleet – finally demonstrated the inevitability of going beyond a mere “military operation”. And that brings us to Electric War.

“If they [Kiev] don’t want people to die, and to die in huge numbers … It’s hard, but [the conflict] must be stopped, because the complete destruction of Ukraine will follow..”

• Belarus Paints Grim Picture For Ukraine If It Won’t Negotiate (RT)

Ukraine should do its best to end the conflict with Russia, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said on Thursday, adding that failure to do so would bring about the total collapse of the nation. Commenting on the hostilities in the neighboring country, the Belarusian leader noted that “everything is in Ukraine’s hands now.” “If they [Kiev] don’t want people to die, and to die in huge numbers … It’s hard, but [the conflict] must be stopped, because the complete destruction of Ukraine will follow,” he said, speaking on the sidelines of the summit of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) in Armenia. Lukashenko added that it is not just “the loss of statehood” that is at stake for Ukraine, but its very existence.

He claimed that the Ukrainian people, who are bearing the brunt of the conflict, would eventually force President Vladimir Zelensky into a diplomatic engagement. “In one or two years, the people will be accusing him: ‘What did you do to start this war?’ According to Lukashenko, the situation will “press the Ukrainian leadership – if it is reasonable – into sitting at the negotiating table.” After Russia launched its military campaign against Ukraine in late February, Belarus hosted several rounds of talks between Moscow and Kiev. At the time, however, these diplomatic efforts failed to garner any results. In October, the Belarusian president claimed that while Minsk takes part in Russia’s military operation, its role is limited.

He said that his country is preventing the conflict from spreading into its territory while making sure that “nobody would shoot Russians in the back from the territory of Belarus.” In late September, he also claimed that the conflict could end “in just a few days” if Western powers were to back a peaceful settlement. This statement was to some extent echoed by Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov, who said last week that the participation of Western nations in dialogue could be a “guiding and reinforcing element.” While Moscow has repeatedly signaled that it is open to negotiations, President Zelensky has set some conditions. They include the “restoration of [Ukraine’s] territorial integrity,” “compensation for all war damage,” and the “punishment of every war criminal.”

“I am not going to take the question because I’m answering your question.”

• Pentagon Dodges Ukraine Aid Question (RT)

The US military has declined to give an exact breakdown for billions of dollars in aid to Ukraine requested by the White House last week, saying it would not discuss funding to replenish domestic arms stocks amid reports of growing shortages. Asked about President Joe Biden’s letter to Congress requesting an additional $37.7 billion in assistance to Kiev, deputy Pentagon press secretary Sabrina Singh refused to offer details. “I would not be able to tell you how much of that… is going back to replenishment,” she told reporters during a Tuesday press conference. “With every security assistance package that we announce, we assess our own readiness and capabilities and also what needs to be replenished.”

Pressed on whether she could take the question back to the Pentagon and provide an answer later, Singh doubled down, insisting: “I am not going to take the question because I’m answering your question.”“I just don’t have a number or a dollar figure for you right now on what that looks like, and I don’t think that’s something that we would broadcast from here,” she reiterated. Though the White House previously said that $21.7 billion of the requested aid would be devoted to both “equipment for Ukraine” and the “replenishment of Department of Defense stocks,” it did not specify how much would go to each. Repeated weapon shipments to Kiev have taken a toll on the domestic stockpile.

Earlier this week, the US Army’s chief of arms acquisition, Doug Bush, said the military was accelerating its process to procure weapons in order to make up for shortages, though Pentagon documents recently seen by the New York Post suggested it will take “multiple years” to resupply the Army. Even as early as March, just weeks after the conflict in Ukraine kicked off, the Defense Department was already scrambling to replenish thousands of shoulder-fired missiles supplied to Kiev. US arms transfers have only increased in the time since, with the Pentagon’s latest fact sheet reporting more than $19 billion in direct military aid approved since February, including over 46,000 anti-armor systems, nearly 200 Howitzers, 38 long-range High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS) and a litany of other heavy weapons, vehicles and ammunition.

“She argues that France continues to act like a colonial power, which drives Africans to migrate in the first place.”

• French Interior Minister Labels Italy Enemy Of France After Migration Row (RMX)

Following growing tensions between Italy and France over the issue of boat migrants in the Mediterranean, French Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin has resorted to extremely harsh rhetoric, referring to the Italian government as “enemies of France.” Darmanin made the comment in response to a question from a National Rally MP Mathilde Paris during a Q&A session in the French parliament, saying Italy is “attacking France.” Paris was inquiring why the majority of the migrants aboard the Ocean Viking ship, which France allowed to dock, have been released from the administrative center housing them, despite the minister’s previous assurances that “(they) will not be able to leave the administrative center.” Instead of addressing the question, Darmanin claimed she was an “ally” of the “enemies” of France.

“In fact, madam, you are not patriotic if you ally yourself with the enemies who are attacking France at the moment,” Darmanin said in response to a question by Paris. “You are siding with Madam (Giorgia) Meloni and her government who did not respect international law, instead you are attacking French policemen,” he added. The French government is being criticized for taking in the migrants, and a report shows that 26 of the 44 minors taken in have already escaped the migrant center. The language being deployed by Darmanin is sure to add further tension between the two countries, which has been growing ever since Italy rejected taking 234 migrants from the NGO ship Ocean Viking, which had mostly North Africans on board.

Italy argues that it has already accepted 90,000 migrants in 2022 alone, and even after rejecting Ocean Viking, it still allowed three NGO ships to dock and 600 migrants to disembark. Although French President Emmanuel Macron has labeled Meloni “inhumane” for not taking in the Ocean Viking migrants, at the same time, France has now said it is retaliating by not accepting 3,000 migrants from Italy it had promised to take in. Meloni has responded, pointing to France’s CFA franc program, in which France agrees to print money for 14 African countries in exchange for mint fees, which can go as high as 50 percent. She argues that France continues to act like a colonial power, which drives Africans to migrate in the first place.

Hopeless. They all want different price caps for different reasons.

• EU Fails To Agree On Gas Price Cap – Hungary (RT)

EU nations have failed to reach an agreement on imposing a price ceiling on natural gas following a Council of Energy Ministers’ meeting, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said on Thursday. Ministers from the bloc will discuss the proposed measure further during an extraordinary meeting scheduled on December 13, two days before the Summit of European leaders. “Today we started negotiations on the introduction of a ceiling on gas prices. I can say that these are bad proposals, which also threaten Europe’s energy security,” Szijjarto said. “At the meeting, no decision was made that could meet the objectives of the European Commission,” the minister stated, adding that most member states, including Hungary, see such a step as a misguided intervention with work of the natural gas market.

Szijjarto stressed that Hungary, which is heavily reliant on Russian energy imports, is planning to seek exemptions from any EU price caps on oil and gas supplied under long-term contracts. The EU has proposed introducing a cap when prices on the TTF exchange, Europe’s gas benchmark, reach €275 per megawatt hour and when prices are €58 ($59.53) higher than the LNG reference price for ten consecutive trading days within the two weeks. Both conditions need to be met for the cap to be triggered.

“It is hoped that the price limit would allow Russian production to remain at pre-sanctions levels, but reduce the country’s oil revenue.”

• Estonia Warns It Will Veto EU Price Cap On Russian Oil (RT)

A price cap on Russian oil proposed by the European Commission is too high and may be blocked by Estonia, Minister of Foreign Affairs Urmas Reinsalu said on Thursday, as quoted by Estonian Public Broadcasting (ERR). The proposal by Brussels to set a limit of between $65 and $70 per barrel on Russian sea-borne oil is insufficient, he stated, arguing that Moscow would make too much revenue at that price. “Estonia finds that the price horizon’s ambition is too low, considering that the EU has also failed to agree on a ninth sanctions package. The cap seems too high,” Reinsalu said at a government press conference, adding that discussions were ongoing.

Earlier, EU energy chief Kadri Simson confirmed that bloc members had failed to reach an agreement on a Russian oil price cap, but said negotiations would continue. Estonia’s warning came after EU leaders had already watered down the proposed cap by weakening some shipping provisions and delaying the implementation of the measure. Under the updated plan seen by Bloomberg, a grace period would apply to crude loaded before December 5, when oil-related sanctions come into effect, and unloaded by January 19. If approved, the measure would ban Western companies from providing insurance, brokerage or financial assistance to vessels loaded with Russian crude, unless the cargo is purchased below an agreed price.

It is hoped that the price limit would allow Russian production to remain at pre-sanctions levels, but reduce the country’s oil revenue. The proposal was reportedly rejected by Poland along with all three Baltic States, which called the cap “too generous” for Russia and pushed for the price ceiling to be imposed at $30 per barrel. Meanwhile, nations with major shipping industries like Greece and Malta insisted the cap should not be below $70. On Thursday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Moscow would embargo nations that support the proposed price limit on its oil.

“I would like to underline that the Swedes and the Finns have not lost a single minute of membership because of Hungary,” Orban said..”

• Hungary Faces Pressure To Ratify NATO Expansion (RT)

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has promised that Finland and Sweden’s NATO membership bids will definitely be among the first items on the agenda when the country’s parliament reconvenes next year, likely around mid-February.“I would like to underline that the Swedes and the Finns have not lost a single minute of membership because of Hungary,” Orban said, as cited by Euronews, adding that the prime ministers of Poland, Czech Republic and Slovakia had nudged him to move forward with the process during their meeting on Thursday.

“We have already confirmed to both Finland and Sweden that Hungary supports the membership of these two countries in NATO, and at the first session of next year, Parliament will put this on the agenda,” the Hungarian PM stated, apparently after facing pressure during a Visegrad Group meeting in Slovakia. Last month, Orban’s chief of staff Gergely Gulyas said there was a “good chance” the Hungarian parliament would vote before its autumn session ends mid-December. The parliament usually reconvenes in early February. In May, amid Russia’s military campaign in Ukraine, Sweden and neighboring Finland broke with their decades-long neutrality stance and formally applied for NATO membership. While the bloc accepted the requests, the Nordic nations’ bids have to be ratified by all 30 member states, and Türkiye and Hungary’s approval is still pending.

Earlier this month, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock rebuked Budapest and Ankara for delaying the ratification process, insisting that there is a “crystal clear basis” for allowing the two Nordic nations to join the military bloc. Hungarian officials have repeatedly stated their support for NATO expansion, and the measure is expected to be easily passed once it comes to the floor. Meanwhile, Ankara is demanding that Stockholm and Helsinki do more to fight “terrorism,” particularly Kurdish groups which are outlawed in Türkiye. Negotiations on the matter are still underway.

Pence and Buttigieg. What a waste of time.

• Oddsmakers Favor DeSantis For 2024 (JTN)

Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis is the odds-on favorite to win the 2024 presidential election. Betting website Covers.com currently assigns DeSantis a 30.77% chance of winning the 2024 electoral contest, with former President Donald Trump coming in second with 22.22%. President Joe Biden rounds out the top three with 20% while Vice President Kamala Harris and Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom tie for fourth with 6.67% each. Former Vice President Mike Pence and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg each have a 4.35% shot at the nation’s top job. Thus far, only Trump has officially launched his 2024 campaign, though Biden is expected to eventually do so. DeSantis, meanwhile, has declined to fuel speculation about his own potential bid, instead asserting that the GOP should focus on the upcoming Georgia runoff election.

Want to use less oil? Stop making stuff.

• Climate Policy Makes Europe Too Expensive for Low-Cost EV Manufacturing (CTH)

We have been closely monitoring the signs of a global cleaving around the energy sector taking place. Essentially, western governments’ following the “Build Back Better” climate change agenda which stops using coal, oil and gas to power their economic engine, while the rest of the growing economic world continues using the more efficient and traditional forms of energy to power their economies. Within the BBB western group (identified on map in yellow), the logical consequences are increased living costs for those who live in the BBB zone, and increased prices for goods manufactured in the BBB zone. In the zone where traditional low-cost energy resources continue to be developed (grey on map), we would expect to see a lower cost of living and lower costs to create goods. Two divergent economic zones based on two different energy systems.

This potential outcome just seemed to track with the logical conclusion. The yellow zone also represented by the World Economic Forum, and the gray zone also represented by an expanding BRICS alliance. Against this predictable backdrop we have been watching various events unfold, some obvious and some less so. Today, we get an obvious example: NEW DELHI, Nov 24 (Reuters) – Fiat parent Stellantis (STLA.MI) has concluded it can’t currently make affordable electric vehicles (EVs) in Europe and is looking at lower-cost manufacturing in markets such as India, its chief executive told reporters. If India, with its low-cost supplier base, is able to meet the company’s quality and cost targets by the end of 2023, it could open the door to exporting EVs to other markets, said Carlos Tavares, CEO of the group whose brands also include Peugeot and Chrysler.

“So far, Europe is unable to make affordable EVs. So the big opportunity for India would be to be able to sell EV compact cars at an affordable price, protecting profitability,” Tavares told reporters at a media roundtable in India late on Wednesday. Stellantis is investing heavily in EVs and plans to produce dozens in the coming decade, but Tavares warned last month that affordable battery EVs were between five and six years away. On his first visit to India since taking over as Stellantis CEO, he said the company was still working out a plan regarding EV exports from the country and had not yet taken any decisions.”

Normally we would expect to see market forces determining the ultimate economic outcome. Historically, we would not expect government policy that puts their nation at an economic disadvantage. However, in this WEF controlled new western economic normal we see multinational corporations’ making decisions and government leaders creating policy to support the corporations. There is money to be made by corporations within the climate change agenda, and there is money to be made by producing goods with low-cost wages and cheap materials. Eventually, if you keep following this to its natural conclusion, the entire yellow zone becomes a service driven economy.

What on earth made them go public with this?

“..the Pentagon was forced to launch a “sweeping audit of how it conducts clandestine information warfare,” after a variety of social media accounts, which its operatives used to target foreign audiences in elaborate psychological warfare efforts, were exposed.”

• Meta Uncovers US Military-Linked Propaganda Campaign (RT)

Facebook’s parent company Meta has acknowledged the discovery of several clusters of fake accounts and pages believed to be linked to individuals “associated with the US military,” according to the company’s latest adversarial threat report published this week. “Although the people behind this operation attempted to conceal their identities and coordination, our investigation found links to individuals associated with the US military,” the company said in a blog post on Tuesday. The influence campaign was discovered earlier this year and in total Meta removed 39 Facebook and 26 Instagram accounts, as well as 16 Pages and two groups, all for violating the policy against “coordinated inauthentic behavior.”

The social media giant admitted that the large-scale operation ran beyond those several dozen accounts and across many other internet platforms, including Twitter, YouTube and Telegram, as well as major Russian social networks VKontakte and Odnoklassniki. It apparently attempted to downplay the discovery by insisting that the “majority of this operation’s posts had little to no engagement from authentic communities” and highlighting similar “deceptive campaigns” by China and Russia. Meta’s acknowledgement substantiates a bombshell investigation by Washington Post that revealed that the Pentagon was forced to launch a “sweeping audit of how it conducts clandestine information warfare,” after a variety of social media accounts, which its operatives used to target foreign audiences in elaborate psychological warfare efforts, were exposed.

The takedown of the influence network was initially highlighted by researchers at Graphika and the Stanford Internet Observatory, which back in August published a report about online networks allegedly pushing “pro-Western,” anti-Russia and other politicized narratives. While the original study did not pin blame for the fake accounts on any particular actors, two officials later told the Post that US CENTCOM – the combatant command which oversees forces in the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia – “is among those whose activities are facing scrutiny” for its influence operations. At the time, CENTCOM refused to comment on whether any of the suspicious accounts were created by its personnel or contractors, but one official claimed such behavior would “absolutely be a violation of doctrine and training practices.”

Death, taxes and getting robbed.

• You’re Going To Get Robbed (Denninger)

Read this Twitter thread in full.: Today, we issued a final rule that allows retirement plan investors to take climate change and other environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors into consideration when making investment decisions: Oh really? Did you not just see a prime example of what happens when “ESG” takes over a corporation? Why, you did. It’s called Twitter. Three quarters of the people, all hired with “ESG” in mind, were just fired by Musk who as a private owner has zero obligation to any such so-called “principle.” The various screaming parties in the ESG cult all predicted immediate doom and disaster. No such disaster has occurred; the firm’s only service it provides to the public is running just fine with one quarter of the staffing load — and thus cost — it used to have. If you think Twitter is unique in this regard you’re too stupid to have a retirement and deserve to lose every cent of whatever you claim to be “investing.”

Let’s put this in simple terms: If “ESG” is a net positive for a company then nobody has to exempt anything or make it a separate subject of consideration and in fact doing so is stupid because if it in fact makes the firm more competitive and operating at a lower cost per unit of output it wins all on its own. What the Department of Labor has said by issuing this advisory is that your “retirement plan” can now be disadvantaged to any degree whatsoever, including losing all of it, when (not if) these “ESG” initiatives cause the firms invested in to underperform or fail outright and when that occurs you can’t sue the plan provider for violating their fiduciary responsibility to you as the true owner of the asset.

In other words the Department of Labor is formally admitting that these “ESG” initiatives are not to the benefit of the firm’s operating results and thus are also not to your benefit as an investor. This fact has now become a formal admission by our Federal Government. What’s worse? This “rule” amounts to an admission of collusive price-fixing — albeit indirect — between what are supposed to be competing firms. Under 100+ year old law that is a serious criminal felony. You will get screwed out of trillions of dollars over the coming years as a result of this and you are responsible for that screwing because you have and continue to permit this sort of rank corruption to take place without demanding it stop and backing up that demand with whatever is necessary to eliminate it.

Steve Kirsch
https://twitter.com/i/status/1595893348035751936

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

Debt Rattle November 8 2022

Nov 082022

November 8, 2022 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 9:10 am Finance Tagged with: Biden, Bottomless Pinocchio, grokking, Highway To Hell, Meta, midterms, rare earth, shamnesty 63 Responses »

Rembrandt van Rijn Self portrait with tousled hair 1629

• WaPo Awards Biden a “Bottomless Pinocchio” (Turley)

• The Pathetic Democratic Pantheon (Victor Davis Hanson)

• Biden Administration Privately Asks US Banks To Keep Working With Russia (RT)

• US Nuclear Forces Chief Says ‘the Big One Is Coming (Antiwar)

• EU Official Reveals How Far Ukraine Is From Membership (RT)

• World Is On ‘Highway To Hell’ – UN Chief (RT)

• The World Is Racing To Break China’s Rare Earth Dominance (AGMM)

• EU and UK Energy Bills Smash Record High (RT)

• Medvedev Names Key Reason For Ukraine Conflict (RT)

• Are You Ready for the Coming U.S. Government Default? (EP)

• How to Beat Propaganda: the Grokking Strategy (Ugo Bardi)

• Low Down on the Showdown (Kunstler)

• House Republicans Allege ‘Weaponization’ of FBI, DOJ (ET)

• Meta Prepares For Large-scale Layoffs (JTN)

• The Unforgivable Request for Shamnesty (Buckley)

• United Airlines Eliminating Seats As Americans Get Fatter (NYP)

Siegfried Sassoon

Trump Biden

LOL President Trump just played a hilarious montage of Joe Biden's dementia moments at his rally in Miami. pic.twitter.com/SLViNk5dos

— Greg Price (@greg_price11) November 6, 2022

I quit Twitter

I Quit Twitter Because of Elon Musk pic.twitter.com/vsWbssQI2r

— Ryan Long (@ryanlongcomedy) November 7, 2022

Macgregor

“..despite his history as a serial spreader of disinformation, I would still oppose any effort to ban him from social media or even remove his comments…”

• WaPo Awards Biden a “Bottomless Pinocchio” (Turley)

We have been discussing a series of false statements made by President Biden about election law, border agents, Second Amendment, gun capacity, and a variety of personal facts. Now, the Washington Post has awarded President Biden a “bottomless Pinocchio” for his repeating of clearly false facts. For those in the free speech community, it is a highly ironic moment given the President’s recent defense of censorship because citizens need “editors” to tell them what is real and what is not. Indeed, he asked, if we did not censor social media, “how will people know the truth?” President Biden is arguably the most anti-free speech president since John Adams. The President often sounds like the Censor-in-Chief, including claiming that social media companies are “killing people” by not engaging in more robust censorship.

Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler listed various examples of Biden spreading false claims that have been repeatedly and publicly debunked. You draw this rare rebuke if you repeat false statements more than 20 times. That includes his claim on meeting with the Chinese leader: “Folks, I spent a lot of time — more time with Xi Jinping than any other head of state. … I’ve traveled 17,000 miles with him.” The Post also noted how the president claimed that he is responsible for seniors getting an increase in their Social Security checks for the first time in 10 years: “On our watch, for the first time in 10 years, seniors are going to get the biggest increase in their Social Security checks they’ve gotten.” The Post noted “the reason Social Security payments are going up is because Social Security benefits, under a law passed in 1972, are adjusted every year to keep pace with inflation.”

The President has also continued to claim that the Republicans want to end social security, which the Post has previously declared to be false. Despite his own pattern of false statements (some might call it “disinformation”), the President seems most alarmed that the a single social media platform is moving to restore free speech protections. For years, Twitter has joined companies like Facebook in barring or removing dissenting views in some of these same areas like election reforms. Biden warns that the pubic will simply not know what is true without such editing of the material that they are allowed to read. The President could cite his own history of false statements are an example for his call for greater censorship to protect voters. Yet, despite his history as a serial spreader of disinformation, I would still oppose any effort to ban him from social media or even remove his comments. It is false that Republicans want to end social security but others can counter such bad speech with good speech. Readers can discern what is true and false from their sources and their support. As shown by the President himself, the governing principle remains “caveat emptor,” or buyer beware.

“The Left got their Biden. And yes, he turned over the reins of government to them. And yes, they got their neo-socialism for two years. And yes, they are destroying America as we knew it.”

• The Pathetic Democratic Pantheon (Victor Davis Hanson)

What will Biden not lie about? The death of his son, the circumstances in which his first wife died in a car wreck, the fantasy congressional vote on his student-loan forgiveness scheme? The number of states (Joe says, 54, Obama used to swear there are 57)? The very century we are now in? Where he went to college? Joe, our own Walter Mitty, has variously been a semi-truck driver, an arrested South-African street protestor against apartheid, a surrogate Puerto-Rican child, a black college enrollee, a Ciceronian populist orator, a coal miner’s scion, an honors student, a blue-chip collegiate athlete, a defender against inner-city Corn Poppers, and absolutely ignorant about the Biden family syndicate.

Recall that a non compos mentis Biden was nominated solely as the thin veneer to a hard Left agenda whose avatars were unelectable. Biden was to feign being the colorless, stand-in “moderate” who would “unify” the fractured country, tone down the Trump rhetoric, and let the Trump record sort of proceed on autopilot. Then when he played out that part and won, the leftist minders in this Faustian bargain took over to push through, on a one-vote senatorial margin, the most radical left-wing agenda in U.S. history. Biden, however, took his role too seriously. He reverted to the mean-spirited, pre-senile blowhard Joe—the obnoxious messenger thus now making the noxious message even more toxic. A retiring, silenced, good old Joe from Scranton was the script, not a doddering, incoherent, ”get off my lawn” old man shouting for the need of socialist policies that were the exact opposite of his previously supposed convictions.

The Left got their Biden. And yes, he turned over the reins of government to them. And yes, they got their neo-socialism for two years. And yes, they are destroying America as we knew it. But in doing this, the people had the rare occasion to see fully and experience the nihilist Left. And they are now about to express their loathing for what the Left has wrought. The problem with the ossified Democratic Pantheon is that they are of no use to the Left in the midterms because it is their own radical ideology over the past two years that was finally enacted and wrecked the country. And all the shrieks about abortion, semi-fascists, and democracy dying cannot put back together what they shattered.

Double tongue much?!

• Biden Administration Privately Asks US Banks To Keep Working With Russia (RT)

The Biden administration is privately urging leading US banks like JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup to continue doing business with strategic Russian firms despite sanctions imposed on Moscow over the conflict in Ukraine, people familiar with the issue told Bloomberg. Such requests have been made by the Treasury and State Departments as the US government is trying to keep pressure on Russia, but at the same time avoid “a global economic catastrophe,” the news agency reported on Monday. Washington has been asking for services such as US dollar settlements, payment transfers, and trade finance for Russian firms exempt from some aspects of the sanctions, including gas giant Gazprom and fertilizer producers Uralkali and PhosAgro, the sources said.

As a result, the largest American banks are currently being “caught in the push-pull” between the Biden administration and Congress, which insists on harsher measures against Moscow. The sanctions prevent US banks from providing services to blacklisted entities and people, with violations punishable with multibillion-dollar fines. Jamie Dimon the CEO of investment bank JPMorgan Chase was reportedly grilled at a congressional hearing in September over his company allegedly using loopholes in the sanctions regime to keep working with Russia. The banker responded by saying that “we are following the instructions of the American government as they asked us to do it.”

When addressed on the matter by Bloomberg, a Treasury spokesman said that it had issued guidance to banks, clarifying that activities in humanitarian aid, energy, and agriculture are authorized. JPMorgan and Citigroup have declined to comment. “Congress needs to understand this – the US government has not imposed a comprehensive embargo with Russia, there’s still pockets of business that are allowed,” Nnedinma Ifudu Nweke, an attorney specializing in US economic sanctions at Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP, pointed out. The Treasury “will continue to have meetings to educate banks on those pockets of allowable transactions, especially in the humanitarian space,” Nweke added.

“..Richard had previously warned that the risk of nuclear war with Russia and China is a “real possibility.”

• US Nuclear Forces Chief Says ‘the Big One Is Coming (Antiwar)

The commander that oversees US nuclear forces delivered an ominous warning at a naval conference last week by calling the war in Ukraine a “warmup” for the “big one” that is to come. “This Ukraine crisis that we’re in right now, this is just the warmup,” said Navy Adm. Charles Richard, the commander of US Strategic command. “The big one is coming. And it isn’t going to be very long before we’re going to get tested in ways that we haven’t been tested [in] a long time.” Richard’s warning came after the US released its new Nuclear Posture Review (NPR), which reaffirms that the US doctrine allows for the first use of nuclear weapons. The review says that the purpose of the US nuclear arsenal is to “deter strategic attacks, assure allies and partners, and achieve US objectives if deterrence fails.”

The NPR says the US “would only consider the use of nuclear weapons in extreme circumstances to defend the vital interests of the United States or its Allies or partners.” The NPR was released with the 2022 National Defense Strategy that names China as the “most comprehensive and serious challenge” to the US and describes Russia as an “acute threat.” The document, as with the previous 2018 National Defense Strategy, makes clear that the US military is preparing for future conflicts with both China and Russia. As the head of STRATCOM, Richard had previously warned that the risk of nuclear war with Russia and China is a “real possibility.” He said last year that the US military must “shift its principal assumption from ‘nuclear employment is not possible’ to ‘nuclear employment is a very real possibility,’ and act to meet and deter that reality.”

The Nuclear Posture Review calls for the modernization of the nuclear triad, which could cost up to $1.5 trillion, and keeping tensions high with Russia and China helps justify the massive price tag. Richard said last week that the US needs to put more resources into competing with China’s military. Congress is looking to spend big on arming Taiwan, with a plan to give the island $10 billion in military aid included in the Senate’s version of the 2023 National Defense Authorization Act. While done in the name of deterrence, China’s actions and rhetoric make it clear that more US support for Taiwan will make war in the region more likely.

Ukrainian membership is EU suicide. The only sensible voice here:

“Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova [..] wrote on Telegram that Ukraine’s accession will take “as long as the collapse of the EU.”

• EU Official Reveals How Far Ukraine Is From Membership (RT)

Ukraine’s accession to the European Union will take several years, the European commissioner for enlargement and neighborhood policy said on Sunday. In an interview with the German newspaper Welt am Sonntag, Oliver Varhelyi said Kiev needs to do “extensive work” to prepare for “participation in the EU internal market and in many other important policy areas.” The commissioner predicted that “the entire preparations for accession will most likely take longer than a year or two.” Varhelyi also stressed that the accession criteria for Ukraine are the same as for any other candidate country. However, Olga Stefanishina, Ukraine’s European Integration Minister, told Welt: “Ukraine is not an ordinary candidate for accession.”

Stefanishina noted that Ukraine started integration reforms under EU supervision before it was granted accession status, and argued that the country can “proceed faster” in its membership bid, especially considering that some of its neighbors and the Baltic countries “have already signaled that quick accession is possible.” On Monday, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova, in response to Varhelyi’s remarks, wrote on Telegram that Ukraine’s accession will take “as long as the collapse of the EU.” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov earlier described the EU’s decision to provide Ukraine with candidate status “a part of the geopolitical gambit against Russia.”

Ukraine applied to join the 27-nation bloc shortly after Moscow launched its military offensive in late February. In June, Brussels granted Kiev EU candidate status, the first step in the accession process, and stressed that the country must continue structural reforms, fight corruption and reduce “the persistent influence of oligarchs.” Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo made it clear at the time that granting Ukraine EU candidate status was an important “symbolic message” in support of Kiev amid its conflict with Russia. Actual EU membership, however, is still “many years” away, and the country must first meet European standards, he said.

Climate change AC/DC style. Time to kick the UN out of the discussion. What they propose will simply kill off societies and economies.

• World Is On ‘Highway To Hell’ – UN Chief (RT)

“Humanity has a choice: cooperate or perish,” Guterres told delegates gathered to discuss how to combat change amid an ongoing military conflict between Russia and Ukraine and rising global inflation and energy shortages. Guterres insisted that the world’s richest and poorest counties must form a pact to accelerate the transition from fossil fuels, singling out China and the United States as two countries that have a “particular responsibility to join efforts to make this pact a reality.” “Greenhouse gas emissions keep growing. Global temperatures keep rising. And our planet is fast approaching tipping points that will make climate chaos irreversible,” Guterres said, proclaiming that “we are on a highway to climate hell with our foot on the accelerator.”

The UN chief’s warnings were seconded by former US vice president Al Gore, who also emphasized the need to end the reliance on fossil fuels. “We must see the so-called ‘dash for gas’ for what it really is: A dash down a bridge to nowhere, leaving the countries of the world facing climate chaos and billions in stranded assets, especially here in Africa,” he said. Guterres also pointed out that the world must achieve net zero emissions by 2050 if the signatories of the 2015 Paris Climate agreement wish to achieve their long-term goal of keeping global temperatures from rising by more than 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels. Last week, notorious teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg suggested battling climate change by eliminating capitalism, which she said was defined by “colonialism, imperialism, oppression and genocide by the so-called global North.”

Too late. Even if it were doable.

• The World Is Racing To Break China’s Rare Earth Dominance (AGMM)

For the past couple of months, MetalMiner frequently posted about the world’s dependence on China for raw materials used to make rare earth magnets. Aside from the US, countries like Japan, South Korea, Italy, and the Netherlands heavily rely on Chinese rare earth imports. It’s clear why. China boasts extensive rare earth reserves. As the world increases its demand for such products, China managed to develope a powerful monopoly on the global market. So, to prevent China from wielding too much geopolitical power in rare earth trading, it’s becoming crucial to find alternative sources. It’s true that most of the world’s rare earth processing takes place in China. However, many raw rare earth materials are actually extracted from other parts of the globe.

Common sources include Myanmar (Burma), the US, Canada, and Australia. And with demand for rare earth magnets expected to double by 2030, tapping into these supplies has become more important than ever. Fortunately, many nations continue to ramp up their own rare earth production. In Japan, miners have gone to impressive lengths to compete against China in the global rare earth magnet marketplace. In fact, researchers recently explored beneath the Pacific Ocean (right outside of the Ogasawara islands) at a depth of 6,000 meters to excavate materials for rare earth magnets. The Japanese government plans to start excavating these raw rare earth materials as early as April of 2023.

Japan isn’t alone. Australia, another nation abundant in raw materials for rare earth magnets, continues to step up its rare earth mining game. Arafura, a mining project located in Central Australia, recently announced plans to increase investments in its mining endeavors. Many of these take place in the hottest, most sun-parched areas of the nation. But according to Arafura it’s worth it. Apparently, the company sees a huge opportunity due to the large amounts of neodymium and praseodymium located in the region. These elements are frequently used in producing rare earth magnets. Currently, the company claims their mines could satisfy up to 5% of the world’s demand.

Whitney Webb

All This Mining for What? Whitney Webb Explains the End Game for the Electrical Vehicle Movement

If you ask people like Bill Gates … they say, 'All of the world's reserves of lithium, cobalt, and nickel must be completely mined if we even want to get close to the electrical ⤵️ pic.twitter.com/E5nuZcXpfi

— Ignorance, the root and stem of all evil (@ivan_8848) November 7, 2022

Peace talks can prevent this.

• EU and UK Energy Bills Smash Record High (RT)

The average retail gas price across the EU and the UK doubled in October compared to the previous month, when it amounted to €0.18 per kilowatt-hour, Bloomberg reported on Monday, citing data from energy consultancy VaasaETT. Electricity costs for consumers have reportedly soared 67% to €0.36 per kilowatt-hour. The surge occurred despite EU governments’ latest attempts to protect households against spiraling energy prices by providing billions in subsidies. EU leaders have pledged more than €550 billion over the past year to help businesses and households tackle the energy crisis. According to Philip Lewis, chief executive officer at VaasaETT, it’s likely household bills would have been even higher if it were not for the financial aid.

On a monthly basis, the average unit rate for electricity reportedly increased 3.4% in October, while that for gas grew by 2.5%. The biggest monthly gains were recorded in Dublin, Ireland, where power rates climbed 44%, while the average gas price in Rome surged 97%. “If we were essentially to have the crisis more or less lasting for another whole year, or more than a year, that cost, of those measures for these governments, is going to be enormous,” Lewis said, as quoted by media. “Eventually customers will forget that those prices are not real prices – they will take them as the norm and then it becomes essentially impossible to remove them,” he added. The EU and Britain are facing a sharp rise in energy prices and record inflation amid anti-Russia sanctions and a policy of abandoning Russian fuel. The situation is expected to lead to energy rationing and shortages across Western Europe.

Nukes. “Ukraine’s threat to resume its nuclear program..”

• Medvedev Names Key Reason For Ukraine Conflict (RT)

Ukraine’s threat to resume its nuclear program was one of the key reasons that forced Russia to launch its military operation in late February, former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev said on Monday. Writing on the Russian social media network Vkontakte, he argued that the Ukrainian authorities are now “crying bitterly” over their decision to relinquish the nuclear arsenal they inherited after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Kiev made this decision after caving in to “harsh pressure of their current masters in Washington,” Medvedev, who currently serves as deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, stated. He added that all Ukrainian presidents – from the late Leonid Kravchuk to the incumbent Vladimir Zelensky – described the step as a forced one.

However, according to the official, Kiev has made clear that it “would be diabolically happy” to use nukes against Russia and “their own citizens”. “They have been dropping explicit hints about this, threatening to resume the nuclear program. And that was one of the reasons for conducting the special military operation,” he insisted. Medvedev also drew a sharp contract between Ukraine and South Africa, the first country with a nuclear arsenal to voluntarily give it up. He noted that after the collapse of the apartheid regime, the nation’s new democratic authorities “took a responsible and sovereign stance towards their people, neighboring countries and the entire world community”. “And today they do not regret the choice made 30 years ago, they are proud of it and show the way for others by their example,” he added.

Under the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, Ukraine surrendered its Soviet-era nuclear arsenal in exchange for promises from the US, Britain and Russia that they would “provide assistance” to the country in case of aggression. The three states also vowed not to attack Ukraine themselves. However, Russian officials have repeatedly stated that this document was undermined by NATO’s eastward expansion, which threatened Moscow’s vital security interests. Moreover, prior to the start of the Ukraine conflict in late February, Zelenksy signaled that Kiev could give up its decades-old pledge to be a non-nuclear nation and reverse the decision it took to give up its atomic weapons.

“Income taxes, budget deficits, the national debt. These are all real things the average person of moderate means and mental capacity can grasp a hold of, should they care to.”

• Are You Ready for the Coming U.S. Government Default? (EP)

Will there be a pivot, pause, or no pivot? This is the wrong question to be asking. The reality is the major stock market indexes have much farther to fall before the bear market is over, regardless of if the Fed pivots anytime soon. If you recall, the Fed began cutting interest rates in September of 2007. Yet the stock market didn’t bottom out until March of 2009. Similarly, the Fed began cutting interest rates in January of 2001. Still, the stock market didn’t bottom out until October of 2002. Thus, using these two most recent bear markets as a guide, once the Fed finally begins cutting interest rates, which would come after inflation has begun to abate and a period of interest rate pause, the stock market will continue to fall for another 18 to 22 months.

In other words, this bear market may not bottom out until well into 2025. What’s more, the entire dollar based financial system will likely blow up sometime beforehand. How’s that for a grim outlook? Investors, as you can see, are incredibly twisted up by the Fed’s money games, and how they’ve enhanced the peaks and valleys of the stock market. As for workers and voters, many don’t have a clue as to the ramifications for the real, Main Street economy. Here’s why… Fiscal policy, as opposed to monetary policy, is more readily understood by workers and voters. Income taxes, budget deficits, the national debt. These are all real things the average person of moderate means and mental capacity can grasp a hold of, should they care to.

The effects of zero interest rate policy (ZIRP) or quantitative easing (QE), however, are less apparent to the casual observer. Politicians may make superficial remarks about consumer price inflation if they think it will score points with voters. But actual currency debasement policies are rarely mentioned.

Ugo sent a mail: “Mentioning your blog in this post!”

“The Greeks killed Socrates because he was “corrupting the youth” by teaching them to think for themselves.”

And yes, that is what I try to do. Only, I don’t corrupt only the youth. I think bigger.

• How to Beat Propaganda: the Grokking Strategy (Ugo Bardi)

Things change completely when you become a professional. At that stage, you must learn to consult many sources and sift good information from the bad. As a good professional, you listen to everybody and trust nobody. We can describe this attitude by the term “grokking,” invented by sci-fi author Robert Anson Heinlein to indicate the kind of in-depth understanding that professionals have of their field. In Heinlein’s fictional Mars, “to grok” also means “to drink.” You assimilate knowledge just like you assimilate the water you drink. [..] Universities don’t teach you how to grok. Probably, it is because the old saying is true: nothing worth learning can be taught. At least, not in the traditional way. Even good professionals often are completely naive when they leave their specialized field and are exposed to propaganda. Yet, it is not impossible to learn how to grok. It is a recursive affair: you must grok how to grok!

Nowadays, with a tsunami of propaganda submerging all of us, I am discovering that many people I know use the same grokking strategy. Typically, we avoid TV and mainstream media, and we use aggregators, feed readers, and similar ways to access multiple sources. Many people seem to have developed this learning strategy by themselves. Not long ago, my good friend Anastassia showed me how she does it: she has hundreds of telegram channels she follows. She clicks on the titles of posts that seem interesting to her, reading them if they turn out to be really interesting. She doesn’t trust any of them, but she listens to all of them. I have a feeling that there is some correlation between this style of learning and the fact that she is among the brightest persons I know.

Personally, I tend to use feed readers rather than Telegram (I described the method in a previous post), but it is the same idea. In addition, some blogs and sites are structured as aggregators and they will do a good job for you by linking to other sites and sources (a good one that I follow is Raul Ilargi’s “Automatic Earth.”). In any case, you want to be in control of what you receive: so, no Facebook, no Twitter, nothing like that, even search engines are biased. You don’t want others to decide what you see. You listen to everyone, and you trust no one. You want to be in control of the information you receive.

“..damning information about FBI crimes continues to leak out of the woodwork via whistleblowers, while the agency behaves more and more like an American Gestapo.”

• Low Down on the Showdown (Kunstler)

One obvious agent is George Soros, whose many NGOs operate at the fine-grained local level to elect district attorneys who won’t enforce the criminal statutes and state secretaries of state who won’t enforce election laws. Mr. Soros is also deeply implicated, through his Atlantic Council org, in the years-long program to destabilize Ukraine and light the fire for a completely avoidable world war. At least part of the time, George Soros lives in the US. Why his activities are not under investigation by the US Department of Justice probably answers your questions about his hidden influence at the higher levels of government. Bill Gates, the Microsoft tycoon, circulates at the center of the evil nexus where US public health shakes hands with the drug companies.

His money appears to be entangled in the biolab projects around the world engaged in weaponizing disease and then profiting from alleged “vaccines” to defeat it. The Covid-19 project went badly awry, especially the “vaccine” part. He’s been vocal about reducing the world’s population and now appears to have succeeded in helping to prompt a weird medical genocide. Other supporting outside players range from the barely plausible Klaus Schwab and his World Economic Forum, which has implanted leaders and managers all over Western Civ inculcated in his Great Reset effort to wreck what’s left of industrial society and its cultural armature; to shadowy figures in European banking chattered about but never identified; to the CCP, which has gotten huge benefits from its relatively penny-ante investments in the Biden Family.

On the domestic scene, where covering-up skeins of manifold crimes sets the political tone, Christopher Wray of the FBI must lead the pack of paper-hangers. Under his leadership, beginning in 2017, the agency carried out most of its RussiaGate crimes against a sitting president and did absolutely nothing to investigate the blatant ballot fraud of 2020 that sealed the deal. Even under the shelter of “Joe Biden,” who Mr. Wray helped elect, and the stooge AG, Merrick Garland, damning information about FBI crimes continues to leak out of the woodwork via whistleblowers, while the agency behaves more and more like an American Gestapo.

“..FBI leadership is pressuring line agents to reclassify cases as domestic violent extremism even if the matter does not meet the criteria. ”That’s no mistake, Republicans assert..”

• House Republicans Allege ‘Weaponization’ of FBI, DOJ (ET)

Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee on Nov. 4 released a more than 1,000-page report that details whistleblower disclosures about the alleged politicization of federal law enforcement. Specifically, the report focuses on the Department of Justice (DOJ) under Attorney General Merrick Garland and the FBI under Director Christopher Wray. Garland, Republicans said, has been “a willing participant of the Biden Administration’s weaponization of law enforcement.” The FBI too, Republicans assert, “has abused its law-enforcement authorities for apparently political purposes.”Republicans proceeded to cite a list of incidents and whistleblower reports showing how deeply rooted they say the politicization of federal law enforcement has become.

One of the most significant findings of the report showed that the FBI has been encouraging its agents to artificially inflate the number of domestic violent extremism (DVE) incidents. For years, Democrats—including President Joe Biden—have claimed that DVE is one of the greatest threats to U.S. national security. Specifically, Democrats have blamed conservatives and “white supremacists” for most such incidents. During the 116th Congress, Democrats even went so far as to propose legislation that would substantially bolster DOJ resources to combat DVE. “White supremacists and other far-right-wing extremists are the most significant domestic terrorism threat facing the United States,” the bill states.According to official FBI numbers, this could very well be taken to be the case. However, the Republicans’ report indicates that Americans may have some reason to pause before accepting the FBI’s numbers on DVE events.

Whistleblowers, Republicans say, “have described how FBI leadership is pressuring line agents to reclassify cases as domestic violent extremism even if the matter does not meet the criteria. ”That’s no mistake, Republicans assert, but instead a targeted effort by federal law enforcement to bolster Democrats’ claims about the threat posed by DVE. “At a time when the Biden Administration maintains that DVE is the ‘greatest threat’ facing the United States, the FBI appears to be complicit in artificially creating the Administration’s political narrative,” the lawmakers wrote.Whistleblowers have reported an environment that pressures agents to rack up DVE case counts. “One whistleblower explained that because agents are not finding enough DVE cases, they are encouraged and incentivized to reclassify matters as DVE cases even though there is minimal, circumstantial evidence to support the reclassification,” the report says.

“Meta had added more than 27,000 employees in 2020 and 2021 and added over 15,000 more during the first nine months of this year..”

• Meta Prepares For Large-scale Layoffs (JTN)

Facebook parent company Meta is reportedly planning to lay off thousands of employees as soon as Wednesday after experiencing rapid growth during the pandemic. Meta, which had more than 87,000 employees in September, has already told workers to cancel nonessential travel starting this week, according to The Wall Street Journal. The workforce reduction would be the first large layoffs in the company’s history. A spokesperson for Meta declined to comment, but pointed to CEO Mark Zuckerburg’s statement that the company would “focus our investments on a small number of high priority growth areas.”

He said during an earnings call late last month that “we expect to end 2023 as either roughly the same size, or even a slightly smaller organization than we are today.” Meta was already planning to cut expenses by at least 10% over the next several months, the Journal reported in September. Meta had added more than 27,000 employees in 2020 and 2021 and added over 15,000 more during the first nine months of this year. Since the beginning of 2022, however, Meta’s stock has fallen more than 70%.

“It was good for woke adults who want to remain children, it was good for the national security-industrial complex, it was good for hiding behind, it was good for expanding societal power. It was not good for people.”

• The Unforgivable Request for Shamnesty (Buckley)

The actions taken by Dr. Emily Oster – who had the astonishing temerity to write the “Let’s Declare a Pandemic Amnesty” piece – and her many many over-credentialed, under-educated power mad brethren over the past 30 months cannot be given a pass. What happened during the pandemic was obviously more than a one-off drunken party moment. Having tee many martoonis does not compare to the whirlwind of destruction the COVID reaction caused. Massive educational degradation. Economic devastation, by both the lockdowns and now the continuing fiscal nightmare plaguing the nation caused by continuing federal over-reaction. The critical damage to the development of children’s social skills through hyper-masking and fear-mongering.

The obliteration of the public’s trust in institutions due to their incompetence and deceitfulness during the pandemic. The massive erosion of civil liberties. The direct hardships caused by vaccination mandates, etc. under the false claim of helping one’s neighbor. The explosion of the growth of Wall Street built on the destruction of Main Street. The clear separation of society into two camps – those who could easily prosper during the pandemic and those whose lives were completely upended. The demonization of anyone daring to ask even basic questions about the efficacy of the response, be it the vaccines themselves, the closure of public schools, the origin of the virus, or the absurdity of the useless public theater that made up much of the program. The fissures created throughout society and the harm caused by guillotined relationships amongst family and friends.

The slanders and career chaos endured by prominent actual experts (see the Great Barrington Declaration) and just plain reasonable people like Jennifer Sey for daring to offer different approaches, approaches – such as focusing on the most vulnerable – that had been tested and succeeded before. And still a million people died. And now Oster asks if everyone would just please move on and forget about it? Oster kept her job. Oster got famous. The pandemic was good for Oster. The pandemic was also good for bureaucrats, multi-nationals, putative experts, the mindless media, and internet scolds. It was good for woke adults who want to remain children, it was good for the national security-industrial complex, it was good for hiding behind, it was good for expanding societal power. It was not good for people.

They don’t take these decisions lightly.

• United Airlines Eliminating Seats As Americans Get Fatter (NYP)

United Airlines’ flights are shaping up to most comfortable coach seating in awhile.Between this month and April 30 of next year, the airline will block off up to six seats on its fleet of Boeing 757s, a company spokesperson told the “Live and Let’s Fly” blog.The decision was based on numbers gathered from the Federal Aviation Administration that indicated the average winter weight of female passengers — including their carry-on items — increased from 150 pounds in 2019 to 184 pounds in 2022. Meanwhile, the average male passenger’s winter weight went up, from 190 pounds to 205 pounds, over the same time frame.“The temporary change is a result of the increased average customer winter weights as prescribed by the FAA,” a United spokesperson said of the temporary change.

“To be compliant with the current B757 weight and balance requirements, United will block specific seats between November 1 and April, 30 2023,” it ended. Blocked-off spots will always be middle seats in rows 16 to 40 to equally distribute passengers’ weight on every flight, an official told the blog. A laminated sign will be placed on each seat that is off-limits. Passengers’ physical bodies aren’t the only contributing factor to the uptick in weight. The FAA calculated that people are stuffing more in their carry-on bags — which are not weighed in the United States — thus increasing the overall heft of the cargo. Seasonal items, such as winter coats, are also considered during the colder months. “Live and Let’s Fly” also noted that this policy was in effect last winter and was lifted by spring.